| [Feb. 1st, 2008|01:08 am] |
The mission briefing was informative and dull, just like all meetings with Intel were. Well, except for the ones where they wanted to know about why your mission had gone up in flames. Those were excruciating and you usually needed a stiff drink afterwards, if for no other reason than to toast the memory of whomever had died on it.
Kakashi seemed more alert, if no less grumpy. Great. A mission with a sourpuss was always such a joy. Sometimes Ginta really wished he could bring headphones along and listed to music. Alas, the days of missions that were utter cakewalks were long gone. He hadn't had a mission where listening to music was an option since before the Fox.
It was getting on towards sunset by the time he and Kakashi actually set out on the trail of their missing nin. Intel had said he'd been tracked as far as Ichinohe in Rain Country. So that meant crossing borders into potentially hostile territory. Rain was still a kind of lawless place, with barely normalized relations with the rest of the shinobi world. But they didn't have to worry about that just yet. First they had to cross several hundred kilometers of cold, wintry Fire country. And ascend to the high plateau that marked the border with Rain.
Elevation. In winter. Ginta was glad he'd remembered to stop at the quartermaster's and get one of those little crinkly thermal blankets. Not, he hoped, that they'd be camping out. After all, there were plenty of inns along the way, and the guy they were after was known to have been staying in a series of run-down little lodging houses as he moved cross-country. |
|