Grocery Shopping [M]

[Mamushi]

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{D-Rank Mission}Grocery Shopping
Rank: D
Description: Yuudai-san is old, and his hips are bothering him. Collect his weekly groceries from the market, and he might give you a candy.
Restrictions: No limitation
Rewards: 25 EXP, 500 RYO

        In the morning gloom, mist hanging over the village like a blanket, Mamushi regarded Yuudai-san's home as if it had been raised from the lowest pits of hell. Why had she taken this mission? She hated grocery shopping. No, that wasn't true. She didn't mind shopping. She hated crowds, and around this time of day, on the weekend, every grocer - store, stand, and stall - would by packed like sardines in a can. Traffic on the roads would be bad too.

        But a mission was a mission, and ryo was ryo. So she swallowed her annoyance and disdain, pushed her way through the leaning fence, and ambled up to Yuudai-san's lovely abode. The home was small and neat, the yard was well kept, the grass cut short and orderly. A winding garden fringed with smooth grey stones curled around the house, bisected by a thin cobbled path. Hummingbirds flitted among the wildflowers, wings thrumming.
    
        She knocked on the door and received a wheezy, "It's open!" She twisted the knob. It was, in fact, not open, but it was hardly the work of a few seconds to pick the lock and step inside.

        Yuudai-san, a thin, beak-nosed man of considerable age, was sitting in a rocking chair, munching on rice balls with a steaming cup of sake clenched in his wrinkled hand. Light from a small television set made his tanned face seem wan. The furnishing was quaint, old but well kept, the wood-tiled floor covered in dozens upon dozens of rugs and tapestries. Some of the art was clearly foreign; just where was Yuudai-san from, exactly? She'd heard tale that he was an old reformed bandit, and an even taller tale that he was a retired shinobi.

        She knew both of those stories were just that. Stories. Yuudai-san was a serial killer.

      When he spoke, his voice was a raspy rumble.  "Ninja-san, good, you are here."

        "So I am, Yuudai-san." Mamushi smiled wickedly, mouth spread from ear to ear. "I'll just take the list and be on my way." She pulled her lips back over her teeth, letting her fangs show.

        Either Yuudai had seen worse, or that film over his eyes meant he was blind. "It's on the frig," the old man wheezed. "You... you aren't a girl, are you?"

        "Well of course I'm a girl." She parted the hanging beads that separated the sitting room from the kitchen and snatched the list off the frig. Yuudai-san liked his sake, she saw. The counter was covered in empty bottles. "That's not a problem is it?" She turned her head and extended her neck into the other room. Yuudai-san smelled like prunes and peanuts.

        "A problem? No, so long as you follow the list exactly. I had to suffer the corrections of a young kunoichi who decided that I shouuld eat healthy. a medic-nin, I think. I'm old. I'm dying. I want to eat fatty, greasy foods because they taste good. Health is not my concern. Do you understand, girl?"

        Mamushi frowned. "You're a sour old man. But have no fear - I'll get exactly what's on the list, nothing more, nothing less."

        "Good." Lips trembling, he took a long pull from his sake, then waved her off. "Now go on. The groceries certainly won't buy themselves!"

        Mamushi blew a raspberry and zipped out of the house before he could protest the spit peppering his face.

[Mamushi]

        Mist still hung thick in the streets, soft and white. Summer was ending, Mamushi decided, and autumn was rearing is misty, golden head. The trees were still green, but it was only a matter of time before they fell to fall. The soft wind that pushed through the streets carried with it the din of the city, a clamorous murmur of voices that reminded her of the forest. The city didn't smell so natural as the forest though; there were a lot of restaurants in this district of the city, and the air reflected that fact. She smelled garlic on the wind, and onions, leeks, and hickory smoke. Hitsuba's Bar and Grille was already smoking meat for lunch hour.
       
        She didn't travel along the rooftops like she usually did, taking to the road instead. There were a couple vendors on the way to the market square that might have a few things from Yuudai-san's list. And what an impressive list it was. Her stomach started grumbling just reading it. Yuudai-san was a heavy meat eater; there were a few fruits and vegetables on the list, but most of it was meat. Cow, pig, fish, fowl, deer, rabbit.

        What she would give for a bacon-wrapped fried beef patty right about now...

        She came upon the first vendor along a narrow lane that fell south towards the village's club district, framed by tall, whitewashed plaster buildings with vines winding up and down their walls. The stall was small, just one booth, really, fish hanging from its racks, shellfish arranged in neat rows. There was snapper and salmon, cod and clams, mollusks, oysters, bass, and even a few marlins. Marlin was on Yuudai-san's list. Snapper too. No shellfish, though.

        The vendor turned out to be a young man not much older than herself, his dark hair matted beneath a bright blue bandanna, his wide smile missing a few teeth, wiry body peppered with scars. "Hello, young miss. Wut can I do ya' fer?" A foreigner, she decided. That accent was decidedly backwoods.

        She perused his wares a little longer, picking through the fish for the best specimens. This wasn't even her grocery list and already the mania was coming over her, the bone-deep desire to get only the best deals for the best prices. "This is a measly bunch of fish you have," she said, letting disdain color her voice. "What sewage dump did you get these from?"

        The vendor frowned. "These wares were pulled from the South Sea."

        "The same south sea plagued by pirates? They must've took all the good fish." The vendor bristled, he was so mad. "'I'll take two of these marlins and a couple snappers. Your fish are shit, but I have enough herbs at home to make up for it."

       Frowning, the vendor sad,  "Two hundred ryo."

        Mamushi let her fangs show. A wedge-shaped snake head pushed its way out from her mouth.

       His demeanor changed.  "Ummm... one-hundred and fifty ryo."

        Hissing sounded from her sleeves.

        "S-s-seventy five ryo?" He was shaking now. Why were people so afraid of snakes?

        "How's about a cool hundred?" Mamushi amended. A better bargain than she'd hoped for, truth be told. "I wouldn't want to cheat you."" She passed over the cash and received a burlap sack heavy with two rather excellent specimens of marlin and a handful of snapper. This vendor had a lot to learn about selling wares in a ninja village. Didn't he know that shinobi cheated?

[Mamushi]

        "I saw this lettuce first! It's my lettuce, and I want it now!"

        "Well I grabbed it first. Can't be yours if it's mines!"

        Mamushi immediately turned around and left the grocery store, door chiming as she left.

     
        The market stores were the more convenient place to go, but all the ones she came across were packed to capacity, or the aisles had been picked dry. The Market Square, when she reached it, was busier than she had suspected it would be as well, but not as bad as the grocers had been. Satchel of fish slung over her shoulder, she pushed her way through the press of bodies to the ring of stalls where they were selling freshly slaughtered cows. She could smell the blood, hear the flies buzzing. A hand squeezed her ass - snakes erupted from her slaves and latched onto the offender, leaving him screaming in the middle of a teeming crowd. Nobody bothered to help him - grocery shopping was serious business. 

        She picked out a nice hunk of beef shoulder, a couple tongues, and three hearts, then moved on to the ring of pig stalls just across the lane. There were more flies here, but only because the vendor kept a few live pigs fenced in beside his stall. She took slab after slab of bacon, and ribs from high off the hog - expensive, certainly, but easily the tastiest meat on a pig. She bought pickled pig's feet too, and a jar of fresh-fried cracklings. The man selling the pigs looked particularly piggy himself, with his beady eyes and fat pug nose. If she poked him, would he oink?

        The chicken stalls were by far the most numerous, and the most crowded, and the loudest. The chicken hung naked from hooks, skin still pink from blood. There were plastic wrapped packages of gizzards and livers and already cut sections of chicken - legs, wings, breast. She bout a whole chicken and two packs of gizzards, wondering if she was shopping for a week, as the mission had said, or for a month. The fish alone would last a week, the beef another two, to say nothing of the pig and the chicken. Why, that Yuudai-san had duped her! And the village! Well, she'd show him.

        She didn't get the same sort of deals she'd gotten from the fish vendor, for the sheer fact that with so many people clamoring to buy, the vendors could afford to turn down hagglers who haggled to hard. She kept her haggling to a minimum, and by virtue of being rather cute when she wasn't baring her fangs or smiling her smiles, she got decent enough discounts at most every stall she visited.

        Her wares were starting to get heavy. She tied the packs to her back and took to the rooftops, anxious now to be done with her mission. It had been so long since she was forced into a crowd that she had underestimated her hatred of them.
        

[Mamushi]

        It took nearly three hours until her shopping was done. The mist had thinned, and the sky was just starting to peak out from behind the clouds that dominated the sky. She'd had to threaten bodily harm to a woman who argued with her over a bundle of celery, but a peak at her tongue-snake had sent the bitch scurrying. One nice man had invited her to lunch, and he hadn't been cowed by her snakes at all. That creeper who grabbed her ass had managed to stitch his wound before he bled out; when he saw her stalking his way, back humped with countless sacks and bags, he had pissed himself and fainted.

        Now she was taking her sweet time getting back to Yuudai-san, enjoying the cool wind rippling her cloak. With the markets so packed, the rest of the village was almost deserted, lanes that were normally thronged left bare for a borderline misanthrope like herself to wander. She had to fend off a few stray dogs sniffing at her back, but other than that, nothing and no one bothered her. Even the flies kept their distance.

        "Umm, kunoichi-san?" A soft voiced asked from somewhere off to her left.

        Mamushi came to a halt, then twisted about to regard the speaker. She was young, stomach swollen with babe, skin aglow. Dark brown curls framed a pleasantly plump face. Mamushi smiled. "May I help you?"

        "I... er, that is, we -" she pointed to the gangly duo standing in her shadow, brothers by the look of them, "were wondering why you have those dead kittens tied to a string?"

        Mamushi glanced down. She'd gotten herself some freshly-strangled kittens from the wailing hag over on Tsuba Street. "How else am I going to carry them?"

        "But... why do you have them at all?"

        Mamushi laughed. "To eat them, silly!" She walked off to the sound of retching.

        Soon enough she was standing before Yuudai-san's modest home. With the fog cleared, his garden looked even more impressive. Every color of the rainbow grew in his garden, and the smell was heavenly. She entered the abode for the second time, not bothering to knock. Yuudai-san was sitting where she'd left him, but he was asleep now, a thin string of drool dripping from his lip.

        She unloaded her haul quietly, not because she cared if she woke the old man up, she told herself, but because learning to move silently - all the time - was an integral skill for a ninja to have. She wrapped the meats in saran and stored them in the freezer, and when it was full, she stuffed them in the larder. Vegetables went in the frig, herbs an spices in the cabinets. As she was putting the groceries away, she came across a piece of candy sitting innocuously among the empty sake bottles.

        Wisely, she left it alone. Yuudai-san wasn't so bad now, but he had been an axe-murderer once upon a time. That's probably what that subtle cloying scent was hanging in the air. Really old dead bodies.

finite.

[Anmida]

Graded.