Takuma recalled the time when he was a kid. One night, he was thirsty and walked to the kitchen in the dead of night for some water. He had gone from his room to the kitchen without switching on any lights on the way, even though there was complete darkness inside the house. That day, his kiddy self had been proud of himself for getting back to his room without ever walking into something. He thought of his home as a territory where he could walk without sight.

That little kid was dumb as a rock, was what Present-Takuma thought as he had a bandana covering his eyes. His heartbeat felt louder than before as he tried to stretch his senses beyond normal.

*Fwip!*

Takuma heard something from his right and immediately tried to move his body, only to be hit by a tiny rubber pellet in the upper back. He cursed bloody murder as the pain from the rubber pellet hit him.

*Fwip!*

Takuma shut up immediately when he heard another sound, but his body froze up when he couldn’t figure out the source. He was punished by another rubber pellet hitting him square in the chest, bringing about another bout of annoying pain.

Why the fuck did rubber pellets hurt so much?!

*Fwip!* “Ouch!”

*Fwip!* “Shit!”

*Fwip!* “Fuck!”

Takuma continued getting hit by the rubber pellets until a blaring alarm sounded in the room, marking the end of his time there. He removed the bandana and looked down at his body which was riddled with red dots from getting hit by rubber pellets. Once again, he failed to evade at least 90% of the rubber pellets shot at him.

He looked around the room. Hundreds of holes dotted the concrete walls with tube-like extrusions barely peeking out.

“Thank you! See you again later,” Takuma said loudly.

“Sure man, shoot you sometime later,” came the reply from within the walls. Motion detection wasn’t used in the chamber to track him. There was a person who aimed rubber bullets at him.

Takuma pulled on a shirt and switched his shorts with pants in the changing before walking out to the counter. A middle-aged woman sat behind the counter with a newspaper in hand. She glanced up at Takuma as he handed her the booking/usage slip along with a payment of ryo for using the facility. There were many such facilities in the Complex that shinobi could use for training— the rubber pellet room was one such facility.

He sighed. To turn Suiton: Kirigakure Jutsu into a skill that could be used without certain conditions, Takuma needed to gain the capability of operating in extremely low visibility. After some research, a lot of which came from the Suiton: Kirigakure Jutsu scroll itself— a shinobi could turn a mix of their chakra-enhanced sense of hearing, touch, and smell into something that could be practically used in active combat.

An example that Takuma knew was Zabuza. A premier user of Suiton: Kirigakure Jutsu, who had turned the jutsu into a tool for peak assassination. He didn’t know if he could ever get as good as that, but he at least wanted to get himself to a practical level.

Essentially, he needed to become a discount Daredevil— or even a full Daredevil if it was possible.

———

.

Takuma pulled out a kunai from his opponent with a grunt and pushed her away. The woman fell to the ground with two stab wounds— shoulder and gut— a very large and ugly bruise on the right side, cuts slashed around their body, and a badly swollen wrist. The sweat and blood from her injuries mixed together, putting on a miserable sight.

But he didn’t have the energy to feel bad about what he did. He had five senbon sticking out of his arm, shoulder, chest, and stomach. Three nasty gashes— side, arm, leg— had bathed his body with blood. His ski-mask behind the Scars’ mask was soaked in sweat, sticking annoyingly to his skin. When he went to pull on it, his eyes caught the kunai dripping with blood.

He wanted to throw it away but couldn’t— they cost money, so he wiped the blood off his shorts.

The medical staff fetched both him and the woman to the medical room, where Sango took care of him behind a curtained-off bed where no one could see his face. He closed his eyes and let the iryo-nin work on him. There were no words spoken between them. Both of them had done this enough that they knew Takuma didn’t like to speak (or do anything) after fights.

“Today or tomorrow?” she asked.

Takuma opened his eye a crack to look at her. It meant that he needed a private session to get fixed completely. But of course, he already knew that the moment the fight had ended. He had taken too much damage in the fight.

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“… Today,” he replied. Tomorrow, he had to attend a briefing for the next mission Team Iruka was going to take. Something about tailing a husband to see if the man was cheating on his wife. The wife was a high-ranking civilian with enough money to turn a simple tailing mission into a C-rank mission.

Later that day, Takuma met with Sango again after dinner time at the tree stump where they usually met and continued their healing session to fix Takuma up.

“Alright, done,” Sango said, finishing up her work by tying up a bandage.

Takuma got up from the tree stump, jumped on his feet, and stretched his body to check his status. Sango might have been a genin, but in Takuma’s opinion, she did a great job because he always felt great after she was finished with her work.

“Go home and just rest for today,” said Sango. “No morning training.”

“Yup,” Takuma no longer felt lethargic as he did after the fight. He felt tired and weak, but he knew that, like always, he would be fine after a night’s sleep. He was still going to train tomorrow.

“Do you have anything else you want me to look at, something that might be bothering you,” said Sango, eyeing him critically as if she thought something was wrong that he wasn’t telling her.

“I don’t think so,” Takuma said as he took out a cash clip and handed it to Sango, who looked skeptical while accepting the decided-upon payment.

Takuma’s face fell when they split up to go on their own ways, and a severe expression came upon him. Sango did a great job, but her sessions were expensive. For the past two months, Takuma had been availing her services around twice a week— and he had racked up a substantial bill. That one activity had raised his expenses by a lot.

On the other hand, his job frequency had gone down. He hadn’t taken many D-rank missions as of late, and the C-rank missions with Iruka only paid only a little better, if not as much as a D-rank mission as the pay was split among the team. And the base pay he got as GN-1 pay-grade genin, while higher than average, wasn’t enough to support his current expenses. The Ring’s ryo payments had only put a temporary stopper on the drain on his savings, but that would only last for so long—

He needed to find another way to get money.

And, unfortunately, he knew where to get it…

———

.

Takuma leaped from roof to roof as he moved through the village. Like any big city, the Leaf village had a vibrant nightlife where its people slept late. But his destination was away from that part of the city, somewhere where the quiet of the night maintained its peace. He was dressed in black, merging with the night’s shadows, with his face covered with a blank mask.

He recalled the address given to him and pulled in front of what looked like a grocery store. Takuma observed the area from the roof across the store before sneaking down toward the back of the store.

As instructed, Takuma knocked on the back door. He heard what sounded like a sword pulled out of its scabbard and stepped back with a kunai ready in his hand. The eye slot in the door slid open, and a pair of eyes peered out. The eyes frowned deeply as soon as they saw Takuma.

“Senju Hashirama was the first Hokage,” Takuma said, his voice distorted using chakra.

The frown didn’t ease up as they stared at each other for a few more seconds before the eye slot slid shut, and the door opened. The eyes belonged to a man, and Takuma recognized the body language to be of a shinobi.

“In,” said the man.

Takuma followed the man inside the building, and they immediately headed down to a basement floor beneath the grocery store. On the way, they met four more men who all had bearings of shinobi, and they eyed Takuma with caution and a threatening demeanor even though they made no direct moves against him.

They walked through the open space used as storage with lots of shelves across the floor and boxes of recognizable retail brands and products on them filling the space. The back of the basement had a small office with a single window covered with blinds from the inside.

The man knocked on the office door and peered inside briefly. Takuma heard a brief conversation mentioning him as the ‘kid.’

“In,” repeated the man as he held the door open.

Takuma stepped inside and joined the two men who occupied the office.

One he knew, the other he didn’t.

“On time, I see,” said the familiar iryo-nin with small blackout shades and a bandana covering his head. Looking as shady as the day Takuma had met him,

Enomoto smiled, “Come sit down, kid.”

“So, this is the kid, eh,” said the other man with a thick accent not native to the Leaf village. The man with the thick accent was a middle-aged man with pale skin, not an unhealthy pale, but a natural paleness. He had a head wrap over a head of gray hair that flowed down the back. But it was the light amber with so much depth that commanded Takuma’s focus.

Takuma wordlessly sat down in front of them.

“Not showing your face is one thing, but no introduction, that’s just rude,” said the man.

Takuma glanced at Enomoto briefly before turning back to the old man.

“Tobi,” said Takuma, throwing the alias of this world out.

The old man chuckled, “I would be a fool to take that as your real name, brat. But since Enomoto here has vouched for you, I shall address you by Tobi… You can call me by my real name, Ryuu.”

“Great, so now that everyone knows everyone, let’s talk business,” said Enomoto, clapping his hands. “Now, Tobi here needs a way to earn some extra cash, and Mr. Ryuu here can provide an opportunity for that to happen. The question is if you want to take that opportunity,” he said the last part to Takuma.

“What’s the job?” asked Takuma. If it was a fucking multi-level marketing scam, he was going to be out of the door before they could finish their pitch.

Enomoto glanced at Ryuu, who pushed his office chair back and reached down behind the table where Takuma couldn’t see. But Takuma could hear— and he heard clicking, and he knew instantly that Ryuu was opening a safe. His curiosity peaked as his mind raced to guess what kind and model the safe was— and if it was something he could open.

Retail locks were easy to access, but safes weren’t things most people had access to. If not for Maruboshi, who had introduced him to a master locksmith with access to storage safes, Takuma wouldn't have been able to practice safecracking. Even now, from time to time, when he had time, Takuma would visit the master locksmith to practice on safes.

Ryuu retrieved a large transparent ziplock bag and dumped it on the table.

“This is the opportunity, Tobi.”

All of Takuma’s thoughts about safes and locks vanished without a trace as he stared at the dried green herb that peered through the transparent plastic.