| [Feb. 22nd, 2012|04:59 am] |
This, clearly, was the genin team who didn’t want to hear what Katsuko had to say.
Ryouma set his chopsticks across his half-empty bowl and leaned back in his chair, looking up at them. The blond--Nori, was it?--was close to Katsuko’s height and build, though what was tall and lanky for a girl ended up as merely average height and skinny for a guy. Genjutsu user, probably. He looked like one solid hit would snap him.
The red-headed chuunin was burlier, but barely two inches taller. He was also badly freckled, which stole a little of the menace from his glare. “Why’d you choose today to come?” he demanded, starting forward. “You trying to start a fight?”
“I just said I was trying to avoid you two,” Katsuko snapped. “Because I knew this would happen.”
“Maybe if you didn’t deliberately provoke us--” Nori began.
All three of them were beginning to leak the raw edges of killing intent. Ryouma wasn’t much of a chakra sensor, but he could feel Katsuko’s chakra like a forestfire, barely contained. Beside her, the two men were guttering candles. Were they idiots?
He planted one sandalled foot on the floor and shoved his chair back another few inches, scraping brutally across the concrete floor. “Hey, Katsuko,” he said, deliberately drawling. It worked for Kakashi, after all. “Introduce me to your friends.”
Both of the men switched their glares to Ryouma, which only confirmed his opinion of their idiocy. He slouched a little deeper and raised his brows blandly. Across the table, Katsuko’s nostrils flared and her jaw set, but the thin dangerous sense of her killing intent faded away. Leashed, for now.
“Sumiyoshi Nori,” she said, jerking her chin at the blond. “And Arata Beni. This is Tousaki Ryouma.”
Nori’s lip curled. “New friend, Katsuko? I thought you were done with those.”
Beni’s gaze trailed over Ryouma’s muddy tee-shirt and training pants, touched on his less-than-bulky biceps, and dismissed him entirely. “Found replacement buddies for us already?” he asked Katsuko.
“Time for an upgrade,” Ryouma said, and smiled.
“Stay out of this,” Nori said, low and cold.
“Ryouma is a jounin and my teammate,” Katsuko said sharply. “You’ll show him respect.”
Something flickered in Beni’s pale eyes, there and gone. It might have been hurt. But it didn’t weaken the sneer in his voice. “Or what?”
She looked at him for a moment, her mobile, expressive face gone still. Then she jerked her chin up again, indicating the rest of the restaurant. “Or I’ll tell on you to Wakahisa.”
Ryouma wasn’t the only one who glanced over his shoulder. The old jounin had come around the corner of the kitchen bar to watch them, arms folded menacingly over his narrow chest. He was holding a ladle like a kunai.
“Pull up a chair if you’re going to eat, boys,” the chef ordered. “Otherwise, if you want to finish this conversation, I’ve got an empty lot out back.”
Ryouma laced his fingers together, and cracked his knuckles. “You do a good bowl of noodles, Yamada-san. But I can’t say I’d mind workin’ it off already.” |
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