But why would anybody care? The merchants gained someone who would do the hard work for a low price, and Konoha no longer had to feed them.
When they got tired of working on caravans and became bandits or criminals of some kind it was only more missions for the hidden village. So, a win win situation.
...
I shook my head and rose from my perched position on one of the roofs in the Akasen, flickering back through the capital and announcing myself at the gate of the stone walls around the central hill.
I signed on a register and walked in, following the direction I had been given and soon found myself into a courtyard protected from the sight by thick edges and a tall wall.
The courtyard was as vast as a ricefield, while the barracks where a simple hangar-like building on the south side.
I walked over leaving open my first two gates and doing nothing to hide my presence.
A man left the building and walked until he stood less than two meters from me, squaring me down.
Well, not really, he had his eyes hidden behind a thick cloth. A blind shinobi? Now I've seen it all.
Because there was no mistaking his presence, his chakra was saturating the very air around him, and I was willing to bet he could use it as a sonar of some kind.
The man was tall and broad-shouldered, with a black and white kimono opened on the front, letting the world see his scarred chest.
However, he had the waistcloth of the Twelve Guardians, so it was good enough for me.
"Hello, I'm Daiki from Konoha, I've been told to come here to join..."
"To be tested." The man interrupted me. "I'll test you if I deem you... adequate, you'll be trained for the next couple of months so that you can work with our tactics and we can come up with... adaptation to accommodate your style of fighting."
He used a tone than managed to express just how unlikely it was the idea of me passing.
I'm going to kick you so hard...
...
( 12 December- 9 years AK )
I landed with a heavy grunt on the snow-covered ground. Trying to find again the trail that I had lost. It was in moments like that that I missed my old team. I was as good at following trails as anyone, but there was no competing against the single-minded pursuit of prey following the Haimaru brothers and Hana.
I ignored the twinge of grief that came over with her name with consummated ease.
Ichika landed a few steps from me and looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
I shook my head and she sighed.
"If only you had an useful summoning contract..." She muttered.
I suppressed a blush. "Hey, cut me some slack yeah?"
She raised her hands in a mock surrender gesture. "Nobody else would have noticed it, but it would have been cooler if you had managed to take down the shinobi you spotted."
"Kunoichi." A voice interrupted.
I threw stealth out of the window and let the first two gates slam open, flooding my pathways with chakra.
I was already assaulting the stranger when Ichika's squealed: "Senpai!"
My fist hit an armguard, cracking it and sending its bearer stumbling back.
I connected the face I could barely recognize into the snowstorm to the title Ichika had given him and grimaced. I was about to apologize when I got slapped on the back of my head. I abruptly disrupted the flow of my chakra to break through the genjutsu she had layered on me.
I growled. It was really becoming a routine. "Stop hitting me woman!"
"Apologize!" She shouted right back.
"I was going to, you unsufferable..." I took a deep breath, focusing on the actually relevant things.
"Sorry Asuma-senpai, but Ichika makes me jumpy."
"I do not!" she whined.
The light chuckle stopped us from going on with the endless bantering. "That is something I miss in Konoha."
I took a closer look at him, he was already a jounin, even if he was wearing anbu quality arm and shin guards, he already looked like he would in the manga.
"Kunoichi, you said?" I brought us back to the point of order. "I presume you were returning from a mission?"
I took a drag from his cigarette, the lung-poisoning instrument shining bright red in the darkness.
"Yeah, I was heading back to Konoha when the kunoichi almost literally fell on my lap. She didn't identify herself and lacked a headband, so I left her bound, gagged and unconscious three hundred meters further south."
The jonin explained, and we started running in that direction.
"You're a godsend, sempai!" Ichika thanked him while I nodded my assent.
"The newbie had lost her you see." the kunoichi kept going.
Ah, hazing, the best friend of the new guy. Even a year after I first donned the Twelve guardians waistcloth. Even If I wore it around my shoulder, so it wasn't really a waist-cloth, it was more like a shoulder-cloth.
And this kind of rambling is a sure sign I'm tired as hell.
Soon we had reached the prisoner, who was still out cold.
"She probably has a team, B-rank ninjas don't work alone out of their country." Asuma reasoned while I was running medical chakra through her swollen brain.
"Her strong point was hiding tracks, we've been lucky to push her in your direction, are you pressed for time or can you help?" I answered while the kunoichi started awakening.
"You do know that the protocol states this is Twelve Guardians business and as a Konohagakure shinobi I have to help unless under direct orders from the Hokage, yes?" The jonin answered lighting a cigarette and taking a deep drag.
"I thought it would have been more polite pretending to give you a choice, Ichika has been working with me on my people skills."
We shared a smirk while Ichika hit me again on the back of my head. I unraveled her genjutsu before it could take root into my system and ignored her to keep focusing on healing the prisoner.
"We've worked on everything, actually, your baffling stupidity when it comes to new ninjas in your life is just one of your most fun traits." She replied.
I sighed, Asuma had cracked her skull in multiple places, it would take a while.
"What's this I hear about a summoning contract that doesn't work?" Asuma joined the 'Make fun of the last to join the twelve guardians' club.
I knew that for the sake of something that resembled the storyline, Asuma should stay as far as possible from the shit going on, but he had already a thirty million ryo price on his head, and from what I could tell, it was well deserved.
I just hoped the situation wouldn't backfire spectacularly.
...
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