Seven Days to River Country as the Crow Doesn't Fly [Toshiro, Travel]

Age : 49 Posts : 1036

"Looks like everything is here. Good luck sir." Accepting the various papers back with one hand then stuffing them into the pouch that had held them when he had set out that morning, Toshiro absently waved his own goodbye to the two chuunin guarding Konoha's outer gate. The jounin's mind and feet were already on the miles he had yet to cover down the hard-packed dirt road, and cold wind that made him glad he had opted to wear his hunting clothes. Between the insulated split-toe socks, a knitted balaclava worn as a muffler until he needed it, heavy gloves, and a forest-pattern coat and heavy pants Toshiro was relatively insulated against the icy fingers of winter. Too bad the poor gate guards weren't so lucky. Required to wear the standard chuunin attire, and in the unseasonably cold air a uniform designed for mild weather wasn't much good to keeping heat in, the white haired jounin had found the pair of newly-appointed chuunin huddled in the guard shed trying to keep from becoming icicles. Under normal circumstances he would have reamed them for not keeping a watch the incoming road, but just that once he had let it slide. Just like he had turned a blind eye to the young woman who had been trying to act inconspicuous while the chuunin had checked his papers before half-dashing to hand two steaming packages that likely held hot food and warm drinks and getting a peck on the cheek from the shorter of the chuunin before hurrying off back into the village proper. Technically the jounin should have confiscated those packages, since in theory they could have been tampered with , but again Toshiro let the breach of regulations slide. If the price of the pair staying alert for a real threat was a breach in the asinine regulations, Toshiro wasn't going say a word. To paraphrase a guard in a radio program he had heard "I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing."

Sporting a slight smile for the antics of the young (from the lofty height of 20 years) hidden by his balaclava, the jounin turned back from looking over his shoulder at the gate he wouldn't see for weeks at least and back to what awaited him. Ahead of him was at least a week of travel to reach his destination just inside the border between that lands of Fire and River. He could have made it in just a few days if he used a direct route, but the need for staying under the radar of certain people required subterfuge. Otherwise it wasn't impossible that one of the potential threats to the client would try something hasty before the jounin was around. Hence why he was heading north towards Snow Country to meet up with a courier-nin that would be handed a package instead of heading directly to River Country. It was hoped, at least by the people who gave him this mission and devised this whole "hiding in plain sight" plan, that any eyes & ears who reported back to the elders of a certain family in River Country that was currently in a succession crisis wouldn't suspect anything. Otherwise they might try to eliminate the client before Toshiro arrived to tilt the odds in her favor. Personally the jounin who was moving at a steady loping pace would have preferred to just have found some ship and gone over the side in a dingy one night to make landfall in some river mouth. That plan and the one he was following were both chancy, but at least if the former didn't work he would be closer to his destination. Toshiro had no problem taking a risk, but this sort of "all or nothing" approach was something he could do without. Still in this case he didn't have an option so he would just have to hope that for once the squirrels in Ops had gotten all their seeds lined up. A final look back and then Toshiro had rounded the first of many turns that concealed the gates of his home from view. He just hoped that in seven day he would be looking at another set of gates in River Country and not be told that the client was dead.