| [Jan. 22nd, 2010|08:48 pm] |
"Already started," Genma answered with a nod at his airing bedding and readied equipment. "And I take-- take it back. You're a com--plete ass." He watched Kakashi stalk off with his food, with his shoulders up around his ears and a scowl that could have cut trees down.
What the hell was his problem?
Genma sucked the last quail bone clean with a disgusted sigh. Kakashi was, in the light of day, the same damn SOB he'd always been. It was just the mission enforcing a false camaraderie that had led him to think otherwise for even a moment. Just the strangeness of having had to worry about him, as a medic.
With the quail gone, he turned to the rice, but it formed a lump in his throat that wouldn't go down. Genma reached for his canteen and missed the grab entirely. On the second try he got it, sloshing water over his hand. How in fuck's name had he gotten more jittery now, after eating, than he had been on an empty stomach?
The next bite of rice was just as difficult to swallow, and by the third he gave up. He'd eaten most of it already, anyway. He dumped the leftovers into the fire, rinsed the bowl out with his canteen, and stood.
The ground lurched under his feet.
For a heart-pounding moment Genma scanned for an enemy, for some sign that it was an earth jutsu. There was none. In fact, there was almost no sign that anything had happened at all. Birds still sang, Kakashi didn't come racing back. Earthquake, maybe? They were prone to them in Earth country, Genma recalled. There had been a devastating one near the border with Waterfall, not far from where they were now, before Genma was born. Konoha had sent shinobi to aid Iwagakure in clearing the debris and caring for the injured--one of the last acts of alliance between the two villages before diplomatic ties had been broken. Before the Third War.
He went back to work, taking down the tents. When Kakashi finally reappeared, looking just as displeased as he had when he departed, Genma frowned. "Did you feel the earth--quake?" |
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