I know it’s only nine pm, but I am SO EXHAUSTED. Today was the actor cold read of the writing workshop scripts in front of the directors and even though I didn’t have to do anything, I was nervous and so hyped up on adrenaline for the entire three hours (because, of course my script was read second to last) that I just immediately crashed.
BUT THEN! I had to go to a birthday dinner basically IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS and for some reason we stayed at the restaurant for OVER THREE HOURS?!?! (And, yes, part of it was that service was pretty slow, but that last hour was excessive and unnecessary).
The token they got from the campers isn’t copper, which is fine. That raid was mostly to complete Naruto Uzumaki’s not-so-impossible objective, and while it didn’t go perfectly she’d say it was a success over all.
He’s only missing one more token.
Technically, so is she, but percentage-wise she’s further from completing her objective than he is.
If they end this exam and her objective isn’t complete, she’s going to be so pissed off. And not even at Naruto Uzumaki–or, at least, not mostly–but at herself. She can already predict that awful self-chastisement telling her, see, this is why you should only look out for yourself.
One more day. Hopefully they can prevent that from happening.
—
The problem with using people as scapegoats is that, eventually, they’re going to find out about it. If she and Naruto Uzumaki are lucky, Neji Hyuuga’s intimidating ice prince personality will ward that eventuality off until after the exam.
She didn’t really consider how Rock Lee might react, mostly because she doesn’t know anything about him except for hearsay. And, unlike mister cardinal clan himself, Rock Lee doesn’t pose much of a threat.
She’s not expecting him to hear about it during the exam, either–as friendless as Neji Hyuuga for vastly different reasons–and she’s definitely not expecting him to have a positive reaction.
Then again, she didn’t expect to him to walk around, literally asking for people to attack him.
“This is a trap, right?” she asks, glancing over to Naruto Uzumaki for confirmation. Between the two of them, he is the one that would have more experience with Rock Lee.
“Eh…” he says, gaze locked on their classmate on the forest floor below them, “Maybe?”
Trap or not, what’s interesting to Tetsuki is that on Rock Lee’s bicep is an armband in a shade of purple so deep as to be nearly black…
… the same color as the armband in Naruto Uzumaki’s pocket.
Tetsuki dreams of the cold. Not from ice or snow or harsh winds, but an empty kind of cold. A void. As if she were the only person in the world.
It doesn’t make any sense. The Land of Fire is aptly named, temperate even in the night, and before moving in to Ueno General Store she shared a room at Ryokushoku with seven other girls.
But dreams don’t always have to make sense.
It changes. Goes from cold to warm, like standing in a sunbeam, like casual affection and stalwart devotion and other things she’s never experienced before.
Getting adopted was a fairy tale that she has long put behind her, but she imagines maybe this is what it would feel like. Family.
Then her chest aches. No, it stings. No, it shrieks–much harsher and visceral–as if she’s been stabbed through the heart, not just punched in the sternum.
She wakes up, breathing heavily, to a worried Naruto Uzumaki.
“Are you,” he starts, uncertain and hesitant for it, “You were, um.”
At least she’s not crying.
Still, she has to swallow, clear her throat, before her voice can be coaxed out. In those quiet moments, she realizes it’s been longer than an hour and a half, the moon already halfway through its trek across the sky.
“Why didn’t you wake me up earlier? It should be my watch now, you need to recover, too,” Tetsuki wrinkles her nose at herself–she had no idea she was such a busybody.
“I’m fine!” Naruto Uzumaki protests, “And I figured you might need it more. And…”
Now that she looks at him more closely, he does look okay. Only his clothes show any sign of the fight, no bruise or scratch or minor swelling even.
“It’s my fault that you got hurt so much,” he nearly mumbles, chin tucking into the high collar of his hideous jacket, “You deserve more rest,” he finishes.
It’s a sweet thought, if very misguided. Basing resources on who deserves what or who’s at fault for that won’t cut it when they’re real shinobi. It’s harmless now, but there’s no need to encourage bad habits for out on the field.
And so she doesn’t address it.
“Are you a medic?” she asks, instead, because that’s far more pertinent. She knows he got hit a few times–she heard it in the smoke and saw the results while they were retreating–his wounds shouldn’t be at that stage yet. Not when her own are angrily pulsing with every heartbeat.
“No, I just… heal fast,” he mutters. Which is an odd thing to be so ashamed about–a soldier who can heal fast would be valuable–but who is she to judge? It’s disappointing that he can’t help her bruises and scrapes along, but they’re nothing she can’t work through.
“I’ve heard weirder,” Tetsuki shrugs, as a sort of peace offering, “Still, convenient healing or not, you should sleep. Tomorrow’s the last day and we need to get two more tokens.”
Plan A–the plan they’re currently enacting–was mostly Naruto Uzumaki’s idea. She tweaked some parts to make it less risky, but the core of it has more flair for the dramatic than she herself would produce.
Plan B–which she had hoped to use on the possibility that their disguises were seen through–relied on the facts that she could switch seamlessly between the henge disguises and that the idea of Neji Hyuuga ambushing someone would be so intimidating that no one would think to test her in a fight.
The henge is not the problem.
The problem is that she’s already been hit three times in this fight and even if she were to switch into the Neji Hyuuga disguise, no one would believe it now.
Gods, this did not go as well as she had hoped.
They have enough armbands, is the thing. They want the remaining token and she’s not even fighting the right person.
As seconds fly by, the smoke disperses more and more, and any advantage she had in this fight against that sensible son of a bitch Komadori is swiftly dispersing with it.
Naruto Uzumaki’s laughter sounds strained now, too, and she knows they’re in trouble.
She tries to trill a whistle–her signal for retreat–but Komadori gets in a hard jab to her sternum that leaves her breathless.
Her henge shatters.
Well, there goes the whole disguise strategy.
Her opponent hesitates–or perhaps, so used to class spars, allows her to catch her breath–but that’s just the opening she needs:
She replaces herself with Renji, their somehow still unconscious hostage, and gives herself some space and what little cover remains of the smoke.
There! Now due north of her, Naruto Uzumaki still in disguise, fighting another camper and losing. She lurches in that direction. Now that she has air again, she finally trills a whistle, reaching out and yanking Naruto Uzumaki out of the way of a punch.
“Let’s go!” she shouts, running and pulling him with her, even as he tries to twist himself away. Thankfully, he’s not trying to stay and fight, but even as he begins to run with his own momentum she keeps her hold on him.
She is vigilant all the way back to the camp, paranoid that someone–especially that sensible son of a bitch–might track them down. But after several feints and a set of bunshin as decoys, she finally lets them spiral back into their camp.
Naruto Uzumaki’s bruises already seem to be healing, or maybe they aren’t nearly as bad as hers which she can feel radiating pain and heat off her skin.
Was it worth it? Attacking the camp directly only got them an additional armband and token each.
But they’ve almost completed Naruto Uzumaki’s impossible objective; surely that’s work a few scrapes.
Still, “You’re getting first watch,” she says, before performing the minimal amount of basic first aid on herself and passing the fuck out.
Up to date with ao3 cross posting. Except for brainstorms (and Externality, which I’d like to edit a bit before uploading), everything is now on my archiveofourown! I’ve got to fiddle around with series and tags and such before I’m completely satisfied, but that’s something I can do over time and not a desperate, burning need to get done.
I also could not make sense of my ao3/ “master list” page to reflect everything, so I just got rid of the attempt at a master list.
I’ll still post things on here primarily, don’t worry, but I would suggest going over to ao3 for an easier reading environment.
The weird thing is, Tetsuki thinks–ducking under a blind flail and returning with a punch to someone’s nose, cartilage crunching under her fist–she doesn’t like taijutsu.
Sure, she can learn and perform kata well enough and, more often than not, she does win her spars during class… which would imply she’s decent at taijutsu.
But that’s only as compared to her fellow students.
As this particular situation can attest to–a camper grabs at her sleeve, how quaint, she grips their arm and tosses them over her shoulder–the majority of her classmates aren’t exactly impressive.
Naruto Uzumaki laughs and blows a raspberry and she whistles in response, their established back and forth to keep track of each other in the smoke. From the sound of it, he’s a little bit northwest of her and has gotten an armband. She thinks maybe the laughter is genuine, so at least he’s enjoying himself, but she’s also been hearing some grunts of pain from him. No doubt someone’s gotten a couple lucky hits on him, better make this quick:
She crouches down and pats at her fallen opponent, delivering a knock out blow beforehand just to make sure–there, in a pocket, metal body temperature, the now familiar feel of a token. They can check the color later.
She whistles again and clicks her tongue–one token down, one more to go.
Someone gets a hand in her hair and yanks. She stumbles, one arm barely catching her fall, this close she can actually see a vague outline of the other person. Hell, she can see the blue of his sandals.
Komadori, that sensible son of a bitch.
“You’re not Atsushi,” he says, somewhat redundantly. Her henge is still up, but her hair is far longer than her disguise.
“I’m not?” she asks in Atsushi’s voice–or a close enough approximation as she could make with what little of it she heard when they ambushed him earlier–an attempt to baffle him before punching hard at the side of his knee.
It’s not enough to dislocate his kneecap, unfortunately, but it does surprise him enough to make him let go of her hair, allowing her to scramble back to her feet.
He’s not so taken off guard that she can just disappear back into the cover of the smoke–they maybe only have another thirty seconds before it disperses into uselessness–and he attacks her immediately.
She barely dodges a kick and gets a punch to the jaw for her efforts. Frustratingly she recalls that this particular classmate is one of the few who consistently beat her in spars.
I’ve gotten up to May of 2017 cross posting wise, so should be done and up to date by tonight/tomorrow. I may also need to clean up my master list after that, though… but I’ll try not to lose myself yet again.
JackSGreyson Says 