Where society ends

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

It was late in the afternoon when Hiruzen left his bunker and decided to go to a place most shinobi would not enjoy entering. The place known as "Shakai Owari", literally translated to "Society's end" was where one would be able to find just about every single criminal roaming the land of lightning as well as the lesser nations close to it. It acted as a safe haven for missing ninja, wanderers that kept themselves involved in some shady business and even corrupt business owners. Hidden inside a large canyon for the most part, the entire place was several stories high. When he was still a shinobi from the Hidden Cloud, he had only been able to lay his eyes on it from a distance. Anyone with a village headband that wandered in there was as good as dead, at least that was what he thought back then. Six years later, it had been a place Hiruzen frequently visited in order to get to an information broker that knew how to get what Hiruzen needed. The last time he had gone there was about four months ago, shortly after he returned from the land of iron with a new batch of text to decipher.

Knowing that a couple of the people that had been caught in the act of extortion a week or two ago, Hiruzen stopped by them first. From the look on their faces, he could tell that they had not expected to run into him again here. Offering him money to leave them alone, Hiruzen took the small bag of Ryo and took it with him. He knew the kind of people they were when he went to them, already expecting that they would try to bribe him so he would leave. Truth be told, the illusionary beating he had given them when he sent them on their way after their failed extortion of a local farmer had been plenty of punishment. That said, he knew that the first rule of money was "don't spend your own when you can spend that of others", which was exactly what he was planning on doing. With the bag of cash in hand, he ventured through the underbelly of society. Many of the people around him looked particularly tough, though it was often just for show. In a place like this, showing signs of weakness was the same as signing your own death certificate. While he was not particularly tough looking, he had the appearance of a seasoned warrior about him in spite of his young age.

Aside from that, whenever someone looked at him wrong or when he felt like someone wanted to come up and threaten him, he just let just the right amount of chakra leak out of his body to strike fear into those paying attention to him, but not enough to draw the attention of everyone else around. As strong as he was, he knew that such a thing would lead to a massacre in which he might even sustain a cut or two. Time away from the village had taught him a lot, especially when it came down to the people he surrounded himself with. When he was in a town or a port, he knew to be kind in behavior and appearance as the people there were easily startled. However, when crawling around with the outcasts of normal society, it was best to show that you mean business and would be best left alone. Passing by some of the people he had once fought and people he had never seen before, there was no doubt in his mind that all of these people would have instantly tried to kill him if he had been a Hidden Cloud shinobi or in any other way affiliated with the authorities. When he finally passed through all of the filth unharmed, it was finally time to talk to his regular information broker. Hopefully, he would have something good for him this time.

600/668 words
Street Smarts