>>5795546You and Masami arrive at the park with the 20 seconds to spare you had accurately earmarked. You look around frantically for your jonin team leader and see an older man with glasses and slouched posture sitting on a bench staring at you. He summons you with a 'come here' hand gesture and the two of you jog over.
As you approach, the man is looking at his watch. "Where's the other one?" He asks, not looking up from his watch. You note that his voice sounds strangely androgenous for the way the man looked.
"He had to pause to take care of a serious crime! I'm sure he'll be here in time!" Masami announces, bowing. "Hikaru-Sensei!"
Hikaru waves at her dismissively with his non-watch hand, still staring at the seconds counting down. "Hikaru would be fine, if it were my real name. That was a lie because I didn't want to tell you if I ended up deciding to send you back to the academy anyway... And 5-"
You see Naoki catapult out of a random alleyway, little boy slung over his shoulder in the distance, outside the park.
"4-"
Naoki looks around as frantically as the two of you did.
"3-"
Naoki spots Masami waving at him with both arms and beings sprinting, HARD.
"2-"
Naoki was flying fast as hell. You could see blood in his facemask as he ran at you with a fierce expression.
"1-"
Naoki skids to a halt in front of you like he's a baseball player narrowly trying to make it to base.
"Hmph. A quarter of a second late. Is that what Juro is teaching you? I get that conscientiousness isn't his forte, but I expected better."
Naoki simply closes his eyes as he lets his extremely, EXTREMELY narrow failure wash over him.
Hikaru scans the three of you with his eyes. "... Well, you're not complete failures. At least you're here *almost* on time. I suppose we can continue..."
He jabs a finger at the little boy crying slung over Naoki's shoulder. "Slash the jewel-thieving little fucker on the cheek with your kunai or something, teach him a lesson and cut him loose. He's a waste of my time. We'll continue afterwards."
>Uh, no?>What the fuck?>... Okay.>Write in. 