| [May. 8th, 2014|03:19 am] |
“Good,” Genma said quietly. “Secure it, and if there’s anything else worth taking, grab it and move on. I’m double checking the staff. Meet you in the counting room when I finish here.”
“Roger,” Kakashi said. Ryouma murmured an indistinct acknowledgment.
“Ram?” Genma said. “Everything okay on your end?”
“I’m fine,” Ryouma said, clipped and entirely unlike his usually vocal self.
So, not fine. But not injured. This was Team Six’s first mission of the sort ANBU was infamous for; it wasn’t that surprising Ryouma was taking it hard. At least the rookies weren’t responsible for killing the youngest children. Genma didn’t envy Raidou and Katsuko their half of this split operation.
There’d be time for an in-field debrief on the way back to the rendezvous point. He tried to remember what Hyuuga-taichou had said to him after his first truly nasty mission as a rookie, but all he could recall was his own shaking horror at what they’d had to do.
He’d just have to improvise, and hope Ryouma was as resilient as his background suggested he was.
In the servants’ quarters, Genma found one room full of women sleeping side by side on several evenly spaced futon. None stirred when he entered, and it took only minimal chakra to assure their continued slumber. The male servants—the gardener, the head of staff, and his assistant—slept in a second room. Only the assistant, youngest of the three, seemed to be shaking off the knock-out drug. Perhaps he’d taken less of the rice than the others, or maybe it was just his younger, faster metabolism at work. It didn’t matter. Genma settled him back down with a palmful of focused chakra.
“On my way to you,” he said, keying his mike. “Staff are taken care of.”
“We’re in the counting room,” Ryouma answered. The radio thinned his voice, but he sounded less shell-shocked than he had before. Maybe leaving the room full of corpses behind had helped.
Genma found Kakashi and Ryouma stacking bundles of gold koban coins onto prepared sealing scrolls. Hundreds of thousands of ryou by Genma’s estimate—more than enough to pay for this mission—and they hadn’t even finished emptying the safes. They were ghoulish in their blood-streaked uniforms and masks. Kakashi’s hair was dyed crimson, the ends dripping with congealing gore. Their hands were surprisingly clean, though, and Ryouma’s gloves were gone. They must have washed up just enough to avoid getting blood all over Konoha’s spoils. Under the metal-heavy tang of blood, there was a strong scent of expensive soap. It almost covered up the reek of decay that wafted down the hall from Tsuto’s bedroom. |
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