"Shuriken scorpions?" Sheimi asked skeptically. "What the hell kind of animals are those? Just what sorts of animals do they have in this godsforsaken dry as hell country, anyway?"
"Oh, you know, sandworms, hellcats, something called a carnasaur which apparently eats sandworms," Makoto said flippantly. "And hyper-aggressive scorpions with necrotic venom, apparently."
She eyed him. "I can't tell if you're kidding. Those sandworm things we were warned about, something eats them?"
"So I'm told," Makoto said, not really paying attention as he double-checked his gear. "As soon as Tatsuya gets back with the cages, we'll go out and grab some. Apparently the local ANBU use it for interrogation or something."
"Aaaand what happens if one of us gets stung?" Sheimi demanded, getting in his face and making him wince from the brief snap of anger. "Doesn't the briefing say it can kill you in a half-hour?"
"If you or I get stung, we cart the other one to the hospital," he said, making sure he had his knives easily accessible. They'd be the better melee weapon for dealing with a bug. "If Tatsuya gets stung, we leave him wherever he falls and claim a sandworm got him."
"I'm fairly sure I could handle a sandworm, actually," Tatsuya said noncommittally as he strolled into the room casually, a bundle of scorpion cages tucked under one arm. He was kitted up for battle as well, a strange polearm slung visibly over his back. "Or at least, get away from one. You do know you were talking loudly enough I could hear you in the hall?"
Makoto glanced at him, then back to his own preparations. "Well," he said, striving to keep his voice neutral and disinterested in the face of the flare of mild irritation from the walking hole in reality, "that could have something to do with the fact that I didn't care if you heard me."
Tatsuya stared at him for a second with a slight frown on his face. "I really don't know why you and your brothers hate me. Can you at least deal fairly with me while we're supposed to be on the same team?"
Dishonesty pinged him hard, and he fought not to twitch and make it visible.
"I guess you're just that sort of person," Sheimi said, an edge of hostility to her voice. "You done, Makoto? I'm pretty sure you're armed enough."
No such thing as armed enough, he thought, but shrugged and tucked his knives into their holsters.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's get moving and grab these bugs. Apparently Chuunin can do it, so, you know, if either of you get stung I'll make fun of you all the way to the hospital."
"And I'm the friend no one likes," Tatsuya said, a bite of irony in his voice.
"Yep!" Sheimi said cheerfully as they headed out, totally ignoring his tone. "You suuuuure are!"
Makoto resisted the urge to sigh loudly. It was going to be one of those missions.
~
It was not. It was worse.
The scorpions were not particularly difficult to track down, once they got to a location out in the desert where there had been an outbreak of the things recently. It wasn't as if any of the bugs were trying to hide. And they were, after all, bugs. Not difficult for a skilled ninja.
To be fair, probably neither of his teammates were having his focus issue. Makoto had heard people say before that tension in a room could make them uncomfortable, or be so thick it could be cut with a knife. For him, however, it was uncomfortably close to literal.
No, the emotions pinging off the other two were a combination of frustration, confusion from Tatsuya and a weird conflicting blend of smug satisfaction, mild reproval from Sheimi. Everyone present was clearly dwelling on their issues and their group's failure to mesh.
Normally, as an empath, not to mention the nominal team leader, Makoto might have been expected to be the one to resolve these issues and get everyone to work together. But he wasn't going to, mainly because 1) he didn't want people to know he was a bloody empath and 2) fuck that.
It was still pretty sad that the haphazard team that he'd been part of to handle the Storm God had gotten along better than a hand-picked team for this mission.
"Can we at least agree we've got a common enemy?" Tatsuya asked, three scorpions into their task as they searched for more.
"What, bugs?" Sheimi asked, nose wrinkled. "Because I'm pretty sure bugs are the enemy of just about everyone! Except those weirdoes who talk to them or whatever."
"No, the Shrine," Tatsuya said evenly.
Makoto swore under his breath. "Will you keep your damn voice down?"
"We're in another country," was his annoying cousin's cool response. "And I know I may not seem it, but I do study people. Sheimi isn't exactly a priestess."
"I don't think you entirely grasp the idiot politics of Moon enough to talk about them," Makoto said tightly. "And it's a bad idea in any situation."
"They don't have spies in the middle of nowhere, Wind Country," Tatsuya answered after a very slight pause. "And I'm not asking you to like me or to be my new best friend. I'm asking you to not work openly against me as long as we have common enemies."
"I'm not, she's not, none of us are," he snapped. "Disliking you isn't working against you. And why am I not surprised you don't have any friends in our country? What happened to your old best friend, did they get tired of you and ditch you?"
He knew it was the wrong thing to say by the way the void-drenched emotional aura suddenly went dark and cold for an instant, and actual literal cold flared out for a brief instant.
"No," Tatsuya said flatly. "He died, actually."
Water Country was... "In the freeze?"
"No." Another, sharper flare of the coldness. Makoto repressed a shudder. "Doing something reckless. As I warned him against, many times. I only have suspicions about precisely what."
I'm sorry for bringing it up, didn't seem to cover it.
"It doesn't matter," Tatsuya said after a moment. "It was a few years back, now. I'm not asking for pity or sympathy just because I'm the only person of my traveling party that left Water who made it to Moon intact."
He wasn't fishing, either; there was no deception or anything like it in his aura. Just that coldness and blankness.
(He'd never, personally, been close to anyone who had died before. As a rule, he disliked death and felt it was a good idea that people do so, generally speaking. Tatsuya must have hated it.)
It suddenly occurred to him that Sheimi had been uncharacteristically quiet for the past few minutes and he glanced over to check on her. She was staring into the distance, at a tanned, shirtless man who was approaching them in a roundabout way that clearly showed he was trying not to threaten them. There was a slight edge to her posture, and her emotions were unusually muted. After a second he realized it was her version of caution.
In the back of his mind, he realized her pose, scarf-sword-weapon-thing held loosely at her side, was very similar to Kanashimi's ready pose. He wasn't sure what to make of that one, since it wasn't a particular standard. Maybe they sparred a lot.
As the man got closer, he could pick up non-hostile curiosity.
"Interesting tattoo he's got across his chest there," Tatsuya murmured.
"Isn't it?" Sheimi said lightly, fingering her scarf. "Looks like those things we've been tracking down."
The man halted a good twenty paces away, and held his hands up to show he was unarmed. His glance at Tatsuya was wary, as if he could in some way sense that aura too, but there was still no hostility.
"Are you the traveling party from Moon?" the man asked, directing his question to Sheimi. Well, she did look rather leaderly, compared to him.
"Yes..." she answered slowly, glancing over at Makoto, who shrugged loosely and made a gesture as if to ask if she wanted him to field this one. She shrugged and stepped a pace back, letting him move forward.
"Is there a reason you wanted to know?" he asked, as cordially as possible. The man did not want a fight, and it was for the best for all of them to keep it from becoming one.
"I am of the Order of the Scorpion," the man said, glancing at the cages that Tatsuya carried. He gave no indication, emotional or otherwise, that he had an issue with them catching the arachnids. "When I heard through a few people you had taken interest in our local venoms, I and a few others thought to approach you."
Their family did work with poisons, but that wasn't exactly common knowledge outside of Moon. Although, the Shoukyou clan as a whole always had, and the Water Country branch might have been more open about that.
"Do you have a vested interest in them, then?" he asked politely. Poisons were definitely not his specialty, but he had a passing familiarity.
"Very much so," the man said. "We believe in building our resistance to poisons through constant exposure to them...the creatures you have there are extremely venomous, and as such are our final test."
"Rather extreme," Makoto murmured, but not without a touch of consideration to his tone. Such a belief would likely preclude antidotes.
He knew people who worked with poisons, but he had never met someone who tested their concoctions on themselves.
"Oh!" Tatsuya said suddenly. "You wanted to approach us about potentially securing foreign toxins?"
Which was assuredly something they were capable of doing, come to that.
The man looked surprised. "Truthfully, I had not considered it, though we could arrange something if you have access to suppliers. It would be interesting to see what poisons you could provide from halfway around the world. No, I simply thought that being from Moon, you would be receptive to friendly overtures. Some foreigners have regarded us as a fringe religious sect and been...unfriendly."
Sheimi snorted, but did not say anything.
"We're not here to start fights," Makoto said with a loose shrug. "And...yes, we ah, more than have access to poison suppliers, if you get my drift."
The man was practically beaming now, and his emotional aura certainly radiated satisfaction. "Excellent! I don't suppose my people can get in contact with you in town sometime to get a full listing or catalog?"
"Certainly," Tatsuya said smoothly. "Why don't we let you know where we're staying in Sand, you can send someone to talk to us? I imagine that what with the climate differences, we would have a vastly different selection than you're used to...we even have a contact in Lightning."
"Not here to start fights," Sheimi said to him lowly as Tatsuya scribbled down their local contact information and went to chat with the Order member. "Except with bugs."
"You know our orders," he said. "Throw down on Sand's side if anything should happen. I seriously doubt this man is part of any sort of subversive movement. He seems like an enthusiast of a strange hobby, at worst."
"Can't say I disagree," she said with a considering tone. "By the way, while you were arguing with Twinkles, I sighted our last two bugs. Should be able to nab them real quick."
He glanced where she pointed, where, sure enough, there were a pair of the creatures making aggressive motions at each other a dozen meters away.
"Fair enough," he said. "And like...okay, I'm not saying ease up on him, because I agree he's annoying, and he bothers me too. But can we at least pretend we're a coherent team?"
"I'm not a good actress," Sheimi said. "And honestly? You've got a shitty poker face yourself."
"Yeah," Makoto said after a second. "But, you know. We only have to put up with him until whatever's going on here is over with."
She made an unconcerned noise. "Whatever. As long as I don't have to like him or pretend I'm anything more than neutral with him."
"All I ask," he said. "And uh. Sheimi?"
"Mm?"
"...I don't offend you, do I?" he asked, somewhat awkwardly. "Because, well, if I've ever done anything that seemed like I was hitting on you in the past..."
She snorted. "No, I'm pretty sure no one has ever accused you of that. And I'm glad of it. Don't want my future brother-in-law creeping on me. Don't worry, you're cool."
She walked away, flaring the scarf in her hand out as she moved toward their targets, leaving Makoto with his jaw hanging open.
Wait, what?
"Oh, you know, sandworms, hellcats, something called a carnasaur which apparently eats sandworms," Makoto said flippantly. "And hyper-aggressive scorpions with necrotic venom, apparently."
She eyed him. "I can't tell if you're kidding. Those sandworm things we were warned about, something eats them?"
"So I'm told," Makoto said, not really paying attention as he double-checked his gear. "As soon as Tatsuya gets back with the cages, we'll go out and grab some. Apparently the local ANBU use it for interrogation or something."
"Aaaand what happens if one of us gets stung?" Sheimi demanded, getting in his face and making him wince from the brief snap of anger. "Doesn't the briefing say it can kill you in a half-hour?"
"If you or I get stung, we cart the other one to the hospital," he said, making sure he had his knives easily accessible. They'd be the better melee weapon for dealing with a bug. "If Tatsuya gets stung, we leave him wherever he falls and claim a sandworm got him."
"I'm fairly sure I could handle a sandworm, actually," Tatsuya said noncommittally as he strolled into the room casually, a bundle of scorpion cages tucked under one arm. He was kitted up for battle as well, a strange polearm slung visibly over his back. "Or at least, get away from one. You do know you were talking loudly enough I could hear you in the hall?"
Makoto glanced at him, then back to his own preparations. "Well," he said, striving to keep his voice neutral and disinterested in the face of the flare of mild irritation from the walking hole in reality, "that could have something to do with the fact that I didn't care if you heard me."
Tatsuya stared at him for a second with a slight frown on his face. "I really don't know why you and your brothers hate me. Can you at least deal fairly with me while we're supposed to be on the same team?"
Dishonesty pinged him hard, and he fought not to twitch and make it visible.
"I guess you're just that sort of person," Sheimi said, an edge of hostility to her voice. "You done, Makoto? I'm pretty sure you're armed enough."
No such thing as armed enough, he thought, but shrugged and tucked his knives into their holsters.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's get moving and grab these bugs. Apparently Chuunin can do it, so, you know, if either of you get stung I'll make fun of you all the way to the hospital."
"And I'm the friend no one likes," Tatsuya said, a bite of irony in his voice.
"Yep!" Sheimi said cheerfully as they headed out, totally ignoring his tone. "You suuuuure are!"
Makoto resisted the urge to sigh loudly. It was going to be one of those missions.
~
It was not. It was worse.
The scorpions were not particularly difficult to track down, once they got to a location out in the desert where there had been an outbreak of the things recently. It wasn't as if any of the bugs were trying to hide. And they were, after all, bugs. Not difficult for a skilled ninja.
To be fair, probably neither of his teammates were having his focus issue. Makoto had heard people say before that tension in a room could make them uncomfortable, or be so thick it could be cut with a knife. For him, however, it was uncomfortably close to literal.
No, the emotions pinging off the other two were a combination of frustration, confusion from Tatsuya and a weird conflicting blend of smug satisfaction, mild reproval from Sheimi. Everyone present was clearly dwelling on their issues and their group's failure to mesh.
Normally, as an empath, not to mention the nominal team leader, Makoto might have been expected to be the one to resolve these issues and get everyone to work together. But he wasn't going to, mainly because 1) he didn't want people to know he was a bloody empath and 2) fuck that.
It was still pretty sad that the haphazard team that he'd been part of to handle the Storm God had gotten along better than a hand-picked team for this mission.
"Can we at least agree we've got a common enemy?" Tatsuya asked, three scorpions into their task as they searched for more.
"What, bugs?" Sheimi asked, nose wrinkled. "Because I'm pretty sure bugs are the enemy of just about everyone! Except those weirdoes who talk to them or whatever."
"No, the Shrine," Tatsuya said evenly.
Makoto swore under his breath. "Will you keep your damn voice down?"
"We're in another country," was his annoying cousin's cool response. "And I know I may not seem it, but I do study people. Sheimi isn't exactly a priestess."
"I don't think you entirely grasp the idiot politics of Moon enough to talk about them," Makoto said tightly. "And it's a bad idea in any situation."
"They don't have spies in the middle of nowhere, Wind Country," Tatsuya answered after a very slight pause. "And I'm not asking you to like me or to be my new best friend. I'm asking you to not work openly against me as long as we have common enemies."
"I'm not, she's not, none of us are," he snapped. "Disliking you isn't working against you. And why am I not surprised you don't have any friends in our country? What happened to your old best friend, did they get tired of you and ditch you?"
He knew it was the wrong thing to say by the way the void-drenched emotional aura suddenly went dark and cold for an instant, and actual literal cold flared out for a brief instant.
"No," Tatsuya said flatly. "He died, actually."
Water Country was... "In the freeze?"
"No." Another, sharper flare of the coldness. Makoto repressed a shudder. "Doing something reckless. As I warned him against, many times. I only have suspicions about precisely what."
I'm sorry for bringing it up, didn't seem to cover it.
"It doesn't matter," Tatsuya said after a moment. "It was a few years back, now. I'm not asking for pity or sympathy just because I'm the only person of my traveling party that left Water who made it to Moon intact."
He wasn't fishing, either; there was no deception or anything like it in his aura. Just that coldness and blankness.
(He'd never, personally, been close to anyone who had died before. As a rule, he disliked death and felt it was a good idea that people do so, generally speaking. Tatsuya must have hated it.)
It suddenly occurred to him that Sheimi had been uncharacteristically quiet for the past few minutes and he glanced over to check on her. She was staring into the distance, at a tanned, shirtless man who was approaching them in a roundabout way that clearly showed he was trying not to threaten them. There was a slight edge to her posture, and her emotions were unusually muted. After a second he realized it was her version of caution.
In the back of his mind, he realized her pose, scarf-sword-weapon-thing held loosely at her side, was very similar to Kanashimi's ready pose. He wasn't sure what to make of that one, since it wasn't a particular standard. Maybe they sparred a lot.
As the man got closer, he could pick up non-hostile curiosity.
"Interesting tattoo he's got across his chest there," Tatsuya murmured.
"Isn't it?" Sheimi said lightly, fingering her scarf. "Looks like those things we've been tracking down."
The man halted a good twenty paces away, and held his hands up to show he was unarmed. His glance at Tatsuya was wary, as if he could in some way sense that aura too, but there was still no hostility.
"Are you the traveling party from Moon?" the man asked, directing his question to Sheimi. Well, she did look rather leaderly, compared to him.
"Yes..." she answered slowly, glancing over at Makoto, who shrugged loosely and made a gesture as if to ask if she wanted him to field this one. She shrugged and stepped a pace back, letting him move forward.
"Is there a reason you wanted to know?" he asked, as cordially as possible. The man did not want a fight, and it was for the best for all of them to keep it from becoming one.
"I am of the Order of the Scorpion," the man said, glancing at the cages that Tatsuya carried. He gave no indication, emotional or otherwise, that he had an issue with them catching the arachnids. "When I heard through a few people you had taken interest in our local venoms, I and a few others thought to approach you."
Their family did work with poisons, but that wasn't exactly common knowledge outside of Moon. Although, the Shoukyou clan as a whole always had, and the Water Country branch might have been more open about that.
"Do you have a vested interest in them, then?" he asked politely. Poisons were definitely not his specialty, but he had a passing familiarity.
"Very much so," the man said. "We believe in building our resistance to poisons through constant exposure to them...the creatures you have there are extremely venomous, and as such are our final test."
"Rather extreme," Makoto murmured, but not without a touch of consideration to his tone. Such a belief would likely preclude antidotes.
He knew people who worked with poisons, but he had never met someone who tested their concoctions on themselves.
"Oh!" Tatsuya said suddenly. "You wanted to approach us about potentially securing foreign toxins?"
Which was assuredly something they were capable of doing, come to that.
The man looked surprised. "Truthfully, I had not considered it, though we could arrange something if you have access to suppliers. It would be interesting to see what poisons you could provide from halfway around the world. No, I simply thought that being from Moon, you would be receptive to friendly overtures. Some foreigners have regarded us as a fringe religious sect and been...unfriendly."
Sheimi snorted, but did not say anything.
"We're not here to start fights," Makoto said with a loose shrug. "And...yes, we ah, more than have access to poison suppliers, if you get my drift."
The man was practically beaming now, and his emotional aura certainly radiated satisfaction. "Excellent! I don't suppose my people can get in contact with you in town sometime to get a full listing or catalog?"
"Certainly," Tatsuya said smoothly. "Why don't we let you know where we're staying in Sand, you can send someone to talk to us? I imagine that what with the climate differences, we would have a vastly different selection than you're used to...we even have a contact in Lightning."
"Not here to start fights," Sheimi said to him lowly as Tatsuya scribbled down their local contact information and went to chat with the Order member. "Except with bugs."
"You know our orders," he said. "Throw down on Sand's side if anything should happen. I seriously doubt this man is part of any sort of subversive movement. He seems like an enthusiast of a strange hobby, at worst."
"Can't say I disagree," she said with a considering tone. "By the way, while you were arguing with Twinkles, I sighted our last two bugs. Should be able to nab them real quick."
He glanced where she pointed, where, sure enough, there were a pair of the creatures making aggressive motions at each other a dozen meters away.
"Fair enough," he said. "And like...okay, I'm not saying ease up on him, because I agree he's annoying, and he bothers me too. But can we at least pretend we're a coherent team?"
"I'm not a good actress," Sheimi said. "And honestly? You've got a shitty poker face yourself."
"Yeah," Makoto said after a second. "But, you know. We only have to put up with him until whatever's going on here is over with."
She made an unconcerned noise. "Whatever. As long as I don't have to like him or pretend I'm anything more than neutral with him."
"All I ask," he said. "And uh. Sheimi?"
"Mm?"
"...I don't offend you, do I?" he asked, somewhat awkwardly. "Because, well, if I've ever done anything that seemed like I was hitting on you in the past..."
She snorted. "No, I'm pretty sure no one has ever accused you of that. And I'm glad of it. Don't want my future brother-in-law creeping on me. Don't worry, you're cool."
She walked away, flaring the scarf in her hand out as she moved toward their targets, leaving Makoto with his jaw hanging open.
Wait, what?