Snippet #2284063

With some reluctance, Mashio Miyazaki accepted the dispatch. Slim, gloved fingers unfastened the hinged lid -- shook out the thin missive written with their village's complex secret code. Read normally, it was a harmless personal letter between two friends; understand the cypher and kanji were rearranged, some discarded and others modified. It took Miyazaki a few moments to transcribe the missive in her head. Aoyama Tomoki glanced over her shoulder, and transcribing the code in as much time as it took him to glance over the characters, he gave an inarticulate gasp of surprise. Too late, the young kunoichi jerked around to avoid any further scrutiny.

"No offense, Matsu-san, but did you steal this from someone?" the briefing office genin said, half-serious, half-joking. Miyazaki had to agree -- Sugahara Matsu was the oldest genin in the Spirit Fox village by far, and they all knew that there must be some reason for his inability to rise to chunin. Some thought cowardice, but Miyazaki guessed incompetence, plain and simple. Glancing down at the missive again, she couldn't understand why this sort of mission would be given to a man such as he.

Still, it had been weeks since her last mission, and Miyazaki was eager to return to the field. If she was to grow her reputation as a legendary kunoichi, she couldn't do it with the occasional two-star mission that dribbled out of the briefing office like thawing snow. No, she would take this mad quest with the fat old scholar genin beside -- and when she returned successful she would be recognized as a full-fledged chunin second to none, and not some burned out child prodigy.

"Very well, Matsu-chan," she agreed, choosing the suffix that would establish their relationship from the beginning: despite being over thirty years her senior, she was the chunin and he the genin, and he would know it. She didn't need some doddering grandfather trying to pull free from her every command. "We leave at sunrise tomorrow."