Click-clack-clickity-clack / went the pretty little kitty all dressed in black.
Nanaka Chikamatsu, as she was now, wasn't very skilled nor unskilled as a Shinobi. She was perfectly average - on par. Even in her school days; she did well on paper, passed practicals, and succeeded on her Genin exams without much aplomb. She was better than other people - she knew this as fact, and her comfortable gait suggested a complete lack of concern or dither. She was better, yes, but struggled not only to apply herself but to make anything from that greatness. Talent only went as far as talent could. She bothered with little training, she 'aced' nothing, and she had no intention of pushing herself. She could know she held a natural inclination toward ability - everyone around her could look at her and think, 'wow, she could fuck me up' - but it was unlikely she managed to show anything for it. There was something to be said about how skills, like muscles, could develop their own form of atrophy. You hunt gutter trash for long enough, scraping by your living in a world that wanted little to do with you, and you became gutter trash yourself. Picking through fraying wallpaper and weathered bricks to find something just like you.
Tap-tap-tippity-tap / and the silly little kitty makes the locks go 'snap'!
The problem, then, became Nanaka's complete disregard for this. The issue was not a lack of self-awareness: but a complete set of apathy as if she was collecting walls. She didn't need to do more. She was back exactly where she started - prowling for spare change and picking up missions that took the least effort. For a predator with blood already on her hands - and a knack for steering interaction in that direction - she hadn't drawn any for years at this point. Somehow, just somehow, the top of the food-chain thrived in mediocrity. There was stagnation in peace and ease. Becoming a Genin had just been an escape - means for the end. Her freedom was spent thus: lining her pockets with grunge money she could either spend illicitly or on candy pops. Or both. Her new start as a Chikamatsu meant only that she was mostly off the streets, yet still found her chances to sleep on rooftops or at the end of seedy dark paths, and was free to continue spending her money on non-living expenses.
Rat-tat-tickety-tat / now what would the kitty pull out of her hat?
This led her now to the exact same place she always was. Alone. Picking through trash with fine claws and an impassive expression, flicking away anything that made itself a distraction. People were blinked away. Children and courtiers, parents and courtesans, they all left Nanaka's view with a shift of her perspective. She struggled to relate to people past the briefest of uses anyway; why would she need to see them when they weren't a target? Her actual target was somewhere within this mire of industrialism. Pickets and packets, bits and bobs, Nanaka slipped through every discarded chachka for what her little ears had picked up - the true prize among tasteless memories. Twitch, twitch, went koneko's ears, bringing with them pitiful mewls that earned only the briefest of pause from heeled feet. The tiniest black cat in the whole of the world - a kitten by any other name, runty paws and calloused beans, that messied tail stained in grime and sticking hair in all odd-end directions - was found within the pit. A hand scooped it by the back of its neck, scruffing the 'treasured' feline so that Nanaka might dangle it before her eyes. She looked it over. Unimpressed. She considered it, truly, for slow, passing moments, while its glassy eyes on Nanaka could offer only another sad mewl.
A boring assignment. The perfect assignment. The least amount of effort possible.
She dropped it at the vet for the owners to find.
Click-clack-clickity-clack / left with too much for little paws to unpack.
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