| Make it Right [Closed to Tsume, Ryouma, Kuromaru] | [Feb. 20th, 2009|10:18 pm] |
[[Takes place March 18th, two days after Pleased To Meet You, Won't You Lock Me In A Cell? and three days after The Weight of the World]]
Tsume glanced out the window once more, though Ryouma had long since disappeared from view. Then she ducked back into the bathroom, angling her head to see the bandaging on one temple. She was down to a large, skin-colored band-aid that looked nothing like skin. New flesh, vividly pink as the edges of scabs peeled away, drew lines back into her hair and flicked across her forehead, melding slowly into the rose-petal pink of new skin. The worst of the rot was still heavily scabbed under the band-aid, but even that was only the size of her thumb, now. It was healing slowly.
Kuromaru's was healing slower still, since his damage was worse. Still, his skin was mending. His mental state... wasn't.
She glanced at him, napping on the bed in a patch of sun from the window. He'd tried again to visit Ryouma. Once she'd found him in a whimpering huddle outside Ryouma's door, and a day later in the stairwell. Ryouma had taken him down so thoroughly in the field that Kuromaru knew he wasn't the strongest, couldn't be the alpha. But Ryouma hadn't properly challenged him, either, and the too-intelligent part of his mind knew it had only been an accident.
He was in limbo.
But she could fix that. She just needed some time to talk to Ryouma. They could fix this.
"Kuromaru, I'm going for a walk. You gonna stay here?"
He grunted in response, and pawed at the blankets until he was nested more comfortably.
"All right. I'll be back later." She'd watched, five minutes before, as Ryouma had walked out of the HQ. She'd watched where he'd gone until she couldn't see him anymore. Now, she picked up a short hoodie and shrugged into it, striding down the hall and nearly tripping down the stairs.
It didn't take her long to get as far as she'd marked Ryouma. She moved fast, glad it was a calm day. There were hints of his scent here and there, things he'd touched as he'd passed. She got another half mile before the smells of the village crowded in and overrode what was left Ryouma's scent-traces. There were jutsu that would strengthen her already admirable sense of smell, but they definitely didn't fall under Haruichi's genin-jutsu-only orders. She could always put her nose to the ground to follow, but she wasn't that desperate.
Mid-day in Konoha, many of the other ways to track someone wouldn't work. If she had a lock on his chakra she could trace him that way, but he was too far ahead, not using his chakra, and the area was filled with ninja of various levels and their active energies.
There were other ways than smell to track someone, though, and Ryouma wasn't unremarkable. Asking if a man who was nearly a foot taller than she was, broad shouldered, and attractive had walked past worked best when she asked young women or teenage girls.
When she found herself striding into the darker ends of Konoha, she remembered his stories about where he'd grown up. Here, groups divided themselves sharply into predator and prey. Even with her chakra shattered, Tsume had no illusions about which group she belonged in.
She didn't catch Ryouma's scent again, but wandered slower through the streets, feeling clean and out of place amid clusters of people. Mostly they were kids, left to their own devices while their parents tried to make ends meet. Occasionally there were dogs; they all stopped barking when Tsume passed.
Then she heard Ryouma's voice.
It was another five minutes before she made her way through the warren of side streets and back alleys to where a group of boys and girls played. They reminded her of adolescent puppies: just big enough to start being dangerous, learning how to bite and wrestle in ways that could kill each other as they got older, but unaware yet of what they were doing.
In the middle of them was Ryouma, laughing brightly, dark eyes sparkling as he guided a thin girl through a hold that would disable any larger opponent. Tsume knew that particular hold well.
She almost left then, feeling like a voyeur in a place she shouldn't be. She stayed instead, recognizing play-battle for what it was, watching Ryouma's muscles flex under a long-sleeved shirt, the quick movement of feet as he tussled with a boy. His hair kept falling in his face, and he swept it back absently with a long-fingered hand.
She didn't belong here.
Tsume turned to creep off the way she'd come--and stepped right into the path of a boy barreling toward her. Slamming chakra into her feet to keep herself from toppling, she tangled one hand in the kid's shirt and hauled up, saving him from a spill, too. Brown eyes glared up at her.
"Lemme go! Who d'you think you are? I got ninja-friends! I didn't do nothing wrong!"
Her eyebrows rose, and she checked for her wallet. It was still where it belonged. "I didn't--"
His narrow chest expanded, and before she could say anything else he bellowed, "RYOUMAAA!" |
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