| Choose Your Blade | [Jun. 9th, 2013|07:17 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 15]
The first day of the ANBU trials started before dawn.
Fifty kilometers, run in an hour. Most of them came in under that, of course—they were jounin—but there was no rest or water before the slim, iron-grey ANBU commander barked an order and masked veterans dropped out of the trees for bare-handed sparring, no chakra allowed. Jutsu came later, as a grey drizzle veiled the risen sun. Timed kawarimi, distance translocation, area-effect genjutsu, shadow clones. Another round of sparring, with blades this time. And then a panting moment of blessed rest, dropping down onto the sparse patches of dry ground under the trees while one candidate after another demonstrated their special jutsu on the muddy field under the ANBU commander's masked and merciless gaze.
Tousaki Ryouma had a cut on one shoulder and mud in his hair. He didn't think the cut was bad; it hurt to lift his arm, but everything still worked, which was all he really needed. Probably. There might be weightlifting next.
He sealed his palm to the tear in his sleeve and rolled his shoulder, testingly. Pain stabbed red and white, but the warm seep into muddy fabric didn't break into a surge. The cut felt long but shallow; a short sword glancing off the padded shoulder of his flak vest as he turned and ducked, slicing into the meat of his upper arm instead of his neck.
He'd only had a single kunai, like all the other candidates. He hadn't actually drawn blood, but that frog-masked veteran would be limping for a week.
Probably, Ryouma decided, he could allow himself to be smug.
“What d’you think we’ve got after this?” he asked the man who sat down beside him. “Swimming across the river without coming up to breathe? Jumping off the top of Hokage Mountain?” Fighting each other was probably more likely, now that they’d fought veterans. He glanced sideways, speculatively.
And blinked.
There was mud on the jounin uniform, but none in the silver-white hair, rain-slicked to the scalp. Jounin-blue fabric mask pulled up to shield mouth and nose, an orange-backed book resting open on his thigh, spotted a little with rain. He wasn’t reading, though; he was gazing at the field where a woman demonstrated a massive earth jutsu, and there was red spinning in his scarred left eye.
“Oh hell no,” Ryouma said, and punched Sharingan no Kakashi in the ribs. |
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