CH_4.13 (113)

CH_4.13 (113)

Arisu stared at the man slumped against the wall with no life in his eyes. The numerous gashes and bruises, the kunai handle sticking out of the chest, and the blood on and around the body told a story of a struggle better than any amount of words could. It was a horrifying sight, but Arisu continued to stare in an effort to find the chain of events that had led to this.

Turning away from the man, she looked to the middle of the building's ground-floor lobby, where another body lay with a sword sticking out gut, surrounded by a pool of blood staining the dirty gray floor.

Two dead men on the ground floor of the apartment complex didn't come as a surprise to her. She had seen many similar situations, especially in the type of neighborhood they were called to. And the blade tracks and shuriken in the walls, sole prints on the ceiling, and light jutsu damage around the scene made it evident they were dealing with shinobi.

'What a waste,' she sighed to herself.

Arisu saw Kano enter the building and walked to the second man to join Takuma.

"Is everything tagged?" asked Kano.

"Yes, ma'am," Arisu replied.

Takuma, who was observing the second man, pointed over at the dead body with a pen as he spoke, "Brutal... A lot of bruising on the front of the neck, from the lower leg I can tell that the other guy was really trying to hobble this one by striking the calf and knee... and look at this," Takuma pointed at the man's left eye, "he even tried to poke the eye out— that other guy was trying to impair him to get in the murder strike. Straight for the liver." Takuma touched the sword blade with his pen, making a ting against the metal.

"Same for that one," Arisu pointed at the man against the wall.

"Any signs of a third party?" asked Kano.

Arisu shook her head. "No, from the looks of it, only these two were involved." The wounds and state of the violence around the scene were congruent to a scene created by two people fighting each other. "We will have to look deeper after tagging everything to know for sure."

Kano squatted by the dead body and observed in silence for a minute before sighing,

"Well, haven't we seen this before," she sighed.

Takuma titled his head.

"Any identification?" Kano asked.

"We got one of them," Arisu held up the shinobi registration card she got from the dead shinobi.

Takuma held up the same for the second guy.

"Good. Yup, this checks out. Let's wrap this up," Kano took the registration cards from them.

"What was that about?" Arisu asked as Kano walked away to the other body.

Takuma stared at Kano. From the looks of it, he also found her behavior strange, but he shrugged.

"She will tell us later. Come on, I want to get out of here," he said.

Arisu frowned. It was Kano who had told them to come to the crime scene to inspect it. And she knew that the Homicide wasn't swamped and that they had to shift case load to other departments. It wasn't that Organized Crime didn't handle killings— in fact, they handled more killings than Homicide due to the fact that there were a lot of deaths connected to organized crime.

The fact that Kano had ordered them meant she knew the connection.

'Why not tell us right away,' she thought.

——

.

"It doesn't happen often, but we do see cases like this. I've seen a few of them in the last few years. The Ring fighters all fight a certain way, influenced by each other, it keeps changing year by year, but some things are carried over... I have formed an eye for the injuries which Ring fighters usually inflict— it's not anything unique and there are other unrelated cases with similar injuries, so we usually confirm with our contact inside the Ring. But this time, we were given the information by our contact beforehand that an incident had happened."

Arisu was still reeling from the discovery of an apparent underground gladiator. She had lived her entire life in the Hidden Leaf, and to suddenly find out that there was something so big was jarring when her first exposure to it was through a double murder.

"How big is it?" she asked.

"Bigger than you might think," said Kano. "It has been here in the village for a long time. You'll find people older than me and people as young as you in the Ring."

"Fuck me," Arisu cursed.

Takuma asked, "This Ring.... What is our relationship with them?"

"Not much. We know to ignore their operations, and they make sure not to come to the surface. When cases like this and some others do arise, they provide us with anything we want to make them go away because that's good for both of us."

"Do we have a list of the Ring fighters on file?" Takuma asked.

Kano shook her head.

Takuma leaned against the chair. He was done asking questions.

Arisu asked a few questions before they left Kano's office.

"You don't seem too surprised by the Ring," Arisu said to Takuma— not anywhere close to as she was.

Takuma sat down at his desk. "I've heard about something like that existed. Didn't think it was real, but can't say I'm that surprised to know now it's real, you know." He looked at her. "You get to hear a lot of things when you live in a place where I do."

Arisu knew where Takuma lived. It was in the opposite direction from where she lived. She had never been to the area where Takuma had lived but had seen areas like that while on cases. It wasn't a good place to live— and she didn't know why someone like him would continue to live there. She couldn't imagine living in a place like that.

"Would you have joined the Ring?" Arisu asked. "Kano said that it helps a lot of clanless shinobi— help them develop."

Takuma laughed. He looked up at her and pointed at his arm where the red Police Force armband sat. "I'm part of the Leaf Military Police Force— an officer of the esteemed Organized Crime division— do you think I can be in any better place to develop as a shinobi?"

Arisu couldn't deny his words. Except under a jonin teacher, the Police Force was perhaps the place to be.

As she looked at Takuma, Arisu couldn't help but remember the Takuma of the past when they were in the academy. Dead last. Someone who couldn't hit a target, win a spar, cast a jutsu, if his life depended on it. Someone who had failed the academy graduation test twice before passing at the last chance. Takuma hadn't even been given a chance to try out for a jonin and was directly put into the Genin Corp.

Seeing that guy in the same place as her after two years honestly made her feel... insecure. She couldn't help but compare her to him and couldn't help but wonder if her effort was lacking in comparison to Takuma.

"I want to finish the damn paperwork as soon as possible," said Takuma as he tidied up his desk.

Arisu shook her head and got herself back together. There was no use thinking about those things. If she felt she was lacking, then all she had to do was up the work she was putting in.

"Yeah, let's do this."

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