~Iki Yabo~
Iki walked down the bustling street trying to match the pace of the crowd. The main streets of the village were packed with traffic as everyone lent their support to managing the chaos that followed that grim day. Iki could feel the apprehension at being so vulnerable alive in the crowd. Many of the younger generation had never seen the village touch the ground. Iki couldn’t remember ever seeing it out of the sky from back home, at least. As he navigated his way into the military district, he finally felt a bit calmer. Moving through a busy crowd with claws on became quite tedious.
Waving a warm greeting to the guards on duty, Iki strolled into the communications tower. His senses were instantly over whelmed by the resulting chaos inside. People were running back and forth yelling in some code he hadn’t learned. It almost looked like a battlefield. “Uhm, excuse me” A pen thudded into the doorframe next to Iki’s face. A sweat drop rolled down his forehead. An innocent, elderly looking man smiled and waved him over. It didn’t just look like a battle field. It was a battle field. Iki tried to make his presence as small as possible and approached his superior.
“Hello. I” The grandpa put up a hand to his ear and yelled “SPEAK UP BOY”. Iki’s face became blank with shock as the coarse manly voice of an Adonis came out of the man’s mouth. Iki instinctively straitened his back and adopted a military stance. “Iki Yabo, reporting for duty!” “GOOD. YAROKI.” A figure darted away from the chaos and landed kneeling at the old man’s feet. “HAI”. “ESCORT HIM. GO”. Yaroki grabbed Iki’s hand and high tailed it away from the scary old man. The old man lit a pipe and let an absent look glaze over his face as the chaos around him continued.
Yaroki and Iki ran for about three miles before they stopped. Iki had begun to protest but Yaroki just shook his head and put a finger over his lips. The genin shrugged and just followed, regressing into his mind to ponder about why that little old man sounded so scary. He was jarred from his thoughts as he slammed into Yaroki. The two went tumbling into a pile of cables. “What the hell!” Yaroki shouted at him, trying to untangle himself from the wires. Iki’s head popped out of the mess and glared at him.
“What do you mean what the hell? You’re the one who had me follow you out here without saying a word.” “Yaroki brushed himself off while Iki struggled in the cables, muttering curses as he just tangled himself more and more in the mess. “The captain has amazing hearing. If you had said anything stupid, he would have made us pay for it.” Yaroki’s eyes narrowed as he watched Iki squirmed. “And you seem like they type of idiot who knows how to run his mouth”. Iki’s struggling slowly came to a halt. He stood up and shook off the cables. They fell to his feet into a nice pile which he stepped out of.
“Your communication skills are pretty poor for someone who works in the communication division." Yaroki glared daggers at him. “Yea, well you’re a little too smooth with your conversation. Right? Yabo san.” Yaroki turned and waved form him to follow as they started to ascend the side of the communication tower. Iki raised an eyebrow at the unprovoked hostility but followed. Smooth? He wasn’t exactly smooth around men, but he shrugged off the comment. It was just a mission after all and it wasn’t as if it was the first time Iki had rubbed someone the wrong way.
As they reached the top of the tower, an alarm began to ring. Iki watched as a unit took off following the communication lines. Iki turned to ask Yaroki what was going on but he was cut off by the genin’s bland expression. As if to say ‘seriously, you can’t figure it out?’. Iki’s mouth formed a little ‘o’ as he realized why the repair of the lines were so troublesome to begin with. The rebel groups had been interfering with them, halting their construction while tampering with others. It made securing the lines a much more tedious process. “Wow. So there really are a bunch of rebels, huh? You hear the rumors but I find it hard to believe people would turn against us”. Yaroki snorted as if he had his own complaints but whatever they were he kept them to himself. “Bring those cables over here and let me show you what to do. Pay attention so I don’t have to show you twice”. Iki complied with a look of contempt on his face and began to work at the repairs.
Despite the unknown tension between the two, the work went surprisingly well. Iki loved to learn how something worked. They passed the time with Iki learning how the system operated through various questions and discussions with Yaroki. While he put up resistance at first, the two eventually reached some decorum of civility as they progressed. Nearing the end of this section of repairs, Iki shot an introspective look at Yaroki. “What?” He asked, shielding the last piece of exposed wire. “What grudge do you bear against me?” The genin slammed his cover on his tools and began to descend back to the ground. They worked the rest of the afternoon in silence.
Iki trailed behind Yaroki as they headed back to the communications head quarters. Iki was walking at a calm stroll, eyes out of focus while he day dreamed over new applications based on what he discovered today. Yaroki stopped abruptly, just barely out of range from the communication tower. Iki looked down and cocked his head with a questioning look. The genin put two fingers on the assassin’s chest and spat through clenched teeth. “You made her cry. She never cries.” He pushed Iki away and turned back to report to the scary old captain. Iki’s face remained stoic as he watched the genin walk away. Aw s**t.
