| [Feb. 5th, 2012|09:54 am] |
Hiruzen paused. After a long moment, he snorted.
“I believe your vindictive streak is showing, Hisoka,” he said, amused. “Are you really that annoyed at the boy?”
Arakaki’s lips twitched, but his answer was purely serious. "If we don't make the point with him now, what will it be next time? Assigning himself his own missions? Endangering not just himself and a comrade, but a whole division? He has potential, Hiruzen, and I'm not entirely sure whether that's a good thing."
Hiruzen looked down at his own ink-splattered fingers, thinking of young men with sharp minds leading sharper lives, where the difference between potential and success was often just surviving.
Surviving and not being a damn fool.
“Time will tell,” he said at last. “But Ginta has already served three years in the mask. He’s running out of time to demonstrate himself as a mature soldier.”
"I'm not ready to give up on him yet,” Arakaki said, surprising him. “Remember Jiraiya at twenty-three? Or yourself?" He chuckled a little, deep in his throat. "Or me."
Hiruzen contemplated that particular memory, now two decades old and a little sepia-toned at the edges, and felt weeks’ worth of tension crack away as he leaned back in his chair and laughed. Arakaki smiled at him, shadow-eyed, but now he was looking for it, Hiruzen could see the younger man still handsome behind silvering hair and deepening lines.
“I recall you being very mature,” Hiruzen said, wiping his eyes. “Particularly when you took it upon yourself to blow up the Hoi An bridge in order to impress that girl—what was her name?”
“Yukomi,” Arakaki murmured.
“I believe that was supposed to be a four-man mission,” Hiruzen said.
“Five, technically,” Arakaki said. “If you count the Intel agent.” He looked a little smug. “She was impressed.”
Hiruzen laughed again. “I don’t doubt. Whatever happened to her?”
“She married Tatami Isamu,” Arakaki said, with a regretful sigh. “They have a son, Iwashi. He's a chuunin already.”
“And how is your lovely wife?” Hiruzen enquired. “Other than missing your presence at home.”
In another man, Arakaki’s look might have been called sheepish. “Yayoi’s fine. Although I’m sure she’s deducting points for every hour past midnight I’m not there. I’ll tell her it was your fault.”
That was not a threat to be taken lightly. Touji Yayoi was a spirited, deadly jounin, twelve years Arakaki’s junior but just as fiercely intelligent as her husband, carving a fine career as a ninjutsu teacher for advanced chuunin classes. The first time she’d been introduced to Hiruzen, she’d manacled a rambunctious student in water chains, and then bowed.
He’d really been quite impressed.
“Then let us keep you no longer than necessary,” he said. “What word of Tousaki Ryouma?” |
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