| Off the Reservation [Ginta, Arakaki, Kakashi] | [Jan. 1st, 2011|09:54 am] |
[Takes place May 3, approximately a month following All My Regrets Are Nothing New, three weeks weeks following This Time It's Different and two weeks following Hair of the Dog.]
Ginta was concerned. In fact, more than concerned. In fact, if you considered the pace at which he was limping down the hall, he was downright alarmed. He'd been home in his own apartment for three weeks, and in all that time he'd seen no sign whatsoever of Ryouma or Kakashi. Which, well, that was their business and he was staying out of it from now on, but they were his friends, dammit, whether or not either one of them thought so. So he'd been keeping an eye out for them, and not just because he knew Kakashi was still recovering and Ryouma was playing a dangerous game with chakra pill abuse.
The thing was, both apartment doors stayed locked, and both men were listed as "on mission." And not with one another. But there was at least a little flicker in Kakashi's status: he'd be "on mission" and then "in debriefing" and then "available" for half a day, before "on mission" went back up by his name on the status board. Ryouma was just continuously on mission, but the date he was expected back had been changed, Ginta was sure, a couple of times, before it was obliterated with a heavy black censor bar and replaced with "classified."
When he analyzed the other missions and who was assigned to them, though, it painted a disturbing picture. Because in amongst the various assignments that composed ANBU's mission load, there was a flavor of urgency, and a suspicious pattern of team make-up, with non-ANBU Inuzuka and Aburame trackers assigned on teams with field medics and heavy muscle, over and over, in little four and five day bursts. It looked like — disturbingly like — a search and rescue operation. And Ryouma was the only agent on that board who was neither deep cover Intel nor S-ranked jounin whose return date was classified.
It was when, on a bright early May morning, Ginta checked and found Ryouma's status itself had been changed from "on mission" to "classified", that he'd really started to worry. Then he'd gone digging. He had time on his hands, with nothing to do but work on regaining his strength and stamina now that the cast was finally off his leg, and there was only so much training he could do in a day before it started to hurt enough he wanted to reach for a bottle of pills. So he had both the time and a lot of connections — in Intel, in the mission assignment office, in documents and forgeries, in mission support services — that he used to put together a nightmare puzzle.
Ryouma was missing, had been missing since the fifteenth of April, and there was no sign of him.
Ginta went with a sick heart to do what he should have done three weeks ago: tell Arakaki his concerns about Ryouma's chakra-pill overuse and mental stability. And volunteer to be on the next rescue mission. He expected a dressing down for having withheld critical information; he didn't expect a fight.
"We know," Arakaki told him, when he said he was worried about how many soldier pills Ryouma was using. "I'm glad you're voicing your concerns, but we do know. Medics and the quartermaster keep a pretty close eye on that sort of thing, Ginta. And you've hardly been in a position to do much more than take care of yourself recently."
It was strangely humiliating.
"As for Ryouma's whereabouts, that's classified. But if, and I stress that word, a search team were sent out for him, you would not be on it."
"Why not?" Ginta demanded. "I'm a decent tracker, and I know Ryouma, probably better than anyone else here."
"Besides Kakashi?" Arakaki pointed out. Like rubbing salt into a raw wound.
"Besides Kakashi. Fuck you, sir. So send us both out after him. Have you even told Kakashi he's missing?"
"Agent Tousaki's status, Sakamoto, is classified. I'll ignore the insubordination, but you are still on medical leave until you pass your fitness evals, which I know for a fact you will not pass until you lose that limp."
Ginta started to protest further, but Arakaki cut him short with a curt, "Dismissed." The director's eyes flashed a warning as his hand snapped a salute.
Ginta stiffened, snapped a salute back, and left. As he headed back down the hall, he felt his gaze drawn magnetically to the mission status board. 'Tousaki Ryouma: classified' he read, but next to 'Hatake Kakashi' was the word 'assigned.' Assigned to a mission, but still here.
Taking the maps and scrolls and papers he'd accumulated and created in his own paper search for Ryouma, Ginta hurried back to the third floor, but not to his own apartment; he went to Kakashi's door. |
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