| Tomorrow Will Be Kinder [Genma, Katsuko] |
[Jul. 7th, 2012|09:17 pm] |
[Takes place in mid-September, approximately a week following Somebody Saved Me, a month before Ryouma’s return.]
Genma was on his way back from the convenience store, paper sack of late-night provisions in hand, when he saw the pair of stiff-backed Uchiha police staring up at something on the roof of the Merchant’s Exchange Bank. One of them had his arms folded in the universal sign of the displeased authority figure, while the other was elbows-out, hands together, forming seals.
It was probably nothing Genma needed to worry about. He was off duty, out of uniform, and hungry for the rice balls he’d just bought. Raidou would be home within the hour, most likely, and the cops clearly had the situation under control. It was probably some genin kids goofing around on a rooftop where they didn’t belong — who would be foolish enough to rob a bank in a ninja village?
He stopped anyway, staying back in the shadows, trying to catch sight of whatever the MPs were focused on.
“This is your second warning,” the male cop said. “Move to the edge of the roof and identify yourself. If you make us come up there, you’re only going to make this harder on yourself.”
Genma thought he could see a hint of a shadow that wasn’t part of the roofline. It didn’t appear to be moving. Poor kid, frozen in a panic, probably. Caught, and knowing that Uchiha eyes would see through any jutsu he used to cover an escape.
“Last chance,” the cop said.
Abruptly, there was movement: a body-sized object came rolling down the slope of the tiled roof.
“What the...? Ikuko!” The man shouted. The woman released a jutsu that cast a bright phosphorescent glow over the street, illuminating the falling... body. Yes, definitely a body. It tumbled as if the owner were absent, almost until it hit the ground.
( Three things happened at once ) |
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| Somebody Saved Me [Genma, Katsuko] |
[Nov. 30th, 2011|11:26 pm] |
[Adult Content Warning: This thread contains one NC-17 moment, about half-way through, which is noted in the title of the entry containing it.]
[Takes place in early September, approximately four months following Tiny Little Fractures and Something We’ve Been Missing.]
When Genma got the mission assignment, he didn’t tell Raidou. Not the details, anyway. Not that it was an eros mission. He packed up his kit and put his tools together, and sealed the necessary clothes and equipment into a scroll while Raidou was out for a run.
It wasn’t like Genma was cheating exactly, but... He felt weird about it. Felt so weird about it that he couldn’t quite bring himself to say, when he was kissing Raidou goodbye, “By the way, I’m going to be sucking cock on this mission. Don’t worry, I’ll play safe.”
He kissed his lover goodbye, shouldered his pack, pulled his mask into place, and went to the mission briefing without managing to mention what kind of mission this was at all. And he felt just a little like a bastard about it.
( The briefer was a woman Genma knew pretty well ) |
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| Tiny Little Fractures [Genma, Raidou, Ibiki, Asuma] |
[Jan. 23rd, 2011|09:17 pm] |
[Takes place May 3, the same day as Off the Reservation]
Genma shut the apartment door behind him and leaned against it, holding the scroll in one hand. He looked across the apartment to Raidou who was in the kitchen, drying clean dishes.
"What was that about?" Raidou asked, pausing mid-motion, damp glass in one hand, tea towel in the other.
"It was Ginta. He wants me to give this to Arakaki on the sixth." Genma stared at the scroll, a standard mid-mission report type, like countless scrolls he himself had filed from the field on longer missions. It was sealed and secured, addressed to Arakaki, and coded with the red and black stripes that marked it as ANBU-specific, A-class or higher, and urgent.
"He can't hand it in himself?" Raidou asked. He put the glass and towel down and took a few steps towards Genma.
"He was dressed in his gear, like he was heading out on a mission." Genma turned the scroll over and over, as if he could somehow read it through the opaque outer covering. "But there's no way he's mission-fit yet. I mean, shit, he and Kakashi were both in the ICU the same time as us, and look at us." He shrugged his arm in its splint and sling, tilted his head back to expose the remains of a more-than-a-month-old garrote injury, still fading red lines under a dusting of stubble. Looked at Raidou's bandage-covered cheek, where the worst of the burns still hid.
Raidou graced Genma with the dryest of grins. "Speak for yourself. I'm the picture of health." He came the rest of the way to Genma to peer down at the scroll. "Assuming 'stamped-on shinobi' counts as healthy, anyway. You gonna open that?"
"I don't know." Genma met his partner's eyes. "It's sealed for Arakaki, it's a mission scroll. That right there makes it a big deal for me to violate the seal. And then he looked at me and he was all, 'I'm trusting you, Genma.' Like... Like I don't even know. Serious. The only time Ginta's ever serious is on a mission." |
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| Clearer Skies Ahead [Genma and Rina] |
[Dec. 23rd, 2010|10:34 pm] |
[Backdated: Takes place three and a half years ago, in mid-September, two days after Lightning Strikes Twice.]
Stumbling out the door of Intelligence into the chill night air, Rina was surprised to see the sky still dark. There was something about those windowless debriefing rooms, the dark eyes and cold metal words picking you apart, that made it feel like nations would rise and fall while you were in there.
But no, it had only been a couple of hours. If she were lucky, none of her insomniac family would be awake, and she’d be able to sneak in and leave them a note without actually confronting anyone. Taking the coward’s route, she darted on aching feet through the winding side streets and back alleys of Konoha, fetching up behind a row of tumbledown shops and planting her palms against the smooth brick of one of the more solid buildings. With a twist of chakra that she didn’t really have to spare, she scampered painfully up the wall and through the darkened third story window, layers of intricate seals parting like the gauzy drapes to welcome her home.
The bed, with its plump pillows and softly flowered bedsheets, looked impossibly welcoming, but she still wasn’t quite ready to handle the well-meaning worry and stifling concern she was sure to encounter in the morning. So, with a pang of regret, she changed out of her disgusting and tattered uniform and turned instead towards the writing desk, penning her family a quick note for them to find when they woke.
Reluctantly bypassing the shower as well, since the noise would certainly wake them up, Rina crept down the two flights of creaky stairs, stepping with a careful lightness of foot shared only by ninja and chronically disobedient little girls. Glancing around the corner and seeing no lights in the main room of the bookshop, she finally released the nervous breath she’d been holding, and ventured through the lintel out into the open.
Only to meet the startled brown eyes of her little sister Mikari, hair looped up in pigtails and bent over a thick dusty book in the alcove under the stairs, where — of course — the light couldn’t escape to disturb their sleeping mother and brother. Twin guilty stares met, and then Mikari’s eyes widened further in pleased surprise, limbs tensing to run towards her battered, but obviously alive, older sister.
( Unable to help it, Rina flinched. ) |
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| No Way Back [Genma & Raidou] |
[Nov. 30th, 2010|10:53 pm] |
Takes place in the morning on April 9th, following Hit the Ground Running
The clock was still glowing when Raidou woke up, and the rest of the room along with it. Broad streaks of midday sun beamed through the blinds, cutting bright swathes across the floor. The whole room felt warm. Hot, even. Though that might have had something to do with the over-warm body pressed up against his right side.
As it turned out, two fully grown men tangled together in a nest of blankets and sunshine equaled a heat source that was approximately furnace-like.
Raidou licked his lips (when had he last brushed his teeth?), and lifted an unthinking hand to rub over his sweaty face. He expected rough stubble and the warped, plastic-like feel of old scars, like always.
( The strip of skin that came away beneath his fingertips was a surprise. ) |
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| Not That Kind of Hand Job [Genma & Haruichi] |
[Oct. 5th, 2010|12:13 pm] |
[Slight backstory: Takes place the day following The Shadow Proves the Sunshine, when Genma and Raidou are still in hospital.]
Less than forty-eight hours after his second hand operation, Genma was back in for more chakra surgery. It wasn't unexpected, and truthfully, he was glad to be out of bed for a bit, though less so to be separated from Raidou. But Raidou had been whisked off to his own appointment with the burn specialists at the same time they'd come with a wheelchair for Genma. Probably by design.
They hadn't really talked yet about that kiss on the balcony. Genma figured he ought to give Raidou some time to digest it. And truthfully, they'd both been too tired to do anything much more than sleep. Raidou wasn't avoiding him, though. That was a good sign. Genma hoped.
The chakra work with Ito-sensei was...
( Best forgotten. ) |
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| Let's Be Enemies [Genma & Kakashi] |
[Oct. 4th, 2010|02:46 pm] |
[Backstory: Takes place [Backstory. Takes place early October, four years post-Kyuubi, approximately two weeks following the end of Have a Little faith]
Genma spent a week in the hospital getting his poison-ravaged chakra system doctored back into health. In that time he endured three separate brain scans by the resident Hyuuga medic, and two hours-long sessions of painstaking work to repair the damage Kakashi and his desperate field-attempt at a chakra sieve had left behind. He was visited several times by three different debriefing agents in crisp Intel grey — mostly short meetings to clarify details he’d already given them, but one intense session covering every wretched moment of his mission and captivity. He’d run a fever that night, earning himself an extra day of observation when all he wanted was to go home and sleep in his own bed.
He also sat through far too many hours of conversation with a plain-faced woman from psych who knew the details of his life story better than he did, and asked him questions to which there were no right answers. She’d been summoned that night after the big debriefing, to sit quietly with Genma and make small talk, like she was a friend. When Genma suggested that what he’d really like would be to see an actual friend — Rina, for example, or Ginta — she’d been sympathetic in her refusal. The whole situation was classified to the highest level. No one, not even Genma’s most trusted friends, could even know he was in hospital, let alone why.
At least she’d told him what she could about Kakashi. Still a captive, but negotiations were going well. Two or three days into Genma’s hospital stay, the news had finally come: Kakashi was released and on his way home. Uninjured beyond what Genma had already known about.
The psych woman had asked probing questions about Kakashi, too, and Genma’s estimation of Kakashi’s mental health. Those hadn’t had any right answers, either.
Eventually he’d heard that Kakashi was back in Konoha, but undergoing medical evaluation. And no, Genma couldn’t visit him. When they’d finally turned Genma loose to recuperate at home, he learned only that Kakashi had been deemed fit for duty. And that pending passing a physical, so was he.
( So maybe some of those questions Genma’d answered had had right answers after all. ) |
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| Have a Little Faith [Genma & Kakashi] |
[Oct. 1st, 2010|04:04 pm] |
[Backstory. Takes place late September, four years post-Kyuubi, the morning following Working by Hindsight]
Sometime between midnight and dawn, before the oil lamp guttered out but after Kakashi and he had both nodded off sitting up and scattered their unfinished game of cards, Genma woke enough to ease his sleeping teammate down onto one of the mattresses, cover him with one drab, scratchy blanket, and then lie down himself, close to Kakashi but not touching him. For a moment he lay on his side, eyes fixed on the stitched, scab-crusted wound on the back of Kakashi's close-cropped head. Fatigue made him tremble, so that every heartbeat felt like the rocking of waves, and sleep soon overwhelmed his exhausted body like an invasion force. It kept him pinned down until well after the sun rose again.
They were both so tapped out that neither stirred, even when the double-locked door opened and three figures entered. It wasn't until Genma felt the sharp prick of a needle inserted into a raised vein in his forearm that his eyes snapped wide. He sucked in a sharp breath, rigid with tension, and found himself on his back, with Kumoto's assistant leaning over him inserting an intravenous line. More terrifyingly, Kumoto himself was on his other side, kneeling next to Kakashi, bandaging Kakashi's burned hand.
Genma's own hands jerked away, but the assistant held grimly on to his arm. "Please don't do that, ANBU-san," she said quietly. "I don't want to have to restrain you."
( The paralyzing jutsu they'd used the day before — had they done it to Kakashi? ) |
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| Working By Hindsight [Kakashi & Genma] |
[Sep. 28th, 2010|07:28 pm] |
[Backstory: Takes place following Break Me Back Together]
Kakashi woke up when a sleepy shift dropped his hand from his face, and light struck his eyelids. Awareness came sharp and instant, bracketed by a carefully slow breath and tension hitting all the long muscles down his spine. He opened his unscarred eye. They were still in the cell. Genma's chest was still beneath Kakashi's head. Nothing had changed.
Except there was daylight.
Genma was asleep, head tipped sideways and down at an angle that was probably giving his neck a serious crick, chin resting a hair's breadth away from the stitches in Kakashi's scalp. His breath was slow and even, settled into the long-haul pattern of a man determined to stay unconscious for a while yet. Which was good -- he certainly needed it.
Kakashi licked cracked, dry lips and resisted the urge to stretch. Both of Genma's hands rested on his body: one wrapped around Kakashi's upper arm, the other splayed open between his shoulder blades, as if Genma hadn't been able to decide between holding and soothing, and had chosen both. Kakashi wondered how long it had taken for Genma to get to sleep. How he'd managed to get back to sleep himself -- and more importantly, how he'd stayed there.
( It probably had a lot to do with those hands. ) |
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| Lightning Strikes Twice [Genma, Rina] |
[Jul. 19th, 2010|09:09 pm] |
[Backdated: Takes place three and a half years ago, in mid-September, immediately following Take a Breath.]
Lulled by the steady pounding cacophony outside, the reassuring safety of her own seal blocking the entrance, and the solid spring-green freshness of Genma's chakra presence resting beside her, sleep was easy to find.
Rina expected to be woken by a calm gloved hand on her shoulder for the change of shifts, or perhaps by the subtle shifting of sounds indicating that the storm was ending. Instead, what felt like barely moments after she'd curled up, she was jolted into adrenaline-pumping awareness by three system shocks in as many heartbeats:
One, the tearing reverberation of a kunai ripping straight through the center of her seal.
Two, Genma's shout, and the slice of a ricocheting shuriken as it carved a path across her thigh.
And three, the skin-pricking electric tingle that gave her an instant of warning--an instant before the entire might of the storm gathered and crashed down above them, splintering their stone hideout into a razor-edged cloud of deadly shrapnel and fountaining earth.
Safely cocooned underground by a flash of earth jutsu as instinctive as a flinch, Rina caught a breath, but her narrow cavern was filling up with the relentless seep of water. ( She couldn't stay. ) |
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| Take a Breath [Genma, Rina] |
[May. 26th, 2010|09:59 pm] |
[Backdated: Takes place three and a half years ago, in mid-September, immediately following Eye of the Storm.]
The shaft was long, winding, and pitch dark. The ANBU's glowstick lent its eerie light, but all Rina could see was Yushiro's white face and savaged chest cavity, his jounin vest shredded and black with blood. Shouji is still alive, she told herself as she climbed, he's still alive.
It helped, some.
The synthetic energy thrumming through her was starting to burn as it coursed through overused channels, and left a sour taste in the back of her throat. Her heart pounded as if it wanted to run away with her, charged with pharmaceuticals, but she tried to keep a lid on it. When they finally pulled themselves out of the ventilation shaft, Rina flinched away from her image momentarily reflected in Inari's mirror: skin too pale, eyes too bright.
( Spun back towards it, all senses wrenched into painful alertness, when the misty gray background in the mirror erupted into fiery red. ) |
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| Eye of the Storm [Genma, Rina] |
[Apr. 19th, 2010|09:27 pm] |
[Backdated: Takes place three and a half years ago, in mid-September, about a year and eleven months after the Kyuubi attack, and six months after Genma's rescue from the Iwagakure prisons.]
It had been so straightforward, to start out.
Two chuunin and a jounin; one sacrificial Konoha bunker in the depths of Rai no Kuni. Half a day to weave trapping seals so tightly into its foundations that the floorboards quivered and it seemed to stagger beneath the weight.
It would be one more needle in Cloud's side, and yet another proof of Konoha's overwhelming martial superiority -- that was what Sandaime said. To prevent another all-out war, he said, during political briefings when the still-straggling upper ranks of Konoha ninja rattled about in a room meant for so many more.
Rina didn't quite understand, but she believed him when he said it.
The booby-trapping itself had been easy: after nearly two years in Konoha's seal division, with full access to its massive library, Rina knew more than enough official and unofficial nastiness to trap ten bunkers the same size without resorting to repeats. She'd never worked with her current teammates Shouji and Yushiro before, but they seemed like solid ninja, relaxed and easy in their competence; knowing they were standing guard outside, Rina had felt safe.
( A muffled thud and screech of metal echoed against cragged granite walls, and half a foot of solid stone no longer felt thick enough. ) |
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| Break Me Back Together [Kakashi & Genma] |
[Feb. 24th, 2010|01:28 am] |
[Backstory. Takes place in the early hours of September 19th, several hours after Don't Like It But I Guess I'm Learning.]
They slept for hours, until it was dark and the cell chilled down enough that both ninja curled up tight beneath their blankets, hands and feet pulled in, heads tucked down. Twin cocoons of self-made warmth. The room was utterly silent, broken only by quiet breathing. They were left undisturbed.
Then Takajin came back.
There was no warning -- the cell door didn't clang open, alien chakra didn't shiver, no scent change hit Kakashi's nose. There was just sleep, unbroken and dreamless. Then there was Takajin's hand clenched around Kakashi's throat.
He woke with a throttled gasp, eye flying wide, choked silent when another hand clamped over his mouth. The cell was pitch black. Kakashi struck out blind, hitting something that felt like pure muscle. There was a quiet grunt, then the grip around his throat tightened brutally and hauled him up. He kicked, aiming for a knee, a thigh-muscle, anything breakable; grabbed wildly for Takajin's face, couldn't find it, and scrabbled at the twin holds around his mouth and throat. They didn't flinch.
He couldn't warn Genma -- he couldn't get air.
His back slammed into stone. Warm, solid weight pinned him there. There was no slow-burning cigarette glow, only Takajin's breath on the side of his face. Hot and damp through cloth.
"Did you think we were done?"
( Panicked, Kakashi tried to drive a knee up into the bigger man's groin. ) |
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| Don't Like It but I Guess I'm Learning [Genma & Kakashi] |
[Feb. 20th, 2010|08:24 pm] |
[Backstory. Takes place September 18th, four years post-Kyuubi. One and a half days after Learn the Hard Way, and only a few hours after Mightier Than The Sword]
Low light, hushed voices just out of hearing range, the scent of alcohol blended with chemicals and blood, and the fact that he felt as utterly ill as he ever had in his life told Genma he was in a hospital. For several heartbeats he lay unmoving on his back, trying to remember why. Then he wished he could forget. He tried to move his arms, and found his hands shackled and aching, one to each side, anchored to cold metal bed rails. His ankles, too, were strapped down, with his feet cramped and his legs wrenched apart. Belly up and vulnerable. It felt like night, but he had no idea how much time had passed since he'd last been conscious. Or what time of day that had been.
Someone came in. A young woman with long blonde hair and elfin features. She didn't smile. Not even a little. Her lips were stained a garish shade, waxy and wrong for her in a way that emphasized flaws in the symmetry of her face. She glanced at Genma, pressed a button, and raised the head of his bed. Then she snapped on a television set, added something to the IV in Genma's arm, gave him another cold, unreadable look, and left.
For the next long stretch of time -- long enough that Genma couldn't tell if it spanned hours or days -- he was left almost entirely alone.
( The room was not in Iwa's hospital, Genma determined, but a medical treatment cell in their prison. ) |
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| Learn the Hard Way (Kakashi & Genma) |
[Feb. 12th, 2010|07:13 pm] |
(Backstory. Takes place September 16th, four years post-Kyuubi. Half a day after How Many Ways Do You Wanna Die? and a day and a half before Mightier Than the Sword)
Kakashi thrashed his way back to consciousness to find no light in the world, his head splitting open, and his wrists in chains. He stifled a groan and lifted his chin off his chest, popping every vertebrae in a neck gone brittle-stiff. Strobing pain pulsed in the base of his skull. Dried blood flaked away from the nape of his neck.
As bad wake ups went, this one ranked about the middle of the list.
The room -- it felt like a room -- was cold, musty, and smelled of stone. Of old blood. He tried to move and realized he'd been manacled to a metal chair, tied at ankles and wrists. Thick straps of something more flexible, probably leather, wrapped tightly around his forearms, torso, and legs. Someone was taking no chances.
He twisted his hands, searching for a weak spot in the manacles, and hissed when hot, sick agony crashed up his right arm. For a lurching moment he thought someone had already started in and broken his hand, then he remembered the sword wound. Untreated, judging by the feel of dried blood caked all over his fingers and the lack of anything like a bandage. If it had scabbed, he'd just cracked it open.
( Upper-middle of the list, maybe. ) |
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| How Many Ways Do You Wanna Die? [Kakashi & Genma] |
[Jan. 22nd, 2010|08:18 pm] |
Set the morning following No Matter How We Try, four years post Kyuubi, September 16th.
Awareness came long after the sun had risen. Kakashi twitched back awake in the blank space between unhappy dreams and spent a long, thoughtful moment contemplating the green tent canvass two inches from his nose. Suguru was dead; the mission was successful. And Kakashi had definitely fallen asleep in his armour: joints and buckles and hard edges had all pressed themselves efficiently into cold flesh, leaving impressions like marks in clay. His hands were freezing, feet even more so in their open-toed sandals. His back...
His back was a long strip of heat, braced against something solid. His neck was even warmer, tickled by a gentle, intermittent stream of hot air. It smelled like ginseng and poison and morning breath.
Which made sense, given that Genma seemed to have decided the best place to sleep was wedged up tight against Kakashi's spine, with his face against Kakashi's neck. Kakashi could feel the subtle twitches of a dream-in-progress in Genma's hands, pressed into the small of his back; when he paid outward attention, he could see his own breath clouding on the morning air. The canvas was dark with cold morning dew. Birds sung undisturbed nearby: always a positive of an enemy-free forest, when the animals were relaxed.
( Kakashi warred with himself. ) |
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| No Matter How We Try [Genma, Kakashi] |
[Jan. 21st, 2010|12:29 pm] |
Backstory. Set immediately following We All Have a Weakness, four years post Kyuubi, September 15th.
Kakashi might not know a damn thing about poisons, but he was the tracker. If he said there was a suitable campsite up ahead, he was probably right. A suitable, safe campsite, because deep inside Waterfall's borders only the most well-protected of locations would be worth considering for two battle-weary, poisoned, Leaf ANBU.
Which, Genma resolved to remember to point out once they were safely entrenched, Kakashi still was. Poisoned. Just because the antidote had saved him didn't mean he had nothing more to worry about. In fact it was Genma's responsibility as medic and poison specialist to check on that sooner rather than later. With only one tube of the antidote remaining to share between them, he'd need to titrate the repeat dose for Kakashi very carefully.
"How's your breathing?" he asked. "And your stomach? Are you hungry at all? Hungry would be a good sign."
Kakashi lifted his ANBU mask and gave Genma a look of rank curiosity, as if Genma had just turned orange, or suggested a swim in lava. "Are you hallucinating that you're a nice person, now?"
"I'm doing my job," Genma snapped. "And trying to make sure that you don't drop dead for want of a repeat dose of antidote."
Kakashi's eye flicked wide, then narrowed under a lowering scowl. "Repeat dose? There's only one of your tubes left and two of us. How's that going to work?" Before Genma could answer, Kakashi exhaled sharply, forcing the air out of his chest with a raw wheeze at the end. Testing. He shook his head. "It's fine. Sore, but fine."
"It will work fine, as long as we're careful. You got a much bigger hit of the toxin than I did, and I've got some immunity, or I'd have been lying on the ground choking to death hours ago." And Kakashi was breathing fine. That was also a good sign. His mask must have afforded him some protection...
And he was still wearing it.
"Take your mask off," Genma ordered.
The storm clouds that skated across Kakashi's expression were impressive.
"I'm serious. Take it off, rinse it the fuck out, and make sure you're not just re-poisoning yourself. If you go down again, and I'm not one hundred percent..." He didn't need to finish the threat. "Take it off and clean it. I promise not to look, so your modesty won't be compromised," he added with an eyeroll. |
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| We All Have a Weakness [Genma, Kakashi] |
[Jan. 14th, 2010|01:48 pm] |
Backstory. Set four years post Kyuubi, September 15th. One year after Kakashi and Genma's encounter in a safehouse shower, Love the Sounds When You Come Undone, two years after the mission where they learned to hate one another, How to Lose a Life. One year and seven months prior to Leaves' canon starting.
Genma hated several things about this mission already, not least of which was his mission partner. He ran next to Kakashi through the farmland that covered the plateau above Konoha, still well within the penumbra of their village's protection. A glance to the left showed a sea of vermilion and crimson, where autumn had set the trees aflame. That was another thing to hate: leaving Konoha at the peak of the fall flush, although if he wasn't looking for things to be unhappy about, Genma had to admit it wasn't as if they'd see no trees on their journey. But they were heading north, he grumbled to himself, and the trees to the north were more oaky, less maply, so less colorful. And anyway by the time they got back to Konoha the peak would be over.
Then there was Kakashi, with his disdainful silence, the twitching eyebrow when Genma had entered the briefing room, the dismissive snort that had stood for an answer when Genma had made what he'd considered a generous effort and greeted Kakashi with a shallow head-nod of a bow. Two years later and Kakashi still hadn't forgiven Genma for his dog's death? Just a month ago Genma had stood at the memorial stone, tracing a calloused fingertip over the names Ishida Nobuki and Oda Ayako, remembering carnage and failure, and the feeling of Ishida's heart stilling under Genma's hands. How did a dog's death weigh more heavily than that?
And one year ago there had been that... That incident in the safehouse showers. As far as Genma was concerned, that ought to have set them more than even over whatever karmic debt Genma had accumulated for failing to save Kakashi's dog. In fact the sums were looking decidedly to him like Kakashi was the one still owing something. The bastard.
( But there were other things to hate, too... ) |
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| Bringing Back the Living [Genma] |
[Jan. 14th, 2010|03:23 am] |
Backdated. Takes place in early March, one year and five months after Kyuubi's attack. One and a half weeks before Got That Mountain to Climb
The orders were clear and unambiguous; it was a retrieval mission--three ANBU were missing on a mission in Earth Country: presumed captured, feared dead. Shiomori Hiroko, ANBU Hunter, volunteered for the retrieval squad because she'd known the the agents who were missing: Kamiyama Kobo, Hoashi Seijuro, and Shiranui Genma. She knew Kobo best, a quiet, competent leader with nearly three years' service in ANBU and uncanny skills with explosives. She and Kobo had entered ANBU in the same rookie group, and had trained together, sparred together, taken missions together. Slept together. He was her friend as well as her lover, and reason enough, all by himself, for Hiroko to have volunteered.
The other two she knew less well. Hoashi Seijuro was a rookie she'd barely interacted with. But Kobo had said good things about the kid--had hand-picked him for the mission. He was young and inexperienced, but the ANBU they served in was full of the young and inexperienced. Just sixteen months ago the Fox had claimed far too many of the few seasoned veterans that the Third War had spared. For ninja like Seijuro, the four months' experience he'd gained since joining ANBU was enough. It had to be.
( Then there was Shiranui Genma ) |
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| Chasing the Sun [Genma & Raidou] |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|02:31 pm] |
WARNING: NC-17 for graphic sexual content.
Takes place in the afternoon on April 8th, immediately following Warm in the Shadows
There were two clear signs someone had been in their apartments: their beds were made with fresh sheets, and their ANBU uniforms, gear, weaponry, and masks were folded and stacked neatly at the foot of each bed. Genma couldn't speak for Raidou, but he certainly hadn't put any time into making military corners on his quilts when they'd been summoned in the wee hours two and a half weeks ago for the mission to track Yukaho and her team.
A third, less obvious, but rather gratifying sign, was that the leftover takeout containers, softened carrots, dried up half onion, and half-empty carton of spoiled milk Genma had anticipated finding in his refrigerator were not there. In fact it appeared the little cold box had been cleaned, with the assorted jars and bottles of longer keeping items (pickled ginger, mustard, miso paste, beer) carefully packed back in.
Genma gave everything a careful inspection: the piles of magazines and a half-worked sudoku he'd left on his table were still there. His shrine was undisturbed; even its oranges were still there, starting to shrivel and harden. Spare weapons, sharpening kits, clothes, books--it was all exactly as he'd left it. But the kitchen had been cleaned, the bathroom tidied and scrubbed, and there was the bed...
He plugged in his electric water heater and went to find Raidou, who was giving his own already insanely clean apartment a thorough going over. "Gotta be a D-rank, cleaning two small apartments and making the beds. But they'd only let someone with ANBU-level clearance in here. What unlucky bastards you think got that detail?" He leaned against Raidou's door frame. It felt almost surreal to be looking at him, to be back here, home. Like those two and a half weeks hadn't happened at all.
If you overlooked the bandages.
"I didn't find any bugs or traps in mine. And I started the water for the ramen. Coming?" |
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