Lockpick

You teleport up to the roof where the cape who saved your life sits.  "Hi!" "Holy shit!"  The kid flails around and you have a moment to see that his mask is a seamless piece of porcelain with no eyeholes before he falls right off the edge of the building. It takes the work of a moment to meet the other cape midair and then teleport safely to the ground.  "Might want to watch out for that sitting on the edge business if you can't use telekinesis to keep yourself from going splat," you say helpfully as he catches his breath.  "Unless you're the kind of psychic meta who can only read minds-thanks for the heads-up by the way; almost lost my he

"Do you still hate me?" Kai's question has his former teammates looking at him quizzically. The five are standing on a hill overlooking Moscow. To the left of the brilliantly lit city, they can see the Abbey in flames. Spencer is the first to answer. "No." Everyone looks at him with some measure of surprise, but he says nothing more and instead looks at the city below. "I guess not," Ian says after a lengthy pause. He shifts his grip on his rifle and glances over at Kai. "No real reason to." Kai nods at him before looking out across the snowy landscape. Bryan sighs and pats down his jacket for the flask of vodka he knows he has. After tak

The crash of thunder woke Selphie from a sound sleep, and a grin broke out across her face. She couldn't run out of the house fast enough, and managed to wake everyone else in the process. "Selphie, what the hell?" Leon demanded, jumping up from the table and grabbing his gunblade. "What's going on?" She threw a broad grin over her shoulder. "It's rain." "Squall?" Yuffie and Aerith appeared on the stairs, Fuu and Kairi behind them, all four of them armed. "Are the Heartless coming?" The man shook his head, looking dumbfounded. "It's just rain." Kairi looked past Leon to where Selphie was outside, dancing in the rain to some song kept in t

Jiraiya pinched the bridge of his nose, looked at the two hospitalized jounin, and tried not to lose his temper.  "Tell me," he said after a while.  "Did the concept of 'moderation' never occur to you?" The younger shinobi exchanged a glance.  "Um, no," Arashi admitted.  "Not really, no." The Sannin threw his hands in the air.  "Fantastic.  My dumbass protege and his idiot friend-" "Kyouji-san's not an idiot," Arashi protested as the jounin in question sighed. "idiot friend," Jiraiya repeated harshly, "aren't going to get killed by enemy shinobi in this war-" "That's a relief," Kyouji couldn't help but observe cheekily. "THEY'RE GOING T

A Naruto Fanfic It was a nice day.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the war was going in Konoha's favor, and Obito and Izumo hadn't fought once on the joint B-class drop-off.  Kyouji almost smiled when they stopped for lunch.  At this rate, they'd be home in a few hours and he could work on that new technique- "Kyouji-sensei, how old were you when you got your first kiss?" -or he could assign his brats as many miles as it took for them to realize that stupid questions are bad.  Kyouji turned to Izumo as the group stopped for lunch on Minato's suggestion.  "What?" "How old were you when you got your first kiss?" Izumo repeated.

The topic of death comes up three days after Izumo's brother hangs himself in the Kamizuki clan gardens. By this point in time, Izumo has been working with his psychic/more than mildly empathic abilities for six months and is drawing off Kotetsu's near-unshakeable calm to stave off his family's and to quell his own hurt at the clan heir's actions. Normally, Izumo leeches off Kyouji-sensei, but the jounin is troubled, and not by this suicide. The ache barely resonating from his sensei is an old one, maybe because of a suicide of someone Kyouji knew, Izumo thinks. Kyouji exhales. "You know there will come a time to die. Death is one of the few

He sees the two gennin and is not at all impressed, but they don’t seem too thrilled to see him either. “Names and specialties,” he barks out and hides a grin when they flinch. Early graduates may mean that they’re far above their peers, but it also means that they’re still children who haven’t even hit a growth spurt yet. “Kamizuki Izumo,” the one with the bandana says after a pause. His file shows that he has a particularly foul mouth for anyone younger than fifteen and a temper to match. It’s almost expected from someone from the small psychic clan. “Binding circles.” The man knows a

Kyouji watches Sakumo over the top of his teacup. They are sitting in the White Fang's kitchen and, as a habit, Kyouji's wire spools are in the middle of the table along with the older shinobi's tanto. "I haven't seen you out on the field lately, Sakumo-san." Sakumo snorts into his cup. "You're not subtle at all, Kyouji-kun, but thanks for the half-assed effort. You know very well why I haven't been on any missions." The brown-haired jounin puts down his cup very deliberately. "You are shinobi, Sakumo-san. A tool of your village. So you made a mistake that could very well cost us the war. You still have your duties." Steely eyes meet light

"You'd fucking think they'd have come up with a cure for it by now." Alesca's voice is deceptively calm, only the curse and her tight grip on the letter she's just received giving away her feelings. She sits down on the ottoman in the common area of the Motley Crew house, and Ethuil gets the distinct feeling this is something she shouldn't be listening in on, and something her father and sister are not going to want to hear. "I mean," Alesca continues, despite the looks Artemis is exchanging with Kage, "the magic world, the non-magic, in no world we've ever traveled to, and we've been to more than just a lot, none of them have found a cure.