Snippet #2282575

The slim young woman removed her hooded cowl as she entered the hidden village, wearing the scarlet fabric loosely around her neck and shoulders. Her face was bared, revealing young pristine features at odds with the stern glint in her eye, the heavy cast to her brow. As she moved through the common grounds, a small group of young kohai darted past, bumping into her as they played their game. "Mind yourselves!" she called at their backs as they ran on, laughing and shouting at each other.

With a sigh, she continued on her way -- heading for the briefing office to see if there was a new mission for her. This last week there had been nothing, and so she'd retreated from the Spirit Fox village to the seclusion of the surrounding woods, there to train in solitude. Now that she was a chunin, the young kunoichi felt uncomfortable with anyone seeing her train -- she was supposed to be the best of the best! Despite her expectations, she had not distinguished herself as a chunin the way she had as a youngling, or even genin. So she continued her training, but did so in solitude.

"Ho! Miya-chan," came a voice from the briefing office, as the man stepped out from the doorway, to stand outside the office as he prepared a pipe to smoke. "Don't call me so informally, idiot!" she growled. Aoyama Tomoki was from her age group in childhood training, and was a junior officer now, although still a genin. He helped his masters prepare the missions -- he verified the secret code that the missives were written in, to ensure there were no errors in the transcription.

"Sorry, Miyazaki-sama," the young man said with a bow, although his smile and the way he flourished his pipe with his bow made it obvious he was joking around. Miyazaki glared at him as she stepped into the office. When she came out a few minutes later, she was demure and composed once more, as she turned to him with a batting lash.

"Tomo-kun," she cooed sweetly, moving as though she was either going to kiss him or tell him a secret. When the boy leaned forward expectantly, she grabbed his ear. "Where are the good missions!?" she shouted. "You're hiding them for your friends, aren't you!" He pulled himself from her grasp, cleaning off the front of his robes that had spilled kizami tobacco down the front. "Of course not, Miya-chan," he growled as he rubbed his ear. "There were plenty of missions on the board -- just not any good ones for a chunin of your rank. Maybe if you..." he trailed off before finishing the sentence, and the hotheaded kunoichi didn't know if he was purposefully taunting her or not. It was true -- there had been some three- and four-star missions, even a rare five-star, but nothing posted for her current second-rank status.

"Why don't you take a genin or two with you?" Tomoki asked. "That way you can be cleared for a higher mission rank?"

It was a fair point, but not one that Miyazaki wished to think about. She'd never led a team of genin on a mission before, and she couldn't explain why. She acted like it was because they would only slow her down, but she feared that deep down, this was just an evasion from the truth. That she wouldn't be good enough to do it.