As You Float Away Into The Shimmer Lights
Rating: K+
The first sign that things were not normal in the Mission Room came with Raidou. A sprig of mistletoe floated above his head-something that Anko, Tsume, Iwashi, and Genma all took advantage of (Anko and Genma got into an unspoken competition as to who could get Raidou to accept the most tongue; Aoba won).
The next clue came with Asuma, whose beard seemed to not only change colours, but gotten longer and much fuller. He also seemed to have abandoned his normal cigarette for a pipe.
“Ho, ho, ho!” Tsunade’s laughter boomed out before she slapped her hands over her mouth, shocked and embarrassed.
Shizune materialised next the Hokage. “Tsunade-sama! Are you okay? That didn’t sound-what? What’s so funny?”
Anko managed to stop howling long enough to point at what she found so hysterical before she collapsed in screaming mirth again.
Shizune looked down and let out a distinctly undignified noise. Her usual subdued uniform top had been replaced with a disturbingly ugly and tawdry jumper. It had garish bobbles and little creepy grinning reindeer doing the can-can all over it.
“What vomited in your closet?” Anko wheezed, wiping tears out of her eyes.
Shizune started to pull the atrocity off, then she looked under the jumper. Her face changed colours again and she firmly tugged it back down.
Izumo and Kotetsu were the third sign that things weren’t normal when they came in to turn in their reports from their B-ranked mission.
“Doing reports right makes me jolly,” Izumo sang. “Fa la la la, la la la la!” He looked deeply mortified as the whole room burst into more wild laughter, Tsuanade and Asuma’s deep chortles easily dominating the room.
“Here is mine, and there’s no folly, fa la la la, la la-” Kotetsu blurted out before he could stop himself. He slapped a hand over his mouth and shoved his report at Iruka.
Iruka smiled a polite smile, trying to keep his face straight. “Getting into the spirit of things today, are we?”
Neither chunin said anything more, both firmly keeping their mouths shut, though it looked like it pained them to do so. They barely waited until Iruka said ‘thank you for all your hard work’ before they bolted out of the room, faces fluorescent.
A small cluster of jounins came in, Shikaku getting quite a few sniggers due to the fact that his uniform top was seeming to try and out-ugly Shizune’s. He looked vaguely annoyed by the fact, but clearly thought doing more than that was too much effort.
Yamato handed Iruka his report.
“Thank you. How was your mission?”
“I had gone awaaaaaay, to where snow glistens. / I do what the Hokage says, ‘cuz I listen.” Yamato blinked, and tried again. “It makes her happy to know, / That I’ll go with the flow. /Even if that means going to such a faraway land!”
Iwashi gave up any pretext of standing and rolled on the floor, laughing so hard he cried.
“Mission a success?” Iruka asked Yamato pleasantly.
“And now our enemies have expired, /Since Kakashi hit them, with lots of fire.” Yamato, it seemed, couldn’t help adding the last bit. His face flamed as Tsunade let out another big, belly laugh.
“Well, thank you for all your hard work and that musical rendition.” Iruka stamped Yamato’s part of the report and bit back his giggles as the young man all but scuttled to the back of the room in embarrassment.
Kakashi trailed up, bored expression on his face.
“Hatake-san,” Iruka acknowledged.
Kakashi paused for a moment, then suddenly started singing. “Ink of black, ink of blue / I wrote this report, just for you. / Filled with words, so clear and mild / Here it is, so carefully styled / Done so your work may decrease. / Done so your work may decrease.”
Quite a few people clapped, drowning out the laughter. Kakashi had a nice baritone and it was clear that it was going to make him very popular later.
The Copy Ninja smiled a little one-eyed smile, and then wandered off, looking like he wanted to be confused, but was too good of a ninja to allow himself that kind of luxury.
“Man, am I glad that I came down here today!” Genma announced loudly.
The doors opened and everyone held their breath, waiting for what would come next. They were hoping for more of a spectacle.
They were not disappointed.
The room exploded even louder than it had before. Three ninjas wet themselves and two others passed out from laughing so hard. Tsunade broke a desk when she pounded on it in her mirth. Asuma nearly swallowed his pipe. Even Shikaku began to chortle.
Ibiki clearly was Not Impressed and radiating murderous intent, but people couldn’t seem stop laughing.
The usual imposing overcoat had been transformed into a huge knitted monstrosity. Clashing, metallic bobbles decorated it in such a way that a lampshade would have been insanely jealous of it and tasteless holiday motifs embellished it in the most vulgar way possible. Multicoloured sleigh bells were attached to the hem and made cacophonous noise whenever Ibiki moved.
It was the work of a mind more twisted than Gai’s and probably could be used to cause all of Konoha’s enemies to either laugh themselves to death or try to gouge their eyes out with whatever rusty, blunt object was nearby.
Ibiki glared harder. No-one stopped rolling on the floor.
“I would like to speak to Umino Iruka,” he finally growled out.
“Careful, Iruka-sensei!” Raidou cackled. “He might lock you in a room with that thing!”
Biting on his hand to keep from sniggering too loudly, Iruka followed the disgruntled T.I. specialist out. “How-how may help you, Morino-san?” He managed to get out once they were in a small room, amazingly keeping most of the laughter out of his voice.
“Undo this genjutsu, now.”
Iruka controlled his face as best as he could, trying to get it to look serious and respectful. “I didn’t put a genjutsu on you, Morino-san. Perhaps asking Hyuuga-san or Hatake-san to…help with your…” he snickered before he could stop himself. “Excuse me, Hyuuga-san or Hatake-san to help with that.”
“It’s your chakra. You remove it.”
“I told you, Morino-san, I haven’t put a genjutsu on you.” Iruka gave the man his most sincere look-which was probably not as sincere as he would liked to have looked, due to the snickers.
Ibiki’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Then what did you do?”
Iruka tsked. “I think it might be more of a matter of what you did.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you had stayed out of the teacher’s lounge and followed clear, simple instructions, I doubt that you would be in this predicament.” Iruka smiled sweetly as the tokubetsu jounin’s forehead darkened.
“Would you care to repeat that?”
“Now Morino-san, I know your hearing is just fine. But perhaps you should have your eyesight examined. I seem to remember a large sign in the teacher’s lounge that said the treats on the table were only for the teaching and janitorial staff of the academy and anyone else who took them would have to just face the consequences.”
“You jutsued the cookies?” Ibiki asked slowly, still looking enormously annoyed.
Iruka let his smile get sweeter. “I never said that.”
Ibiki loomed over him, making full use of the fact that he was larger than Iruka. “Fix this,” he said softly. “Whatever you did, fix this.”
“I’m sorry, Morino-san, but I can’t.”
The bobbles on the atrocity quivered dangerously. “What?”
Iruka bit back a giggle. “The only way to not suffer ill effects was to go to a classroom and expose yourself to about twenty-five sources of partially-trained chakra within half an hour of consuming the treats and staying there for more than two hours.” He put his innocent face back on. “Other than that, you simply have to wait twenty-four hours until the effects wear off by themselves.”
“I cannot interrogate our guests looking like this.”
“I’m sorry, but I already told you that I can’t remove it. Maybe next time, you’ll stay out of places you don’t belong and read the instructions on the sign.”
Ibiki glared.
Iruka smiled.
Ibiki glared harder.
“Have a nice day, Morino-san,” Iruka waved and walked out of the small room, chuckling to himself as he left. Really, Ibiki looked utterly ridiculous like-
A large, heavily scarred caught Iruka’s arm and yanked him back. Iruka only just managed not to stab Ibiki with his kunai.
“You need to figure out how to remove this-”
“Morino-san! First, let go of me! Second, you try something like that again, and I won’t stop myself from stabbing you! Third, why the hell aren’t you making the most of your situation? You could be using your…outfit to your advantage!”
“I fail to see how this could be used to my ‘advantage’.”
Iruka rolled his eyes. “Please. All you have to do is steal a few more treats from the teacher’s lounge, put some twinkly lights up in your interrogation rooms, serve each prisoner one cookie, wait about an hour, and then go in and interrogate the hell out of them.”
Ibiki blinked. “What?”
“One cookie only. That will have them confessing all their naughty and nice deeds over the year. Two cookies…well, you know the results of that.” Iruka smirked.
Another hard glare.
Iruka beamed angelically. “Is that all, Morino-san?”
The large man studied him for a moment. “If this works, perhaps you would be good enough to offer up some…suggestions for some other techniques to use.”
“Only if you buy me dinner. Good dinner, not something cheap.”
The corner of Ibiki’s mouth twitched. “But only if this works. If not…I’m going to make you pay for this.”
“It’ll work. You can pick me up from the Mission Room after my shift; I’m done at six-thirty. Now if you are quite finished, I do have work to do and you have some prisoners to extract information from.”
Iruka didn’t let the evil smile cover his face until after he had left the room. That had been surprisingly easy to get Ibiki to take him out on that date. The Interrogator was never going to know what hit him.
Iruka was making his own Christmas cheer. And Ibiki was going to be under his tree this year.
x Fin x
The first sign that things were not normal in the Mission Room came with Raidou. A sprig of mistletoe floated above his head-something that Anko, Tsume, Iwashi, and Genma all took advantage of (Anko and Genma got into an unspoken competition as to who could get Raidou to accept the most tongue; Aoba won).
The next clue came with Asuma, whose beard seemed to not only change colours, but gotten longer and much fuller. He also seemed to have abandoned his normal cigarette for a pipe.
“Ho, ho, ho!” Tsunade’s laughter boomed out before she slapped her hands over her mouth, shocked and embarrassed.
Shizune materialised next the Hokage. “Tsunade-sama! Are you okay? That didn’t sound-what? What’s so funny?”
Anko managed to stop howling long enough to point at what she found so hysterical before she collapsed in screaming mirth again.
Shizune looked down and let out a distinctly undignified noise. Her usual subdued uniform top had been replaced with a disturbingly ugly and tawdry jumper. It had garish bobbles and little creepy grinning reindeer doing the can-can all over it.
“What vomited in your closet?” Anko wheezed, wiping tears out of her eyes.
Shizune started to pull the atrocity off, then she looked under the jumper. Her face changed colours again and she firmly tugged it back down.
Izumo and Kotetsu were the third sign that things weren’t normal when they came in to turn in their reports from their B-ranked mission.
“Doing reports right makes me jolly,” Izumo sang. “Fa la la la, la la la la!” He looked deeply mortified as the whole room burst into more wild laughter, Tsuanade and Asuma’s deep chortles easily dominating the room.
“Here is mine, and there’s no folly, fa la la la, la la-” Kotetsu blurted out before he could stop himself. He slapped a hand over his mouth and shoved his report at Iruka.
Iruka smiled a polite smile, trying to keep his face straight. “Getting into the spirit of things today, are we?”
Neither chunin said anything more, both firmly keeping their mouths shut, though it looked like it pained them to do so. They barely waited until Iruka said ‘thank you for all your hard work’ before they bolted out of the room, faces fluorescent.
A small cluster of jounins came in, Shikaku getting quite a few sniggers due to the fact that his uniform top was seeming to try and out-ugly Shizune’s. He looked vaguely annoyed by the fact, but clearly thought doing more than that was too much effort.
Yamato handed Iruka his report.
“Thank you. How was your mission?”
“I had gone awaaaaaay, to where snow glistens. / I do what the Hokage says, ‘cuz I listen.” Yamato blinked, and tried again. “It makes her happy to know, / That I’ll go with the flow. /Even if that means going to such a faraway land!”
Iwashi gave up any pretext of standing and rolled on the floor, laughing so hard he cried.
“Mission a success?” Iruka asked Yamato pleasantly.
“And now our enemies have expired, /Since Kakashi hit them, with lots of fire.” Yamato, it seemed, couldn’t help adding the last bit. His face flamed as Tsunade let out another big, belly laugh.
“Well, thank you for all your hard work and that musical rendition.” Iruka stamped Yamato’s part of the report and bit back his giggles as the young man all but scuttled to the back of the room in embarrassment.
Kakashi trailed up, bored expression on his face.
“Hatake-san,” Iruka acknowledged.
Kakashi paused for a moment, then suddenly started singing. “Ink of black, ink of blue / I wrote this report, just for you. / Filled with words, so clear and mild / Here it is, so carefully styled / Done so your work may decrease. / Done so your work may decrease.”
Quite a few people clapped, drowning out the laughter. Kakashi had a nice baritone and it was clear that it was going to make him very popular later.
The Copy Ninja smiled a little one-eyed smile, and then wandered off, looking like he wanted to be confused, but was too good of a ninja to allow himself that kind of luxury.
“Man, am I glad that I came down here today!” Genma announced loudly.
The doors opened and everyone held their breath, waiting for what would come next. They were hoping for more of a spectacle.
They were not disappointed.
The room exploded even louder than it had before. Three ninjas wet themselves and two others passed out from laughing so hard. Tsunade broke a desk when she pounded on it in her mirth. Asuma nearly swallowed his pipe. Even Shikaku began to chortle.
Ibiki clearly was Not Impressed and radiating murderous intent, but people couldn’t seem stop laughing.
The usual imposing overcoat had been transformed into a huge knitted monstrosity. Clashing, metallic bobbles decorated it in such a way that a lampshade would have been insanely jealous of it and tasteless holiday motifs embellished it in the most vulgar way possible. Multicoloured sleigh bells were attached to the hem and made cacophonous noise whenever Ibiki moved.
It was the work of a mind more twisted than Gai’s and probably could be used to cause all of Konoha’s enemies to either laugh themselves to death or try to gouge their eyes out with whatever rusty, blunt object was nearby.
Ibiki glared harder. No-one stopped rolling on the floor.
“I would like to speak to Umino Iruka,” he finally growled out.
“Careful, Iruka-sensei!” Raidou cackled. “He might lock you in a room with that thing!”
Biting on his hand to keep from sniggering too loudly, Iruka followed the disgruntled T.I. specialist out. “How-how may help you, Morino-san?” He managed to get out once they were in a small room, amazingly keeping most of the laughter out of his voice.
“Undo this genjutsu, now.”
Iruka controlled his face as best as he could, trying to get it to look serious and respectful. “I didn’t put a genjutsu on you, Morino-san. Perhaps asking Hyuuga-san or Hatake-san to…help with your…” he snickered before he could stop himself. “Excuse me, Hyuuga-san or Hatake-san to help with that.”
“It’s your chakra. You remove it.”
“I told you, Morino-san, I haven’t put a genjutsu on you.” Iruka gave the man his most sincere look-which was probably not as sincere as he would liked to have looked, due to the snickers.
Ibiki’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Then what did you do?”
Iruka tsked. “I think it might be more of a matter of what you did.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you had stayed out of the teacher’s lounge and followed clear, simple instructions, I doubt that you would be in this predicament.” Iruka smiled sweetly as the tokubetsu jounin’s forehead darkened.
“Would you care to repeat that?”
“Now Morino-san, I know your hearing is just fine. But perhaps you should have your eyesight examined. I seem to remember a large sign in the teacher’s lounge that said the treats on the table were only for the teaching and janitorial staff of the academy and anyone else who took them would have to just face the consequences.”
“You jutsued the cookies?” Ibiki asked slowly, still looking enormously annoyed.
Iruka let his smile get sweeter. “I never said that.”
Ibiki loomed over him, making full use of the fact that he was larger than Iruka. “Fix this,” he said softly. “Whatever you did, fix this.”
“I’m sorry, Morino-san, but I can’t.”
The bobbles on the atrocity quivered dangerously. “What?”
Iruka bit back a giggle. “The only way to not suffer ill effects was to go to a classroom and expose yourself to about twenty-five sources of partially-trained chakra within half an hour of consuming the treats and staying there for more than two hours.” He put his innocent face back on. “Other than that, you simply have to wait twenty-four hours until the effects wear off by themselves.”
“I cannot interrogate our guests looking like this.”
“I’m sorry, but I already told you that I can’t remove it. Maybe next time, you’ll stay out of places you don’t belong and read the instructions on the sign.”
Ibiki glared.
Iruka smiled.
Ibiki glared harder.
“Have a nice day, Morino-san,” Iruka waved and walked out of the small room, chuckling to himself as he left. Really, Ibiki looked utterly ridiculous like-
A large, heavily scarred caught Iruka’s arm and yanked him back. Iruka only just managed not to stab Ibiki with his kunai.
“You need to figure out how to remove this-”
“Morino-san! First, let go of me! Second, you try something like that again, and I won’t stop myself from stabbing you! Third, why the hell aren’t you making the most of your situation? You could be using your…outfit to your advantage!”
“I fail to see how this could be used to my ‘advantage’.”
Iruka rolled his eyes. “Please. All you have to do is steal a few more treats from the teacher’s lounge, put some twinkly lights up in your interrogation rooms, serve each prisoner one cookie, wait about an hour, and then go in and interrogate the hell out of them.”
Ibiki blinked. “What?”
“One cookie only. That will have them confessing all their naughty and nice deeds over the year. Two cookies…well, you know the results of that.” Iruka smirked.
Another hard glare.
Iruka beamed angelically. “Is that all, Morino-san?”
The large man studied him for a moment. “If this works, perhaps you would be good enough to offer up some…suggestions for some other techniques to use.”
“Only if you buy me dinner. Good dinner, not something cheap.”
The corner of Ibiki’s mouth twitched. “But only if this works. If not…I’m going to make you pay for this.”
“It’ll work. You can pick me up from the Mission Room after my shift; I’m done at six-thirty. Now if you are quite finished, I do have work to do and you have some prisoners to extract information from.”
Iruka didn’t let the evil smile cover his face until after he had left the room. That had been surprisingly easy to get Ibiki to take him out on that date. The Interrogator was never going to know what hit him.
Iruka was making his own Christmas cheer. And Ibiki was going to be under his tree this year.
x Fin x