Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Contingency

Some time ago:

____________________________________________________________

A revitalizing spring breeze rustled the occasional lively green brushes and trees intertwining with the cold and bland cement and grey brick towers of Kirigakure. An old man in a plain kimono of a washed-out color and worn cloth trousers approached an orphanage building. The man was careful, occasionally glancing behind him, but his discrete movements didn't allow his wary to disturb his long, silver hair or manchu-style mustache.

The orphanage was a peculiar building in Kirigakure. It was older than most of the rest of the buildings and yet it looked a lot more sophisticated and its style hardly suited those of the surrounding buildings. Instead of it being just a block or a rectangle of plain bricks, it was a collection of building wings defined by its contrast, movement, and exuberant detail to the decorations on the walls. Intricate ornamentation in plentiful quantities didn't allow the white walls to stand out too much from the colorful, dumpling-shaped tips that swirled atop each tower.

The elderly gentleman tipped his straw rice field hat and peeked behind him as he opened up the steel wire fence and passed on to the inner territory of the orphanage. A young woman was already waiting for him by the door. A young lady that was neither too tall nor short, baggy black trousers with a weapon pouch attached to the side where the pocket would have been, a grey vest covered the slim and bare body of the young orphan woman. Just like her mother, she wore plenty of make-up of exuberant colors, matching the manner in which sophisticated eastern ladies decorated themselves, putting herself out as royalty despite living in an orphanage.

The kunoichi pushed her back off of the wall in reaction to the man's coming. She lingered for a second, unsure about what the old geezer's intentions were and how she should react. Her body language just couldn't decide on if she wanted to lash out at him and take a fighting stance or to approach him with her guard fully down. That was just how Rakugi wanted her. Namikaze Asuka was neither his friend nor his ally. She was just an insurance policy. As such, he was neither a direct threat to her, nor did he put much faith in her role to play.

"I don't even need to ask you of your name, girl. You're a spitting image of your mother. That Namikaze hair too..." Rakugi lowered the front of his hat while retaining his favored old man from the rice fields disguise.

"Before you tell me just who you are and what you want from me, we should step further away from the yard. The caretakers don't take too kindly to people strapping swords by their belts," Asuka pointed out while combing her sporadic blond hair that spiked up and curled until around the nape before forming a handful of smoother, lightly curved lines until the middle of her back. The girl's body language seemed to betray her as both somewhat proud of her mother's legacy in terms of her appearance, but also somewhat peeved by being complimented by some old geezer about something as flat as her looks.

"Normally that'd be smart. Right now, however, I don't much care about bounties or infamy. A man that's taking up their last resort finds distraught social workers to no longer be a barrier from reaching his goals," the bounty hunter flicked his hat and placed his boot on the cement railing at the edge of the staircase, rubbing dirt and shit from the commoner district of Kirigakure all over the pristinely maintained part of the structure.

While Asuka Namikaze didn't react vocally, she granted the man's foot a troubled look and gulped once in anticipation of trouble. Somehow, none of it came. Maybe the caretakers were just occupied with other business or maybe they had a clear view of the old swordsman geezer's antics but just didn't care too much. Either way, this peace and quiet made young Asuka gulp again, realizing that she was completely by her lonesome with this troublesome man.