| Grow Teeth and Pursue |
[Apr. 23rd, 2014|01:05 pm] |
[Takes place May 5 through 7, Yondaime Year 5, following Diversionary Tactics and Reunions and Ruminations.]
At 1900 exactly, Team Six set out into the gathering blue twilight.
The mission split point was Kaede Ridge, an old strategic hold-over from the last war (and the war before that). It took them just under two days to reach it, moving at a steady wolf-pack pace. The healings had done good work. Raidou felt loose and easy, stiffness erased by a medic’s clever hands. Genma was back to his usual fluidity, loping along with the watermark smoothness of a shinobi in glowing health.
The kids were feeling their oats. Raidou could barely keep track of the rapid-shifting alliances between Kakashi, Katsuko, and Ryouma as they squabbled, challenged, teased, and whetstoned each other’s edges. He only interfered once, when Kakashi looked tempted to commit actual homicide.
They camped twice, cooking, storytelling, and sleeping under starlight, while Katsuko’s clones kept guard.
In the late afternoon of the target day, the ridge came into view. It was dotted with May wildflowers and long grass. At the highest edge, a giant tree had fallen sideways and bleached in the sunlight, broad roots making a pale lattice of dessicated wood. That was the marker.
Raidou called a halt in the sheltered lee of the tree, and Genma broke out a cold late lunch.
Half an hour, maybe, and they’d splinter out towards their separate missions, running to keep pace with the five other ANBU teams arrowing towards their own goals. Raidou should probably say something.
( Nothing profound presented itself. ) |
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| Diversionary Tactics |
[Mar. 4th, 2014|05:43 pm] |
[Takes place the early morning of May 5, Yondaime Year 5, the day after Shoot the Messenger.]
The first morning of team training started cool and misty and, Raidou was gratified to note, promptly. Kakashi was actually early, which made a first.
And… surprisingly enthused.
Raidou leaned his elbows back on the dew-dappled fence rail, and watched in faint puzzlement as Kakashi hauled Ryouma out onto the field, bullied him through a fast warm-up, and proceeded to hound him viciously around the field, sparring him repeatedly into the dirt.
Sitting on the railing, Katsuko cheered sleepily.
Raidou leaned sideways and muttered to Genma, “Hatake seem a little extra peppy to you?”
Genma didn’t quite meet his eyes. “He seems to have developed a real enthusiasm for sparring of late. Showed up at my door last night with his face out to here.” He brushed two fingers across his left cheek, indicating a pretty sizable ouch.
“I’m not sure which part of that made the least sense,” Raidou said. “He came to your door?”
“Yeah. I was as surprised as you are.” Genma propped his chin on his hands; he was standing behind the fence, leaning slightly over it. Compared to Katsuko’s half-lidded slouch, he looked almost lively. “He came to tell me— Ah, shit, this is probably still not common knowledge. He came to deliver some amazingly good news he had access to because of his relationship with the Hokage.”
That—could be any number of things, but going by the faint curve of Genma’s mouth behind the silver senbon, Raidou had a pretty good guess.
He flicked two ANBU-signs. Teammate followed by home safe?, ending in a curl-fingered question.
Genma’s smile spread, actually showing a flash of white teeth, and his fingers tapped against his arm: Looks safe. That wasn’t quite as definite as all clear, but hopeful. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I was shocked as hell Kakashi actually came to tell me. He wasn’t under orders or anything. It was a spontaneous act.”
( Raidou didn’t even know what to do with that. ) |
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| We Started Nothing |
[Dec. 21st, 2013|11:48 pm] |
[Takes place early in the morning on May 4th, two days after Ain’t We All Just Runaways and one day after The Morning Breaks]
That night, Katsuko dreamt of the Kyuubi’s tails trailing fire in the night sky. The scent of smoke and charred flesh hung thick and cloying, almost enough to drown out the demonic intent that stained the air red. The Kyuubi’s chakra ate up all the light, burning like a small sun in the wreckage.
Hideki-sensei grabbed Katsuko’s shoulders and pushed her back, into the arms of the waiting medics. Soot streaked across his forehead where his hitai-ate should have been; she could see burns on his arms, on his jacket. Beni and Nori hovered behind Hideki-sensei, faces grim above the collars of their chuunin vests.
“Let me go with you,” Katsuko begged, reaching for him. “I can fight, I can help, just don’t leave—”
“You’re still injured,” Hideki-sensei said, catching her hand. His eyes softened. “Go with the medics, Katsuko. Stay safe.” He let her go and turned away, towards the center of Konoha where the Kyuubi raged.
( Katsuko woke up still calling for him, throat tight and eyes burning. ) |
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| The Morning Breaks |
[Dec. 7th, 2013|09:48 pm] |
Takes place Yondaime Year 5, May 3rd, the morning after As Shadows Grow Long
Katsuko opened her eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling and a comforting warmth pressed against her side. She grumbled and tried to turn over, but the arm draped over her chest like an iron bar stopped her. That woke her up the rest of the way.
Her first thought was one-night stand, but all her clothes were still on and she didn’t smell like sex. Katsuko scrubbed at her eyes and wriggled around until she could get a look at her new friend.
( Whoever she'd been expecting, her squad captain hadn't been it. ) |
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| As Shadows Grow Long |
[Nov. 1st, 2013|11:54 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, May 2, in parallel with Ain't We All Just Runaways]
Genma’s attention was only half on the form he was filling in detailing the medical attention he’d rendered in the field. His pen ticked boxes to count off soldier pills and blood pills administered, the time between doses, the effectiveness of each dose. The side effects he’d seen. The countermeasures he’d taken. It wasn’t until he got to the ‘notes’ section that he had to pause, unable to put words together.
He’d known a Code Broken Link was ominous. He’d known there was nothing good waiting for them in Konoha. But the village was intact, and—other than the bristling presence of guards on the walls, and the scarcity of ANBU in the compound—almost unchanged.
He’d been prepared for something awful. War. Terrorism. Hundreds of civilians dead. Borders insecure.
Orochimaru raising his venomous head at last.
Perhaps even a threat against the Fire Country Daimyou.
In the three days they’d had to contemplate it, as they’d traveled downriver, the idea had crossed his mind, although he hadn’t let himself dwell on the possibility. It was never good practice to imagine your friends in danger, and a threat to the Daimyou was a threat to the Guardian Twelve, was a threat to Asuma.
( He’d never, ever, imagined the Guardian Twelve could stage a coup. ) |
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| Ain't We All Just Runaways |
[Oct. 19th, 2013|01:37 am] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, May 2, three days after The Way Home]
The ANBU were talking.
Naruto heard them when they thought he wasn't listening. They had soft voices and quick gestures but he had good ears, and Turtle-san had taught him some of the hand-signs once. She thought he would forget but he didn't. He didn't forget what the ANBU said now, either, when new masks slipped through the windows at shift-changes or caught up in the hallway on the way to preschool.
They talked about his dad, except they called him Yondaime-sama, and about Sagara-san, who was sometimes Hawk and sometimes Sagara-sama. Sagara-san was in Dad's office today and she'd been there yesterday and the day before, and she'd only come once to Naruto's room, on the first day, to tell him that Dad was gone for a little while and he needed to be good.
No one but Dad and Kakashi-niisan and Rin-neesan could expect Naruto to be good just because they said so, and Kakashi-niisan was gone right now, too. Rin-neesan came by for dinner once and she didn't know where they were, either. Sometimes Rin-neesan lied, though, like when she said this wouldn't hurt a bit and she made you count to three but she stuck the needle in when you were still on two. So he didn't know.
Sagara-san knew where Dad and Kakashi-niisan were, but she wouldn't tell. Turtle-san wouldn't either. Wolf-san got stiff and uncomfortable and told Naruto not to ask questions that they weren't supposed to answer. But Wolf told Turtle, when they thought Naruto was throwing a fit over the bones in his grilled mackerel, that Yondaime-sama was hunting down traitors and they needed every mask they had right now, so it was a good thing that Crescent Moon's squad was coming home.
( Crescent Moon was Kakashi-niisan's captain. ) |
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| The Way Home |
[Sep. 27th, 2013|07:52 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 29, the morning after Suffering Fools]
Nine unbroken hours of sleep wasn't enough to make Ryouma feel anything near human when he woke, but the press of warm fingers against his forehead and the slow trickle of chakra into parched coils went a little way towards helping him feel less murderous. He slit boulder-weighted eyelids open and squinted hazily at the broad palm masking most of his vision. "R'dou?"
"Rise and shine, kiddo," Raidou rasped. He sounded almost as tired as Ryouma felt. His chakra was sluggish, clogged with earth affinity that refused to settle into the low ebb of Ryouma's water and fire.
Not solely Raidou's fault. But even molding borrowed chakra until it melted into his own felt like an insurmountable task now, with the warm bed dragging him down and darkness beckoning behind the backs of his drifting eyelids. "Said I could sleep," he mumbled.
"I did," Raidou agreed. "Now I'm saying you need to wake up."
He cut the chakra flow with a flick of his fingers against Ryouma's forehead, and his hand fell away. Ryouma groaned, rubbed his face against his shoulder, and finally dragged his eyes open again to see Raidou crouching at the side of the bed and reaching for Kakashi's ANBU mask.
Kakashi's head had tipped back against the mattress, and for some reason Ryouma's fingers were laced through his wild grey hair. He stared blankly at them until the edge of Kakashi's ceramic mask nudged his thumb. Raidou was shoving Kakashi's mask back to clear his forehead, but he'd paused to give Ryouma a weighted look from behind the eyeholes of his own henged mask.
( 'He's soft,' Ryouma said, and patted Kakashi's hair to prove it. ) |
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| Suffering Fools |
[Sep. 24th, 2013|07:43 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 28, immediately following When the Reckoning Arrives]
Miles bled by in a waking dream. The litter-carrying clones' gait wasn't smooth enough to sleep, even if Ryouma'd dared. His head ached, a low fuzz of tension under the haze of morphine, and he kept hearing Genma's raw voice rasping, B-brain bleed?
The pain became something to hold on to, jostled back with each long running step, sinking away again in the space between strides. Rain spattered against his face, faded to drizzle, and then pounded down with renewed fury. Someone tried, briefly, to hold an oiled cloak over them, and then gave it up.
"Betcha I can boil the rain to steam," Genma offered.
"Don't," Raidou growled, somewhere behind them. Ryouma snickered, coughed, and curled painfully against Genma's bandaged side. There seemed to be waves of heat rolling off the lieutenant, pulsing with his heart; if Ryouma squinted he thought he could almost see the visible haze of fire chakra burning through veins. It looked like it hurt. His own chakra-charred pathways ached in sympathy.
But the heat was beginning to sink into his shiver-knotted muscles, like sunlight on frosted ground. He tucked his chin down very carefully on Genma's shoulder and tried to press a little closer.
Genma twitched as if he meant to turn his head, but nothing moved. He took a deeper breath instead. "Doing okay, Tousaki? Don't think I can turn the heat up any higher. I'm kinda over the line already."
"I'm fine!" Ryouma tried shifting back against the sloping side of the stretcher. Cold air clawed between them. "Just takin' my chance to cuddle up to the hottest lieutenant in the corps. Sorry, you can turn it down—"
"Don't be an idiot," Genma said, but there was no bite to his voice. "Stay close. You need the heat, and so do I."
( That sounded reasonable. ) |
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| Interlude |
[Sep. 20th, 2013|11:25 pm] |
[Takes place during When the Reckoning Arrives, while Raidou goes to look for Kakashi and Genma]
“Hey,” Katsuko said, after Raidou vanished up the mountain.
Ryouma was a warm presence at her side. The oilcloth tent wrapped around them rustled as he shifted. “Mm?”
Katsuko wiped rain out of her eyes and tugged their pseudo-blanket over her feet. Her toes felt like little, individual blocks of ice. “It’d probably really suck if the demon-queen had a demon-king, wouldn’t it?”
Ryouma considered this for a moment. “Yeah,” he decided. “We’d be dead. Good thing she was a single mom.”
Even Katsuko’s bones ached. Her collarbone flared up again, a high note of pain amidst the low-grade roar of all her other hurts. She gave up digging in her medkit for a moment and leaned her head against Ryouma’s arm, wadding up the oilcloth to serve as a makeshift barrier between them. He still smelled like all the corpses in the world, but the rain washed some of the stink away.
( 'I'm glad you're not dead', she said. ) |
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| When the Reckoning Arrives |
[Sep. 20th, 2013|06:25 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 28, immediately following Teeth in the Dark]
Genma and Kakashi took up positions on the craggy wall above the auxiliary mine shaft, clinging to slippery rock in the driving rain with the barest threads of chakra. They flattened into crevices, black and gray shadows nearly invisible against the rough limestone. From their vantage point, they saw every feint and strike as Katsuko’s two dozen clones dodged and weaved amongst the roused demons, slapping smoldering chakra tags to glistening, black, armored bodies.
Tags detonated, staggering the demons. Clones slashed apart by flailing demon limbs and tails erupted in a frightening illusion of spurting blood, before they collapsed into vapor. And one by one, Ryouma’s jutsu struck home. Katsuko or her clones would disable a demon, and Ryouma would surge forward, hands glowing with putrid light to liquify it through whatever cracks the discharging tag had left in its shell.
Each time he ran in close it looked like certain death, but Katsuko and her clones were everywhere, providing enough distraction for Ryouma to get in and lay hands directly on the injured demons. Genma counted only three uses of Ryouma’s chakra-heavy version of the rot jutsu that could strike from a distance. Each one of those hits, though, was a spectacular victory, sending one of the larger soldier beasts careening to the ground with a sick slosh of decay.
The stench rising from the battlefield was overwhelming—acrid and acidic, sulfurous, bloody, and under it all, the reek of rotting flesh. Genma fought back a surge of bile in his throat, and at his side, Kakashi’s shoulders shuddered.
( Eight of the demons lay dead near the mine shaft entrance. ) |
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| Teeth in the Dark |
[Sep. 18th, 2013|10:14 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 28, the day after Into the Breach]
Katsuko slept long and deep, and didn’t dream. Her bunshin woke her before dawn, silent sentries in gleaming armor. They faded back to guard the perimeter as Katsuko struggled out of her bedroll.
Genma was already awake and in uniform, poring over the maps by the light of a glowstick. His mask hung at his belt. He glanced at her and nodded, freshly shaven and much more alert than anyone had any right to be at four in the morning. Katsuko gave him a dead-eyed look and a tired attempt at a salute.
Raidou was up and moving, running through kata because both he and the lieutenant were morning people. It was like a disease.
Ryouma, reassuringly, was still asleep, sprawled across his blankets like an ad for skintight tanktops. Katsuko magnanimously decided to leave him be. People who didn’t willingly wake up before the roosters had to stick together.
Kakashi was a blanket-covered lump on the ground. As she watched, he shifted to pull the covers up higher over his head. Conscious, and apparently hating every moment of it. Maybe he and Ryouma could form a club with her, if he and Ryouma didn’t strangle each other first.
“I hate everything,” Katsuko croaked, by way of greeting.
“Exercise will help!” said Raidou, because his soul was one of the things he’d signed away before joining ANBU.
“I’ll help your face,” Katsuko muttered. “Into a tree.”
The extremely offensive level of cheer in Raidou’s voice increased. “That’d count. Five minutes, then I’m turfing everyone out of bed.”
“There’s no light,” Kakashi said. He sounded like Katsuko felt: mutinous, with a side of promised future stabbing.
Genma, because his sense of timing was precise and malicious, chose that moment to enter the conversation. "Since when do ninja need light in order to function? The first kanji in ANBU is ‘darkness’."
Katsuko shuffled over to Ryouma’s sleeping form and crouched down by his head. “Get up,” she said, and poked him in the shoulder. ( 'I need you to help me hide the lieutenant's body.' ) |
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| Into the Breach |
[Sep. 13th, 2013|10:38 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 27, about a week after Take the Mask and four days after After the Tornado]
There were perks to dying early on ANBU Team Six.
Genma brought juice boxes to team training session, for one thing. Not that he called them that—he had a long spiel about electrolyte balancing and blood sugar and rehydration—but the fact of the matter was that they came in flavors like Lychee and Coconut, and once Raidou broke your neck in taijutsu practice you could sit under the trees with a drink and a rat bar and call out less-than-helpful commentary while the next victim sweated and strained on the training field. It was slight recompense for the bruises.
Ryouma was pretty sure he'd be feeling these bruises for days. Raidou hadn't exactly gone easy on him during the past week of team practice—Ryouma'd run countless laps, performed sixty-nine sit-ups in a minute, done one-handed push-ups and chin-ups, sparred with his right arm tied behind his back—but the captain's eyes had lit with an unholy delight when he saw Ryouma on the training fields for sparring that morning without bandages on his hand. Katsuko had practically chortled. "One-on-one, or free for all?" she'd asked.
"One-on-one, definitely," Raidou said. They were in workout gear today, worn-out jounin blues and faded tee-shirts, and no painted mask obscured his evil grin. "Step up, Tousaki. Let's test that healing."
( He put Ryouma into the dirt two out of three times, but he had to work for it. ) |
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| Take the Mask |
[Jul. 24th, 2013|10:14 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 19th, the day after Dangerous Game and Heaven's Got a Plan For You.]
The night before oath-day, Kakashi didn’t sleep.
He hadn’t had mission-related butterflies for years, and he didn’t now. These were tigers chewing on his spine. Excitement with teeth. And tense, over-thought—
Not fear, exactly.
He wasn’t afraid.
Maybe, for once in his life, he was actually ready for something.
He left the skeleton-crew boxes of his packed apartment when the moon was still setting, and went to the Hokage’s Monument, picking out a seat on stone spikes of the Sandaime’s hair. When dawn came, he had a perfect view.
Tuesday was fire-day, the namesake day of Fire Country, and someone had given nature the message. The sun rose in a blaze of orange and gold, draping Konoha in molten light. The river glittered. The forest swayed in a warm eastern breeze. Even the heavy crags of the carved Hokage faces looked less severe.
( And Kakashi was late. ) |
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| 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. ) |
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| One for the Road |
[Jun. 8th, 2013|09:16 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 13]
For the glory that was supposed to be springtime, April had stayed colder, rained longer, and made everyone grumpier than the happiest month had any right to. But the cherry trees, in despite of it all, had bloomed at last, and there were more than a few blossom viewing parties going on under canopies of pink and white petals on the banks of Konoha’s river.
Genma was heading towards one of them himself, glad for a day off before proctoring the ANBU trials, when he heard raised voices coming from a darkened glen off the main path. There was plenty of noise coming from revelers—the laughter and chatter of civilians and shinobi drinking and picnicking in groups under the trees filled the park—but this was different.
Someone called someone else a tightwad bastard. Drunken voices escalated.
( “You owe me five-thousand fucking ryou!”
) |
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| From Here On Out |
[Jun. 2nd, 2013|10:19 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 10]
“You know,” Takahashi Isamu said, watching Katsuko and Raidou from the safety of the tree-line. “Most people play cards when they’re bored.”
“Dude, we’re ANBU,” Momoi Mitarou said. “Could be worse. One of them could be an Uchiha.”
Katsuko ducked underneath Raidou’s swing, feeling his sword whistle an inch over her head, and slammed the butt of her katana into his stomach. He staggered back, parrying her when she went in for a strike at his knees. They leapt apart and circled each other, searching for an opening.
She grinned at Raidou. “Nearly got you there, lieutenant.”
( “Did you?” Raidou shot back. “Because I seem to have all my limbs.” ) |
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| Secrets That We Keep |
[Jun. 1st, 2013|08:27 pm] |
[Takes place October 17, Yondaime Year 1]
Sandaime’s funeral takes place on a grey afternoon, a week after the Fox’s rampage through Konoha. Despite the hundreds dead and the destruction wrought, nearly all of the village’s surviving ninja and civilians arrive in mourning black. Yondaime himself stands before the gathered crowd, face carved in lines of sorrow. Enough rubble has been cleared away to make room for the unlit funeral pyre— and the body.
In death, Sandaime’s face is free of the haunted look it has borne for the past three months. The hole in his torso from one of the Fox’s giant claws is covered by a set of Hokage’s robes, gleaming white amidst the charred grey of Konoha. His students, Lady Tsunade and Jiraiya the Toad Hermit, stand like statues on Yondaime-sama’s right, their expressions dark and unreadable.
( The space between them where the third Sannin should be is empty. ) |
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