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[Nov. 29th, 2016|09:38 pm]

tousaki_ryouma
Ryouma resisted, just barely, the impulse to spit.

He'd managed to keep his distance from Fukuda so far. Team Thirteen had primary custody, and Kuroda preferred assigning Ryouma to scutwork anyway. But Fukuda looked...different, from how he remembered her. Paler, thinner, her blond ponytail chopped off into a short easy-to-tend bob, her mouth etched with fine lines of pain. She wore the same dark, loose-cut pants and wrapped shirt as the Konoha nin, empty sleeve pinned over her stump. Unlike the ANBU, she carried no hidden weapons or scrolls. On the run, and on the junk, she'd kept her gaze fixed on the horizon.

Now, with the rocky soil of her own country under her feet, her shoulders straightened. "Your timid ship-captain lost us time," she said. "We'll have to run." The sharp-tooth smile tugged at her lips again. "Watch your step, Konoha."

Kakashi's eye narrowed, a glimmer in the darkness, but Kuroda said dismissively, "Lead, Kiri."

The squad reformed, three interlocking triangle shapes with Fukuda and Eizo at the point and the Intel agents protected towards the center. They ran, or tried to. The vegetation was a tangle of low trees and dense shrubs, with no branches high or thick enough to hold a shinobi's weight. Knotted roots caught at their feet, and jagged spurs of rock struck up unexpectedly out of ferns to bruise their shins.

Shredding clouds let a little moonlight slip through, then hid it again. They left the wave-cut line of the cliffs and plunged abruptly into a steep ravine, clambering over rocks and splashing through a stream too thin to chakra-walk. At least there were no trees, here.

Fog found them again, cold and clammy, and their clothes clung to their skin. Wet boots chafed. Ryouma was fairly certain he was rubbing a blister.

The ravine cut off at the base of a waterfall. Fukuda led them scrambling up slick rock and plunged into jungled hills. Once or twice, as they crested yet another ridge, Ryouma saw the dim watch-lights of villages a long way off.

"Thought Kirigakure wasn't on this island," he muttered to Genma, when he had breath to spare. "Why the hell couldn't we start closer to the access point, instead of running from one side of the damn thing to the other?"

"We couldn't just sail around the island and drop anchor in the closest harbor," Genma reminded him. "Even if the captain had been willing to take us that close, you think Water Country villagers won't report?"

A seafaring junk in a fishing village probably was more noticeable than a bunch of suspiciously young and healthy strangers hiking through isolated forest. Ryouma wished they'd bludgeoned the captain into bringing them in a little closer, anyway. Maybe Fukuda just wanted to run them all to exhaustion before she sprang her trap.

"Not enjoying the scenery, Tousaki?" Kakashi asked mildly, resettling the elastic band of the dark cotton allergy mask around his ear. With his dyed hair and civilian clothes he looked like some wanna-be civvie delinquent, and Ryouma told him so.

"Settle down," Raidou rumbled, behind them.

Ryouma gritted his teeth, and kept running.

A sharp ridge led them down from the island's spine toward the eastern coast. The sky began to grey toward dawn, and Fukuda picked up the pace, hurtling down the treacherous slope toward a thin strand of pebbled beach and a rock-strewn cove.

"High tide," Ryouma heard one of the Intel agents murmur to the other as they reached the shore. Yuuhi Kurenai, the pretty one, who seemed friendlier with Raidou than Ryouma liked. She freed her curling hair from its high ponytail, ran her hands through it, and began to braid it swiftly into a tight rope.

Uchiha Satomi uncorked her canteen, drank, and passed it to Fukuda. "You set a good pace."

"I had good reason," Fukuda said, coldly. But she took the canteen.

"Five minutes," Kuroda told the rest of the squad, breaking a rat bar out of his pocket. He paced down the shore, eyeing the waves. "Get ready to swim."
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