The Outsider

[Valkier]

The Outsider
Bloodriver Bar, Kirigakure, Two Weeks Ago… -

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- Aisu Naohiro toyed with a rogue lock of hair. Blonde hair, cropped short, as tousled and unkempt as one just risen from an uneasy night’s sleep. He grimaced and let the disgust show openly on his face, letting the twisted expression contribute to his necessary disguise. He wore the body of a young man starkly different from himself; stubbled, slovenly, half-slumped against the railing in a private balcony above the infamous Bloodriver bar of Kirigakure. A spot that the refined and noble Naohiro himself had never graced with his honest patronage. It wasn’t much the kind of place for honest patrons. It was, therefore, perfect for his business today.

He sighed loudly and swirled the glass still half-full of swill in his other hand—a local spirit, probably distilled in the alley behind the bar itself, which he presumed served triple-duty as paint stripper, drain unblocker, and top-shelf intoxicant—then turned back to the booth behind him, shirt hanging carelessly open to reveal a toned body untouched by the scars of a ninja. Perhaps the act of playing a rich merchant’s son was excessive, but Naohiro was not a man of half measures. He knocked back another gulp, grimaced, fought down a burning retch, then dropped back down into his seat across the table from an old acquaintance.

“Ugh. I don’t know how people do this shit day in, day out,” he pushed the glass away gladly and absently scanned the patrons visible in other booths and balconies. Theirs would be mostly in shadow to most potential onlookers, aside from a dim red table lamp too low to reveal their faces, but he was cautious all the same. But they’d been at this act for an hour or more, now, and any initial attention had long since waned to disinterest; the pair of them were hardly the only young delinquents present, after all. “All right. To business, then.” His eyes suddenly refocused and he leaned in across the table, making it look like a drunken slump from a distance, but all the better to talk quietly. Privately.

“I need your help, old friend. I know, I know—again. But hear me out, please.” He spoke quickly but his tone was uncomfortable. He picked up the glass again and turned it in his hands just for something to occupy them. To keep them reaching down to the security of the knife hidden in his boot. “I can’t shake the feeling that the factions in the village are brewing something. Something big. And it’s already reaching through to the highest levels. I don’t know who I can trust; even in the Division, everything ultimately passes through Shiv. In the Seven, it’s his cousin.” He glanced upwards over the lamp at his companion, aware of how he’d be toeing a dangerous implication there had he been meeting anyone else. But this man thought like him, understood him. Or so he hoped. The safest port in a storm, and all that.

“Now there’s a newcomer to both groups. A young Shiimu, Kozan. You know of him? A chuunin, but remarkably talented, and with an… interesting history. He seems to have integrated effortlessly into both organisations, and all reports are positive.” He paused for a moment to gauge Kinsue’s reaction and to listen again to their surroundings for any suggestion of eavesdroppers. All appeared clear. He had no few reservations about what he spoke, but if he couldn’t trust his old friend—even with such sensitive information as was on his mind—then he was in a considerably worse position than he already thought. “He lied to me. No great crime for our profession, I know—but the manner of it bothers me so. He joined the Division by returning a body. A Fushinkou body, of all things, and a retrieval ordered by Shinjiro himself. The corpse had been spliced for its kekkai-genkai tissues already by the time it reached me, almost still warm from the kill. Kozan was not forthcoming with the details, but surely he knew I would examine the corpse and learn of it. Surely…

“Which leads me to wonder: Is he a tool of the Shiimu, created and used by them for their own ends; or of Shinjiro, playing to the goals of the Karagata; or a lone actor with his own agenda? He plays the obedient underling, but I do not trust him. Not as I must, without knowing what he’s about. Now, I hear he’s putting together an operation over in Reikou Taishuu, ‘pacifying’ some local unrest. I’d like to send him with a pair of eyes and ears I can trust. Someone not on our roster, with different ties to mine. I need an Outsider.” -

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- Present Day… - Aisu Naohiro toyed with a rogue lock of hair. Long, auburn, glossy; he almost wished it was his. Almost. It fell in gentle waves around a girl’s round face, delicate and smooth with a youth belying his real age, and bunched around his-her shoulders with an attractive sheen, almost a shawl over the ragged outfit of a low-born urchin. This time he lurked in the doorway of a disused room in a seedy low-rise tower block overlooking the bar, dark-rimmed eyes shifting with suspicion between passers-by. Not an uncommon sight in the dirty underbelly of Kirigakure. He slunk back into the shadows of the doorway as one of the local patrons stumbled past on the street below, waiting for sign of his contact. He’d told Kinsue where to meet him during their last communication, but did not know what form the other ninja would take, or whether he’d be recognised himself. He’d have to trust to his instincts—and hoped that they would not result in blood, as was so often the instinct in this part of town…