The moon is but a sliver of light at the apex of it’s journey when she is roughly shaken awake. Reflexively she strikes out, fist meeting rough cloth over boney flesh.
Naruto Uzumaki gives a yelp, more out of surprise than any pain, and that places Tetsuki even better than the cool night air or the dirt floor of sleeping outdoors. That, she’s done before, but never where another person might happen upon her.
“Sorry, sorry,” they both gibber at each other, unused to company and all the more hyperaware for it.
“It’s been an hour and a half,” Naruto Uzumaki says, sheepishly, which she might have guessed for herself–unless they were being attacked or someone had stumbled into one of their traps, there’s no reason for him to wake her up.
“A little more gently next time,” she responds, shaking off the sleep.
“Yeah, I figured.”
Four hours of rest and a REM cycle each–the other on watch while the other slept–should have energized them enough for a midnight raid or, at the very least, a decent scouting.
Their traps they keep up–both to protect their makeshift camp and because, frankly, they’re pretty good and she’s impressed by Naruto Uzumaki’s ingenuity–though while it would be nice to catch someone in them, they can’t actually depend on it. Maybe they’ll catch a rabbit to supplement their ration bars.
They’ve been spiraling inwards rather than cut through the training ground in straight lines; their camp on the northern edge of the east sector. This outing they’re aiming for the center on the logic that the river bisecting the training ground would be an attractive place for those with armbands to camp–not considering that they might need more defensible positions.
Neither of them are so stupid as to think that they’re the only ones to team up: for everyone else, so long as their colors don’t match, there shouldn’t be any conflict. And considering that the two of them–who are are independent at best and friendless at worst–still managed to form an alliance, they wouldn’t be surprised if their classmates did the same–teamwork is Konoha’s most valued virtue.
They’re not expecting to find a group of eight settled together, a smokeless fire pit and bedrolls and camping gear and everything. How…
Is that a tripod with a hanging pot over their fire? Is that stew? What’s next, a tent?
… comfortable.
Not very well defended: the few traps are half-hearted at best, trip wires obvious and shining, and even the person on watch–only one, never mind they had more than enough people to do a two person watch in a three shift rotation–was staring into the fire and ruining her night vision rather than looking outwards where threats would come from.
Tetsuki wants to take them out so badly.
From the way Naruto Uzumaki practically vibrates beside her, he must feel the same.
But not yet. Foolish and audacious as their camp may be, it would still be eight to two, and in an outright fight no way would that end favorably for her much smaller team of two.
“Recon only,” she hisses to him, no matter how tempting–wait, what if this is a trap? After a few moments and no trap is sprung, she decides that that’s just her paranoia at work.
Together they make a count of the group–six armband wearers, one of them flak jacket green, and two probable token holders. No one particularly outstanding in any one area. One of the boys is better at taijutsu than either of them, but the Neji Hyuuga disguise ought to discourage that.
They observe for two shift changes–one watcher every hour, how… quaint–before the both of them decide to go back to their own, less comfortable but better defended, camp.
They’ve got a raid to plan.
JackSGreyson Says 