| Sacred Balance |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|02:41 am] |
[Immediately follows Sacred Duty]
Kuromaru woke up at the first noise. He slept lightly on missions; that was his job as the alpha male, no matter who else was on watch. He rolled up to his feet in one sleek move, turning to look where the noise was coming from.
Raidou's face was pulled, drawn. He smelled bad. The bitter smell of fear came off him, slowly growing. In a moment he'd wake, and if he was still panicked--
Kuromaru glanced at the children lying helplessly. The decision was made before he ever realized what he was deciding on. In one swift movement, faster than any non-ninja canine could do, he slid over Raidou and dove, forepaws pinning the man's shoulders, hindpaws his wrists, teeth at his throat. He held, keeping the man from flailing and hitting the cubs, careful not to break the skin but jaw tight on the human's windpipe, like Kuromaru would do for any other canine that he needed to submit without a fight. |
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| Sacred Duty [Closed to Raidou and Tsume] |
[Jun. 27th, 2008|03:49 am] |
[Follows immediately after Sacred Rituals]
Raidou slowed, and then settled down onto his haunches. The shadows of scrubby plantlife broke up his shape, making him almost invisible in the lowering gloom of evening. In the distance, a few lights were beginning to burn.
"We need to lose insignia," he muttered, looking at Tsume, thinking. "No Leaf symbols. No ANBU marks. Nothing that'll give them ammo to start a war. Your clan marks," he added, turning to look at Tsume. "Fangs, claws... mask, too. We'll need to leave our masks. Or hide them. And armour..." |
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| Sacred Lines [closed to Tsume and Raidou] |
[Jun. 25th, 2008|06:27 pm] |
[Takes place two weeks after the end of the Three's a Crowd... thread and Get Your Story Straight. Five days after Attack of the Ankle Biters.]
The door to the little cabin was cracked open, letting afternoon light spill in, turning dust motes to fools' gold and streaking a beam across the warped wooden floor. Cold air ghosted up from the holes in the flooring planks, breezes that shouldn't have existed sliding around Tsume's ankles like cool fingers. It was a miserable hideout in the chilly weather, but still better than a cave. She could only be grateful they had a bunker on the far edge of Fire Country, though grateful was difficult to remember when the pump was so cold her skin had to be dragged off it, and the slanted roof let rain water dribble in.
She'd be glad when her back-up arrived. There wasn't any hurry, really; the demon lurking at the edge of the other country was only a minor demon, she could tell by scent and spoor, and while the rumors might be true and it might be preying on the nearby village, that wasn't a Fire Country village. In fact, Konoha wasn't even getting paid for this mission: keeping Fire Country free from demons--minor or otherwise--was in their own best interest. A single quiet whisper of something demonic was enough to send any available ninja out to investigate.
( This time, it had been her and Kuromaru. ) |
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| Get Your Story Straight [closed to Ryouma, Raidou, Genma] |
[Jun. 11th, 2008|10:36 pm] |
[[takes place two days after Three is a Crowd. Four is Salvation.]]
Inside ANBU Headquarters, information spread through a precise and rule-regulated path. Intel field agents collected it; Intel internal agents distilled it; Oita Gennosuke, the director of Intel, read their reports and briefed Arakaki Hisoka, who personally briefed the Sandaime Hokage.
But if anyone really wanted to know what was going on, they had to talk to the chuunin who staffed the HQ Mission Desk.
Ryouma was there now, perched on the edge of the desk, swinging one leg and gossiping happily. Reiko was happily married and eight months pregnant, but she was also cheerful and funny, and she loved gossip as she loved breath. She and Ryouma were speculating vividly on the exact nature of the rumored relationship between two Hunters--Ryouma thought they were sleeping together, and Reiko wasn't so sure--when ( a man in the casual clothes of an Intel agent ducked his head in. ) |
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| Three is a Crowd. Four is a Pain in the Tail. [closed to Tsume, Raidou, Genma] |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|06:53 pm] |
Directly follows/continuation of Three is a Crowd. Four is a Massacre.
Time passed.
Kuromaru wasn't great at telling time beyond animal instinct. The storm fouled his ability to measure with the accuracy he needed to know how many minutes were sliding by. The watch helped, though he found it difficult to read. He peered at it, puzzling out hands and numbers, waiting for the right time.
She'd been gone too long. Not longer than three hours, but longer than he believed the trail would hold. Two hours passed, and he watched the freezing storm with mounting anxiety. They wouldn't find her in this weather, if something had gone wrong. She would hole up. She knew how to den in, stay safe until movement was possible again. He realized he was whining and stood, pacing to the door and outside, trying to find her trail just beyond the ice where Genma had tossed dirty water.
He couldn't, of course. Her trail was long since dead. Kuromaru howled. Nothing responded except wind and lashing rain. He returned to the fire, eying the men absently, pondering Raidou. The watch ticked. One ear flicked toward the entranceway.
( It had been too long. ) |
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| Three is a Crowd. Four is a Massacre. [Closed to Genma, Raidou, Tsume] |
[Apr. 5th, 2008|09:08 pm] |
Backdated to before Thicker Than Water. Set after the It Takes... threads, and the morning after Stories We Tell. In response to this mission.
It seemed like a fairly easy mission, all in all. Oh, sure, the fighting was going to be a tin of bloodworms, but at least it didn't involve searching out missing scrolls or working undercover. Find the ball of cat turd who'd killed their ninja, kill him back, and come home.
( These were the kinds of missions Tsume rather liked. ) |
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| Freely Given [closed to Genma & Raidou] |
[Mar. 13th, 2008|02:27 am] |
Backstory, set in November. Immediately follows Fair Trade, Brother
Genma didn't remember a lot about his father. He'd died when Genma was only seven, so while he had some solid memories, they were mostly the sort that a child forms. Impressions as much as events. One thing he was sure of was a memory of his father waking him in the early morning by pulling the blankets away and lifting his sleepy son from his bed with the phrase, "Up and at em, Genma-chan. No rest for the wicked, you know." As a child Genma never quite understood why his dad called them wicked, but he had no doubt that his father meant both himself and his son when he said that, and he meant it with affection.
Genma wasn't sure why he thought of it now, but it was certainly apt. He'd been asleep maybe an hour when the agony of returning sensation to his frozen hands and feet broke through half-formed dreams. The first thing he was aware of after the pain in his extremities, was Raidou, right there, with one arm under Genma's head and the other thrown around his shoulders, pulling him in like he was afraid Genma might slip from his grasp. Funny, since Genma was really the one who was afraid Raidou was going to try to run away again.
His feet burned and itched and were an agony. The bones within ached. And what happened for his feet went double for his hands. It was odd how clear-headed he felt thinking about it. How he could tell himself I've had worse; it was worse in Iwa, and not have it set off the shaking, nauseating flashbacks pain like that sometimes did. He wanted a painkiller. He wanted it to stop. He didn't dare get up, because Raidou was still asleep, and undoubtedly would be hurting just as much when he woke. More because his ankle--broken or sprained in that desperate flight the night before--would be screaming now. Didn't dare wake him up because for the moment Raidou's scarred face was at peace.
Flashbacks, Genma thought, and could feel ever single scar on his hands, ever single mended bone, every single regrown nerve. That had to have been behind Raidou's break. Something like that. What else could drive a man so mad with grief he'd run for miles barefoot through the falling snow? |
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| Fair Trade, Brother. [Closed to Genma & Raidou] |
[Mar. 7th, 2008|12:46 am] |
Backstory, set in November
Raidou woke up hot. His skin was burning, his head was splitting, and if he didn't move fast the jounin would hit him again. Rake his face with claws drenched in caustic and blister the flesh from his bones. Eat away any chance he had of being useful to Konoha. It was the war and he was only fourteen, but he was a chuunin and he could be useful. He had to be useful.
( The jounin was going to hit him again ) |
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| Thicker Than Water [closed to Ryouma, Kakashi, Genma, Raidou] |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|02:23 am] |
Ryouma wasn't quite sure how they made it up the stairs. Obviously it happened, but--like a few too many other things about the past day--it lost itself somewhere in a dim fog of dull pain and dried blood. Drying blood. He'd dripped on the forms the mission-desk chuunin gave him to sign, the 43-A for Mission Accomplished, Personal Injury; and he knew damn well he shouldn't have been signing them, because he couldn't see clearly enough to read even if he knew the kanji, but Kakashi's left hand was blistered and burned and his right hand was swaddled in brown-stained bandages, and somehow they couldn't get by without a signature.
The report could wait. The report could damn well wait, Ryouma had snarled, and the blood masking his face and the broken lips curling back from his teeth must've been persuasive enough, because the chuunin stammered an assent and reached for another file.
Then it got hazy again, and by the time Ryouma managed to blink the mist away he was lurching against the door to the men's showers, leaving dark stains where his side hit the doorframe. The door swung half-open, revealing a long, pale, bare expanse of tile under harsh fluorescent light. Some thoughtful janitor had left a stack of towels on the bench in the changing room. Ryouma made a low ragged sound in his throat that might've been a laugh.
"All ready 'n waiting for us," he breathed. "How nice."
Then his arm slipped off Kakashi's shoulders, and he took a nosedive for the floor. |
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| Different Kind of Dance [closed to Tsume and Raidou] [NC-17] |
[Mar. 2nd, 2008|01:26 am] |
Set six years previous, a year before the Kyuubi attack. WARNING: very dark material. Discretion advised.
( She wasn't sure how long she'd been drinking. ) |
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| It Takes Your Last Saving Grace [Closed to Sumire, Genma and Raidou] |
[Feb. 28th, 2008|01:35 am] |
[Following "It Takes Time to Recover"]
In the grand scheme of life, Sumire knew three things as absolute fact: she would always have great hair, Shibata was a dick, and Shiranui Genma couldn't come back from a mission without something going disastrously wrong. In fact, that she had to hear he'd returned from his mission through the grapevine rather then to have him show up on her doorstep with a bag of prawns for seafood curry had sent her into a tizzy. She'd "gently" relieved Shirokawa of his debriefing duty, and slid on her long black coat. Shirokawa wouldn't mind anyway, she knew. He absolutely hated Genma after that one party two and a half years ago. Really, by slipping the minor laxative in his coffee, she was doing him a favor.
Surely, she was just that nice a woman. He could thank her later.
The sound of her heels against the hospital tile sounded like rocket fire, and the closer she came to the room on the so-called Suicide Floor, the more irritated she got. It didn't even matter if any of this was actually his fault or not; he'd broken his promise. After getting the assurances from the nurse that her subjects were awake and mostly amiable (a state she was bound and determined to fix), Sumire opened the hospital door and looked at the two recovering shinobi.
"This," she stated as she swept into their room, "doesn't look anything like a 'light wounding', Genma." Sumire frowned at him, her lips a thin line. |
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| It Takes Time to Recover. [closed to Genma & Raidou] |
[Feb. 24th, 2008|03:59 am] |
Coda to the It Takes an Assassin Mission, immediately follows It Takes a Strong Sense of Irony
By the time the medics had gotten Genma and Raidou separated--not an easy task--loaded onto stretchers, and taken to hospital, Raidou's laughing fit had deteriorated to full-blown delirium. If anything, that just made the world a funnier place. He was fine when they took his mask, checked his eyes and talked over his head. Laughing when they felt his forehead and touched his skin and brushed his scar. Happy to watch the walls melt and the colours blur and the airwaves make interesting patterns that became words that became numbers that became leaves...
( He was fine with everything until he turned his head and realized Genma wasn't there ) |
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| It Takes a Strong Sense of Irony [closed to Genma and Raidou] |
[Feb. 23rd, 2008|04:20 am] |
Concluding chapter of the It Takes an Assassin Mission, immediately follows It Takes a Will of Iron
Sleep was a healing thing. A nap was refreshing, a good night's sleep could set your whole day right. Sleeping for fifteen hours wasn't nearly enough to completely heal them, but by the time Raidou woke and Genma stirred, it was clear that sleep had done them both a lot of good. Raidou's fever was lower, his wound looked better, and he tolerated another session of soaking and cleaning the injury with a great deal less pain. Genma was hungry when he woke, and what went down stayed down, to his and Raidou's deep relief. Poison metabolized, wounds scabbing over. Raidou's headache a faint echo of its former self. Genma's hip, when he finally got around to changing the bandage, was an ugly black and blue mess rent by long gashes, but none of the swelling or redness that said infection lurked within.
They showered. They washed their clothes, because there hadn't been enough spares not to, and neither of them were looking even slightly presentable. Genma used a quick-dry jutsu to get the things ready to wear. Then they put on game faces and masks and uniforms, and went down to see what Iijima had decided in the night about his wife.
( Having looked over the evidence Genma and Raidou had brought him from their painful mission, he'd come to the conclusion that he was ready to be a widower. ) |
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| It Takes a Will of Iron [closed to Genma & Raidou] |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|12:27 pm] |
Follows from It Takes a Lot Out of You
When Raidou woke up, it took him a long moment to really wake up. The first thing he realized was that he was not actually in his own room. The fact that he was lying on his side on a wooden floor was a fairly decent clue. His room didn't have a wooden floor. There was a hand underneath his head, cool fingers pressed gently against his temple. Raidou stiffened, frowned, cracked one eye open, and found himself face to face with Genma.
That would explain the hand.
Raidou became aware of a few things in quick succession. It was dark, his left hand was numb, his shoulder ached abominably, he could actually think clearly, and Genma did not look good. The last was the thing that really grabbed his attention. Raidou's eyes widened as they took in the state of his partner--horribly pale, vomit-covered, and completely dead to the world. The fact that he was breathing in a shallow, raspy way was the only proof Raidou had that Genma wasn't actually dead.
"Kid?" Raidou started up and discovered the reason his left hand was numb was because Genma was lying on it. He tugged his arm out from underneath his friend's lax body and shook it hard, forcing the blood to flow back into his fingers. Thanks to Genma's unique brand of tackle-healing, his right hand at least was fully sensate. Raidou put it to good use by pulling it carefully free from his sling--it hurt, but not enough to even register compared to the howling agony of earlier--and pressing two fingers to Genma's neck, searching out his pulse. It was there, thready and weak, but there.
( He just wasn't waking up. ) |
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| It Takes a Lot Out of You [Closed to Genma & Raidou] |
[Feb. 20th, 2008|11:37 pm] |
Follows from It Takes a Morning Person
It didn't take long to track down the 'rich guy's estate' Shinobu had tailed the wife to, and after a skirting look around the place, Raidou could see why they hadn't bothered to flee for the border. Between the Suna-nin still in residence, and the security set up the man of the house maintained, they clearly weren't worried by the possibility of an outside threat.
Mistake, thought Raidou with a slight grin as he scaled his hidden way up the wall. A henge was enough to keep him covered while he climbed to check the upstairs windows, slipping carefully around traps with the ease of a ninja who'd done this more then once. The weight of his shoulder and the cumbersome sling presented a minor problem, distracting him and throwing his balance ever so slightly off. He countered that by staying upright and using his left hand as well as his feet to stick to the weathered stone.
( Seven windows--damn this was a big place--one minor run in with a Suna-nin, and a whole lot of dodged traps later, Raidou found the room their client's missing wife was currently calling her own. ) |
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| It Takes a Morning Person [Closed to Genma & Raidou] |
[Feb. 18th, 2008|05:03 am] |
Follows from It Takes A Partner
Raidou woke up with a headache. It wasn't his first return to consciousness -- Genma had kept his promise and woken him up periodically in the night to check he still had some cognitive function -- but it was certainly the most unpleasant so far. That probably meant the painkillers were well and truly out of his system. He shifted, rolling onto his side and winced as his shoulder confirmed the lack of pain relief.
Ouch.
And more ouch as bruises added their own little notes to the symphony of early morning pain. A sore neck and shoulders completed the music. Raidou found he had a word that went with it. "Argh," he said, very quietly, and sat up with a clink of dogtags. It didn't quite harmonize, but it certainly got the message across. The only other person to hear it, however, was Shinobu. Raidou blinked at the small rat sitting next to Genma, and watched the quick flurry of paws that went with a thorough whisker-cleaning. Bright black eyes regarded him for a moment as the summon stilled, and then the cleaning recommenced. Apparently Shinobu didn't find Raidou quite so interesting as he found the rat.
Raidou glanced up to check the light filtering in through the windows -- it was weak and grey, a watery dawn sort of light. A look at his watch confirmed it was still early in the morning. He'd slept for about seven hours total, maybe slightly less. Despite the renewed ache in his head and the very much awake pain in his shoulder, Raidou felt much improved. He was thinking clearly, moving okay (if a little stiffly) and his stomach, thank all the gods that Genma believed in, was fairly settled. In fact, he felt hungry.
Good sign.
( He also needed to take a leak. ) |
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| It Takes a Partner [closed to Genma & Raidou] |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|09:22 pm] |
Follows from It Takes an Assassin
As far as Genma was concerned it took far too long interviewing the civilian party guests and hired help, tracking down the party-goers who'd fled, and otherwise dealing with loose ends. The local law-enforcement showed up, not surprisingly, but took one look at the mayhem and the Konoha ANBU and decided it was a shinobi matter, best left to them to sort out. He and Raidou did manage to deputize the client's civilian bodyguards, so that helped a bit. But still it was several hours before Genma and Raidou had finished disposing of Suna nin and yakuza corpses, collecting information, getting the client settled in his well-protected bedroom suite under a doctor's care, and had a moment to themselves to start sorting out the disappearance of the wife.
They'd been given the use of a small set of rooms that had once been a nursery, complete with child-sized furniture and cute animals painted on the wall. At least they'd been given futons on which to sleep--much more comfortable on bruised and battered limbs than settling on the bare floor or trying to squeeze six-foot-tall bodies into beds meant for toddlers. Genma checked the room over thoroughly before finally slipping off his mask, then slowly, carefully unbuckling his armor and shedding his clothes. Every muscle had tensed and tightened, and the place where that kusuri-gama had struck was an ugly blotchy black and blue. He fingered it and winced, and was surprised he hadn't cracked a rib.
"Well," he sighed, and leaned against the wall, half undressed and entirely exhausted. "That was a piece of work. I couldn't believe how useless those bodyguards were. Someone seriously needs to have a talk with the client about his help. You think any of them were in on it, too, or were they just rent-a-ninja with no skills?" |
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| It Takes an Assassin [closed to Genma & Raidou] |
[Feb. 10th, 2008|01:18 am] |
Takes place the day following Pride and Falls and Baby the Stars Shine Bright
Genma arrived at the specified basement briefing room a good fifteen minutes early. Coffee in one hand, notebook in the other, he waited patiently, sipping at the scalding, bitter liquid and keeping a wary eye on every ninja who walked by. The Intel guy who was going to give them their briefing--or gal, he thought, not that it mattered--would undoubtedly be punctual. But it was his partner he was anxious to see. A new guy, Minamoto Touji, supposedly a sharp-tongued taijutsu specialist with a long scar across his face from some kind of duel that you weren't supposed to ask about. Well not actually new. He had a year and some months under the mask already, but he was new to Genma. That was enough to make him both curious and wary.
( He glanced at the mission brief he'd received again. ) |
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angry
nauseated
cold
exhausted
busy
curious