InsaneJournal

Pleased to Meet You, Won't You Guess My Name? [closed]
Backdated two years.

Ginta had traveled solo all the way to the border of Rai no Kuni. It had been an easy journey, carried out at a fairly sedate pace, with a stop overnight near Fire Country's northeastern border at a cozy little inn in the town of Shinano, and once more when he was nearly at the Lightning Country border, in the province of Mutsu. That was where he was meeting his contact, a Konoha ninja stationed in a Leaf outpost there. The man he was meeting--Ginta read over the mission scroll once more--was none other than Tousaki Ryouma.

They'd met once before, during the war. They'd been fifteen years old, chuunin, pinned down in a bunker that was two bodies over its official occupancy. Trapped with a group of weary, dangerous, over-stressd, bored shinobi. For days.

Ginta at 20 was short, wiry, delicately-boned and while his face and physique had taken on enough angularity to mark him as an adult, he could still easily pass for younger. At fifteen he'd been softer-cheeked, rounder faced, prettier. He was assigned more than a few missions where that just-past-the-cusp-of-puberty look was what got him where he needed to be. It didn't mean he liked it. And it definitely didn't mean he wanted any of that sort of attention from the rough-voiced jounin with the greasy hair and broken nose who kept finding excuses to touch Ginta in that too-small space. To make lewd insinuations and give him syrupy-eyed leers. Ginta had been on the point of seriously considering a kunai applied to the overly-randy creep's tenderest regions and hang the consequences, when he noticed the other boy. The tall one roughly his own age, who stank of corpse-rot, pissed-off his kunoichi comrade, and was otherwise left entirely alone.

Ginta was a smart ninja. Prodigy even. He'd attached himself to the other boy, cultivating a fast-forged friendship of necessity, because he knew exactly why that boy--Tousaki Ryouma--didn't get shit from the jounin. Tousaki Ryouma could, with a touch, rot the flesh off your bones.

He hadn't seen the other boy once in the five years since they'd finally been liberated from their little safe-haven-turned-prison. And he hadn't, thanks to Ryouma back then, been bothered any more by that jounin. So Ginta had a fondness for his contact before he even met him. He wondered if Ryouma would remember him at all. If he did, that might be a problem.

Morning in Mutsu had dawned clear and cold, with a damp-scent in the air that spoke of freezing rain or late snow. The plums were in blossom, gorgeous bursts of pink and white along stark black branches, and the cherries were already starting to form buds. It was pretty here in the mountains, a pleasant place for a mission. Ginta would be disappointed if all that botanical beauty were slain by the fickle weather, but such was the fleeting nature of life. He watched one blossom-laden bough wave outside his window and sipped the last of his breakfast tea, scooped up a last bite of barbecued dried fish and rice, tipped the last of his bowl of miso soup in to his mouth. Time to get moving. Time to stop being Sakamoto Ginta, and start being Seishi.

He shed the purple and white ryokan yukata, changing it for ANBU black. Black underwear with protective hardware stitched neatly in place. Black tabi socks. Black fitted trousers with pockets and pouches and hiding places for hundreds of tools of the ninja trade. Black leg wraps and shin guards. Black turtleneck, sleeveless and clinging. Over that went a bone-white body-armour vest made of some miracle fabric that flexed fluidly with even the most complicated of motions yet turned aside blades like stone. Long black arm covers were next, leaving only the hands and the biceps--the left with its distinctive fire-red emblem of Ginta's ANBU rank--bare. White arm guards strapped around his forearms. Black gloves that attached seamlessly to the arm covers but were made of stronger stuff. You could scale a castle wall or stop a flying blade with those gloves.

The last bit of black was the mask Ginta pulled up over nose and mouth. Face hidden now, with only his blue eyes and pale hair to give any hint to his identity, he looked a little like he'd been designed to go with that uniform. Anonymous, deadly, ANBU. Seishi.

He slipped his kodachi through the straps at the back of his armour , buckled on backpack, utility belt and weapons holsters, re-rolled and stowed his mission scroll, and last of all, slipped on the hard ceramic ANBU mask--his was a monkey, painted with swirls of black and a slightly dull-blue--and swirled his heavy black cloak around him, pulling up the hood so even his light hair was hidden, completing his transformation.

He looked in the mirror one final time. Seishi looked back. Satisfied, he left the inn, took the little path that he'd memorized from his maps--it was prettier than it looked on paper, with blossoming plums and a few early-blooming forsythia lining the path. The earliness of the hour meant the morning sun had yet to penetrate the mountain fog, and everything dripped with moisture, making it harder than it might have been to obscure his trail. Not impossible though. Not by any stretch. Where Seishi went, there was only a whisper of a shadow to mark his passing.

The Leaf hideout was underground. Not surprising, given the terrain. The entrance a dilapidated shrine to a deity long forgotten. It took a good half hour, even at a jounin's pace, to reach it, high in the hills where there was still snow icing the north-facing hollows, and even the plums had only begun to put forth buds. Seishi stood, head bowed under his damp cloak, cast a revealing jutsu and offered a sham prayer. He tossed three coins into the offering box, itself a sad affair with rails broken and edges growing moss. His coins, two ryou and a false ryou piece that was magnetized to open the lock, tumbled into the box and through the false bottom. Seishi waited. A moment later, the stone face of Buddha turned aside, revealing a small door.

Seishi approached warily, waiting for a counter sign. It came in the form of a tall, mop-haired, bright-eyed man holding a half-drunk cup of coffee. "Seishi?" the man guessed.

Seishi nodded. "My contact?" he replied. Not giving out a name. Not until Ryouma named himself.

"Come on in, it's hella early but we got coffee and grub on," Ryouma said, and indicated Seishi should follow.

Seishi didn't move. "Your name and birthplace," he said instead and waited, monkey-masked face inscrutable, body-language conveying nothing more than that he was prepared, at an instant's notice, to launch himself in any direction, including at the taller man's throat.

Ryouma laughed. "It's Konoha, and Ryouma. Tousaki Ryouma. And you ANBU guys sure are paranoid buggers. You'd think all the stuff with the coins and the fact you can't even find this place unless you cast the right jutsu woulda convinced you."

"It never hurts to be careful," Seishi said and tipped back his hood and the outer mask at last. He grinned under the cloth mask, blue eyes lively and full of mischief. "So is the coffee actually good? Or am I risking mission failure before I even start if I have some?"

"You're risking mission failure if you don't," Ryouma replied. "Also if you insult the coffee. It is fabulous coffee. The best. None better in a three-hundred click radius."

"If you say so," Seishi said with a chuckle.

"I know so," Ryouma replied. "I made it."

"Excellent, then fill me up," Seishi said. He could feel Ryouma's eyes on him, assessing, reacting to his size, his coloring. He saw no sign of recognition, not even the tiny, subtle ones people had when they were trying to pretend they didn't know you. That was good. Much easier if Seishi was Seishi and Ginta was Ginta and never the twain should meet.

Ryouma nodded, grinned, and led the way in. "Good, good. Glad to see ANBU keeping to its reputation for hiring smart guys," he said, and laughed.

It was, Seishi thought, going to be a fairly good mission.