No One Stands Alone

Chapter 26

Chapter 26:

"Ryouta?"

The teen turned at the sound of his name, and met the gaze of his teammate. "Yeah?"

"Why didn't we do anything?"

Ryouta and his teammates had stumbled upon the genin team from Konoha just as the green haired boy was struck. Now, the blond boy was carrying him on his back as they walked towards the tower. Ryouta and his teammates had been, and were currently, concealed in a tree.

"What do you mean, Jirou?"

His teammate's gaze held nothing but curiosity as he elaborated. "We could have easily defeated those two teams, so why did we just sit back and watch? The only one who looked like they could've put up a fight was the one with the sword from Konoha."

Ryouta simply shook his head. "Did you notice the color of his eyes?"

"Brown," Shizuka, the third genin in his team, replied in a bored tone. Ryouta glanced up at the kunoichi who was sitting on a higher branch.

"The other one," he clarified, keeping a civil tone. Ryouta could feel his irritation rise at the sound of her voice, but he didn't want to fight today. "The blond one."

"Nope," the kunoichi answered in a mocking, disrespectful tone. "Was it a pretty color?"

"I'm older than you by a year," Ryouta muttered under his breath. "Can't you show some respect?"

"Hmm?" Shizuka met his eyes, and her raised eyebrows told him that she heard him. The smirk on her lips told him that she didn't care about what he said.

Ryouta just sighed. He knew she was baiting him. "They were silver."

The kunoichi almost slipped from the branch she was sitting on. "What?!"

Ryouta couldn't help a smile from forming at her shock. His joy didn't last, though, since he felt a elbow jab him in the side hard. He whirled around to glare at Jirou. "What was that for?!"

His teammate evenly met his eyes. "Keep it up and—"

"I know, I know," Ryouta interrupted him. He didn't want to be lectured again. "Ayumu-san won't tolerate another failure from us—from me."

"Then stop acting like a child." His voice was hard and strict. It was a tone that Jirou reserved specifically for his two teammates.

Shizuka opened her mouth to rub salt in his wound, but Jirou glanced up at her and used the same tone. "Don't."

The kunoichi clamped her mouth shut.

Jirou turned back to him. "Now, what do we do?"

Jirou was supposed to be the leader of the team, but he was afraid of the responsibility. Ryouta has no qualms stepping up to take his place, but Jirou's authoritative side made an appearance once in a while, reminding Ryouta why the taller of the two was asked to be the leader.

Ryouta shook away those thoughts as he took a deep breath. "Did Ayumu-san say how to tell if the Victan is completed?"

"No..." Shizuka recalled, slipping off her branch to join the other two below. Her flippant attitude was gone, at least for now. "He said that we'll have to take our chances if we ever encounter someone with silver eyes."

"What about the third one," Jirou pointed out. "The one who was injured in the beginning. Could he have completed his Victan?"

"His eyes were also silver," Ryouta answered slowly as he remembered back to when he saw this genin team during the first exam, "but I don't know if he completed it either. If the two of them completed their Victans, though, we are lucky the green haired one was knocked out. Otherwise, we wouldn't have stood a chance."