Introducing Kuchiha

     Kuchiha [koo-CHEE-hah] was a bounty hunter. There were a lot of them in her time, but she really was the only one who had a katana at her left hip and a short long-sword [I even researched this, and I still can't find what a long-sword that's slightly shorter than a long-sword is called!] across her back. She would turn 17 that summer (not that she knew, or cared), and always tied her waist-length black hair into a ponytail with red ribbon. Everybody who saw her saw first the sharp, black eyes.

     When she met Kake, she had just turned in a bounty whose head was worth 3,000 pintas on the wanted poster, but the officer station only gave her 1,000 because the bounty was dead, and that was "two-thirds of the money dead with him." Kuchiha was furious.

     "The wanted poster never said anything about that! Since when was there a two-thirds bounty deduction!? This's never happened before!"

     "Sorry miss, but it's a new law both Government and the South Tribe passed. The crime rate's sky-rocketing. They want to use public executions as a means to infuse fear into the criminals," the Officer replied.

     To give you an idea of exactly how much a pinta is worth, the average weekly income of Waterloo Town's citizens is 5,000 pintas. A cheap meal costs 30 pintas, a good one costs 50, and an extravagant one can cost up to 1,000. The average traveler can stay at Waterloo Inn at 1,000 pintas a night, all meals included, extra sake for 10 pintas a bottle. Kuchiha was "an average traveler," and needed at least a daily income of 1,000 to pay for her bed and board. But this was her first catch in three days, and when she had finally thought she was ready to keep traveling, she found herself tied down still with a debt of 2,000. Of course she'd be in a sour mood.

     After she had paid for her new sword grip, Kuchiha ate lunch and went bounty hunting, determined to somehow set off to the Forest of Angels the next morning without having to taint her name. Bounty hunting was more of a tedious than dangerous business to Kuchiha, who found tracking and finding criminals more difficult than actually capturing them. But, like the Officer had said, the crime rate was so high that normally, if she lay low and waited, sooner or later a ruckus somewhere in town would tell her where there was a bounty. The trouble with Waterloo was that there were no crimes. It was such a peaceful town, that all the bounty hunters there had run out of business.

     Kuchiha wasn't a worry-wart, though. Her main concern was somehow getting 3,000 pintas. She couldn't work, she knew. She’d tried. So, the only solution was to poke around and do some research. This soon bore fruit, as she learned that there was a formidable-sounding criminal who liked hanging around the potatoes--why the potatoes!?--in the shopping district. The wanted poster named him "Akuma [AH-koo-mah] 'the Devil'," had a picture of a tall, thin, haggard-looking man with giant bags under his eyes, and displayed a mouth-watering (to Kuchiha) 10,000 pintas bounty. She wondered that somebody else hadn't gotten to him first.

     Kuchiha went to Waterloo Market under the pretense of stocking up on vegetables. After a while of wandering around sampling tomatoes (which were right next to the potatoes), she saw a shadow flicker from the corner of her eye. She readied her sword. It might have been bad luck, it might have been good luck, or it might have been just pure fate--but at the exact moment the shadow swooped into the light, the black-haired boy popped up in front of Kuchiha.

     "Hello there!"

     "You!! It's you! You...kid!!! Get out of my way!!”

     "Eehh, isn't that a little harsh? There's just something I'd like to ask you."

     Akuma was closing in on the potato stall nearest him. He had a hooded cloak on, which wasn't unusual on a cold spring day like this, but Kuchiha knew for certain that it was him.

     "What!? Hurry!!"

     "Eh? This isn't the question, but why are you so rushed all the time? Do you always have to catch a train or something?"

     The outlaw was acting strange. The bounty had warned about a magic sword of some sort, and Kuchiha had braced herself for a swordfight. But Akuma drew a pistol from the folds of his cloak and started fiddling with it. The potato stall manager caught sight of it, and looked like he wanted very much to scream and run away, but wasn’t sure if the gun was going to be pointing at him or not. Akuma didn’t look too sure either. Why would a bounty worth so much be so hesitant to kill? But finally, with a sudden malicious glint in his eyes, he swung the gun towards the manager.

     "Ack!! Forget it! Tell me later!!"

     A shot rang out, and half the town jumped at the unfamiliar sound. There was a scream from the crowd, the potato cart was overturned, and Kuchiha was upon the Devil. A bullet, cut clean in half, landed with a tinkle in front of the stall manager's feet. The drawn Wsword [that's the short long-sword, it's short for Western sword, I'll call it that until I have a miraculous revelation on what its actual name is] would have cut Akuma's neck, too, if it weren't for him blocking it with his gun. The two metals screeched upon each other, and he slithered backwards. The crowd recovered from the shock and, panicking, fled the scene, doing their best not to trample anybody. 

     "Hey! What's-your-name!" Kuchiha yelled over her shoulder, sheathing the sword.

     "It's Kake! Ka--ke! Remember it!" He hadn’t run away.

     "I'm about to try out your new leather grip! If I don't like it, you'll have to give me a refund!"

     Kake smiled. "Sure."

     Akuma had reached the surrounding buildings from which he had come, and was a step away from the shadows when he turned around and blindly rapid-fired his gun, apparently hoping to get revenge with a lucky hit. He wasn't so lucky. Kuchiha could see the bullets piercing the air like she was watching a slow-motion movie scene, and could move at a speed to match her sight. Leisurely, she gripped her hand on the new dark red leather, adjusting her wrist. The bullets all whizzed by her, brushing her hair sometimes. She slid the blade out, then in, then out again. The last bullets, she saw, would hit. The katana stayed out, and in a flash she had dodged the bullets and closed the distance between her and the escapee. With an easy upward thrust, she sliced Akuma's arm off, the one holding the gun. She figured that this way, she could both restrain him and keep him alive. If he was really as strong as the bounty said he was. If he wasn’t, he'd die of blood loss before she could get him anywhere.

     Kake whistled. "Girl, you are one cold-blooded she-wolf. So, how’s the grip?"

     Kuchiha smiled grimly, partly from annoyance at the name-calling, partly from worry that she might really get only 3,000 pintas.

     "Fair enough. Stop standing around there, hurry up and help me drag him to the Office."

     Easier said than done.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 3