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Kenchiro winced as he tried to push the passing bandage whip away from his body. Akira got himself into a steady rhythm; he would lash out with one arm, draw it back in, and then lash out with the other arm, always with just enough of a pause for Kenchiro to recover. The blonde Genin scowled. The mummy boy was toying with him. Him, of all people! If there was one thing that got his dander up, it was seeing that it was not him at the top of the food chain. And when his dander was up, he had a tendency to get creative. Not that it was easy to think of cunning plans when one was trying to keep from getting filleted.

Ducking behind a coffin, he threw open the casket lid, using it as a shield to block the incoming wrapping. Inside, he found another human shaped mass of gauze. He recoiled for a moment? Was it a clone, or a family member? No. Kenchiro noted a little bit of wood sticking out of a joint, not wrapped up perfectly. It was a puppet, one of the ones used by certain ninja with a toy fetish. Why it was wrapped in bandages, Kenchiro had a few guesses. More importantly, if all of these caskets had one of these in them... He grinned wolfishly.

Akira's bandage had found its way around Kenchiro's impromptu cover. Quickly, Kenchiro hopped away from it and ran around the coffin, rushing straight for his opponent. He began rattling off a series of hand-seals, shouting. "I'm going to burn those silly mummy wraps off of your body." He could see Akira's face shift in a general direction he was going to assume was "worry." He stopped, making a tube with his fingers and putting them to his mouth. "Sacred Fire Technique: Heavenly Crucib..." His casting was interrupted, as to be expected, by a mass of senbon needles to the chest and arms. He stumbled backwards, seemingly struck in a vital area. That is, until he was encompassed in smoke. When it cleared, a bandage covered puppet was in his place, pierced at several points by needles.

Akira took a step back, expecting an ambush to strike at any moment. When all he heard was a clattering in the next room, he realized that his opponent must be using the Substitution to retreat and regroup. The wrappings on his face moved back in the direction of "smiling" as he followed the source of the noise. "That's right, little man. Run, hide! But don't think that that will save you in the end."

Languidly, he followed the noise to another section of his workshop. One of the doors had been knocked off one of the coffins that lay against the wall. Akira looked at the puppet that lay resting in its open bed, and he appeared to smile even deeper. "You see, little nobody, I have friends who can help me find you." He held out a hand, willing the unwound bandage on his arm to wrap around the wrist of the mummy puppet, and the puppet responded by climbing out of his casket. "That's it, my minion. Go, go and find this little nobody for me!"

The puppet responded by grabbing the gauze that bound him and his master together, wrapping it one more time around its wrist, and charging. Even before the Henge disappeared, revealing Kenchiro was the puppet in the casket, he had his fist firmly in Akira's gut. Akira recoiled; Kenchiro pulled on the bandage in his hand and loosed another punch square in the cheek. "Is that it? Is that all you got?" Kenchiro was feeling pretty full of himself, until he realized that the bandage around his wrist was starting to creep up, winding itself around his arm. "Oh, crud..."

Kenchiro hopped forward, bridging the gap between the two of them and loosing a right for Akira's stomach. Akira made no move to dodge or block, but he barely registered the force of the punch, hardly moving and not even losing any breath. Kenchiro cocked back his left fist, punching again; still nothing. Even another pair of punches did little to root Akira from his spot, and from what little information he could glean from his face, Akira was not even feeling them. With a grunt, Kenchiro hopped back. "Okay, I'll bite. What's with the no-sell act, Shishimura?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Akira raised his hands, which were fitted with more senbon needles between their fingers. Kenchiro flinched, reaching behind him. Just as a fresh spray of needles came flying his way, he threw his cloak from the table in front of him. The heavy fabric caught the lightweight projectiles in the air, causing the cloak to jerk and spasm in air. That bought him the split second he needed to get out of the line of fire, kicking off the wall and taking to the ceiling. Drawing his ninjato, he descended on Akira, swinging down with all his weight.

Akira responded quickly, undoing the bandage around one arm and stretching it over his head with his other hand. He stopped the falling blade, and the ninja behind it, using the bandage, which began to glow with a green light that appeared to burn like a smoldering flame. Kenchiro grimaced, putting a foot on his opponent's shoulder and hopping off. "So that's what you're doing!" Kenchiro landed on a floor-bound coffin, sword at the ready. "You're feeding chakra into your bandages to create some kind of cloth armor."

Akira put his hands down, letting the undone bandage fall to the floor. "Well, looks like you're not completely hopeless, after all." The bandage on his other arm began to unwind, falling until it just barely touched the floor. "Behold the secret techniques of the Shishimuras. With this, I have complete control over the bandages on my body. And not just their hardness. I can even control the motions of my bandages as if they were living things. Observe!" He held up an arm, and suddenly the loose bandage began to bend and curl on itself, coming up to eye level similarly to a snake. Then, it lunged forward, unwinding itself on Akira's arm as it shot straight for Kenchiro.

Kenchiro leaned back, wincing as the flying cloth strip grazed his arm, taking with it a bit of skin as readily as if it had been a steel blade. The Genin hopped off the coffin, holding his arm as he retreated for cover. "Why didn't I see that coming?" he muttered.

"Did the Kazekage send you?" asked Akira.

"In a manner of speaking, he did," Kenchiro replied, one hand on his hip near his tool pouch.

Akira huffed. "It's about time they got around to recognizing me. I suppose they're calling me to the tower to finally bump me up to Chuunin." There was a slight shift in the fabric of his face covering, which Kenchiro could only surmise was a smile.

Kenchiro shook his head. "Actually, I'm here to set you straight. You've been getting a bit confident lately. The Kazekage wants me to try and determine whether that confidence is empty or not."

"I see. And who are you, exactly?"

"Nobody. That's precisely the point. Once lowly little me wipes the floor with you, hopefully you'll realize that you're nowhere near Kage level."

Akira's eyes flared, and his facial bandages shifted in a direction Kenchiro assumed was "outrage." "How dare they underestimate me like this! Sending a know-nothing little urchin like you to take me on? Do they know who they're dealing with? Akira Shishimura, eldest son of the Shishimura line! I'll break you, little nobody, and then I'll take this to the Kazekage himself!"

Kenchiro unclasped the broach holding his cloak to his body, tossing it on the table behind him. "Right. Well, let's deal with that hurdle when we come to it, shall we?" The Genin raised his fists, shifting his weight from foot to foot rhythmically.

A man in a suit stepped out. A man who clearly needed an eyepatch, and whose boots were a suspect color, but a man in a nice suit nonetheless. It was normal enough to throw Kenchiro off his game; he disengaged his jutsu, catching his knives out of the air and putting them back in his tool pouches. "Right. That's a bit better. Maybe now we can actually figure out what this nonsense is all about." He followed after the man. For a moment, he was optimistic. Maybe it was finally time for him to worm his way out of this horror story and figure out it was all a complex practical joke. Maybe...

Maybe children's corpses would line the ceiling and the chairs would be made out of human skin. Kenchiro was not even angry anymore. Nor was he looking for a cunning way out, nor was he convinced he was in an illusion. No, there was only response left in his arsenal; a complete and utter loss of sanity. "Heh... hehehehe... heheheheheheHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!... AHH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAH!"

He held out his hands, motioning to the scene before him with a grand gesture. "Look at this! This... is wonderful! Terrifying, completely devoid of aesthetic pleasure, but wonderful! I thought the whole 'corpses on spikes' thing in the last room was good but you, you've outdone yourself yet again, you certifiable, one-eyed, addle-brained genius, you! I mean, look at this detail!" He held up a plate. "Are these baby bones? Well, they must be! That, or whittled down midget bones." He tossed it behind him like a piece of rubbish, moving on to the sign with equal fervor. "And he's got a menu, guys! A bloody menu! Just like those fancy restaurants down in the Land of Fire!" He lifted his foot, about to kick the sign to the floor, but stopped in mid-kick to stare at the items. "I didn't know you could eat heart. Being raw muscle and all, I always thought it'd be a bit gamey." He followed through on his kick.

He marched back to the table, spinning a chair on one leg. He was about to sit down on it, staring at their waiter with an abstracted air. However, when he looked down, he was reminded of the cushion, and promptly heaved the piece of furniture over the table. "Bravo, mister crazy man! I mean bra-bloody-vo! How did you find the time to put this little show together and do it all underneath the Village Hidden in the Sand? I feel like you shouldn't even be punished for taking it this far. You should be rewarded, even! Tell you what, in recognition for all this, I'm only going to make you beg for mercy for an hour before I finally wipe your sunken eyed, smelly boot wearing, can't properly appreciate the shelf life of organic wallpaper face off the face of the planet!" He drew a pair of kunai, one in each hand, and spun them both on his middle fingers. "Time to stand and deliver!"

Kenchiro liked the village bazaar. Stalls, shouting men and useless junk. It was the perfect place to blend in and be nobody. The Genin was a master of being nobody; all he needed to do was put on his drab cloak, find an open spot on a bench, and sit the hottest part of the day away. He did not even need Henge; nobody from the Academy even looked his way half the time, let alone recognized him. What he did in the interim was evenly divided between chats with strangers and people watching, with a bit of window shopping when he felt like stretching his legs.

It was a nice way to make those boring days go away. Sometimes, he got a bit too into being a piece of the scenery, and he wound up missing most of the more important stuff he was supposed to do or, even worse, walking away with something he did not need from one of the stalls. At this moment in time, in fact, he was looking at a collection of statues painstakingly crafted from the local clay with an attention to detail that bordered on super-human. Kenchiro naturally appreciated art, given his rather clandestine appreciation of jewels and other such theft-worthy items. Of course, he would not be caught dead trying to steal one of these terracotta figurines. They were dime a dozen and as common as the clothes on his back. They might fetch a pretty Ryo elsewhere. Like in Konoha, perhaps. Of course, Konoha probably had more than their fair share of treasures too. It made Kenchiro chuckle just thinking about it.