The Bad, The Worse, And The Down-right Evil

[Taiga]

phpBB [video]

Present day...

Clip clop, clop, clap, clip, clip-clap-clip-clop-clip-clap.

The thundering of hooves echoed through the canyon with immense fury as Rio leaned forward, her spurs digging slightly into the sides of her steed with an apologetic sorry plastered all over her face. Her right arm, bloodied and hastily wrapped in bandaging, held tightly onto a small hooded individual. She could taste iron in her mouth and her hair was drenched in sweat beneath her helmet. Shaking her head to try and stop the ringing her vision nearly blacked out as she leaned forward on the girl and horse as it picked it's pace up, only to come to moments later.

She'd just been struck in the head with a javelin, and while her helmet made of the purest Ryuuhagane had easily defended against the blow the kinetics and weight behind the javelin left her seeing stars. Shaking her head more she tried to stay awake, her left arm pulling tighter on the reigns of the horse. Behind her hootin' and hollerin' filled the canyon as the sound of hooves multiplied. For every clip there was four clops, and for every clap their was four clippity-clops.

A metalic ringing noise filled the air as a kunai bounced off her shoulder piece, denting it but failing to do any true damage. Rio groaned. She needed to get her head back on quickly, but found her eyes closing once more as she nodded off and leaned forward, the horse veering slightly to the side.

---

Twenty-four hours earlier

Despite it's name Tea Country had quite exceptional liquor... and despite being a raggedy sea shack of a bar the Predaceous Tit served a special nectar of the goddesses that made even the most stalwart mean spill his secrets. With the added patronage of some important people passing by the freshly minted Heart Empire, there was always a wealth of information for a young woman and leader of a bounty hunter guild to obtain. Guzzling down a cup of water, Rio pretended to be slightly drunk off of her "nihonshuu", having drunken only enough to taint her breath and enter the boys tables.

"And so I told him don't let these white duds and my pleasant demeanor fool ya, and you see, this fella didn't take to kindly to my pleasantry-" a samurai dressed in pure white said as he recanted a story to the others surrounding the bar. Before Rio could get to the end of the story someone tapped her on the shoulder and beckoned her to follow, and having flashed a sizeable amount of coin she was inclined to hear the fella out.

The flickering of candles weakly bathed the back alley of a bar in Tea Country in a warm light- light enough to see your hands but dark enough to not see much else. She couldn't make out much of the hooded man's face before her, and noted only the slimy voice of the would be employer.

I was asked to find someone to do a job in the Laughing Desert- a simple package retrieval. There may be some light resistance, but I'm sure you will find away to retrieve and deliver the package unharmed... was how the pitch started... and things ended with a total of 200 Ryo. Though the man who was asking her could only be described as slimy and possessing a voice of poisoned-honey, Rio was inclined to take a job so simple with a payout this sweet, and perhaps to naive to realize the folly that was "a simple job" with a grand payout.

"One thing though, sweetheart. You must deliver the package to the border of Tea Country and leave it be- no questions asked... and under no circumstances are you to damage the package in any way."

As weird as it was this was often how jobs like this went. It'd also be nice too, for a change, to not have to kill or beat someone down for a payout. With the finer bits of contract complete she would set out with her bounty puck and head for the desert, a lone hunter atop her trusty stead. Eventually, she would ride upon the dusty desert town lined by cactuses and sparse buildings where the package was said to be... unsure really of what was to come.

[Nick]

Why would things ever deign to be so simple?

The small town was full of the red clay buildings accented with oversized animal bones that were commonplace throughout the laughing desert of New Tea Country, and this town in particular was full of non-natives. Those who had originally inhabited shark country were mostly gone, and those that remained mostly lived within the capital of Xincha, and so abandoned homes above and belowground out here were filled with those who had moved in afterwards, patriots of Old Tea Country, and unbeknownst to the Iron Lady, a darker sect of Old Tea that sat deep enough in the shadows to remain unseen to the majority of its citizenry.

Most of the town's buildings would be underground with small sheds acting as entryways into the buildings, but a few would be largely aboveground as well, especially more public buildings such as the local general store, and as was appropriate, the local saloon. As she rode into town, people would look over at her with dead-eyed stares, wary glares, and some would simply get a look in before retreating to their lairs. The puck she'd been given was chakra reactive and attuned to chakra signatures of anyone of a specific bloodline, giving her a sense of where her package was, whether or not she had a sense of its nature as a living being was another question.

Her bounty puck would lead her to the far edge of the town, narrowing down her search significantly to a number of the aforementioned underground huts, a small, government run post office, or of course, the saloon, all located in a small block-sized area. Where would her hunter's intuition would take her?

---

Fukuzawa, Suzuko... Well, she was somewhere she didn't recognize. She was small, dark of hair and bright of eye, quiet, and unsure. Her mother had sent her to this strange land towards the end of the war, and she'd lived in a nice estate with a family friend who treated her well, but about a week ago, she'd woken up here, in this unfamiliar place. The people here had treated her well, if distantly, and this room she'd found herself in was somewhat comfortable, if a little too warm at times, but she didn't complain all that much. She'd ask questions to those that brought her meals, and they responded reverently that they did not know the answer, almost no matter what she asked. There were three that seemed to rotate between bringing her meals, and every time they would walk in, greet her as one might pray at a shrine, set her food down, and turn away from her, not looking at her as she ate, and only turning back around to grab her tray and walk back away.

She wished they were better conversationalists, but this was probably what her mom had wanted, right?

[Taiga]

Beneath her helmet, the young hunter looked quizzically upon the dusty streets of the laughing desert. It was probably the last place she would ever be... certainly only at the behest of a hunt. As she came to the end of the town she'd pull the reigns of her steed pausing to take in the surroundings.

Lots of awkward stares. Looking to her hand, outstretched, she held a puck.

The puck was glowing more than it had before- the target was close... there were lots of questions though about how she would know who the target was. Would the puck glow a different color? Would it be like a magnet? What was this magic puck anyways? Placing the puck away securely in her pouch she looked back to her surroundings. Mostly shacks, but two larger above-ground structures.

The oversized animal bones everywhere certainly add a... homely touch... she thought to herself as she continued closer towards the saloon. Between her lack of direction in these foreign lands and the pools of sweat she had produced beneath her armor, she was parched. Leaving her steed she would tie it to a near by post and make her way towards the saloon, tossing a coin to the boy outside. He'd run out a bucket of water to the horse.

As the hunter entered there saloon, she would be careful not to remove her helmet just yet. Taking in the room before her she'd nod to the keep and hold out some gold, signalling for something to drink with her other hand.

Silence tended to disarm people. Least more than the voice of a young woman did.

[Nick]

Man, who really understood how pucks worked? Certainly not whoever had invented them. They were probably some kind of dark forbidden magic that required the sacrifice of multiple children for a single-use person tracker. Or more likely it was honing in on a specific familial line, a certain someone's sons and daughters all would be likely to be shown up by it... But who knew, really?

The stable boy at least would be friendly, gracious for the ryo sent his way, even if the rest of the town seemed older, meaner, gruffer, as if it was a collated cast of people all picked for how they looked... And maybe for how they looked at her. The stare permeated deep as if trying to look into her soul, to view her deepest warrior spirit, but none of the men here were skilled enough to look past the strange armor that she wore, viewing her as a foreigner of some kind, potentially a threat... But at least her coin seemed to be good.

The man at the bar stopped pretending to be busy for a moment to snatch the money from her hand, biting down on it with a disgusting 'crack' noise, before turning to spit out a bad tooth that may have been bothering him for months, and filling her up a mug with some kind of thick sloshy swill that swirled slowly from a sticky spigot into a mug made out of some kind of... yellowed material. Gross.

He planted it down in front of her and it sloshed up to the rim, and threatened to spill over, but apparently was too thick to do so, and oozed back into the mug with a 'plop'. The bartender seemed happier now that the tooth bothering him was gone, but still probably didn't understand the concept of a smile. "What's got you about a place like this in armor like that, eh?"