| Lay Your Armor Down [Ryouma, Katsuko] |
[Nov. 21st, 2009|10:53 am] |
Takes place April 6, the morning after All My Regrets Are Nothing New, a week after Katsuko and Ryuichi's mission in Knife's Edge and No Rest for the Wicked.
Ryouma stopped by the mission office just before breakfast, right after his morning workout and the mission desk shift change. The gangly young chuunin who manned the desk for the morning shift was new--he'd just come in a few weeks ago, after an injured knee took him off active duty for the next month or two--and unlikely to ask questions. In fact he seemed much more interested in the sudoku puzzle in his newspaper than in the reasons Ryouma had spent a week on Personal Leave and now wanted the first mission that would take him out of Konoha. "Things're always slow at the beginning of the week," he said, poking through the open-assignment missions stacked on his desk. "There's a B-rank surveillance out in Mangrove Country, but--"
"I need somethin' with less time to think," Ryouma said. "Team'd be good." Dammit, where were Arata and Hiroyuki when he needed them? "There's not anything up by the Lightning Country border, is there? Near the post that replaced the Dainichi Nyorai Temple Base?"
"Operations there are extremely limited right now," the chuunin said firmly. "But... Hold on a sec." He swiveled his chair around to paw through another basket of sealed scrolls. "You said your name was Tousaki, right? Then you're just in time. Another two days and they'd probably have pulled you off Personal Leave for this one, or assigned someone else. Reiko-san must've been keeping this one back for you. You're good with straightforward assassinations, aren't you?"
( 'My specialty,' Ryouma said. 'Who's coming along for the ride?' ) |
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| Reconaissance and Recovery [Haruichi, Katsuko] |
[Oct. 28th, 2009|06:03 pm] |
Takes place directly after Celestial Navigation.
With Haruichi tracking, it'd taken them a scant half-hour to locate the fortress. By that time the moon had come out, throwing their shadows into sharp relief on the blank white desert. Eerie quiet reigned as they closed in on their destination, with not even the soft whisper of booted feet upon the sand to give their presence away.
Katsuko kept her eyes trained on Haruichi’s back as she ran, trusting the Hyuuga to lead the way. The byakugan and his encyclopedic knowledge of the stars made him more of an expert on this bit than her; all she had to do was focus on providing backup. She skimmed her fingers over the hilt of her mother’s katana, double-wrapped and oiled with balm to protect against the harsh desert winds. The mission brief had said to expect heavy resistance. She’d be ready.
The Intel bastard had been half-right: the bunker was near a cliff, and a godsdamned mountain range. It’d be pushing it to call it the ‘Cliff of Sorrows’, though. Looked more like the ‘Sad Little Half Hill’. The bunker itself almost dwarfed the cliff, its builders having added onto the original design since Konoha had obtained the floor plan. It clung to the side of the mountain like a parasitic mass; obviously, the architects thought that normal geometric designs were for weaklings. The bunker itself was divided into round little ‘pods’, similar to the structure of Sunagakure. Bridges manned by hidden guardsmen connected each ‘pod’ to each other, leaving Katsuko with the impression of a giant insect nest glued to the side of the mountain. Mountain range and attached bunker were located in the deepest part of a desert valley, shielded by genjutsu that had taken all of Katsuko’s and Haruichi’s skill to see through.
Now both Konoha ANBU were crouched behind a stand of boulders on the lip of the valley mouth, looking down on the slumbering bunker below. Katsuko raised an eyebrow at the size of the thing. Rather more than two ANBU could handle.
Good thing she’d brought extra explosive tags. |
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| Celestial Navigation [Haruichi, Katsuko] |
[Oct. 25th, 2009|07:16 pm] |
[Backdated!! Set on March 3rd, not long after Can't Choose Your Family]
Huh.
Well as first days went, this one hadn't been so bad. Katsuko set up her things in her new apartment and laid traps around her soon-to-be permanently opened window. Then she wandered around HQ, learned nothing about its layout, and got hopelessly lost. Somehow, she made it back to her room for a quick catnap that ended up lasting several hours.
And then that message summoning her to a mission debriefing came.
Katsuko sighed and eyed the lone couch in the room. It didn't look nearly long enough to accommodate her lounging frame. Briefly, she considered sprawling out on the floor to continue her nap.
Then the door slammed open and her mission partner stalked in. |
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| All You Can Take [Ryuichi, Katsuko] |
[Oct. 3rd, 2009|06:38 pm] |
Late at night on April 14th, after Knife's Edge and No Rest For the Wicked.
What it all came down to was that Headquarters wasn't stupid. They'd see something wrong with the report, or the hospital charts, and eventually they'd dig a little deeper into Arai Ryuichi's files. What they'd find there was anybody's guess, but Katsuko knew it would more than enough for them to put two and two together and come up with four.
They'd find out Ryuichi had taken illegal drugs, that he'd overdosed on those drugs to complete the mission.
And then they'd realize that Katsuko had deliberately left it out of her report.
Kami, what had she been thinking, enabling a chronic user? Some skewed notion of honor, protecting a teammate who didn't want her help? The most she'd managed to do was buy both of them some time, and it would only ensure that HQ would come down on their asses all the harder for it.
Ryuichi would be unrepentant.
Three agents dead, one partner looking for death, and her caught in the middle of it all.
It pissed her off.
Normally she wouldn't be so angry, just accept the consequences and move on, but... she was due for her period in a week. Unlike some lucky bitches who just bled and went on with their lives, she'd inherited from her mother the cramps, headaches, and hair-trigger temper that came before the 'woman's gift'. It made her chafe inside her own skin, want to lash out at whoever and whatever crossed her path. It was a restless feeling burning underneath her breastbone, a sort of exhausted energy that wouldn't let her sleep until she'd worked the need to hurt and hit and fight out of her system.
So that was how she found herself slipping out of bed and down to one of the training grounds by the Forest of Death, where she could punch and kick at trees and unseen enemies to her heart's content. The training ground itself was rarely used by anyone except fellow jounin, and even they wouldn't be crazy enough to come around in the dead of night.
Katsuko shrugged out of her jacket and dropped it carelessly on the ground, heading over to one of the training dummies. She'd beat it it until she worked up a sweat or it broke, whichever one came first. Then she'd move on to practicing lightning jutsu on the trees. That was always a stress-relieving exercise in futility. |
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| No Rest for the Wicked [Closed to Ryuichi and Katsuko] |
[May. 27th, 2009|08:21 pm] |
Takes place directly after Knife's Edge in the Konoha Hospital
After--
After they'd managed to tug Ryuichi away from her grasp, and hauled both of them onto stretchers, and carried them both to separate examination rooms--
After the clinical examination, and the doctor's prounouncement that she didn't have anything a day or two of rest wouldn't cure--
After alll the questioning, and the papers and the report she had to fill out, and the long hours spent waiting outside of surgery where her partner's life hung in the balance--
They wheeled Ryuichi to a room, ICU or something like that, but Katsuko wasn't listening because she staring at his bandaged, pale, unnaturally still face.
She bullied her way inside and dragged a chair up beside his bed, ignoring the oderlies' protests. She'd spent the rest of the time alternately dozing or waiting for Ryuichi to open his eyes, only leaving to change and wash up.
The steady beep of the heart moniter soothed her anxiety and prevented the waiting from becoming unbearable, a constant assurance that Ryuichi was still breathing. What he would be like when he woke up, however...
Katsuko's hand went into her pocket and closed around the unmarked bottle of pills. She'd slipped her hand into Ryuichi's belt pouch during their panicked run, claiming the bottle with the vague idea that he wouldn't want the hospital to take it when they wheeled him into the operating room.
They'd have to talk about that. As soon as Ryuichi woke up. As soon as... |
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| Knife's Edge [Closed to Katsuko and Ryuichi] |
[May. 24th, 2009|08:26 pm] |
It was Ryuichi’s opinion that Intel was screwed up and filled with sadists. It was also his opinion that his current mission partners were doing their very best to make him miserable. Despite flatly ignoring them for three hours straight and then pretending he was deaf for what felt like another two, they were succeeding.
Thick grass stretched out from them in all directions, broken only occasionally by dark boulders. A chill wind hissed through the grass, and it would have been worse if it weren’t so dry. When the sun went down, Ryuichi knew it was going to be very cold. Winter was mostly over, just a few more days of cold intentions to break it up before the heat came, but this was one of the few and letting everyone know it.
Eventually they would reach the forest and the rendezvous point. Katsuko would be there.
When it all came down, she was little more than a stranger, but Ryuichi respected her fighting ability. That mattered in a Hunter, and what mattered more was that she seemed level-headed.
( Well. For a jounin. ) |
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| Keep You Safe |
[Mar. 15th, 2009|07:33 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | katsuko | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
[takes place march 21st, a day after Great Party, But It's Hell on the Furniture]
March 21st dawned bright and cold. Katsuko opened her eyes to the blank grey ceiling of her blank grey room and stared unseeing as HQ's alien scents and sounds filtered in through her senses. Fatigue and the warmth of her thick sheets tugged at her, almost strong enough to drown out the creeping whispers of last night's nightmare.
The woman with white hair staring at her through the bars, pale eyes assessing where to cut next, what jutsu to use next--
Flinging aside her blankets, Katsuko went to get changed.
( If her hands shook while pulling open her dresser drawers, well, it was obviously because of the cold. ) |
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| Say it Right |
[Jan. 21st, 2009|08:09 pm] |
Once his head stopped ringing, Ryuichi would conclude that the spar had been quite enjoyable. Katsuko (he'd forgotten her surname already, but that could be attributed to the fact that she'd hit him square in the face at least once) was a jounin. She'd also agreed to practice with weapons, too, and hadn't required convincing to do so. Most of the jounin Ryuichi knew were either psychopathic or full of themselves. Arrogance came with skill, and jounin had that by default. Insanity usually came with the rank, too, but few shinobi were all there in the head. Came with the job. Sanity hindered things.
Civilians were slow, whereas shinobi were fast. The wording was simple. The meaning, not so much, but it all worked out at the end of the day.
"That was fun," he said, staring at the ceiling and waiting for his head to stop spinning. There were a few lines on it that had come from something bladed. How they'd gotten on the ceiling itself was a question without an answer. Maybe he'd get bored enough to pursue it, but probably not. Ryuichi didn't get that bored often, unless he got hurt enough that active-duty was something he thought about wistfully, and he'd been lucky the past few weeks. Nothing major enough to make the medics notice. "And I'm fine. Really."
( He wasn't lying ) |
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| Great Party, But It's Hell on the Furniture [Kotetsu, Katsuko] |
[Jan. 10th, 2009|06:54 pm] |
[Takes place March 20th, two days after Mission: Blow Things Up]
Katsuko leaned against the cold stone bench, rubbing her numb hands together. The lights of Konoha had come on, blinking among the twisted buildings like fireflies in a particularly screwy field. The evening crowd streamed past her heedlessly, an endless river of flushed faces and cheerful shouts. It was a perfectly lovely, chilly March evening.
She let her head fall against the bench with a loud thunk. Tonight was going to suck. Her little brother's birthday was tomorrow, and she wasn't even allowed to talk to him. Kami on a fucking pogo stick. What did Makoto even look like now? Did he know what she looked like anymore?
Her hands fisted on her lap as she let out a low snarl. |
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| The Weight of the World [Ryouma, Hayate, Katsuko] |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|07:47 pm] |
[[Takes place 8 days after Blood Will Make It Right and 5 days after Sunburst]]
The crutches fell victim to a katon jutsu in the hospital courtyard on the fifteenth of March, exactly ten minutes after Ryouma's examining doctor told him he could resume training with only a supportive brace for his knee. He marched back to HQ without limping at all, changed from jeans and a hoodie into shorts and a tee, grabbed a water bottle and a towel, and slid down the banister for two full flights of stairs. The teenage agent he met on the first floor landing looked shocked, and then mildly envious.
"I'm supposed to stay off my feet," Ryouma told him.
"Uh," the boy said. "Right. You go ahead and do that, senpai."
Not rookie, Ryouma noticed. Not even though the kid had probably worn the Hunter's mask a year longer than he had. Was the deference due to age, height, injury? Or just to the mistaken assumption that the only ones insane enough to slide down the banisters in ANBU HQ were the veterans who'd already cracked?
( He took the last flight down to the basement the normal way, just in case. ) |
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| Mission: Blow Things Up [Closed to Katsuko and Kotetsu] |
[Nov. 12th, 2008|08:27 pm] |
[Takes place after Justify My Reasons]
Katsuko slapped another explosion tag on the back of an unsuspecting guard and translocated to the rendezvous point, laughing under her breath. Poor bastard. It was just his luck that he was guarding this particular warehouse tonight. She waited, crouched in the tree branch, until the distant boom of the explosion tag going off startled the other guards awake. Grinning ferally under her mask, she slapped her hands together and spread her chakra out into making nearly twenty substantial clones. They flitted off into the night to wreak havoc on the smugglers' base. With that done, she leaned back against the tree branch and waited for the kid to finish with his part of the mission and report back. |
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sleepy
confused
angry
amused