This far north it was easy to pretend he was just another fur trapper looking to score a seal or two. Was he over land or water; the difference was non-existent. This wasn't even tundra land anymore, this was outright ice. The mountains that buffered the forest line from the unbearably harsh winter winds coming off the polar ice were little more than bumps along the horizon from where he sat. He was trying the native method; hoving over a ice hole, positioned in relation to the sun so that he would be invisible from below the ice. If there were any seals nearby, they'd have to come here; the open water was at least 30 miles away, and he hadn't seen anything that even looked like it could be a salvageable back-up hole for nearly two days.

Ffffff-whooosh~

Oh, there it was. He didn't have a harpoon or hook to pull the seal up; but that was fine. All he needed was the bolt of silk that was already wrapping the clueless animal in an inescapable grip; the effort of yanking the fat beast out of the small hole enough to crack the ice around it more. Poor thing, it was hissing and screaming in pain already; the small hole he'd just ripped it through had compress it's body enough to break bones.

Oh well; it was dead meat the moment it surfaced for air.

A corner of the cloth was contorted into a dart shape and quickly shoved directly through the braincap of the seal, shoving inside to scramble it's brains some before pulling free, yanking the organ with it. A knife was produced quickly; he only had a few minutes to break the carcass down before it froze solid, and he wanted at the good bits before the got cold. He was munching on brain matter as he stripped the flesh from muscle and bone; setting it aside to stiffen up and dry while he turned the muscle tissue into strips that would freeze nicely. The fat be tossed into a linen bag; it would wick away the blood but not the fat; and he could sell that fat with the skin; it was almost more valuable then the pelt would be when he finished with it. The value of seal pelt was in the fur patterns and the water-tight nature of the skin; he'd clean it carefully over the next few hours until it was perfect; then store it along with the rest and start the week long trek back to the northern trading post.

------

Nothing more than a lone bear; that was all he saw on his walk back. The temptation to hunt down the great beast had been high; but he recognized a dying animal when he saw one. To be moving around in the dead of winter like that? It had to be sick and hungry; no challenge, no fun. Better to get the skins he had cashed in before the other trappers came in; he'd get a better price and less headaches that way.

The old man he bartered with was the type that didn't ask questions; so long as you brought in legal pelts during legal times, he gave no fucks about you personally. Far as anyone in the outpost knew, he was just another nameless aboriginal from the ice sheets past the far mountains; a disguise he happily adopted and perpetuated. It bought him peace; no one bothered the northern traders; and they bothered no one in return. So long as he only spoke in the trader tongues, dropped a few words in the native's language; they bought it tooth and nail.

He figured that he'd have a week or so before anyone appeared; so he actually grabbed himself a room above the saloon and general store; somewhere to store his gear while he let it sit in the cleaning solutions that would keep it from degrading. It was quiet enough downstairs; he was actually sitting in the common room like a normal person; nursing some of the grog that they passed for pine whiskey locally, and working over plate of bread and cheese; a rare treat for someone that ate little more then meat, fat, and the occasional berries when he was far enough south. Hell, he'd even bathed and put on new clothes; his bear and wolf-skins soaking with the rest of his gear; he was in nothing more than linen and wool tunic and breeches. If you didn't know better, you'd think he was just another outcast fur trader enjoying a warm fire and some food.

"Want more?" The voice was gruff, thick with age, smoke, alcohol, and cold; the man running the bar that day. He wasn't the owner; his brother or something stupid that made the old trapper trust him with the valuable kegs and coin. Pathetic. Trust...

Trust was for the weak.

Trust is for people, not beasts.~

Oh joy, the voices in his head where back. Time for more piss in a jug to make them shut up. "Yeah. Anythin' stronger 'n this piss?"

"Depends. Ya got tha' coin fer it?"

A flash of gold and steel, true ryo from Kori; the only stable coin out this way. Rare, too; only the bounty hunters and trade merchants ever had anything, even the little silvery coins that where less then a whole; used for partial transactions and the like. Chump change from Kori was all that ever made it this far out; to see the equivilant of the locals yearly wages in a single coin... enough to put the gruffer man on edge, and pull the sound of knives being drawn in the air.

The room was quiet, not empty; not even this early in the day. The few others; old men and miners all; they were huddled in their corners with their poisons of choice and not much else; had been working on drowing out their woes. That flash of coin had their minds on theivery; no one out in the backwoods was above it. Steal to eat, steal to live. That was a motto for these badlanders.

"Right. Yeah. Juss hand over tha' pretty little coin, an' 'll get ya som'n better."

Ballsy. Or stupid, rather. Yeah... this guy was looking tastier every moment, really. As was the fucker typing to sneak up behind him. And the one not-so-subtly shifting around to peg him with a knife. Not even a kunai, just some basic utility knife the civilians out here had. So cute.

This was going to be one fun bloodbath.

"Yeah, I'mma hafta decline tha', eh. See, ya buddies are all about to end up givin' this place a nice new coat a paint; and I'mma walk out with some yummy eyeball candy and some brain matter fer my tanning baths." The whole time he was speaking he was sending a trail of cloth out from under his pant leg and towards to the bartender; he'd wrapped several meters of his clean cloth around his legs after his bath so that he was armed without showing it. Now that cloth was snaking up the male's back, completely unnoticed until it was wrapping around his neck and slowly crushing his windpipe while lifting him clean off the ground. Human sheidl time was had as he swumg the body the half an inch needed to block the incoming knife from the right, and a snap of the arm had him catching the knife thrown from far left midair in order to stab the face of the one that had been sneaking up behind him. Not a killing blow, but that hole in the cheek had to hurt.

"Hang out a minute, kay?" A second line of cloth appeared, this time snaking up Ranmaru's body from the other leg; moving to wrap around his arm just right to act as offensive and defensive weaponry; it was thick and strong enough to stop the knives being pulled at him, while still long enough to use as a makeshift whip or third arm when needed. The entire tavern was on him now; they wanted his coins and his blood, neither of which he was about to give them. Mr. Hole-in-Cheek was dispatched fairly easily; he merely had to grab the knive handle still sticking out from his cheek, yank it free, then shove it through his eyeball and twist; the spray of blood and brain matter enough to start the job of painting the ceiling a nice dark red. Vast improvement, really. The bartender was contiuously used as a human shield; his song of pain and fury a lovely counterpoint to the animalistic roars of fury coming from the Kurosaki male. One of the bigger miners; the one from the far left corner; gods he was huge now that he was stranding. All that bulk wasn't from clothing, it was pure body mass; the musculature of the lifetime miner, hands the size of shovel heads and arms almost as thick as a tree trunk. This was gunne be fuuuuuun. What did he have to work with... some piss water, not enough cloth, no sharp objects past what he was taking from the others... and a snarky little fucker trying to stab him while he was distracted. Joy.

All the short blade hit was cloth, but it was enough to pull attention. Well, that was helpful. "Thanks, corpse.~" The cloth retrived the knife for him, he was too busy kicking the table out of the way while making sure not to loose the alcohol in the mug that was now occurpying what was his free hand. While the cloth went to work on the walking corpse; a few feigns before carving a neck smile ear to ear and continuing the new paint job on the ceiling and the floor; he focused on the big fucker that was really starting to look like he was working up a berserker's fury. Great. A native berserker. Just what he needed with his weapons out of reach. Hnn... no more table for a shield, he'd shoved that out of the way; and the blood was in the wrong place to be an oil slick for his use... what to do...

"What's tha matter chicken shit? Too scared ta fight little ol' me? COME AT ME, BRO!~"

That was a thing, apparently. He wasn't even trying to speak until he had; and then it didn't matter because his brain was having a snappity snap snap moment and thought was impossible; the roar of the berserker charging was almost dwarfed by his own scream of psychotic rage; nothing but pisswater whiskey mug and a tiny little dagger knife in hand.

Really, it should have been obvious to them how this would end the moment his cloth started moving around his body like extra hands; Kurosaki where famous in these parts for being tricky fuckers to deal with, and even in a blood rage, Ranmaru had the instinctual reflexes that gave the illusion of being calculated and cunning. Or maybe he was just lucky? Who really knew. All he did know is that somehow in the insuing 10 seconds between the start of their dual charges and the inevitable impact of bodies; his right ankle gave out and set him flying to the floor at the perfect moment to end up tripping the berserker instead of being bullhorned by him. It was no secret that his childhood entrapment and tourture had left him with a multitude of scars and permenant physical defects, the least of which being his weak ankles; both had been broken more times then he could count and never healed properly; it was why he wore knee high boots and wrapped his legs double thick most of the time. That, and it was a good way to keep warm and dry in the high tundra where it was never anything but frostbite inducing cold. He barely had time to register the change in orientation when he was being trampled over in a rather rude way; what with legs and genetals being stomped on before the berserker went flying to the ground himself. That was going to sting in the morning.

A quick glance around himself told him two things. He STILL had the mug of pisswater whiskey in his hand, and the knife was now burried in his arm. Joy. The only good that came of this was that he had the pisswater whiskey, a clear shot to the berserker's face, and with a little seal-ish wobbling, he was in position to crack the mug across the fucker's face. Not that it meant much anyway; because that wasn't what he did. No; he figured it was time to beat a dude with another dude, having finally remembered that he had the barkeep's brother in a chokehold a few feet off the ground, and using all his spare cloth. Oh well; he'd make for a useful enough beatstick. A sick cackle left the Kurosaki male as he began to ruthlessly slam the poor heald-dead bartender into ther berserker; he knew the berserker wouldn't feel a damn thing, but he was getting one hell of a kick out of it, and with the forces he was applying, he could easily buy himself a few moments to do something. With the knife stuck in his arm, there was no point for the cloth to hang onto it; instead he was fine leaving the blade where it was in favor of reaching for torch held by the sconce 5 feet up the support column he'd landed beside. A quick roll and he was sitting up enough to take a heavy pull off the mug while bringing the flame down to where it was useful; the whiskey was like warm piss, but it was alcoholic enough to burn; and damn did it make for a decent flamethrower when he spit the liquid through the flame. Now he had a screaming berserker and a burning bartender to deal with. Still, pretty fire was pretty.

Now then, while he continued to work on turning the bartender into a flaming mash of bloody pulp; what to do with the berserker; who was finally managing to get to his feet even under the beating. He had no knives, and even fewer jutsu that would be usable here... wait. Yes he did. He had the perfect jutsu for this. It'd just been so long since he'd used jutsu beyond his cloth control that he's almost forgotten that he had any.

All he neededto to was fling the mug away, he didn't even bother to aim it, before bringing hands together; this was one of the last jutsu he'd learned before leaving his village and he'd never spent a lot of time perfecting it after learning it; so it still required that he take the moment to form the handsigns to mold the chakra properly. It was never pretty to use, and the sound was even worse; a sick wretching noise that normally only accompanied someone violently vomiting, which was not that far from the truth. However, he was vomiting the equivilant of liquid stone; an almost liquid cement like substance that was forming into a defined shape and beginning to harden in contact with the cold air. The Strong Servant Warrior Jutsu, a staple of the Doton user that created a large mass of super hard rock and turned it into a puppet warrior. A nasty beast of a warrior, too; which made it all the stranger that he never used the jutsu, given they where both rampaging, mindless beasts most of the time.

This golem of a beast was as good as a berserker itself; only several times more powerful and nearly indestructable via human hands. Without some kind of jutsu or weapon, the berserker was a dead man; the lumbering golem was already starting to throw punches and it wasn't even fully formed. The heat of the flames coming off the burning barkeeper was nothing to it; and it was attacking whichever of them was closest without thought or care. The instant the puking of the cement-rock was finished, Ranmaru was attempting to get to his feet, swipping some of the unhardened muck and pasting it to his ankles for support at the same time. Unless he was able to grab his cloth bolts and su-... oh. Oh shit. He'd lit the place on fire and left ALL of his gear upstairs. Joooooy.

This was going to be a problem.

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