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Choose Your Blade [Jun. 9th, 2013|07:17 pm]
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[tousaki_ryouma]
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[User Picture]From: [info]hatake_kakashi
2013-06-10 02:04 am (UTC)

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When the man stepped, a strange ripple went through the ANBU. A flash of handsigns almost too quick to see—code Kakashi didn’t know. The commander didn’t move, but he had the impression that she’d caught every flicker.

“Step to the right,” she said, and called another candidate forward. This one went left. The next went right, and the one after. None of them got names, but every one got a different ripple from the ANBU.

Votes, Kakashi realized. Did they affect the commander’s judgement, or had she already made up her own mind?

Ayane stepped forward, chin lifted. She went right.

The phoenix Uchiha went left.

When Ryouma was called, he walked forward straight-backed and met the commander’s eyes. Kakashi looked at the vice-commander, and saw him make a two-fingered V. There were a few of those among the ANBU, but more four-fingered signs, and Kakashi got it. The number four. Shi.

Death.

Ryouma went right.

Kakashi was second-last. When he stepped forward, the commander twitched her hand and the ANBU held theirs. He frowned.

“Minato-san’s student,” she said. “Which side do you think you should be?”

“I get a choice?” he asked, thrown.

“No,” she said. “There are no favorites here. Get used to it.”

There were unfavorites, he suspected, and very carefully didn’t touch the empty tanto sheath strapped in the small of his back; the blade had been confiscated earlier. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her hand moved slightly and the ANBU voted. Mostly fours, but he saw some twos. Ni. Burden.

At the commander’s order, he stepped right.

The last candidate went left. The commander gestured curtly at the disappointed knot of shinobi. “You’re dismissed,” she said, flat. “You can reapply in September if you have a taste for masochism, or you can choose to grow in new ways.”

She waited until they had left, drenched and unhappy, then rounded on the remaining ninja—a group cut down to less than half of the original candidate pool, perhaps twenty-two total.

“Return here tomorrow at 0400 hours. Jounin uniforms, weapons required, no supplies beyond what your belt-pouches can carry. I suggest you sleep between now and then.” She regarded them all with one sweeping look, eyes dark behind her mask. “You have been given a tenuous chance. Do not waste it. Dismissed.”

She vanished in a swirl of leaves, taking every ANBU soldier with her.

The confiscated weapons clattered out of thin air.