| Dangerous Game | [Jul. 6th, 2013|11:39 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 18, the day after Run, Rabbit, Run and Take Me Back to the Start.]
Ryouma woke in the dark hours after midnight to a blue and white mask bending over him and a hand on his throat.
"I moved the kunai under your pillow," a low alto voice said, very quietly.
His good hand was under his pillow already, long fingers flattening. No cold brush of steel, just a tiny slit in the bottom sheet where the blade must have snagged as she'd drawn it out. He drew a slow breath.
"You didn't trigger my wards," he said.
"I had a key." The hand left his throat. She straightened, slim and straight in ANBU black and bone. The mask caught the yellow spill of light from the streetlamp below the window; better lit, its fragmented blue accents still didn't resolve into any recognizable animal. Maybe the ANBU quartermaster wasn't much of a naturalist.
She said, "Tousaki Ryouma, the Hokage requires your presence."
He cast a fleeting glance at the red numbers of the alarm clock glowing on his bedside table. 0145, only seven hours after he'd finally been released from the hospital and returned to his apartment to collapse. Well, they did say Yondaime never slept. Presumably his ANBU would learn to do without, too.
Maybe they got extra issues of soldier pills.
He sat up, scrubbed his good hand through his hair, and rubbed crusted sleep from the inner corner of one eye. "Can I get dressed?"
"Uniform," the ANBU said. She didn't step back from the side of the bed. "You have ten minutes."
Clearly, she was planning to wait.
He rubbed his face again, then dropped the sheet defiantly and scrambled over the foot of the bed, dogtags chiming against his sternum. Trunks from a drawer, his last clean pair of uniform blues; he'd need to do laundry soon, if they weren't going to be issuing him ANBU blacks today. He stepped into the bathroom, holding the bundled clothes in front of his hip, and looked back.
The blue and white mask met his gaze, unreadable.
"You might as well come in, if you're gonna watch," he said. "Make it easier on both of us."
Was that the slightest stiffness in her stance? "You can close the door," she said.
He snickered, and slid it shut.
Pissing, brushing his teeth, splashing water on his face and running a comb through his hair took three minutes of his allotted ten. Dressing went quicker, though he'd forgotten to pick up the bandage-bindings for his shins and kunai-holster. He slid the door back in time to catch the ANBU turning quickly from her inspection of his video tapes.
"Don't worry," he assured her. "I was already pretty sure you were human." He dug out a roll of bandage and put his foot up on the edge of the bed. Binding was a little awkward, with his right hand still swathed and stiff in bandages, but he managed at last with something like his usual precision. He tucked and tied the ends, switched legs, and said idly, "You wouldn't've given me ten minutes if I were under arrest. Or if this were an invasion. So I must've made it to the third stage after all."
"One minute," she said.
Well, he hadn't really expected her to spill details anyway. He tied off the second binding, found his kunai holster and bound it quickly on, and shrugged into his spare flak vest. It still had a finger-long gash beneath the arm, baring the steel mesh beneath the stiff oiled canvas; he'd meant to repair before his next mission, but there was no time now. He belted on his equipment pouch, ran a hand through his hair, and, at the last moment, dived for his hitai-ate. Then he had to ruffle his hand through his hair again, raking his forelock down properly over the steel plate.
"Shinobi," the ANBU said, "the Hokage truly does not care what you look like."
"I care," Ryouma said, finding his boots by the door. He stamped into them, flicked the catches, and straightened.
His bandaged right hand felt even more awkward now, a useless lump of white that wouldn't even fit easily in a pocket. The hand specialist, Asuka-sensei, had explained that the bandage job was big so that Ryouma wouldn't bump or jar his fingers and strain the healing tendons. He was starting to think maybe it was revenge for a few too many bad jokes cracked under the influence of a heady cocktail of morphine and stress.
Painkillers, right! The bottle was on the table by his bed, and the ANBU stood between them. Her painted, pitiless face met his gaze.
He reached for the door. "I'm ready." |
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