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Floor 1 - Behest Board

        Mamushi slinked her way through the castle, scrolls tucked under her arm and spilling from her hip-pouch. "Courier mission completed, sir." She parceled them out to the bland man at the desk, scroll by scroll. The room smelled like ink and parchment, and the fan in the corner gave off a thrumming whir. She was already itching to get off to her next mission.

        Mamushi took to the roof tops, feet pattering against slate tiles. Most buildings in Konohagakure sported hip-and-gable style roofing, the most prominent of which was the castle at the center of the village. The Hokage’s Castle. It was Konoha’s heart, the tracery of dirt-packed roads and streets and back-alley wynds its veins, the people traversing the veins its blood.

        She leaped across a twenty foot gap without breaking stride, wind streaming her hair, caressing her skin. Running was fun. She could almost imagine she was hunting ninja, chasing down foreign interlopers for assassination. One day, she vowed, she would be ANBU, and that would be her true job. But for now, she was only a genin, and her job was to collect messages for the Hokage to peruse. Paperwork was ever the bane of bureaucracy.

        Her next stop was a blacksmith down Steel Alley. Smoke billowed from the forge, thick and gray. She could taste the flames in the air, and burning iron. If she listened closely, she could hear the ringing clang of a hammer striking an anvil. She’d bought her ninjato from the armorer she was sprinting to visit, and her kris too. She suspected, though, that it had been his wife, Maya, who made both items. Kitsudo-san tended to make armor – fine armor, affordable by jounin only, or extremely rich chuunin. His wares were renowned throughout the city.

        Rumor was that he’d been a samurai at one point, and Mamushi could believe them. When he’d sold her the ninjato, she remembered him holding it almost reverently, as if it were a child instead of a sword. His regard for the steel had transferred over to herself. No matter if she’d used it or not, she sharpened and oiled it every night.

        She dove off the eave that leaned over the lip of the wall and landed in front of the shop’s door. The bell above it chimed as she pushed her way in. “Kitsudo-san?” she called out. “It’s Natsumi. I’ve come to collect documents for the Hokage?”

        Maya's warm tones answered her from the rear of the shop, past the weapon's displays and racks of armor. “Back here, Natsumi-chan!”

        She followed the voice to a storeroom set catty-corner from the door, all wrought of fire charred stone. The walls bristled with steel. Swords, knives, daggers, throwing stars – she saw a mace with a jeweled hilt, and a shuriken as big around as she was tall. “Maya-san?” Her tongue darted out, tasted the air. Charcoal, iron, and sake.

        “Over here, dear.” Maya-san was sitting in an alcove, polishing a massive nodachi. Kuroda Maya was a short, fleshy woman, with powerful thighs and thick shoulders. Her face was broad and tanned, but she had a nice smile, and was perhaps one of Mamushi’s most favorite people. Maya-san wasn’t bothered by her nature at all.

        “I’ve come for your messages,” Mamushi said again.

        Maya's broad face curled in a frown. “Not a social call, then. I’ve missed you, dear, since you started doing mission. How goes your training?”

        Mamushi grinned, but there was nothing malicious in her expression – only joy. “I can turn my arm into twelve snakes, now! That’s twice as many as I could do before. I still haven’t learned how to create the poisons though… but I can move real quiet-like. Even ANBU can’t hear me!”

        Maya sighed. “You’ll be chuunin before long, and then I’ll never see you.”

        “Yes you will,” Mamushi protested. “A ninja always needs weapons, and I’ll never buy weapons anywhere but here!”

        Maya smiled. “Oh, I certainly hope so. Kitsudo is hammering out more armor in the back, but he’s already signed everything of import.” She put the sword aside and ambled off to a darkened corner where several scrolls sat sprawled over a rickety old table. “Here you are, dear. It’s all there – documents from all the armorers. Kitsudo nearly forgot, the lummox!”

        Mamushi tucked the scrolls into her pouch. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be anymore space.

        “How many stops do you have left?”

        “Just one. I got all the merchant lords in one swoop, and with the smiths out of the way, only the hospital is left.”

        Maya was shorter than Mamushi, so she had to stand on her tiptoes to press a dry kiss to the girl’s cheek. “You take care of yourself, Natsumi-chan. And scare a few doctors for me.”

        Mamumshi loosed a tinkling laugh. “I will.”

        Mamushi balanced on the slate-tiled roof, bare toes gripping the eaves. The sun winked down at her, wreathed in white clouds, its heat swept away by a brisk, northerly wind. Pigeons wheeled beneath the brume, fluttering from sky to roof to street, snatching up crumbs and tossed bird seed. Mamushi’s stomach grumbled; a pigeon would be nice right about now. Or a kitten.

         She saw storm clouds gathering in the far north, heard a rumble low and distant. It’ll rain soon, she thought. Mamushi loved the rain.

        Konohagakure bustled below, the dirt-paved streets choked with merchants and venders and stalls, and there, milling about in the shadow of the onsen, were the pot-bellied men who owned the venders and stalls, laughing and back-slapping like happy rich men were wont to do. One stood apart from the others, a butterball of a man in a tangerine kimono that probably cost more than her yearly salary. He had several scrolls tucked under his arm, anxiously glancing back and forth as if waiting for something.

        Mamushi like upsetting people, even something so small as making them wait. She grinned, thin lips spread wide. Her mother, shinigami rest her soul, had always said her smile was a thing of demons. The Kage Hebi blood was strong in her; her tongue snaked out, tasted the air, and with a single ram seal, the pink appendage shifted into a fanged viper that lovingly nuzzled her cheek. She felt more than heard the ninja arrive behind her. A chuunin, she reckoned, by the lightness in his step and the taste of his chakra.

        “Freaky snake bitch,” he grumbled.

        She twisted her head around to face him, her neck impossibly flexible. “Kentaro-chan! To what do I owe the pleasure?” Her voice was sickly sweet, but her eyes were as sharp as the ninjato sheathed at her side. If she could have gotten away with plunging it into his throat, she would have. But it was against the rules to murder your fellow ninja, especially if they weren’t traitors. Hokage-sama would be wroth with her if she killed one of his ninja.

    Kentaro scowled. He was shorter than her, but stocky, and was a fair hand at Katon jutsu. He was nothing special though. Just another thirty-year old chuunin. “Another mission,” he ground out, thrusting a scroll out at her, “for when you’ve finished playing messenger.”

        She accepted the scroll with her snakey tongue, delighting in the shiver of revulsion that raced through him. “Arigatō, Kentaro-chan!” She slipped the mission scroll into her pouch and dived off the roof. The fat merchant lord was starting to get impatient.