… Huh, something was cracking apart. He heard the wooden fibers burst to someone’s tightening grip, so after fetching the captives, Kojirou turned towards Kumori… who’d hoisted up the mother with murderous intent, while the baby was on the ground- that wasn’t a baby, that was a doll.
… Wait, she was lying? Was she conspiring with these bandits? WHY? Didn’t she know that Kumori vehemently loathed being taken for a fool?! She basically signed her obituary now!
The woman in question was whitened with absolute fear. Something about being lifted up as if you weighed 5 kilos made her lose any hope to escape. As Kumori explained the ordeal to him, Kojirou tilted his head while holding his chin at the ridiculous thought process of that fake mother – certainly, the first Sensory-type shinobi would’ve been able to tell that it wasn’t a real baby, and here were two non-Sensory-type shinobi catching her red-handed. Sad game.
"You’re from the Land of Rivers, no?”
"I-I-I-I-"
Kumori’s death glare wasn’t exactly unwelcome – Kojirou was kinda angry at getting taken for a fool like this, too, but anger… kinda hurt his heart. Maybe he just had a fragile scale in there, but he’d rather get to the case about this strange increase in troublemakers. They seemed to shed their fear of shinobi gradually, which was bad. Dumb. Bad. "The Land of Rivers isn’t directly bordering the Land of Fields, but… I’ve dealt with many assaulters there, and something tells me you’re from there too… ‘cause, y’know, the whole ‘bad plan’ thing is frequent there.”
Kojirou checked a map he pulled up from his Katana Case, just in case. The Land of Earth, check – it had a border to the Land of Rivers. So did the Land of Fire, and the Land of Storms. Up north, the Land of Basins. "I don’t really get why you moved over here, though. You used a doll…”
"I-I was desperate for a new life! Please, you have to believe me!” the woman protested with quite a sob story to follow, "They promised me I could start anew here, I-I didn’t want anything more to do with the-"
"YOU FILTHY LIA-"
*Bonk*
One of the other captives had woken up, listening to the woman’s ramblings and accidently ratted her out. "You’re a liar, miss. And a bad one, at that!”
"W-What do you mean ‘bad liar’?! You fell for my doll trick, didn’t you?! Don’t get carried away! This isn’t even fair – you’re both shinobi!”
"I-I didn’t… I…”
Oh no, Kojirou’s tear channels were opening. Now on his butt, back turned away from the tied-up woman, he began sulking: "I was just… not paying attention…”
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