| [Mar. 5th, 2014|03:09 am] |
Tempting fate.
Kakashi looked at Ryouma. Even with the height of the arm-rest lifting Kakashi up, Ryouma’s spine was long enough that they were still almost eye-to-eye. Kakashi barely had to dip his chin down. “Let’s hope.”
It had been too long since he’d had the chance to go steel-to-steel against a real challenge, scorpion-dog demons aside. Natural disasters didn’t have the vicious cunning of a real shinobi; they were just dangerous and tiring.
Ryouma grinned.
At his desk, Genma twitched and made a religious-looking warding sign. “If you call for a tiger, you will likely get eaten,” he quoted.
Kakashi touched the tip of his tongue to the edge of sharp teeth, and smiled. “Superstitious, lieutenant?”
That won him a brief, narrow look before Genma returned to his Bingo Book. “No. Experienced.”
If they racked their lives up side by side, Kakashi was pretty sure he knew who had more hours in the field. But Genma had been in ANBU longer, and there was doubtless something in that.
Still.
Kakashi stretched his back and glanced aside at Ryouma and Katsuko, flicking hidden hand-signs against his left thigh, out of the lieutenant's eyeline. ANBU-sign didn’t have the words he needed; he had to fingerspell out the individual kana. Let’s be tigers.
Ryouma snarled softly, deep in his throat, and looked pleased. “Just decided what I’m gonna get for my next tattoo.”
Katsuko smiled thinly, like a slow-burning threat.
This was his team.
One in five didn’t survive the first year intact, Minato had said. Right now, the odds were probably a little worse. Ayane’s hadn’t made it a month.
Don’t let yours be one of them.
That was going to be a little trickier with a split-mission, but on the balance between Katsuko and Raidou, and Genma and Ryouma, Kakashi had been given the puzzle piece more prone to trouble anyway. As long as the lieutenant didn’t get stabbed again, and Ryouma managed to avoid complete collapse…
This was actually a mission that suited them. Ryouma’s whole skillset was geared towards messy slaughter, and from what Kakashi had seen of Genma, infiltration and tactical support fell neatly into the lieutenant's wheelhouse. Both of them had an affinity for fire.
Kakashi could handle any surprises Kirigakure wanted to spit at them.
And the captain had given him licence to plot out a road-map for both sides of equation. There was enough Intel to build in a solid contingency plan or two—though in Katsuko and Raidou’s case, it would mostly be ‘detonate everything and run’.
When he looked up, Raidou was watching him with a thoughtful smile. Kakashi ignored that. “Any requests for supplies? I know you all need new armor.”
“The QM should have all my gear ready,” Ryouma said. “I was going to pick it up today, anyway. Extra ration bars? And soldier pills, if you can get ‘em.”
“I picked up my new armor yesterday, but I could use a box of number twenty senbon,” Genma said. “Get the ones with grooved tips if they have them. If they're out of 20's, get 24's.” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out his medkit, perused it briefly, then got up to hand it over. “Tell Morita-san to replace everything I’m low on. He knows what I like to stock. And I’ll need a roll of level three exploding tags.”
Grooved senbon were almost exclusively used by poison-artists.
Kakashi nodded once and raised an eyebrow at Raidou.
“Got my armor, but Morita-san still owes me a replacement mask,” Raidou said. “Standard set of kunai and shuriken wouldn’t go amiss, and see if he has an updated copy of the area map—I know some of the old war bunkers were pulled out recently.”
“Two copies,” said Genma.
Raidou tossed across his med-kit. It was smaller than Genma’s, but just as well-worn. “Standard restock for that, too.”
“Tell Morita-san I said hi,” Katsuko said, with a lazy wave. |
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