Meet the Scrub

Kohei walked through the streets, arriving at the contract center. In the back of his mind, he was thinking about a new (for him) water technique he wanted to learn. Meanwhile, his footsteps rapidly approached the contract center.

He walked inside.

First time he had been here, he was intending to find a simple job that would let him buy some grub for the next week or so. Then he could get back to training.

His arms dangling at his side, by and around his normal attire, his eyes scanned the pages of jobs pinned to the walls. Hrm. Maybe he was looking in the wrong area, a lot of these looked like hit jobs on important people, Kohei wasn't that ambitious yet.

He began walking between the other people in the room, trying to keep a handle on all of them, as far as he could see. His chakra was decently well developed, but not everything else, so he needed to be careful. Finding a list of the smaller missions, he began perusing the list there.

The world slowly came into fuzzy focus. Wiping bleary eyes, Scorse looked around finding herself in her room. A clock showed that this was impossible as she was supposed to be on shift at the contract center. A brief moment went by where she contemplated the facts and how these two things should not be possible, 1. She was in her room and 2. She should be at work.

A quick scream and she shot out from under the quilt. Dressing as quickly as possible she ran and began to do her hair. "I grew you!!!! I gave you life, and this is how you repay me!!!!!" She would shout at her reflection as she attempted to curl her ruler straight hair. It was the opposite problem many had, but she couldn't stand it. Finally taming the beast, she bolted from her room. Her wooden sandals clicking, a sound of her shame with each step. Her body was conservatively tucked away in a plum kimono.

The Boss had given her several jobs, but one she always maintained while at home was running a contract table. It was one of the smaller tables, nothing high ranking and barely above petty crime. Yet, it was her responsibility, and he didn't take kindly to tardiness. Damn, damn, damn....she repeated over and over in her head. It wasn't the fear of punishment, though that was sure to come, more so the fear of letting him down.

Her stomach rumbled and quaked, she had missed breakfast and felt like death. Her eating habits.......she couldn't stand that she needed to eat so much, yet if she didn't she felt like her insides might become cannibals. The late morning sun shone bright, as if to put a spot light on her lateness.

As she threw open the doors and continued to run towards her booth, she rushed into someone who clearly wasn't watching where they were going. Yes, obviously his fault.

As her frame collided with his, instinct took over. Her right foot planting, both hands grabbing the back of his shirt. Probably before he realized what had happened she would spin on her heal before releasing the boy effectively trying to toss him, which would sadly send him into a watermelon cart that always sold fresh watermelon to the criminals that were looking for work. Criminals love watermelon, it's true. Her spin would send her around her heal twice more before she regained her balance, though far from gracefully.

"Would you watch were you're going!" She would shout at the totally innocent, well of this surely he was guilty for something, boy she had pelted into. Her arms going to her side she would huff and walk to her table sitting behind the desk and start sorting papers. Which confidently was right next to the watermelon cart.

He thought he was getting mugged.

It started with the doors to the contract center being thrown open, rather loudly, the doors swinging back and forth several times, creaking all the while. Evidently, someone was in a hurry. Just who exactly, he didn't know he was about to find out.

As he was making his way across the room, he felt himself collide with something... a person most likely, he could feel the clothing touching his skin. He opened his mouth to apologize - even if it was not necessarily his fault, it was still ru-

And then suddenly his world was tumbling.

"Wha-"

Next thing he knew, he was flying through the air, bystanders scrambling to get out of the way. He would have grabbed onto something except that this path was now clear, for the most part. His arms only had time to flail a little bit though.

The resulting crash was probably heard across the building, unless you were Kohei. The person in question was a bit dazed, and at first barely heard the person's words. This was partially because he had slammed into a cart, giving him bigger things to worry about, than a mere loud noise. In fact, he was certain he felt the impact of multiple objects on his back, before the grand finale - it seemed the impact had been mostly with the upper segment of the cart.

He was not sure how much had been damage of it, he only vaguely remembered the shape from an earlier brief glance. Of course, this was probably because he couldn't see anything.

His initial groan was not very audible, unless you were Kohei. It was also kind of hard to breathe. Oh, that's right.

The watermelon came off of his head with a slight "pop", seeds and fruit juice all over his head, and the top of his shirt. Yuck, what a mess! Hopefully they still had the garden hose coiled up, outside. Because this was going to be some hefty work.

As he struggled to his feet - wincing form the earlier impact - he was double teamed by two disconcerting sights.

Firstly, the damaged watermelon cart. While he had managed to not destroy the main body of the cart by pure dumb luck, he had definitely done some serious damage to the counter and the upright windows. He didn't think he wanted to know what the back of his shirt looked like.

Secondly, he was confronted by an angry voice, and the image of a short young woman yelling at him. He was tempted to duck back under the watermelon cart, just to avoid this, but she finished yelling at him pretty quickly, and then stalked... towards him? No, she apparently... oh man. She was working one of the tables near where he was going to look for jobs. Crap.

Slowly, her words sank in. So, she was obviously the one he had collided with, then. Not a lot he could do about it here, at the moment, it wasn't worth an argument over. Not that he was happy with this, as evident from his exasperated sigh. His ordinarily dour expression had turned more sour, as the water melon juice had made solid contact with his head. Being yelled at made him even more unhappy. Imagine if you will, the expression of a wet cat. The angry kind. Now, if you could transplant that onto a normally grouchy looking guy, you would have Kohei's current expression.

The very first thing he did was restrain himself from exploding verbally.

The second thing he did was to step outside, tossing the holey watermelon into a trash can, and hose himself off. At least he would be just wet, rather than wet, sticky, and with seeds in his hair.

The third thing he did, was take a deep breath, sort of a quick meditation or mind clearing, if you will.

Then he walked back inside. Looking for the watermelon cart - which now had a horrified guy in an apron standing beside it - he began fishing out some money.

"You the owner of this cart?"

An affirmative nod.

"Well, you probably noticed already, but there was an... accident, which unfortunately involved your cart. Hard to say whose fault it really was, but here, take this, it should cover the cost of your cart, and then some. I threw in the price of a watermelon as well."

Kohei handed the man some painful amount of cash, and patted him on the back. Looks like he needed to do a bit extra this week, to make it up. But at least he would know he hadn't taken away someone's livelihood just like that, not without trying to make up for it. Speaking of which....

He helped clean up the rest of the mess. Though he was afraid to touch the cart, in case he broke something else. He just had this way about things that could cause them to break accidentally....

That all over with, he checked his watch. Drat. most of a good half hour wasted!

He walked back over to the wall he was intending to peruse earlier, before the collision. Studiously ignoring the redhead who he seemed to have collided with earlier, he began looking for jobs suited for his relative lack of strength.

Ok.

That one looked good. A tip off about a noble with jewels and a fairly small retinue. Too bad that he would have to give some ryo if he succeeded, though this was in effect a tip, rather than a normal mission. After all, picking a fight with those higher up the pecking order, didn't always go well. Only hitch was... he had to get his claim to the mission checked in. Probably to reduce the quantity of people who took it, and make verification easier.

Now, which table was he supposed to get this... oh no. Not that girl. Crap.

He mentally cleared his mind, trying to keep his indignation about the watermelon incident from rising to the surface.

Ok. Here goes. He would pretend that nothing happened. Because otherwise he would probably say something he shouldn't.

"Um... hi. Apparently, I need to get checked in as working on this... contract? Do I have the right table?"

He gently wiggled the sheet of paper in his hand, held so she could see.

Hopefully he didn't get punched out.

Roku had made his way back to the contract center for what was far from the first time in the past couple weeks. There were small jobs he could do to get a bit of quick cash here, and bigger ones to get actual living and spending money from if the need had presented itself. He pushed his shades a little further up to his face and began examining the people with interest, a slightly increased interest placed on the vendor that was selling watermelons. Food was something to be pursued on the daily, and it could be acquired simply through contracts and the exchange of money for sustenance. Regularly, he came and looked about for something useful to do with his time to continue... finding things to do. As the circumstances stood, he was hungry and the quiet rumbling from his torso echoed that thought.

Sometimes, opportunities presented themselves through standard chaos.

A man slammed into the target of a greedy stare, the food that had been suchly targeted sent about. Watermelon, as it turned out, were wonderful for quenching the hunger and thirst of a criminal simultaneously. Too useful to simply pass up, at least in the strange eyes of a hungry boy. As the victim of the whole crash, the direct object of all three individuals distress, left to wash his rather sticky seeming skull, the eyes of the vendor followed him. The look on the poor man's face was most easily classified as horror, though there was some level of general shock still left in the lines in his expression. Some of the stock had been crushed, some simply sent hurtling elsewhere, and Roku quickly spotted some of the fruit left in the cart that had been harmed but not ruined. Delightful. As the merchant began picking up his remaining fruit, what few were intact on the ground, the mischievous child snagged a couple fragments of unsoiled edibles from the cart. Almost shaped as if they had been cut, if a little thick and deformed for proper slices. They would suit him as a rather pleasant breakfast, and it even had a little bit of a show beforehand. How interesting. Speaking of which... Roku's head flicked to the side, like a startled animal, to the woman seated only a few feet away. Who would have most likely seen him stealing from the merchant. Before he could hardly register exactly what she saw or thought, his legs carried him to the front of the table and he reached across to hand her a portion of his meal before scurrying away. It was up to her whether or not to accept the bribe, it was simply for the sake of her immediate silence. The small shinobi would be out of the merchant man's sight in but a few seconds, quickly scurrying off towards the door. What an eventful little trip, maybe he could even find an interesting contract to achieve a dinner. 

As he was just about to commence looking for a contract, nibbling on the at least one rather large piece of melon he retained possession of, the entity that had found himself chucked into the cart returned to the interior of the building. Once more, Roku found himself plainly in the view of someone involved in the incident in which he had involved himself. It would be quite simple and accurate to describe the boy as mousy, given his stature and way of eating his stolen meal, and although he would never agree to be called such a thing because of the rather negative connotation, it retained something of its truth when he found himself staring at the man. It was beginning to click in his mind that this was something of a situation, and those could be used for a lot of things. Instead of dipping out of the center to finish the melon, Roku decided to see how this would all progress. After keeping the tinted lenses of his shades focused on the former projectile for a couple seconds, the peculiar, almost monochromatic child ran off toward the wall of contracts. 

They were simply not interesting to hold the attention span of a child. Sure, if he wanted to, he could focus down on them with the precise, determined nature of his brain. But as the situation was, that just didn't do enough. One about a traveling merchant or some such, a man that would be making his way along the countryside with his profit in tow. The reward was whatever could be stolen, the contract itself created by a business partner of the man with some ulterior grudge. Embezzlement or some such, the goal now chiefly being revenge. Again, it was of no interest, but it did lead him to go get checked in with the same female as made the meal he held possible. That made it a worthwhile grab, and it was snatched off the wall quickly as Roku made his way back to the table with his watermelon at his side, hidden by his kimono sleeve, and his contract paper in his opposite hand. As he approached, he could observe the man that had lost his fruit to conflict and larceny getting paid; at least he would be able to get back the goods he had lost. Roku was a couple meters behind the man that had seemed to simply be the victim of unfortunate positioning and watermelon placement at this point, Kohei, playing the part of a somewhat nervous and, indeed, mousy, onlooker.

Rip, looked like he had the wrong table.

Unless stopped or given other reason to stay, Kohei would turn and walk out after talking to the right table about being cleared for his contract.

(potential exit)

Potential approval

The slight ninja frowned, watching his potentially interesting situation deteriorate in mere seconds. Well, at least he had found a decent contract. Roku examined his next mission for a moment before smiling; the listed individuals were none other than the merchants he had stolen from only a couple weeks previous. Delightful. 

The boy would swiftly move to get his own approval before promptly dipping out, presuming nothing would be distracting.

[Exit]

Equally potential approval

It indeed appeared that nobody was going to bother trying to stop him from leaving. So he did. The end.

(exit)

(no claims :/ )

Approved lol