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Tweak says, "I....need some coffee"

fallen_senbon (fallen_senbon) wrote in fallen_leaves,
@ 2008-02-23 04:20:00

Current mood:	cold
Entry tags:	genma, mission, raidou

It Takes a Strong Sense of Irony [closed to Genma and Raidou]
Concluding chapter of the It Takes an Assassin Mission, immediately follows It Takes a Will of Iron

Sleep was a healing thing. A nap was refreshing, a good night's sleep could set your whole day right. Sleeping for fifteen hours wasn't nearly enough to completely heal them, but by the time Raidou woke and Genma stirred, it was clear that sleep had done them both a lot of good. Raidou's fever was lower, his wound looked better, and he tolerated another session of soaking and cleaning the injury with a great deal less pain. Genma was hungry when he woke, and what went down stayed down, to his and Raidou's deep relief. Poison metabolized, wounds scabbing over. Raidou's headache a faint echo of its former self. Genma's hip, when he finally got around to changing the bandage, was an ugly black and blue mess rent by long gashes, but none of the swelling or redness that said infection lurked within.

They showered. They washed their clothes, because there hadn't been enough spares not to, and neither of them were looking even slightly presentable. Genma used a quick-dry jutsu to get the things ready to wear. Then they put on game faces and masks and uniforms, and went down to see what Iijima had decided in the night about his wife.

Having looked over the evidence Genma and Raidou had brought him from their painful mission, he'd come to the conclusion that he was ready to be a widower. Genma breathed a sigh of relief and caught Raidou's eye with a tilt of his head. Just for a second. Then he was standing straighter, bowing to Iijima, agreeing to this one final task for the mission.

Sometimes it really did take an assassin to do an assassin's job.

The wife was still tied up, bound to her bed. A servant had been sent in to tend to her physical needs, offering chamber pot and spoon feeding. The lady herself was busy deeply lamenting her treatment when Genma and Raidou entered.

"You can go now," Genma said to the maid. "We need to talk with your mistress. Alone." The woman looked up, terrified, at the pair of masked ANBU, and fled.

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 12:35 pm UTC (link)

Raidou watched her go with a slight head shake, then he sat down on the bed next to the wife's head. "Morning," he greeted congenially, "Well, actually, it's closer to afternoon, I think." This mission was playing havoc with his internal clock. "You know who we are." It wasn't a question.

The wife had blue eyes, Raidou realized with mild surprise. They had little yellow flecks embedded in the iris. He noticed because of the way they seemed to fill the woman's face, stretched wide with what could only be fear. She made a sound that wasn't any syllable he recognized.

"I'll take that as a yes." Raidou slid his mask to one side, letting her see his face for the first time. He wasn't smiling. "Your husband has granted us the authority to put you to death."

Another sound, still no closer to words.

"You don't have much of a choice in the matter," Raidou continued. "Your recent actions have led you to this point, and we have no intention of letting you go to do more harm." A lot of people had died in the last week. It was strange to realize the whole mess hinged on one scrawny, shaking woman with yellow flecks in her blue eyes. "That said, you do get a choice in how you face your death. Which is more then most poor bastards get. So listen carefully, I'm only going to say this once. You have three options. My way," he pulled a kunai from his leg holster and let it spin in his left hand. "His way," a nod at Genma showed the little vial that rested in his open palm, contents glistening in the light. "Or by your own hand."

Raidou lifted the tanto Iijima had pressed into his hand, and showed it to the wife.

"Choose."

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fallen_senbon
2008-02-23 12:36 pm UTC (link)

The little whimper the woman made wasn't exactly a clear choice. In fact it was the opposite of one. Her eyes flickered from Genma's masked face, alien and forbidding with that smiling cougar mask like something from a perverse carnival; to Raidou's scarred and unsmiling face, no more comforting than the blank porcelain and possibly much much less so; to the tanto in its pretty lacquer case, with braided tassels hanging from the hand guard. She whimpered again, her eyes made the circuit again, and again, and at last they settled on Genma's face.

Genma pushed his mask back too. He was smiling with a self-satisfied air. "Me huh? Don't want to get blood on your pretty bed?" He sat down next to the woman and put his arm around her shoulders. She flinched. "You know I kind of figured that's how your choice would go. You don't have the guts to hold a blade yourself, which is why you poisoned meals and hired assassins. And you don't have the guts to face a naked blade. Not that you could be blamed. Most people don't have that kind of fortitude. And you don't either. So you'll reach for the death in a bottle." He shook the vial, tipping it back and forth so that the liquid inside swirled and rocked.

"Do you think this will be easier? Less traumatic? Leave a pretty corpse? You're a little past the age where pretty matters as much as clever, aren't you? Yes, quite past it. And clever killers don't get caught. So I'm afraid clever isn't working out so well for you either, is it?"

He pushed back then, and gave the woman a disgusted look. She trembled and begged them to have mercy.

"Mercy? You want mercy? Sorry, that's not our field," Genma said simply.

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 12:37 pm UTC (link)

Raidou leaned around and took the bottle neatly from Genma's hand, lifting it up to study in the light. The fluid gleamed an oily shade that wasn't quite purple and wasn't quite black. "Actually, darling," he said, when Genma had unloaded some of the recently gained chip from his shoulder, "this is mercy." He held the tiny vial in front of her face, waiting for her to focus on it. "It could be a whole lot worse then this."

A dozen and more dead Suna-nin, one slain lord, a handful of civilians, one wounded shoulder, one cracked skull, one poisoned buddy, three raw wounds, one night spent curled together until the world turned and woke them up to a better place. Raidou's eyes flickered for a moment, a half-second's glance to the monochrome figure of his partner before moving back to the wife. The fragile vial didn't even tremble.

"Take it," he said quietly. "Before I show you what mercy your actions really merit."

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fallen_senbon
2008-02-23 12:42 pm UTC (link)

Genma untied her. With the two of them there was no chance she'd escape. In fact she only whimpered and tried to rub the feeling back into her wrists when her bonds were released. Raidou held the vial out to her, and she reached for it, but snatched her hand back at the last minute, letting it fall to the bed covers.

"Coward," Genma snapped. "Be grateful I've chosen a poison for you much less painful than the one your hired help from Sand used on me yesterday." He'd actually been tempted to dose her with something that would induce the same misery he'd endured and more, but in the end his compassion for the servants who would have to handle her body stayed his hand. No one liked cleaning up vomit, especially not a vomited upon corpse.

He snatched up the vial and stood at the lady's side. "I take it then, you need help with this?" Unscrewing the cap was the work of a moment. He looked at Raidou, nodding to him, as his partner moved in to hold the women with one arm around her chest. Genma grabbed the woman's hand and forced the vial into it, then pushed it to her mouth. "You can drink it yourself and leave this world with a last shred of honor," he said, "or you can make me pour it down your throat." The woman's hand twitched, Genma pushed, and the purple liquid spilled into her mouth. When he was sure she had swallowed, Genma let go. Raidou did the same.

The woman looked bewildered. "Oh. It's sweet," she said, then she arched backwards, clutching at her throat, gasping for air. In less than three minutes it was over.

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 12:45 pm UTC (link)

Raidou watched her bow and spasm and twitch for a moment before turning away to look at middle-distance, counting under his breath. When she exhaled and didn't inhale he paused, waited another five seconds to be sure, and turned back. She looked exactly the same if you ignored the trace of purple-black foam around her lips. But for the first time he could remember, she didn't look terrified. Raidou guessed it was hard to be scared when you were dead.

"Nice," he said to Genma, breaking the silence, and stood up to roll the corpse over, pulling her limbs straight and putting her into some semblance of order. The neater the death, the better it reflected on Konoha. He drew the line at messing with her hair, and left her in a position that resembled sleep for the most part. Then he plucked the empty vial from her lax grip. "Want this back?"

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fallen_senbon
2008-02-23 12:48 pm UTC (link)

"Thanks," Genma said, reaching for the vial. He glanced at Raidou's fingertips as he did, relieved to note no residue from the bottle on them. "You should probably wash your glove off, just in case," he said, recapping the bottle with an almost careless gesture. "I'm immune enough to handle traces of this stuff, and that little bit you might have touch-transferred is probably not enough to make you sneeze even, but I'd hate to be wrong about that."

It had been September, and hot, with the air heavy and dust-laden. Sweat ran down your shoulders within only a few minutes of leaving the comforts of an air-conditioned building, so Genma, being sensible, had retreated to the pleasantly cool poison lab on ANBU's first basement floor. He'd devised this poison in June, refined it in July, and in late August begun the process of acclimating himself to it enough that he could handle a vial of it and not worry if there was residue on the outside of the glass, take a droplet of it on a gloved hand and not worry if that was a threat to him. He'd worked himself up to a 0.03 milliliter dose with only a little difficulty. 0.035 however proved his undoing. Raidou had found him.

He was, he thought, carefully restowing the now empty vial, very very lucky to have Raidou as a friend.

"It's that same stuff from September," he said, casual as you could be about something that had so very nearly meant he wouldn't be here now.

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 12:49 pm UTC (link)

Sometimes Genma said things that made the world spin backwards for a moment. Raidou's head came up and swung round to regard his friend while he battled with the sudden urge to grab that empty vial and throw it across the room. Or out the window. He didn't make a move, though. Instead he simply nodded and turned back to look at the wife, clenching his teeth hard enough to make a jaw muscle flicker.

Genma was, Raidou knew, prone to small moments of insanity--testing a poison on himself when there was no one around to help if things went wrong was a damn case in point--but they still occasionally caught him by surprise when they surfaced. It just seemed wrong for Genma to hang on to a poison that had almost killed him, but if you followed that logic, no ninja would ever carry a kunai.

That didn't mean Raidou had to like it, though.

"C'mon, lover boy," he said, hooking his mask back into place. "Don't know about you, but I'm ready to get home."

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fallen_senbon
2008-02-23 12:50 pm UTC (link)

Genma didn't miss the sudden tension. But he didn't heed it either. Raidou had vented his spleen at Genma quite thoroughly back in September. He'd argued Genma should abandon the poison. Genma'd argued back he wasn't wasting all the fucking effort he'd put into acquiring the resistance he had to it, and 0.03 ml was a hell of a lot more of a dose than most people could take.

They hadn't ever really resolved it, but Raidou had eventually agreed when Genma pointed out that there were more than a few training scars on Raidou's body. Training accidents happened. You didn't get good if you weren't willing to play with live steel, live jutsu, live poisons. It was part of what made you that cut above, got you promoted to jounin or special jounin. Made you an elite ninja, and not just cannon-fodder, despite Raidou's fondness for describing himself that way.

Right now they were tired, Raidou was sick, both of them were injured. Raidou's testiness was understandable. All they had to do now was keep each other together long enough to get home, make their report to Intel, get Raidou checked in to the medics' care before he ended up with blood poisoning...

"You feeling okay still? We go tell Iijima-san the job is done, and then we're out of here. After they kick you loose from the hospital we're totally going to the hot springs, too. One of the nice places where they do those sushi feasts and have the outdoor pools. You and me, we're gonna make up for this shit and then some."

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 12:52 pm UTC (link)

Raidou set himself next to Genma, using a bit of subtle body language to get his friend moving towards the door. "I'm fine," he said, falling into step a pace back. He didn't miss Genma's skeptical look. "Okay, so I'm not great, but I'm walking and talking. And I'm not limping--" 'like you' went unsaid, "--so you really don't need to ask me again for at least another five minutes. Six even, if you can restrain yourself that long."

As nicknames went, Raidou sometimes thought 'mother-medic' really was the most accurate. His headache was still a crouching presence behind his temples, but he could think around it. And his shoulder was still the least fun place on his body to have active nerve sensation, but it wasn't crippling. The fever he was ready to say goodbye to--more than ready--but it didn't have him flat on his back whimpering like an infant anymore, and that was really all Raidou cared about.

"I'd ask how you are, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a similar answer," he added, a shade dryly. "I like your plan. Lead on, oh fearless."

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fallen_senbon
2008-02-23 12:53 pm UTC (link)

Telling Iijima his wife of thirty years was dead was surprisingly easy. It helped that Iijima expected the news. Had ordered his wife's execution. But it would have taken a harder and less observant man than Genma not to feel the grief of the man. Not to want to get away from it as soon as possible. Fortunately Raidou's fever and his own shaky pallor made it abundantly clear to their client that they'd done what they could for him. With a promise to send word by messenger of the Hokage's response, should he deem one necessary, to the expanded threat Genma and Raidou discovered, they finally managed to leave.

"Next time we get a mission where they put us up in a nursery," Genma said, limping along at an easy pace, "Remind me that it's a bad omen. Ninja and fluffy bunnykins don't mix. We were probably jinxed the minute we set foot in there."

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 12:54 pm UTC (link)

"Oh, I don't know," said Raidou, from his position three feet behind Genma's left shoulder, "they kind of start to grow on you after a while. Though if you tell anyone I said that I'll kill you and blame the fever." It was good to have an excuse.

The day was already middle-aged, with the sun well past its zenith and a rich butter-yellow in the cloudless sky. It was cold but not icy, and the wind stayed low. The ground was iron-hard--still in the grip of winter--which afforded fairly excellent traction and left no footprints to make an enemy's job easier. They even passed a field of cows which afforded some amusement when Raidou created a few intricate stories and Genma played the voices.

If it weren't for the fever, the injuries, and Genma's steadily worsening limp, it really would've been a nice stroll across the border.

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fallen_senbon
2008-02-23 12:56 pm UTC (link)

By the time they came to the little row of jizo statues that marked the Leaf's northeastern border, the sun was low, slanting orange tinted rays through the dead winter grass. Most of the recent snowfall had melted or blown away here, leaving the earth itself bare and ugly with its thatch of dead greenery. But it was Konohagakure's northeastern boundry, and as such, they were finally back in safe territory.

Maybe it was the psychological effect of realizing home and rest were only a few kilometers away, but crossing that border was where Genma's hip finally decided enough was enough. He took a step, landed, twisted, and pitched forward in a graceless fall, already shouting to Raidou that he was okay. Rolling onto his back, pushing himself up quick, quick before Raidou...

Raidou was right on top of him. Bending down, reaching out. Genma reached back, past the hand Raidou offered him, to push his friend's mask off his face. Raidou was red-faced and sweaty; panting, with his eyes taking on that feverish glaze again.

"Shit, Rai, you look terrible," Genma said, still propped on the ground, pale and sweaty under his own mask. "You gonna make it the rest of the way back?"

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 12:56 pm UTC (link)

Raidou blinked once as the peripheral edge of his vision expanded without his mask to block it. Cold air hit his face, icy against overheated skin. He stared at his floored partner and lifted an eyebrow. "As the one of us not currently on his back, I think you stole my line."

The temptation to sit down next to Genma was strong enough to make his legs shake. Raidou locked his knees, cursed himself for the weakness, and caught hold of Genma's forearm. He waited until Genma grabbed his own in return and leaned back, hauling the man carefully onto his feet. It was hard to tell which of them steadied the other as they both wavered, but after a swaying moment of uncertainty they managed to stay upright. Raidou let go of Genma to tug his mask back into place. "And I look fabulous," he added, voice dryer then the heat clawing its way up inside. "I always look fabulous. Told you that once already."

They needed to keep moving. Home was so close, so very close. They just had to keep going a little bit longer to reach the end of the line. Raidou took a step and set his good hand between Genma's shoulder blades, pushing gently until his partner did the same. He hated to make Genma walk on his injured hip, but they needed to keep going. "C'mon, lover boy, not much further. You wanted sushi, right?"

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fallen_senbon
2008-02-23 12:58 pm UTC (link)

"Wasn't planning to stop," Genma complained as he stumbled forward again. "I just tripped. I'm fine. You're the one who's in trouble." He wondered if he should give Raidou another dose of medicine for his fever, but as close as they were to real medical help, he didn't really want to mask it. The hospital medics would need to accurately assess just how far that infection had spread, and fever was a sign they'd need to measure accurately.

He also wondered why--since obviously he'd survived the poison and was past its effects this morning, and hadn't needed any more of the Anti-A--why that tense-muscled, weak-legged, tingling-handed, queasy-stomached feeling was back. Although really all those things in their mild form--as they now were, Genma told himself sternly, mild-- were easily chalked up to fatigue. And that he had in spades. He was going to take Raidou to the hospital, go report in to Intel, and then sleep for a week. Maybe two. By the time he woke up Raidou would be cured and his hip would be healed and they could go to the onsen and eat sushi and bathe any lingering bruises away in the medicinal, healing hot springs.

It was a good plan. It was his Plan at the moment. As long as Raidou was able to keep going and he didn't trip over any more invisible roots. He limped, winced, swayed, kept going. Checked Raidou, who stumbled and teetered, righted himself, kept going. By the time they were within sight of Konoha's gates, though, Genma had a new Plan. A really, really simple one.

Do not throw up.

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 12:59 pm UTC (link)

For as long as Raidou could remember, there had always been a chuunin--or a jounin who'd really pissed someone off--manning the small office just inside Konoha's main gates. That chuunin served a very important function; checking who came and went through the gates, serving as an instant runner for anyone who staggered their way in with an important message and legs to shaky to carry it anymore, and being the first person any battered ninja fell on when they made it home and could go no further. There was an instant relay system set up with the hospital for just that purpose.

When Genma and Raidou made their slow, limping way up the path in full ANBU armour, it was a clear sign that chuunin's services were needed. He came out at a dead run just in time to see Genma stop, rip his mask aside, and throw up. The boy's dismayed look matched Raidou's, even if the latter's was hidden by his mask.

"M-medic?" stammered the chuunin, taking a hasty step back out of range.

Raidou caught Genma by the shoulder and half-steered him, half-dragged him to the wall. It didn't take a whole lot of persuasion to make him sit down, a gentle shove and gravity did most of it. Raidou slid down in a graceless heap next to him, leaned back against the wall and adjusted his hold to keep Genma upright. Mostly upright. Neither one of them was anything close to steady. "That'd be nice," he agreed, and watched the chuunin flee.

The world swayed a slow, blurry dance. Raidou licked dry lips, felt sweat burn down his face, and wondered if he'd ever catch his breath. "Guess we're taking a raincheck on the sushi."

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fallen_senbon
2008-02-23 01:00 pm UTC (link)

"Fuck, Raidou," Genma whined, and stopped to swallow. "Do not talk to me about..." He groaned, tipped his head back, eyes tight shut, and endured a pair of heaves that didn't really do anything, then swallowed hard again and panted shallowly. After a few breaths he whispered, "Sushi."

He couldn't feel his hands. Well he could feel them, but they felt wrong. Detached and electrified and aching in a strange remote way. He couldn't feel his feet either, but he could feel the muscle twitches in his abdomen and torso, in his thighs, pulling viciously on his wounded hip. He was really just tired, he told himself. He was tired and he had done too much on a weakened body. Probably still dealing with some anemia from the wound, even with the blood pills, so that would explain the hands and feet. And every genin in the history of Konoha knew about running til you puked.

It was not the poison. It was not, because he wanted to go home. Plus Sumire had promised him curry--the thought of which at the moment was enough to nearly start him vomiting again but--she'd promised if he came back from his mission without serious injury. His hip he counted as moderate, not serious. But if it was hip and poisoning together, then there was no way she was going to buy it as minor or moderate or...

Do not throw up.

It was a simple Plan, one he'd already failed on, and reinstituted as the new Plan by simple expedient of its still being the most urgently needed set of actions. If at first you don't succeed and all that...

And if he was still poisoned they'd try to make him stay in the hospital. Although they were undoubtedly going to make Raidou stay. They'd better make him stay. Genma was weary, but Raidou was the one who was actually in anything like real danger, he told himself.

"You doing okay?" Swallow, swallow, fight it, breathe...

He didn't hear Raidou's answer. He lurched away and had to start over on the Plan from square one all over again.

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fallen_raidou
2008-02-23 01:01 pm UTC (link)

"Guess that's six minutes," said Raidou quietly as Genma retched and heaved and shivered his way through another bout of vomiting. He'd lost count by this point, but it wasn't a far stretch of the imagination to believe that Genma had probably thrown up more times then he'd actually eaten on this damn mission. Raidou couldn't do a whole lot. He rubbed Genma's back above the hard line of his armour while he choked up bile, and pulled him upright when he was done, tugging him sideways so he was fairly steady between Raidou's side and the hard, cold brick that said they'd made it home.

Kind of sucked to make it the whole way and crash land on the finish line.

Raidou sat wedged against his poisoned poisoner and thought about irony. The funny side of wives that tried to kill husbands and did everything but, and taijutsu masters that could hold their own against any ANBU you'd care to name but had problems with a group of chuunin. About buildings wired for traps that burned up like a rose blooming fire and became a better charnel house then a safe home. About leaders and back up and how none of it meant a damn thing as long as you did your hardest to keep going and make it home.

By the time the medics showed up and knelt down in front of them, Raidou had given up trying to catch his breath. He was too busy laughing hard enough to cry.

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	fallen_raidou 2008-02-27 02:37 pm UTC (link)
	Concludes in It Takes Time to Recover (Reply to this) (Parent)