A/N : Guys I believe its time to vote for the female lead. Let me honest, I'm gonna have Karin in there. I just Wanna. Meaning you guys get to choose the other if you want the other that is.
Here Let me make things easy for you. Just comment under the name to let me know...
1. Karin
2. Kiyomi
3. Sakura
4. Other (Tell me who)
---<>---
The bounty office of the Land of Fire hadn't changed in years, and that in itself was suspicious.
Same old run-down suspicious place, same old bald uncle who had by now lost all of his hair.
"Yo… been a while old man. Good to know you haven't kicked the bucket yet." He waved his hand, his usual greeting with the bald uncle at this point.
"You brat, I'm just 58, stop imagining me in a grave…" He shouted, fuming, but still had that smile upon seeing him. Out of all the killers, robbers, terrorists, and all sorts of degenerates who visited here, only Sukuna bothered to talk with him honestly.
He somehow found the interactions entertaining.
Sukuna long learned that the outpost where bald uncle sits is actually just the upper layer of the bounty market. The real market was underneath them.
He only learned later on when his credibility rose in the bounty market. Annoying, but he understood why they would do that.
However, he actually never goes down there in the market outside that one time when he just wished to know how it looked like. There was no reason; he got all his bounty from the bald uncle, and even the harder bounties, he asked the bald uncle to sort them out for him.
Unlike most times though, today he was entering deeper. To find the intel he needed.
The same dim lanterns clung stubbornly to the ceiling as the last time he came. He remembered due to his Sharingan being active all the time. A rather annoying part of his eye modification, that always-active eye acted like a 24/7 dash cam, recording everything and anything.
He saw the same boards sagging under the weight of parchment and ink. The same mix of stale sweat, cheap alcohol, and blood lingered in the air like a permanent resident.
At least the blood smelled newer. How could he say? He was a doctor.
He stepped in quietly and wordlessly, in his hood, masked and goggles (different pair) to hide his identity. From his face to his hair and eyes, everything was hidden.
This was his 'Ryomen' identity.
That name carried its own weight in places like this. Not famous enough to invite challenges from top-of-the-line bounty hunters like Kakuzu who might fight him over a bounty or, worse, come after him since some unfortunate soul put a bounty onto him, and his name wasn't obscure enough to be completely dismissed either.
It was in that perfect Goldilocks zone.
He moved casually, posture relaxed, eyes sharp. Minding his own business while eyes and ears were everywhere.
Believe it or not, bounty offices were a treasure trove for intel gathering. If something ugly was happening, chances are, someone here had heard whispers of it.
His first concern was eyes.
Not metaphorical ones, which were on him the moment he entered. That happens with everyone.
No!
He was after Byakugan. Sharingan. Anything gouged out, traded, collected. He scanned reports of recent killings, robberies, missing-nin executions. Fingers traced the edges of parchment as he read, listening as much as he looked.
It's been a long time since Izumi was attacked; the chances were if he came immediately, then perhaps he could have found some clue, perhaps someone looking for some kind of dōjutsu or something. At least the chances of him finding something rather than nothing were high.
Now though, after almost 3 months later, he'd be lucky if he didn't get stray leads and have to waste the next few days chasing them.
Back then he didn't have to, to be honest. Yeah, he knew Izumi, but not close enough to go after his killer personally.
However, now that he knew that Izumi's dying had something related to another curse user being reincarnated here, he was interested.
He came as soon as he could get some free time on his hands.
A pair of hunters argued loudly about a missing payment. Someone else bragged about killing a rogue chunin with a poisoned blade.
Ignoring them, he kept reading the quests and bounties on the billboard.
Nothing about harvested dōjutsu.
Good.
Or bad, depending on how one looked at it.
Next came the villages.
Sound was quiet. Too quiet. The Chunin Exams were drawing closer, and the plot had changed so much that Sukuna didn't wish to just wait for things to happen without knowing anything.
However, there was nothing, neither on Sound Village nor on Orochimaru.
No rumors of snake-themed lunatics buying corpses by the cartload. Though why would he waste money on that when there were plenty of small towns and settlements all over the elemental nations.
But there wasn't anything on big purchases like instruments and scientist stuff here either. Orochimaru, wherever he was, wasn't leaving fingerprints here.
Mist was next, and it was tense.
Sukuna noticed it in the way conversations died when certain names were mentioned. In the way bounty clerks avoided eye contact when flipping specific pages. There was something coiled tight beneath the surface, but no one wanted to be the one to tug at it.
'Must be either an explosive rumor without any backing or someone's paying good money to hide whatever they got there.' Sukuna mused.
Cloud, however, was where the whispers grew interesting.
"The Raikage went out personally," someone murmured behind him.
"And didn't come back," another replied.
"You think he's dead?"
"Think he'd let himself be?"
No confirmation. No announcement. Just absence. The kind that made people uneasy.
Sukuna had a smirk on his face, and then curiosity certainly rose inside him. He asked the bartender to deliver a high bounty roster to him.
The bartender didn't give it at once; he first observed him, like assessing him, before finally handing out a high-profile bounty roster.
In there, Sukuna directly went to find the Raikage's name.
Usually, bingo books don't contain bounties of super important persons like a village Kage or daimyo of a nation.
These kinds of bounties are only traded secretly in the bounty market. And each one is as hard as infiltrating a bloody village on your own.
Sukuna saw the amount on the Raikage's head and his eyes almost popped out.
'Oh cow…'
A sudden remorse filled him. Perhaps he was a little too hasty in burning away the Raikage's body.
Sukuna was pretty well-off with all the money he was making from different resources, but that was a small fortune right there he missed.
'Ah… don't think about it, you did the right thing. Money wasn't worth the trouble if someone were to figure out who killed him.' He berated himself internally and closed the roster and handed it back to the bartender.
Sukuna then went ahead and bought himself the newest version of the bingo book, to be up-to-date all the time, and turned the page of the bounties.
Then he froze.
Slowly, he leaned closer.
Spiky hair. Calm reddish eyes. Familiar posture. The sketch wasn't perfect, but it didn't need to be.
Twenty million ryō.
His eyes flicked to the seal.
Mist Village.
For a long moment, he simply stared.
"…Huh."
It wasn't even the amount that caught him off guard. Twenty million was respectable, sure, but what truly amused him was the audacity. He almost felt insulted on principle. After Waves, he'd expected either nothing at all—or something absurdly higher.
He reread the description.
Sukuna Haruno
Affiliation: Konohagakure No Sato.
Mission interference.
Threat level: High.
Estimated Rank: Mid Jōnin.
Estimated Age: 12 to 15
Gender: Male
Traits: Pink hair with red eyes. Sharp pointy canines.
Possible Team Arrangement: Hatake Kakashi.
'Well,' he thought dryly, 'at least they spelled my name right. And what they have with my canines? How those shark teeth bastard even have the audacity to comment on others teeth.'
Seems like Mist still got some spies in the village for them to extract this much intel this fast.
And of course, who else could it be if not the Mist. Perhaps he should have killed Zabuza back then.
Of course it was his real identity. Ryomen remained clean, untouched. Years of careful separation paid off once again. If anyone here suspected the masked figure flipping pages beside them was worth twenty million, things would have turned violent very quickly.
He glanced around.
No sudden tension. No greedy stares. Just bored killers and desperate opportunists.
'Good.'
The reason was obvious. Waves. Zabuza. Yagura. Too many loose ends tied together by his involvement. Mist wasn't the only one; any village would do the same honestly if it found a rising talent in another village. It was quite normal.
Outsourced vengeance, as some say.
Sukuna closed the book and slid it back into his pocket, resisting the urge to draw a mustache on his own sketch out of spite.
As he moved toward the exit, he took one last mental inventory.
No dōjutsu collectors.
No Sound activity.
Cloud rumors, unconfirmed but spreading.
Mist angry, wounded, and very willing to pay.
All things considered, it could have been worse.
Stepping back into the sunlight, Sukuna adjusted his mask and let out a quiet breath.
"Twenty million," he muttered to himself. "I fucking beat a Tail Beast, how come my bounty is still lower than Asuma?"
Just as he was about to leave, he saw a figure at the corner of his eye and his posture went rigid…
xXx
A/N : Well him getting anything here was already nonexistence; however, what there is to try right.
By the way, is the bounty seem right ! What you guys think?
Oh... stones. Yeah I need Stones. Almost forgot. STONES !
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