| Gone to Ground | [Jun. 9th, 2013|10:26 pm] |
[Takes place in the early morning hours of Yondaime Year 5, April 17, the morning after Run, Rabbit, Run]
Genma was glad he’d taken that soldier pill the night before. The intensive debriefing they’d just concluded was easily as exhausting as the originally planned night of chasing ANBU candidates would have been. And in many ways a good deal more harrowing, given the stakes involved.
He and Raidou had gone over the incident—every step they’d taken, every interaction they’d had with the dead traitor Akiyama and the two injured candidates—while the Hokage listened grave-faced. Yondaime-sama and Commander Sagara didn’t stay in the debriefing long; they had defenses to muster and an investigation in the field to conduct before the snake sannin’s trail went cold, if there really even was a connection to Orochimaru. But if there was, it was a threat no one dared take lightly.
Vice-commander Kuroda and a pair of calm debriefer-interrogators from Intel had taken over when the commander and Hokage left. Hajime had joined them to give his report, and gone again to muster his team into the field. In the halls, the sounds of booted feet not attempting any degree of stealth made plain the state of high alert the village was on.
When Kuroda finally dismissed them, the eastern sky was a fiery apricot glow, and ANBU headquarters’ halls were alive with masked and armoured agents, grey-uniformed internal operatives, and men and women in regular jounin blues.
Genma moved to the window to peer out at the distant village wall. Without binoculars, it was too far to see the ranks of additional guards that would be manning it, but they were there; he and Raidou would be joining them.
They stopped by unspoken mutual consent in the men’s room—it had been a long interrogation with no breaks, and it was going to be an even longer day. Genam splashed water on his face after he washed his hands, and tried to ignore the cooled-sweat stink of his uniform. “I’m glad I took your advice on that shower,” he told Raidou, as they headed back into the hall.
“Me, too,” Raidou said with dry irony.
“Do you need anything before we head out there? Besides a rat bar and a cup of coffee, I mean.” Genma ticked his fingers over kunai handles and shuriken in their neat bundles in his holster. They were a reassuring weight: cold, heavy steel clanking softly as he jostled them. And he still had plenty of senbon.
Raidou slanted a look at him. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“I... guess so,” Genma said. He tugged his hair tie tighter, then pulled the hand portion of his modified gloves back on, fastening them at the wrist to their long black sleeves. “I’m good. I was geared up for the Trials already, and I only took one soldier pill last night. They’ll have extra throwing weapons at the wall already.”
“Then let’s go,” Raidou said. “If we’re lucky, they’ll have coffee up there.” He unclipped the crescent moon mask from his belt and put it on.
Genma followed suit. They’d spent hours together in the debriefing, and a day and night working the trials, but for the first time it started to sink in: Raidou was his new captain, and he wasn’t Hajime. |
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