| [Apr. 20th, 2008|03:05 am] |
"The mission," Genma said, in a voice as dead as his comrades, "proceeded without incident until the fourth day." Four. An unlucky number. So unlucky. Why did they send out teams of four when it was a jinx? Of course ANBU were the death squad. Assassins and killers every one of them. They'd kill to keep from breaking their cover, kill to take out a specified target, kill to save a comrade, kill because it was the mission. Four was a natural number for ANBU, if you thought about it.
"Ayako sent Nobuki and Kakashi to recon the enemy position; she and I hung back, mapped out avenues of possible flight if our targets spooked."
They'd spooked alright. Somehow they'd caught sight of one of the ninja. Caught sight of Nobuki or Kakashi, and sent their own meat squad after their pursuers. The first clue Genma'd had that something was going fantastically wrong was the sound of voices. Shouting voices he hadn't recognized. He'd turned from where he'd been laying a trap of concealed wire and spring-triggered shuriken and been thrown against a tree by the force of an explosion behind him. More voices, screaming instead of shouting, and another flare as a fireball had gone off, someone's fire jutsu, he hadn't known whose. There had been smoke and his ears had been ringing. Blood had trickled down the side of his face from one ruptured eardrum, and he hadn't know where his friends were, where the enemies lay. Who was alive, who had died.
His ears still felt muffled and wrong, stuffed full of cotton wool, even though the medic had healed them. It would take a few days for his hearing to come back to normal, he'd told him, with that same sad look on his face. As if he doubted any agent who'd come back from a mission like Genma's ever achieved "normal" again.
"The recon team was spotted," he said, carefully not naming Kakashi. Privately, he was sure it had been the younger agent who'd made the error. Kakashi was arrogant. Took chances. He'd seen him do it plenty of times on that mission. "And the target had evidently linked up with reinforcements. There were..." He tried to think. He hadn't been able to count. Had had to take Kakashi's word for it as to how many enemy they'd spotted. By the time the enemy had gotten back to Genma and Ayako's position, there had been at least seven of them. That didn't count the ones Kakashi and Nobuki had already engaged. If they'd engaged any. If they hadn't just sent them straight at their rear-guard comrades.
"There were at least seven," he said finally. "The recon team was..." careless. Wrong. Half dead now. Kakashi had survived. Had he been seen? "Overrun." |
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