Songs For The Heartbroken: That's What You Get

Chapter 24

In all of my trips to the Land of Rivers, I'd never had reason to visit the docks, even if I'd sent Doyun to infiltrate more than a few cargo ships. If I had ever been under the impression that the main road in the capital was overcrowded, it had immediately left my mind once we went throught the gates at the port. Every member of the local police force that we had noticed had been missing within the city walls, was out in the port. One would have thought that with the utter state of chaos the city was in, the docks would have been better off with the entire police force present. Thwy weren't, every officer there was either guarding shady looking cargo or bullying honnest tradesmen into paying made up taxes for the port's "services". All the people we had managed to avoid in the city was conglomerating there: human traffickers, drug dealers, people deep in the trade of organs and animals and sellers of devices and objects that were of dubious presedence. They were all there, and we were now in the big leagues. There was no place for mistakes going forward.

We definitely looked out of place there, even if our clothes were those you could find on any child of a merchant's. Brown, moss green, grey, and a bit of terracota were the most predominant colors ammong us. Hotaka was wearing brown lenses and I had hidden my braided hair under the hood of my green cloak. It had been a gift from Hana for my last birthday, it was short, it reached my hips, effectively covering the harness that held my weapons to my side and back. It allowed movement just fine and had an inside layer of light mesh that offered an extra layer of protection.

Both Hotaka and Takahiro blended into the crowd than I did, even when they both were sixteen, as tall as Sensei and visibly built; their darker complections made them look like they had been travelling their entire lives. I for all my disguise, still looked like a clan kid, sharp features, slanted eyes and white, milky skin meant that I was either a brothel worker or part of a clan. The bright red hair and purple lenses did not help in the slightest either.

Well, what do you know? Hotaka had been right. Awful decision on my part really. Oh well, what was done was done, no point crying over spilt milk I guess.

The fact that at fourteen I still hadn't grown much did not exactly help either, but there was no avoiding that; Shisui had never been that tall anyway.

So from an outsider's point of view, I probably looked like a distant relative of Taka's. That or they were escorting me either for protection or merchandice "safekeeping". Which was pretty funny since I was and had always been the muscle of the team. The tallest and bulkiest members of team eight were the medic and saboteur respectively which gave us the advantage since looks were deceiving like that, and since we were living proof of it, it was a principle we lived by.

Akira-sensei had stayed behind to speak with his contacts in the city, and had sent Kosuke with us. Not because he didn't trust we couldn't take care of anything that came up, but because none of us had a sense of smell as sharp. Kosuke was, alongside Sensei, our only tracker in the team and regardless of how much we tried, we never would have been able to do our job without him. Even if we were still genin at what was considered an advanced age, none of us were particularly bothered, underestimation was a very powerful weapon of ours so letting the enemy think that Kosuke was there for protection would play in our favor.

And we loved the expression of utter shock with a hint of confusion and desperation whenever our enemies realized they had in fact fucked up.

We pretended to mingle with the merchants, buying things here and there, and asking around for the best way to travel to Grass if one wanted to be discreet about it, laying falce traces to throw off any tails we had on us. Oh and Kami did we have tails, seemed like people had taken an interest to us. It wasn't ideal, but we could use it to our advantage if we were smart about it. And smart we were, because the next day most of the people following us were sailing to grass without us. Jiraiya-san thought it was hilarious.