Theater of War, Chapter Five
Jun. 4th, 2010 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alliancesjrHello, eighteen-month delay. I kept getting this chapter out in spurts. Two paragraphs, lost interest. Two paragraphs, lost interest. But I told you I was chipping away at it. This thing hasn't been forgotten.
As always, comments and criticism. I'm afraid the chapter might seem disjointed with how long it took me to write it, so anything you point out can only help.
Chapter Five
In which the plot thickens, Hiroshi gets another chance to play Gai, and Team Gendou make it back to Konoha to prepare for a new mission.
* * * * *
Takashi tensed up as he neared the building. He was the only ninja that Suna sent in response; the rest of his team was tied up on border patrol on the Amegakure side.
It wasn't as if the Kazekage didn't want to send more. When the raven arrived with the message, he had scoured the mission logs to see who was available for the duty. He had been prepared to accompany Takashi himself when his advisors pulled him aside and made some sort of argument against it.
That, in and of itself, was a miracle. There was a time not too long ago that Temari and Kankuro lived in mortal terror of their younger brother. Now he valued their opinions and even allowed himself to be cowed by their frustrations.
Takashi grimaced. He could see the damage to the outpost already. Scorch marks and rubble were all that remained of its western wall, and half the building had been reduced to the skeletal framework.
He readied his axe as he quietly entered the outpost. He wished the Kazekage had come with him. Supernatural dread or not, the kid was powerful, and probably would make mincemeat out of whatever had done this damage and decided to stick around to pick off unaware would-be rescuers.
Takashi really wished he hadn't thought that last part.
He wasn't too worried. The Kazekage had asked him personally, and he had said that he was very impressed with Takashi's abilities as a shinobi. This mission was practically tailored to someone of his caliber, and he knew that he was the best choice even if nobody else had been available to come with.
All of this kept bouncing through his head as he stepped through the empty hallways.
Clink.
Takashi froze, tightening his grip on his axe. Not empty. The sound had come from the doorway just ahead, on the right of the hallway.
He formed a few quick seals and leapt forward, weapon poised to decapitate any enemy found inside--
--and stopped as a pair of rats darted out the open window. The blinds snapped shut once more with an audible clink.
Takashi sighed in relief, relaxing his stance and allowing his axe to lower. He glanced downwards to see what the rats had been doing.
"Gods protect me..."
Whoever had attacked the Suna outpost had been thorough. The remains of its staff were strewn haphazardly around the room; each killed, it appeared, by different means. One body had been brutally but efficiently hacked apart, probably by an axe, cleaver, or large machete. Another had extremely precise stab wounds to the heart, lungs, and neck. The last...
The last one had Takashi reaching into his pack for a summoning scroll. He sliced his palm on his axe, dipped his fingers in the blood, and performed the seals.
One swirl of ink and chakra smoke later, he was handing message tubes to a pair of large sparrowhawks. Each had a Suna hitai-ate around their necks, the dark grey cloth blending in with their feathers. Both were fixing Takashi with hard, red-eyed stares.
"Take this straight to the Kazekage," ordered Takashi to the first one. "He'll know what to do."
The hawk bowed its head, then took off with the message.
"You must go to Konoha," Takashi said to the other hawk, glancing at the bulletin board on the wall. A poster had been pinned to it with obvious care, but the bloodstains and the slashes through it marked it as an equal target of the attack as had the Suna operatives been.
"Take this directly to the Hokage. She'll decide how to handle this."
The remaining hawk took off, heading northeast towards the Fire Country and the Hidden Leaf.
The last body had shaken Takashi more than anything else. The blood and death and destruction didn't bother him as much; he was a ninja of the Hidden Sand, and he was used to the hardships that came from the life of a shinobi.
The third body, however, had died in excruciating pain. Its eyes were a pulpy mess, and thick streaks of blood had flowed out of its ears, nose, and mouth. It was very familiar; he had seen it himself when the Sand had allied with Orochimaru and his rogue village in his attack on Konohagakure. Many of the Sound ninja were able to use a sonic jutsu that ruptured vitals inside the heads of anyone caught in the way. Takashi had lost teammates because of an oto-nin with poor aim.
Takashi glanced at the poster. As defaced as it was, it was still clear that it was for a concert being held in Kimura, the capital of the Fire Country. Koizumi Aika was on tour, and not even the daimyo himself was going to miss a performance from the most famous opera singer of the decade. The destruction of the poster meant that either Koizumi or the daimyo was their next target.
The worst of it was that the last victim did not appear to die immediately from the wounds. The man had scrabbled something in the dirt, something that became garbled and trailed off as he had died from shock halfway through writing it. There was an arrow pointing to the tattered poster on the wall, supporting his theory of Orochimaru's next target.
The rest of the scratches were mostly pained scrabblings in the dirt, but Takashi was able to make out a few words.
Hands of blue.
* * * * *
"Look, I just don't think I have the grasp of it yet."
A squirrel froze, clinging to the side of the tree, waiting to see if there was danger or if it had passed. A kunai buried itself into the tree in front of it and it tore off in the opposite direction.
"Kensuke, I know you understand the theory behind it. There hasn't been a jutsu yet you haven't taken apart."
Kensuke landed on a sturdy branch, reaching for his crossbow. "I understand it just fine, but I can't make it work. Knowing and doing are two different things." He pushed off from the branch in a rolling leap and fired twice at the targets that Hiroshi had set up.
Both bolts missed. Kensuke growled, reloading his weapon as he landed. "Come on, Moriyama, I had you. No fair moving."
Three sets of shoulders shrugged. "Come on, Kensuke, you should know better than that." Hiroshi dispelled his clones. "You know what Gendou-sensei would say."
"Yeah, yeah," grumbled Kensuke. He straightened up even further and affected a cold, calculating expression. "'Your opponents will not sit still and wait for you to aim properly, Inuzuka Kensuke. Anticipation is the key to precision.'"
Hiroshi grinned and started heading back to the campsite. "That's a better impression than I could do."
"No way, you've got all those ventriloquism genjutsu skills, you could totally do a better Gendou than me."
The two of them walked silently through the trees. "Kensuke?"
"Yeah."
"I don't have kage bunshin down yet either."
"What?"
Hiroshi looked embarassed. "Those were just regular ones." He ruffled Kensuke's grey hair and dodged the retaliatory swipe that always came after. "Come on, you were working so hard, I had to try and mess with you."
Kensuke grumbled.
"Hold it."
Kensuke looked up. "What?"
"Perimeter traps. They've been disabled." Hiroshi crept forwards, pulling aside leaves and inspecting the disabled alarm. "We've been breached."
Kensuke nodded and disappeared into the trees, readying his weapon as he went. He watched through the scope of his crossbow as Hiroshi disappeared under a genjutsu - anyone not familiar with the chuunin wouldn't have known enough to spot the extra bush that appeared near every tree on the way to the campsite.
He watched as Hiroshi moved silently from bush to bush, until he reached the camoflaged tents and Kensuke's sleeping hound. There was nobody there.
"Did you find him yet?" said a bored voice right next to him.
Kensuke jumped slightly. He covered this move by twisting around, grabbing a weapon from his pouch, but in his shock and subsequent haste, his foot came down just an inch too far, where there was not a branch to support it.
Minor discovery. Falling out of trees hurts.
Kensuke had to give his teammate credit, though. Hiroshi was instantly at his side, kunai out and ready to damage
Then he looked up. He sighed and put his weapons away.
Kensuke looked up as well. On the branch that he had just fallen off of crouched a man with short, spiky grey hair, with a face mask and his hitai-ate pulled low over his left eye. He was holding a small orange book in his left hand; without taking his eye off it, he raised his right hand in greeting.
"Yo."
"Kakashi-san, what are you doing here?"
"Reading, mostly," said Hatake Kakashi, completely engrossed in his book. "You wouldn't believe what Toshiro just said to Yume."
The jounin flipped a page. "Also, Kensuke-kun, while taking a sniper role is advantageous in most situations, you still need to be aware of what's going on around you. Too much focus, and you're vulnerable to attack."
"Or falling out of a tree, I gather," said Kensuke, rubbing his head as he sat up. "You here on business, or just to give me a concussion?"
"I can't do both?" Kakashi put his book away and pulled out a red scroll. "The Hokage is calling you four back in for a new mission." He tossed the scroll to Hiroshi.
Hiroshi caught the scroll and checked the chakra signature on the Hokage's seal. He nodded to Kensuke, then turned back towards Kakashi. "They get anything useful from our oto-nin friend?"
Kakashi waved a hand dismissively. "They didn't say. I didn't ask. I'm taking over the rest of your patrol, so you can head back to Konoha at any time."
Hiroshi nodded, stowing the scroll in a pouch and turning to leave. Kensuke followed suit.
"Moriyama, before you go..."
Hiroshi turned back to Kakashi, who had finally departed from his branch and was now walking on solid ground. "Yes?"
"Gai was very impressed with your genjutsu. He said it was the best he had ever seen."
Kensuke raised an eyebrow inquisitively. "Is that what he said?" he asked, conveying with his tone that he really didn't believe a word of it.
Kensuke couldn't tell, but he was certain that Kakashi was grimacing under his mask. "Actually, he said 'the determination of young Moriyama and the power of his youth and exuberance has demonstrated the heat of his burning fiery flames of fire' and so on." The jounin rolled his eye. "I stopped paying attention right around then, but it seemed very impressive."
"And you wanted me to show you." Hiroshi had that gleam in his eye. Kensuke had spent enough time with Hiroshi over the past thirteen years to know that nothing good ever came of that look. He started edging away.
Kakashi shrugged. "If you don't mind. We have so few genjutsu specialists these days, and I haven't seen Kurenai do anything new since Akatsuki visited."
Hiroshi grinned. He flashed the now-familiar seals and touched his finger to his throat. "So serious all the time, my eternal rival! I will break through your cool exterior one of these days, or else I climb the Hokage Monument using nothing but my pinkies! And if I cannot do that, I will perform ten thousand sit-ups hanging upside-down at the waterfall at the Valley of the End!" He twitched his fingers, then gave one of Maito Gai's signature Nice Guy Poses, complete with twinkling smile.
That gleam had to be genjutsu. There was no alternate explanation for it.
Kakashi winced. "Okay, okay, I get it. Turn it off."
Hiroshi continued to grin nastily as he dispelled the genjutsu.
"That right there is a powerful psychological weapon," Kakashi said, dryly. "You might want to consider sealing it and marking it Forbidden." He shuddered. "For the good of Konoha."
* * * * *
It was midnight when they arrived back at the village. Team Gendou's appointment with the Hokage would be taken care of first thing in the morning, they were assured at the administrative building. Since it didn't seem to be time-critical, they decided to relax at a quiet, grassy training area.
"You know, we should probably at least try to get some sleep," Hotaru said, absent-mindedly spinning a kunai on her finger. "I know we've been on a rotating sleep schedule, but nothing says we have to be nocturnal at home."
Neither Kensuke nor Hiroshi responded, prompting her to look up at what they were doing. Both of them were concentrating, and Hiroshi had managed to phase a kage bunshin into existence next to him.
Kensuke glanced over and cursed. "Man, now I have to try extra hard to catch up."
"You'll get it eventually," replied Hiroshi - Hotaru was pretty certain it was the real one, but she couldn't be entirely sure - as he continued to practice the motions. She couldn't blame him, even after succeeding; most tricky jutsu involved more than just one seal to focus, so the trick of this was to go against previous training, which was harder than learning the skill in the first place.
Hiroshi grinned at her, obviously catching the fact that she was watching him, and started waggling his eyebrows. Almost immediately, his clone started doing the same in synchronization.
"Gods, now there's two of them. Kensuke, hit him."
The blow to the back of the head only seemed to encourage Hiroshi, however, and now the two of him were waggling their eyebrows off-rhythm from each other. It was giving her a headache to watch, it really was.
He finally stopped and dismissed his clone when a shadowy mist started to swirl in front of them. Gendou stepped out of the gloom and gave his students a cursory nod.
"What's the story?" asked Hiroshi, suddenly all business again.
"The spy has given us all he is going to," said Gendou, removing his dark glasses. His good eye seemed to focus on something in the distance. "Ibiki-sensei and the Hokage are meeting in an hour to discuss what we have found out."
"Don't worry," drawled a voice from outside the clearing. "You'll find out what it is in the morning." A woman in a burned and tattered kimono was walking towards them, mischief in her eyes.
Hotaru grinned. "You came to see us, Ren?"
"Just my husband," said Ren, winking conspiratorially. "You three are a bonus." Kurobana Ren glared at Hiroshi, and pointed her umbrella at him. "You, however, have some explaining to do."
Hiroshi looked innocent. "Me? I was out in the forest for a week. What am I supposed to have done?"
Ren growled. "Care to explain that little trick your sister was able to pull off?"
Hiroshi blinked. The scrolls he had given his sister didn't have anything terribly dangerous she would have been able to perform until her chakra reserves and control had grown. Even the tamest Doton ninjutsu would have been months away from her grasp. "Why, what did she do?"
"The little twit hit me with the most disturbing genjutsu I had ever seen." Ren shuddered. "It wasn't strong enough to make me believe what I was seeing, but just the sight of it distracted me long enough to almost take a strike from the Hyuuga."
Hiroshi broke out into a huge grin. "I didn't know there was a Hyuuga on her team. That'll give her motivation to practice, sure enough." He frowned. "Which one was it? The giant lobster waterfall? The thing with the flying bison fighting a samurai lemur?"
Ren's eyebrows twitched with each description. "No. It was the Teddy Bear Picnic. What kind of horrors are you unleashing, Moriyama?"
The other chuunin struggled to keep straight faces. Even Gendou seemed to withdraw deeper into his tattered scarf.
"It's a combination of her favorite stories as a kid and a lesson in psychological warfare," said Hiroshi. "Throwing out images that the opponent doesn't expect to see can distract for even just a moment, which gives her an opening to strike. It definitely helps that these are images that she's familiar with, since it adds extra details to the illusion with decidedly less effort."
Hotaru noticed his grin operated independantly from his attitude; this was actually a serious explanation. That was Hiroshi all over, though; even when he's in shinobi mode, he'll lighten the mood somehow.
Ren looked sour, but shrugged. "It's a valid tactic, I'll grant you, but if she hits me with it again, I'll have to retailiate. I hope you realize that."
Hiroshi nodded. "I'm surprised she's come this far in learning the techniques I wrote down for her."
"Hey, you know how girls are," said Ren, waggling her eyebrows. "Yukiko and Hanabi have a rivalry going right now."
"Friendly, I hope."
"Mostly. The Hyuuga is too proud to admit that 'a commoner' impressed her, and Yuki-chan likes pushing people's buttons. I think she takes after you." Ren stretched her arms. "Now, I don't know about you kids, but I'm going to commandeer my husband for the rest of the night. Go do whatever, we're busy now."
The three chuunin watched them leave. "You heard the lady," said Kensuke, stifling a toothy yawn. "We'll be debriefed by Tsunade-hime in the morning. I'm out."
Hotaru watched him leave, then turned to Hiroshi. "What do you say? Late night snack?"
Hiroshi shook his head. "Kensuke's right. We should take it easy." He looked over at the darkened faces of the Hokage Monument to the north. "I have a feeling we'll need the rest."
Chapter Four / Continue to Chapter Six
As always, comments and criticism. I'm afraid the chapter might seem disjointed with how long it took me to write it, so anything you point out can only help.
Chapter Five
In which the plot thickens, Hiroshi gets another chance to play Gai, and Team Gendou make it back to Konoha to prepare for a new mission.
* * * * *
Takashi tensed up as he neared the building. He was the only ninja that Suna sent in response; the rest of his team was tied up on border patrol on the Amegakure side.
It wasn't as if the Kazekage didn't want to send more. When the raven arrived with the message, he had scoured the mission logs to see who was available for the duty. He had been prepared to accompany Takashi himself when his advisors pulled him aside and made some sort of argument against it.
That, in and of itself, was a miracle. There was a time not too long ago that Temari and Kankuro lived in mortal terror of their younger brother. Now he valued their opinions and even allowed himself to be cowed by their frustrations.
Takashi grimaced. He could see the damage to the outpost already. Scorch marks and rubble were all that remained of its western wall, and half the building had been reduced to the skeletal framework.
He readied his axe as he quietly entered the outpost. He wished the Kazekage had come with him. Supernatural dread or not, the kid was powerful, and probably would make mincemeat out of whatever had done this damage and decided to stick around to pick off unaware would-be rescuers.
Takashi really wished he hadn't thought that last part.
He wasn't too worried. The Kazekage had asked him personally, and he had said that he was very impressed with Takashi's abilities as a shinobi. This mission was practically tailored to someone of his caliber, and he knew that he was the best choice even if nobody else had been available to come with.
All of this kept bouncing through his head as he stepped through the empty hallways.
Clink.
Takashi froze, tightening his grip on his axe. Not empty. The sound had come from the doorway just ahead, on the right of the hallway.
He formed a few quick seals and leapt forward, weapon poised to decapitate any enemy found inside--
--and stopped as a pair of rats darted out the open window. The blinds snapped shut once more with an audible clink.
Takashi sighed in relief, relaxing his stance and allowing his axe to lower. He glanced downwards to see what the rats had been doing.
"Gods protect me..."
Whoever had attacked the Suna outpost had been thorough. The remains of its staff were strewn haphazardly around the room; each killed, it appeared, by different means. One body had been brutally but efficiently hacked apart, probably by an axe, cleaver, or large machete. Another had extremely precise stab wounds to the heart, lungs, and neck. The last...
The last one had Takashi reaching into his pack for a summoning scroll. He sliced his palm on his axe, dipped his fingers in the blood, and performed the seals.
One swirl of ink and chakra smoke later, he was handing message tubes to a pair of large sparrowhawks. Each had a Suna hitai-ate around their necks, the dark grey cloth blending in with their feathers. Both were fixing Takashi with hard, red-eyed stares.
"Take this straight to the Kazekage," ordered Takashi to the first one. "He'll know what to do."
The hawk bowed its head, then took off with the message.
"You must go to Konoha," Takashi said to the other hawk, glancing at the bulletin board on the wall. A poster had been pinned to it with obvious care, but the bloodstains and the slashes through it marked it as an equal target of the attack as had the Suna operatives been.
"Take this directly to the Hokage. She'll decide how to handle this."
The remaining hawk took off, heading northeast towards the Fire Country and the Hidden Leaf.
The last body had shaken Takashi more than anything else. The blood and death and destruction didn't bother him as much; he was a ninja of the Hidden Sand, and he was used to the hardships that came from the life of a shinobi.
The third body, however, had died in excruciating pain. Its eyes were a pulpy mess, and thick streaks of blood had flowed out of its ears, nose, and mouth. It was very familiar; he had seen it himself when the Sand had allied with Orochimaru and his rogue village in his attack on Konohagakure. Many of the Sound ninja were able to use a sonic jutsu that ruptured vitals inside the heads of anyone caught in the way. Takashi had lost teammates because of an oto-nin with poor aim.
Takashi glanced at the poster. As defaced as it was, it was still clear that it was for a concert being held in Kimura, the capital of the Fire Country. Koizumi Aika was on tour, and not even the daimyo himself was going to miss a performance from the most famous opera singer of the decade. The destruction of the poster meant that either Koizumi or the daimyo was their next target.
The worst of it was that the last victim did not appear to die immediately from the wounds. The man had scrabbled something in the dirt, something that became garbled and trailed off as he had died from shock halfway through writing it. There was an arrow pointing to the tattered poster on the wall, supporting his theory of Orochimaru's next target.
The rest of the scratches were mostly pained scrabblings in the dirt, but Takashi was able to make out a few words.
Hands of blue.
* * * * *
"Look, I just don't think I have the grasp of it yet."
A squirrel froze, clinging to the side of the tree, waiting to see if there was danger or if it had passed. A kunai buried itself into the tree in front of it and it tore off in the opposite direction.
"Kensuke, I know you understand the theory behind it. There hasn't been a jutsu yet you haven't taken apart."
Kensuke landed on a sturdy branch, reaching for his crossbow. "I understand it just fine, but I can't make it work. Knowing and doing are two different things." He pushed off from the branch in a rolling leap and fired twice at the targets that Hiroshi had set up.
Both bolts missed. Kensuke growled, reloading his weapon as he landed. "Come on, Moriyama, I had you. No fair moving."
Three sets of shoulders shrugged. "Come on, Kensuke, you should know better than that." Hiroshi dispelled his clones. "You know what Gendou-sensei would say."
"Yeah, yeah," grumbled Kensuke. He straightened up even further and affected a cold, calculating expression. "'Your opponents will not sit still and wait for you to aim properly, Inuzuka Kensuke. Anticipation is the key to precision.'"
Hiroshi grinned and started heading back to the campsite. "That's a better impression than I could do."
"No way, you've got all those ventriloquism genjutsu skills, you could totally do a better Gendou than me."
The two of them walked silently through the trees. "Kensuke?"
"Yeah."
"I don't have kage bunshin down yet either."
"What?"
Hiroshi looked embarassed. "Those were just regular ones." He ruffled Kensuke's grey hair and dodged the retaliatory swipe that always came after. "Come on, you were working so hard, I had to try and mess with you."
Kensuke grumbled.
"Hold it."
Kensuke looked up. "What?"
"Perimeter traps. They've been disabled." Hiroshi crept forwards, pulling aside leaves and inspecting the disabled alarm. "We've been breached."
Kensuke nodded and disappeared into the trees, readying his weapon as he went. He watched through the scope of his crossbow as Hiroshi disappeared under a genjutsu - anyone not familiar with the chuunin wouldn't have known enough to spot the extra bush that appeared near every tree on the way to the campsite.
He watched as Hiroshi moved silently from bush to bush, until he reached the camoflaged tents and Kensuke's sleeping hound. There was nobody there.
"Did you find him yet?" said a bored voice right next to him.
Kensuke jumped slightly. He covered this move by twisting around, grabbing a weapon from his pouch, but in his shock and subsequent haste, his foot came down just an inch too far, where there was not a branch to support it.
Minor discovery. Falling out of trees hurts.
Kensuke had to give his teammate credit, though. Hiroshi was instantly at his side, kunai out and ready to damage
Then he looked up. He sighed and put his weapons away.
Kensuke looked up as well. On the branch that he had just fallen off of crouched a man with short, spiky grey hair, with a face mask and his hitai-ate pulled low over his left eye. He was holding a small orange book in his left hand; without taking his eye off it, he raised his right hand in greeting.
"Yo."
"Kakashi-san, what are you doing here?"
"Reading, mostly," said Hatake Kakashi, completely engrossed in his book. "You wouldn't believe what Toshiro just said to Yume."
The jounin flipped a page. "Also, Kensuke-kun, while taking a sniper role is advantageous in most situations, you still need to be aware of what's going on around you. Too much focus, and you're vulnerable to attack."
"Or falling out of a tree, I gather," said Kensuke, rubbing his head as he sat up. "You here on business, or just to give me a concussion?"
"I can't do both?" Kakashi put his book away and pulled out a red scroll. "The Hokage is calling you four back in for a new mission." He tossed the scroll to Hiroshi.
Hiroshi caught the scroll and checked the chakra signature on the Hokage's seal. He nodded to Kensuke, then turned back towards Kakashi. "They get anything useful from our oto-nin friend?"
Kakashi waved a hand dismissively. "They didn't say. I didn't ask. I'm taking over the rest of your patrol, so you can head back to Konoha at any time."
Hiroshi nodded, stowing the scroll in a pouch and turning to leave. Kensuke followed suit.
"Moriyama, before you go..."
Hiroshi turned back to Kakashi, who had finally departed from his branch and was now walking on solid ground. "Yes?"
"Gai was very impressed with your genjutsu. He said it was the best he had ever seen."
Kensuke raised an eyebrow inquisitively. "Is that what he said?" he asked, conveying with his tone that he really didn't believe a word of it.
Kensuke couldn't tell, but he was certain that Kakashi was grimacing under his mask. "Actually, he said 'the determination of young Moriyama and the power of his youth and exuberance has demonstrated the heat of his burning fiery flames of fire' and so on." The jounin rolled his eye. "I stopped paying attention right around then, but it seemed very impressive."
"And you wanted me to show you." Hiroshi had that gleam in his eye. Kensuke had spent enough time with Hiroshi over the past thirteen years to know that nothing good ever came of that look. He started edging away.
Kakashi shrugged. "If you don't mind. We have so few genjutsu specialists these days, and I haven't seen Kurenai do anything new since Akatsuki visited."
Hiroshi grinned. He flashed the now-familiar seals and touched his finger to his throat. "So serious all the time, my eternal rival! I will break through your cool exterior one of these days, or else I climb the Hokage Monument using nothing but my pinkies! And if I cannot do that, I will perform ten thousand sit-ups hanging upside-down at the waterfall at the Valley of the End!" He twitched his fingers, then gave one of Maito Gai's signature Nice Guy Poses, complete with twinkling smile.
That gleam had to be genjutsu. There was no alternate explanation for it.
Kakashi winced. "Okay, okay, I get it. Turn it off."
Hiroshi continued to grin nastily as he dispelled the genjutsu.
"That right there is a powerful psychological weapon," Kakashi said, dryly. "You might want to consider sealing it and marking it Forbidden." He shuddered. "For the good of Konoha."
* * * * *
It was midnight when they arrived back at the village. Team Gendou's appointment with the Hokage would be taken care of first thing in the morning, they were assured at the administrative building. Since it didn't seem to be time-critical, they decided to relax at a quiet, grassy training area.
"You know, we should probably at least try to get some sleep," Hotaru said, absent-mindedly spinning a kunai on her finger. "I know we've been on a rotating sleep schedule, but nothing says we have to be nocturnal at home."
Neither Kensuke nor Hiroshi responded, prompting her to look up at what they were doing. Both of them were concentrating, and Hiroshi had managed to phase a kage bunshin into existence next to him.
Kensuke glanced over and cursed. "Man, now I have to try extra hard to catch up."
"You'll get it eventually," replied Hiroshi - Hotaru was pretty certain it was the real one, but she couldn't be entirely sure - as he continued to practice the motions. She couldn't blame him, even after succeeding; most tricky jutsu involved more than just one seal to focus, so the trick of this was to go against previous training, which was harder than learning the skill in the first place.
Hiroshi grinned at her, obviously catching the fact that she was watching him, and started waggling his eyebrows. Almost immediately, his clone started doing the same in synchronization.
"Gods, now there's two of them. Kensuke, hit him."
The blow to the back of the head only seemed to encourage Hiroshi, however, and now the two of him were waggling their eyebrows off-rhythm from each other. It was giving her a headache to watch, it really was.
He finally stopped and dismissed his clone when a shadowy mist started to swirl in front of them. Gendou stepped out of the gloom and gave his students a cursory nod.
"What's the story?" asked Hiroshi, suddenly all business again.
"The spy has given us all he is going to," said Gendou, removing his dark glasses. His good eye seemed to focus on something in the distance. "Ibiki-sensei and the Hokage are meeting in an hour to discuss what we have found out."
"Don't worry," drawled a voice from outside the clearing. "You'll find out what it is in the morning." A woman in a burned and tattered kimono was walking towards them, mischief in her eyes.
Hotaru grinned. "You came to see us, Ren?"
"Just my husband," said Ren, winking conspiratorially. "You three are a bonus." Kurobana Ren glared at Hiroshi, and pointed her umbrella at him. "You, however, have some explaining to do."
Hiroshi looked innocent. "Me? I was out in the forest for a week. What am I supposed to have done?"
Ren growled. "Care to explain that little trick your sister was able to pull off?"
Hiroshi blinked. The scrolls he had given his sister didn't have anything terribly dangerous she would have been able to perform until her chakra reserves and control had grown. Even the tamest Doton ninjutsu would have been months away from her grasp. "Why, what did she do?"
"The little twit hit me with the most disturbing genjutsu I had ever seen." Ren shuddered. "It wasn't strong enough to make me believe what I was seeing, but just the sight of it distracted me long enough to almost take a strike from the Hyuuga."
Hiroshi broke out into a huge grin. "I didn't know there was a Hyuuga on her team. That'll give her motivation to practice, sure enough." He frowned. "Which one was it? The giant lobster waterfall? The thing with the flying bison fighting a samurai lemur?"
Ren's eyebrows twitched with each description. "No. It was the Teddy Bear Picnic. What kind of horrors are you unleashing, Moriyama?"
The other chuunin struggled to keep straight faces. Even Gendou seemed to withdraw deeper into his tattered scarf.
"It's a combination of her favorite stories as a kid and a lesson in psychological warfare," said Hiroshi. "Throwing out images that the opponent doesn't expect to see can distract for even just a moment, which gives her an opening to strike. It definitely helps that these are images that she's familiar with, since it adds extra details to the illusion with decidedly less effort."
Hotaru noticed his grin operated independantly from his attitude; this was actually a serious explanation. That was Hiroshi all over, though; even when he's in shinobi mode, he'll lighten the mood somehow.
Ren looked sour, but shrugged. "It's a valid tactic, I'll grant you, but if she hits me with it again, I'll have to retailiate. I hope you realize that."
Hiroshi nodded. "I'm surprised she's come this far in learning the techniques I wrote down for her."
"Hey, you know how girls are," said Ren, waggling her eyebrows. "Yukiko and Hanabi have a rivalry going right now."
"Friendly, I hope."
"Mostly. The Hyuuga is too proud to admit that 'a commoner' impressed her, and Yuki-chan likes pushing people's buttons. I think she takes after you." Ren stretched her arms. "Now, I don't know about you kids, but I'm going to commandeer my husband for the rest of the night. Go do whatever, we're busy now."
The three chuunin watched them leave. "You heard the lady," said Kensuke, stifling a toothy yawn. "We'll be debriefed by Tsunade-hime in the morning. I'm out."
Hotaru watched him leave, then turned to Hiroshi. "What do you say? Late night snack?"
Hiroshi shook his head. "Kensuke's right. We should take it easy." He looked over at the darkened faces of the Hokage Monument to the north. "I have a feeling we'll need the rest."
Chapter Four / Continue to Chapter Six
