"The bizarre symbolism of tunnels was not lost on me. The whole life and death thing, I tried to brush it all away. Acknowledge the existence of these thoughts while I calmly keep walking on and under an arching bridge that formed a long tunnel underneath. After sundown, it did not look nearly as afterlife-like, more like the center of the void, like a black hole, almost. More like what I imagined dying to be like."

"I couldn't see Mika waiting but I knew he was there. We've arranged a meeting because I needed information. He needed to meet me even more than I needed him so I was completely certain he'd show. Seeing this cone of oblivion stretching out in front of me made me grip my kunai dispenser tighter to my side and wonder if it was a good idea to pull it out and hold it even tighter."

"Mika was undercover for some time. We had some in the Security like that, how many of them were trustworthy and didn't get drowned in that swamp of shitshow they encountered on a daily basis was beyond me. How many of them did things that they were not allowed to do and incriminated themselves forcing them to cut ties was known only to old man Chontai."

"I had to dive myself deep into it. Remind me of what Kita's last moments must have been like. I lied to myself that she was afraid, I had to. I lied to myself that she begged for someone to be there because that was what would have motivated me to take the step and let myself get drowned out by the darkness of the tunnel. Kita was better than that. She knew what was coming and accepted it but I'd be better off not thinking about that."

"Walking forward in all of that gloom was next to impossible. It was so dark that telling straight from the left was as fun as bumping my shoulder or elbow against the mossy stone was. There was one little light, one that I created, my raft in the sea of shadows. The light from my match soon went out as the smoky smell of tar filled the air. As my smoke smoldered it spread a pleasant sparkle that was enough to calm my aged chest."

"You still talking to yourself, Itemi?"

"Mika addressed me from the dark. The bastard must have been as scared of the dark as I was. No one ever stopped fearing the dark, the contents of that fear changed, sure, but standing all alone with nothing but pitch black to each side as far as the eye could see could not ever be not scary. I was almost tempted to snap back at him, take a stab at his weight the last time I saw him but I was not nearly amused enough to partake in this childish nonsense."

"Fair enough, what's with all the noise coming from your end?"

"My contact was worried about the whiffs he got coming from the Shukuba Security, rightly so. The Security was his salvation if ever things undercover got too hot, if ever he got what he went down for. It was quite lucky that Shukuba Security getting dismantled kept its head down at the rumor level, it won't stay that way for long. The kid was better off rushing along with her little war."

"Wait, what? Shukuba Security has been dismantled?"

"It's not like it made any difference to Mika. His operation was not authorized nor was it by the book, he went undercover hard, so under the cover that not even his superiors knew he was doing it. Mika smelled the filth reeking off of Security for a while, he was a lot like the magician brat that way, including his actions. Regardless, I needed him doing his thing until this war thing of ours was done. If he had one way of escaping the burning building it would be when it is all crumbling down around him and the people there too busy trying not to die to throw hellfire at his fleeting feet."

"Fair enough. I have something for you. Have in mind that once this goes out, it'll be on. Whoever is in charge of the Diamond Hand, they'll be kicking you in the nuts, you'll have their full attention."

"It was a fair warning. Up until now, the Diamond Arm may have been curious about the state of Shukuba Security, wondering why so many of their lapdogs came running back at them begging for work and cover from the rising storm. I suppose all this curiosity had to grow into a full-on rage at some point, whatever the contents of the storm were we'd have to weather it."

"There's going to be a good old heist tonight. Three to four hours from now, they're going to hit the vault. One group coming in through the sewers, another one using the evacuation tunnels. Whoever came up with the plan behind this is afraid that once the Security gets a whiff of the thing, they'll all see the sewers coming so the whole pack will retreat through the evac tunnels with all their loot."

"Some sick sense of irony. The evacuation tunnels were supposed to be used for civilians to withdraw from the town's premises during times of war or another extraordinary occasion of such caliber. In a way, the evac tunnels will be used for evacuation but not the kind of evacuation they were built for. This info was useful, good old Mika paid off big time. If this was a Diamond Hand op, which it should have been, after the movies were hit and exposed to Konoha they must have felt a shortage of money, there was a fair chance of bumping into someone important and finding some space for a kunai to fit inside their face."

"So that's how you guys are doing it now, huh? No more laws, no procedure? Sounds a bit scary…"

"Sit tight, Mika, was all I could tell him. Whatever hole he scurried into, whatever peaceful corner of his crime den he ran off to and whatever lowlifes he surrounded himself with for protection would have had to do for a short while. After the Diamond Hand went down, the Shukuba Security would have to slowly be reformed. During that time Shukuba will remember where every man stood when they were needed."

"Yeah, right back at you…"

"Three to four hours was ample time to go back and pick up the kid. I don't know if it was my lack of sleep disturbing my judgment or maybe I was just too pissed. I wanted to do this alone. Kita faced whoever came for her alone, attacked from behind. The kid sounded like a decent person, she'd not like what I had in mind for dogs that were capable of doing something like that."

"My mind tuned out as I walked the squishy mud roads of Shukuba, slowly transitioning into the occasionally pleasant and occasionally irritating stone roads. My body was working almost on an autopilot as my mind worked on other things. It couldn't have been a good sign that I could barely control the contents of my own mind. I reached for my belt, the dozens of bottles all placed around my waste. They did wonders for pain but maybe they could help some for lack of good night's sleep too?"

"My hand slipped down, even if this was legitimate medicine, which was a big if, it probably had rules about being used too often. I had a feeling that if I went in all by my lonesome I'd end up gulping down a bottle or two of those to numb one or two blades sticking out of me. That was just how my job was, I knew it, I always knew it. Maybe that's why for a decent while I kept the arrests for Kita and stuck to paperwork…"

"Nah, the kid stayed out of this. She talked a nice and tolerant game but I couldn't risk involving her. She said she was fine with murder as long as it wasn't her doing it but I didn't buy it. So far she was really honest, no one was completely genuine, she had to be full of shit about something and this was not something I could allow myself to gamble on. They killed Kita, they lead to the collapse of the entire Shukuba Security and possibly even the collapse of the whole damned town. I'm going to kill every last one of them I see. The kid can stay above all of that and pick up the pieces."

"Hey, so since when are we doing hit jobs like this?"

"Yeah, sounds more like the Syndicate's forte, don't it?"

"Heh, I wonder what even happened to those assholes. One day they just stopped being a giant pain in our asses…"

"Just a pair of steps into the sewer and I could already hear the sound of filth rubbing off on my shoes. I was lucky enough not to step right into it and lean to a nearby wall, listen in around the corner for all it was worth. It was not like they were talking about anything useful so I moved my kunai dispenser out of my holster and pressed it to my chest, mentally readying myself. I wasn't afraid, I was enraged and a furious hand shook just as much as a terrified one."

"Ey, who the fuck is speaking?"

"What the fuck?"

"I jumped out and put a kunai through each of their eyes. These were just some smalltime shit stains. Not worth any more steel, before this night was done, I may as well have run dry of blades to put into these scumbags. It would be best off if I checked what they had, just in case. Each one of them had a handheld, standard choice for Shukuba Security. Well well… Someone must have been smuggling some inventory on the side. That kid may have been onto something, just ending the whole damned thing all at once."

"There were more and more voices all around the sewer. They were leading me to where I was supposed to go. I guess I was lucky that our sewer was not as small and compact as the Konohagakure sewer. My time interning there before Security days left me less than impressed with how they treated the flow of their royal shits. Our establishments were pretty fancy, all things considered, nice stone walls, lights on the side, was it always that well designed for rats scurrying around or was it a more recent development? I guess Diamond Hand has a union…"

"Just like I guessed, it wouldn't all be quite a smooth sailing. I missed the head of some lowlife and my stinginess towards ammunition cost me. They pulled their dispensers and opened fire back at me before I could raise my hand up again and fix my mistake of not putting those two fast enough. I took a quick roll behind a nearby wall, I didn't plan on wearing this jacket anywhere else anyways…"

"I gave them a pair of quick blades back, judging from the clanging sounds they hit something hard and stony, likely bounced back. They were built pretty durable this way, couldn't believe that ninja used these things to stab at each other like kunai were some goddamn kitchen knives. A handful of blades bounced right off the wall dangerously close to my ear. Nothing like the impending death by high-velocity blades shredding through your flesh to wake a sleepy head up."

"My heart was pounding, I leaped out and dived under all of the dirt and shit. Had to close my eyes and think about something else entirely. I needed to rush, else a bunch of dirtbags from farther ahead will come back and give these assholes a hand at putting me down. I fired a bunch of blind ones from underwater. Doing my best to open my burning and itchy eyes as fast as I could I leaped out from underwater, having swum behind those two bastards. The time it took for them to turn away was just about enough for me to calm my sore and full of shitty water eyes."

"This time I was not about to take any chances or waste any more blades but one. I pulled one from the side of the dispenser and ran in on close distance. The blade slid right in under the shitstain's ribcage and I turned him sideways to block the barrage of invitations to hell coming my way. Kicking the bastard I just stabbed was probably the most pleasant thing I felt whole week. Surpassed maybe by stabbing his pal right in the eye up close and personal and watching him disappear into the same river of shit that I was forced to swim around in so recently."

"Pain and stars in my eyes lit up almost simultaneously. Maybe I was a bit too ambitious with my approach, got too blind. The asshole grazed me with a pair of blade shots that cut me clean in the sides. Just pissed me off more, honestly, but the infection would do more than just piss me off in a short while. Was not looking forward to that part but I had a job to do. Shit… I forgot to loot the blades from those bastards, either way, the last pair handed me more than I was bringing into this anyways. It would have to do."

"My sleepy head blacked out completely. It was all nothing but one big vortex of blood, blade-fire, clangs and fleshy sounds. By the time I realized I was past the sewers I was standing in front of the ladder up to the lower sections of the Shukuba vault surrounded by dead bodies and with good four kunai sticking out of me and making me leak myself out. Grunting, I downed one of the potions I had bought that afternoon. The pain disappeared but not the wounds…"

"Regardless, the absence of pain that looking like a pin-cushion made one feel was a welcome addition to what my life has become. I picked up one of the larger kunai dispensers off of one of the corpses lying beside me, the bastard took a nasty blade right through the side of his face and was most definitely not about to use that. I heard a loud rabble being roused up in the vault, the evac crew must have arrived."

"These dispensers that the last bunch carried were all just like what Syndicate used to carry around in their prime. Four times bigger than the handhelds that the Security used, one guy with one of those would have scared the entire squad of Security away with one of those. No cover would have protected from the speed and shredding power of one of those. Could the Syndicate and the Diamond Hand have reached some sort of agreement? That would be a new one, but also about as welcome as a blade in my foot."

"Whenever the assholes back in the Security HQ used to tell fancy lies about their biggest arrests, how they plowed through thousands of criminals without getting as much as a speck of dirt on their cheeks, they left out the fun details, like climbing the ladder with just one hand while the other one struggled to keep hold on the demonic machine of murder that I was carrying with me."

"Another problem was once I finished scaling up the ladder and bumped my head into the round cover that separated the lower sections of the vault from the service sewer entrance. I had no arms to spare for this shit, I bumped my head hard against it, raising my foot one step higher just so I could kick up better and ram my shoulder into it as well. Seeing how these assholes were expected to get into the vault through here, I figured it'd be left unlocked and so it was."

A good handful of bastards sat around the service room where the entrance lead to, I was not quite whom they intended to see and their weapons were nice and placed on their side. I was simply faster at taking them out, I was the first at raising a real lot of noise too. However much of these guys were present in the vault, they were quite likely to all swarm down my way now. Those Syndicate type dispensers were way too loud for what I had in mind."

"Like clockwork the scumbags started bursting through the door, I was still using the service ladder hole for cover as the steel of the walls of the most secure facility in the entire Shukuba was just about the only kind of thing that could stop a shredding, high-velocity kunai in its path without leaving me even fuller of holes. The bastards were plentiful, all crammed around one doorway, desperate to get in and kill the only thing between them and a whole lot of money. I was nothing else if not patient…"

"Making my way up the steps over a pile of dead bodies was tougher than I thought it'd be. I also ran out of the kunai belts used to keep this machine of murder running so I had to dump it. Not too long ago I was swimming through shit and piss, now I was plowing and swimming through blood and dead bodies in an almost too literal manner."

"What the fuck? Who is that man? He's not part of the plan, kill him!"

"The piece of shit yelling that at me was a small guy, looking more like an accountant than a criminal. I wondered if I had just hit the jackpot and saw the man behind this brilliant plan to make the town's finances into those of Diamond Hand's own in a more official manner that it was a custom for those guys. It was time for yet another fight. I crouched behind a cover, not because it would have protected me too well, just to hide my position from the endless streams of blades coming my way."

With quick rolls from behind where I was hiding, I took out a good handful of them. Got those blades that were stuck in me stuck even deeper too, I could feel the pressure of the blades and the warm spray of blood running down my body but no pain. The magic of the potion seller's mightiest potions, without a doubt. After a couple of close-calls, I disabled another four or five with a bold dive from my cover."

The little round-faced, glasses wearing and half-bald weasel shrieked in horror and ordered his goon-squad to hit the road. I wasn't about to let them do that so I ran after but the suppressing barrage of fire was too hard. I felt the intense pushback from a couple of more blades sinking into my shoulder and bringing be on my back. Yeah… It was safe to say that I wasn't going to give those assholes any chase. The full extent of my senses returned to me slowly. The world stopped blacking in and out, that must have been the adrenaline kicking in, pushing away the general sleepiness."

"The sight of the decently emptied Shukuba vault was even more painful than the sight of my front side being riddled with blades and me laying on my back, slowly bleeding out."

Author's Note: Wow, this was a bit experimental, wasn't it? :D

Sorry if you didn't like the difference in perspective and writing, it's just something I wanted to try while telling something I would have normally told either way. On Wednesday's chapter, it's back to basics 3