The Jackal had left her with precious little time, all in all considered. He wanted the materials delivered in the morning, seemingly forgetting that the common trader outside the slums didn't open shop at the crack of dawn. These people greeted the sun. Not the moon. Still, she had procured the requested ingredients for him after some haggling.

While she had the whole night to find the place, the real challenge had mostly presented itself in convincing the trader himself. As a stranger, she had precious few credentials upon her name that would warrant a sense of reliability in the eyes of the salesman. Though the Shinko Monastery of the Sunagakure was a familiar name, their devious reputation as being tricksters equally made the man narrow his eyes in caution towards her. This was even more so the case when she swished a pair of ash blonde tails in anticipation of a good answer. Yet, despite their mischief, the Shinko had no distinctly bad reputation with the people or the shinobi of Sunagakure and, with the joyful ringing of ryo in the early morning, the man was eventually swayed in favour of trading with her rather than against it.

That said, the man had no intention of cutting himself short. An eager peddler was generally willing to pay a little more. Akemi had anticipated a little extra to ensure a success in her trial under the idea it was an investment into future contracts, but even with that the shrewd salesman tried to wring out every last extra ryo out of her hands. Though annoyed at the hard bargain he drove, she didn't fail to keep her ears up to pick up a trick or two from this encounter. Eventually, she ended up victorious in her attempt, albeit at slightly higher cost than most would pay.

After bargaining had taken place and she had received the goods, the kitsune huddled them together as good as possible and formed the seal she so commonly used to transport her goods - the Item Sealing Technique, as most shinobi would come to name it upon recognising it. To her, the technique didn't have a name. It was just a little trick of the trade to make transportation from one place to another easier. As the goods vanished into the scroll, she tucked it away into her backpack, thanked the shop owner and left for her next destination.

Now walking down the slums to find back the Jackal's tavern, the slums seemed once more quiet as most of its citizen seemed to shun the morning sun, or returned home from an all-nighter at their favourite drinking place. The Yakuza were brushing out the last of their illicit customers in an attempt to clean up home and restore the semblance of being honourable owners of the establishment. All in all, Akemi expected it to be an easy walk down the streets...

The opposite was true, however, as a gang of thugs suddenly appeared from all sides to surround her. One broad man had stepped in front of her to cut off her path, while two others stepped out of the shadows behind her. The fourth man had been leaning against the wall, seemingly minding his own business at first, but now grinned widely as he flanked her from the left side since the right side was nothing more but the wall of a rather tall building holding a few dirty windows which she wasn't quite eager to jump through.

"Lookie here... A woman alone? Not too shabby, them clothes. And that backpack's full of goodies you're going to give up for us, aight?"
"Ain't she the one from last eve's tavern visit?"
"Yeah, threw her drink at me, she did."

Turning around so her back would face the wall, she eyed the last man to speak. It was true. He did look very alike to the disgusting little toad that had tried to grope her while she was having a drink with Zu. He had been really drunk then, but it seemed Akemi's appearance had, despite the oozing amounts of alcohol in his blood, left a lasting impression nonetheless. "That's what I got for standing out...", she thought to herself, even though she had easily outmanoeuvred him with just the basics of Wudang Quan movement techniques.

"Y'know what? I think you owe us a lil'...", they said, ugly smirks and grins growing as they started to approach her.

---

755
Total: 755

It had been a very long time since Kuno Uchiha had wandered through the slums for any purpose at all. For a while, it seemed that all the young man did was sneak through the shadows of the Sand Dune Slums in search of criminal filth to prey upon, capturing them and interrogating them on the location of the Autumn gang for hours on end. It seemed like that time was not so long ago, when he had not slept for days at a time and simply went through the motions of living, accented by the occasional killing of a criminal or two. His efforts had not been fruitless of course, else he would have never broken free of that lifestyle, instead digging himself deeper into a depressive state until only a husk of himself would have remained. No, he had managed to find the answers he sought, at least for a time. The information that had led him to the abandoned warehouse where he had learned the truth about Autumn had come to him on one of those trips into the slums, and since that night Kuno had stayed away, for the most part.

After finding out that his father was the one in charge of the mysterious criminal organization, Kuno had searched high and low for any sign of him in the Village Hidden in the Sands, and in the wilderness surrounding the village that he now called home. But this time his investigations had yielded nothing, and so Kuno had let the trail run cold. Short of him travelling to the Land of Fire where his father used to live, he did not believe there was anything else to be done, and since he needed to stay in the village for the sake of his comrades and his Kazekage, Kuno had lost the trail of Autumn, and it seemed he would not find it again for some time.

Yet despite all this, Kuno had decided to wander into the slums yet again, far stronger than he was the last time he strolled through the dark streets, but still only a chuunin. He was not quite sure why he had decided to ender the Sand Dune Slums again after all that time had passed. Perhaps it was a quiet hope that he still held onto that maybe, just maybe his father was still in the village. And maybe he would find someone who could lead him there. In any case, Kuno had given up on the alleys and small streets of the slums long ago, and so he was travelling from rooftop to rooftop, listening and watching for anything that was suspicious and seemed to warrant an investigation. In truth, he had not expected to find anything worth investigating; but much to his surprise, as he travelled above the general population of the run down slums, he managed to catch a glimpse of something that pulled his attention.

A woman who appeared to be quite a bit older than Kuno was standing in the middle of a small alley, surrounded on all sides by four disgusting looking men whose faces were plastered with grins that Kuno did not like the look of. The blonde haired woman seemed uncomfortable to say the least, and Kuno could not blame her considering her situation. Without a second thought, the young Uchiha began to hop from rooftop to rooftop until he could be sure of what was going on. He was met with a surprise as he perched onto a building above the woman and her four…acquaintances. The woman appeared to be sporting two tails. Now, Kuno was no stranger to tailed individuals, having met a young gentleman names Otter who also possessed a tail. But two of them? He could not help but be a little surprised.

Regardless of how he felt about the woman and her tails, Kuno was thrust into action as the found men began to approach her, grinning creepily and worrying the young Uchiha. Without hesitating, Kuno leapt from the room, his crimson blade becoming unsheathed form underneath his Ninshiki robe. He did not want to kill the men, but they needed to learn a lesson before this was over. He landed right in front of the woman, his brow already furrowed in concentration as he tried to determine how strong these guys actually were. “Alright gentlemen, you’ve had your fun. Now move along before somebody loses fingers.” Kuno was not surprised when the biggest of the men simply cursed at him and laughed as he ran forward to grab the woman. “I warned you!” With a deft spin of his blade, Kuno severed three fingers from the man’s hand, then followed up with a swift kick to the side of his right knee, causing him to collapse in a heap.

“Now what did I tell you? Back off, or next time I cut higher than that.” There was a momentary silence that filled the pace as the remaining three men seemed to try to reach a decision. If Kuno had been the only one here, he would have waited, but with this woman beside him in danger as well, there was no time to waste. He spoke calmly and evenly, hoping to intimidate the thugs into moving on. “Fine then, either you all move on, or you face the wrath of the Uchiha.” With that, he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they would be the colour of blood, spotted only by two back tomoe in each eye. That seemed to be enough to shake one of the men, who also cursed while picking up his fallen friend and ran off. The other two did not move for a moment, the smaller of the two seemingly waiting to hear what the other would say. They stood in silence like that for another twenty or so seconds before he finally raised his hands and began to back off. “Fine, no lady is worth this much trouble anyway…”

And with that, they were gone, backing off into the filth from whence they came. Sheathing his miao dao, Kuno turned to face the woman, a serious look still on his face and his Sharingan slowly fading away. “Are you alright ma’am? Sorry to drop in like that but I saw those guys messing with you and I couldn’t just watch.”

WC:1069

Akemi was about to step into the Wudang Quan basic stance to evade the grabbing and groping when a young man dropped out of the skies and ended in between her and the group. She blinked for a moment, about to look up with a frown at the top of the building she stood with her back against, as if to convince herself that it wasn't raining people, but she remembered the height of that building - any normal person should have crash-landed from that altitude, with broken legs as a result.

Proceeding as if nothing unusual happened, he requested the guys to back off, and warned that some would lose fingers. Eventually, as they refused to be diverted from their goal, one did lose three fingers. Blood splattered the wall as three stumps hit the floor almost soundlessly, upon which the toughest guy clasped his hands and looked at the young man with a mixture of terror and confusion. Akemi guessed he got what he deserved, even though it wasn't quite the way she'd have taken care of things. Still, she couldn't deny his efficiency, the speed with which he had drawn his blade and the precision with which he had used it. The whole moment had flashed before her eyes faster than she realised.

As he took care of the gang, he dropped a particular strange word. The wrath of an Uchiha. What was that even supposed to mean? She couldn't say, and for some reason, the word alone was enough to dissuade some to continue the thought of getting to her. Whatever this 'Uchiha' was, it had to be the bearer of a curse of sorts. A nickname for impending doom. Akemi could only flick her tails in defiant anticipation to that, and as the gang drooped off, throwing a last statement about ladies and worth, she retorted, "It's not like you'd get any anyway."

With the danger gone, the 'Uchiha' turned around, his eyes turning from blood back to a more normal state. Like a visual diminishing of his adrenaline, or something of that sorts. It was... eerie, to say the least, but he seemed friendly enough as it were as he asked her how she was doing, and crazy enough to talk about his drop as if it was the most normal thing to do - well, it was normal, for a Shinko.

"I'm well, thank you. You're my hero for today, young man.", she replied with a warm smile, hiding her scepticism about him dropping out of the sky like that. By which she eyed the rooftop once more to be sure she remembered its height correctly. Staying in the game, she chuckled as she said, "I'm not sure how you did that trick, but it looked like you dropped right out of the sky to save me."

She knew he had done so, but the question was rather if he knew it as well. If he knew that such a height should have broken his legs. She guessed she'd know soon from his reaction.

In meantime, as she waited for a possible answer to his heroic appearance, she dusted off her robes as if to confirm she really had suffered no harm, and proceeded then to check her backpack to see if the backpack too truly had been saved. Both did, naturally, as the Uchiha had left no chance for the men to even get close to her. Eyes darting around, the three stumps that were once fingers had remained there where they were forgotten in the panic of the moment. Considering them not worth a nogitsune's attention, she shifted her gaze back to the direction she had intended to walk, and with it, her mind thought about the bar she had yet to reach.

"I'd like to thank you properly, if I may.", she began eventually. "I'm on my way to a nearby tavern where I am supposed to drop off a few trade goods. Please, allow me to repay you for your kindness with a drink or meal, at least, mister ah...?"

---

694
Total: 1449

Relief rushed over Kuno when the woman assured him that she was fine, while also calling him a hero. He smirked a little bit at that as glanced up at the surrounding rooftops, though Kuno could not figure out why. His question was answered fairly quickly when she chuckled through her evident confusion. "I'm not sure how you did that trick, but it looked like you dropped right out of the sky to save me." He raised an eyebrow for a moment, unsure if she was being serious or not, but when she seemed to wait for some kind of a reply, he let out a small chuckle himself. “I’m sorry miss, I guess I just assumed everyone around her would know what my forehead protector means.” He reached up and grabbed it, showing off the village symbol on the piece of metal wrapped atop his head. “I’m a shinobi of the village, a chuunin actually. I didn’t directly jump from the roof down to here, but I’ve been trained for fairly…quick descents.”

He hoped that he had not insulted the lady with his answer, he just was not used to people in the Village Hidden in the Sands that did not know about the ninja of the Land of Wind. Hoping for a positive reply, he watched as the older woman brushed herself off and then have her eyes fall to the fingers that had formerly belonged to one of the thugs. His eyes darted to them for a moment too, though he felt no regret for what he had done. They were given fair enough warning, and yet they had still moved against him. It was the guy’s own fault. Shaken from his thoughts by the woman with twin tails, Kuno glanced back up to her and listened attentively. "I'd like to thank you properly, if I may.", she began eventually. "I'm on my way to a nearby tavern where I am supposed to drop off a few trade goods. Please, allow me to repay you for your kindness with a drink or meal, at least, mister ah...?"

“Kuno,” he replied as he bowed slightly out of respect. “Kuno Uchiha. And I would be remiss if I gave up an offer like that.” With that, he fell into step with her, following her along the path that she was walking. He had never actually had a meal in the Sand Dune Slums before, and if he was honest with himself, he was not really interested in finding out what kind of meals would be served in the dumps around here. But regardless, he figured that he should at least stay with the woman that he had helped, and the least he could do for her was to accept her thanks. She seemed kind enough, though her lack of knowledge regarding shinobi baffled him a little bit. He wondered to himself where she could be from, and eventually worked up the courage to strike up a conversation that could perhaps solve his little mystery. “So um, I didn’t catch your name and I’ve never seen you around the village before. Are you from around these parts?”

Having always been a fan of discovery, Kuno was equally interested in learning about new people as well as new places. Considering this woman’s lack of understanding about the ninja of his village, on top of the fact that she was sporting a pair of fox like tails that weaved and bobbed like nothing was out of the ordinary, was more than just a little bit intriguing to the young Uchiha. Though he did not want to pry and scare away his newfound acquaintance, he hoped that he would at least learn something from the woman; that and he hoped that his free meal would be at least a decent one.

WC:650+1069=1719

---

Total: 1449

[EXIT]