| Heaven's Got a Plan For You |
[Jul. 24th, 2013|09:43 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 18th, several hours after Dangerous Game]
Even though Namikaze Minato was only about a decade older than him, Raidou felt exactly an inch tall kneeling in front of the Hokage’s desk, waiting for judgement to fall on the back of his neck.
“At ease, captain,” said Yondaime-sama.
Raidou took that to mean stand up, not collapse on your face and attempt to hide in the rug. He found his feet, standing straight-backed, and slapped a respectful salute against his scarlet ANBU tattoo. “Commanders.”
Sagara-sama sat at the Hokage’s right, like a favored partner. The vice-commander stood on the Hokage’s left, back a pace, like a much less favored step-child.
“Namiashi Raidou, captaining Team Six,” Yondaime-sama said. He glanced down, checking an open file in front of him. “Lieutenant Shiranui Genma. As members, Ueno Katsuko, Hatake Kakashi, and Tousaki Ryouma.” He looked back up, a faint smile curving his handsome mouth. “Good luck, captain. I have no doubt you're up to the task.”
( Raidou couldn’t have heard that right. ) |
|
|
| A Man Who is Not Afraid |
[Jul. 7th, 2013|03:36 pm] |
[Takes place in September of Yondaime Year 4, about six months before Ryouma's ANBU Trials. Warnings: NC-17, contains slash, graphic sex, and consensual BDSM/kink. Please read with an awareness of your own comfort level.]
Raidou made it home with blood in his hair, grit between his teeth, and a powerful desire for a shower, shave, and some kind of shindig.
Except no one said shindig anymore, so scratch that last one.
The barracks’ water pressure was temperamental at best, but it ran hot and long and very, very red before he was done with it. Heartblood spiralling down the drain. Well, there were worse ways to end up, he thought, making a clone to scrub his back. One day he’d be the crimson under someone else’s nails.
“Are you having a moment with yourself?” his clone asked, picking a ragged bit off the sponge.
“I might be,” Raidou said. “If myself would shut up.”
( The clone raked through his hair, stripping out dried blood and other unmentionable things until Raidou felt re-sterilized and a little scalped. ) |
|
|
| Dangerous Game |
[Jul. 6th, 2013|11:39 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 18, the day after Run, Rabbit, Run and Take Me Back to the Start.]
Ryouma woke in the dark hours after midnight to a blue and white mask bending over him and a hand on his throat.
"I moved the kunai under your pillow," a low alto voice said, very quietly.
His good hand was under his pillow already, long fingers flattening. No cold brush of steel, just a tiny slit in the bottom sheet where the blade must have snagged as she'd drawn it out. He drew a slow breath.
"You didn't trigger my wards," he said.
"I had a key." The hand left his throat. She straightened, slim and straight in ANBU black and bone. The mask caught the yellow spill of light from the streetlamp below the window; better lit, its fragmented blue accents still didn't resolve into any recognizable animal. Maybe the ANBU quartermaster wasn't much of a naturalist.
( She said, 'Tousaki Ryouma, the Hokage requires your presence.' ) |
|
|
| Gone to Ground |
[Jun. 9th, 2013|10:26 pm] |
[Takes place in the early morning hours of Yondaime Year 5, April 17, the morning after Run, Rabbit, Run]
Genma was glad he’d taken that soldier pill the night before. The intensive debriefing they’d just concluded was easily as exhausting as the originally planned night of chasing ANBU candidates would have been. And in many ways a good deal more harrowing, given the stakes involved.
He and Raidou had gone over the incident—every step they’d taken, every interaction they’d had with the dead traitor Akiyama and the two injured candidates—while the Hokage listened grave-faced. Yondaime-sama and Commander Sagara didn’t stay in the debriefing long; they had defenses to muster and an investigation in the field to conduct before the snake sannin’s trail went cold, if there really even was a connection to Orochimaru. But if there was, it was a threat no one dared take lightly.
( Vice-commander Kuroda and a pair of calm debriefer-interrogators from Intel had taken over when the commander and Hokage left. ) |
|
|
| Field of Daggers |
[Jun. 9th, 2013|08:06 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 15, immediately following Choose Your Blade.]
Raidou wished ANBU’s commitment to drama involved less translocation. Space-time jutsu tended to give him a nosebleed.
It took a moment for the candidates to finish filtering away; a few hung back, lingering on the scorched training field. Raidou could understand that impulse. His Trials had been three years ago, but he still remembered the vibrating impatience to get to the second stage—and the tiny bit of terror that said, oh god don’t fuck up.
He was pretty sure he’d never looked that baby-faced, though.
When the last candidate left, he stepped down from the ridgeline of ANBU’s HQ’s roof, crouching on the edge. Rain dripped from the bottom of his mask.
The HQ was built behind the Hokage’s monument, surrounded by the ANBU-only training fields. They shared space with T&I and the barracks, plus a few other buildings. From here, he had a prime view of the whole village, framed through the spikes of Yondaime’s stony hair. A prime view of the other ANBU, too; most of them were clustered below, scattered around the buildings and in the woods.
( Booted feet stepped forward on his left. ) |
|
|
| Choose Your Blade |
[Jun. 9th, 2013|07:17 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 15]
The first day of the ANBU trials started before dawn.
Fifty kilometers, run in an hour. Most of them came in under that, of course—they were jounin—but there was no rest or water before the slim, iron-grey ANBU commander barked an order and masked veterans dropped out of the trees for bare-handed sparring, no chakra allowed. Jutsu came later, as a grey drizzle veiled the risen sun. Timed kawarimi, distance translocation, area-effect genjutsu, shadow clones. Another round of sparring, with blades this time. And then a panting moment of blessed rest, dropping down onto the sparse patches of dry ground under the trees while one candidate after another demonstrated their special jutsu on the muddy field under the ANBU commander's masked and merciless gaze.
Tousaki Ryouma had a cut on one shoulder and mud in his hair. He didn't think the cut was bad; it hurt to lift his arm, but everything still worked, which was all he really needed. Probably. There might be weightlifting next.
He sealed his palm to the tear in his sleeve and rolled his shoulder, testingly. Pain stabbed red and white, but the warm seep into muddy fabric didn't break into a surge. The cut felt long but shallow; a short sword glancing off the padded shoulder of his flak vest as he turned and ducked, slicing into the meat of his upper arm instead of his neck.
He'd only had a single kunai, like all the other candidates. He hadn't actually drawn blood, but that frog-masked veteran would be limping for a week.
( Probably, Ryouma decided, he could allow himself to be smug. ) |
|
|
| One for the Road |
[Jun. 8th, 2013|09:16 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 13]
For the glory that was supposed to be springtime, April had stayed colder, rained longer, and made everyone grumpier than the happiest month had any right to. But the cherry trees, in despite of it all, had bloomed at last, and there were more than a few blossom viewing parties going on under canopies of pink and white petals on the banks of Konoha’s river.
Genma was heading towards one of them himself, glad for a day off before proctoring the ANBU trials, when he heard raised voices coming from a darkened glen off the main path. There was plenty of noise coming from revelers—the laughter and chatter of civilians and shinobi drinking and picnicking in groups under the trees filled the park—but this was different.
Someone called someone else a tightwad bastard. Drunken voices escalated.
( “You owe me five-thousand fucking ryou!”
) |
|
|
| From Here On Out |
[Jun. 2nd, 2013|10:19 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime Year 5, April 10]
“You know,” Takahashi Isamu said, watching Katsuko and Raidou from the safety of the tree-line. “Most people play cards when they’re bored.”
“Dude, we’re ANBU,” Momoi Mitarou said. “Could be worse. One of them could be an Uchiha.”
Katsuko ducked underneath Raidou’s swing, feeling his sword whistle an inch over her head, and slammed the butt of her katana into his stomach. He staggered back, parrying her when she went in for a strike at his knees. They leapt apart and circled each other, searching for an opening.
She grinned at Raidou. “Nearly got you there, lieutenant.”
( “Did you?” Raidou shot back. “Because I seem to have all my limbs.” ) |
|
|