“Are you seriously propositioning me for sex in return for lower prices on your goods?”

Terumi’s smile cramps at Azula’s harsh and indignant tone. She does away with the majority of her seductive body language and exclaims curiously, “Ah! Have you retained your former culture’s prudishness?”

Azula cannot even be angry anymore. She had forgotten that in the culture of the Shinobi World, it would be a high honor for Terumi, the current Mizukage, to offer her sex, if only for the dual cultivation benefits it would bring. Her own chakra capacity and density would grow if she takes the offer, which is how everyone else sees it. It is likely that there is no economic relevance to this meeting.

“You could say that.” replies Azula while wanting to bury her head in the ground from all of her misunderstandings, “Did the Hokage speak to you privately about..?” She cuts herself off without finishing that question. As a soldier, she should follow her established orders, not jump to assume that her boss is trying to mess with her, and obviously not give Terumi a chance to replace Tsunade’s orders without a means of verification.

Terumi smiles slyly and explains, “It’s good that you’re being careful, but remember that you’re a cultivation candidate. You may live there, but you aren’t bound to Konoha in the same way a shinobi of Konoha is bound.”

This concept throws Azula off-kilter. Terumi is right! She wonders why and how she had somehow convinced herself that she is a soldier of Konoha in the past year.

Terumi continues, “Of course, my bed remains open if you ever want to change your mind..”

Seeing Azula’s face fall into a deadpan, she carries on in a more serious tone, “The main reason I called you to speak in private is that there’s an issue that’s come to my attention, and I’d like an outsider perspective. What you’re about to hear is top secret.. A new illegal organization has arisen in the past few years, flown under our radar, and has successfully destabilized Iwagakure. Now I suspect that they have penetrated into Kiri as well. They call themselves the Akatsuki.”

It takes all of Azula’s mental effort not to flinch and let on that she has heard the name before. She slowly releases her poker face and asks, “I’m not all that strong compared to you guys. How would I be able to help?”

“It’s fine.” mentions Terumi dismissively, “You’re improving quickly, right? And besides, I have a good feeling about you.”

Azula eventually nods. She’s curious about the Akatsuki and she’s terribly bored of the past year of listless training. There’s only two more years to get strong enough to protect Zina. It doesn’t help that Terumi’s personality and beauty reminds her so much of Nuwa. A nice fap or two at nighttime helps to alleviate her issues, but not entirely.

The two ladies exit the room. Azula explains to her comrades that Terumi is going to take her on a tour of Kiri, which they attempt to dissuade her from, but she goes anyway. The moment they walk out into the mist, Azula senses the thrill of danger wash over her. She’s next to someone she barely knows in a city with a cutthroat culture. It’s exactly what she needs!

Azula follows Terumi along the rooftops and notices that the military presence lowers significantly outside the convoy’s line of movement. Occasionally, she picks up the smell of blood in the air, emanating from the convoluted network of alleyways below her as they near the outskirts of the city.

Terumi stops, performs a few hand signs, and says with a tone of embarrassment, “It’s a little underwhelming compared to Konoha, isn’t it? Petty crime is common here. Before, if a citizen or low-ranking shinobi died, I wouldn’t even know. Their bodies were either destroyed or fed to the fish. It’s easy to cover up illegal activities in the mist. We have some observation seals for the main areas, but nowhere near enough manpower to monitor everything.”

‘Symptoms of poverty..’ notes Azula as she nods in understanding. She had picked up several periodic chakra waves from Terumi, which she assumes is some sort of sensory technique allowing her to penetrate the mist to detect what is going on in the alleyways below.

“We have places like this in my world as well.” states Azula, recalling the impoverished areas of the colonies and the outer ring of Ba Sing Se.

Presumably, Terumi has found nothing with her jutsu because she explains with no shortage of frustration, “I became the Mizukage just two years ago, and I’m sure that the city has gotten worse during my time in charge. We’ve always been the poorest and most crime-ridden city out of the five major shinobi cities, but I’m sure it didn’t used to be as bad as it is now. What do you think? Do you have any suggestions?”

Scratching her head, Azula mentally complains, ‘This is something Nuwa would know how to tackle better than me.’ She sums up her memories of how the triad in Republic City worked according to Toph and responds, “Back in my world, in the poor areas, there would be gangs. They’d have strong leaders, connections to local politicians, and methods to avoid detection.”

All of Azula’s points are fairly self-evident. Terumi falls into thought and states, “The clans wouldn’t dare to get into open conflict and one of them wouldn’t milk the citizens any more than the others do, or else they’d earn the ire of the citizenry. The issue is that I suspect one or more of these corrupt agents are moles in my service and part of the Akatsuki. Their true intentions for Kiri go beyond mere greed and cannot be good.”

Turning to Terumi, Azula agrees, but feels odd as she thinks, ‘Why are we discussing top-secret stuff in broad daylight?’

Several pairs of footsteps land on nearby rooftops, the figures of their owners obscured by the mist. Plenty of shinobi use rooftops to get around the city in Kiri, but unlike before, where the shinobi pass by them, these footsteps are only getting closer to them. Terumi clenches her jaw and mutters, “I apologize in advance.” then shoves Azula off the roof down into the alley as a masked man with a broadsword lunges out of the mist at Terumi.

Sensing the threat, Azula prepares herself well in advance, but she hadn’t expected that Terumi would shove her away to protect her or imply that she should run away. Logically, she knows that whoever is charging Terumi is likely at a similar power level as the Mizukage and his companions may be as well, but despite this, she doesn’t want to run away with her tail between her legs!

Another masked man drops from the rooftop in pursuit of Azula. She pretends to run away while she pulls her goggles up, and fires a large explosive fireball jutsu out of her mouth with a single hand sign at the area where the man is landing. Her strong firebending experience makes fire her most comfortable jutsu type. This explosive version is very rare among fast-use fireballs. Her attacker wields a scimitar and slashes at the fireball.

Unfortunately for Azula, the density of the mist means that most of the punch of the fireball is gone by the time it reaches him. He manages to cut the fireball and it explodes directly upon him, but it does less damage than she had expected. All it does is leave some charring and ruins the mask. While Azula is stunned by the shark-like appearance of her aggressor, he releases a grunt of anger and rushes forward.

Azula pulls a kunai out and jumps backward to barely block a horizontal swipe from the scimitar. Her miscalculation on the fire had cost her, but lightning is empowered in a watery environment, so she prepares her chi to do some lightning-bending. She could infuse chakra into it and her opponent wouldn’t see it coming without hand signs! Charge builds up inside her body and she twirls around in a way that allows her to slide into his swipe, like she’s going to enter his embrace.

When she finishes her twirl right up against him, the shark-like man is smiling. She gets a bad feeling seeing his extremely sharp teeth and sure enough, he bites deep into her shoulder, breaking through her Eight Gates protection with ease and mangling both flesh and bone. Fueled by anger and bloodlust, she zaps him with all the chi and chakra she has gathered.

The two of them are immediately locked together in joint paralysis in midair as she discharges directly against his heart. There’s not much of the lightning, but the fact that there is no grounding means it courses through the both of them multiple times, compounding its damage.

His weight falls upon her amid the scent of burnt flesh as they finally hit the ground, which frees them of the residual lightning. Azula is in severe pain and she’s pretty sure the lightning has helped him bite clean through her shoulder. She knows she doesn’t have much time before he recovers. This guy definitely has more Gates open than her, which means that he won’t be taken out by this alone. ‘C’mon little birdie, don’t fail me now!’

Both her eyes and her hands get to work disintegrating as much as she can. She goes straight for the brain. The Phoenix fire seems conscious of the fact that she’s in trouble, because it eats through the chakra-enhanced flesh slightly faster than the dead bodies back in the bandit lair. 

Nourishment floods her Dao Core and allows her to cut off the blood loss from her shoulder. In the next few seconds, she manages to break the surface of his skull when his creepily wide open eyes finally swivel and he lets out a groan. Azula flips over his bulky body, kicks away his scimitar, puts both legs up into the air and fires thrusters with them to keep him pressed against the ground while she focuses her eyes on drilling that hole in his skull.

The issue is that she only has one usable arm to press him down with. So he growls, swallows everything he bit off with difficulty, and delivers a devastating punch to her side that she is unable to block. Thankfully, she mitigates it slightly by leaning with her thrusters and does manage to break through his skull with all that delay. The sharkman is bleeding profusely from his skull and due to the disintegration, he barely feels any pain from the wound. All he knows is that there’s a growing sense of disorientation and nausea rising within him.

Azula grunts as she hits a building and falls on the ground. She clutches her ribs and coughs out some blood. Her right lung has been punctured by one or more broken ribs. Leaving herself defenseless to pin him down with the fire thrusters had been a bad idea. She hadn’t expected him to regain control of his limbs so quickly.

“Whaddafoq you do ta me, beeeeiitch?” the man slurs as he staggers to his feet.

Azula does the same, continuing to use her disintegrating eyes, but it’s much less effective at this distance. The water vapor in the air is interfering. She throws a few kunai, aiming for his head, but he blocks with his arm and they only manage to embed themselves a few centimeters in his leathery skin. In any other situation, he would have dodged, but he cannot trust his balance at the moment.

Between Azula and the sharkman, another masked man suddenly draws a long skidmark with a hand and knee as he recoils from a blow by someone else. He takes note of his companion and shouts, “Kisame, you idiot! You’re unmasked! Forget it, you’re on your own. I’m out.” He apparently either doesn’t notice the hole in Kisame’s temple, doesn’t care, or is in too much of a hurry to leave, because he doesn’t even mention it or size up Azula before leaving.

“Screw you!” retorts Kisame as he tries to take a big leap in the direction of the other man’s retreat, but hits his leg on a building’s balcony and falls over just within Azula’s visibility. She pulls out another kunai from her belt and limps after him. Her Dao hungers to cleanse his filthy aura.

(A/N: O,..,O)