Naruto Saigen Roleplay

Their first day of travel had been a tough one. It had started under less than ideal circumstances. No, that wasn’t quite true: waking up next to Nikkou had been a great start. Between being late for the muster, the depressing nature of their mission, and the long, cold march, it had deteriorated after that. After nearly twelve hours of travel, the four had finally made camp. Fire built, tents raised, Hanzou and Kohaku were assigned first watch.

The cold air of a Rock Country night was only just kept at bay by the combination of their campfire and the thick wool-and-fur shepherds coat Hanzou had brought with him. When they could be sure that Nikkou, and, more importantly, Youji were asleep, the two friends exchanged a mischievous look. Without needing to say a word, Hanzou produced two cigarettes from his pocket, lit both, and handed one to Kohaku.

Able to tell what Kohaku’s next move would be before he made it, Hanzou pushed a tin camping cup over to his friend. He took a long drag on his cigarette.
“Bleak fucking mission,” he finally said, breeaking the windy silence of the steppes. A small cloud of smoke escaped his mouth and nose as he spoke. “And it had to be the City of Towers huh? Bunch of religious wackjobs.”

The day had been awkward for Kohaku. While he was the second in command on this mission, he didn't feel like he was in the lead. With Hanzou and Nikkou paired up, that left Kohaku to tag along with Youji, and the genin wasn't exactly in the zone. While he did appreciate the extra attention he got from his sensei, the whole time Kohaku was dashing through the woods, he felt detached from the team. Kohaku couldn't quite place his finger on the feeling in his heart, but with Hanzou occupied by the female gaze, he was left to entertain himself. Fortunately there wasn't a lot of downtime, but nevertheless Kohaku was distracted throughout his journey.

Eventually the group would be done moving for the day, and it would be time to set up camp. Hanzou and Nikkou set off to collect wood while Kohaku and Youji put together the campsite. They wouldn't be asleep long, but a few hours to rest would be ideal. As he put up the tents, Kohaku gritted his teeth, thinking about Hanzou balls deep in Nikkou's love tunnel. It was absolutely disgusting, and Kohaku had an active imagination. He did get the tents up, despite his displeasure, and by the time he did, Hanzou and Nikkou had enough wood for a six hour camping trip. "Sick fucks." Kohaku muttered as he threw foam mattresses in the tents. They may have been roughing it, but thanks to modern Shinobi technology, sealing tags, they could store a variety of convenient items. Kohaku had all sorts of shit that he let the team use.

Starting the watch, Kohaku and Hanzou would be awake for the first three sleeping hours. They sat next to the fire in silence, watching the woods and waiting for the rest of the team to fall asleep. After some time, Hanzou broke the silence. Which was good because Kohaku had too much angst to talk to his sex-having friend.

With his back to the campfire, Kohaku was scoping out the trees for any signs of danger, he was focused, but Kohaku was a multi tasker. When Hanzou spoke to him, Kohaku responded quickly in a hushed tone. "Dude, Sensei couldn't have sold it to us any darker." Kohaku grabbed the cigarette and took a quick drag. He was still learning to smoke, holding the cigarette wasn't natural to him, but he was picking up quick. As a test of skill Kohaku went to ash it, but Hanzou had a can for him. Kohaku carefully tapped the cigarette into the tin can, and gave Hanzou a smile. It was hard to be mad at his friend, unfortunately the disgust was still there and Kohaku turned back to the woods.

"Dude, this mission is going to be hell on Earth. I wonder if your girl is ready for it." Kohaku took another drag of his cigarette, then looked over at Hanzou, exhaling a cloud of smoke around his face. In the light from the campfire it looked like a sort of halo, or maybe a noxious aura.

“Dark for real for real,” Hanzou assented. “Iwa has expanded so much, so fast that I suppose shit like this this was bound to happen. It just…” Hanzou trailed off, taking a quick puff on his cigarette while protecting it from a sudden gust of wind.

“I don’t know… if Iwa can’t protect the people it conquers, it’s gonna be bad. And now with Suna there are going to be some so-called freedom fighters. If the Suna people, the old Wind Country outer provinces hear that Iwa shinobi are burning plague victims it’s gonna pour more fuel on the fire.”

Hanzou bookended his little oration with a second drag on his cigarette, this one much longer. That was when Kohaku hit him with the question he had been dreading all day.

Shit, he did notice.

Shock flickered across Hanzou’s features for a brief moment. Almost as quickly, his face returned to normal.

“My what now?” Hanzou asked, feigning ignorance, cooly glancing away as if so uninterested in an irrelevant question that the inky blackness outside of camp was more interesting.

No, that was wishful thinking. Of course he noticed. Everyone fucking knows now. Nikkou definitely knows. Sensei knows for sure. Now. Kohaku knows. Fuck, the blind lady selling roasted sweet potatoes we passed on our way to the mustering point probably knows.

As long as Hanzou had known Kohaku he had been weird about matters of romance. He had always talked a big game about wanting to find an Akari woman for himself, but any time the chance presented itself, suddenly he was Mister Sanctimonious, loudly eschewing romance to study the blade. It was why Hanzou’s first kiss – some Akari cousin of Kohaku’s whom he had met at a party – would forever remain a secret from his friend. It was also why he was hoping Kohaku hadn’t noticed anything. Before Kohaku could say anything, Hanzou tore down his cool facade.

“You noticed, huh?” Hanzou chuckled, shaking his head and waving his hand, tracing zig zag shapes through the dark with the smoldering end of his cigarette. “I guess we weren’t exactly subtle. What with the damn… I guess it used to be my jacket.”

Hanzou craned over, around the fire to grab the can and tap some ash in.

“It’s brand new. I don’t even know what it is yet,” he said quietly. “But shit, you know Nikkou is just my type. It's that tomboy shit.”

He straightened himself back out and took another draw. As he exhaled, he looked Kohaku right in the eyes, his eyebrows tenting slightly.

“Are you gonna make this weird?”

Listening to Hanzou spit out words was unreal to Kohaku. He couldn't believe Hanzou had fallen for Nikkou so assuredly and quickly. Kohaku had never been with a woman, he had never even kissed a girl; there was no way he could relate to Hanzou's cool demeanor. Listening to him talk about their team mate was cringe inducing for Kohaku. He wasn't against it, Kohaku believed love could be found anywhere, but he wasn't convinced it was love, and more than that, he thought it was dangerous for the team.

As the leader among the genin, second in command of the team, Kohaku had a sort of high up point of view of his team. Kohaku saw himself as the captain of the team, and as captain it was up to him to conceptualize the proponents of his team in a way that could be geared for war. In other words, Kohaku saw Hanzou and Nikkou, and himself, as pawns for Iwagakure. To have feelings between the team, that was dangerous.

Kohaku picked his hand up to his mouth and sucked on the cigarette smoke. It tasted rich, Hanzou had given him a non-menthol. Kohaku found the smoke to dry out his mouth, and it tasted especially sweet. "Dude, I don't have to make it weird. It's weird." Kohaku exhaled as he spoke and the ghastly cloud of smoke covered up his face again. Kohaku was speaking as the leader of the team, and he was trying to be clear. "What if this 'tomboy shit' gets you killed, what if it gets her killed, what if it gets me killed? Are you strong enough to carry around another on this team?" There was an ichor laced with Kohaku's words. He didn't mean to, but he was giving Hanzou an emotional response. "I don't think it's a good idea for our team. You should be studying Tenkujutsu, or mastering the Shogo-zumi. Learning your way around a weapon finally, maybe." Kohaku turned to look at Hanzou. He had been facing the woods as he spoke with his friend so candidly. He was trying to make a joke, lighten the mood. Kohaku realized he was giving Hanzou a lecture. The two had always teased each other about their styles of fighting, Kohaku hoped it would ease the sting of his words.

Hanzou glared at his friend. He had tried to lighten the mood and instead was getting a lecture. Kohaku hit him with a plenitude of reasons why what he was doing was a bad idea – some of which Hanzou couldn’t refute with ease. His eyes bolted wider and their usual black hue was replaced with a brilliant, dark purple which almost seemed to glow in the firelight. Hanzou kept the eyes in that state for a long time – far beyond the momentary flash that Kohaku had seen in their first spar together as teammates. The pattern too was different: double-ringed and far spinier than it had been at any point before. Refutation number one.

“Man, what is this?” Hanzou barked. “I don’t need to carry shit around. I know you think Nikkou’s some weakling or something, but you saw her in action: she saved our asses twice on these spirit missions.”

He brought the cigarette to his lips and sucked in some smoke. Kohaku’s expression told him all he needed to know: he knew that he had been harsh and was trying to extend an olive branch. Now that it was out of his system too, the least he could do was accept it. He exhaled all of the smoke at once with a pout. When it cleared, Hanzou’s eyes had returned to their usual shade.

“I at least gotta learn that Fukusha style so I can stick my foot up your ass the right way,” he grinned and a chuckle crept out from deep inside him.

IT was true what Hanzou said about the last two spirit missions. Nikkou had slayed the massive swarm of rats on one mission, and on the other, she outright solved the apparition problem. Nikkou was most certainly useful. She wasn't weak by any means, and Kohaku had seen that for himself. When she pushed lava through the Ougonjidai, Kohaku was definitely impressed. She had greater chakra control than anyone else on the team at that time. Nikkou was a strong kunoichi, but she wasn't perfect. What Kohaku needed was teammates that were utterly flawless, then if they wanted to bump uglies, well, he would still be disgusted.

When Hanzou flashed his Shogo-zumi Kohaku scoffed. "How would he like it if I formed my shiin right here?" The Genin thought to himself and flicked his spent cigarette into the fire, accentuating his middle finger on the flick.

Despite their bickering, Kohaku didn't feel any ill will towards Hanzou, or Nikkou. He thought they were unwise, but he knew now to expect that from Hanzou, and he decided to put his worries on the back burner. When Hanzou mentioned Kohaku's ass, the Akari guffawed a little too loud. "I don't think that will be happening any time soon." He said, quietly, looking around to check if Youji or Nikkou was stirred awake.

Hoping to change the mood a little bit, Kohaku decided to ask about what he was working on the most lately. That being training. "So what do you think, you getting strong?" Kohaku looked over into Hanzou's eyes. There was a burning passion smoldering in Kohaku's red eyes.

Likewise, Hanzou felt no ill will towards Kohaku. They had fought more stridently in the past, and had hundreds of happy memories for every angry one. The two had met shortly after Hanzou had arrived in Iwa. As a child of the then-and-still-often reviled Fukusha clan, Hanzou’s integration into the village had been fraught to say the least. He had been dumped, illiterate and largely uneducated into the academy system and forced to adapt on the fly. Most of his cousins were either too old or too young for the academy, and the ones who were the right age were kept separate. “To aid in their integration” the Iwites said.

It didn’t work. Hanzou was all alone. He spent his days mostly alone. His only interactions were teasing and fighting, and he tended to lose the fights. Things came to a head in late April, as the first inklings of Spring started to gnaw at the edges of the harsh Rock Country winter. The teacher had announced that there were two birthdays today: his and Kohaku’s. At lunch, there was a small celebration for Kohaku’s birthday. Hanzou lurked far off: huddled up and hiding his tears.

Then, Kohaku had approached him.

“Isn’t it your birthday too?” the boy had asked him. “Are you also nine?”

Hanzou simply looked up and nodded. He tensed his body, preparing to either run or take a beating.

“Come with me,” Kohaku had said instead. “We can be birthday buddies.”

Still apprehensive, Hanzou stood up and walked with Kohaku. He thought this was a bad idea. His eyes were peeled for whatever trap this would doubtless be. Instead, Kohaku had given him some food and told their assembled classmates that they also had to sing a birthday song for Hanzou. When one of the more troublesome children refused, Kohaku charged the boy and punched him right in the face. Ever since then they had been inseparable.

“I like to think so,” Hanzou said with a grin that gleamed in the light of the campfire. “Ever since we took Suna, their secrets have been pouring into Iwa. They have this gravity release school that’s incredibly powerful. Watch this.”

Hanzou flicked his cigarette butt into the fire and held up the pack. He channeled a bit of chakra into it and two cigarettes slowly levitated out. They floated at Hanzou’s eye level for a moment, then they shot out: one towards Hanzou, one towards Kohaku. Hanzou caught his with his teeth, and with another surge of chakra it smoldered and lit.

“Cool, right? More useful for kunai, but using it with cigarettes gets more chicks.”

There were many good mmemories between Kohaku and Hanzou, and some of them were great. Others were embarrassing, but they had a sort of epic charm to them. The two friends had been through a lot. When Hanzou came to Iwagakure, he was an unfortunate child, and Kohaku seemed to see something strong in him. Both of the boys grew close together, testing their mettle against the world together. They fought valiantly in the streets of Iwagakure. They even had the fearsome reputation as the two strongest kids in their class. They fought some fearsome battles for their respect as ninja, and both of them saw each other as rivals. It was always a fight for reputation, and the battle between each other was a whole 'nother war. They were at each others necks, but it was in good fun. Growing up was tough in Iwagakure, but when you had a friend like they did, it was bearable.

As a testament to their friendship, Hanzou and Kohaku practiced their ninja arts together. When one learned about something, the other was sure to catch on. They developed a symbiotic relationship with each other, strengthening one anothers talents with understanding of the other skills. They also complimented each other in social settings. Hanzou's zany smoothness paired with Kohaku's composed confidence well. They were like two tomcats, and they were proud of each others tenacity. It was good to be friends with Hanzou, Kohaku appreciated his brother in arms.

Hanzou's new power would have normally made Kohaku seethe with envy, but Kohaku had a special skill to show Hanzou too.

With his next cigarette in his mouth, Kohaku reached for his flint lighter. He toasted the begining of his cigarette and set it back in his coat pocket. "That's cool. I can see you using that well." Kohaku exhaled a cloud of smoke, it penetrated the cold air around him in a noxious aroma. The cigarette satisfied a deep desire in his soul though, making the stink worth it.

Kohaku put together some hand seals and grains of iron began coagulating in the air around them. The grains of iron floated there, partially obscuring each others vision. The cloud of iron Sand was thick and just the glow of each other's cigarettes could still be seen. If Hanzou moved just an inch, his skin would be gently irritated with the coarse nature of the sand.

With another hand seal, Kohaku released the jutsu. The iron sand fell softly to the ground. "I studied some of Sunagakure's scrolls too." Kohaku ashed his cigarette into the fire.

A smirk came across Hanzou’s features. Kohaku had been so eager to show off his new tricks that he hadn’t even taken the bait about Kuuton getting chicks. Whatever: probably even better that way. They’d probably just end up arguing again.

Ain’t that just the way…

Hanzou sat still, admiring the cloud of shifting, vibrating iron dust. His cigarette drooped out of his mouth, held loosely between his lips, a thin trail of smoke rising up. When Kohaku released the jutsu, he held out his hand, catching some of the sand. It was corse, and surprisingly hot from its time over the fire. Hanzou tossed the granules into the fire where they fizzled into small golden sparks and let out the acrid smell of a forge. The smell made him think briefly of Nikkou. The life of a shinobi: one evening spent in the wild throws of passion, the next camping in the wilderness.

“Nice man,” he smirked. “You can sand the enemies of Iwa to death.”

He took another drag from his cigarette, let his head roll back, and blew a plume of smoke up into the air. There were so many more stars here than in Iwa. Their watch would be ending soon.

Kohaku held his cigarette in his hand like a joint and rolled it between his fingers, considering his friend in the moment. Hanzou had just taken a big step in life, and from the way this mission sounded, he was going to take another one soon. Kohaku felt just a tad dejected by his friend. It was as if by fornicating, Hanzou had left Kohaku behind.

Kohaku didn't like this feeling. He thought it felt gay. It wasn't that deep, it came down to who would be the strongest. Not where the loser fell behind. kohaku knew if Hanzou mastered Kuuton and ascended past him, his friend would still be there to challenge him. The Akari grinned as he thought about it, "What a challenge.." Kohaku declared, thinking to himself.

Trying not to seem like he was one dimensional (that hurt me to write actually), Kohaku decided to bring up Nikkou again. Of course, he was going to talk around her. "So, you think you can get more chicks? This isn't your first fluke, can't you smell it." Kohaku wondered what sex smelled like. "Save some pussy for the rest of us, bruh." Kohaku drew a hit from his cigarette, his scarlet eyes peering into Hanzou's own world renown eyes.

Hanzou made a face at his friend’s comment. His eyes narrowed, his brow furled, and the corners of his mouth pulled outward unevenly, exposing clenched teeth. It was an expression somewhere between horror and disgust.
“What in the Tushikage’s smelly fishbone are you talking about?” Hanzou asked, the expression still on his face. “What are you smelling?”

He took another drag, giving Kohaku some concerned side eye as he sucked in the smoke. Finally, he hit his breaking point, breaking into a chuckle that sent little puffs out with each laugh.

“Nah, it is,” he finally got out, the last aftershocks of his laughter coming through in his voice. “Except for, well…” Hanzou waved his hand in front of his face as if to banish the topic of his first kiss like so much cigarette smoke. “I hope it’s not just a fluke.”

Another drag.

“Man, I swear, you’d be getting some too if you spent some time outside of your compound. I don’t know, maybe you’re dead set on an Akari chick. Otherwise, I’ve probably got a cousin our age: maybe even one that likes sad guys with big fishbones.”

He shot Kohaku another look, this one almost conspiratorial. Inviting Kohaku in on the joke made at his expense.

Kohaku busted out into quiet laughter with Hanzou. It was always funny when Hanzou built up on a joke, Kohaku could feel the laughter rising up in him and the anticipation drew a pleasant break for him. In those moments, Kohaku felt like he was free from the world. He didn't dwell on his errors, or his worries. Hanzou was a good friend, and Kohaku felt that in his gut as he laughed with him.

Hanzou got serious again though. Mentioning Nikkou had him in his feelings. Kohaku couldn't help but whince, drawing on his cigarette. [color=.slategrey]"Don't confess your love now.."[/color]r Kohaku thought. He wasn't the most mature ninja.

"I just haven't found the girl for me. I've been busy lately, and not all my pursuits pan out." Kohaku felt like he was making excuses. The truth of the matter was that Kohaku didn't try hard enough. He was plenty handsome and charming. Most girls liked him enough to go on a date with him even. But he was so busy studying the secrets of his mind and body, he didn't pan out himself. Kohaku exhaled his cigarette. It was going fast, but his always did. Kohaku smoked fast.

"When I find one, you will be the first to meet her. But i'm telling you, she'll be an exotic chick." Kohaku ashed his cigarette into the fire again. The lickering orange inferno instantly enveloped the ash and spit defiant embers into the air.

“Exotic chick, eh?” Hanzou cocked an eyebrow at Kohaku. “My boy’s gonna be picking up chicks at the plague hospital when we get to the Holy City.”

He decided to keep the comment about girls in the Holy City of Towers being “to die for” to himself. Too far, even for just him and Kohaku. In truth, this mission worried him: plague, piles of bodies, using their power to suppress these newly-conquered people even as they suffered. A shiver ran through him.

Hanzou glanced at the watch that he conveniently had on. Watch was almost over.

“Hey man,” he said, standing up and dusting himself off. “Almost time to wake up Youji. He’s got next watch.”

Hanzou flicked the remains of his cigarette into the fire, then tossed another log on. The sound of crunching wood and a flash of embers rose up into the cold night air. Even just a few more feet away from the fire was uncomfortably cool. He was looking forward to crawling into his sleeping bag and finally catching some shut eye. It had been a long day.