Peaceful Waters

OK Next chappy in this “one-shot” gone horribly out of control . . .


Genma leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees wearily as he sat on the edge of the bed all teasing abruptly over and gone as if someone had pulled a plug and it had all gone down the drain. He really had no energy left at this point. He would die before he’d let it show in front of others but at this rate he really would.


God how he hated that damn tattoo. As if Kakashi even knew the real reason he had it. Fortunately his big dick and cheeky personality let him carry off the too obvious joke it represented. He was immensely relieved that only Sakura had seen it. He couldn’t stand the thought of the whole group bugging him about it the whole week as he was sure they would given half the chance. Genma closed his eyes tightly and willed the tears away that always threatened when he was in such a weak state and had such a strong reminder about the real reason the damn ink was there.


“Nobody knows and nobody’s going to know,” Genma said quietly to himself.


He would continue to pass it off as bravado and ego. He was 33 now, he’d had the thing for 17 years. Even Kakashi and Anko who were there when he’d gotten it didn’t truly understand why it was there, even if they didn’t know it. Unbeknownst to him in his current sad condition, two tears had escaped his control and slid down his face and a certain pink haired medical ninja had entered the room in time to see them make their smooth progression down the weary Jounin’s face.


Sakura was immediately alarmed and ran over to his side.


“Genma-san are you ok?” Sakura asked concerned as she bent down in front of Genma and summoned her healing chakra, inspecting the senbon ninja for damage.


Genma’s eyes shot open in realization as he heard Sakura’s voice and felt her chakra enter his body. Quick to avoid questions Genma answered, “Fine! I was just feeling a distinct lack of beauty and appreciation for the world being trapped in here with old mask mouth, but looking at you I remember how to live again.”


Sakura couldn’t help but smile and roll her eyes as she straightened, crossing her arms.


“Come on liar,” Sakura chuckled deciding to leave the man’s private thoughts to himself and held out her elbow for him to take a hold of for support, “I need someone that’s not completely annoying to escort me to dinner but if you continue on like that . . . “


Genma smirked around his senbon, his good spirits returning quickly with a lovely lady to take his mind off matters best left forgotten. Thankful for Sakura’s Tsunade given strength he carefully hauled himself up using her offered appendage and made sure to keep a good grip on her being careful to make it look like he wasn’t about to collapse if he let go. Sakura and Genma walked arm in arm towards the door when Genma suddenly remembered Kakashi’s wise advise.


“Um, Sakura-chan, can I run to the bathroom first?” Genma asked almost shyly.


“Of course handsome,” Sakura answered smiling broadly as she escorted him to the facilities. “Do you need any help?”


A virtual landslide of dirty thoughts and comebacks assaulted Genma but he simply replied smiling around his senbon, “Not this time.”


Genma held the counter for support and closed the door behind him. He turned the water on in the sink and lathered his hands in soap, quickly since he couldn’t hold himself up while washing his hands. Once his hands were rinsed he splashed some water on his face, refreshing himself. He swirled his senbon with his tongue and smiled opening the door. This would be a fun week he decided. A forced vacation never hurt. He was a quick healer and Sakura was an expert medic. They’d make a perfect team.


“Come on needle mouth, I’m starving!” Sakura smirked at him grabbing his arm and practically pulling him out of the bathroom.


After donning their shoes they took a comfortable pace down the path towards the restaurant. Both shinobi took the time to enjoy the beautiful scenery around them breathing the clean mountain air, lightly scented with the carefully landscaped flowers that were spread throughout the gardens.


Genma watched Sakura out of the corner of his eye. She was in his opinion the most beautiful flower in the garden. After all she was a smoking hot Kunochi and the rest were just foliage. He decided to phrase it better to her however.

Genma turned his head side to side in an exaggerated way so that Sakura couldn’t fail to notice.


“What are you doing?” Sakura asked giggling at his antics.


“Have you noticed all the flowers are bowing and asking you pardon?” Genma smiled at her.


“What?” Sakura asked confused.


“That’s what happens when not one can match the beauty of a Sakura in full and perfect bloom,” Genma charmed shifting his senbon to the far side of his mouth and giving her a quick but warm peck on the cheek.


Sakura blushed as brightly as her hair for once not knowing what to say. It wasn’t often, if ever that a man actually said something so flattering. From her team it was mostly“so annoying”, or “RAMEN!” or “Ugly”, at the hospital it was all so formal only “Haruno-san” this or “Medic, help!”. Sakura just wasn’t sure how to react to this kind of attention.


Genma smiled at Sakura as they walked watching her blush and speechless at his compliment. She was so cute. He was going to enjoy making her smile like this until he got well enough to make her scream.


They walked the last few steps to the restaurant in a content silence and Genma saluted the hotel worker who graciously opened the door for them as they arrived. Sakura was instantly struck by the simple but elegant beauty of the restaurant, not to mention the amazing aromas that the kitchen was perfuming the air with. The rest of the team were easy to find as Naruto in his highly energetic and loudmouthed fashion called, “HEY SAKURA-CHAN!!”


Sakura looked over at the table already full of her teammates. Kakashi gave a two fingered wave in their general direction over the edge of his book, Sasuke glared at Genma and completely ignored Sakura, Sai smiled disturbingly brightly and Neji nodded solemnly.


Sakura walked Genma over to the two remaining seats which placed Genma next to Kakashi and herself next to Genma and Naruto. It was a circular table so everyone was a comfortably chatting distance apart. Just as they sat waiters appeared with trays laden with steaming dishes placing them on the lazy Susan.


“We went ahead and got the full course dinner special. It’s supposed to feed about 20 people so we may not have to order more,” Kakashi explained.


Sakura nodded in understanding. She was surrounded by four teenage boys, one ravenous copy nin and a recovering shinobi who hadn’t eaten properly for weeks. Not to mention she was quite famished herself. In fact as soon as the last plate was down she had already helped herself to rice and set to work with the rest of them to make the food disappear. It was a good ten minutes before everyone had gotten to the point where they could take some time to actually taste the food and not just shovel it into their mouths. Able to slow down a bit Naruto leaned back and sighed happily looking over to Sakura and Genma, seeing that they had slowed as well he decided to find out more about the mysteriously appearing Jounin.


Subtle as always Naruto blurted out, “So, Genma-san, how exactly did you get whooped so bad?”


Sasuke smirked at this, as Sai and Neji just looked toward the recovering shinobi in curiosity wanting to know what happened. Kakashi and Sakura spared a second to give Naruto and glare that warned against loud mouthed insensitivity but also turned to Genma wanting to know what happened.


Genma took it in stride and directed a crooked smile over at the Kyubi container.


“Interesting story that,” Genma started picking at a piece of eggplant with his chopsticks. “Well obviously I can’t relate anything about the mission I was on, being S-class and all.”


“Aren’t you only a “special” Jounin,” Sasuke asked smirking a bit with a hard look in his eye, “ Must have been some S-class mission to send you. But then again you did get beat down by roadside thugs and have your team leave you behind so. . .”


Everyone froze at that comment. Everyone on his team knew that Sasuke pretty much only valued power and thought very little of shinobi who couldn’t attain at least true Jounin status. Kakashi’s eye narrowed dangerously but he knew Genma could take care of himself and waited to see how this played out. Anyone who had ever been on a mission with Genma knew how skilled he was in his specialties. A little too skilled to be comfortable around truly since he was an assassin. Doing surveillance for him while he did his job could be truly frightening. The man was a skilled actor, and watching him insinuate himself into a situation and bend it his way making the target completely comfortable until it was time to strike, leaving no evidence or trace behind him was fascinating but frightening. Every shinobi killed eventually but what was the mind of a person like whose sole job was to eliminate a human life, and do it so well. Kakashi guessed that was why he was such a reckless sex driven maniac when he was at home. Genma was desperate to be close to someone. Sleeping with anything that moved was like Icha Icha for himself. An escape and a way to enjoy life until the next mission came around and you had to do it all over again.


Genma ignored Sasuke and took a sip of his water calmly. After setting the glass carefully down on the table he looked up slowly shooting a calm, chill, hard eyed stare at the young genius that made the Uchiha unconsciously sit a little straighter. Despite how confident he was in his own skills that stare seemed to promise something dark and sinister happening to parts of his body he needed to restore his clan and frustratingly actually made him a little nervous.


“So leaving out any of the details of my S-class mission I’ll tell you what happened while we were on the way home,” Genma began, “We needed to return to Konoha with all possible speed so we decided to take a path through the mountains about 15 kilometers from here. One of my teammates was carrying something obviously valuable and frankly we all looked like we’d been thought the wringer and back so I suppose this rogue group of Shinobazu that apparently take up in that area thought they’d be a match for us, maybe take back what we had and sell it back to our mark. I’m not sure because once they started attacking I didn’t bother asking why; I just killed them. I was rear guard so they started on me and my teammate in front thinking they’d get us in a vice maneuver and try not to damage what we were carrying. At this point we were already pretty beat and to be honest I’m no Kakashi in these kinds of sixteen to one close combat maneuvers so even though I was able to kill or paralyze the first eight or so at that point I started to get into trouble. My first clue I was in trouble was when a guy with a huge club came out of nowhere and got me full force across the back. I turned and shot a senbon through his eye but his partner came at me with this huge sword so I grabbed a kunai and deflected it but this thing was freaking massive! Bracing against it I hurt my knee and the force messed up my shoulder. I was able to turn the momentum a bit and kick the guy in the throat crushing his windpipe so then I was down to five. Just as I landed from that kick a short little bastard ran at me driving his head and shoulders straight into my chest knocking me to the ground and fucking my knee up again. Unfortunetly for him he didn’t notice I still had the kunai in my hand and he impaled himself on it when he fell on top of me. I finished him off and just got him rolled off of me when the last four started towards me. Luckily my team mates had almost finished with their attackers and we joined together to finish them off. Now all the ones I saw were killed. We burned the bodies and sent a messenger bird to Tsunade since apparently I was too injured to go on and we were going to be late now. She sent us a message that she had just sent a team with a medic nin to this spot, my team dropped me off and from there you know the rest.”


“No one on your team stayed to make sure you would be ok?” Sakura asked not understanding.


“Naw, I don’t really know those guys anyway. I’m a specialist so my teams always change. Haven’t had a permanent team since I was a genin,” Genma answered unconcerned taking a bite of spicy pork.


“That’s still not right,” Sakura objected, “Someone should have stayed until we got here. What if we had something similar happen and we didn’t show up until the next day? You would have died.”


Genma sweated a bit at this. He didn’t like thinking things through that far when the situation was already resolved.


“They were probably happy to be rid of me anyway. Seems like after a missions like those I tend to creep people out,” Genma answered shooting Kakashi baleful glance.


“One of those huh?” he asked sympathetically.


“Beats doing paperwork,” Genma smiled back half heartedly.


“Oh, that’s right. You were the proctor at out first Chunin exams. I didn’t know they let paper pushers on real missions.” Sasuke said sinisterly


“Yeah funny thing about working directly under the Hokage for 10 years, smart ass little punks who think they’ve seen it all just because of a family squabble think all we do is paperwork when if they were real shinobi they’d look underneath the underneath and ask themselves what kind of skills shinobi need to have to be the ones to constantly surround the most important person in the village.” Genma answered straight faced seemingly staring at the table.


Before anyone but maybe Kakashi and Neji could see Sasuke was standing behind Genma, Sharingen blazing with a kunai to his throat. More surprising however to everyone at the table except Kakashi, Genma had three senbons inserted into the Sasuke’s side. Suddenly Sasuke’s hands started tremble slightly and his eyes bulged as he looked at the shinobi once again calmly sipping his water beneath him ignoring his kunai.


Neji quickly activated his Byakugan and gasped at seeing the precise locations the senbon were located and exactly how they were affecting the Sharingen user.


“Remember child. I’m a “special” Jounin for a reason, perhaps in future you should take that title under a different advisement before you underestimate the skills of such a shinobi. For future reference, my actual specialty is assassination and even though I am still recovering, there is no way in hell a pup like you can get me in this type of situation. It will never happen. Now I’d be nice to Sakura and ask her to fix what I did to you or your vital organs will start slowly shutting down. Don’t bother saying anything. I know you can’t,” Genma stated as he rose from the chair stepping around the frozen shinobi. “I believe I’ve had my fill of this meal. I’m going to go back and rest for the evening.”


Genma nodded politely toward the table and walked carefully out the door of the restaurant. The table still in shock that Sasuke had picked a fight, lost control and then got told just stared open mouthed until Sasuke sent Sakura a piercing look that demanded her immediate attention. Snapping out of her trance she gave Sasuke a half apologetic look and carefully removed the senbon and righted his chakra flow until he could move.


“That was amazing,” Neji said eyes wide. “ How could he hit those points without the Byakugan? Kakashi-san, does he have a blood-line limit?”


“No Neji. It’s what he’s been trained for. It takes many years of study to be an assassin and a natural talent as well. Focusing in one area like that is why there are practically no pure assassin Jounin or ANBU. We all know how to do it of course but in special situations it requires not just a master of the skill but an adept. Genma is one of them. It is important to never underestimate your opponent or begin a fight in anger. In those moments mistakes are made and those who know how to use those mistakes to their advantage will always win, no matter how skilled you are. Or think you are,” Kakashi said giving a significant glance over to the now brooding last Uchiha.


Sai nodded in agreement. ROOT removed all emotion from their shinobi’s for a reason. Looking over at Sasuke Sai couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to fight with anger. He decided it probably wasn’t a good idea given the outcome. Sai felt he needed to watch this Genma closely. Not only did he seemed highly skilled but his use of emotion was perplexing. He had seen him laughing at his injuries, making sex jokes with Kakashi when he had gotten up earlier in the afternoon. He watched as he controlled his anger at Sasuke and his little comments and his almost emotionless defense he put up against Sasuke. This man seemed to be a Naruto in his off time and, well almost like himself in a battle. Cutting comments and all. He wanted to learn from this shinobi. Maybe he too could find a balance of emotion in down time’s and emotionless missions. That is if he could ever figure out what emotions were in the first place. At first Sai figured that was all that piqued his interest in the man but as he pulled out his sketch book and started drawing he seemed to think that perhaps the man reminded him of someone. It surely couldn’t be but there was a definite resemblance. If only there was a way to find out. This could be a truly enlightening vacation.


Ok sorry that took forever and a month. . . So much going on in my life right now! Nothing you’d care about. And yes I am working on the next chapter of Growing up Sakura but It’s only like three pages right now and I don’t think that ‘s quite long enough to satisfy anyone.

As always R&R!!