| Restlessness and Fury [closed to Ryouma and Tsume] | [Jul. 2nd, 2008|02:55 am] |
[[Second installment of the Mission of DOOM. Takes place immediately following Drunk on Dreams.]]
They didn't find the bandits that day. They did find evidence of an old attack: a stray arrow still lodged in a tree branch, splashes of dried blood painted so deeply into creviced tree bark that the rain could not wash it out, a severed hand rotting in the lee of a rock. The bandits had cleaned up their mess casually, presumably leaving the bodies behind; Inuzuka noses reported that the corpses had lain where they'd fallen for almost a week before someone from the village recovered them. Rain had washed away any tracks and any scent the bandits had left behind.
"We'll get 'em anyway," Ryouma told the forgotten hand, as he used a tiny earth jutsu to bury it. Rotting it away might have been easier, but that was for enemies. That was for the guys who'd done this.
They scouted for the rest of the afternoon, finding a deserted campsite, a couple of shallow graves, and nothing else. If the bandits were out there, they were well-hidden. It would take something more than a couple of ninja to draw them out.
So it was a good thing Konoha had sent ANBU.
As evening fell, Tsume and Kuromaru widened their scouting pattern, and Ryouma took to the road. The fifteen kilometers to Fujioka vanished quickly at a ninja's ground-eating pace. By supper-time a simple henge had him strolling the streets under someone else's face, looking for dinner and a good place to drop rumors.
He ordered three dinners in three separate restaurants that night. The ramen--and the pie--he ate. Both steaks vanished when no one was looking his way, and he slid the sealing scroll back into his (concealed) hip pouch with a (concealed) grin. The bars, where he ordered a total of thirteen rounds without drinking a drop, were much less pleasant. He focused on feigning progressive drunkenness, on babbling his story to anyone who'd listen, and on not throwing up when the reek of cheap alcohol seared his sinuses and his memory.
He did kill the man who was beating a whore in the alley behind the third bar, but that only marginally improved his temper.
By midnight, though, everyone in Fujioka knew that the merchant Sasaki Ichigo was expecting a caravan of dyes and spices--and, he'd hinted widely, a great deal of the coin his investors were pouring into his business--to arrive tomorrow on the road from Hirai port. Half of the men he'd told had warned him about the bandit problem and advised him not to be surprised if the caravan didn't make it through. Some of the rest wondered aloud what kind of idiot sent a caravan without shinobi guards.
A handful of drinkers in the seediest bar had looked very thoughtful.
Near one o'clock in the morning, Sasaki Ichigo staggered out of his fourth bar and began to reel his way home. Half a mile later, he stumbled into a shadowed alley and never came out.
Ryouma took to the roofs, and then to the trees. The clean night air cleared his head; the wind whistling through his hair restored his mood. He was still grinning when he found Tsume's new campsite. |
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