ANBU Legacy - Trials Arc - ANBU_Legacy, Kilerkki, Nezuko, saunterleftside (2024)

Chapter 1: Choose Your Blade

Chapter Text

April 15, Yondaime Year 5

The first day of the ANBU trials started before dawn.

Fifty kilometers, run in an hour. Most of them came in under that, of course—theywerejounin—but there was no rest or water before the slim, iron-grey ANBU commander barked an order and masked veterans dropped out of the trees for bare-handed sparring, no chakra allowed. Jutsu came later, as a grey drizzle veiled the risen sun. Timed kawarimi, distance translocation, area-effect genjutsu, shadow clones. Another round of sparring, with blades this time. And then a panting moment of blessed rest, dropping down onto the sparse patches of dry ground under the trees while one candidate after another demonstrated their special jutsu on the muddy field under the ANBU commander’s masked and merciless gaze.

Tousaki Ryouma had a cut on one shoulder and mud in his hair. He didn’t think the cut was bad; it hurt to lift his arm, but everything still worked, which was all he really needed. Probably. There might be weightlifting next.

He sealed his palm to the tear in his sleeve and rolled his shoulder, testingly. Pain stabbed red and white, but the warm seep into muddy fabric didn’t break into a surge. The cut felt long but shallow; a short sword glancing off the padded shoulder of his flak vest as he turned and ducked, slicing into the meat of his upper arm instead of his neck.

He’d only had a single kunai, like all the other candidates. He hadn’t actually drawn blood, but that frog-masked veteran would be limping for a week.

Probably, Ryouma decided, he could allow himself to be smug.

“What d’you think we’ve got after this?” he asked the man who sat down beside him. “Swimming across the river without coming up to breathe? Jumping off the top of Hokage Mountain?” Fighting eachotherwas probably more likely, now that they’d fought veterans. He glanced sideways, speculatively.

And blinked.

There was mud on the jounin uniform, but none in the silver-white hair, rain-slicked to the scalp. Jounin-blue fabric mask pulled up to shield mouth and nose, an orange-backed book resting open on his thigh, spotted a little with rain. He wasn’t reading, though; he was gazing at the field where a woman demonstrated a massive earth jutsu, and there was red spinning in his scarred left eye.

“Oh hellno,” Ryouma said, and punched Sharingan no Kakashi in the ribs.

The blue-chakra warning of changing fate lines still didn’t give Kakashi quite enough time to dodge. One of the scrolls stored in his flak-jacket crunched under the man’s knuckles. His ribs flexed inward; his breath thumped out.

He’d known ANBU would be violent, but he’d assumed enemy ninja would be a feature first.

He righted himself and glanced sideways. “Problem?”

The Sharingan caught every detail of the man’s dark scowl and flagged a memory. “‘Problem?’’ Tousaki Ryouma, the face-melter, mimicked back. “You asshole, she’sKonoha. She probably invented that jutsu herself. You don’t juststealit!”

Oh, he was one of those.

Kakashi considered it. “Says who?” he asked, after a moment.

Tousaki’s mouth dropped open. “You serious?” he demanded. “You’reserious. Look—”

“Tousaki!” Across the field, the vice-commander gave a sharp gesture.

The dark, angry head jerked around. “sh*t,” Ryouma said, and scrambled up—and up, and up. The man had about twelve foot in legs alone. He looked down at Kakashi from all of his height and visibly sought for a threat dire enough. “If I catch you watching, Hatake, Iwillliquefy your lungs.”

“Noted,” said Kakashi.

Even the sharp lines of Ryouma’s shoulders looked angry. Kakashi leaned back on his hand, feeling the morning dampness soak into his glove, and watched. The vice commander had already sealed the gaping trenches cut into the earth. Just beyond that spot, two heavy wooden poles had been driven deep into the ground, with a crossbar nailed across the top. Hanging from the bar, a pig carcass swung gently from a rope.

Just before he reached the target, Ryouma turned on his heel and yelled, “SHUT IT, HATAKE.”

A confused murmur went through the other candidates.

Try to make friends, Rin had said.Just try.

Kakashi waved one hand and pulled his hitai-ate down, stripping the chakra-meaning out of the world. He blinked once, adjusting. Full color, no depth perception. He tried not to use the Sharingan on teammates who were—loudly—against it, even with the temptation to ruffle Ryouma’s tall feathers.

He regretted the courtesy, just a little, when Ryouma’s infamous rot jutsu melted the pig to black slag, leaving only bones behind.

There was a gratifying little ripple of noise from the spectators when what was left of the pig carcass dripped off the rope, half-decayed bones splattering in the blackened ooze beneath. Ryouma cut the chakra flow; the reddish-black light haloing his hands flickered out, leaving his palm slick with rotting sludge. He shook a few drops off and stooped to wipe his hand in the rain-wet grass. The commander was conferring with the proctors at the edge of the field; no one had new orders for him yet. He cast a quick glance back, over his shoulder.

Most of the other candidates were staring. A few—probably the more imaginative ones—looked a little pale.

Kakashi was reading his book, with the slanted hitai-ate anchored firmly over the Sharingan eye.

Well, Ryoumahaddeliberately turned his back when he started the hand-seals for theNikutai Hakai no Jutsu. Maybe Kakashi’d gotten bored. Or maybe he wasn’t, actually, anxious to get his lungs liquefied.

Shinobi told stories, in bars, around campfires. Senju Hashirama, the Shodai Hokage, defeating Uchiha Madara at the Valley of the End; the legendary Sannin, including Shodai’s granddaughter Tsunade-hime, holding Traitor’s Gap alone against an army. The Yellow Flash, Yondaime himself, who was barely twenty-two when he came closer than anyone ever had to killing the Raikage. And Yondaime’s silver-haired student, Sharingan no Kakashi, who’d inherited an eye from an Uchiha and split a lightning bolt.

People said he was kind of weird, mostly rude, and scary as hell on the battlefield. No one actuallysaidhe was a bastard, though, and they didn’t hesitate to apply that label to Uchiha who earned it.

Still—who got to say they’d punched Sharingan no Kakashi and lived?

“Tousaki!” the ANBU commander called, beckoning from the sidelines.

Ryouma jogged over obediently, as a proctor came out to bury the former pig with an earth jutsu and set up the field for the next candidate. The commander handed her clipboard to an assistant and clasped her hands at the small of her back, muscled shoulders set straight as an iron bar. Her mask was a hawk, white and red; her dark eyes glittered dangerously up at him from the shadowed eye-holes. “You’d registered the Internal Organs Melt Technique on your application form. A-ranked, mid-range. What wasthat?”

“Human Body Destruction Technique, ma’am,” Ryouma said promptly. “B-rank, close range.”

Great explanation there, Tousaki. Let’s tell her exactly what she already knows.She’dseenhim step up and slap a hand glowing with putrid chakra to the hanging carcass; she’d read probably every detail of every original combat jutsu in his file. The hawk mask hid all expressions, but the tilt of her head saidimpatience.

He bit his tongue, took a precious few second to think. “TheNaizou Tokasurequires a lot of chakra. Ten times as much as theNikutai Hakai. I didn’t know if it was chakra I’d need, later. I thought it’d be better to show a lower-ranked jutsu—even if it’s just a variant of one anybody who’s worked with me has already seen—than wipe myself out halfway through the trial.” He couldn’t resist adding helpfully, “Strategic thinking, ma’am.”

“Just so,” the commander said, dry as bone. “Your strategic thinking didn’t have anything to do with Hatake Kakashi watching with his Sharingan open, did it?”

Ryouma opened his mouth, closed it, and stood silent, hands curled at his sides.

“I thought as much,” the commander said.

She reached out a hand; her assistant slapped the clipboard into it. “Nakashima’s up next,” he said.

The commander flipped a page and said, without glancing up, “You’re dismissed, Tousaki. Wash your hands.” She turned away.

On the field, Nakashima Hideo was gathering water from the misty air for his ice arrow technique. Ryouma trudged around the sidelines instead and found a proctor willing to share a thin stream of water from his canteen. Soap would have to wait. He went back beneath the trees, where f*ckui Ayane raised her eyebrows at him and indicated the dry spot on a bed of pine needles beside her.

The last time he’d seen her they’d both been very drunk, and mostly naked.

He shook his head, and dropped down by Hatake instead. “You can keep breathing,” he said.

“Generous of you,” Kakashi said, turning a page. Thesshh-thunkof arrows cut the air over the training fields, shattering the still-standing wooden posts. He didn’t look up; he knew thatHyoutonalready.

Ryouma’s voice bled self-satisfaction. “I’m a generous man.”

“Mm.”

The wind changed; a northerly slip of air twisted around Ryouma, blowing rain and rot-scent directly into Kakashi’s face.

He’d fallen onto a sun-bloated corpse before, when the Third Great Ninja War was at its height and bodies had dropped faster than they could clear them. When he’d been too tired to keep standing. His hands had broken into the swollen belly cavity and splashed, if he remembered rightly.

This smelled worse.

Not much worse, but the fresh edge of putrid death had something a little extra when you set it to the background of April rain and spring flowers.

Kakashi closed his book with a snap. “Excuse me,” he said, and got to his feet.

“Sensitive nose?” Ryouma said, mouth twisting wry. He leaned back, casually flattening his hand palm-down to the wet grass. “Guess you wouldn’t’ve wanted it anyway.”

Kakashi paused. “Is it that you don’t like to share?” he asked. “Or are you afraid someone might do it better?”

Ryouma’s smile thinned, but didn’t slip. “I’m sure you could. How long can you hold your breath?”

“Hatake!” shouted the vice-commander. “Front and center.”

Kakashi tuckedIcha Ichaaway. “I guess you’ll have to test me sometime,” he said, and left Ryouma in the grass.

The rain had picked up, growing from a light shower to an actual downpour: the short, hard kind that spring enjoyed so much. Despite the wet, it still felt warm. Earth churned to gritty mud on the field. The proctors had left it swept clean after the last demonstration; the wooden posts were splintered toothpicks.

The vice-commander, a hard-muscled man in an abstract owl mask, nodded once and stepped back. “In your own time, Hatake.”

Kakashi offered him a shallow bow and faced the watchful audience. He thought, perhaps, there was a renewed edge of interest in the candidates, and even in the masked ANBU. Eagerness for a lightning show.

He didn’t call lightning.

Very precisely, he ran through six seals, flung the threads of chakra out into the rain, bowed again, and returned to his seat—slightly more upwind of Ryouma.

Nothing happened.

“Were there supposed to be explosions?” Ryouma inquired. “I was looking forward to explosions.”

Kakashi looked back at him, six feet away. Beneath the water-logged curtain of rain-grey hair his single visible eye curved in a less than believable smile.

And he shredded apart, dust on the wind.

Beyond him, half-shrouded in rain, Hideo and Ayane crumbled like so much dried sand. Across the field, the ANBU commander and vice-commander and the proctors were already gone.

Ryouma scowled. “I expected more,” he said, and gathered his chakra. “Kai!”

Fire exploded in the center of the field, leaping skyward into the rain, blasting out over the field of mud. Heat hit him like a slap in the face, and was gone.

The ground was faintly steaming. And Kakashi stood quietly at the vice-commander’s shoulder, hands in his pockets, close enough to kill.

The owl mask turned belatedly. One hand twitched for the ninjato slung from the back of his belt, before he caught himself.

No one laughed. Kakashi stood still, waiting.

“Thank you, Hatake,” the vice-commander said coldly. “Dismissed.”

Kakashi came slogging back through mud and rain, hands still crammed in his pockets, shoulders slouched. A thin buzz of conversation sprang up in his wake, and refused to die even when the vice-commander shouted another name.

Ryouma waited until Kakashi had settled down again, still upwind. “Ninjutsu?”

It could be a genjutsu. Itlookedlike a genjutsu. But the wider an area-effect genjutsu was, the more people it covered, the weaker it had to be and the less it could change in the minds of everyone it touched. Kakashi had covered an open training fieldandthe trees around it, had affected upwards of sixty shinobi. And he hadn’t just convinced them he’d vanished in mist and rain; he’d madeeveryonevanish, followed it up with a fireball that boiled water out of mud, and used it all to make the ANBU vice-commander look foolish.

Kinda weird,people said.Mostly rude.

Scary as hell.

Interesting,Ryouma thought.

Kakashi raked dripping hair out of his face, and studied Ryouma afresh. “Yeah,” he said, after a moment. “I manipulated the rain drops.”

It was a clever little jutsu—a ninjutsu that mimicked genjutsu, but didn’t break under kai. The illusion was all in the way you twisted the water, shaping it to create a chosen image from a thousand reflections. Unlike genjutsu, it didn’t touch the victim’s chakra coils.

The trick was to put in enough chakra that the heat felt real.

Ryouma’s dark eyebrows pulled together. “Not water clones,” he said thoughtfully. “Mirrors? But you had to create the image on the other side…” He glanced sideways. “So didkaiactually trigger the next stage, or were you just being an asshole and waiting for one of us to try it before you got your explosion on?”

Kakashi’s mouth quirked. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “That would be mean.”

“‘Cause clearly you’re so worried about making enemies,” Ryouma said. He eased back on his elbows, uncaring of the wet, but stopped with a hiss and sat up again. A slow-spreading red patch at his shoulder suggested why. He nodded at the vice-commander. “Not worried that stunt’ll damage your chances?”

Kakashi shrugged. “Should it?”

“Hell no,” Ryouma said instantly. “You made him look like a fool, sure, and he won’t like you for it—but that jutsu wasgood.” He tugged absently at his sleeve, peeling scarlet-drenched threads out of the edge of the open cut. “Did you really need the explosion as a cover, or did you just throw it in for show?”

Well, someone had warmed up.

“I was going to do a water dragon, but someone wanted fireworks,” Kakashi said, glancing sideways before he looked at the field again. A gossamer thread of a girl was breaking shed-sized boulders apart with her firsts. “Any distraction would have worked.”

At least on a captive audience that wasn’t expecting it. On the field, in a real fight, it would have been harder, but you only needed a split-second to get the final blow.

“You should put something on your shoulder,” he added.

“Dirty hands,” Ryouma said, then appeared to realize he already had a hand on his shoulder, and dropped it. “Bleeding’ll keep it clean, anyway. I’ll wrap it up later.” A sudden white grin split his mud-streaked face. “Nice to know you care.”

“I what?” said Kakashi.

“It’s all right,” Ryouma assured him. “I won’t tell.”

A shockwave of fire brought their attention back to the center field. An Uchiha candidate stood with her head tipped back, blowing a thirty-foot column of flame into the air. On the final exhale, the fire twisted into a phoenix, spread its wings, and blew apart with a ringing scream. The rain hissed into giant clouds of steam.

Dammit.

That one, he would have wanted.

“Pretty,” Ryouma allowed, watching the Uchiha brush heat-dried hair back from her face and walk back to her place under the trees. “Little too flashy, though. What’s the point of the phoenix at the end? Anybody who dodged the first flame is gonna be gutting her while she’s still breathing smoke.”

Kakashi tapped his fingers thoughtfully against his knee. “Drop that attack low and put it through a crowd—anyone who thinks they’d dodged the first part would get fried by the wings. But you’d need someone to guard her back.”

He had a point about the wings. Still… “How much crowd-massacring are we planning to do? Battlefield I could see, but the war’s over.” Ryouma glanced quickly sideways. Hokage’s former student: how much did he still hear? The thin blue mask clung wetly to the angled planes of cheek and nose and mouth, but the stark profile gave nothing away. “Unless we’re planning to start it again.”

One shoulder came up in a loose, wordless shrug. Kakashi’s gaze didn’t come off the field, where the proctors were setting up four straw dummies. Ayane answered the vice-commander’s call; he handed her his own short sword. She took it, tested the balance, and then spun into a chakra-edged whirlwind.

“Not with Earth Country,” Ryouma said, watching her. “Yondaime-sama crushed them too finally at the Battle of Takagawa. I was in Shintama last spring; it’s been six years and they’re still rebuilding.” He glanced briefly sideways; Kakashi’s face hadn’t changed.

“Lightning, maybe,” Ryouma tried. “That treaty’s only two years old. Ayane was up in Frost Country for a mission a couple of weeks ago. She said you couldn’t turn the corner without running into a Cloud shinobi.”

Ayane landed on one knee in the mud, head down, long ponytail falling past her face, with the sword sheathed at her side. A few bits of straw drifted down around her. The rest lay scattered in mud and rain.

Kakashi blinked, tugged his rapt attention off the woman with the sword, and glanced over at Ryouma. “Sorry. I wasn’t listening.”

And clearly wasn’t talking, either. Ryouma shrugged, winced, and just stopped himself from reaching for his shoulder again. “Ayane’s hard to ignore,” he agreed.

The woman herself was coming back across the field, after returning the vice-commander’s sword with a careful bow. Her dark brows quirked. “You seem to be managing,” she said.

“I wasn’t ignoring you!” he protested, scrambling to his feet. “You were magnificent. You’ll make it in.”

Her lips thinned, but she said only, “I’ve heard there’s another kenjutsu-using kunoichi in the ranks. She uses wind chakra, too. They may not be looking for a second.”

“They’d be idiots not to,” Ryouma said. He glanced up the field, narrowing his eyes against the steady rain. “I’ve seen—seven, maybe, I’d take for sure. Another twenty who won’t make the cut. Eight or nine on the edge. They usually accept eight or ten, don’t they?”

“Twelve in September, my brother said.” Ayane plucked a bit of straw out of her hair, combed her fingers through the long dripping ponytail to find more. “They may not need as many this time.”

“Older brother?” Ryouma asked cautiously.

She flashed a sudden grin. “Three years, kenjutsu and ninjutsu user. He’s better than me. Don’t worry, Tousaki. I won’t tell on you.” She clapped him on the shoulder and swung past him, squelching in the mud, to take better shelter under the tree near Nakamura Hideo.

Ryouma watched her go. Then he looked down, to find Kakashi gazing up at him. A steel-silver eyebrow spiked beneath the wet fall of hair.

“Judging my choices?” Ryouma asked mildly. “Or her taste?”

“I have to choose?” Kakashi said.

His entire knowledge of Tousaki Ryouma was, so far, a half-remembered war record and two pieces of new information: the stories of his jutsu weren’t exaggerated, and he was a flirt.

Apricklyflirt.

But Ayane had taken her irritation and her sword skills and her hipswing over there, and Ryouma was still here, wanting something.

“Not if it’d make you unhappy,” Ryouma said. “I told you, I’m a generous man.” He settled down next to Kakashi in an easy, hunkering crouch, arms balanced across his knees. Rain dripped from the ruffled tips of his short, dark hair. “You’re one of the seven, in case you’re curious.”

Kakashi had been curious, but he didn’t intend to admit it.

“I know,” he said instead. He was obviously one of the best candidates here. The sky was also blue.

Well, it was actually overcast and grey. But certain things were facts, was the point.

“Ayane, too, like I said,” Ryouma carried on. “And Takeshi, and Hakone, and Himura Tadao, and that blue-haired guy I don’t know. And me, obviously.” He looked critically down the line of trees. “The Uchiha’s one of the fence-sitters. Her taijutsu was kinda sloppy.”

The Uchiha in question was not actually outside of earshot. Kakashi felt the hot steel of her glare press against his mask.

Ryouma raised one long-fingered hand and gave her a little wave.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Kakashi asked, after a beat.Like a survival guide?

Ryouma blinked and looked at him. “Pissing off Uchiha? I think I can handle it, thanks.”

Well, yes, as challenges went, that wasn’t one.

“That’s not—” Kakashi said, then cut himself off. You might as well use resources while you had them, and this one didn’t seem eager to leave. There were two more ninja still waiting to demonstrate their skills; he had at least five minutes.

He turned to face Ryouma, rearranging himself to sit loosely cross-legged, and asked, “Your affinities—fire and water, right?”

Ryouma’s attention fixed on him, bright and sharp. He nodded, eyebrows lifted curiously.

Most healers were water-aligned, paired with wind or earth, but some of the strongest medics had fire in their blood. Rin did. Ryouma wasn’t a healer, clearly, but perhaps his jutsu came from the same source.

Which would be a shame—it was the one chakra talent Kakashi had no skill with. His lightning got in the way.

He leaned forward, letting his interest show. “Whyrot?”

No one had ever, actually, asked that question before. Ryouma’s sensei had frequently demandedWhat iswrongwith you?but that wasn’t exactly the same. He eyed Kakashi sidelong, thinking through answers.

He settled on one that was close to the truth. “I was fourteen, and it was gross. It made people pay attention.” He nodded to the field, where proctors’ earth jutsu had buried the residue of pig carcass. “Doesn’t need to be that fast. That was theNikutai Hakai; I mostly use it for corpse disposal. TheNikutai Tokasu no Jutsu, the Human Flesh Melt technique, is better for combat. One touch—a glancing blow—and I can incapacitate a man. Kill him, if he can’t amputate in time. It spreads.” He splayed the fingers of his right hand up the outside of his left arm, miming the creep of necrosis and blood poisoning.

Kakashi’s mouth tilted. “That would definitely get you five minutes of attention. Can you direct it, or does it grab flesh indiscriminately?”

“Whatever I touch.” Ryouma clamped down on his forearm, lifted his hand, leaving a crumpled handprint in the loose wet sleeve. “And that’swhateverI touch—I mean, it doesn’t affect me, ‘cause it’s my own chakra, but I’ve got to stay clear of my teammates when it’s activated.” He grinned crookedly. “They stay clear of me afterward.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Kakashi murmured.

“I carry soap on missions,” Ryouma assured him. “So then you get rotandnight-blooming jasmine, or whatever. I’m told it’s a winning combo.”

“You were lied to.” Kakashi glanced at the field as a brown-haired man called up an explosion of lethal glass butterflies and flung them slicing into the targets, then looked back to Ryouma. “Do you do anything besides rot?”

“Plenty,” Ryouma said, a little stung. “Uchiha aren’t the only ones who can breathe fire. Those jutsu just eat a lot of chakra, and they’re not as effective. You hit somebody with that phoenix fire-wing jutsu, and if he’s got fire chakra himself, he’ll walk out of it barely smoking. Mine aren’t as flashy, but theywork.”

Well, theNaizou Tokasuwas pretty flashy. For a given level of flash. He scowled at the flurry of butterflies glittering through the rain. “My A-rank technique liquefies your inner organs. From a distance. It’s not rot, it’s…”

Bloody vomit, was what it was. Deadly, sure, but not exactly impressive.

“It’s a work in progress.”

“To what?” Kakashi asked.

Ryouma blinked at him. For a man that defensive about his jutsu, he seemed pretty surprised any time Kakashi expressed an actual interest.

“To, uh, well,” Ryouma started, stumbled, and visibly regrouped. “To something I can use more’n twice a day. And less messy, hopefully. It was supposed to just wreck the heart, ‘cause one of my old captains kept complaining about the mess and the smell. But so far it pretty much just melts everything inside the ribcage.” He gestured with both hands, as if holding the disintegrating lobes of someone’s lungs. “I’m still working it out. You get less chance to practice when you only use it on the battlefield.”

“Have you tried the morgue?”

“Y’know, I never have,” Ryouma said, after a long, thoughtful stare that left Kakashi feeling oddly measured. “I took care of bodies sometimes, in the war, when we didn’t have the time for cremations and burials, but— I always kind of figured that was different. People wouldn’t want me messing with their relatives back here.” His mouth twitched; he jerked his chin at the field. “First time I’ve ever done a pig, either. ANBU has a bigger budget than I do. I used to sneak into the Forest of Death when I was younger, though. Nobody’d mind an exploded giant centipede or ten.”

War orphans used to hunt in the Forest. They didn’t now. The Fourth had started programs.

“The med students get most of the donated bodies,” Kakashi said. “But you could request one after they’re done. Intel use them, and T&I.”

And ANBU, he’d heard. Practice for dismembering fallen comrades on the field. Ryouma might be a shoe-in just for that.

“Huh.” The barest edge of Ryouma’s mouth curled up, like a hook. “Guess I could put my masculine wiles to good use. Do some persuading. Jutsu research is a good cause, isn’t it?”

“You have wiles?” Kakashi said.

“When I don’t look like a drowned rat and smell like a battlefield— Why, yes, Hatake, thanks for noticing,” Ryouma drawled. He dragged a hand through his hair, raking it into black-glass spikes, and flashed a grin. “Generally I like to start things with a striptease. Improvise from there.”

Kakashi was pretty sure he’d read a scene like this about five minutes ago, except Ikeda Terumasa-sama had been much more naked, and also a tragic samurai. “Are you hitting on me?”

Well, hehadn’tbeen. There was never any harm in seeing where things went, though. “Is it working?” Ryouma inquired.

Kakashi cast an assessing gaze around them, studying dripping trees and soggy grass and sodden shinobi. “It’s wet,” he said, flatly. “There’s an audience, and we’re auditioning. But sure, let’s sneak behind those bushes. You can talk more decomp to me.”

That was a fairly good one, asNos went.

Ryouma dug up his best expression of caring concern. “Hatake,” he said, very gently. “I’m sorry to break this to you. But I think you need to seriously reconsider your standards in seduction.”

“Hmm,” Kakashi said. “You’re right. I should go for someone more classy.” He tipped his head, single eye narrowing against the rain. “You think Owl-mask would still give me a chance?”

“He’s ANBU vice-commander,” Ryouma said. “I’m sure he likes assassination attempts in bed.”

“I’m contemplating a certain kind of little death right now, Tousaki.”

Ryouma was on his feet and reaching for a kunai he wasn’t carrying before he’d even fully registered the words. The low, gravelling voice was the same one that had been shouting candidates’ names for the last hour; the empty-eyed owl mask gleamed cold in the grey rain. The ANBU vice commander stood with one hand on his hip and the other resting very casually on the hilt of his ninjato.

How thehellhad he gotten behind them?

Ryouma forced himself out of battle-stance and into parade rest. His mouth kept moving, without thought—or sense—to guide it. “Glad to hear it, sir. It’s been a long day. You look like you could use—”

His tongue thickened. The short hairs rose on the back of his neck. Muscles shuddered and twitched. The vice-commander hadn’t moved, but killing intent seeped through the air like poison.

“Two words, Tousaki,” the vice-commander said very quietly. “Yessir. Nossir. I hear more than those from you, and you lose your tongue. Do you understand?”

His killing intent didn’t fade. Challenge, from one jounin to another.

And weakness in his stance, unbalance, that fisted hand too hard on the hip, the booted feet planted too firmly in the wet grass. He’d slip if he stepped too fast. If Ryouma went left, shoulderedintothe blow, caught him off-guard with a surge of his own killing intent—

Ryouma set his jaw. “Yessir,” he said.

For a moment, Kakashi really thought Ryouma was going to take the vice-commander’s subtle opening, and get his neck broken for it.

The vice-commander thought so, too. When Ryouma stayed at rest, it took the older man three full heartbeats to twitch his fingers away from his ninjato.

The red thrum in the air faded a little.

Kakashi unfolded from his half-crouch, letting gathered chakra ease back from his fingertips, and cleared his throat. “Was there something you wanted, sir?”

The vice-commander gave him a narrow look through the eyeholes of the mask. “If your conversation hadn’t kept you so distracted, Hatake, you might have noticed the demonstrations are winding up. Report to the center of the field with the other candidates. And you, Tousaki.”

The final candidate was still braiding earth and water, creating living ropes of black mud that swallowed and drowned his straw targets. Tarry pools littered the ground, dusted with grass stems. Kakashi looked back at the vice-commander.

“Did I stutter, Hatake?”

Kakashi was fond of his tongue. “Nossir.”

“Tousaki, did you hear me stutter?”

The faint flex of tendons in Ryouma’s neck suggested murder, but he said, “Nossir.”

“Well, then,” the vice-commander said.

The candidate—Hanzo, Kakashi thought—gave them a black glare when they infringed on his splattered bubble of personal space, but the vice-commander was right, the pattern-dance ended barely a few moments later, leaving Kakashi and Ryouma liberally sprinkled in another layer of sticky mud. The rest of the candidates were ordered to join them, arrayed in a ragged cluster of weary shinobi.

In perfect silence, the watchful ANBU circled them.

Kakashi recognized a few masks. That blue boar with stylized tusks had guarded Minato-sensei last month. That wildcat with the shrapnel marks scattered over her bare shoulder had been on wall duty a year ago; Maito Gai had tried to challenge her to a one-lap race. He’d lost. Most of the Hokage’s soldiers looked younger. That red-and-white panda looked almost the same height and weight as Kakashi, cut lean, barely done filling out, with his hair in a high blond-streaked horsetail.

Of course, that guy on the right, with the single crescent moon cutting down through the blank ceramic face, looked like someone had carved him out of solid, scarred maple.

The commander stepped forward.

“Your village thanks you for your service,” she said. “Some of you have performed adequately today. Some of you need to reevaluate your career aims. You—”

She pointed at the glass-butterfly ninja, who straightened sharply.

“Step forward.”

When the man stepped, a strange ripple went through the ANBU. A flash of handsigns almost too quick to see—code Kakashi didn’t know. The commander didn’t move, but he had the impression that she’d caught every flicker.

“Step to the right,” she said, and called another candidate forward. This one went left. The next went right, and the one after. None of them got names, but every one got a different ripple from the ANBU.

Votes, Kakashi realized. Did they affect the commander’s judgment, or had she already made up her own mind?

Ayane stepped forward, chin lifted. She went right.

The phoenix Uchiha went left.

When Ryouma was called, he walked forward straight-backed and met the commander’s eyes. Kakashi looked at the vice-commander, and saw him make a two-fingered V. There were a few of those among the ANBU, but more four-fingered signs, and Kakashi got it. The number four.Shi.

Death.

Ryouma went right.

Kakashi was second-last. When he stepped forward, the commander twitched her hand and the ANBU held theirs. He frowned.

“Minato-sama’s student,” she said. “Which side do you think you should be?”

“I get a choice?” he asked, thrown.

“No,” she said. “There are no favorites here. Get used to it.”

There wereunfavorites, he suspected, and very carefully didn’t touch the empty tanto sheath strapped in the small of his back; the blade had been confiscated earlier. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her hand moved slightly and the ANBU voted. Mostly fours, but he saw some twos.Ni.Burden.

At the commander’s order, he stepped right.

The last candidate went left. The commander gestured curtly at the disappointed knot of shinobi. “You’re dismissed,” she said, flat. “You can reapply in September if you have a taste for masochism, or you can choose to grow in new ways.”

She waited until they had left, drenched and unhappy, then rounded on the remaining ninja—a group cut down to less than half of the original candidate pool, perhaps twenty-two total.

“Return here tomorrow at 0400 hours. Jounin uniforms, weapons required, no supplies beyond what your belt-pouches can carry. I suggest you sleep between now and then.” She regarded them all with one sweeping look, eyes dark behind her mask. “You have been given a tenuous chance. Do not waste it. Dismissed.”

She vanished in a swirl of leaves, taking every ANBU soldier with her.

The confiscated weapons clattered out of thin air.

Ayane moved first, scooping up her sheathed katana with the face of a woman who’d just found her lost child. Kakashi was behind her, there and then back again, settling a straight-bladed tanto into the sheath at the small of his back. The light steel was wet, like everything else. He’d have to clean and oil it later, but if he was unhappy about it, the mask gave nothing away.

Ryouma moved slower, finding his kunai holster, the shuriken pouch. They’d landed in one of Hanzo’s puddles; the waterproof pouch had opened, spilling shuriken into the mud. He scrabbled them up and stuffed them back in, mud and all, and straightened just in time to avert an attempted headlock.

“Punk,” said Norita Takeshi, who was five foot three and would’ve had to climb a tree to get a lock on Ryouma at any other time. He was bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, nearly vibrating with energy. “Suicidal punk, maybe. Isawyou mouthing off to the vice-commander.”

“So’d everyone else,” Ryouma said. “Think you’re special?”

“Poor, maybe,” Ayane said, behind him. “He bet me five hundred ryou you’d take a swing. I’m calling in that debt now,” she told Takeshi. “I’m thirsty.” She eyed Ryouma appraisingly. “I’ll stand you one, if you like.”

“I might like,” he allowed. “Mouthing off is thirsty work.” He hooked the filthy shuriken pouch on the back of his belt and looked around. “Hatake! You coming?”

Kakashi was on the very edge of the group, watching. His brow came up. “To drink?”

“Liquid late lunch,” Ryouma said, shrugging. “Or actual food lunch, if you’re as hungry as I am.”

“Liquid,” Ayane said, decisively. “And snacks. And then a bath, and thenbed.” She glanced at Kakashi, her mobile mouth pursing a little, and surprised Ryouma again.

“You should come,” she said. “First round’s on Takeshi.”

Kakashi hesitated. They saw it, the slight tension in his shoulders, as if he were about to turn toward them; the squelch of mud, as he shifted his weight. But he shook his head, wet hair falling over his eye again, and didn’t push it back. “I can’t. Another time.”

“Sure,” Ayane said easily, and hooked an arm through Takeshi’s. “Come on,” she said. “There’s rain in my blood. I need it to be beer.”

A few of the others moved with them, already talking, analyzing each others’ techniques, the earlier sparring, the commander’s ominous plans for the morning. Ryouma hung back, just for a moment. “Another time,” he said.

Kakashi’s eye curved, under the curtain of wet hair. “You can show me your jutsu,” he said.

“Screw you,” Ryouma said. Kakashi’s eye-smile deepened. He lifted two fingers and was gone in leaves and smoke, rain filling in the mud-tracks he’d left behind.

“Imeanit,” Ryouma said. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, hissed at the sting of the forgotten cut on his shoulder, and turned to trudge through the rain after the others, towards beer, and food, and bed—maybe not even his own.

At some point he really ought to take his shirt off, anyway. Take a look at that cut, see if it needed stitches. Get the shoulder healed and clean, ready for an ANBU tattoo.

Chapter 2: Field of Daggers

Chapter Text

April 15, Yondaime Year 5

Raidou wished ANBU’s commitment to drama involved less translocation. Space-time jutsu tended to give him a nosebleed.

It took a moment for the candidates to finish filtering away; a few hung back, lingering on the scorched training field. Raidou could understand that impulse. His Trials had been three years ago, but he still remembered the vibrating impatience to get to the second stage—and the tiny bit of terror that said,oh god don’t f*ck up.

He was pretty sure he’d never looked that baby-faced, though.

When the last candidate left, he stepped down from the ridgeline of ANBU’s HQ’s roof, crouching on the edge. Rain dripped from the bottom of his mask.

The HQ was built behind the Hokage’s monument, surrounded by the ANBU-only training fields. They shared space with T&I and the barracks, plus a few other buildings. From here, he had a prime view of the whole village, framed through the spikes of Yondaime’s stony hair. A prime view of the other ANBU, too; most of them were clustered below, scattered around the buildings and in the woods.

Booted feet stepped forward on his left.

“Care to join us on the ground, Namiashi?” said the commander.

Raidou was easily half a foot taller than Sagara-sama and twice as broad, but every single cell in his body wenteep.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and gripped the edge of the eaves, dropping an easy twelve feet to the ground. He unfolded and stood to attention, drawing the focus of his fellow ANBU, who slipped from the shadows and did the same.

Sagara landed lightly in the middle of the circle. Instantly, the vice-commander appeared at her side, because he was a boot-licking, career-advancing little—

Raidou yanked his attention back to the commander, who was removing her hawk mask.

The revealed face was sun-weathered and strong-jawed, with a silvering of steel at the temples. Sagara had been a handsome woman in her younger years. Now, at the respectable age of forty-something, she was still handsome, but the knotted white scar stretching from the corner of her mouth to her ear leveled her up toscary.

Not that she needed it.

“Ono,” she said, addressing the man wearing a frog mask. “How’s your knee?”

A whispering laugh went up from the clustered ANBU. Ono gave an unhappy grunt. “Bent backwards, ma’am,” he said. “It’ll mend.”

“See to it afterwards,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She surveyed the group with pale blue eyes. “Well,” she said at last. “I believe that went acceptably. You have two hours to eat, rest, and pack your things before we begin set up for the second stage. New captains—” her gaze found Raidou, Usagi, and Shinji. “I suggest you liaise with your new lieutenants, if you haven’t already. Any questions?”

Usagi raised a hand. She was a stocky, muscular redhead with a rabbit mask, because the Quartermaster thought visual name puns were hilarious. “Bombs,” she said. “Encouraged or not?”

Something flickered behind Sagara’s eyes. An unwise man might have called it amusem*nt. “Whatever you need to make a point,” she said. “Anyone else?”

Silence made the rain seem louder.

“Very well,” she said. “Kuroda, a word?”

The vice-commander’s masked face turned sharply. Before he could say anything, Sagara translocated away. After a half-beat, Kuroda followed.

Nara Shikaku whistled softly. “He’s in the sh*t.”

A ripple of laughter and muttered confirmations of Shikaku’s prediction went around the circle now that the birds of prey had gone. Genma wondered if that was deliberate or just a happenstance that commander and vice commander wore hawk and owl masks. Captains and lieutenants were drifting away now, talking about the candidates they’d just evaluated, the two-day hunt to come, and just exactly how much sh*t the vice was likely in.

Genma pushed his mask off, hooked it to the holder on his belt, and turned his face up to catch a few cooling spatters of rain. Scrubbing a damp-gloved hand over his face, he pushed unruly hair into place, then went to greet his new captain who was, sensibly, staying dry under the eaves.

Namiashi Raidou was a citadel in human form: the kind of taijutsu specialist whose body was an advertisem*nt offering perfectly executed ass-kickings. He was a couple centimeters taller than Genma, and several kilos heavier. A reddish mop of hair that even the rain couldn’t quite make lie flat flared around the top of his mask. Where most of the ANBU got animal masks of some type or other, Raidou had a spare abstraction: a slender red crescent moon slicing through the left eye on an otherwise blank white face.

It was, Genma had to admit, surprisingly intimidating. He touched his shoulder in salute and waited for instruction.

Raidou returned the salute, then seemed to hesitate before he took off his mask and clipped it to his belt. He threw Genma a crooked smile. “Hi.”

Genma’s new captain, it turned out, was a hottie. Not that looks counted for a lot when you spent most of your time in a mask, but this guy had them.

That was a bonus.

“Hi,” Genma said. “Shiranui Genma. I guess we’re the new team six for now?”

‘Ninjutsu guy’ was the full brief Raidou had gotten about Shiranui Genma, which, yeah, he looked like a ninjutsu guy. Lighter build, long fingers, unreadable face. Taijutsu specialists made for heavier, sturdier ninja—like Raidou—and genjutsu mostly lent itself to highly focused weirdness. Ninjutsu was the midway between, where muscle and mind met.

“Us and Ueno,” Raidou said. “You’ll meet her later.”

“Oh?” said Genma. His hair was bound back into a damp ponytail; when he tilted his head, little strands escaped, standing out at strange angles.

“Yeah. Big chakra, big attitude. She was part of my last team.”

“Anything else I need to know?” asked Genma dryly.

Ueno Katsuko actually came with a laundry list of standard warnings for the newly introduced, but in the interest of not striking fear into his shiny lieutenant, Raidou stuck to the basics. “She’ll grope you to say hello. We’ve been working on boundaries.”

Hidden amusem*nt flickered in Genma’s light brown eyes. “Are you using the nose-thumping technique, or a spray-bottle?”

“Mostly we just toss something shiny on the ground and run while she’s distracted,” said Raidou. “Silver coins work.”

Genma didn’t rise to the bait. “Good to know,” he said, like he’d actually filed a mental note away somewhere. He pulled a senbon from a holster, twirled it absently along his fingers, and stuck it in his mouth, where it underlined the thoughtful quirk of his lips. “I assume I won’t be meeting her before we head out. Do you know if we’re working adjacent sectors out there?”

Raidou shrugged. “We did last year, when I was lieutenant. I don’t know if we’re doing the same this time around.”

His memory of last year involved mostly explosions, and a few second-degree burns.

Katsuko again. That had been her Trials.

“Want to get food?” Raidou asked.

“Sure,” said Genma, looking at the HQ. “Here?”

“Sure,” Raidou echoed. “Hardly anyone gets food poisoning anymore.”

Genma snorted quietly and looked at him, waiting, Raidou realized, for Raidou to lead. Because captain, right. After a year of dog-tagging behind his own captain, all his muscle-memory was backwards.

He managed to navigate them successfully to ANBU’s small cafeteria without anyone falling over or having a fatal accident, and snagged two trays from the stack. The hot line was free; they’d fallen behind hungrier, less social ninja. Genma chose healthsome vegetarian options: bok choy and mushrooms with rice and tofu, and a bowl of miso. Raidou grabbed the first thing that contained meat and complemented it with a side of spare ribs, and another of vegetables because he couldfeelhis parents frowning at him.

He got water, Genma chose green tea, and they settled at a window table by wordless mutual agreement.

“So,” said Raidou, cracking his chopsticks apart. “What’d you think of the candidates?”

“Where should I start?” Genma asked. He stirred his soup with his chopsticks, bringing tiny cubes of tofu and dark green flags of seaweed floating up out of the murky broth. “I can tell you who I think we definitelydon’tneed. That guy with the boiling wind technique? Hebarelykept it together. Hajime and I were both ducking for cover halfway through that one.”

“The sixth kid?” Raidou asked.

Genma nodded.

“Yeah,” Raidou said. “Sloppy chakra control. I was surprised he made it through.”

“I was counting votes; Sato and Munenori both gave him a four, and so did Kuroda. Maybe they saw something we didn’t.”

Raidou paused with a morsel of food halfway to his mouth. “Like talent?”

“Yeah, that,” Genma agreed, amused. “Or maybe T&I wants him. I know at my Trials there were at least two candidates who were on the fast track to a career in the windowless wing.”

Raidou looked past Genma, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Toriyama—the pretty guy with the butterflies,” he said. “If it’s anyone this year, I’d bet on him.”

Pretty? That said something about how Raidou viewed the world. Or men, anyway. Genma filed that for future reference.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Genma said. “He had that feel in sparring, too. Mean as a stepped-on viper. I was glad they weren’t using their personal weapons. His jutsu was cool, though.”

“Shiny,” Raidou agreed with a flick of amusem*nt. “And sharp. What’d you think of Hatake?”

“That jutsu was one of the finest, most subtle pieces of insubordination I have ever seen,” Genma said evenly. “I would have given a week’s salary to see Kuroda’s face under that owl mask when Kakashi was standing right behind him, all hands in his pockets like it was no big thing.”

Raidou’s satisfied smile wasn’t exactly a nice one. “That made my week.”

Seemed like his new captain was one of the many in ANBU who had a private opinion or two about the vice commander. Genma tipped his head to one side in acknowledgement. “I guess that level of skill is what you’d expect from the Hokage’s personal student, but that was still a risky tactic. Not so sure if he has no sense of self-preservation or he’s just that confident.”

Raidou had managed to clear two-thirds of his plate already. He paused in eating now, resting his chin in his hand and giving Genma a thoughtful look. “Are they mutually exclusive?”

“Point. I guess they’re not,” Genma said. He was enjoying this conversation. “What’dyouthink of him? He got me good with that not-really-a-genjutsu thing. I’ve been trying to figure out how he did that. Maybe some kind of light refraction thing with the rain?”

Raidou gave an uneven shrug. “Not really my specialty,” he said, rather than his first, less tactful response ofgenjutsu sucks ass. Beneath the tabletop, he rubbed his index finger and thumb together, feeling flakes of dried blood crumble away from a deep, narrow puncture in the pad of his thumb.

Bad enough to stab himself whenkaihad failed. Worse to stab himself, have thatalsofail, and think he’d finally lost all ability to deal with illusion.

Of course, so had everyone else.

Hatake Kakashi—coward’s son, hero’s student, Sharingan-bearer. Raidou had privately marked him down ascunning little sh*t.

But he had voted yes.

“That doesn’t really answer my question,” Genma said dryly.

Raidou ate a broccoli stem. “I think he’s going to cause problems. He’s a smart, high profile kid, and his judgment’s obviously not as good as he thinks it is. But if he’s half as talented, he’s gonna be show-stopper.”

“I did a couple missions with a guy who worked with him before,” Genma said. “Said he’s absolutely as talented as everyone says, and twice the pain in the ass.”

“Did the guy have any specifics?” Raidou asked. Second-party information was still rumor lite, but it ranked higher than general village gossip.

Genma had tucked his senbon behind one ear while he ate; he freed it now, spinning it absently around the fingers of his off-hand. “According to Seiji,” he said slowly, “Hatake Kakashi pretty much knows he’s better than everyone else, isn’t afraid to let you know he knows it, and isn’t real big on the ‘working as a team’ thing. Doesn’t bother explaining or getting consensus on a plan. He just does sh*t and expects everyone else to fall in line.”

Raidou filed that away. “How much do you trust Seiji?”

Genma shrugged. “He’s usually a decent judge of character, but he’s also the kind of guy who will hold a grudge, so if Kakashi pissed him off…”

“Character assassination abounds,” Raidou finished. He finished the last bite of ribs and drained his water, sitting back to stretch out the Trial aches. His spine popped like old knuckle bones. “I might be inclined to believe him, though. Did you spot Hatake stealing everyone’s jutsu?”

“He had both eyes open and wasn’t making any effort to hide it,” Genma said dryly, which sounded like his thirteen-word way of sayingduh. “But I don’t know, is it really stealing? I mean, we’re all Konoha ninja. If I had a Sharingan, I’d probably be collecting jutsu, too. Most of the Uchiha do; it’s not like it’s giving aid to the enemy.”

“Most of the Uchiha are dicks,” Raidou said. He pointed two fingers at Genma’s senbon. “Poison guy?”

“There are other reasons to use senbon,” Genma said, which, yeah, fair enough. Medics used them for nerve-cluster work, and some hunters liked them for a subtle stab. “But you’re right. Never use one of the senbon from my blue pouch to stir your coffee.”

He smiled slightly, which, given the topic of conversation, was a little frightening. But it also did nice things to shape of his mouth, Raidou couldn’t help noticing.

“Noted,” he said. “Make your own poisons?”

Genma arched an eyebrow. “Some of them.”

“Bet that takes some sweat,” Raidou said. “So if I helped myself to a couple vials on the field without asking you first, that’d be a fair share?”

Understanding flickered behind light eyes. Genma tilted his head to the side, a subtle tension vanishing from his shoulders. “If I copied your jutsu, you could still use it. If you took my poison, I couldn’t.”

“Fair point. But, okay, take Tousaki, for example.” And hadn’t he just. But that wasn’t a memory to air here. “No-clan kid with a set of unique, lethal-as-hell jutsu. That’s half his value to the village right there. What happens to him when Hatake bolts off with all his hard work?”

“He keeps being incredibly valuable to the village, but now his scary-as-f*ck jutsu doesn’t get lost forever if someone takes him down?” Genma said, without missing a step. He drained his soup and set to spearing the remaining cubes of tofu with his senbon, eating them one by one, like marshmallows. “Unless someone takes Kakashi down, too,” he added.

That was a fight Raidou didn’t want to see.

“I do see your point,” Genma said. “But I think the needs of the village outweigh the needs of the individual. I mean, the Records Department must have made him archive that jutsu on a scroll, right? I know I had to file details on the jutsu I’ve come up with, and they aren’t nearly that impressive.”

“Yeah, I never had to do that,” Raidou said, with a crooked grin. “There’s no trademark on ass-kicking. Still, you can’t tell me if Hatake—or any Uchiha—ran off with one of your personal jutsu, you wouldn’t be alittlebit murderous?”

Genma tapped the point of his senbon against his lower lip, thoughtful. “I’d be pretty surprised if someone busted one of my jutsu out on the field. As long as they saved my ass with it, or my teammates’ asses, I think that’d be okay.”

Raidou snorted a laugh. “You’re a nicer guy than me.”

“Now if anenemydid it,” Genma said. “Then yeah, extreme murder.”

“Well, as long as someone’s getting murdered,” Raidou said, tickled. He was getting good feelings about his first ever lieutenant. “What did you think of Tousaki, by the way?”

“More temper than judgment,” Genma said. “Seeing as he was trying to start something up with Kakashi. But that jutsu of his looks useful as hell, and I guess he’s got a tactical one he didn’t show off, too.” He turned to the remnants of bok choy and mushrooms on his plate, herding them into a pile and skewering several into a sort of kebab on his senbon. “Other than that, I was glad Ono drew him for hand-to-hand, and not me. He spars like a back-alley brawler. Ono’s gonna need some serious work on that knee. Although Tousaki did catch a blade in the shoulder, I noticed, so maybe he’s not as quick as he should be.”

“He’s tall. Makes a big target,” Raidou said with the authority of a man who spoke from experience. “Should be done growing, but if he got it late, he might still be figuring out where his reach actually ends.”

“True enough,” Genma said. “Although it’s not his reach that worries me, it’s his peripheral awareness. But Ono’s no pushover. I have a souvenir from a sparring match with him a few weeks ago myself.” He turned his head and brushed his hair back to show Raidou the fresh scar behind his left ear where Ono’s kunai had nicked him, and shrugged.

“What did you think of him? He had chakra like a geyser, and I didn’t see a lot of votes against him. Seems like he’s kind of a natural as long as he doesn’t wash out in phase two or three.”

Raidou hesitated, his expression going carefully neutral. “I think he’ll do great, but I’m a little biased in his favor. Ran into him last year—though I didn’t realize he was the face-melting guy then.”

Genma nodded. “On a mission, or just out and about?”

“Just in the village. Seemed like a decent guy.”

Well that could cover just about anything from someone giving up the last dryer at the laundry for you, to having your back in a bar brawl, to a casual hookup between missions… Not that it mattered. Favorable was favorable. If Raidou was feeling cagy about why, maybe it was just because he didn’t want his personal opinion coloring Genma’s judgment.

“Cool.” Genma sucked a mushroom from his senbon. “So who else is worth talking about? Butterfly boy we discussed. There was that sword woman, Ayane— she’ll be worth watching in the next phase. And on the ‘no’ side, there’s the Uchiha girl. No surprise she washed out already. With a dramatic flair like that, she ought to be doing pyrotechnics for a rock band, not trying for ANBU.”

Raidou snorted. “Because most ninja are so subtle with their jutsu. Remind me what our Hokage is famous for again?”

“Not leaving himself open like an idiot while he’s pulling off his shock and awe maneuvers?” Genma suggested with a chuckle. “But yeah, you have a point. Hajime and I ran into a chick from Suna last year that hauled out this freakin’ ten meter tall sand dragon. Lots of flair. Also about flayed the skin right off us. And talk about having sand where you don’t want it after a fight.”

Raidou gave him a long, level look. “Thank you for that mental image,” he said, dry as the desert that had spawned that Suna ninja.

Genma just nodded. “Anyway. What else? You’ve proctored before. Hajime told me we’ll get our sector assignments when we get to base. And we’re scrolling it out there. We spend the rest of today setting up and we get the candidates sometime after 0400.” He looked up at Raidou. “Any advice or orders for me?”

“Don’t f*ck up,” Raidou suggested.

Genma gave him a flat, level look. “Really? That’s it?”

“You wanted a road map?” Raidou said, then relented. “It’s pretty much what you’d expect. Lot of running, lots of fighting. The only wrinkle is that we try hard to freak the candidates, and there’s always that one idiot who gets rattled and tries for a kill-shot on an ANBU. So, dodge.”

Genma sketched an ironic salute, touching two fingers to his temple. “Dodge, got it,” he said, with an actual smile. “As far as freaking the candidates, the idea is to stress them and observe, right? Not actually take them down?”

“Depends on the higher-ups. We did some weeding last year—makes the threat more believable if people actually go down, but we’re not allowed to kill anyone.” Raidou tapped his fingertips against his empty cup. “Or permanently cripple anyone. They frown on that.”

Genma nodded seriously. “Plus, there’d undoubtedly be paperwork. And who needs that?”

“My point exactly,” Raidou said, entertained. He looked up when a pair of shinobi rose and left, followed by three more, and sighed. “Time’s up, lieutenant. You have your kit ready to go?”

Genma drained the last of his tea and set the cup aside. “Pretty much. I was going to stop by the Quartermaster’s and pick up a few more senbon and a couple of things, but other than that I’m ready to go.”

Reasonably organized. Good sign.

“Here’s a piece of real advice, then,” Raidou said, getting to his feet. “Take a shower before you go. You’ll thank yourself.”

Genma took him at face value on that, presumably having done more than his fair share of back-to-back missions. “Excellent point. Thanks.” One hand went to the end of his ponytail, tugging it absently in a thinking-tic Raidou made note of. “Guess I’ll head to the showers in the barracks before I hit up the QM. When and where do you want me to meet you, or am I just aiming for the 1400 muster out with everyone?”

“Muster’s fine,” Raidou said.

“Great.” Genma nodded and stood, swiping Raidou’s tray before Raidou could pick it up—because, right, lieutenant, which Raidou wasn’t anymore. It was going to take some getting used to.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I’ll see you at 1400 at the flagpole,” Genma confirmed, then hesitated. “What do you want me to call you? Captain, Raidou-taichou, or just Raidou? Obviously in the field you’re… Moon-man?”

Raidou didn’t twitch. “Crescent Moon,” he said neutrally. “Captain’s fine, Raidou’s fine. Namiashi’s fine if you want to play it up for the rookies. Tanuki for you, or is it a panda?”

“Tanuki. It’s got a kind of pointy nose; I think a panda would be more flat.” Genma hooked the mask off his belt, turning it so Raidou could see the sharp lines of its face. “Also, I’d rather be a clever trickster with tremendous balls than a cute bear with fertility issues.”

Not a sentence you heard very often.

“You know they’re not actually supposed to be a reflection of your personality, right?” Raidou said.

“I’d hope not,” Genma said, with a twinkle. “Otherwise I’d have to guess you were a lunatic.”

Because lunar.

“You punned,” said Raidou, with a groan. “You punnedbadly. You’re banned from the team. Get out.”

Genma hung his mask back on his belt and saluted with his free hand, humor glinting in his light eyes. “See you at 1400,” he said, and left with the trays.

Shiranui Genma was, Raidou suspected, a little bit of a smartass.

Well, Raidou would take that over a dumbass any day.

He stood, stretched, and stole a final fortifying rib from the hot counter before he left to pack for the challenge ahead.

Burn cream this time.Lotsof burn cream.

Chapter 3: Run Rabbit Run

Chapter Text

April 16, Yondaime Year 5

Kakashi visited the Heroes’ Stone on the morning of the second trial.

It had stopped raining; the air was cold and clean, and Obito had zero useful advice to offer. Kakashi left a single flower at the foot of the stone, mostly to annoy him.

Dawn was still a distant possibility when he arrived at the hidden training field behind the Hokage’s monument. The commander wasn’t there yet. Kakashi slipped in behind the loose knot of sleepy-eyed candidates. Today, most of them had thought to bundle up in oiled rain-cloaks over their uniforms. All of them had visible weapons—slung swords, kunai, shuriken. One woman had a giant folded fan strapped to her back.

It took Ryouma less than four seconds to find him. “You’re late.”

“I was getting a haircut,” Kakashi said.

Dark eyes gave him a blatant once-over, stopping at the bedhead Kakashi hadn’t really attended to. “You need to fire your barber,” Ryouma said.

There was a dark shadow of stubble angling over the planes of Ryouma’s jaw and the length of his throat, barely lit by moonlight. Kakashi gave it a dry look.

Ryouma rubbed his palm over his chin. “I’m growing a beard,” he defended. “Last chance before the mask goes on.”

Kakashi was starting to suspect Ryouma was a morning person, or an extremely well-caffeinated night owl, and it was a horrible thought.

“Reconsidered showing me your jutsu?” he asked, just to needle.

Ryouma flipped him off, cheerfully. “You missed out yesterday, Hatake. There were two fights and an amateur drag show. And civilian ninja groupies, eventually.” He ruffled a hand through his hair and smirked. “Nobody went home alone.”

There was a sliver of white bandage showing at the neck of Ryouma’s jounin vest, and the shadows under his eyes weren’t dark. If he had taken someone home, he’d slept afterwards.

Only half-stupid, then.

“I’m glad you could feel validated,” Kakashi said, and lifted his head as chakra whispered around the edges of his senses. Ryouma tensed, sensitive enough to feel it too. Some of the candidates weren’t, but they followed the example of their temporary teammates, getting quiet and watchful.

The commander stepped out of the shadows.

“Welcome to the second stage,” she said. “I’m glad to see you can follow basic instructions.”

Like showing up at 0400 was the hardest thing they’d had to do so far. Ryouma shifted, folding his arms across his chest. The stitches in his shoulder pulled a little; you didn’t ask for chakra-healing on a scrape like that, not when there were men and women brought in bleeding out every day, but the medic had cleaned and sutured him just fine. It didn’t impair his range of motion much, anyway. He didn’t think it’d hold him back.

Hold him back from what, was the question. Everybody’d had theories—each more ludicrous and more dangerous than the last, yesterday, as the empty glasses stacked up—but nobodyknew. The ANBU trials were one of the few secrets Konoha’s gossip-mill kept.

0400 with weapons and limited supplies was enough to start guessing on, though. And the commander, apparently, didn’t believe in suspense for its own sake.

She gestured briefly. A deer-masked ANBU faded out of the darkness with a bundle in his arms. It spread out into a cloth, pale on the dewy grass, with a jumble of six-inch scrolls on top.

“Abe,” the commander said.

The blue-haired man Ryouma didn’t know stepped forward, selected a scroll from the side of the pile, stepped back.

“Akiyama.”

Another man, dark-haired, with a giant fuuma shuriken folded on his back. They were going in order, Ryouma realized, and settled back on his heels, ready to be bored.

Names he didn’t know. Some he did. One name was called and not answered. Silence pooled in the moonlit darkness.

“Wise choice,” the commander said at last. “Hatake.”

Kakashi walked silently to collect a scroll. He chose the first that came to hand, from the top of the shrinking pile, and came back without stirring dew from the grass beneath his feet.

Himura. Nakashima. Others, and at long last, Tousaki.

There were only three scrolls left. Ryouma chose the center one, and took up his place again by Kakashi. Ayane had drifted over from somewhere; they exchanged brief nods as Yamada was called up to select the final scroll.

The deer-masked ANBU rolled up the cloth and slipped back into shadows again. The commander said, “Open the scrolls.”

Ryouma slid his thumbnail under the seal, unrolled it, and barely registered the incomprehensible scrawl inked on the white paper before the world skewed sideways and spiraled into smoke.

He landed on one knee in thick moss, dizzy and faintly nauseated, on the broad branch of a tree so high in the air that the ground was lost in darkness below him. Paper crunched under his knee, gleaming faintly in the faint moonlight that managed to filter through the high canopy. He eased it out, blinked hard against the dizziness, and compared the inked scribbles to those on the first scroll still in his hand.

A matched set. Space-time seals, linked over dozens—perhaps hundreds—of miles.

And something more, written in thick brush strokes on the second scroll. He tilted it to the light; it made little difference.

Find, he knew that character. They used it often enough on mission briefs.Twowas easy enough. So wasdays. The rest might as well have been fancy pictures, shimmering and swimming against white paper, and he was already getting a headache.

He rolled the scrolls up, jammed them inside his vest, and took his bearings. The moon was sinking over his left shoulder; there was west. The forest was alive around him, spring peepers, insects, an owl ghosting past on silent wings. Somewhere, twenty ANBU candidates.

One ofthemhad to be able to read the trial objective.

He focused chakra in his feet, tested his grip on the rugged tree branch, and set off into darkness.

Kakashi landed in a grove of twenty-foot mushrooms that collapsed under his weight, releasing a thick cloud of spores. Paper crackled beneath him; he grabbed it and vaulted free, coughing.

Covered in orange. That was a good way to start.

Tall trees ringed the grove. He swung up into the nearest one, gaining higher ground, and took stock. It didn’tsmelllike the Forest of Death. Mostly it smelled like fungi. He pulled a twist of wind around himself, shedding the spores.

Welcome to Stage Two,the second scroll said.You have two days to find your way back to Konoha. Use any means necessary. Only the first ten candidates to succeed will be considered. Death disqualifies you.

The stylized looping flame printed underneath was Minato-sensei’s signature.

“Son of a bitch,” Kakashi muttered. They’d had dinner together last week. He could havementioned—

Well, no, of course he couldn’t.

In his next life, Kakashi decided, he was going to be the kind of man who actually used nepotism. It would make things so much easier.

He climbed higher, until the branches became thin and dangerous, bending underfoot. Trees stretched in all directions, silver-green beneath the broad moon. Away in the east, a tall mountain range raked the clouds. That looked like the Tomuraushi volcanic cluster, fortunately not active, which meant—

A hundred and thirty miles, or thereabouts, through some of the worst territory Fire Country had to offer.

He hadn’t thought to pack a toothbrush.

Dawn came late, filtering through the canopy, weak and greenish by the time it reached the forest floor. Ryouma surprised a clan of rabbits feeding in the thin undergrowth and butchered his kill quickly and neatly. He’d eaten raw rabbit before, and been grateful for it, but he took the time now to build a small, smoky fire near a stream and skewer chunks of meat on stripped sticks.

It still feltwrongto crouch in an open glen, with his back to the woods and not a trap or wire laid at the perimeter, and listen for the footstep he might never hear. But while he was (almost) entirely certain he wasn’t alone in the forest, he wasn’t a tracker.

And besides, he was hungry.

The first skewer was done. He slid the sizzling chunks of meat off the stick with the point of his kunai, tumbled them onto the clean inside of the rabbit’s own skin, wrapped the whole bundle swiftly up, and jammed it in his over-full belt pouch on top of his med kit and exploding tags. He laid the next skewers on at an inviting angle, and wished for salt.

Smoke drifted. Steel, cold and sharp, kissed the side of his throat.

“I’ll bleed on breakfast,” he said, without looking up.

That wasn’t, evidently, the expected response. The blade pressed a little closer, but flesh wasn’t quite parting yet. If he jerked, ducked, he might only lose a slice of his jaw and the rest of his ear, instead of his head…

“Sit down,” he said, as steadily as he could. “It’s nearly done.”

The silence stretched out. He could hear fat dripping on the coals, wood popping, spring peepers singing in the distance by a stream. His pulse thumped against the blade.

Mistake,he thought.

“That needs salt,” a man said, finally.

The blade fell away. Ryouma turned, looked up at the blue-haired man he’d noticed in yesterday’s trials: Abe, the first candidate to choose a scroll today. One of the seven he’d pegged as a shoe-in for ANBU. He was perhaps a year or two older than Ryouma, with a square jaw cut by an L-shaped scar and a tousled, wind-blown look to the short, straight hair. Dyed or natural, Ryouma couldn’t tell.

“I packed for a stay in Kawashima’s red-light district,” he said apologetically. “Not the Forest of Death, or wherever this is. No salt. On the other hand, no poison, and you get to save your rat bars for tomorrow or next week or whenever you really need them. Which d’you want?”

“You first,” Abe said, pointing with his sword-blade. “That one, third from the top.”

The meat was searing hot, still a little bloody in the center; Ryouma ate it in careful bites from the tip of his kunai, then held the rest of the stick out. Abe hesitated a moment more, then sheathed his ninjato in a swift, sharp movement, and hunkered down on the other side of the fire. “So what’s your angle?” he asked.

There was no point in deceit. “Information,” Ryouma said bluntly. “What did that scroll say?”

Abe’s eyes narrowed. “What happened to yours?”

“Can’t read,” Ryouma said. “Mostly.” He shrugged. “Something weird in my head, and we needed bodies on battlefield so bad by then that the Academy sensei thought it wouldn’t much matter. Usually I get my teammates to read the mission assignment to me, but looks like we’re independent operators out here.”

Abe studied him, measuring. “So you’re the guy.” He nibbled at the seared edge of a rabbit shank, made a thoughtful noise, and tore half the chunk off. Swallowing, he added, “And you’ve got the rot thing going. Must be hard to make friends.”

“So long as nobody asks me to read ‘em a bedtime story, we’re good,” Ryouma said. He blew on another piece of sizzling meat and bit it in half. “So. What’re we doing out here?”

“Racing,” Abe said, with his mouth full. “First ten back to Konoha win the cake.”

Two days,the scroll had said, in the few characters Ryouma could read. He chewed thoughtfully. Two days was time enough to run halfway to the border of Wind Country, which meant either those scrolls had landed them more than a thousand klicks from home, or they were expected to be delayed on the way.

Abe hadn’t come in just for breakfast. He’d meant to attack, to eliminate or at least incapacitate the competition, and it was luck and friendliness and, most probably, Abe’s empty stomach that had stayed his blade. Which meant Ryouma had been far,farstupider than he’d thought in baiting his trap.

He stripped another chunk off the stick. “Run into anyone else yet?”

Abe shook his head. “Your smoke’s the first sign I saw. From about two miles away.”

Dammit.Toosuccessful. Ryouma popped three cubes off the skewer and into his mouth, thinking furiously. He still didn’t know exactly where hewas, that was the problem. Had to be somewhere in northern or southeastern Fire Country, because if you went too far west of Konoha you’d run into the endless sweeping grasslands from which Kusa no Kuni took its name, and due east there were too many population centers.

He should’ve taken the opportunity at first light to climb above the canopy and look for landmarks. He hadn’t known what the objective was, but that was no excuse. One mistake might be survivable, if you were lucky. Two meant you probably deserved to die.

The slight shift in his weight, drawing his knee under him, brought Abe’s attention flickering back. Ryouma tried a crooked smile. “How many ANBU d’you think they’ve got hunting us?”

“sh*t,” Abe said, and was gone. Ryouma killed the fire with a water jutsu, scuffed mud over the tracks where he’d been crouching, and took to the trees.

A twang of chakra and a flurry of swearing brought Raidou slipping out of the shadows to inspect trap forty-two. He was particularly proud of this one; the mesh net had allkindsof sneaky jutsu built into it.

He reached the clearing and stopped.

A little too sneaky, apparently.

“God-f*cking-dammit, Namiashi!” yelled a slim ANBU with a grasshopper mask. He was bundled high up on the side of a bending ash tree, thrashing in the net. Blood streaked and splattered the pale bark, dark red in the dim forest light.

That’d be the fish hooks Raidou had woven in.

“The hell are you doing in my quadrant, Omashi?” he said blankly.

“Oh, y’know, tea-partying,” said Omashi. “I’mbleeding, you giant stupid f*cktruck. Let me down!”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Raidou asked, crouching at the tree’s base to inspect the seal.

“You wanna talk moms, Namiashi? Because I’m about to get real detailed about yours,” Omashi spat.

Raidou paused. The tone of voice was right, but— “Which one?” he said.

“What?” said Omashi.

“Which mom?” said Raidou, sitting back on his heels and looking up. “I have two.”

There was a pause. “Either mom!” Omashi said.

“Well, let’s get specific. If you’re gonna threaten a man’s mother, you should at least have a basic idea of your target. No one likes an empty threat.” Raidou stood up. “Omashi’s met both my moms, by the way.”

There was a longer pause.

“Goddammit,” said the person in the trap, and dropped the illusion. Raidou blinked at the sudden reveal of curves, braided red hair, and a sweet round face that included lipstick.

“Tottori,” he said, recognizing the candidate notable for her giant-ass fan and a collection of neat, dangerous ninjutsu techniques. “That was pretty good. You had me going for a minute there.”

She gave him a narrow, green-eyed look. “Really?”

He see-sawed one hand. “About four seconds. How do you know Omashi?”

“He babysits for my sister,” Tottori lied blatantly. “What did you put in this net that jutsu won’t break?”

“Kitten whiskers,” Raidou said, grinning. “And chakra-drinkers.”

“Clever,” she said, in a tone that mostly impliedannoying. “Now what? I assume you don’t intend to slit my throat.”

“Nope,” Raidou said. He crouched and tapped the seal again, making it glow under his fingers. “Now you get to go home, explain what you did wrong, and, I’m guessing, try out for Intel, because there’s no way you should know who I am, or how Omashi talks to me, unless you’re good at getting information you shouldn’t have.”

The dark purple curve of her mouth was proud, but also a little sad. “I really wanted to make ANBU,” she said, quiet enough that he almost didn’t catch it.

“Try again in September, then,” he said, and activated the Heaven and Earth scroll hidden above the trap. The net lit up, twisted, and sucked out of existence, taking Tottori with it. Someone in Konoha would have the job of peeling her out of it and extracting the hooks.

He tapped the radio comm collared at his throat, raising a bust of static in the earpiece. “Tottori down,” he said. “Made herself look like Omashi. Clever jutsu.”

Static hissed for a moment, then Omashi came on the line. “What the fu—”

“You need to swear less, man,” Raidou said, and signed back off as the other hunters laughed.

Out of twenty-two, that was three reported candidates down. He hoped the next one was just as interesting.

Either his see-me-not jutsu was particularly effective, or Kakashi had managed to land in a mostly unmanned section of the forest. He thought he saw a distant hint of smoke near dawn, rising up further west, but it vanished soon afterward. Other than that, nothing disturbed his run until past midday, when a giant centipede tried to eat him.

It was a short, grisly fight, which ended when Kakashi ran hot chakra through his tanto and split the insect’s back open from neck to tail, spilling yellow guts across the forest floor.

The blood smelled like steel and rancid plantlife, and plumed steam into the air.

Kakashi cleaned his blade and moved hastily upwind. There was nothing he could eat on a centipede without making himself sick, but the corpse was too big to leave as it was, marking an obvious shinobi kill.

After a moment of debate, he risked an earth jutsu. The ground opened beneath the centipede and swallowed it, zipping closed afterwards. There was a visible scar left behind; he kicked loam over it and called it good. The air still smelled foul, but most ninja didn’t have his nose.

Time to not be here.

A translocation dropped him a mile away, helpfully not in the middle of a tree, though it was a near miss. He crouched low on a sturdy branch and took a look at the new lay of the land.

Miles of forest to the south and east, but to the north-west…

Kakashi whistled very, very softly.

The trees gave way to open grassland, which faded fast into broken black earth that spilled all the way to the horizon. He’d known the past year had been dry, but this looked like a wildfire had razed it all down. Skeletons of trees reached blackened fingers towards the unforgiving sun.

Reaching up, he straightened his hitai-ate, giving Obito a look. The blue wash of chakra lines didn’t make the landscape look any more forgiving, but he didn’t see any lurking energy signatures either.

“Any thoughts?” he murmured.

A hot salt tear ran down the edge of his cheek. He pulled the hitai-ate back down.

No cover, no rivers, and he knew that desertscape ended in a treacherous rocky valley. A smart ANBU could hide himself anywhere along the way, like a spider in a trap, and wait for someone to trip the web.

Kakashi thumbed the tear away. “Water first. Okay, dead-last.”

He dropped out of the tree and went river-hunting in the forest to restock his canteen.

The mushrooms seemed an obvious trap. It was clear from the way the candidate was prodding them with a cautious kunai point that he didn’t trust them. Too bad, though, because those were perfectly edible takenoko, and with the sun creeping up past noon behind the clouds, Genma had no doubt the guy was hungry. Hell, he was hungry, and he’d eaten two rat bars already.

He held his position and the jutsu that concealed him, smiling when the candidate gave up on the mushrooms and started digging for the slender bamboo shoots instead. April bamboo shoots would be about perfect right now. Sweet, full of moisture to save canteen water, not too fibrous, and rich in nutrients for a vegetable. They were a smart choice for a hungry ninja on the forage.

Or they would have been, if Genma hadn’t gotten to them first.

The candidate was definitely hungry, though. And not stupid. He dug up the shoots, peeled them, sniffed them carefully, and tasted a sliver of one, waiting fifteen agonizing minutes before he wolfed down the rest of the shoot, and a second one.

Genma was disappointed. Maybe the guy had some immunities he didn’t know about? It was an unfortunate waste of a brilliant idea, really. He was just about to give up and go for something more obvious, like a fire jutsu, when the candidate coughed.

Then he coughed again.

And again. He clutched at his throat, hacking and choking on a feeling Genma knew from his own experience was like swallowing a live sea urchin. Poor guy.

Scrabbling in a pouch at his side, the candidate pulled out a small medkit, which he opened with shaking hands, scattering bottles and bandages over the mushrooms. He was drooling by the time he got a vial opened and tipped the contents into his mouth.

The choking coughs eased off a little, but the drooling didn’t. Genma waited until, judging by the way the candidate was slumped against the mature bamboo and shaking his wrists, his muscles were getting weak and his hands were going numb.

That’s when Genma dropped his jutsu and slid into view.

“Hi.”

The candidate reached for a kunai, but his numb hands spasmed as his fingers closed on the steel, and all he managed to do was gouge his own thigh with the dropped blade. He choked out a hoarse curse and glared instead. And drooled.

“Don’t try to talk,” Genma told him. “Let’s see, what did you use?” He picked up the empty vial and inspected the label: a standard antitoxin for a variety of caustic-type agents. “Not a bad choice. Unknown ingested poison affecting the respiratory system. It’s a good start.”

The man made a questioning sound, raspy and raw in the back of his throat. His eyes flicked to Genma’s belt pack.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you covered,” Genma told him. He reached for the candidate’s chest and freed the man’s dog tags. Tonbo Iwaji. “Sit tight, Iwaji, I have an antidote; you’re not going to die.”

He unrolled a soft leather case and extracted a slender syringe, already prepared with the antidote in question. Iwaji got the shot in the upper arm, in a single, swift motion. Then Genma carefully zip-tied the man’s wrists together, bound his ankles with sticky tape, and dropped a scroll onto his chest. He collected up Iwaji’s weapons and reassembled the man’s med kit for him, laying them across Iwaji’s lap.

“Next time you’re suspicious of a food substance, you might try cooking it,” Genma said. He started to activate the scroll, then stopped. “When you get back to Konoha, make sure you drink some water.”

Iwaji blinked an acknowledgement, and Genma let the scroll’s jutsu run.

“Tonbo Iwaji down,” he said, keying his radio mike on. “Irakusa poison. I’ve already given him the antidote. Base, tell the other end to make sure he drinks some water.”

“Relax, Mom,” came Hajime’s voice. “Base has it covered.”

By mid-afternoon, Ryouma calculated, he’d run, walked, jogged, and very occasionally translocated more than thirty miles. The translocations left him light-headed and nauseated, and once landed him in the center of Fire Country’s biggest briar thicket. He spent five minutes trying to fight his way out before he gave up and translocated out. That time he had to climb a tree and spend ten minutes shaking before he could come down again. Space-time jutsu had never been his forte, and Yondaime-sama’s new skimming-the-borders-of-reality trick felt uncomfortably like he’d left his stomach behind.

He lost an hour when an ANBU hunter picked up his trail. At least, he assumed it was a hunter, although he never caught more than a fleeting glimpse and a distant chakra flare. Another candidate wouldn’t have wasted the time. He wasn’t sure if he shook the hunter, eventually, or if the ANBU simply lost interest. Maybe they were assigned to special quadrants, and weren’t allowed to leave.

Which meant he’d moved into someoneelse’sterritory. sh*t.

He slowed a little more, took his time testing clearings that looked suspiciously empty, circled around branches that hung invitingly low. Once, in the distance, he heard a woman scream. He kept his head down and pushed on.

Konoha lay somewhere northwest, he’d figured out by now. Northwest still covered about a quarter of the shinobi world, but if he struck too far west he’d hit the road to Tanzaku City, eventually, and too far east he’d find the road to Otaf*cku Gai. Within fifty miles of Konoha, he’d know the land. It was as good a plan as any, and better than some he’d tried.

Much better, he hoped. Some of those plans had ended with pretty ugly scars.

Eventually, he came to the forest’s edge.

And to a boar-masked hunter, standing in the very last of the shade.

He was so still, black-and-bone armor dappled in green shadows and sunlight, that Ryouma almost didn’t spot him. If it hadn’t been for an errant breeze that shook the leaves and ruffled the ANBU’s reddish hair, he wouldn’t have. But the movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention; he glanced, and froze.

A voice whispered very softly into the back of his neck, “Like the bunshin?”

Ryouma threw himself out of the tree, hit the fire-blasted soil on his shoulder, and rolled. He came up with his hands already slipping from Monkey to Hare seal, before he remembered this was a Konoha nin: his comrade in arms for the last six years; his senpai, if he survived.

“Hesitate,” the voice murmured into his ear, “and you’re dead.”

He spun, striking at throat-height with the knife-blade of his hand. There was nothing to hit. Just blackened dust spurting up where feet might have struck, prints already swirling away in the wind. The bunshin was gone from under the trees, if it had ever been there at all.

“Easy, boy,” the voice said mockingly behind him. “You almost nicked me that ti—”

Ryouma didn’t bother spinning. Hedropped,snapping his head back with all the force he could muster. His skull cracked hard against ceramic before resistance broke away. He caught himself with one hand in the dirt, pushed off, and sprinted three steps before he finished the seals for the translocation jutsu and yanked himself somewhere else.

When he landed five hundred meters away on a rocky outcropping thrusting up out of a tangle of charcoal that used to be trees, he barely managed to pitch to his knees before he was sick.

At least, he thought bleakly, spitting onto the dirt, he’d packed mouthwash in his kit. He’d come prepared forsomething.

The burning lands were even less fun than they’d looked.

Dust was the main problem. The faster Kakashi ran, the moreincredibly obvioushis rising dust-trail became, billowing up behind him like a come-kill-me flag. He didn’t have the chakra for multiple translocations, and even if he did, it was too hard on the body. He had to run, and he had to run slow.

Then there was the hammered-iron heat.

Konoha wasn’t stupid; the jounin uniforms were designed to breathe and move and, for preference, deflect sharp weapons. An overheated shinobi was a sad shinobi; sweat-wicking was important. But it was still April, and April in Konoha was breezy, rainy, and edged with the last traces of winter. Kakashi’s cold weather clothes—wool woven with slender steel threads—were killing him by inches.

After an hour, he gave up, sheared his sleeves off, and fashioned himself a desert hat. A splash of precious water and some of the black dust made a dark, gritty paste to cover the white glare of his arms and, hopefully, ward off sunburn. He thumbed a dark line under his uncovered eye, on the slim chance it would help eat some of the sun’s glare.

He dropped the see-me-not jutsu. There were no shadows for it to steal.

Another hour of jog-trotting and he was halfway to the horizon, wondering if he’d gotten something wrong. If ANBU were tracking him, surely he would have seen one by now? Or at least run across a trail. The only sign of anyone was that nebulous smoke trail he’d seen, and nothing since. He couldn’t have outrun all the competition already.

Maybe he’d missed something.

Minato-sensei had an unhealthy love of evil little puzzles. If he’d built an under-layer into the scroll, and Kakashi hadn’t even thought to check it…

“Goddammit,” he muttered, sliding to a halt.

The scrolls were paired together in a pocket of his jounin vest; he pulled the second one out, unfurling it in the strong, dry wind, and read it again.

Welcome to Stage Two. You have two days to find your way back to Konoha. Use any means necessary. Only the first ten candidates to succeed will be considered. Death disqualifies you.

He let Obito have a look, eye narrowed against the swirling dust. Therewasa chakra print stamped into a corner of the scroll, tiny and tucked away, and incredibly unfair, how was anyone else supposed to read—

Smartass,it said.

Kakashi rolled the scroll back up. Shinobi rule #87, slightly paraphrased:Don’t psyche yourself out.

Bright chakra flared in the corner of the Sharingan, sending him down into a wary crouch. Steel unsheathed between his fingers.See what happens when you ask for it?A kick-up of dark dust obscured the view, but he was pretty sure he could see someone moving out there, and they weren’t wearing ANBU armor.

A light wind jutsu—not his—blew the dust away. It swirled back instantly, but Kakashi got a good look.

He blinked, then winced.

It was Akiyama, the candidate with the giant fuuma shuriken strapped to his back. This morning he’d been neat and sleek looking, dark-haired, with fine features.

He looked mostly bloody now.

“Run into some issues?” Kakashi asked.

Bright crimson froth spilled over Akiyama’s pale lips. “Help,” he rasped, and staggered, falling to his knees.

Yeah, that wasn’t suspicious at all.

Narrow-eyed, Kakashi sheathed his kunai and approached the man, keeping a careful watch on the empty landscape around them. Nothing else stirred. He stopped just out of arm’s reach.

“What happened?”

Akiyama braced himself on empty hands. “ANBU,” he managed; the word came out smeared. He spat red into the black dust, where it shined. “Tripped a trap.”

Itsmelledlike real blood.

“What do you want?” Kakashi said.

There were deserts less dry than the look Akiyama gave him. “Medical assistance?”

“You have a med-kit,” Kakashi pointed out.

Akiyama’s back heaved as he retched and brought up a stomachful of bile and blood that splattered between his hands. He didn’t look stabbed, just sliced and torn, like someone had gone at him with shuriken and a briar thicket. Poison, maybe?

And then he’d translocated into the middle of the burning lands and somehow landed on Kakashi’s head?

“Drop your weapons,” Kakashi said, after a moment. “Then we’ll see.”

Akiyama almost threw his weapons down. The fuuma shuriken hit the dust first, then a welter of kunai, shuriken, senbon needles, and a short blade he’d strapped in the small of his back. He shoved them out of reach and sat back, visibly shaking with effort. His skin was waxy pale.

Kakashi scratched the back of his neck.

“Okay, then,” he said, and pulled his canteen off his belt, offering it across.

Akiyama reached for it, closing unsteady fingers around the neck. “Thank you,” he croaked.

Lines of intent snapped together in the Sharingan’s sight.

Kakashi yanked his hand back, but Akiyama caught him by the wrist. Two sharp, hot lines scratched across his skin—needle points from steel rings. He broke the grip and reversed it, forcing Akiyama’s elbow against the joint until something popped. Akiyama hissed and spat blood, splattering Kakashi’s arms and jounin vest.

Three openings presented themselves. Kakashi hit all of them, jaw, neck, and a knee in the side, and translocated the hell away while Akiyama choked.

He landed in cool, dark shadows between overhanging rocks, and resisted the urge to whack his head against one of them.

Stupid.

His arm was burning, and Akiyama still had his canteen. He ripped into his med-kit and flushed the scratches with alcohol, wishing he’d thought to pack more antitoxins. He had two; one of them covered contact poisons. He found the slim tube, swiped the thick green paste over his arm, and bandaged it. The burning faded, replaced by a dull ache.

At least his throat wasn’t closing up.

He lifted a scarlet-splattered hand to his face, inhaling carefully. Blood, yes, and something else—sugar water, he realized, to keep it wet and fresh and red.

He spared another pour of alcohol, sluicing the mess off his skin, and raised his head.

Crags and broken stone stretched out in front of him, splintering up into dark, jagged sides of sheer rock. He’d landed halfway up the side, in the shelter of a shallow cave. Further down at the bottom, an anemic creek wound poisonously along a stony bed.

Well,Kakashi thought,at least I made it to the valley.

By 2200 hours on the first day of the hunt, five candidates had been eliminated, one was teetering on the brink of failure, and sixteen were still in the running. Radio chatter amongst the dozen proctors had waxed and waned throughout the day, as candidates fell into traps, or evaded them and impressed their hunters.

“Ooh. He just stepped on my wasp nest. Bet you all fifty he’s going down,” came Usagi’s voice in Genma’s earpiece. She sounded as fresh and chipper as she had at 0400; he kind of hated her. Just a little.

“None of us are fool enough to take that bet,” Shikaku observed, sounding just as weary as Usagi sounded bright.

Genma didn’t bother offering an opinion. He pushed his mask up and wished he had a cigarette while he waited for the all-clear.

“Aaaaaaand… He’s down. Komozaki Minorou down. You all owe me a five-double-o.”

Radio-silence begged to differ with her.

“You guys are no fun,” Usagi complained. “Alright, I’m gonna go collect my toys, patch Komozaki up, and I’m good to go.” Her comm clicked off.

“Is that a go from Base?” Shikaku asked.

“That’s affirmative,” came Hajime’s voice. “If you haven’t already cleared your sector, we’re pushing on to phase three. Sound off if you’re in the outer ring and still have actives in your quadrant.”

“I’ve got one in Boar sector.” Sato’s voice crackled and hissed over the distance. He must be in one of the rockier areas where radio signal was weak. “Tousaki’s still with me.”

“One in Grasshopper,” Omashi said.

There was silence.

“Anyone else?” asked Hajime.

“One in Tanuki,” Genma said. f*ckui Ayane, the impressive kenjutsu user from the first day of trials, had crossed into his sector about an hour ago. Unlike her predecessor, she’d cooked—and eaten—the safe mushrooms, and left Genma’s bamboo shoots alone.

“Roger that. Anyone else?”

No one spoke.

“Phase three commence,” Hajime told them. “You have until 0400 to get them to Hebi Valley.”

A dozen voices acknowledged the command and clicked off their comms. Genma yawned and stretched. First, a soldier pill, because it was going to be a long night. Next a long, deep drink of water, followed by a quick piss against a tree, because… it was going to be alongnight. There weren’t likely to be many rest breaks between now and 0400, and getting the candidates to Hebi Valley was just the beginning.

He wondered if the proctors athistrials two years ago had had as much fun as he was having, even if it was tiring. So far the trials had been a blast. They got to use all the skills they would on a mission—at least the non-lethal ones—without any of the usual risks or consequences. There were no innocent bystanders to worry about, no real enemies lurking around the next corner, and in two days time they’d be back in Konoha, sipping sake in the park where the cherries were almost at peak bloom.

Well, he and the other proctors would, anyway. The candidates, if they made it through, had a few more hurdles to deal with before their ordeal was over. He sleeked his hair back into its tie, flipped his mask down, and flexed his shoulders. Time to go get Ayane moving.

Raidou’s sector—Crescent Moon sector, because he needed a better mask—was a forty-square-mile swath of forest that bled out onto the Shoudo Plains, ending just after the land blackened and cracked. The rumor was demon fire, but they’d had no confirmation on that.Somethinghad blighted the grasslands; Raidou would’ve put even money on a regular nasty-ass jutsu.

Either way, his sector was empty. Time to say goodbye and move on.

From chatter, he’d gleaned a pretty good idea of where most of the candidates had landed, but a few were dust in the wind. Hatake had vanished and stayed gone—best guess put him somewhere in the badlands, maybe as far as the valley. Tousaki had shown and split a few times. The guy with the fuuma shuriken—Aki-something—had given Omashi some serious trouble and rabbited.

Nakashima, the kid who liked to use ice spears as punctuation, was firmly on Raidou’s sh*t list.

He packed up his last trap, sealing the twists of wire and hooks in a scroll to prevent a self-stabbing, and pulled his mask off for a brief, glorious second. His hair was plastered to his forehead; he raked it back, wiped his face, and took a deep breath of blessedly cooler night air.

It tasted like sweat and leaf mulch.

“This glamorous life of mine,” he murmured. He put the mask back on and went to stir the rabbits from their bolt holes.

The Shodou Plains were still warm underfoot, reflecting back a day of soaked-in sunshine. He took a quick, graceless roll in the dust to darken the bone-white parts of his armor, and set a quick pace under the broad yellow moon.

When he reached the marker, he clicked his comm. “Crescent Moon ready.”

“Yourname, man,” came Omashi’s voice, crackling.

“Crescent Moon also willing to squash Grasshopper,” Raidou said.

“Grasshopper invites Crescent Moon to suck his giant hairy—”

“Gentlemen,” said Hajime.

Hissing static filled the air for a moment, then Usagi came on the line. “You had to interrupt.”

“Focus,” said Hajime.

One by one, the ANBU checked in, a few breathless from chasing quarry. Genma was the last.

“Let’s go,” he said, “before she gives me the slip.”

“Light ‘em up,” ordered Hajime.

Raidou cupped his hands, calling a spark of chakra into a flickering, thumbnail-sized flame. He set it to the trigger buried in the dust, and stepped quickly back. A long fuse hissed to life, racing a snake-trail through the blackened earth.

When it reached its target, the badlands detonated.

Notallof it, but a long, broad strip went up in glorious shower of boiling fire. Twelve separate explosions, triggered simultaneously by twelve ANBU. The heat crisped the tiny hairs off Raidou’s arms. Some terrible joker added a thread of chakra to theirs and made an exploding phoenix from the flames.

“There they go!” said Usagi.

She was more sensitive than Raidou, but even he caught the flicker-edge of someone’s distant chakra bursting into alarmed movement.

“Goddamn, I saw that blast from here,” said Hajime. “Good job, boys and girls. Have at ‘em.”

Someone—Usagi, probably—let loose a loud, ululating wolf’s howl and burst through the fire wall, scattering it to shreds in the distance. Yowls and roars went up from half a dozen other agents, as they followed her example and tossed subtlety to the wind.

Laughing, Raidou threw himself through the fire and went after that distant chakra signature.

Nakashima, it turned out.

What followed was very, very fun.

Ryouma wasn’t sleeping, exactly, when the horizon lit up like the Hokage’s birthday. He was still on his feet, still moving generally in a straight line, but his pace had slowed to something between a saunter and a stumble. When the ground shook and the sky went briefly orange, hedidstumble. He caught himself with a knee and one hand and looked back to see the fiery glow at the edge of the burned lands, some twenty miles behind him.

Twenty miles wasn’t much to a ninja.

He tightened his bootlaces, since he was kneeling anyway, and drank a little of the stale, warm water remaining in his canteen. There was still cooked rabbit in his belt-pouch. He hesitated over it, then went for a soldier pill instead.

Chemical chakra sizzled through his pathways. He straightened, fastening the flap on his belt pouch, and looked back again. He couldn’t yet see the tiny little figures in black-and-bone running across the burned lands, but Boar would be among them, lethal and fast and mocking.

They called ANBUhuntersfor a reason.

Ryouma bared his teeth. “Come and get me,” he said.

Within an hour, they did.

He’d made it out of the burned lands by then, scrambled down broken slopes and boot-gouging slides to the slab-bordered rivulet of black water at the valley bottom. Only shreds of moonlight fell down here, turning shadows even darker where they didn’t touch, and he wasn’t wearing a white mask and armor the color of old bone.

He wasn’t alone, either. Another shadow, blacker against the dark stone, flitted across the other side of the stream, twenty meters away. Ryouma pressed against a rock, watching. A paler blotch tipped, looking up at the cliff above him; he heard a muttered curse, the scrape of steel on scabbard. Ayane.

Two ANBU flowed like ghosts out of the darkness. Ayane spun, struck, releasing wind-chakra like a scythe. One ANBU flipped out of the way, hit the steep canyon wall with one foot and stuck there, sideways to the world. The other ducked in under the arc of blade and chakra to close with Ayane, hand to hand.

“You like to watch?” the boar-masked ANBU whispered behind Ryouma’s shoulder.

Ryouma looked up, smiling, and lifted hands humming with chakra the color of clotted blood. “Knew you’d come for me,” he said.

Boar lurched back one quick-half step. Ryouma slammed forward, wrapped his palm over the cool ceramic mask, and rapped Boar’s head sharply into the rock slab behind him.

Boar’s knees buckled. Ryouma dropped him, and cut the genjutsu.

“Some of us learn from our mistakes,” he said, and slid back into shadow.

Ayane was still fighting the other ANBU, and holding more than her own. He left her to it and made his way up the valley, following its river-crazed twists and angles vaguely northward. The stones were loose beneath his feet, slab and shale prone to cracking; he had to step slowly and carefully, picking his way by instinct more than sight.

He was just beginning to think about risking a run up the other side of the valley when another candidate lurched up out of a cleft in the rocks. Ryouma eased back, drawing a kunai, but the dark blot shook its head and put out an empty hand.

“Don’t—” he said, hoarsely. “No, I’m not— It’s Hatake.”

Ryouma snorted. “Try again.”

“Hatake’shurt, I mean,” the candidate said. “I found him just now—I think he got away from them, but somebody cut him up bad, and I lost my med-kit. He’s still bleeding.”

Ryouma’s hand dropped to his own med-kit, but he hesitated, fingers lost halfway through opening the flap. “Why ask me?”

The candidate made an angry gesture, cut short. “Hell, I’d’ve gone to the ANBU commander herself if she was here! You’re the first person I’ve seen. I sent a clone to find someone else, but I didn’t dare leave him.”

“sh*t,” Ryouma breathed. He dropped his head, lifted it again. “All right. Where is he?”

“Back here,” the candidate said, scrambling back between rocks. There was more than just a cleft there; a narrow passage led into blackness, dank and dripping. Not the sort of placehe’dhave chosen to hole up, but if Kakashi was that badly hurt he was probably half out of his head with pain and blood loss, gone like an animal to ground.

Ryouma ducked his head to follow the other candidate in.

And realized, in the flickering moment before the pain in his neck drove him to his knees, that some mistakes you didn’t survive.

Since they’d ignited their charges, Genma had harried f*ckui Ayane for almost an hour, driving her towards the narrowest point of the valley. When Raidou turned up at just the right moment to engage with her and give Genma a breather, Genma took it as a sign from providence. He was catching his breath from a chakra-anchored position on the side of the cliff face, watching Raidou work taijutsu magic with the sword user, when a glint of moonlight on a pale mask further down in the valley caught his attention.

The blue and white boar’s mask was definitely Sato, and the candidate he was engaged with was…

Tall. Dark-haired. And aiming a handful of liver-red, rot-making chakra straight for Sato’s masked face.

Genma didn’t think, he moved.

Tousaki’s jutsu flickered out as Sato fell.

By the time Genma arrived, Tousaki was gone, melted into shadows like he’d never been there.

Genma keyed his mike. “Code three, agent down.” He scanned the area frantically, but the candidate was nowhere to be seen. “Tousaki just did his decomp jutsu on Boar. I’m checking status.”

“Roger code three,” Hajime said. “Watch your back. Any other agents in your vicinity?”

“Crescent Moon’s on my ten. Engaged with f*ckui.”

“Roger that,” Hajime said. “Crescent Moon, disengage target and get me eyes on Tousaki if you can. I don’t want Tanuki getting it in the back if this guy’s snapped.”

There was a crackle of static and the sound of a breath being drawn, followed by several sharp clangs, then Raidou’s voice came over the comm. “Disengaged. She’s rabbiting. The hell happened?”

“Tousaki took down Boar with his special. Have you got eyes on him yet?” Hajime asked. “Tanuki, give me a status on Boar.”

Fun had evaporated, replaced with the heart-pounding terror of a real mission. What had Tousaki been thinking?Hadhe been thinking, when he turned his utterly lethal jutsu on a comrade?

“He’s breathing,” Genma said. Depending on what he found underneath Sato’s still-pristine looking mask, that might not be a good thing. All he could think about was that pig carcass disintegrating into black slime at Tousaki’s touch yesterday. It was painfully ironic that Sato’s mask was a boar.

A chakra presence behind him sent a shiver racing through Genma’s guts, but a quick glance revealed his new captain at his back, wary and on guard. “No sign of Tousaki,” Raidou said.

Genma reached gingerly for the side of Sato’s face and released the strap. “Removing Boar’s mask,” he said, and steeled himself for a nightmare of putrefied flesh.

Sato’s face was completely unharmed.

“What the hell? Did his mask protect him?”

“Say again?” Hajime said.

“He’s okay. Well, not rotted. He’s out, though. Checking for head injury,” Genma said, pulling himself together.

Sato groaned, and his eyes fluttered open. “sh*t,” he said thickly. “Bastard got away, didn’t he?”

“How did you even survive that?” Genma asked him.

“Genjutsu,” Sato answered. He groaned again. “Gods my head hurts.”

“You’re a lucky son of a bitch,” Genma said, almost shaking with relief. He keyed his mike open again. “Base, looks like it’s a false alarm. Boar’s conscious. He thinks it was genjutsu. He’s a little concussed, but I think we’re ok here.”

“Roger,” Hajime said. “Crescent Moon, see if you can pick up Tousaki’s trail. Tanuki, once you get Boar set, you can join him.”

“Roger. Tanuki out,” Genma said. He nodded at Raidou. “I’m five behind you.”

Behind his mask, Raidou let out a slow breath.

“Watch your back,” he said. He carefully jostled Sato with the toe of his boot, making the man groan. “Nice dodging, Boar.”

“Bite me, Moon-face,” Sato managed.

“Maybe later,” said Raidou, and left them to it.

Ryouma’s trail was two minutes old and already cold—a scuff on a rock, a scrape against a tall mossy stone where a hasty hand might have grabbed too hard, then nothing. The inner valley was a rabbit-run of broken trails and crisscrossing paths. Ryouma could have picked any of them.

“Clever little bastard,” Raidou said quietly, and had to smile.

Two ANBU agents in a panic, one dropped bloodlessly, Base’s attention distracted,anda clean getaway. Screw that one night complication; if Raidou had the choice, hewantedRyouma for his team.

Assuming Ryouma made it through.

He clicked the comm. “Heading true north, Tanuki. Try north-west when you get here. Left a mark for you.”

Static hissed. “Roger that,” said Genma.

Raidou scored an X on the stone next to the possible hand-mark, stowed his kunai, and picked the trail he would have chosen if he’d had ANBU on his tail. Steep, with sliding shale underfoot; the kind of thing that might slow a pursuit, or at least announce it coming. He left the path and chakra-ran from rock-to-rock instead, more interested in catching a glimpse of dark hair and a jounin vest than avoiding notice entirely.

A flicker of motion made him drop.

Through cracks between black rocks, he saw the tail end of a confrontation silvered in patchy moonlight. The pale guy with the glass-cut jaw—Raidou hunted for a moment, and turned up the name Akiyama—leading Ryouma into a crevasse, apparently willingly.

Did they know each other? He was pretty sure Akiyama had been in an entirely different section, but maybe pre-Trials…

Metal flashed and drove into Ryouma’s neck. Ryouma staggered, long legs collapsing beneath him, and Raidou startled up. A knife? No, aneedle.Who the hell brought a needle to Trials?

Whatever it contained was strong and nasty. Ryouma went down like a tree, arms and legs shaking, fingers spasming. Akiyama hauled him into the cave like a successful desert scorpion dragging its catch home.

Raidou hit his comm hard. “Head’s up, Base, we’ve got some kid-on-kid violence. Akiyama just took Tousaki down with a needle. Don’t know his intentions, but I doubt they’re friendly.”

“Is Tousaki breathing?” Hajime asked.

“Twitching,” Raidou said.

“Boar’s taken care of,” Genma said, voice clipped between what had to be long jumps. “I’m on my way.”

“Roger that,” Raidou began. “I’ll—”

A second silver flash made him twitch, but this one wasn’t metal. Moonlight caught a lean figure running down the valley wall, briefly lighting up some very distinctive hair.

“Crescent Moon?” demanded Hajime.

“I’ll be damned,” Raidou said. “Hatake just showed up.”

“Helping or hurting?” Genma said.

“Too soon to tell,” Raidou said. “But he’s making for Akiyama’s cave.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Cave?” Hajime said.

Kakashi had been scrupulously careful about avoiding other ninja in the valley—until the ANBU had blown up half the desert and driveneveryonetogether, disrupting his plans to be the world’s fastest hermit for the rest of the second stage. Despite that, he’d done mostly fine avoiding notice, using the fading evening light to scout the valley floor and his route up into the mountains.

He’d even spotted what he thought might be an ANBU base camp, nestled up high and hidden.

The drawing darkness had kinked his plans; he didn’t want to navigate the treacherous Kubire Pass without light, not with his dominant arm still burning fitfully. Better to wait until dawn, hidden safely.

On his way back down into the valley, the obvious chakra flashes of Ayane’s charged blade and Ryouma’s subtler genjutsu pulled his attention sideways, goosing his curiosity. Ayane fled when the crescent-moon ANBU let her go, but Ryouma earned a full on chase.

And a needle in the neck.

From Akiyama.

Who, if Kakashi was lip-reading correctly, used Kakashi’s name.

Entirely against his better judgment, Kakashi wasnot okaywith that. He didn’t take the time to examine why; he just moved, ignoring the watchful ANBU masks.

Ryouma’s heels had vanished inside the narrow cave entrance when Kakashi arrived. The jagged gap was a black mouth ringed with stone teeth, smelling faintly of blood. Quiet scraping sounds came from inside.

Kakashi slipped inside, following his nose.

The cave was surprisingly deep, turning a sharp corner to the right. Inside, it was pitch black, and stank strongly of overworked bodies. Kakashi trailed a hand along the damp wall and paused when he saw the dim green light of a cracked glowstick.

Behind a rocky outcrop, a slab of stone had pitched at a crazy angle, making a platform that was almost table-shaped. Ryouma’s booted feet dangled over the edge of it. He’d been dropped flat on his back, one hand hanging down, fingers loosely open.

The other hand was held in Akiyama’s long, pale fingers, with a scalpel pressed to the wrist.

“Hello, Hatake,” Akiyama said. He was sheened with sweat. “I thought you might show up.”

Kakashi dropped his hand to his kunai holster. “What are you doing?”

“Grocery shopping,” said Akiyama. The scalpel pressed down lightly, drawing up a droplet of blood. “We wanted your eye, but a flesh-melter’s hands are nearly as good, don’t you think?”

A scuff of stone near the cave entrance gave Kakashi a half-second warning.

“For what?” he asked, easing back just enough to flash awaitsign behind his back, hopefully visible to the coiled chakra signal there.

It paused.

“co*cktails,” Akiyama said, rolling his eyes. “Research, obviously. They told me you were smart.”

“Research in a cave,” Kakashi said, glancing at Ryouma’s chest. Very faintly, it rose and fell beneath the flak jacket. Still breathing. Impossible to tell his skin color in the neon green glow, but Kakashi thought it wasn’t good. “Are you testing infection rates?”

“You like this one, don’t you?” said Akiyama, making Kakashi blink. “I saw you talking at the first stage.”

“I’m talking to you,” Kakashi pointed out quietly.

“Very calmly, I note. Well done.” The tip of the scalpel twitched. “I’d tell you to drop your weapons, but we both know that won’t make a difference. So I’m going to need you to break your fingers, or I’ll slice Tousaki’s face off in front of you.”

Kakashi lifted a hand to his hitai-ate.

“Ah,” said Akiyama warningly, and pressed the scalpel in, slicing a deep line across Ryouma’s wrist. Tendons glistened for a moment, before blood welled up and drowned the view. Ryouma’s blank face didn’t change, but his scent soured like rotten lemons.

Was heawake?

Kakashi still had one hand held behind his back. He flicked three quick signs, felt the tiny flare of acknowledging chakra, and brought his hand forward, lacing his fingers together. “Okay,” he said. “But only if you clamp that wound.”

Akiyama transferred the blade to the soft skin at Ryouma’s temple, where a hard thrust could puncture the thin skull bone, and wrapped his free hand around Ryouma’s wrist, quelling the blood. “Done,” he said. “You know, you’ve done remarkably well with that dose I gave you. Most people would be comatose by now.”

“I inherited some immunities,” Kakashi said, and flexed his fingers backward. “You realize I’m only going to be able to do one hand?”

“You’ll do both,” said Akiyama, and drew a scratch across Ryouma’s skin.

Kakashi sighed and braced himself, forcing his fingers backward until they began to pop—

The wall behind Akiyama trembled and lurched, flaring with chakra. The solid stone transformed to thick clay, which sheared away in slabs.

“What—?” Akiyama demanded, head jerking around. The scalpel lifted an inch.

Kakashi twisted a six-seal sequence, filling his right hand with screaming birdsong, and threw himself forwards. Without the Sharingan to guide him, it went too fast to pick a perfect target; he just aimed for central mass. Akiyama whipped around just as theRaikiripunched through his ribcage, and the wall behind him collapsed.

Blood sprayed.

Kakashi drove the taller man backwards, through the falling clay, away from Ryouma, into the shattered moonlight of the open valley. He kept going until Akiyama’s back slammed into a tall spur of black shale, which exploded.

In the falling rain of stone chips, Akiyama’s choking cough was quiet. Blood washed down his chin—real this time. Shredded muscles constricted around Kakashi’s arm. Empty hands wrapped around Kakashi’s elbow, pale fingers stuttering and weak.

“Who do you work for?” Kakashi demanded.

Akiyama tried to speak, but only managed a gargle. His lips pulled back, showing red teeth, and his tongue slid out, dark and obscene.

He flexed it like a snake.

Ice slurried through Kakashi’s blood. “Orochimaru?” he whispered.

Akiyama managed a thin, bubbling sound—a laugh with broken lungs behind it—and slumped, eyes sliding half-closed. Blood drooled thickly out of his mouth.

Kakashi wrenched his burning arm back and let the body drop.

“Hatake!” someone yelled.

He jerked around. The moon-masked ANBU agent was bracing the cave ceiling up with earth jutsu and his bare hands. Behind him, his tanuki-masked partner was dragging Ryouma clear and laying him down on an open rock slab, quickly checking a pulse and wrapping a hard grip around that gashed wrist.

Kakashi took a step forward.

“Hatake, stop,” snapped moon-mask.

Kakashi froze. “I didn’t—” he began.

“Your shoulder,” said the ANBU.

Kakashi looked down. Jutting out of the join between his arm and his flak vest, Akiyama’s scalpel stood out like a dart. Thin red trickles of blood ran down his bare arm, because he’d cut the sleeves off.

“Oh,” he said. “Damn.”

That was why you didn’t use theRaikiriwithout the Sharingan.

Tousaki looked bad. His breathing was shallow, his skin clammy, and that cut across his wrist was deep enough to be alarming. The only mercy was the steadiness of the bleeding—the ulnar artery was still intact. Genma’s gloved hands twisted through a series of seals, lighting with a cool green glow as he held them over Tousaki’s wrist, splicing cut veins back together. He dropped the jutsu as soon as the bleeding had stopped—nerves and tendons would have to wait until Tousaki was stable, which he most definitely wasn’t yet.

Helookedpoisoned.

Genma snapped a bright white glowstick into life, casting eerie shadows across his patient. “Moon, what kind of needle did you see him get hit with?” he called over his shoulder.

“Hypodermic, back of the neck,” Raidou answered.

A quick inspection showed the faintest trace of a needle mark. There were a number of knock-out drugs and poisons that might be at work, then. Tousaki’s respiratory rate and sweating made it easy to discount a few of them. Genma reached for an eyelid to check Tousaki’s pupils.

He was startled to find an anxious brown eye looking back at him.

“Tousaki? Are you conscious?”

The eye twitched.

“Okay, hang on. You’re going to be okay,” Genma told him. He let Tousaki’s eye slip shut, reaching for his med kit with practiced hands. There were two likely suspects: a poison made from salamander secretions, and one that came from a night-blooming cactus. Two entirely different antidotes. The poisoner had been a Konoha ninja, though, which made the amphibian toxin the more likely. Genma filled a syringe from a vial of eresine, working as quickly as it was safe to do.

Tousaki’s breath rattled in his throat like a dying man’s.

“I’m giving you an antitoxin now,” Genma told him, injecting the drug directly into Tousaki’s jugular. The effect was immediate and gratifying: a deeply drawn breath, and a twitch of Tousaki’s head.

“Don’t move, I’ve still got a needle in you,” Genma said. “I need to inject this slowly. Can you open your eyes?”

Tousaki didn’t respond at first, but then his lashes fluttered as if he were working the lids against a tremendous weight. As the last of the antitoxin flowed into his vein, he managed to slit his eyes open.

“Good,” Genma told him. He checked Tousaki’s pulse and found it steadier. “You’re going to be okay. Keep looking at me, okay? You got hit with imori poison. I’ve given you a big dose of antitoxin, so you might feel a little shaky, but you’re going to be fine. Can you take a deep breath?”

Tousaki’s eyes opened a little wider, and his chest heaved as he inhaled. Even through the mask of immobility the paralytic poison had stamped on his face, he looked frightened. His eyes twitched towards his cut wrist.

“Your hand’s fine. Still attached,” Genma told him. He’d seen that fear on faces during the war, when his answer had been a much scarier one. “Can you make a fist for me?”

Tousaki’s hand twitched, and the index and little fingers curled in, but the two middle fingers merely flexed. That wasn’t what Genma’d been hoping to see.

“Good,” he said. “Relax your hand now. Can you talk yet?” He wanted to take his mask off and give Tousaki a reassuring human face to focus on, not the impassive red and white Tanuki mask, but protocol forbade it. And Tousaki wasn’t dying, thanks be to the merciful Amida; Genma couldn’t justify the breach.

Tousaki scowled slightly as he took another breath in. “Thanks.” His voice was slurred, but intelligible. “Sorr’ I hit boar mask, now. F’this’s what he felt like.” He tried to close his hand again, doing a better job with the working two, and not at all with the others. “Can’t feel m’fingers,” he said quietly. The fear was still there, hitching his breath and drawing his gaze back towards his hand.

“You might have a little bit of nerve injury,” Genma said. “A little tendon damage. I can stabilize it, and we’ll get you back to Konoha if you need surgery. I don’t think the tendons are severed.” The nerves were another story, and potentially a worse one, but if the tendons and at least some of the nerves were mostly intact, the damage could probably be repaired. “Relax your hand?”

After a moment of hesitation, Tousaki did.

“I’m going to test your sensation now,” Genma told him. “Let me know if you can feel this.” He plucked a senbon from the holster at his hip and lightly tapped the end of Tousaki’s thumb. The reaction was instant, an instinctive twitch away from the prick of the needle. “Good. Good job. Your thumb is fine, that’s the most important one.”

Index finger got him a sluggish reaction, and pinky was fine. But the two middle fingers didn’t move. “Do you feel this at all?” he asked, pressing hard enough to draw tiny beads of blood.

The furrow between Tousaki’s eyebrows deepened, then his breath released in a gush as he dropped his head back. “Jus’ a bit. They’re still there?” His voice cracked with relief.

“They’re still there,” Genma said, mirroring Tousaki’s relief with his own. “I’m going to stabilize everything in there now, so nothing gets misaligned while we transport you to the medics for treatment.” He flicked through handseals, bringing the healing chakra back into his palms, and pressed them around Tousaki’s wrist.

“Moon, how’s Hatake?” he asked. “Tell base we’ve got at least one stable who needs further medical.”

“Make that two,” Raidou told Genma and his open comm-line. Agent chatter hissed and crackled on the line, commands getting snapped between alerted ANBU. “You catch that, base?”

“Already working it,” Hajime said. “Got teams locking the other candidates down. How bad?”

“Cluster-f*ck,” said Raidou. “Akiyama’s dead. Tousaki’s stable, but needs a full medic. Hatake’s got a scalpel in his shoulder.”

And no real inclination to let Raidou get near him, which, yeah, made sense after a full day of being chased by spooks in masks and getting sliced by a teammate.

Genma’s masked face whipped around like someone had tasered him. “Bring him over here in the light.”

“Working on it,” Raidou said calmly.

He’d crouched to check Akiyama first, in the interests of proper triage, but the smoking hole between the man’s ribs was pretty definitive. Kakashi was still on his feet, at least, watching Raidou from the corner of one grey eye, lean chest heaving. He was significantly less relaxed-looking than he’d been this morning. His shirt sleeves had been torn off and fashioned into some sort of strange object hanging off his belt. His bare arms were caked in black dust, the left red-streaked, the right bandaged around the wrist and sleeved in Akiyama’s scorched blood to the shoulder. His jounin-vest was splattered with dried dark stains. The jutting scalpel looked like a surgical event gone wrong.

Despite all that, and the extremely pale quarter of skin showing around the one eye, Raidou wasn’t prepared to take Yondaime-sama’s former student lightly. Particularly not when he’d just seen Kakashi pin a manthroughtwo walls like a beetle.

Quietly, he snapped two fingers, making Kakashi twitch.

“With me, Hatake?” Raidou said.

Something flickered, there and gone, then Kakashi’s blank, adrenaline-blanched look turned extremely dry. “Present,” he said.

“Care to join the medic?” Raidou invited, gesturing at Genma.

Kakashi’s eye tracked, but stopped when it reached Ryouma, fixing on the skin melting back together like wax beneath Genma’s fingers.

“I can wait,” he said.

“I’m thinking no,” said Raidou. “On account of the bleeding stab wound. Tousaki’s fine, it’s all surface stuff. How about we make sure you keep a functioning shoulder?”

Kakashi lifted a hand, slotting his fingers either side of the scalpel and pressing down hard, staunching the blood flow—which would have been an excellent step if his hand wasn’t covered in gross. He didn’t look away from Ryouma. Either something very nasty had happened in that cave, beyond what Raidou had heard, or something else was needling the genius, because that was not a man operating on all visible planes of reality. Hatake’s head was elsewhere.

Of course, he had just killed a teammate.

The green glow lessened, and Genma turned fully, still crouching. “Hatake,” he said, accessing the special medic voice that grabbed you by the spine. “I need you to come over here now.”

Kakashi took a step, then his attention went back to Raidou. “You need to get Minato—” He stopped, corrected himself. “Yondaime-sama here, right now.”

Behind his mask, Raidou felt his eyebrows go up. “For one dead rogue?”

For the first time, all of Kakashi’s focus narrowed down to one thing, which was Raidou. It was a little like being speared in the eyeballs, except slightly less lethal.

“Get Yondaime-sama,” Kakashi said, in a voice like iced steel.

“Base—” Raidou started.

“Heard that,” Hajime said, over the open comm line. “We’ve already sent a relay message, expect a ten minute delay. We’ve got one of his special kunai here. Medics should be inbound, too.”

“Done,” Raidou told Kakashi, tapping two fingers to his radio-collar as punctuation. “Nowlet him look at your shoulder. Trials are on hold for a minute. We’re all just Konoha boys, okay?”

Ryouma’s dark head lifted, and his voice came slurred and weak. “They don’ bite, Hatake,” he managed. Then, “Maybe if you ask nicely…”

In the interest of seeming like a qualified field commander, Raidou swallowed his entirely inappropriate laugh.

Kakashi took a subtle breath through his nose, and visibly unclenched himself enough to walk over to Ryouma and crouch down next to him, only just within arm’s reach of Genma. He dropped his hand from the scalpel and turned, presenting a red-black smeared shoulder.

Good enough, Raidou decided.

He stepped closer to the little group in their glowstick light, and finally returned his attention to the earth jutsu keeping the cave’s ceiling up. Better not to destroy evidence, if there was any. He flicked two seals, changing the jutsu’s pattern by one small element, and forced the ceiling up with a dull crunch, molding it into a shape that would hold.

When that was done, he settled on Ryouma’s other side and carefully helped the man sit up, giving him a knee to brace his back against, while Genma turned his attention to Kakashi’s issues.

The world wavered, like a reflection in unquiet water, when the crescent moon-masked ANBU eased Ryouma upright. He flung out a hand to catch himself; the ANBU caught him by the elbow in a firm, steady grip. “Careful,” he said.

Ryouma nodded. He dropped the hand into his lap. It was streaked with blood from elbow to fingertips, and the cold light of the glowstick picked up the tremors that he couldn’t stop.

His right hand was still there, with an angry, swollen red line under flaking blood across his wrist. Two fingers and a thumb still worked. But the medic was very carefully not making promises, and two fingers and a thumb couldn’t form a seal.

He tried flexing again. The middle finger barely twitched. He found his left hand, cupped it under his right, and tried pressing the fingers closed.

“Just let your hand relax, Tousaki,” the medic said. “Moon, you want to do up a splint on that for me? It needs to be immobilized.”

Kakashi looked over, face unreadable in mask and darkness. There was blood all over his right arm and side, and more blood streaking down his left shoulder; he didn’t look as if he minded much. The medic made a hissing sound, and poked at something in his shoulder. Kakashi looked away again.

“You got it,” Moon said briskly. He hefted Ryouma up again, with a little more help this time; Ryouma’s legs were beginning to come back, and he could scuttle awkwardly where Moon guided him, to a solid slab of rock a few feet away. Moon braced him up with his back to the rock and then crouched down in front of him, pulling a med kit out of his belt pouch. “Hell of a day for you, huh?” His voice had gentled a little; the smoky baritone sounded almost familiar. His gloved hands were warm.

Ryouma was, he was beginning to realize, very cold.

And still shaking. He leaned his head back against the rock, staring up at the knife-cut of starry sky above the valley rim, and thought about pretending that the hand being swiftly and competently wrapped in splints and bandages wasn’t his.

After a moment he stirred, catching the ANBU’s notice. The pale ceramic mask, painted only with a slicing crimson crescent through the left eye, tilted up at him inquiringly.

“Guess I’m washin’ out here,” Ryouma said, as steadily as he could. His tongue was still thick, prone to slurring. He couldn’t quite make it a question.

“Are you dead?” the ANBU asked.

Ryouma blinked. “Not yet.”

“Then you’re good.” The ANBU finished wrapping bandage around Ryouma’s wrist, tore the bandage neatly, and tied it off. “Think you can drink something?”

“You’re looking forward to watching me drool, aren’t you?” Well, maybe not; that had come out reasonably articulate. He worked his jaw, testingly, and decided, “Yes.”

The ANBU hesitated a moment, then said dryly, “No comment.” He unhooked the canteen from his belt, screwed the cap off the top, and held it out. Ryouma took it left-handed, and only spilled a little.

“Thanks,” he said, handing it back. His tongue felt almost normal again, and the tremors were beginning to ease. His wrist was also starting to throb savagely, as shocked nerves began to finally re-establish connections. He flexed the fingers almost unconsciously, but the tight bandaging didn’t let him move far.

Kakashi was still sitting quietly, behind the moon-masked ANBU’s tattooed left shoulder, as the medic’s green-glowing hands hovered over knitting flesh. Beyond him, a lump of shadow lay crumpled among shards of broken stone. Ryouma wet his lips, and raised his voice. “Thanks, Hatake.”

Was he supposed to sayyou’re welcome?

Something scraped in his shoulder, distant and dull, as the medic pulled the blade out. Probably not steel on bone; he didn’t think it had gone that deep. Just a nerve misfire drowned in adrenaline.

His hands were still steady.

Well, the right was. The left felt leaden.

“Are you nearly done?” Kakashi asked, when he’d pulled himself back inside his skin enough to find words again. Chakra signatures still glimmered at the edges of his flung-wide senses, some orderly, some more tangled, but none of them had the bruised malevolence he remembered.

If Orochimaru washere, he was even better at hiding himself.

Behind the Tanuki mask’s red-circled eye holes, a flicker of surprise went past, but the medic just said, “Hi. Can you lift your arm?”

Kakashi clenched his left hand. A faint twist of pain darted down his arm, following the muscle tension, but it barely ranked. The arm lifted stiffly; he held it in midair, then turned his hand over, testing the range of motion. Wrist was fine, elbow was fine, all his fingers flexed. It ached in the joint, but not deeply. He raised his eyebrows at the medic.

“Good,” said Tanuki. He pulled Kakashi’s fingerless glove off and took a kunai to his fingertips, pricking each one in turn, then ran a series of tracks up the back of Kakashi’s hand. “Can you feel this? Do they all feel the same?”

Focusing on sensations that small took a degree of effort. “Yes,” said Kakashi after a moment, twitching his fingertips together.

Tanuki offered two of his own gloved fingers. “Squeeze,” he ordered. When Kakashi passed that strength test, the medic made him hold his hand out, fingers spread, and keep them there while the other man tried to force his fingers together.

Kakashi passed that one, too, and decided he was done. “That’s good enough,” he said, pulling his hand back.

Away in the distance, high in the mountain, a sudden thunderclap of familiar chakra made his chest loosen. Minato-sensei had landed at the base.

Bracing his better hand on the ground, Kakashi started to his feet.

“Not yet,” Tanuki said, reaching to grab him. “Sit—”

ANBU or not, Kakashi knew how to evade. He flickered back, pulling up a twist of chakra to get out of arm’s reach. Tanuki’s hand closed on empty air.

Tanuki paused. The mask lifted, reassessing.

“They’ll come to us,” he said, after a moment. “I need to see your other arm. What did you get tagged with?”

“It can wait,” Kakashi said. “How many ANBU do you have near? I can feel—five close, not including you two. Do you have a perimeter set up? Eyes on the other candidates?”

Tanuki was up and inside Kakashi’s personal space in the edge of a second, but he kept his hands to himself. “The area’s secure,” he said. “What kind of threat are you anticipating?” Two gloved fingers tapped the comm in his ear.

Behind Kakashi, the crescent moon ANBU asked for a status update.

Kakashi hesitated. He didn’tknow—he just had a guess, based on a dying man’s mockery and a gut feeling. But if Orochimaru had planted a rotten seed in the candidates, there was no telling what he could have already twisted into ANBU’s central corps. If you wanted to strike Konoha’s heart, hitting her best soldiers would give you direct access through the arteries.

Of course, if you already had the soldiers, why bother with a candidate?

“Potential S-class,” he said. “Can you vouch for everyone in range?”

That was an alarming answer and a troubling question. “I can vouch for Squirrel, who’s manning base,” Genma said. “Crescent Moon is my new captain. I haven’t worked with him long, but I have absolutely no reason not to trust him with my life.” He concentrated on picking up the chakra signatures of the nearby agents. Usagi was closest, with Omashi and Shikaku not much further off. Sato was there, too, with Munenori, and a little further out he could feel Kobayashi closing in.

“Every one of the ANBU working the trials is either a lieutenant or a captain. Of the six closest, I’ve worked directly with four and indirectly with two.” He turned to face Kakashi. “I take it you think we have a breach.”

Kakashi’s eye flicked towards the corpse of the former candidate, then back to Genma, with a look that asked whether Genma was altogether an idiot.

“I wasn’t privy to your conversation with the deceased,” Genma said mildly. “How imminent do you think this threat is?” He could count on one hand the enemies that would rate an S-class distinction, although any enemy planting a spy as a candidate at the ANBU trials was a terrifying thought.

“What’s going on?” Raidou asked tensely, looking up from Tousaki. He’d draped the candidate with a blanket and was still bracing him upright.

“Just be ready,” Kakashi told them. His attention was clearly elsewhere. If Genma had to guess, it was on the rapidly approaching cluster of chakra signatures that heralded the imminent arrival of the Hokage and Sagara. There was a third chakra signature with them that Genma didn’t recognize, probably a medic.

Genma tapped his earpiece. “Base, this is Tanuki. Say IDs on inbound, our location.”

“Tanuki, you should be seeing Flash, Hawk, and Hyuuga Iori. Confirm?”

There was a muffled pop as air was displaced by incoming bodies. The Hokage was in a jounin’s uniform, minus the showy coat he wore on more public occasions. Sagara flanked him in bone and black, with her sharp eyes hidden behind her hawk mask. The Hyuuga wore a white medic’s hood that matched her moon-pale eyes.

Genma and Raidou both snapped salutes, touching fingertips to inked spirals on their shoulders, and Tousaki struggled to rise. Raidou stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Confirm that, Base,” Genma told Hajime. “We have eyes on all three.”

Yondaime-samalookedlike he should have a cape flaring around him, even when he stood in plain jounin blues. He acknowledged Genma and Raidou’s salutes with a brief nod, and swept an icy pale look around the little tableau, taking in the torn out cave, shattered stone pillar, Ryouma beneath his blanket, Kakashi in his blood-sleeves, and the crumple of Akiyama’s slumped corpse.

He raised exasperated hands. “I should’ve expected to see you, Kakashi.Death disqualifies youwasn’t supposed to be an invitation!”

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder.

The living golden legend of Konoha walked past his former student, gave Kakashi a quick, rough pat to the head, which did strange things to Raidou’s worldview, and crouched down next to the corpse.

Hyuuga Iori looked between Kakashi and Ryouma, visibly deciding who needed her attention more, and settled on Ryouma, probably because he was sitting down, corpse-white, and still shaking faintly under Raidou’s hand. She crossed over to them and knelt down, veins bulging around her Byakugan.

“What’s the status on this one, Tanuki?” she asked.

“Imori poisoning by injection,” Genma said, mask still tilted in Kakashi’s direction. “I gave him four CCs of eresine, and heart rate and respiration stabilized. He’s got what looks like an incomplete laceration of the median nerve and a couple flexor tendons on the left. I healed the bleeders and skin nerves, but didn’t touch the deeper stuff.”

A harder shiver ran through Ryouma’s muscles, but he only said, very quietly, “I’m a ninjutsu man.”

Raidou squeezed his shoulder.

“Hmm,” said Iori, which could have been more reassuring. “Hatake, what’s going on with your arm?”

Kakashi was standing almost directly behind her and she hadn’t looked at him. Even though he’d seen Hyuuga do that particular trick before, it still kind of knocked Raidou down.

The tousled grey head didn’t turn. “Scalpel. Tanuki fixed it.”

“Your other arm,” Iori said.

Kakashi’s fingers twitched, which was pretty telltale, actually. “Minor injury.”

Raidou couldn’t evenseean injury under all the blood—unless Iori meant the square of clotted gauze slapped on the inside of Kakashi’s arm, but that would barely cover a scratch.

“Your chakra’s roiling,” Iori said, in the tone of voice of someone discovering something mildly interesting. “Are you poisoned?”

Genma’s head turned sharply.

“Hewouldbe,” said Yondaime-sama. He straightened up, wiping his hands on his trousers, and returned to Kakashi. “What happened?”

Kakashi stood at least two inches taller than the Hokage; he had to tip his head down to put his masked mouth next to Minato’s ear, grey hair shading over blond spikes. He must have whispered something, but the mask made it impossible to lip-read, and the wind carried any faint words away.

Yondaime-sama’s head jerked back.

Every shinobi present tensed. Even Sagara-sama, standing watchful and silent, put her hand to the hilt of the katana strapped across her back.

Every scrap of humor had fled from Yondaime-sama’s face. “Get ready to move,” he said.

Raidou barely had time to throw an arm around Ryouma, bracing him, before the Yellow Flash ripped open a hole in the universe and shoved them all through it. There was a dizzy, wretched moment of passing through intense cold and howling white noise, then the air lurched and popped like the moment before an earthquake, and they landed on a dry wooden floor.

Genma staggered, going down on one knee. Raidou’s stomach turned over. Iori let out a long, slow breath.

Sagara-sama and Kakashi both looked unaffected, presumably used to being dragged through Hell’s half-acre and back again.

Against Raidou’s shoulder, Ryouma made a dry choking sound and clapped his good hand to his face. Raidou turned hastily, expecting a lost lunch and subsequent unpleasantness, but Ryouma wasn’t heaving—he was bleeding. Red strings dripped between long, unsteady fingers and splattered his jounin vest, and Raidou had an acute moment of panic before Iori spoke.

“Tip your head forward, Tousaki,” she said.

Nosebleed, Raidou realized. Ryouma hadn’t just randomly burst both lungs.

Relieved, he ruffled a hand through Ryouma’s sweaty black hair before he realized he really shouldn’t, but then it was too late. “Can’t catch a break today, can you?” he said.

Ryouma shook his head very carefully, and mumbled past his fingers, “S’my secret plan to impress you all. With how good I am at bein’ rescued.”

“If I may interrupt,” Iori said, touching green-glowing fingertips to the bridge of Ryouma’s nose. The blood flow ceased instantly.

“Rousing success so far,” Raidou said dryly, and raised his eyes to the room.

Sagara-sama had moved to Kakashi and Yondaime-sama, standing slightly off-set from the two men, but clearly waiting to be let in on the details of whatever threat Kakashi had decided outranked ANBU clearance.

Genma was still braced on one knee, but his masked face lifted to focus on Kakashi—itching to get healing hands on him, Raidou bet.

And in the corner, seated at a paper-stacked desk and staring at them through a blue-swirled squirrel mask, was Hajime. Behind him, a map clustered with pins had been tacked to the wall.

At his feet, Akiyama’s body bled gently onto the floorboards.

Raidou lifted his free hand. “Hey, Base.”

After a moment, Hajime returned the wave. “Hey.”

“I need to attend to these tendons before they get the chance to retract further,” Iori said, unsplinting Ryouma’s wrist and wrapping chakra-haloed hands around the ugly red scar. She raised her voice. “Tanuki, watch Hatake. He should keep for a minute, but grab him if he goes down.”

Genma nodded, stood, and moved just in range of Kakashi.

“Orochimaru?” said Minato, almost inaudibly. “Are you sure?”

“No,” said Kakashi, frustrated. “It was just a feeling.”

The Tanuki hovered at his back, uncomfortably close. Kakashi twitched an irritated look at him.

Minato followed his gaze. “Stand down, Tanuki.”

Tanuki tapped his right hand to his scarlet spiral tattoo, sketching the ANBU salute. “Sir, Kakashi-san is suffering from unknown poison. If we find you some chairs, would you consider having this meeting seated?”

Minato dropped down to sit cross-legged on the floor. Sagara, ANBU’s commander, glanced down at him from behind her mask and remained standing.

“It’sfine,” said Kakashi, but at Minato’s pointed look he settled into an impatient crouch. Tanuki stepped back out of immediate range, folding his arms.

A flicker-shot of expressions sped over Minato’s face, rueful pride and exasperation—he liked to complain about hovering guards in his office, but he never got rid of them—then he returned to Kakashi. “Just a feeling?” he echoed, very low. “Did hesayanything before you put your hand through his lungs?”

Given that Minato had made a career out of shredding enemy ninja like bagged lettuce, Kakashi didn’t think he had much room to criticize.

“He said he wanted my eye, but Tousaki’s hands would do instead. He called it grocery shopping for research, and he said ‘we’, not ‘I’,” Kakashi said. “When I asked him who he was working for—”

It was easier to show them.

Kakashi pulled up his hitai-ate, unfolded the memory, and spun it into a genjutsu for Minato and Sagara. He gave them image and sound, but nothing more visceral—just the cave, Ryouma under the blade, the falling wall, and the blue-light crash into Akiyama’s dying joke. He broke the illusion before he got to the part where he noticed the scalpel.

Sagara let out a short, hard breath and looked to Minato.

Minato sat back, lips thinning. “Dammit. Jiraiya’s last report had the snake in western Earth Country, but it’s not impossible for him to have recruited someone.” Apparently everyone in this room had enough security clearance to hear this conversation, because Minato had just killed any attempt at subtlety. “Whyhere, though? Why now?” He leapt to his feet, paced the length of the room, turned, and fixed Kakashi with a blue ice stare. “He wanted your eye. Did you run into him before he attacked Tousaki?”

“Once,” said Kakashi.

Minato whirled on the squirrel-masked ANBU, but Sagara beat him to it. “Are any candidates missing?” she demanded.

“All sixteen remaining candidates are present and accounted for,” Squirrel said calmly. “I have agents with eyes on everyone.”

That explained the extra chakra signatures in the field, and the lack of other agents in this room.

“So he tried Kakashi, then went for Tousaki.” Minato looked at Ryouma. “Your jutsu isn’t linked to a bloodline limit, is it?”

Kakashi turned. Ryouma was leaning against the crescent moon ANBU’s shoulder, dark head hanging low, breathing hard as the Hyuuga medic attended to his wrist. He struggled to sit upright under Minato’s attention.

“Nossir. Hokage-sama,” said Ryouma, clearly not a man at ease. “If he’d carved off my hands, he’d just get meat and chakra scars. I—” He hesitated; Minato waited. “I think I was just bait, most likely. He threatened me to get Kakashi to stand down.” Ryouma’s mouth twisted bleakly. “And he got me in the first place telling me Kakashi’d been injured. Guess that’s where makin’ nice at the ANBU trials gets you.” There was silence after that. Belatedly, Ryouma tacked on, “Sir.”

If he was talking about the sucker-punching introduction, Kakashi had a different word for that.

“I heard about that,” Minato said, with a dry glance at Sagara. “Though you didn’t precisely describe it as ‘making nice,’ as I recall.” He turned, rubbing the back of his neck. “I want our best analysts on that corpse, Sagara. ForensicsandIntel, classified at S-level. I want every contact he made, every mission he took, every thought he had since he graduated from the Academy. Double village security until further notice. As for the Trials…”

“You can’t cancel Trials,” Kakashi said.

Every face in the room, masked and bare, looked at him. He pushed himself to his feet.

“I assume you have a reason?” Minato said, eyebrows raised.

“Because there’s no point. If it is Orochimaru, the surprise is gone, and he’s not stupid enough to go up against this many ANBU, plus the candidates,andthe Yellow Flash without an army at his back—which we’d feel coming. If I’m wrong, or Akiyama lied, then the threat’s already neutralized. And if he had a different partner—” Kakashi shrugged. “They can’t be worse than Orochimaru, so the first argument stands.”

Minato’s mouth twitched. “How about an argument for why I shouldn’t disqualify you anyway?”

“We’re not dead,” Ryouma said.

Minato looked at him, surprised. He wasn’t the only one.

Ryouma was stark pale behind the blood, but he set his jaw and lifted his chin. “Death disqualifies you. You said it wasn’t an invitation, Hokage-sama, but if it’s a rule, we haven’t broken it.”

“What he said,” said Kakashi.

The crescent mask ANBU providing shoulder support for Ryouma spoke for the first time. “Can I raise the point about poisoned and injured? Because that seems slightly crucial if there’s a risk of major attack.”

“Thank you, Crescent Moon,” said Minato dryly. “So does the diversion of sixteen jounin and almost as many ANBU, if this were meant to distract us from a pincer attack on Konoha itself.”

Kakashi hadn’t thought of that.

Heshouldhave thought of that, he realized, feeling like an idiot—what better way to get Minato out of the village than to attack Kakashi’s Trial directly, when the whole shinobi world knew Minato had a soft spot for him?

“You need to get back to Konoha,” he told Minato. “Right now. I should never—”

Have called for you, he meant to say, but Minato cut him off.

“We’reallgoing back to Konoha,” Minato dug in his vest, pulling out a handful of slim scrolls, and tossed them to Hajime. “The proctors may regret having their fun cut short, but I doubt any of the candidates will be sad to skip the mountains and Mamushi Swamp. Bring them in as quickly as you can.” Turning to Sagara, he added, “We’ll hold the third stage tomorrow, if Konoha is still standing.”

“Orochimaru cantry,” she said dangerously. A flicker of killing intent unsheathed like a claw, barely coloring the air before she slid it away again.

Minato smiled, then turned to Ryouma. “Take a good hold, Tousaki,” he said, voice gentling. “I’ll try not to be as rough this time.”

The Hyuuga withdrew her hand from Ryouma’s wrist, transferring the grip to his unbraced shoulder. “I can help,” she said.

On Ryouma’s other side, the crescent moon ANBU nodded. At Kakashi’s back, Tanuki stepped closer.

Minato put a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder, called up a golden landslide of chakra, and took them through the skin of the world. The distance was much longer this time, sixty miles instead of barely two, but Minato managed it in the space between heartbeats, carrying them gently through the howling void and into the heart of the Hokage’s tower.

They landed on carpet, Ryouma held between the Hyuuga and Crescent Moon, Tanuki alone, Sagara with the charred corpse at her feet, and Kakashi at Minato’s side.

By the door, two masked guards twitched to attention.

Sagara pointed at one of them and indicated the corpse. “Take this to Intel. For Oita Gennosuke’s eyes only,” she said, naming Intel’s commander.

The guard stepped forward, touched the body, and vanished with it.

“Iori-sensei, you have Tousaki in hand?”

The Hyuuga nodded, her hand glowing green again on Ryouma’s shoulder. He swallowed hard, but managed not to bleed or throw up.

“Hospital, then,” Sagara ordered. “Moon, you and Tanuki with me. I want your full reports. And— Hatake, what’s wrong?”

Minato’s tightening grip stopped Kakashi from dropping into the crouch he wanted to, when the world did a melting spin sideways. The dull burning in his arm was—less dull, suddenly, throbbing up to his shoulder.

“My mouth’s gone numb,” he said.

Minato glanced over and barked, “Tanuki!”

The Tanuki-masked ANBU must have beenwaitingto spring, because he was there in less than a second, competent, gloved hands catching Kakashi’s right arm at the wrist and elbow—then at the shoulder when Kakashi hissed and jerked his arm free. Tanuki peeled the blood-cracked gauze away, revealing oozing scratches with livid red lines spiraling out around them.

“Do you have any immunity to Oomukade poison?” Tanuki said calmly.

“I thought I did,” Kakashi said, staring at his arm. The words slurred.

“Hospital for both,” Sagara ordered. “Go now.”

“Take charge,” Minato told her crisply. “I’ll be back in five.”

Liquid-light chakra burst out again, grabbing Kakashi, Ryouma, the two ANBU, and Iori, and spinning them away.

The hospital was still standing. That meant that probably most of Konoha was, because the hospital was about as central as you got: two blocks away from the Hokage’s Palace, five minutes’ run from the Academy, a short jog from Intel’s main offices. Nightshift medics and anxious-eyed patients flurried around the red-tiled circle in the corner of the lobby where the Hokage landed them; somewhere a bell began to ring.

“Shut that down,” the Hokage said sharply. Someone jerked a guilty finger away from a button and pressed another one. The bell cut off, and ordinary sounds filtered back: a child crying, footsteps on tile, a querulous old man asking what the hell was going on. The flurry had resolved itself into a thin, wide-eyed crowd ringing the Hokage’s translocation circle.

Not translocation, Ryouma thought muzzily.Hiraishin no Jutsu, the Flying Thunder God Technique only the Yondaime Hokage—Konoha’s Yellow Flash—could master. He’d taught a variant of it to the jounin, but the real thing was nothing like its reality-skimming stepchild. At least Iori’s green-lit hand on his shoulder kept bile and blood where they belonged.

Braced between the Hokage and the tanuki-masked ANBU, Kakashi looked just as crumpled as Ryouma felt. One of his knees seemed to be trying to buckle. The Yondaime looked down at him, lips thinning, and then up again.

“Is Nohara Rin available?”

“She’s in surgery,” a stocky woman with short-cropped white hair said, pushing through the crowd. “All right, everyone, as you were, nothing to do here…” She shooed them with her hands. Parents with colicky babies and old folks with midnight heartburn began to shuffle shamefacedly away. A few uniformed shinobi, back from a mission with bloody bandages tied around wounds too minor for immediate surgery, stayed where they were. The white-haired woman eyed them direly, but turned back. “What’s our status, Yondaime-sama?”

“Poisoning,” the Hokage said, with a gentle little shake of Kakashi’s shoulder. “Probably stupidity as well—hisandmine—though I don’t think anyone’s invented a pill for that yet.” He looked back to Ryouma.

“Recovering, mostly, at this point,” Iori-sensei said. Her hand dropped from Ryouma’s shoulder to cup his elbow. He tried to cooperate as she levered him up, but his boots skidded on the slick tiles; the crescent moon-masked ANBU ended up taking most of his weight. “I’ll want Asuka-sensei to see him eventually, but there’s no rush. You did good work, Tanuki.”

Tanuki bowed his head. “Thank you, sensei.” He straightened, looking around; spotted whatever he was looking for, and gestured. A gangly chuunin medic-nin who’d been hovering less-than-discreetly looked startled, then pleased, and darted towards a stack of folded wheelchairs by the entrance. “I don’t mean to overstep,” Tanuki added, “but I really think Kakashi-san needs a dose of hashirido in an isotonic solution.”

“Hmm,” the white-haired medic said, eyeing him more thoughtfully. “We’ll see to it.” She stepped aside as the chuunin came rushing up with two clattering wheelchairs. Ryouma stumbled where Iori-sensei pointed him, nearly tripping on the blanket Crescent Moon had tucked around him thirty minutes and sixty miles ago, and collapsed gratefully into one.

Kakashi drew himself up like an affronted cat when Tanuki tried to direct him into the other. He shook himself, as if resettling his balance and coordination along with the hang of his flak vest, and shrugged neatly out of Tanuki’s and the Hokage’s holds. “I can walk,” he said. “The jutsu just knocked me.”

“You can sit,” Yondaime said pleasantly, “beforeIknock you. Our medics work hard; they don’t need to pick you up from the floor after you face-plant, too.”

Kakashi gave him a long, flat stare, cold as water under ice. Then, slowly, he sat.

Yondaime brushed a hand over the wild grey hair. “Good work,” he said quietly. “I’ll see you later.” He looked up, and his blue gaze caught Ryouma’s. He smiled. “Tomorrow, maybe.”

Chakra flared across Ryouma’s senses. The Hokage, and his ANBU, were gone.

The white-haired medic let out a long breath. “Well,” she said. “Well.” Then she straightened, and pointed at the boy behind Kakashi’s chair. “What are you waiting for? Toxins ward! And Iori-sensei, there aren’t any open beds in General right now, but we should at least be able to find you room to run an IV. Asuka-sensei will be coming on shift soon, if you’ll wait for him. Let’s see your ID tags before you go, boys, and I’ll get the paperwork started…”

Ryouma fumbled at his throat. “Not that one,” he said, when Iori tried to help him. “Here’s mine.” He hooked the second chain off over his head and passed it across, leaving the old single tag to dangle alone. Even that slight effort was exhausting; his heart pounded against the cage of his ribs as he slumped back in the chair, breathing hard.

But he’d used his right hand. And his middle finger had closed, almost halfway.

Tomorrow, maybe, the Hokage had said. They were cutting the second stage short for everyone.

Are you dead?Crescent Moon had demanded, when Ryouma wondered if he’d washed out, after one mistake too many.Then you’re good.

“Wake me up f’r the third stage,” he mumbled, and closed his eyes.

Chapter 4: Gone to Ground

Chapter Text

Early morning of April 17, Yondaime Year 5

Genma was glad he’d taken that soldier pill the night before. The intensive debriefing they’d just concluded was easily as exhausting as the originally planned night of chasing ANBU candidates would have been. And in many ways a good deal more harrowing, given the stakes involved.

He and Raidou had gone over the incident—every step they’d taken, every interaction they’d had with the dead traitor Akiyama and the two injured candidates—while the Hokage listened grave-faced. Yondaime-sama and Commander Sagara didn’t stay in the debriefing long; they had defenses to muster and an investigation in the field to conduct before the snake sannin’s trail went cold, if there really evenwasa connection to Orochimaru. But if there was, it was a threat no one dared take lightly.

Vice-commander Kuroda and a pair of calm debriefer-interrogators from Intel had taken over when the commander and Hokage left. Hajime had joined them to give his report, and gone again to muster his team into the field. In the halls, the sounds of booted feet not attempting any degree of stealth made plain the state of high alert the village was on.

When Kuroda finally dismissed them, the eastern sky was a fiery apricot glow, and ANBU headquarters’ halls were alive with masked and armored agents, grey-uniformed internal operatives, and men and women in regular jounin blues.

Genma moved to the window to peer out at the distant village wall. Without binoculars, it was too far to see the ranks of additional guards that would be manning it, but they were there; he and Raidou would be joining them.

They stopped by unspoken mutual consent in the men’s room—it had been a long interrogation with no breaks, and it was going to be an even longer day. Genma splashed water on his face after he washed his hands, and tried to ignore the cooled-sweat stink of his uniform. “I’m glad I took your advice on that shower,” he told Raidou, as they headed back into the hall.

“Me, too,” Raidou said with dry irony.

“Do you need anything before we head out there? Besides a rat bar and a cup of coffee, I mean.” Genma ticked his fingers over kunai handles and shuriken in their neat bundles in his holster. They were a reassuring weight: cold, heavy steel clanking softly as he jostled them. And he still had plenty of senbon.

Raidou slanted a look at him. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“I… guess so,” Genma said. He tugged his hair tie tighter, then pulled the hand portion of his modified gloves back on, fastening them at the wrist to their long black sleeves. “I’m good. I was geared up for the Trials already, and I only took one soldier pill last night. They’ll have extra throwing weapons at the wall already.”

“Then let’s go,” Raidou said. “If we’re lucky, they’ll have coffee up there.” He unclipped the crescent moon mask from his belt and put it on.

Genma followed suit. They’d spent hours together in the debriefing, and a day and night working the trials, but for the first time it started to sink in: Raidou was his new captain, and he wasn’t Hajime.

The rooftop run to the east side of Konoha’s great circular wall was fast and silent, and Raidou felt a little bad about it, but there’d be time to get friendly later, when Konoha wasn’t under direct threat.

They left the stairs to slower ninja and ran straight up the wall, vaulting over the edge with a warning chakra flare to avoid startling anyone. Edgy ninja tended to stab first and ask questions never.

“ANBU-san!” said a long-haired jounin Raidou didn’t recognize, bowing deep.

Raidou nodded. “Any news?”

“All quiet,” she said. “Yondaime-sama swept through about an hour ago.”

He looked down the wall. The usual skeleton crew had more than quadrupled, white-masked ANBU backed by uniformed jounin and chuunin. Even his senses could pick up the thrum of armed chakra.

“Runners in the field?” he asked.

“Reporting nothing,” she said. “Every checkpoint’s clear, and we’re seeing regular messenger hawks overhead—there goes one now.”

High above, a bird screamed. Raidou squinted up, barely able to see the backlit shadow against the rising morning sun.

“Hm,” he said. “Chuunin runner?”

“Gifu!” yelled the woman, making about thirteen heads snap around. Twelve turned back, and one skinny, shaved-bald boy detached himself from the crowd, trotting over.

He bowed. “Yes, Mie-san?”

“ANBU,” Mie introduced, gesturing at Raidou and Genma. “Gifu.” She gestured at the boy.

Gifu bowed again, jerky as a marionette. “How can I be of service, ANBU-san?”

“I need you to find someone for me,” said Raidou. He held a hand up at throat-level. “About yea high, short brown hair, skinny. Her mask looks like a rat, with a red spiral in the center of her forehead. She should be on the wall.” Katsuko had been on-call for the last few days, serving any ANBU role needed. She’d probably been posted for hours already.

Gifu nodded. “Any message?”

“Her captain’s home early,” said Raidou, twitching a hidden smile. “Tell her to find me.”

Gifu saluted, fingertips flicking up to his shiny head, and bolted away.

Raidou turned back to the jounin. “Mie-san, was it?”

“Mie Hikari,” she said, studying him and Genma with interest. Her eyes were pale green with a yellow ring at the center, light in a darkly tanned face. “Sensor specialist.”

“Noted. Jounin commander?”

“That’d be me, too,” she said, with a knife-like smile. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Raidou glanced sidelong at Genma, who was standing to easy attention, mask tilted towards the distant horizon. He didn’tlooktired, but they’d been scheduled to run another full day of the second Trial today. Comparatively, wall duty was easy.

Still.

“Coffee?” Raidou asked.

“I thought ANBU ate living souls,” Mie said, desert-dry.

“And drink the blood of our enemies,” Raidou said. “But I’m not seeing any.”

She smirked. “Breakfast crew should be by in an hour. I’ll make sure to send them your way.”

Raidou tapped his tattoo. “Appreciate it.”

There was a thirty foot ANBU-free stretch a little further down. Raidou centered himself and Genma in the middle, and stepped up on the back edge of the wall, balancing easily on the thick stone lip. Genma stayed on the main throughway, leaning back against the wall at Raidou’s feet. In front of them, the forest stretched out for miles, gold-leafed in the morning light. Behind them, Konoha was still in sleepy shadow.

It was hard to imagine anyone laying siege to walls this thick, and a Village this defended, but the Fox had done it once.

At least they’d be better prepared this time.

Wall Duty when things were peaceful was something to look forward to, as long as your fellow guards were interesting conversationalists. When Team Nine, Hajime’s team, had drawn it, it had usually been a rest break between harder missions.

Not now.

Even with four times as many eyes as usual on the horizon, Genma was tensely alert, scanning the treeline for shadows that weren’t there, and demons that might materialize out of thin air at any moment.

No one standing watch that morning did so easily. With the village on high alert, it was impossible not to think of the Fox’s attack four and a half years ago. Back then they’d been caught blindsided. The youngest chuunin on the wall now had been Academy students then, herded into bunkers with rest of Konoha’s most vulnerable citizens. They’d lost parents and siblings and teachers. The rest, who, like Genma, had faced down the demon, had lost partners, lovers, and friends. The raw ache that crept up Genma’s shoulders and neck was mostly fatigue and tension, but it reached tendrils down into the scars on his back, his own legacy from that night when so many had died.

It had never been confirmed, but there was credible speculation that Orochimaru had been behind the Fox. Genma didn’t doubt that at all.

A pair of chuunin slipped past, carrying a message to the commander at the next watchtower down the line. Mie-san was at her post again, conferring with a Hyuuga in full uniform.

There wasn’t a lot to do, standing ready for an attack that might or might not come, but just waiting was agonizing. Genma straightened up and walked to the wall’s outer lip, leaning against the shelf at chest height, and threading his chakra sense out as far as he could, into the shadows under the trees. All he found were Konoha shinobi on patrol, and the perfectly ordinary animal inhabitants of the forest.

At his back, he could feel Raidou’s chakra, dense and palpable, like the heat of glowing iron in a smith’s forge. It had texture and depth, and while it wasn’t the beacon-bright furnace of the Yondaime’s nearly inexhaustible supply, it felt steady. Earth nature, Genma guessed. With Water or maybe Wind tempering the glow and adding fluidity into the signature. He’d remember that chakra. Learn to trust it at his back, as he’d trusted Hajime’s bright greenish flicker.

Other chakras braided and flowed around him: the ANBU and jounin and special jounin ninjutsu-specialists were smoothest, the chuunin less distinct, lower powered, less organized, but all of them together made a wall of chakra noise as thick and impenetrable as the stone wall on which they patrolled.

Genma narrowed his focus and sent feelers out into the woods again. Still nothing but a deer here, a grouse there, a rabbit with babies in a hole in the ground. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, drew in the net of chakra and cast it once more.

There was nothing to do but wait.

Katsuko found Raidou on the wall five minutes later, tracking his familiar chakra signature. She eyed the ANBU in the tanuki mask leaning against the wall across the walkway, trying to remember if they’d met before, and gave a mental shrug. “Namiashi-taichou,” she said, stopping in front of him where he was standing like a statue on the back wall’s lip. She threw out a casual salute. “Demonstrating your amazing stealth skills again?”

Raidou tilted his head down, standing judgmentally in the light of the glorious morning sun, and looked at her. His crescent-moon mask gleamed unimpressed skepticism down upon her. “Are you qualified to comment on subtlety, Ueno?”

He couldn’t see her grin through her mask, but she let him hear it. “Just because I think subtlety’s boring doesn’t mean I’m not capable of it, captain. Have I told you yet that you look particularlyshinytoday?”

“I had two days without you,” Raidou said, an answering grin in his voice. “It refreshed my ability to sparkle.” He stepped down from the wall and gave her shoulder a friendly punch in greeting, then raised his voice. “Shiranui, come meet our third wheel.”

The ANBU in the tanuki mask—Shiranui,nowshe remembered the name—had turned to stare at her and Raidou, his posture guarded. “It turns out we’ve met. At a blossom viewing party before the trials.”

Raidou did the full-body version of a blink. He turned to Katsuko. “Youwent blossom-viewing?”

“I appreciate nature’s beauty as much as the next person, Namiashi-taichou,” Katsuko said gravely. “Besides, Shiranui invited me. It would have been rude not to.”

Raidou leaned down and said very quietly into Katsuko’s ear, “Tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”

“I didn’t,” Katsuko muttered. “Stop being creepy in front of the new guy.” She crossed the walkway and offered her hand to Genma. “Hey,” she said, smiling. “Welcome to the team.”

Shiranui hesitated, then shook her hand and gave a slight bow. “Thanks. I really didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon.”

“Me neither,” Katsuko said, frankly. “Can’t say I’m upset, though. Glad to have you, Shiranui.” She jerked a chin over at Raidou. “You and Namiashi are gonna be the only two vets on the team. Have fun with that. No pressure.”

“You’re not a rookie,” he pointed out.

Katsuko shrugged. “Barely. This is the first year I can haze newbies.” She grinned. “It’s gonna be fun. How are you and the captain getting along? He didn’t bully you, did he?”

Shiranui’s posture relaxed slightly. “So far Crescent Moon-taichou has been a perfect officer and gentleman. Is that something I should be on my guard against?”

She stifled a snort. “Not at all,” she said, not bothering to hide her grin, and turned to look at Raidou. “A perfect officer and gentleman, huh?”

“I’m going to ignore that skepticism,” Raidou said, and then grew abruptly serious. “How much did they fill you in before they called you up?”

“Not much,” Katsuko said. “There was a threat at the trials, and the higher-ups think it might have been a feint to draw attention away from Konoha. There’s talk about a full-scale assault against us. You?”

“Caught the pre-show,” Raidou said, with a quick glance around them. The closest shinobi were out of eavesdropping distance; Team Six had this section of wall to themselves.

Well, three-fifths of Team Six.

Captains had free license to share information with their subordinates as they deemed fit, with an understanding that complete indiscretion was frowned upon. Genma already knew. Katsuko could be scattered, but Raidou trusted her implicitly when it came to the important things.

Most of the important things.

Mission-related important things.

“Taichou?” said Katsuko, with an under-thrum of tension in her voice.

“One of the candidates went rogue,” Raidou said. “Nearly took one guy’s hands off, and stabbed another. Nothing confirmed, but he might have been an Orochimaru plant.”

Katsuko’s posture didn’t change, but her chakra was noisy enough that even Raidou felt the flicker that ran through it. Genma definitely did; his hands twitched. Medics were more sensitive—that’d probably felt like a sledgehammer.

“Understood,” she said, distantly.

Genma’s mask tilted towards her. “It’s not confirmed. For all we know, this guy just cracked.”

Katsuko’s head dipped once in acknowledgement, and her chakra muted down to a background static.

Raidou frowned at her. “Yondaime-sama seemed pretty on edge, though. But it was his student who got knifed.”

Hefeltthe moment Katsuko snapped back into the present. “Hatake?” she demanded, because everyone knew Sharingan no Kakashi was trying out for ANBU the second he was legally old enough—and Raidou had to wonder, sometimes, how much it sucked having a whole village in your business.

“Hatake,” Genma confirmed, shifting his weight. His attention kept flicking between them and the outside of the wall. “He’s not critically injured. Neither is the other candidate. Unfortunately Hatake killed the guy who went rogue though.”

“Nearly killed us, too,” Raidou said, remembering that burst of blue-white light slamming through the wall an inch from his face. “I’ve never dodged so fast in my life.”

Genma’s bare shoulders twitched in a faint echo of that brief, mutual heart attack. “We were lucky.”

If Katsuko cared about their dice roll with death, she kept it to herself. “He usedChidori?” she asked, with ghoulish fascination. “Did his hand really go through that guy’s chest?”

There was the girl he knew and loved.

Genma’d recognized Katsuko the minute she’d appeared: her chakra, bright as burning magnesium, was unmistakable. But now he had a sudden, clear memory of the kunoichi he’d found in the park egging on a civilian fight barely a week ago. Her enthusiasm for a gory description of Kakashi’s jutsu made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. She wasdangerousin a way most ninja he’d worked with weren’t. Unstable, he thought.

What had Raidou said about her? Big chakra, big attitude, and she’d grope you to say hello?

But she was also deeply rattled by the news that Orochimaru might be behind the attack. Or she had been. She seemed to have settled down now, her focus flitting onward. Maybe that’s why Raidou hadn’t reacted when her chakra flared. He knew her better, certainly.

Genma’s own focus was still fractured as he scanned the area, but Raidou seemed comfortable continuing to engage with Katsuko. “Raikiri,I think?” he said. “There was a lot of electricity and screaming. I’m not real certain on the difference.”

“Excellent,” Katsuko said. After a moment she added, “Glad to see you’re okay.”

“You had doubts?” Raidou said. He stepped forward, shoulder to shoulder with Genma, and leaned on the lip of the outer wall, surveying the horizon. There was no swell in Raidou’s chakra—he probably wasn’t much of a sensor. Why waste chakra when it wasn’t going to help? With this many chakra presences packed so tightly in, a short distance sweep was useless.

Genma turned his attention back outward, too, but once again, there was nothing out of the ordinary astir. Katsuko’s chakra nearer by still felt roughed up, like coarse fur swept the wrong way. And almost unbearably hot. Shelookedfine, but with the rat mask hiding her face, and her posture ninja-perfect, there was no telling what was going on inside her head.

“Have you been out here long?” he asked her. “And what do you want me to call you? Actually what’s our protocol on names, Captain? Hajime was pretty strict about using mask-names only in the field, but we’re on home turf now.”

“Mask names in the field, last names on duty,” Raidou said, after a moment’s thought. “You can call each other whatever you want in your own time.” His masked face inclined towards Katsuko. “Within reason.”

“You can call me Ueno,” said Katsuko. “Ueno-sama, that is.” There was a brightness to her voice that suggested laughter, like the dial had twitched inside her to yet another setting.

“And you can call me lieutenant, Ueno-kun,” Genma told her.

Katsuko cackled a laugh and saluted him. At his side, he felt a subtle shift in Raidou’s presence. Not disapproval.

That was something.

He made room for Katsuko to join them at the wall. “I’m not sensing anything out there.”

“How far can you reach?” Raidou asked.

“A little over three klicks, in a cone about 900 meters in diameter. More if I really try, but it tires me out faster. I could take another soldier pill and get a bump in my distance for an hour or so, if you think it’s worth it.”

“Not necessary,” Raidou told him, tipping his head towards Mei. Beyond her, another of Konoha’s sensor specialists was scanning east-southeast, her reddish hair a copper halo in the morning sun. There were more in her cadre perched at regular intervals all along the wall, scanning for foreign chakra out to at least ten kilometers. The very best could reach up to fifty. “They’ve got you beat, but you’ve got me beat,” Raidou said. “I just wanted to get an idea of how far you could reach. I don’t get anyone’s files until the teams are fully assigned.”

Genma nodded. “It doesn’t hurt to have me looking, too, but you’re right. No point wasting my chakra when it will be better spent on jutsu. If it comes to that.”

“Save it,” Raidou agreed. “If they get close enough for you to sense, we’re in for a fight anyway.”

Genma nodded and settled back into watching the sunrise with his new teammates. Golden light grew whiter, shadows shorter, and early morning bird calls gave way to the chirps and twitters of mid-day. At some point a group of chuunin came by with coffee and stacks of bonito and bamboo shoot onigiri for breakfast. Genma cast a small genjutsu over the three of them to preserve the illusion of remaining masked while they ate. Then they went back to watching.

Nothing happened.

No alarm call was raised, no enemy materialized.

As yet another messenger hawk streaked overhead towards ANBU headquarters, Genma sighed and wished he could smoke through his mask. Except he was quitting. Definitely quitting. Tomorrow.

Katsuko would have given an arm and a few toes to makesomethinghappen. A horde of giant eagles could descend on the wall, maybe, or the forest could spontaneously burst into flames.

Anything was better than the silence in her head.

“So, Shiranui,” she said.

The tanuki mask tilted in her direction. “Ueno.”

“You play poker?”

“Sometimes.”

Katsuko passed on making the obvious joke about strip poker. “Me too. Are you right or left-handed?”

“Right for some things. Left for others.” He paused. “Why?”

She couldn’t tell him she was just grasping at straws. “I’m bored,” she said at last. “And I just made up a game where you play poker with your writing hand tied behind your back. Wanna try it out later?”

“We could.” Shiranui relented and turned towards her. There was a hint of a smile in his voice. “So, Yamanaka Susuki. You wouldn’t believe how badly you two broke Aoba’s heart the other night.”

“Oh, awesome,” Katsuko said. Thinking about blondes was much better than thinking about— what she wasn’t thinking about. “Susuki was lovely. I hope Aoba cried alot.”

Raidou looked at them both. “What context did I miss?”

“I’m a grown woman, captain,” Katsuko said, deadpan. “I have needs.”

Shiranui was very carefully not laughing out loud. “I told you we met at a blossom viewing party.”

Funny was good. She was doing funny rather well. Everything was fine. Katsuko wet her lips, concentrated only on taking her next breath. “There was alcohol and beautiful women, too.”

Shiranui sniffed, as if offended. “And beautiful men. Don’t forget the beautiful men.”

“I’m going to assume that was Aoba,” Raidou said. He shifted casually, shoulder brushing against hers. His chakra nudged her, radiating calm as steady and solid as a pillar.

She couldn’t let Raidou know, not right now. She’d have to tell him about it, she’d have to— his face would be hidden behind the mask, but she—

She couldn’t.

“I’m sure everybody at that party was very pretty, lieutenant,” she told Genma placatingly. “You and Aoba included.”

“You just weren’t looking at me or Aoba, I’m guessing.” All of Shiranui’s attention was fixed on her, now. “You want some tea? It’s getting warm. I’d about kill for a smoke and a cup of tea, if the captain will give us leave to take a five.”

Katsuko let out a breath. On her other side, Raidou’s watchful presence didn’t waver. She bit her lip until she felt a sharp sting, using the pain to center herself as copper flooded her mouth. “I’m fine, lieutenant,” she said, and crushed the curl of panic in her chest down to something manageable, something small and numb she wouldn’t have to worry about. “Sorry. No more distractions, I promise.”

Shiranui glanced over at Raidou for a quick second, then back to Katsuko. “Nothing you need to be sorry about. Wall duty is boring.” Quietly, he added, “Come on, Ueno, taking you for a tea would give me the perfect excuse for a cig.”

Raidou looked at them both, clearly unhappy, but said, “Take ten, both of you. Get some better air.”

They weremanagingher. Katsuko nodded, not wanting to make a scene, and gave Raidou a salute. “Taichou.”

Raidou nodded at her and returned his attention out over the wall. Katsuko turned and dipped her chin at Shiranui, following a step behind when he started down the walkway.

The lunch crew was still handing out food a little ways down the wall. Katsuko received her styrofoam cup full of scalding hot tea, pushed her mask aside, and drank it in silence, uncaring that it burned on the way down.

Shiranui had performed the face-hiding genjutsu on them again and pushed his own mask up. He materialized a pack of cigarettes from one of his belt pouches and held it out. “You smoke?”

“Not regularly.” Katsuko set her tea aside and took a cigarette. “Got a light?”

Shiranui gave her a quizzical look, but Katsuko remained impassive. She didn’t have enough energy to explain that trying to light the cigarette on her own would end up with it exploding. After a moment he shrugged, lit his cigarette, and then took hers and repeated the tiny flame jutsu. He handed it back to her with its tip ember-red and glowing.

Katsuko stuck the cigarette between her lips and inhaled, closing her eyes at the first rush of nicotine. She opened them again when Shiranui spoke.

“Want me to patch that up for you?” His gaze flickered to her bitten lip. “I’m a field medic.”

“I’m fine, lieutenant.” Katsuko gave him a polite smile. “I’ll let it heal on its own. Thanks for the smoke.”

He slouched back against the wall, looking off into the distance. “Yeah. You’re not fine. You don’t have to tell me why, but you don’t need to bother pretending, either.” He took another drag and tipped his head up to blow out a thin stream of smoke. “Don’t worry, Ueno. We’re teammates. I’ve got your back.”

Katsuko looked away. “Thanks,” she said at last, surprised when it came out sincere.

Raidou drummed his fingers on the wall.

Nine and a half minutes arrived at the pace of cold syrup, infinitely more frustrating then the hours that had preceded them, and with every passing second he expected a chunk of wall to explode. In his year as Team Eighteen’s lieutenant, he’d seen Katsuko go critical three times—but each incident had been predictable. Once when Isamu had gone down with a blade in his back. Once when an enemy Iwa-nin had cornered her in a shelter of rocks and torn her armor open—that one had ended in a red mist. The last time had been the thing with the children’s hospital, and Katsuko hadn’t been the only one driven to slaughter.

People had died each time, but they’d been therightpeople.

He’d never seen her misstep on home ground.

He hadn’t seen her misstepnow, in fairness, but he was ninja enough to recognize the breath between a lit fuse and the inevitable crater.

At ten and a half minutes, he pulled a pebble loose from the wall and tossed it over the edge, listening for the faint clink as it hit the path sixty feet down.

Eleven minutes. He unbuckled and re-buckled his armguards more tightly.

Twelve minutes. Back to drumming.

At thirteen minutes, he was ready to abandon his post and go looking for them.

Thirteen and a half—

Screw it. He turned away from the wall and almost walked straight into Genma, who’d managed to wraith right up to his back without Raidou noticing, becausedistraction killed.

It almost killed Genma, actually. Raidou arrested the automatic punch before it was more than a twitch, and regained his composure.

“Tea?” Genma offered, holding up a cup.

At his back, Katsuko was a casual S-curve in her ANBU armor, radiating only the barest hint of tension. “Everything okay, taichou?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Raidou, before remembering he had a general no coddling on duty policy. “No, scratch that, you’re late.”

Behind the tanuki-face, Genma didn’t even blink. “Won’t happen again,” he said steadily.

Katsuko straightened and bowed an apology, iced-over calm. “Sorry, captain.”

Yeah,Raidou thought.Blew that.

He sighed and raked a gloved hand through his hair, then rolled his shoulders back and took the tea from Genma. It smelled like something green, slightly over-stewed. “Thank you,” he said.

Genma’s mask tipped an expressionless acknowledgement. “Anything happen while we were gone?”

My blood pressure rose twelve points, Raidou didn’t say. “Whole lot of nothing,” he said. “I’m starting to think there was either a change of plans, or Hatake got it wrong.”

“He was shocky and poisoned. I’m willing to believe he was a little wrong,” Genma said.

Katsuko piped up helpfully. “Maybe they’re off on holiday.”

Well, she seemed recovered.

Raidou gave her an assessing look that, hopefully, suggestedbrain filter, and twitched a simple genjutsu around himself. He drained the lukewarm tea in three long swallows; it went a long way towards clearing his head. “Or the armed battlements drove them off.”

“Maybe,” Genma allowed, with cool skepticism.

Maybe Orochimaru was smart enough to let them wear themselves out with a week of high-tension guarding, and he’d mount an attack when they started to wind down.

Or maybe it was all just rumors on the wind, and they were getting sunburned for nothing.

Raidou dropped his genjutsu and centered his attention back on his most pressing concern, which was Katsuko. When she walked past him to the wall, he brushed his fingertips against her arm-guard, tapping a quick four-beat ANBU code:Okay?

The response was instant, almost a perfect mirror against his arm.Okay. She took her place at the wall again, still unusually quiet, but focused this time.

He had no idea what was going on with her.

Well, if she told him, he’d help her beat it bloody. If she didn’t tell him, he’d make sure she stayed on the rails until she’d figured out a way to solve it for herself.

He took up his place at her side and propped his elbows on the wall, staring out at an unchanging sea of wind-blown trees.

Genma’s soldier pill had finally worn off. The sky had slowly modulated from bright aqua to rich tangerine to dusty mauve, and the shadows of the guards on the walls stretched out to the east instead of the west—long black lines pointing towards the darkening forest. The craggy faces of Konoha’s leaders backing the village wore deep shades of blue, with rays of gold backlighting the spikes of Yondaime’s hair and the roofs of ANBU headquarters beyond them.

Nothing had happened.

All day long, messengers had come and gone. Personnel had arrived and departed. Ranging parties had come in the gates with nothing to report beyond the usual activity within Fire Country’s borders, and others had gone out to look for what seemed to be increasingly imaginary clues that an attack was imminent.

Genma yawned, rolling his shoulders with a creaking pop. His back ached, his feet were leaden, and his chakra, when he mustered it for a casual sense of what was in range, came sluggishly to his call.

Raidou’s chakra felt like a banked fire, too. He still stood ramrod straight, but Genma could read fatigue in the way Raidou moved—he showed the careful economy of a man who was husbanding the last of his resources.

How long had it been since they’d slept? Last night was the chase, theincident, and the endless debriefing; the night before had been set up for phase two of the Trials—it was hard to believe the first day of Trials was only two days gone. It felt like a week since Genma’s head had last seen his pillow.

Well, Aoba’s couch.

Maybe tonight, if things stayed calm, he’d sleep at his dad’s.

Katsuko’s chakra, unlike his and Raidou’s, remained a beacon. It still flared and flickered with disorder, and as the shadows grew longer, her agitation seemed to be mounting again.

He leaned back against the wall and looked at his two companions. “Our relief team ought to be here soon. Looks like they’ll probably have a boring night.”

Katsuko shrugged, distant and preoccupied with whatever internal demons she was facing down.

“I may kill Hatake,” Raidou said, in a friendly, conversational tone. “Or at least tack a notice to his big clever forehead. ‘Capture enemy spies for questioning, don’tfillet them.’”

“I’m pretty sure I remember that one from Akuma-sensei’s lectures at the Academy,” Genma agreed. “What is that, Rule 63? ‘A shinobi never wastes an opportunity to gather intelligence, no matter how much the enemy deserves to die.’ Something like that.”

“My point exactly,” Raidou said. “Geninknow that one.”

Katsuko tipped her head slightly, listening despite her turmoil. The cheerful incongruity of her rat mask struck Genma as funny for no reason other than that he was tired. Funny and a little sad. Was it the spectre of the Fox that had her so worked up in knots? But the Fox was dead, and if there was another tailed demon about to be loosed on Konoha, there was no sign of it.

“Hey, listen,” he said. “When we get done here, I’m gonna swing by my dad’s. He lives above the bakery. You want to come with me and get some buns? It’ll be whatever didn’t sell today, but they’ll be good.”

Katsuko hesitated. “Are the buns free?”

“For my teammates? Always. Especially if we bring him back spices and stuff from missions in interesting places.”

“For the free buns, then,” Katsuko conceded.

Genma looked up at Raidou. “Captain?”

Raidou rubbed one sun-reddened shoulder. “You had me at ‘bakery,’ honestly.”

Genma smiled behind his mask. “Good.” He stretched again. Fast approaching and familiar chakra caught his attention. When he looked over the wall, four shinobi in bone and black were already scaling it. “Here comes Team Ten.”

Nara Shikaku’s deer-faced mask emerged first, followed by his lieutenant and two more. He surveyed the rag-tag pieces of Team Six, sketched a casual wave of greeting to them all, and looked up at Raidou. “We’re relieving you,” he said.

“We’re relieved,” Raidou returned, in what had to be the oldest and most stale joke in military history.

When they were away from the gate, heading up the street towards Konoha’s heart, Genma caught Raidou’s eye. “And you kickedmeoff the team for punning?”

Raidou snorted a surprised laugh. His body language was looser now that they were off the wall and actually moving again, still tired, but with more purpose and animation. “Yours was worse.”

“Only a little worse,” Genma said. “But yours certainly had antiquity on its side, I concede. Am I still off the team, then?”

“Guess that depends how good these buns are,” Raidou said. His attention was back on Katsuko, silent and intense, with her chakra flaring and frayed.

Genma reached out to tap the hard plate of Raidou’s arm guard.All OK?He nodded his head at Katsuko’s shadow.

They traveled in silence for a long moment before Raidou reluctantly flashed back the single handsign forundecided.

Genma nodded.On your six, he signed back.

As lieutenant, it was his job. As a ninja, his duty. But he was starting to actually care about his new teammates, too.

“Come on,” he said, picking up his pace a little. “If we get there looking tired and pathetic enough, maybe Dad’ll make us dinner, too.”

Chapter 5: Take Me Back to the Start

Chapter Text

Morning of April 17, Yondaime Year 5

A hospital was a good place to reflect on your shortcomings.

Of course, with a little practice, anywhere could serve as a place to yank your flaws out, sharpen up the edges, and stab yourself with them—repeatedly, for preference, until you’d finished bleeding incompetence over the floor and could actually stand your own company again.

Not that Kakashi had that kind of problem.

Or difficulty looking at himself in the private bathroom’s tiny, depressing mirror.

He washed his hands, careful not to wet the edges of the new white bandage wrapped around his wrist, and shoved his hair back from his forehead. It fell forward one spike at a time until it looked exactly the same. He gave up on it.

Minato-sensei was waiting for him back in the hospital room, backlit by milky dawn light.

“No news,” he said, preempting Kakashi’s question. “If Orochimaru planned an attack, he hasn’t followed through yet. How was your debriefing?”

“Lengthy,” Kakashi said, after disregardingexhausting. Talking about an event was always worse than living it, somehow. “How’re the candidates?”

“All brought back,” Minato said. “No obvious traitors, but Akiyama wasn’t obvious until you put a hole through him, so. Intel’s combing over the rest.”

“Tousaki?”

“Him, too. Why, you think they shouldn’t?”

“No, I meant—” Kakashi paused, then continued. “How’s his hand?”

“He’ll keep it,” Minato said. “And full finger function, if I’m correctly reading between the lines of Asuka-sensai’s very conservative report. He’s getting a week in bandages.”

There were worse things.

“Akiyama used my name to take him down,” Kakashi said.

“I heard.”

Kakashi sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand why that worked.”

“What, you’re the only one who can risk your life to rescue someone you barely know?” Minato said dryly. He lounged against the wall, hands shoved deep in his flame-coat pockets. “Granted, you did it better.”

An empty IV stand stood next to the bed like a leafless tree. Kakashi flicked the chrome pole, making it chime. “Not much better,” he said.

They’d run antitoxin through him until he’d seen double and peed orange, but his head was clear again, and he could talk without slurring. The scratches barely ached. His left shoulder was stiff at the joint, where the scalpel had sliced muscle and nicked a nerve, but the medics had promised it would be back to normal by the week’s end.

Medics who weren’t Rin, Kakashi noted.

She hadn’t visited yet.

Minato pushed away from the wall and came over to sit down next to him, just close enough that a warm shoulder brushed against the sleeve of Kakashi’s ridiculous hospital shirt. “You’re looking a little gloomy, for ANBU’s top candidate,” Minato said.

“Well, now I’m having concerns about ANBU’s hiring standards,” Kakashi drawled.

Minato jostled him. “Spit it out.”

He was too good at listening, that was Minato’s problem. It waseasyto talk to him, especially when all that clear blue focus was narrowed down to fixing your problem. But Kakashi couldn’t spend the rest of his life running to his jounin-sensei for band-aids and fix-its. Minato would make it better, but Minato was Konohagakure’s overburdened leader and his focus was deserved elsewhere.

Kakashihadto learn to self-regulate.

He shrugged and straightened up, finding a half-smile. “It was just a long night. So what’s next? Orochimaru’s never failed to follow-through before—why dodge out this time, if it was him?”

Minato gave him a sidelong look of distrust, but didn’t press the point. He leaned forward, bracing elbows on his knees. “He never failed to follow-through when he was a Konoha nin. Who knows what game he’s playing these days? Jiraiya caught wind of him with a rogue group in Earth Country, but that was three months ago. Maybe he got tired of them. Maybe…” He sighed and, always restless, canted back, resting the heels of his hands on the rumpled bed. “Intel will come up with the maybes. And whether Akiyama was the only one the snake suborned. And when, and where, andwhy…” He blew out a breath and looked sideways at Kakashi. “I can’t fault your actions in saving a comrade, Kakashi-kun, but the interrogatorsdolike it when you leave them something to work with.”

“If I had, we’d have been picking up Tousaki’s brains with a sponge,” Kakashi said. He touched a fingertip to his temple. “Akiyama had the scalpel here, and anything else fast enough to take him down—”

“Would have brought the cave down on all three of you,” Minato finished.

“I almost went for his shoulder, but I couldn’t risk not hitting him if he dodged.” Kakashi flexed his own shoulder, feeling the stretch of lacerated muscle. “He was quick.”

Minato’s mouth quirked. “Well, I’m sure the scar will look very dashing in ANBU blacks. And that Tousaki will be appropriately grateful.”

Kakashi gave him a sharp look, but Minato radiated bland, politely supportive innocence.

“You’re very convinced I’m going to make it into ANBU,” Kakashi said at last. “I thought the Hokage was supposed to be impartial?”

Minato sighed, but let the topic of Tousaki-gratitude go. “The Yondaime will be impartial. Sagara and her captains are the ones who make the real decisions, anyway; I just sign off on ‘em,” he said, as if the Hokage had no direct input selecting theHokage’s soldiers. “But I happen to have been observing you a lot longer than they have.”

He flicked one hand in a quick jounin hand-sign:Eyes on.

Kakashi snorted.

“I know what you’re made of,” Minato said firmly, and then went for his familiar hair-scruff, raking calloused fingers through Kakashi’s bedhead. “Besides, Naruto’s convinced you’re going to be on palace guard dutyevery day. You wouldn’t want to break a little boy’s heart, would you?”

“Do I have to answer that?” Kakashi asked, ducking out from under Minato’s hand.

“Better not,” Minato said, and switched gears. “Come to dinner tonight? I’m not cooking.”

“Because you’ll be working.”

“I’llmaketime,” Minato said, with the sudden iron will of a man who made it home by seven p.m. every day he wasn’t actively bleeding out or banging council-member heads together, to attempt mac and cheese for his three-and-a-half-year-old.

Kakashi’s mouth lilted crookedly. “Maybe,” he said.

Minato’s wide grin was like a scatter-shot of sunlight breaking through clouds. Kakashi realized, with an abrupt pinch in his chest, that he hadn’t seen it much recently—he hadn’t beenaroundto see it, in all the training build up for Trials.

Had Minato actually missed him?

“I almost helped Akiyama,” Kakashi admitted, finally.

Minato’s smile vanished. “What?”

“Not like that,” Kakashi said. “Before the cave, when I ran into him in the desert—he played me, and I fell for it. That’s how this happened.” He turned his arm over, showing the bandage covering heavily debrided scratches. “I knew I couldn’t trust him, but I still got too close. If I hadn’t had a baseline immunity—”

Minato waited.

“I would have lost Obito,” Kakashi finished quietly.

The bed creaked when Minato leaned against him, shoulder warm against Kakashi’s arm, chakra shifting like a mellow supernova beneath Minato’s skin. It was a little like being nudged by a furnace. “You can thank your mother for those immunities, after all,” he said.

“Hah,” said Kakashi, remembering miserable nights of mild—and less mild—poisonings. “Never tell her.”

“She scares me, too,” Minato assured him, with complete sincerity.

In fairness, Kakashi thought, she had stabbed Minato once.

“That the only secret?” Minato asked.

It was enough for now. “Well,” Kakashi said, drawing the word out.Weeeeell. “I did notice something else…”

It was like putting a treat in front of a golden labrador. He could almost see Minato’s ears prick up. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” said Kakashi, and elbowed him hard in the ribs. “You’re a nosy bastard.”

Minato collapsed like a felled tree, sprawling across the bed. “I’mwounded,” he said, with dramatic hands. “Also disappointed. Eight years you’ve known me, and you’ve only just noticed?”

“You used to be subtle about it,” Kakashi said dryly, feeling his shoulders begin to untense.

“I was never subtle.” Minato shifted on the mattress, digging into the covers. “Gods, I could sleep here. When did hospital beds actually get comfortable?”

“They didn’t. You’re just old and tired,” Kakashi said. “You should go home and sleep.”

Minato folded an arm over his face. “Can’t,” he said, muffled into the crook of his elbow. “Too much to do.”

A whole village to defend, Kakashi thought, for starters. But there had to be fallout from the second Trial’s aborted ending—clans to appease, councilmembers to bring in line, diplomats to spin. A thousand strands of information to pluck, and a hundred alliances to preserve. The Trials were, in theory, secret, but other villages had ways of finding out information, and Konoha couldn’t afford to look weak.

And then there was the matter of one Konoha ninja slaughtering another.

Akiyama had a family; they needed to know why Kakashi had executed their son.

But not right this second.

“Will Konoha implode if you sleep for three hours?” he asked.

Minato pulled his arm down enough to reveal one dark-shadowed blue eye. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Well, if it does, your ANBU will tell you,” Kakashi said, and kicked Minato pointedly on the ankle, making him wince.

“Isn’t itmyjob to abuse you—” Minato began, when a thump of chakra outside the door and a high-pitched wail of distress cut him off. He sighed deeply and clawed the pillow over his face. “I’m not here. Tell them I’m not here.”

Someone rapped on the door.

“He’s in here,” Kakashi called.

Minato made a smothered noise of betrayal, but sat up when the door opened and an ANBU stepped carefully in, bearing an armload of small, pink-faced, screaming boy. Despite his fearsome wolf mask, the ANBU managed to look like every one of his cells was trying to saysorryall at once.

Minato scrubbed both hands over his face. “Nightmares again? C’mere, Naruto-chan.” He held his arms out as the ANBU set Naruto down; the little boy streaked across the floor, skidding on pyjama’d feet, and scrambled up into Minato’s lap.

“My apologies, Hokage-sama,” the ANBU said. “When he woke up and you weren’t there…”

“I know.” Minato gave a distracted nod, busy pulling Naruto into a rough hug and petting his sleep-tumbled hair. “I’ll look after him now—huh, Naruto-chan? Bet it wasn’t a nightmare at all. Bet you knew I was visiting Kakashi-kun and you gotjealous.”

Naruto rubbed his snotty face into Minato’s shirt, sniffling—then looked up suspiciously. “Kashi?” He peered around Minato’s arm.

Kakashi waved his fingertips.

Naruto made a fist—not quite correctly; he tucked his thumb at the wrong angle—and thumped Minato with it, which was an achievement not many people claimed. “You left me behind! Itoldyou I wanna see Kakashi-niisan!” He launched himself out of Minato’s lap and scrambled to Kakashi’s side, tears apparently forgotten. “How come you’re in the hospital?” he demanded. “Did you get hurt? Did you hurt anybody?” Then, with ghoulish interest: “Did youeatanybody?”

Wolf-mask slipped quietly out the door.

“You need to stop letting ANBU babysit,” Kakashi said to Minato, after a beat, and flicked Naruto gently on the nose. “Why would I eat anyone? We get ration bars.”

Naruto pulled a face. “Were they peanut butter?”

“Dried cardboard and orphan’s tears,” Kakashi said, making Minato snort.

Naruto’s blue eyes lit up. “So youdideat people. Wolf-san said you run barefoot on a volcano. And you have to fight a giant demon. And there are wolves chasing you. And—”

Minato reached across and lightly tugged Naruto’s blond spikes. “No wonder you had bad dreams.”

“I washelping,” Naruto defended. “Kakashi-niisan was gonna be all alone when I woke up!”

“I was?” said Kakashi, confused.

Thirty-five pounds of eager little boy clambered into his lap. Naruto stood straddle-legged on Kakashi’s knees, balancing well without any help, and reached up to try and flatten Kakashi’s hair down. “There weredemons,” Naruto chided, as if Kakashi was a little slow for not noticing. He directed an accusing glance at Minato. “I went into your room to tell you Kakashi was getting eaten by demons! But you weren’t there. And you weren’t in your office. So I yelled for you, and the ANBU came and said you were gone.”

“So then you yelled alot,” Minato said dryly.

Naruto shrugged, unembarrassed, and returned to his battle with Kakashi’s hair. The slanting hitai-ate was evidently in his way; he corrected that by pulling it down over both of Kakashi’s eyes, and mauled Kakashi’s head with tiny, pointy hands.

Minato chuckled, sandy-rough, and yawned.

“I can watch him,” Kakashi offered, before he thought better of it. “I’m checking out soon anyway.”

Minato hesitated for just a moment. “Two hours?”

“Three,” said Kakashi firmly, meaningsix, and felt the bed rock gently as Minato flopped back across it. There was a shuffle of covers being moved, and Naruto left Kakashi alone to go and helpfully cover his father’s head with pillows.

Kakashi lifted his hitai-ate back up. Minato was sprawled awkwardly, legs dangling, sheets half-drawn across one arm, face obscured by flat hospital pillows. His hair was a tangled splash of yellow, and his chakra felt like a guttering forest fire—low for Minato, after his multiple dimension-jumps, but brimming over by anyone else’s standards.

He didn’t protest when Kakashi got up and hiked his legs onto the bed, forcing him to re-sprawl in a slightly less back-murdering way. Five minutes, Kakashi figured, and he’d be dead asleep.

“The hospital cafeteria has jello,” Kakashi informed Naruto. “Want to help me find it?”

Bright blue eyes, exactly like Minato’s, sparked excitement. “Yeah!” Naruto grabbed Kakashi’s hand and towed him towards the door—then stopped, frowning. “You gotta get dressed before you go outside.”

Kakashi looked down at his hospital-issue blue cotton pants and the loose, irritating shirt, and then at Naruto’s bright footie pyjamas.

“You’re not,” he pointed out.

Naruto looked down, surprised. He stole a glance at Minato, who was starting to make quiet snuffly sounds, and tugged Kakashi’s sleeve until Kakashi bent down. Naruto stretched up on his tiptoes to whisper, “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“Deal,” Kakashi said gravely, and let Naruto tug him out of the room.

Wolf-mask was still lurking at end of the corridor, making a matching set with a tall woman in a panther mask. They started forward, but stopped when Kakashi closed the door behind him.

“He’s asleep,” Kakashi said, readying himself for battle.

Panther-mask surprised him. “ThankGod,” she said, shoulders relaxing.

“Did he say how long?” said Wolf-mask.

“Three hours,” Kakashi said. “But I want to give him six.”

“Done,” said Wolf-mask.

The two ANBU came forward and took up posts either side of the door, arms folded, masks a blank warning for any potential intruder to reconsider. Their tightly coiled chakra signatures were like smooth glass against Kakashi’s senses, ready to fracture and slice someone.

Well, that was surprisingly easy. He nodded gratitude.

“Comeon, Kakashi-niisan!” Naruto’s feet skidded on the floor in his eagerness to achieve jello.

Kakashi let himself be dragged.

The cafeteria was mostly empty, except for a few tired nurses and one hollow-looking woman nursing a cup of cold coffee. It smelled like bacon and eggs and morning miso. To facilitate Naruto’s early training, Kakashi created a brief diversion by falling over, while Naruto liberated four bright cardboard jello cups from the cold display.

They split their spoils on the roof, tucked into a quiet, breezy alcove. As a successful trainee-thief, Naruto took a 75% cut. Kakashi chose lime-flavored jello with fruit bits.

“Naruto-kun,” he said.

Naruto had opened all three cups and was trying to balance equal amounts of different colors on his flimsy plastic spoon. He grunted.

“Do you dream about demons a lot?”

Thin shoulders hunched slightly as Naruto devoted his entire attention to his jello, carefully portioning out exact strips of red, purple and yellow. “Sometimes I don’t,” he said finally. “And sometimes we beat ‘em.”

“You and me?” Kakashi asked.

“An’ Dad!” Naruto said, enthusiasm flaring up. “He goes zip—zip—flashacross the battlefield.” The spoon ascribed a zigzagging arc through the air, sending jello tumbling in all directions. “You and me, we fight like a team.” Naruto lowered his voice confidingly, “Sometimes we savehim. And sometimes I save everybody.”

Kakashi’s mouth quirked. “Yeah?”

Naruto sighed happily and ate the scrap of jello left on his spoon. “I like those dreams.”

Nightmares again?Minato had asked, and he hadn’t batted an eye at the content—though sometimes Minato could be harder to read than plate glass. But he had to know, which meant he was already handling it in much better-qualified ways than Kakashi could.

Kakashi offered Naruto a bite of lime to complete his next rainbow attempt. “Want to hear something gross and cool?”

Naruto attacked the bite like a shark, taking the spoon and narrowly missing Kakashi’s fingertips. He spat the spoon accurately into one of his cups and clacked his teeth together. “Didjareallyeat somebody?”

“Not this week,” Kakashi said. “But I did meet someone who can make people melt.”

Naruto’s mouth dropped open, showing a purple tongue. “Melt all away?” he demanded. “Like an ice cube?”

“Like turning them into soup. One touch andfloosh—people-puddle,” Kakashi said, taking a slightly editorial slant on Ryouma’s method of turning flesh into black slag.

Naruto found that hilarious. “People-puddle,” he repeated. “They melt all down, down, down, and their clothes an’ faces an’ eyeballs float on top—” He spilled over sideways, waving his arms and legs in a parody of agonized writhing, and laughed hysterically.

Kakashi propped his chin on his hand and wondered what normal civilian children looked like. Their parents must be so bored.

“Eyeballs,” he said, just to see Naruto get giggle-fits all over again. “You know he wouldn’t let me copy it? He got all offended about it. And then hepunchedme.”

Naruto stopped laughing. “Did you kill him?” he said fiercely.

“For being a jerk? If I killed everyone who was a jerk, I wouldn’t have time to sleep,” Kakashi said, amused by the staunch outrage.

Naruto considered that. “You could eat soldier pills? Sometimes Dad does that when he doesn’t have time to sleep.”

“You’re slightly missing the point,” Kakashi said. “Remember rule fifty-seven?”

“No,” said Naruto.

Kakashi poked the round little belly, making Naruto squeak and slap at him. “‘A shinobi puts his comrades’ lives above his own, for the good of the mission and the village.’ Nothing in there about murdering people for being mean.”

Naruto’s lower lip jutted out mutinously. “Okay. What does he look like? I’ll kick him for you.”

Kakashi laughed. “Will you?” he said, and caught Naruto under the arm with a quick attack of ticklish fingers, making the boy drop and roll, yelling. Kakashi pinned him with a leg and scruffled him like a pup. “He’s four times your height and twice as wide, and hemelts people, but you’re going to kick him for me?”

Naruto shrieked and twisted, scrabbling at Kakashi’s leg and laughing like a banshee. “I will! I will! I’ll kick him an’ runreally fast.”

“You’re going to be a soup-boy. Your father will have to dress you in a bucket,” Kakashi threatened, grinning. He aimed for the bright blue printed stars over Naruto’s ribcage. “You’ll drip down stairs.”

Naruto flailed, kicking. “I don’t want to drip!”

Kakashi hauled him up, settling Naruto on one thigh, and rumpled the bright gold hair. “You’re already a drip,” he said.

“Am not,” Naruto said instantly, even though his blank look suggested he had no idea what that meant, but he assumed it was an insult. He shifted on Kakashi’s lap, cuddling closer in the easy, proprietary way that Kakashi never knew what to do with, and reached up a hand to tug the edge of Kakashi’s mask. “Will you be Dad’s guard sometimes when you’re in ANBU?”

Kakashi caught the curious fingers before they unmasked him. “Probably,” he said. “I’ll try my best not to eat him.”

Naruto gnashed his teeth again. “If you do, I’ll eatyou.”

“I’d taste bad. You’d probably throw up everywhere,” Kakashi said, fighting a smile. “You’re violent today, Naruto-kun. Maybeyoushould join ANBU.”

“When I’m bigger,” Naruto said confidently. “Then I’ll be Hokage.”

Every now and then, Naruto sounded so much like Obito that listening to him was like being gently gutted. Kakashi curled an arm around the small, warm body, fingers splayed over Naruto’s ribcage. The hot heartbeat was an even march beneath his hand, alive and steadying.

“Or you could be a plumber,” he said.

Naruto made a noise of vague interest. “What’s a plumber?”

“Someone who fixes drains and bathrooms. Very important job.”

“I don’t fix things,” Naruto said scornfully. “I break ‘em.”

That was undeniably accurate.

“Demolitions specialist?” Kakashi suggested.

Naruto’s three-year-old resolve could have cracked rocks. “Hokage. You can be my guard.”

“Well, as long as you get a very fancy hat,” Kakashi said, giving that up as a lost cause. He nudged Naruto in the side. “I’m not a chair, you know.”

Naruto gave him a stealthy look. “Horsie?”

“Hell no.” Kakashi shoved him into the litter of half-empty jello cups. “Hokages-to-be make their own transport; they don’t abuse their ANBUs-to-be.”

Naruto rebounded like a rubber ball and attached himself to Kakashi’s arm, bouncing up and down. “Horsie! Horsie! Kakashi-niisan’s a horsie!”

Six hours.

Now what, genius?

Kakashi swept the cups up, and, at a loss for trashcans, burned the cardboard to a crisp and tossed the ashes off the roof. He peeled Naruto free and dangled him by one ankle, swinging like a noisy purse. “You want to see the melty guy?”

Shrieking with laughter, Naruto tried to crunch up and grab Kakashi, but he missed and kept swinging. “Yes! People soup!”

“Think you can be quiet around the sick people?”

“No!” Naruto yelled, demonstrating exactly why Kakashi was a terrible child-minder who shouldknow betterthan to wind his tiny charge up before taking him through a hospital.

Kakashi flipped Naruto up, caught him, set him down, and dropped into a crouch that put them on eye-level with each other. Naruto grabbed at Kakashi’s hair; Kakashi caught him gently but firmly by the wrists.

“I can’t take you in there if you’re going to scream,” he said. “Sick people need quiet, and if you wake Minato-sensei up, I’ll skin you and wear you as a hat.”

Naruto giggled.

“So what do you think we should do?” Kakashi challenged him.

Naruto’s brow creased in heavy thought, then inspiration hit. “Sneak like a ninja!”

From covert observation, Kakashi had noticed most regular full-time parents tended to treat every child-idea like an attack of genius, but he didn’t like giving Naruto unrealistic impressions about himself—especially when Narutowaspretty sharp, if not blindingly brilliant. Minato could do the gushing.

He nodded once, seriously. “Good. We need to go down three floors—you know how many that is, right?”

Naruto held up four fingers. Kakashi folded one down for him.

“I knew that!”

“Then we turn right—this hand,” Kakashi said, tapping Naruto’s right hand. “And you wait for my signal. Got it?”

Naruto freed himself, almost vibrating with excitement. “Yes, yes, let’s go!”

“Like aninja,” Kakashi reminded him, and opened the roof access door.

Naruto took off like a slingshot.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Kakashi told the empty wind. He let the door slip shut behind him, and followed.

For two floors, Naruto did reasonably well flying down the stairwells on his slippery pyjama’d feet. He grabbed the metal bannister at each turn to whip himself around, and even managed to skid to a stop just before a door opened, hiding in its shadow to escape detection by the harried nurse.

The third floor gave him more trouble.

In fairness, Kakashi might have had some small difficulty dodging three grouchy shinobi in a space less than six feet wide, but he wouldn’t have tried to leg-sweep a man’s crutches out from under him.

Well, maybe he would.

Anenemyshinobi, obviously.

The hallway ninja weren’t expecting an ambush from knee-height, but their reflexes were still dangerous. Kakashi hurled himself down the stairwell, grabbed Naruto, vaulted over three surprised heads, and made it through the door before anyone had the chance to paste Naruto to the wall. Muffled swearing followed them.

“Four out of ten,” he hissed at Naruto, hustling him quietly past a distracted medic. “Three and a half, even. What was that?”

“Ninja fight!” Naruto said, with mingled guilt and defiance.

Not their own teammates,Kakashi almost said, but he’d only finished scrubbing Akiyama’s blood out from his nailbeds an hour ago.

“Ninjawin,” he said instead, letting Naruto down when they reached the branching hallway crossroads. “You remember which way?”

Naruto studied his hands. “Right!” he said, and took off in a scramble.

This time, Kakashi stuck closer on his heels.

A passing set of medics gave them a slightly puzzled glance when Naruto’s next attempt at subtlety involved him sliding along the wall, humming the theme tune of his favorite action cartoon, but he remembered to look for a signal when they reached the next turn.

Kakashi nodded left.

There wasn’t an ANBU-specific wing anymore. Minato had changed things when he’d taken over, folding ANBU into the hospital’s general care and re-designating the private wings for high trauma cases—tortured ninja, generally, but that was a broad term. Kakashi had seen battlefield jutsu that de-sleeved skin from whole limbs, pulling it off in an eyeblink. You couldn’t treat that on a general floor.

He’d copied that jutsu, actually.

Ryouma’s bed was on a general floor, in one of the wings that catered to a dozen ninja at a time, separating the one-person beds with hanging curtains. Kakashi had checked with a nurse earlier, when he’d been able to think clearly again. Floor three, ward six, bed thirteen.

Which was empty.

“Dammit,” he said, eyeing the crisply made sheets. Ryouma must have been discharged already.

“Oooh, I heard that! Fifty ryou in the jar!” Naruto said, with a gleeful bounce that made Kakashi want to saysh*t. “Was the melty ninja here? Did he run away?” A glimmer of disappointment surfaced. “I wanted to see him soup somebody!”

The curtain surrounding the next bed twitched aside. “Lookin’ for the handsome lad?” said an older woman with a face like a cheerful wrinkled apple—a kunoichi, by her orderly chakra signature. Both her legs were wrapped in bandages.

“He left?” said Kakashi.

“Took his first chance and ran with it,” the woman said, with an earthy chuckle. “The doctors took him out for more treatments, I think, which was a shame. If he’d slept longer, I could’ve sold tickets.”

Kakashi raised an eyebrow.

“To watch someonesleep?” Naruto asked, nose scrunching.

“Among other things,” said the woman.

Kakashi picked Naruto up, wrapping an arm around his head to cover his ears and smother his confused question. “We have to go now,” Kakashi said.

“Sure you don’t want to sit a spell?” the woman asked, with a travelling look that started at his neck and moved down. She patted the bed next to her. “Keep an old lady company.”

“Another time,” Kakashi said, rather thanhell no.

The woman sighed. “At least I can watch you leave.”

Kakashi had never had a reason to prefer hospital pants over jounin blues, but now he did: they were looser. He left the ward with an extra touch of speed, and almost tripped over three nurses clustered around the door. They cleared the way, apologizing with little bows—and fell about laughing when he turned the hallway corner.

“They need more TVs here,” he told Naruto darkly.

Naruto pulled his head free, hair ruffled. “What was that old grandma talking about? How come she wants to watch you leave?”

“You know how I try to tell you the truth?”

“Yeah,” said Naruto slowly.

“I’ll give you the choice this time. Ask me again, and I’ll tell you.”

Naruto’s face crinkled in baffled concentration, making him look slightly like a blond pug. “Tell me!”

Kakashi boosted him up, settling the boy on his shoulders. “She wanted to look at my butt.”

Naruto giggled, high and scandalized, and grabbed Kakashi’s hitai-ate tails like a pair of reins. “Why?”

“People are weird?” Kakashi suggested.

There was a protracted silence as Naruto thought that over. Then, with guilty, half-whispered delight: “Doyoulike to look at butts?”

Should’ve seen that one coming.

“Sometimes,” he said, because honesty was a continuous curve. “I think minds are more interesting.”

“You should go to the bathhouse. Lots of butts there,” Naruto informed him sagely, as befitted someone who was growing up with Jiraiya-sensei as a visiting uncle. “Where do you find minds?”

Kakashi smiled. “Everywhere.”

“How about the melty ninja?” Naruto asked, because nosiness was genetic.

How sharpwasRyouma’s mind? He’d gotten caught and nearly crippled by letting his guard down, but he’d also unraveled Kakashi’s first Trial’s not-quite-illusion in under a minute, and he’d had the intelligence to come up with a brand new class of jutsu by himself.

“Too soon to tell,” Kakashi said.

Perhaps he’d find out at the third Trial, if they both made it in. And through.

Naruto sighed and collapsed on top of Kakashi’s head, like a deflating hat. “Well, you gotta tellmefirst when you find out.”

Kakashi canted a look up. “Y’know, sometimes you sound just like your dad.”

Narutowrenchedon his hair.

“Ow, hey!”

He grabbed; Naruto scrambled. There was a brief moment of Kakashi being throttled by his own shirt collar, then he wrangled Naruto back under control, held safely against his chest.

“I can make you walk,” Kakashi threatened.

“I’m hungry,” Naruto said, shifting restlessly. “Buy me breakfast, Kakashi-niisan.”

“With what money?” Kakashi patted the pocketless hospital pants with his free hand.

Naruto thought about it. “Steal me breakfast, Kakashi-niisan.”

Kakashi snorted. “You’re going to end up in prison before you ever make it to Hokage, tiny miscreant,” he said, ignoring their earlier instance of blatant thievery. “Tell you what: let me get discharged so the medics don’t panic, then we can go to my place where there’s actual clothes and food, and you can play with the dogs. Viable plan?”

“Pakkun!” said Naruto, delighted, which Kakashi took for agreement.

His jaw cracked with a yawn. He still had the vaguely unreal feeling that came with too little sleep and the aftermath of murder, which, despite years of practice, had still not become something he could shrug off without some processing—at least, not when it was a Konoha nin.

Also, recent poisoning.

Fortunately, hewasable to function with light purple haloes surrounding everything he looked at, and minding Naruto wasn’t much worse than a B-rank. A lot better, in many ways.

It was hard to hate yourself when someone else loved you so much that even other people could see it.

He settled Naruto a little higher on his good shoulder, feeling the hot, messy thrum of Naruto’s disorganized chakra signature tickling against the edges of his, and went to get on with the rest of the morning.

If the village was still standing, he’d sleep at noon.

And tomorrow—

Hewouldbe ANBU’s best candidate.

Chapter 6: Dangerous Game

Chapter Text

April 18, Yondaime Year 5

Ryouma woke in the dark hours after midnight to a blue and white mask bending over him and a hand on his throat.

“I moved the kunai under your pillow,” a low alto voice said, very quietly.

His good hand was under his pillow already, long fingers flattening. No cold brush of steel, just a tiny slit in the bottom sheet where the blade must have snagged as she’d drawn it out. He drew a slow breath.

“You didn’t trigger my wards,” he said.

“I had a key.” The hand left his throat. She straightened, slim and straight in ANBU black and bone. The mask caught the yellow spill of light from the streetlamp below the window; better lit, its fragmented blue accents still didn’t resolve into any recognizable animal. Maybe the ANBU quartermaster wasn’t much of a naturalist.

She said, “Tousaki Ryouma, the Hokage requires your presence.”

He cast a fleeting glance at the red numbers of the alarm clock glowing on his bedside table. 0145, only seven hours after he’d finally been released from the hospital and returned to his apartment to collapse. Well, theydidsay Yondaime never slept. Presumably his ANBU would learn to do without, too.

Maybe they got extra issues of soldier pills.

He sat up, scrubbed his good hand through his hair, and rubbed crusted sleep from the inner corner of one eye. “Can I get dressed?”

“Uniform,” the ANBU said. She didn’t step back from the side of the bed. “You have ten minutes.”

Clearly, she was planning to wait.

He rubbed his face again, then dropped the sheet defiantly and scrambled over the foot of the bed, dogtags chiming against his sternum. Trunks from a drawer, his last clean pair of uniform blues; he’d need to do laundry soon, if they weren’t going to be issuing him ANBU blacks today. He stepped into the bathroom, holding the bundled clothes in front of his hip, and looked back.

The blue and white mask met his gaze, unreadable.

“You might as well come in, if you’re gonna watch,” he said. “Make it easier on both of us.”

Was that the slightest stiffness in her stance? “You can close the door,” she said.

He snickered, and slid it shut.

Pissing, brushing his teeth, splashing water on his face and running a comb through his hair took three minutes of his allotted ten. Dressing went quicker, though he’d forgotten to pick up the bandage-bindings for his shins and kunai-holster. He slid the door back in time to catch the ANBU turning quickly from her inspection of his video tapes.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I was already pretty sure you were human.” He dug out a roll of bandage and put his foot up on the edge of the bed. Binding was a little awkward, with his right hand still swathed and stiff in bandages, but he managed at last with something like his usual precision. He tucked and tied the ends, switched legs, and said idly, “You wouldn’t’ve given me ten minutes if I were under arrest. Or if this were an invasion. So I must’ve made it to the third stage after all.”

“One minute,” she said.

Well, he hadn’t really expected her to spill details anyway. He tied off the second binding, found his kunai holster and bound it quickly on, and shrugged into his spare flak vest. It still had a finger-long gash beneath the arm, baring the steel mesh beneath the stiff oiled canvas; he’d meant to repair before his next mission, but there was no time now. He belted on his equipment pouch, ran a hand through his hair, and, at the last moment, dived for his hitai-ate. Then he had to ruffle his hand through his hair again, raking his forelock down properly over the steel plate.

“Shinobi,” the ANBU said, “the Hokage truly does not care what you look like.”

“Icare,” Ryouma said, finding his boots by the door. He stamped into them, flicked the catches, and straightened.

His bandaged right hand felt even more awkward now, a useless lump of white that wouldn’t even fit easily in a pocket. The hand specialist, Asuka-sensei, had explained that the bandage job was big so that Ryouma wouldn’t bump or jar his fingers and strain the healing tendons. He was starting to think maybe it was revenge for a few too many bad jokes cracked under the influence of a heady co*cktail of morphine and stress.

Painkillers, right! The bottle was on the table by his bed, and the ANBU stood between them. Her painted, pitiless face met his gaze.

He reached for the door. “I’m ready.”

The Hokage’s Palace always looked different at night.

Red and sprawling in the daylight, fringed with trees, it loomed dark and forbidding in the cool moonlight, dwarfed only by the Hokage’s monument which backed it. The repairs were holding up well, Kakashi judged, because he couldn’t help looking. Minato had only had the building three months before the Kyuubi attack. Half the right wing had been ripped away, and the remainder left smoke-blackened. Two-thirds of the offices had belonged to ninja who hadn’t survived.

Sandaime’s body had been recovered less than a hundred feet from the western wall.

There was a fountain built on the spot now, topped by a laughing monkey. Children liked to throw coins into the water.

“Shinobi,” said his ANBU escort.

Kakashi bestirred himself. “Sorry.”

He was taken to a side-room he recognized, set just off from the Hokage’s main office. Usually filled with comfortable chairs and tastefully arranged plants, now it stood empty except for a dark red rug and sleep-ruffled candidates. He recognized faces—the man with blue hair, Ayane the sword-dancer, a redheaded woman who looked like she’d run afoul of a barbed wire net.

Sixteen had finished out the second Trial, including Kakashi. There were ten here. Ryouma wasn’t one of them.

Had they failed him?

“Please wait a moment,” said the ANBU, and stepped out, closing the door behind him.

Ayane stepped forward. Her lower lip had a scabbed split running through it, and her right eye was blackened. She looked unhurt otherwise. “What happened in the second Trial?” she demanded.

Kakashi blinked. “Running, mostly.”

“We heard you and Ryouma ran into trouble,” she said, with a flat, unfriendly stare.

She wasn’t the only one who looked less than pleased to see him. The tired expressions covered the spectrum from bored disinterest to active dislike, and Kakashi was acutely grateful he’d been allowed time to change into fresh clothes, mask included.

“We did,” he said. “We ran out of it again.”

Ayane made a sound like a threatened viper, drawing air sharply between her teeth. “How badly was he hurt?”

If Ryouma hadn’t gone to tell her himself, presumably there was a good reason. Or this was an extremely strange slant on a final test that was about to turn violent on him. She certainlylookedlike she wanted to wrap her hands around his throat.

Kakashi edged back a step, holding his hands up. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know.”

“Hatake—” Ayane began dangerously.

Behind Kakashi, the door clicked open and a bloom of orange-scented soap colored the air.

“Perfect timing,” Kakashi said with relief. He ducked behind Ryouma, shoving him forward. “Save me.”

“Not that I generally object to rescuing dudes in distress,” Ryouma said slowly, “but I haven’t had coffee yet and the adrenaline hit fromANBU in my bedroomis starting to wear off. Morning, Ayane. It’s no good trying to molest Hatake, he doesn’t put out on the first date.”

“Youwouldknow,” Ayane said, but her stiff shoulders eased a little. Her dark gaze drank Ryouma in between one blink and the next, and fixed on his bandaged hand. She folded her arms. “All that fuss for a few broken fingers?”

“They really hurt,” Ryouma said plaintively. He glanced behind him, where Kakashi was wedged in the narrow gap between Ryouma and the doorframe, peering warily over Ryouma’s shoulder.

Kakashi didn’t look poisoned anymore, though he’d hid it well yesterday, too. His eye curved in that patently false smile when he noticed Ryouma’s gaze. “Hi.”

It didn’t look like there was a story forthcoming. Ryouma stepped away from the door. “Heard they had the village on Code Red lockdown yesterday. I slept through most of it.” The medics had released him at 1800, with dire warnings about calories and further rest to replenish the chakra drained from him by successive healings. He’d fallen asleep twice in the cafeteria before he made it home, and he’d barely managed to stagger across his threshold and strip down before he hit the bed.

If the villagehadbeen invaded, he’d have missed it.

“Observant as always,” Ayane said drily. “But I’m glad you’re less hurt than rumor made it sound.” She flicked a glance like a knife over his shoulder at Kakashi, and turned away.

“Wow,” Ryouma said, not quite under his breath. “I think shecares.”

Ayane tossed her hair, and flipped him off.

“About you, maybe,” Kakashi said. He was staying firmly near the doorjamb, and he’d dug in his belt pouch for the orange-backed book he’d been reading on the day of the first trial. It had a picture of a man chasing a laughing woman on the front, which possibly accounted for why Kakashi was so interested in it. He was only about halfway through.

Ryouma leaned against the wall next to Kakashi, and stole a glance over his shoulder. No pictures. Boring. He asked, “What were you talking about? She didn’treallytry to molest you, did she? Because you probably should’ve let her.”

“I’m still waiting for the date you owe me,” Kakashi said, and turned a page. “Ayane-san was a little concerned about your wellbeing, and under the impression I had the answers. Next time you fail to die, you should consider a press release.”

Across the room, Ayane was talking quietly with Takeshi and Hakone, her head bent and her long ponytail falling like water over her shoulder. She didn’t look back.

He needed a lot more caffeine in his blood before he could start figuring out what that meant. A friend’s concern, maybe; they’d been friends before she invited him home after a mission two weeks ago, and things had seemed easy enough at the bar the night after the first trial. Hell,he’dhave asked, if it was her. Curiosity didn’t have to mean anything.

Kakashi turned another page.

“Any good?” Ryouma asked him.

That got Kakashi’s attention, at least. He looked up, blinking. “You don’t know this one?”

“I don’t read much,” Ryouma said. “Is there a movie?”

Enthusiasm kindled like a flame in Kakashi’s eye. He slid a finger between pages and flipped the book shut, cradling it against his side. “They’re talking about it. There’s an actress interested in one of the main roles.”

“You’ll have to let me know when it comes out. Assuming we’re both alive.” Ryouma kicked up a heel against the wall. “So…wasAkiyama working for the snake?”

Kakashi’s jaw shifted sideways under the mask. His eye shuttered again. But whatever evasion he meant to slither away with died on his tongue as another door at the head of the room opened, and the owl-masked vice commander stood framed against a blaze of lamplight within.

“Norita,” he said.

Across the room, Norita Takeshi stiffened, exchanged glances with Ayane, and then struck off stolidly for the door. Ryouma flashed him a discreet thumbs-up as he passed. Takeshi’s eyes flickered, but his face didn’t twitch. The door closed behind him.

He left silence behind. Blue-haired Abe, who hadn’t killed Ryouma yesterday, was pacing near the window. Ayane folded her arms and leaned against the wall, but her manicured fingernails beat a steady tattoo on her biceps. Kakashi opened his book again. Ryouma tipped his head back against the wall and tried not to think about the steady ache building in his wrist. Maybe, if they were going one at a time, he could snatch a few minutes’ sleep before they called his name…

“Himura,” the vice-commander said.

Ryouma twitched. His eyes felt crusted again, though the black sky outside the windows was no lighter. Takeshi hadn’t come back, and Himura Tadao was heading stone-faced for the door.

The wait stretched out. A red-haired woman Ryouma didn’t know pulled out a pack of cards and struck up a game with the brown-haired man who’d used the butterfly jutsu in the first trial. Two or three of the remaining candidates trickled over to watch. Ayane wasn’t one of them. Ryouma thought about wandering over to talk to her, and shook the idea off again.

Minutes dragged by.

The door opened. “Hatake.”

Kakashi put his book away.

The room was watching him again, though with markedly less hostility since Ryouma had decided to play a one-man bookend. Kakashi glanced sideways, meeting friendly dark eyes under a neat thatch of ink-black hair.

Ryouma gave him a thumbs up with his unbandaged hand. “Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

Sometimes, Kakashi did not understand his life.

Scratch that.Quite oftenKakashi did not understand his life.

“Try not to injure yourself in my absence,” he said, and peeled himself away from the door, following the vice-commander into the Hokage’s office.

The bodies of rejected candidates failed to greet him, which was mildly encouraging.

In fact, the office looked exactly as it always did, if slightly more crowded. Minato sat in pride of place behind his broad, beautifully carved desk, which had been cleared of teetering paperwork stacks for the special occasion. Despite the late hour, he looked daisy-fresh and alert, one hand wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee. He was wearing his flame-coat of office, but the official hat was tossed over the back of his chair. In four years, Kakashi had never seen him wear it.

On Minato’s right, the ANBU commander, Sagara-sama, sat in full magpie-colored armor. Lamplight gilded the steel-grey hair at her temples and made the fierce black lines of her hawk mask seem, if anything, even more forbidding. The vice-commander moved to stand at her back.

To Minato’s left, Kakashi recognized the head of Intel. Oita Gennosuke was a short, round, dark-haired man with an unfortunate bald spot and shrewd eyes. He had one of the most contained chakra patterns Kakashi had ever come across; even this close, Kakashi could barely feel a shimmer.

The last man had to be the head of T&I. Kakashi had seen worse acid scars, but they’d belonged to corpses.

He dropped to one knee, pressing his fist against the floor, and ducked his head, waiting for instructions.

“At ease, shinobi,” Minato said.

There was no trace of humor lurking in bright blue eyes. Kakashi straightened up, and quite carefully didn’t think irritated thoughts aboutwhy 3:00 amand’Sagara and her captains are the ones who make the real decisions, anyway; I just sign off on ‘em’. Minato might be a lying, bastard-shaped idiot who couldn’t take the favor of a six-hour nap when it was dropped in his lap withoutwhining, but he was still the Hokage, and Kakashi would never disrespect him.

At least, in public.

“Hokage-sama,” he murmured. “Commanders.”

“Justify your use of lethal force in subduing Akiyama,” Sagara-sama said, without preamble.

The third Trial was aninterview?

“I thought it was necessary at the time,” Kakashi said. He’d discussed this once with Minato already, thoughjustifyhadn’t been the word on the table. “I still think that. Akiyama had a scalpel pressed to Tousaki Ryouma’s temple, and the intent to use it.”

“You left nothing to question,” she said.

The T&I commander leaned forward. “Did you consider the possibility of disabling and disarming?” he asked, with a soft lisp. Kakashi wondered if he’d always had that, or if the partial removal of his lips had caused it.

“I did,” said Kakashi. “I doubted my ability to achieve it.”

“How long would it take you to run from Funahashi to Chibu in the rainy season, carrying a 190 pound injured comrade?” Oita asked him.

“Do you always prioritize saving a comrade over gaining tactical information?” the T&I commander said.

Are you your father’s son, Kakashi translated.

“Six hours, if my comrade could stand the journey and didn’t fight me, but the connecting train line would be an easier ride for both of us,” Kakashi said. He looked at the T&I commander. “In Tousaki’s case, his worth to the village outweighed the information I thought Akiyama could provide at the moment of attack.”

“And in hindsight?” The T&I commander pressed. “Given theconsiderablevalue an interrogation with Akiyama may have had.”

Kakashi hesitated. “In my experience, commander,” he said slowly, “obsessing over your mistakes in the field does more harm than good. I regret losing Akiyama, but I have faith in Intel’s abilities to cope without him.”

The flicker of Minato’s hand covered what might have been a smile. The T&I commander gave an eerie, hissing laugh that ran cold fingers down the back of Kakashi’s neck.

“Touching,” Oita murmured. “How long can you maintain in the field while using your Sharingan?”

“How many A-rank jutsu can you cast in an hour without face-planting?” the T&I commander translated, with a helpful air.

Kakashi scratched the back of his neck. “Depends on the jutsu,” he said at last. “I can use theRaikirifour times in a day, which requires the Sharingan. For the Sharingan alone—I’ve gone a few days at my best, but the consequences were unpleasant.”

“Your team captain gives you an order which will ensure successful completion of the mission but may lead to loss of innocent life,” Oita said. “What is your course of action?”

Define innocent,was Kakashi’s first thought, but he didn’t want them to say ‘orphanage’. Accurate or not, ANBU were still known as Konoha’s black ops baby-killers.

“Who’s my team captain?” he asked.

“Why is that relevant?” Oita said.

“I’d like to have all the facts,” Kakashi said. “Sir.”

“Your captain is a veteran ANBU officer,” Oita said, with as much warmth as an arctic wasteland.

Kakashi glanced at Minato, then at the blank-masked ANBU commander. Softly, he said, “If Konoha ordered me to, I would kill every innocent between here and Iwagakure.”

Behind the T&I commander’s ruined face, something flickered, quickly sheathed behind unfathomable eyes, but Kakashi caught the bloom of warmth in the man’s scent.

Oita’s next question distracted him before he could make anything of it. “Under what circ*mstances would you disobey a direct order?” the Intel commander demanded.

Well, that wasn’t vague at all.

“I wouldn’t,” Kakashi said at last.

A second flicker passed across the T&I commander’s face, only just disturbing the warped surface, but there was no warmth this time. It was echoed in the other commanders—a sharpening of intent.

“Even if the order directly countermanded your understanding of the mission objective?” Oita said.

“If my captain is a veteran ANBU officer,” Kakashi said steadily, “my assumption would be that he, or she, would have a better understanding of the mission than I would.”

“Your captain has ordered you to carry out an action that will result in the deaths of non-ANBU Konoha ninja, who happen to be in the area on an unrelated mission,” Sagara-sama said. “Your response?”

“I would question the validity of that order,” Kakashi said. “Is this a likely scenario?”

“I certainly hope not,” Oita said.

“No,” said the T&I commander, sounding almost cheerful. “But we were just discussing your spectacular takedown of a man who might or might not have been connected to Konoha’s most famous traitor—at least mostrecentfamous traitor.”

If there were ever a set of circ*mstances that landed him in T&I’s extended care, Kakashi thought, he’d make absolutely sure to stab himself in the brain first.

“Returning to that incident,” Sagara said, slightly icy. “There were two ANBU agents directly in your line of fire. Not Hyuuga and unable to detect your position clearly through the wall.”

Kakashi answered the unsaid question. “I could feel them.”

“Well enough to be sure you wouldn’t hit them?” Oita asked.

“I didn’t hit them,” Kakashi said. “So—yes.”

“I think what you mean, shinobi, is ‘It’s a good thing they dodged’,” the T&I commander said.

Kakashi met the man’s eyes. “I could feel them,” he repeated.

The T&I commander made a short, gravelling sound in his throat:hm. But he dropped the point.

The vice-commander leaned over Sagara-sama’s shoulder. “Konoha has a mission to copy an S-rank enemy jutsu,” he said, derailing Kakashi slightly. “There’s a four-agent team including an Uchiha with a fully mastered Sharingan. You are on a five-agent team. Who should get the assignment and why?”

“My team,” Kakashi said, after a moment.

“Why?” said the vice-commander.

Kakashi shrugged. “Based on that information, I trust myself more.”

Lamplight gleamed on Sagara-sama’s mask, lightening the bone and darkening the black. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft as an extended claw. “And when it’s your commanding officer who is not as clever, or as skilled, or as trustworthy as you?”

Minato’s smile had vanished.

What answer did theywant?

The scenario was a possibility—he’d never worked directly under any commanding officer after Minato, who was demonstrably smarter, more skilled, and better trusted. He’d workedwithother field-commanders, but he’d made jounin at thirteen. None of them outranked him. There’d always been an avenue for disagreement.

What would he do?

Get promoted fastwas not, he suspected, an acceptable answer.

“ANBU is Konoha’s elite,” Kakashi said at last. “I cannot believe any shinobi hand-picked by the Hokage, and by yourselves, would put their subordinates in a position so dangerous, or so questionable, that I would consider breaking rank.” He straightened his shoulders. “That said, Akiyama was able to make it all the way to the second Trial without being discovered, and we’ve discussed how I handled that. If I truly believed my commander was wrong, I’d hope they would listen to me.”

The T&I commander glanced at Oita, and smirked. Oita didn’t react.

Halfway through Kakashi’s little speech, Minato’s hands had steepled in front of his mouth. He gave a slow, unrevealing blink, and said, “Thank you, shinobi. You may go.”

Kakashi bowed stiffly, turned to the door he’d come in through, and hesitated. No one else had come back through it.

“That one,” said the T&I commander, hooking a battle-scarred thumb at a door on the opposite side of the room.

Kakashi bowed again, crossed the room, and let himself out. The door opened into a quiet, dimly lit anteroom—and here were the previous candidates, sitting side by side on a padded wooden bench, looking entirely drained.

They barely glanced up when Kakashi walked in.

The room had a tall, elegant window against the rear wall. When he went to it, he found a sprawling, star-lit view of Konoha laid out like jewels on a map. Kakashi leaned his forehead against the cool windowpane, metal hitai-ate plate clinking once against glass, and crushed his frustration.

The T&I commander had liked him.

He was fairly certain no one else had.

If he failed at thelast hurdle— He could try again in six month’s time, without killing a teammate, and fall short in some other way.

Minato was always going to outshine him.

“Goddammit,” Kakashi muttered, almost soundlessly, and didn’t punch the window through.

Kakashi didn’t come back.

They were expecting that, by now. The door opened again and the vice-commander called for Abe Shintaro, then, twenty minutes later, for Matsumoto Haruka. When the door opened again and the vice-commander summoned Yamada Kasumi, only Ryouma craned his neck in a vain attempt to peer inside.

There was an advantage to staring down a menacing masked man, he discovered: you could blithely pretend you didn’t know he was scowling daggers at you. The vice-commander seemed to realize it about the same time Ryouma did. The hard-muscled shoulders stiffened even more, and the vice-commander whirled and shut the door.

“Satisfy my curiosity,” Ayane said, drifting up to Ryouma’s elbow. “Are you reallytryingto be the first candidate rejected from ANBU for reasons of being a pain in the ass?”

“It’d be a good line for my entry in the Bingo Book,” Ryouma said.

“Something tells me that’s the reason behind sixty percent of what you do. The other forty percent is probablyWhat would sound good on my epitaph?”

“Your math’s off,” he said. “There’s atleasttwenty percent devoted toHow can I get him/her/them to sleep with me?”

“Like I said,” she retorted. “What would sound good on your epitaph?”

He surprised himself into a laugh. Her mouth twitched, and for a moment she looked as if she were about to say something else.

Hakone lounged over her shoulder like saturnine salvation. “Toriyama thinks we have to fight the Hokage next,” he said. “He thinks there are corpses piling up like cordwood behind the door.”

Toriyama had to be the brown-haired man with the glass butterflies, who was accumulating scraps of IOUs at his knee while the red-haired woman who’d brought the card-deck scowled. The only other candidate left was Kurosagi Kaito, who was doing a decent job of pretending to watch the game. Ryouma raised his voice.

“I think it’s a strip-tease,” he said. “Points for grace and rhythm and looking really good in a skin-tight outfit. Yondaime-sama’s the hottest Kage in the Five Countries. He can’t have his ANBU letting Konoha’s image down.”

Ayane smirked. “Guess that’s about the only wayyou’dget in, Tousaki. Sew your mouth shut and stick you in a corner when the dignitaries come visiting. You missed out on tact and sense, but we’ve got to admit you’re decorative.”

“H’st!” Hakone’s head was up, like a watchful hound. Ayane slid out from under his arm, stood ready.

The door opened. The vice-commander said, “Tousaki.”

He didn’t look back.

The Hokage’s head was turned when Ryouma came in; he was speaking quietly to the pudgy, balding man on his left, Oita Gennosuke, while the hawk-masked ANBU commander listened with her chin on her fist. Sagara, Ryouma remembered hazily, from a very long twenty-four hours ago. A third man was just turning away from the dark window: Shibata Tomohiro, the commander of Torture & Interrogation. They’d met briefly a year ago, when Ryouma’s team had brought a prisoner in. Even in a shinobi village, that scarring was impossible to forget.

Ryouma knelt in the shinobi’s bow, and waited for them to acknowledge him.

They didn’t seem to be in any hurry. The Hokage finished whatever he was saying; Oita barked a short laugh. Shibata’s soft, husky lisp contributed a suggestion. Footsteps on the floor; a chair scraped. Yondaime said, finally, “At ease, shinobi.”

He straightened, setting his feet a careful shoulder-width apart, tucking the bandaged hand and the good one at the small of his back. Shibata had taken a seat beside Oita; the owl-masked ANBU vice-commander was on Sagara’s far side. Their eyes itched on his skin.

The ANBU commander demanded, “Explain your failure at the second trial.”

Ryouma’s fingernails bit into his palm.

“I trusted,” he said. “Too much and too little. I believed Akiyama when he said Hatake was hurt and holed up; it tracked with what I knew of him, that if he was hurt he’d go to ground. And I didn’t just toss Akiyama my med-kit and go on my way, ‘cause I didn’t knowhim, and I wanted to be sure Kaka— Hatake was all right. I could’ve sent a clone in. I didn’t think of that.”

What was left of Shibata’s face wasn’t easy to read, but he didn’t look impressed. “So he used what he knew of your personal feelings for Kakashi, and played on them?”

“He saw us talking at the first stage,” Ryouma said. His right hand flexed, impotently, in its puffy prison of bandages. Still only halfway there, but at least it moved. He swallowed. “I wasn’t particularly discreet. I’m guessing he picked up on my, uh, overly emotional reaction to Hatake’s use of the Sharingan, and figured I’d be easy prey. And decent bait.”

Which he had been, until Kakashi refused to play by Akiyama’s rules. Shinobi Rule of Conduct 48:A shinobi chooses his own battlefields.Ryouma’d just blundered into someone else’s.

Oita Gennosuke said dispassionately, “Quote me Endo Tsuyoshi’s third theorem on the transference of matter in an unequal henge.”

sh*t,Ryouma nearly said. He bit his tongue. “I don’t know Endo Tsuyoshi, sir. But when you’re henge’ing into something smaller—or larger—than you really are, the extra mass has to go to somewhere, or come from somewhere. Getting bigger’s easy; you use compressed chakra to fill out the bulk. Getting smaller, you can compressyourself—which is what kids at the Academy do, until they realize any idiot can tell a fifty-kilo shuriken apart from the real deal. If you really want to make an unequal henge that nobody can tell, you’ve got to find somewhere else to put the mass. Best option’d probably be sticking part of yourself in the Summoning Dimension, but I’m not that good at space-time ninjutsu.”

As Sagara and the Hokage had surely already noticed. He managed not to wince.

Shibata’s ruined mouth pulled sideways, baring missing teeth, as he jotted something down on the scroll in front of him. He looked up. “Is that why you so jealously protect the jutsu that youaregood at?”

Firmer ground. Ryouma scrambled for it gratefully. “Any shinobi has a right to protect the jutsu he’s created,” he said. “The clans have their kinjutsu. The sensei of my genin team had a seal branded on her forehead when she turned three years old, meant to slag her eyes the moment she died. If the Hyuuga can guard their doujutsu with their daughters’ lives, I don’t see why I should sharemywork with anyone with a Sharingan eye.”

“The Sharingan can’t copy a bloodline limit,” the T&I commander observed. “Your jutsu are merely applied elemental chakra and seals, aren’t they? Is there some reason you couldn’t teach them to, say…” He glanced casually around the room. “Yondaime-sama?”

Yondaime was sitting back in his chair, elbow on the armrest, curled hand braced under his chin. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

He’d complimented Ryouma on the jutsu, once, before he was Hokage, back when he was only a legend. Konoha’s Yellow Flash pausing with a shoulder-pat for a fifteen-year-old chuunin on a shattered battlefield under a sodden sky—did he still remember it?

Probably not the way Ryouma did. The warmth of that brief clasp had lingered for weeks, until they pushed far north enough that the rain turned to snow and frostbite, and shivering ninja swore they’d never be warm again.

Ryouma said carefully, “I’ve already described the basics of the techniques and their effects for the Records Department, as the law requires. If Yondaime-sama requested it, I’d willingly teach him. I don’t see why he’dwantto, though. He said it reeked.”

The Hokage smiled slightly. “It did,” he said.

“It’s certainly ausefuljutsu,” Shibata pressed. “Suppose your captain ordered you to teach your teammates?”

Well, Ryouma thought, there were worse hills to die on.

He said, “I’d refuse. My captain directs me in combat. That doesn’t give him a right to my jutsu, any more than it gives him a right to my body. I’d hope ANBU doesn’t overlook theftorrape from its officers. Sir.”

Silence. It stretched out far longer than any ordinary pause should have, while three men and two masks stared at him without a flicker of expression between them. His palms were beginning to sweat. He curled his left hand around the bandaged right, and lifted his chin.

Shibata said at last, very softly, “I keep our rapists out of the general flock.”

Ryouma swallowed.

“Identify your three worst flaws,” Oita said, “and your methods of rectifying them.”

That wasn’t, actually, much of a save.

“I can’t read well,” he said, reluctantly. “I nearly got myself killed in the second trial because I couldn’t read the mission scroll.” He fixed his gaze on the red and white hat hanging off the high back of Yondaime’s chair. “Usually I get my teammates, or someone at the mission desk, to read the briefing. And write the report. It’s worked so far but not always. And sometimes I act without thinking things through enough—or at all. Moving on impulse’s saved my life, more’n a few times, but it got meandKakashi hurt this time. I did think, but I should’ve thought more.”

Third thing. They wouldn’t care that sometimes he hooked up with the wrong people, or that he always messed things up afterwards. They were probably looking for him to admit he was too stubborn, but he still didn’t see how that was a flaw. His grandfather’d called him a stupid bastard, and Hitomi-sensei’d called him an idiot brat, but he’d created a brand new class of jutsu without help from anyone; wasn’t that enough to prove them wrong?

“I’ve been told I have an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation,” he said at last. “So I’m joining ANBU.”

Someone snorted. The Hokage’s mouth tugged in a crooked little curve. “And why should we take you?”

“Iamsmart,” Ryouma said. “I’ve got two B-rank and one A-rank jutsu no one else in the world has, and they’re all deadly. I’m a good strategist and a dirty fighter and I’ve got a really good memory. I work well on a team.” Mostly. There were a couple of team captains from his chuunin and special jounin days who might dispute that, but they’d been bastards anyway.

He said, “I’m loyal to Konoha. And I don’t give up.”

“Multiply four hundred and thirty by twenty-seven,” Oita said.

All right, maybe not that smart. But the T&I commander spoke up while Ryouma was still wrestling with numbers. “If you died tomorrow, what would you regret?”

The extra zeroes fell away and were lost forever. Ryouma opened his mouth, and nothing came.

Shibata’s scar-skewed grin could make children cry. “Haven’t thought about it? Well, that does make it easier to romanticize a deathwish.” He leaned back in his chair, and glanced at the others. “I’m done. Anyone else?”

Oita shook his head. The ANBU commander sat still and silent, with the vice-commander just as unreadable at her shoulder. The Hokage dropped his hand, fingers curling lightly over the carved armrest of his chair. “Thank you, shinobi. You may go.”

Ryouma bowed, backed up two steps, and turned for the door he’d seen reflected in the wide bank of windows behind the Hokage’s desk, the one he hadn’t come through.

His hands were shaking.

There wasn’t a clock in the room and Kakashi didn’t wear a watch, but every shinobi knew how to measure time. Moonfall, heartbeats—the interviews lasted twenty minutes a candidate, give or take. Which meant four hours for twelve candidates.

Or, translated, it’d take until the thin edge of eternity to find out what happened next.

The door clicked gently against the jamb. Ryouma’s reflected window-image slipped out, caught sight of an empty chair, and made a beeline for it. He dropped down into it and stared at his hands. Like every other candidate in the room, he looked not unlike a person who’d been schooled with metal rebars for a few hours, minus the actual bleeding.

Most of them would have preferred the rebars, probably.

Kakashi pulled himself away from the window.

“Questioning your life choices yet?” he asked, settling into the empty seat on Ryouma’s left.

Ryouma’s eyes stayed fixed on his hands. “I’m reconsidering taking a vow of silence and running off into the mountains to become a monk,” he said, and dragged his gaze up to view a middle-distance of invisible horrors. “They wanted me to domath.”

They wanted me tocarried a suggestion ofI couldn’t dowith it.

“Not your strong suit?” Kakashi asked.

Ryouma’s glare would have atomized a more flammable man. “Do you always ask questions you already know the answer to?”

Obito had asked him that once.

Against his will, Kakashi felt himself grin. “I like to confirm things.” He held up one hand. “Can you count how many fingers?”

“Three, after I bite two off,” Ryouma said darkly. “You probably sat down and did crossword puzzles with the commanders, didn’t you?”

“We had a group hug first,” Kakashi said, settling back in his chair. “But then crosswords, and drinks after, because I am special enough to warrant it. Have you noticed how ANBU is just reallyniceto the people it likes?”

Ryouma slouched backwards, long legs stretching out like a land-bridge. “They’ll be sending you fruit baskets next. And slipping roofies in your drink.”

Unbidden, Kakashi’s thoughts circled back around to that blossoming warmth in the T&I commander’s scent. But you couldn’t blame a professional sad*st for reacting to a subordinate sayingunder orders, I’d commit genocide for you. Perfect obedience gave everyone a thrill.

He reeled himself back to solid ground. “I doubt it,” he said.

A quick glance flicked his way, then resettled on the opposite wall. “Well, maybe not,” said Ryouma. “Yondaime-sama’d probably make them compete for your hand instead. Slay monsters and bring back three perfect fruit from a tree in the garden of the gods, that sort of thing. Plus a dowry.” He folded his arms behind his head and slouched down even more, crossing his legs at the ankles. His voice was lighter now. “I bet you’re worth atleasteight cows.”

“You’ve put a disturbing amount of thought into this,” Kakashi said at length.

“Don’t worry, I’m fresh out of cows,” Ryouma said.

Why did people always saydon’t worrybefore they said entirely worrisome things? Like medics who saidthis won’t hurt a bit.

He wondered what Rin would make of Ryouma.

A purse, probably, if Ryouma annoyed her enough.

“How’s your hand?” Kakashi asked.

The awkward club of bandaging made a reappearance, pulled down from behind Ryouma’s head. “I’ll keep it. Probably.” He made a visible effort to curl his fingers, which only curved a slight dent into the fluffy white block. “Feeling’s back, at least.”

And full recovery expected, otherwise they wouldn’t bother letting him stand the third Trial. So, no harm, no foul, no reason to feel guilty—and yet. He could still see the glisten of tendons paring open under the scalpel blade.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry about that. I should’ve—well, I probably could’ve handled it better.”

By not sayinghandledto the one-handed man for starters.

Ryouma’s head jerked up, like a horse hitting an unexpected jump. “Youshould’ve? How aboutIshouldn’t’ve gotten caught in the first place? You had no reason to get involved, and you did anyway.” He rubbed his left thumb across his wrist, tracing the bandaged path of the blade. “I owe you a lot more than just a ‘thanks.’ Let me know when your movie comes out. I’ll take you to it.”

Kakashi couldn’t actually think of a more potentially awkward experience than going to an Icha Icha movie (Icha Icha movie!) with company. What if he combusted in his seat? What if hemade a noise?

There would betwelve-foot naked people on the screen. Who could watch that in touching distance of someone else?

Though, maybe if he watched it six times first, he’d be desensitized enough…

“Or you could show me your jutsu,” he suggested instead.

Ryouma’s mouth shaped an automatic word, and closed on it. He rubbed his aching wrist again, thought of the cold sting of the scalpel at his temple, Kakashi’s calm voice, the electric screaming of a thousand birds. The hot spray of blood on his face, Akiyama’s death in trade for his own.

Hewasgrateful. He hadn’t wanted to die blind and paralyzed in that stinking cave, had wanted even less to live on as a handless, useless cripple. He hadn’t gone out courting death, no matter what the soft-voice T&I commander implied, but…

If he’d died there, his jutsu would have died with him.

He tipped his head against the wall. “Teach me the Raikiri, and I’ll show you the Nikutai Hakai.”

Kakashi tilted him a wry look. “The melting pig one? Doesn’t sound like a fair trade.”

“Nice try, but you’re not going to insult me into offering you something better.” Ryouma folded his arms across his chest. “You probably couldn’t even use it right anyway. You’d electrocute instead of melting. And then you’d throw up on top of it.” He was beginning to cheer up again. “Is your sense of smell really almost as good as an Inuzuka’s?”

Copy-nin Kakashi folded his arms over his chest, crossed his legs at the ankle, and slouched down lower in an exact mirror image. “Nice try,” he mimicked, voice dipping a shade lower into Ryouma’s baritone. “But you’re not going to insult me into giving you information.”

“My god,” Yamada Kasumi said, from the bench across the room. “Do youhaveto flirt in front of everyone?”

“Shut up!” Norita Takeshi hissed. “They were just getting to the good part!”

“Watch and learn, children,” Ryouma advised kindly, but Kakashi closed up like a trap snapping, straightening in his chair, hands falling loosely to his lap. He looked away, toward the window, and the thin grey light beginning to relieve the darkness.

Kasumi sniffed.

Ryouma stared at her until she looked away. Kakashi’s shoulders didn’t loosen even then, but after a few more minutes he pulled the orange book out of his hip-pouch and began to read.

A few of the others were napping. Takeshi had a magazine scrounged up from somewhere; Kasumi settled back on her bench and half-lidded her eyes, apparently trying to meditate. Ryouma considered pacing, just to annoy her, but the door opened while he was still plotting out the most advantageous route. Kurosagi Kaito came in, grey-faced, and fell into a chair.

Eight here, four left. Another hour at least, maybe two. Ryouma was starting to envy the readers. He was still too keyed up to nap, and Kaito’s legs were in the way of his pacing path.

Well, there were other ways for a tense, nervy ninja to amuse himself. Ryouma slipped a kunai out of his holster, and kicked Kaito’s chair. “Five Finger Fillet. Your hands shaky?”

Kaito blinked, roused, and scowled. “Yourhand’s bandaged.”

“So we’ll trade off.” Ryouma bared his teeth. “Think you can’t?”

“I’m in,” Takeshi said, tossing his magazine aside and sliding down cross-legged onto the floor. Kaito bristled, flexed his broad, scarred hands, and joined in.

Blue-haired Abe Shintaro came too, crowding a chair aside to give them room. They paired off, placed bets, inspected each other’s kunai—no one wanted to trust his fingers to someone else’s badly balanced blade. Ryouma volunteered his left hand first. He placed it palm-down on the scuffed wooden floorboards, and looked up into Takeshi’s muddy hazel eyes.

“Hatake Kakashi killed the last man who injured my hand,” he said. “Just so’s you know.”

BehindIcha Icha, Kakashi went carefully still. Muted flares of surprise rippled through half a dozen chakra signatures, but whether that was because the information was new or just because Ryouma hadsaid it—

“I felt the chakra surge at the valley,” Takeshi said slowly. “I knew Akiyama.”

Not all jounin ninja were chakra sensors, but most of them had at least an edge. Raikari wasn’t a subtle jutsu. Most likely, every person in this room had felt Akiyama die.

Kakashi lowered his book and gave Ryouma a look that, hopefully, conveyed his willingness to go two for two if Ryouma didn’tshut up.

Ryouma didn’t glance over. “You know me, too,” he said to Takeshi, eye to eye with the other man. “If you figure that what happened in the valley was anything other than Akiyama gone bad, and Kakashi intervening before it got worse, here’s your chance.”

Takeshi snorted. “Yeah, right. Akiyama was ajerk. Calm your feathers, hardass.”

The kunai flicked like a snake, and hit the floorboard between Ryouma’s first finger and thumb.

Ryouma grinned. “Aww, I knew you liked me better,” he said, without glancing down at the steel shivering against his hand.

“Oh my god,” Kasumi muttered. “He’s worse than an alley cat.”

Kakashi was starting to not like her.

Takeshi leaned forward, pulled the kunai out of the wood, and began to gently tap the point between Ryouma’s fingers. Thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky—then back again. Genin liked to play this game. The point was to build up speed and complexity without removing a finger and prematurely ending your career. Not much of a challenge for a jounin.

Which was, presumably, why Takeshi wasn’t actually looking down.

The kunai picked up speed and broke pattern, weaving a river of constantly moving silver over Ryouma’s hand. The point bit into wood faster and faster, digging out chips.Thunkthunkthunk.There was barely an audible pause between hits.

“Ah!”

Ryouma snatched his hand back. A bright droplet of blood fell onto the massacred wood.

“You moved,” Takeshi accused.

“You cut me,” Ryouma threw back. He curled his index finger and licked the thin cut, hissed, and sucked it to stem the bleeding. Then held out his hand. “Your turn.”

Reluctantly, Takeshi handed over the kunai and spread his hand on the floor. Abe and the other one, Kaito, held their game to watch, fascinated.

Ryouma weighed the kunai judgingly—it looked well balanced to Kakashi, except for maybe a slight tilt towards the hilt—and flicked it hard between Takeshi’s index and middle fingers. It slammed into the wood, quivering, the razor edge barely kissing skin.

“You do know I’m not left-handed, right?” Ryouma said, like an afterthought.

“Honestly? More concerned about you being an asshole,” Takeshi said. “If you chop anything off, I’m going to use your testicl*s for a skin hat.”

“Small hat,” Kaito observed, with a grin.

“Didn’t think you’d been lookin’,” Ryouma said sweetly. “Bet there’s a bathroom around here somewhere if you want a closer acquaintance.”

“Suck it, Tousaki,” said Kaito, unruffled.

A grin slashed across Ryouma’s mouth. “I can do that, too—” he began.

“Oh mygod,” Takeshi broke in. “I’m sorry I mentioned the parts you think with. Just stab me before I die of boredom already.”

“Since you ask so nicely.” Ryouma yanked the kunai from the floor and drove it back down, a sharp steel lick between Takeshi’s fingers, then up again. There was no slow start here; Ryouma set at a blistering pace and got faster, blurring a web of liquid light between Takeshi’s frozen fingers.

Idly, Kakashi wondered how old that oak hardwood was. Probably antique.

If Ryouma was right-handed, he was nearly ambidextrous with a blade. The pattern changed once, then again, moving so fast Kakashi could almost see images in the steely blur. Like Takeshi, Ryouma wasn’t looking at his hand; his steady gaze was fixed on his volunteer-victim.

After a minute, Takeshi said, “Um.”

Ryouma’s teeth flashed. He flicked the kunai up and let it go. It spun six times in tight, blurring turns and slammed down between Takeshi’s middle and ring finger, like a bannerless flagpole.

“Sorry about the hat,” he said.

Kaito whistled between his teeth. “sh*t, Tousaki.”

Takeshi pulled the kunai free and inspected his fingers—looking for a painless papercut, Kakashi suspected. When he found nothing, he tossed the kunai back to Ryouma like a prize. “Not bad,” he said.

The kunai twirled a silver pinwheel before Ryouma shoved it into his holster, ducking his head with modesty that even Kakashi recognized as fake. “I’ll collect from you later,” he said. He sucked his bleeding finger again, and scrambled back into his abandoned chair.

Kakashi regarded him curiously. “You’re like a giant, weird labrador,” he decided.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Ryouma said. “What’s a labrador?”

“Breed of dog in Water Country. Overly friendly, not much between the ears,” Kakashi said. “Why risk your fingers?”

One broad shoulder shrugged. “Ever do something you probably shouldn’t just ‘cause you can?”

“No,” said Kakashi.

On his blind side, the door clicked. He turned to see a white-faced redhead stumble through. She caught sight of the beginning game between Abe and Kaito, and dropped down next to them like her knees didn’t quite want to hold her. “My turn next,” she said.

Three candidates left.

The morning dragged on, as the sky outside the window lightened from slate to ash grey. Toriyama came in, placid-faced but sheened with sweat. Then Hakone, just as Ryouma was beginning to nod off against Kakashi’s shoulder. Finally, as the birds were beginning to raise their raucous dawn chorus, Ayane came in. She held her head very high and proud, but there was a tightness to her mouth and exhaustion in her eyes.

Ryouma stood to give her his chair. She nodded at him, unsmiling, and sank down to tilt her head against the wall and close her eyes.

Ash turned to pearl in the sky. The village would be waking by now, bakeries opening their doors, guards trading shifts on the walls. Ryouma traded off with Matsumoto Haruka at the window to watch for a little while. Two children raced past the closed doors of the Academy; an old street sweeper bent over his broom, resting at the end of his route. A limping chuunin in a bloodied uniform detoured into a coffee shop. And behind Ryouma, the door opened.

He turned. The other candidates were all at attention, on their feet or straight-backed in their seats. Kaito shifted a casual foot to cover the scarred floorboards.

“The Hokage is ready for you,” the owl-masked vice commander said.

They filed back in, trying not to shuffle, and ranged out in front of the desk. Ryouma found himself between Kasumi and Hakone; Kakashi was near the end of the line, with his blind side facing the wall. His masked face gave away nothing at all.

Neither did the Hokage’s, or his commanders’. They were all standing, even the Yondaime, with his flame-hemmed coat hanging in crisp white lines from his shoulders and his hands clasped behind his back. He said gravely, “I thank you for your service, and for your desire to serve. Norita, Himura, Kurosagi, and Toriyama, please follow the vice-commander to the west antechamber.”

No one spoke. Ryouma saw Himura Tadao’s face briefly as he bowed and stepped back from the line, shuttered, showing nothing of disappointment. The door back to the room where they’d first waited closed without a creak.

“Hatake Kakashi,” the Yondaime said. “Will you serve as ANBU of your own free will, knowing its dangers and the sacrifices you will be called to make?”

A heartbeat’s pause. Then Kakashi said firmly, “Yes, Hokage-sama.”

“Matsumoto Haruka,” the Hokage said, and moved down the line, calling them each by name: Abe Shintaro, Yamada Kasumi, Tousaki Ryouma, Shibata Hakone—

Ryouma startled. He’d never made the connection with Hakone’s seldom-used family name. He stole a glance sideways, saw Hakone’s lean, moody face carved from stone as he gave his response: “Yes, Hokage-sama.”

At the front of the room, the T&I commander’s scar-wrecked mouth pulled in the slightest of smiles.

“Tottori Tsubame,” the Hokage said, and the red-haired woman with the bandaged hands bowed her head.

Ayane was last, and her voice rang like steel. The Hokage’s stern expression bloomed into a broad smile. “Thank you,” he said. The bright blue gaze swept over them. His voice softened. “I hoped you all would.” He sounded as if he meant it for each of them, individually. Ryouma found himself smiling back.

“Sagara-san will lead you to ANBU HQ,” Yondaime said. “The Quartermaster needs your measurements, andyouall need to fill out your paperwork.Somuch paperwork. You’ll take your oaths, and receive your masks, at sunrise tomorrow, after which you’ll be given the tattoo and your new teams will take you in hand. If at any time in the next 24 hours you change your mind and wish to remain in regular service, no one will think the less of you. Though it may be wise to avoid ANBU’s quartermaster for the next fortnight or so, till he forgets about the all-nighter he and his assistants pulled getting your uniforms ready. Whatever decision you make, Konoha is grateful for your service.”

He bowed.

Startled, the candidates bowed lower. When Ryouma straightened again, the Hokage was smiling at them.

“Take ‘em away, Sagara,” he said.

ANBU’s commander—Kakashi’s new commander—stepped forward.

“Follow me,” she said, and took them through the main doors.

On the way out, Kakashi saw the T&I commander heading purposefully towards the antechamber, where the four rejected candidates waited. Oita was hot on his heels. Not all the candidates were being returned to regular jounin or special-jounin status, Kakashi suspected.

As useful as Intel and, arguably, T&I was to Konoha, he was profoundly glad he wasn’t one of them.

Sagara took them down a complicated back-way of stairs Kakashi recognized from an adolescence partially spent rattling around the Hokage’s oversized palace, chasing Naruto out of dangerous crannies. Behind them, Minato’s sun-flare of chakra faded down to a distant glimmer.

“If you are called to deliver a report to the Hokage in uniform, or to perform guard duty, this is the way you will exit,” Sagara said. “Remember it.”

She stopped at a blank wall, formed a seal, and touched the plaster.

A door opened seamlessly.

More than one of the candidates blinked. Kakashi’s eyebrows lifted. Well, that answered a few long-standing questions.

The door led into a downwards-sloping tunnel, which, if Kakashi had his bearings correctly, took them into the connecting network of emergency tunnels carved into the Hokage’s monument. He didn’t recognizethistunnel, but that just meant Minato had done his work well.

Without warning, Sagara broke into a fast run. The candidates leapt after her.

The tunnel cut a razor-straight line until it hit three narrow switchbacks, places a single ninja could hold off an invading force by bottlenecking them, then another straight line right up to a vertical shaft.

“Lift for injured,” Sagara said, pointing at a slender crack carved into the base of the rock face. They had those in the regular tunnels, too, discretely hidden unless you knew where to look. A seal would open doors in the rock, and a wooden platform could be raised or lowered by a pulley operation.

As they were demonstrably uninjured, Sagara did not invite them to use it. Instead, she ran directly up the shaft wall, fleet on chakra-lined feet. Her chakra control was perfect. Flocking at her heels, the candidates were just as good.

Kakashi hung a little to the back, watching his new teammates with interest. He wasn’t the only one—to his right, Ayane briefly met his eye, then looked away. Ryouma was ahead of them both, moving with a loping, long-legged stride that cost him very little effort. He was a head taller than most of the candidates, but he didn’t jostle anyone for a better position.

The wall was at least the height of the whole monument, but easier to run up without anyone’s giant stone nostrils getting in the way. They reached a flat ledge, Sagara opened a new door with a different seal, and the candidates filed out of a bush-shrouded rocky outcrop onto the training field from the first Trial.

The door sealed smoothly behind them, and even with his acute chakra-senses, Kakashi couldn’t tell it was there.

Across the village, the sun was rising over the main gate, which made it nearly 7am. Any other non-mission day, he’d be making tracks to the Hero’s Stone about now.

Without any disrespect to Obito, Kakashi had to admit this was more interesting.

Sagara took them across the training field, through a grove of trees, to the first of a set of imposing buildings nestled behind the Hokages’ stony heads.

“HQ, barracks, medical office, cafeteria,” Sagara said rapidly, pointing out landmarks. “T&I building. Stay out of there unless directly invited.”

Eyeing the squat, grey-stone building, Kakashi didn’t need telling twice.

“The QM lives at the back of the HQ building,” Sagara went on. “He is one man with a heavy workload, and very few assistants. You will treat him with extreme respect, or you will find yourself in a co*ckroach mask. He has full control over the designs. You have none. Do not argue with him.”

Ryouma crossed his arms over his chest, flattening his unbandaged hand over a finger-length gash in the side of his jounin-vest. “Do we repair our own gear?” he asked.

The hawk-mask regarded him. “No,” she said. “You maintain it. The QM will repair any damage, or provide replacements. He does not attend to regular jounin wear, or personalized weapons. Those remain your responsibility.”

Kakashi was starting to suspect the QM was a touchy man.

Ryouma nodded, and didn’t risk another question.

“I expect rookies to remain silent in the HQ,” Sagara said, and led them through the front doors.

For a building with a rich history of bloodshed behind it, the ANBU HQ was surprisingly office-like. Instead of the usual hardwood flooring, bland grey carpeting stretched from wall to wall. A pale wooden desk stood to the left side of the door, manned by a grizzled older shinobi—a veteran, Kakashi judged, by the tight chakra signature and missing hand. The walls were taupe.

“Commander,” said the desk-ninja, tapping his stump to his left shoulder.

Sagara nodded.

There were more elevators. Sagara led them down the stairs. A winding, intricate set of hallways itched Kakashi’s senses with the metal-taste of latent chakra. They passed multiple closed doors with, as far as he could tell, no coherent numbering system. None of them were paper-screen; everything here was solid wood or stone. The walls and carpet remained the same grey and taupe combination.

Curiously, there were no scuffs or scratch marks anywhere.

Any invading ninja would have a bastard of a time navigating without a detailed map to guide him. Kakashi’s respect crept up a notch.

Sagara halted at an entirely unremarkable door and rapped twice, then three more times. After a moment, the door opened and a thin, grey-haired man peered at them over half-moon spectacles.

“Sagara-sama,” he said, with a deep, respectful bow. “The new candidates?”

“Eight of them this time, Wada-san,” Sagara said. “Is Morita-san available?”

“One moment, please,” said the assistant, with another bow. He withdrew, leaving the door partially open.

How specialwerethe ANBU uniforms, that this much respect went to the man who made them?

The door pulled back. Sagara bowed slightly, and Kakashi blinked. The Quartermaster wasyoung.A middling-height, sturdily built man with the distinctive darker skin and lighter hair of Lightning, but without the typical beard—and then, because he couldn’t help himself, Kakashi saw the other details. Smaller hands, a throat unbroken by the profile of an Adam’s apple, the lines of flattening bandages beneath the shirt. And when Morita spoke, a voice that held more sand than gravel.

“Sagara-sama.” A broad smile showed very white teeth. “You’ve brought me fresh meat.”

Sagara saidhe, which meant it washe, no matter the original landscape. Some villages were more strict about maintaining binary lines, but Konoha had always leaned towards accepting the shades of grey.

“Don’t feel you need to be nice to them,” Sagara said. “Send them over to Briefing Room 37-A when you’re done with them.”

“Of course,” said Morita. His eyes swept over the eight candidates, and landed on Ryouma. “You, tall guy, let’s have you first.”

Ryouma was at the back of the cluster, as usual for any crowd in which he stood more than a head taller than the shortest, which meant an awkward sidle between Haruka and Kasumi and then trying not to bang into the doorframe. The rest of the candidates trooped after him, which rather defeated the point.

The Quartermaster’s office looked like a demented tailor’s warehouse. Rows of shelving stretched nearly to the reinforced beams of the ten-foot ceilings, with every space crammed full and not a one labeled. Wada, the spectacled assistant, and a plump woman with a grandmother’s smile looked up from the tables where they sat at chattering sewing machines surrounded by mounds of black fabric. There were bins of kunai, trays of bandage rolls, a table heaped with shattered and bloodied armor. Painted masks glared down from the supports between the shelves: foxes, insects, rats, boars, birds, shapes that refused to assemble into a face. Ryouma rather liked the look of an open-mouthed roaring dragon near the ceiling, but they probably saved that for the fire-breathers.

“Stand here,” Morita said, indicating a low, broad wooden box on the floor. Ryouma approached cautiously, and stopped beside the box.

“Hmm,” the Quartermaster said, drawing a flexible tape thoughtfully between his slender hands. “Yes, perhaps you’d better stay down here.” He circled Ryouma once, head tilted like a curious bird, and stopped just behind him. Ryouma’s shoulder blades itched; he forced himself not to turn.

“Vest, shirt, and hitai-ate off,” Morita announced. “Keep the pants.”

Takeshi would have catcalled, but Takeshi wasn’t here. Ryouma unzipped his vest and dropped it on the floor, peeled his shirt over his head and wrestled the sleeve off over his bandaged hand. He placed his hitai-ate more carefully on top of the pile, then straightened. His skin prickled with cold, andeveryonewas staring at his tattoos. He braced his hands on his hips, and let them look their fill.

Morita circled again, stopped in front of Ryouma, and reached out to tap the bright, glittering eye of the coiled dragon tattooed over his shoulder and heart, just above the silver nipple-ring. “Lovely design. Personal meaning?”

“Yeah,” Ryouma said.

Morita waited a polite moment for him to elaborate. Ryouma rode it out.

“Very personal, I see,” the Quartermaster concluded, unruffled. He took Ryouma’s left hand and turned it thoughtfully, splaying the long fingers out. “Ninjutsu user. You’ll want fingerless gloves.” He tapped Ryouma’s forearm, where a livid red scar cut through an older line faded to white. “Block with your forearms a lot? Reinforced guards. What’s your weapon of choice?”

Ryouma blinked.

“Bare hands, for preference,” he said finally. “Basic kunai and shuriken otherwise. I’m not bad with a ninjato.”

“Ever try a naginata?”

Ryouma shook his head. “That’s more a samurai weapon, isn’t it?”

“For the unimaginative,” Morita sniffed. “I have one. You should take it with you. Aiko, grab me the one, you know which.”

The plump woman eased her foot off the treadle of the sewing machine and hoisted herself to her feet, limping back into the rows of shelves. Ryouma tried to imagine himself swinging a six-foot spear around and then…what, dropping it in the mud while he performed the seals for theNikutai Tokasu? The whole point of his fighting style was to get close enough to land even a glancing hit. Maybe he could use it to spear fish.

“We’ll proceed,” Morita announced, and whipped the end of his tape measure around Ryouma’s neck. He was moving on before the lizard part of Ryouma’s brain had even begun to panic, measuring shoulders, chest, waist, hips, inseam, and a series of increasingly bizarre items, like the circumference of Ryouma’s thigh and the distance from the hinge of his jaw to his lips. He paused, curiously, to brush the hair back from Ryouma’s right ear, exposing the angling scar that had sliced off the tip and furrowed the scalp. “Forget to duck?”

Ryouma grinned. “You shoulda seen the sword. You’d be asking how I’ve still got the top of my skull.”

Morita tugged cheerfully at his hair. “Good job keeping it. It’d be a shame to lose this nice hair.” He’d climbed up onto the box at some point in his frenzy of measurement; he hopped off now, and took another critical pacing turn around Ryouma. “That’ll do you,” he decided at last. “Ah, Aiko, thank you.” He accepted the polished two-meter shaft, ran a hand over the sheath capping the long, curved blade, and held it out to Ryouma. “Play with it for a week. If you don’t like it by then, bring it back. If the blade is even scratched, I’ll have your scalp.”

Maybe Ryouma wouldn’t take up spearfishing after all.

The Quartermaster was looking over his shoulder already. “You, with the hair,” he said, pointing.

Ryouma had crouched to scoop up his shirt and vest. He stopped, looking up. The candidates were staring at each other—or, more accurately, at each other’s hair. Abe ruffled a hand through his blue spikes, looking unsure. Tottori tugged her red braid.

Kakashi sighed through his mask, tucked his book away, and pushed himself off the wall, unzipping his flak vest as he came. “Do you actually need my shirt off?”

Morita’s eyes narrowed. “Doyouwant a shirt three sizes too big under the arms and armor two inches loose in the gut? Those jounin uniforms are barely tailored at all. Shirt comes off. You can keep the mask.”

The vest dropped on the floor by Ryouma’s feet. Ryouma shrugged his own vest on, not bothering to force his shirt over the bandage, and tucked his hitai-ate in his pocket. He straightened, just as Kakashi set his back firmly to the other candidates and pulled his shirt over his head, taking the hitai-ate with it. The mask stayed put, a thin, stretchy tube of blue material that just skirted his scarred collarbones.

There wasn’t, actually, much skin that wasn’t scarred, from the purple-seamed closed left eye to the shiny burn ripple stretching over the sharp curve of his hip bone to burrow beneath his waistband. Most of them were healed and old, faded silver by time or medical jutsu, but some were still raised and red. Slicing and raking blade marks, acid dimples, crescent-moon animal bites on his forearms and wrists, shrapnel gouges in his shoulders, a barbed wire tear wrapping up his left forearm to the elbow, debris-peppered blast burns on his stomach and chest. The line on his shoulder where Akiyama’s scalpel had hit was knitted closed, but still pink.

Beneath the scars, Kakashi was muscled lean and spare, all glass-cut planes and angles. Veins knotted under the thin skin up his forearms. The hard lines of his stomach muscles were interrupted by one small, unexpected surgical scar. If Ryouma had to guess, Kakashi’d had his appendix out.

Morita was looking at Kakashi’s hands, not his abs. “Reinforced gloves,” he concluded. He skimmed a professional eye from hips to hair, and frowned. “What, you block with youreverythinga lot? I’m not sure we’ve got armor tough enough for you. You may have to take lessons from the tall one here on how to dodge.”

“Especially if you insist on leaving my shoulders bare,” Kakashi said coolly.

Ryouma snickered. The Quartermaster flicked him an irritated glance. “You got an opinion, you can air it outside.” He turned back to Kakashi. “How do you feel about co*ckroaches?”

Ryouma laughed all the way back to the door.

Apparently constructive criticism counted as less than extreme respect. Kakashi considered a future filled with bugs.

“I think if I saw a man-sized co*ckroach face coming at me, I’d run the other way,” he said, after a moment.

Morita gave a soundless laugh, shoulders shaking. “You’ve got guts,” he said. “Ever try a kusarigama?”

A sickle on a weighted chain, good for middle-range and close-range, depending on whether you swung or stabbed. “I prefer a tanto for a short-blade,” Kakashi said. “Chains are useful, but I like a longer length than a kusarigama provides.”

Eyes the color of light whiskey gave Kakashi a weighing look and apparently judged him lacking in weapons, because Morita said, “Kyoketsu-shoge. There’s one around here somewhere.”

The female assistant hefted herself up again, limping into the stacks without complaint. Morita’s measuring tape snapped around Kakashi’s neck.

Kakashi managed not to twitch.

“Do you need to keep that eye closed?” Morita asked, flicking two fingers towards the shuttered Sharingan.

“Most of the time,” Kakashi said.

“A hitai-ate won’t fit beneath an ANBU mask,” Morita said briskly. “Can’t give you an eye-patch, either. Mask’d get in your way if you needed to yank it off. Does it hurt to hold it closed for long?”

“It’s not comfortable,” Kakashi admitted.

“Hm,” said Morita. “I could rig a screen over the eye-hole, with a thread to yank it off—but you don’t want trailing ribbons flapping about. Something chakra would burn away? A mesh, maybe. You’d need to replace it every time, though.” He slapped Kakashi on the bare biceps. “You’re a challenge!”

Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry?”

“Just stop blocking with your chest, and we’re in business,” Morita said, and returned to his increasingly invasive measurements, humming a cheerful warbling tune. His hands were warm and professional, like the better class of medics, but Kakashi couldn’t help tensing when the tape measure laid along the flat of his jaw and touched his masked mouth.

Morita pulled it away, coiling it around his wrist. “That should do it. Ah, thank you, Aiko.”

A wickedly sharp blade was pressed into Kakashi’s hands.

He’d studied kyoketsu-shoge back in the academy, but he’d never worked with one. They were the precursor to kusarigama—a peasant weapon, from the pre-ninja days when farmers had defended their own lands and used the tools that came readily to hand. This one seemed… slightly updated. The main blade was about the length of Kakashi’s forearm from elbow to fingertips, forged from folded steel and backed by a shorter blade curving like a sickle from the black, leather-wrapped hilt. A slender eighteen-foot chain was fixed to the base of the hilt, and neatly looped into a ribbon-tied coil.

The weight was beautiful.

Kakashi tested the edge with his thumb, and cut himself. “Do you give weapons to everyone?”

“Not everyone,” Morita said. “Just the ones who look like they’ve got something to learn.”

“The smart ones, then,” Kakashi said, dryly amused. He tilted his head towards the door. “Except that doesn’t explain Tousaki.”

“Hey!” Ryouma yelled from the hallway. “I don’t insult your face!”

“You can’t see my face,” Kakashi said.

“You wouldn’t hide it if you were hot,” Ryouma shot back, sticking his head around the doorjamb.

Kakashi rounded on him, irritated—and was interrupted by his own shirt being shoved in his face.

“Out,” ordered the Quartermaster. “Foreplay and fighting arebothoff-limits here.”

“It’s not flirting,” Kakashi said, yanking the shirt down.

Morita bundled the abandoned jounin vest into Kakashi’s arms, narrowly missing the kyoketsu-shoge, and pointed firmly at the door. “I don’t care. Get out. Go punch him until you feel better, or whatever coping mechanism validates your issues more.”

Maiming might, Kakashi thought darkly, and stepped down from the measuring box. He slipped through the crowd of conspicuously silent candidates and through the door, which was suddenly absent of mocking heads.

Ryouma was leaning against the opposite hallway wall, grinning. “It’s alittlelike flirting,” he said. “And you’re welcome for the rescue.”

“I will kill you and everything you hold dear,” Kakashi said.

“Hope you’re up for a long, boring afternoon,” Ryouma said, with the lazy unconcern of a man who doubted the threat, or didn’t have many people to care about.

Kakashi pulled his shirt back on, layered the jounin vest back over it, and calmed his ruffled feathers. Clothes improved matters. Fewer eyes on his bare skin definitely improved matters. He’d thrown the first barb; he couldn’t bite at Ryouma for throwing one back.

The cool weight of his reinstated hitai-ate anchored him down. “Actually,” he said stiffly. “I’ll be using my afternoon to pack.”

Because he’d made it into ANBU.

At some point, that was actually going to sink in.

“Pack for what?” Ryouma asked, interested, just before understanding rose up and smacked him in the face: “Right, they have dorms, don’t they? Or we do, now. Will.”

“Barracks,” Kakashi corrected. “For you, maybe a kennel.”

“Hot times with the Inuzuka ahead, I see.” Ryouma nodded sagely. “I hear they’re wildcats in bed.” Which was a comparison that probably didn’t make much sense for a clan rumored to be descended from mountain wolves, but no one’d ever said innuendo had to be logical as well as hot. Descending from wolves wasn’t all that logical anyway.

Kakashi was raking his hair flat with his fingers—unsuccessfully, from Ryouma’s point of view, but maybe he found the action calming. He stopped to shoot Ryouma a half-suspicious, half-fascinated glance, as if he were wondering what color the sky was on Ryouma’s home planet. “Maybe a pen outside,” he judged at last.

Ryouma grinned at him. “Aww, you’ll come visit me, right?”

“No,” Kakashi said, very firmly. He looked down the hallway, frowning. “We were supposed to do paperwork, I thought.”

“Briefing room 37-A, she said.” Ryouma shoved off the wall, and leaned instead on his unwieldy new naginata. At least it was tall enough to be a useful prop, even if carrying it wholly occupied his only good hand. His long-sleeved shirt, with its narrow wrist-cuffs, dangled from the crook of his elbow. Next time he got dressed, he was choosing short sleeves.

Next time he got dressed would be in sleeveless ANBU blacks. He hugged that thought to himself for a moment. Twenty-four hours ago he’d been sitting shirtless on a hospital table, gritting his teeth at the ice-and-fire needles of healing chakra in his nerves, dreading the possibility that his fingers would never twitch more than halfway to his palm. Asuka-sensei had never been more than noncommittal about his prognosis—but if they were admitting him and outfitting him, that meant the hand specialist’s report to the Hokagehadto have been good, didn’t it?

He looked up the hall. “You didn’t happen to see it when we passed, did you? ‘Cause the last room I remember was 16, and the one before that just had a squiggle.”

Kakashi’s eyelid dropped briefly, as if he was reading a script off the back of it. Then he took off, heading purposefully toward the stairs. “It’s back up a floor.”

Up a floor and down three halls, as it turned out. Ryouma was fairly sure they should be ending up close to the stairwell where they’d begun, but with no windows and no markings other than the bizarrely labeled and staggered doors it was hard to tell. What would they do to a rookie who wandered in with a stick of charcoal and a fondness for maps? Would it be worth it?

Some rookies, apparently, didn’t need maps. Kakashi halted in front of a door that looked identical to a dozen others they’d passed, down to the dull brass plaque screwed at eye-level. “Check for traps,” Ryouma advised. Kakashi gave him an evil glare, shifted the shoge to his other hand, and tried the doorknob.

It swung open without any accompanying explosions, revealing a room that could have been any nondescript classroom in the Academy: three rows of wooden desks, a blackboard at the front, a bespectacled older man in a blue and white happi coat over a green uwagi shirt belted with a hitai’ate. There was a neat stack of paper and a sharpened pencil on every desk.

“Is this another test?” Kakashi demanded.

The man looked up from his book, blinked, and said mildly, “Of manners, perhaps.”

“Please excuse him,” Ryouma said. “He was half-naked just now, and he took it badly. Are you the God of Paperwork?”

The man’s mouth quirked. “God-king, in fact.”

“It’s like youinfectpeople,” Kakashi hissed under his breath.

“Kindred spirits will always find each other,” Ryouma informed him, and abandoned him in the doorway. He leaned the naginata against a wall, slipped a stack of paper off the nearest desk, and approached the God-King of Paperwork with his most charming smile. “I’m Ryouma. I injured my writing hand in the trials, which might be a good thing; my spelling’s terrible anyway. I don’t suppose you could lend meyourhand?”

He could hear Kakashi’s snort all the way from the back of the room.

Chapter 7: Heaven’s Got a Plan for You

Chapter by ANBU_Legacy, Nezuko, saunterleftside

Chapter Text

April 18, Yondaime Year 5

Even though Namikaze Minato was only about a decade older than him, Raidou felt exactly an inch tall kneeling in front of the Hokage’s desk, waiting for judgment to fall on the back of his neck.

“At ease, captain,” said Yondaime-sama.

Raidou took that to meanstand up, notcollapse on your face and attempt to hide in the rug. He found his feet, standing straight-backed, and slapped a respectful salute against his scarlet ANBU tattoo. “Commanders.”

Sagara-sama sat at the Hokage’s right, like a favored partner. The vice-commander stood on the Hokage’s left, back a pace, like a much less favored stepchild.

“Namiashi Raidou, captaining Team Six,” Yondaime-sama said. He glanced down, checking an open file in front of him. “Lieutenant Shiranui Genma. As members, Ueno Katsuko, Hatake Kakashi, and Tousaki Ryouma.” He looked back up, a faint smile curving his handsome mouth. “Good luck, captain. I have no doubt you’re up to the task.”

Raidou couldn’t have heard that right.

“I’m sorry, sir, I think I briefly hallucinated,” he said. “Could you repeat that?”

Yondaime-sama’s golden eyebrows arched. “Your rookies are Hatake Kakashi and Tousaki Ryouma. I believe you’ve met them before.”

Meeting was exactly the issue with Ryouma, even though Raidou really,reallywanted him for Team Six. Kakashi was just an issue all by himself, andwayout of Raidou’s commanding-league.

Well, okay, Raidou had managed to talk him back off the ledge in the tense, adrenaline-drenched moments right after Akiyama’s death, but that was mostly through luck. And Kakashi being tenuously willing to listen.

He started with the easier one. “With respect, Yondaime-sama, and regret—” alotof regret, “I have a, uh, conflict with Tousaki.”

Yondaime-sama had the kind of face that inspired children to adore him, older generations to listen to him, and shinobi to die for him. He also had the kind of sharp gaze that could strip paint. “Indeed,” he said, when Raidou felt sufficiently sand-papered. Yondaime-sama braced one elbow on the desk and curled his fist under his chin. “Elaborate.”

He’d had nightmares like this. Though usually his mothers were watching, too.

Raidou picked a point slightly above Yondaime-sama’s head, fixed his eyes on it, and just said words. “I had a one night stand with Tousaki six months ago. He was aware I’m ANBU. I don’t believe he recognized me at the Trials.”

Yondaime’s brow furrowed. “And you believe you cannot command him because…?”

“Of the ethical implications?” Raidou said, after a fumbling moment. “He’d be my subordinate. I have a duty to treat him as a fair and equal member of the team, without favorable or unfavorable bias.”

Not that he had anything but favorable memories of Ryouma. But it would be easy to go too hard on the guy, just by trying not to go too easy.

A little of the edge went out of Yondaime-sama’s eyes. He traded a glance with Sagara, who was unmasked but just as implacable as always, then looked back at Raidou. “Six months ago, you said. And the only contact you had with him since was at the Trials—where you and Shiranui helped Kakashi save his life?”

Well, when you put it like that.

“Yes, sir,” Raidou said.

“Is there anything in your conduct toward him at the Trial that would lead you to believe you could not treat him fairly?”

“No,” Raidou said slowly, with a glimmer of hope. He couldn’t prevent himself from adding, “But that’s sort of the point about bias. It skews your view.”

Yondaime-sama sat back with a flare of the white, flame-patterned coat, and rubbed one thumb along his jaw. “What do you consider the qualities of a good ANBU captain?”

Could’ve kept your mouth shut, Namiashi, but noooo…

“Integrity,” Raidou said. “Insight, both into one’s subordinates and into oneself. The willingness to listen, but also the ability to take no crap. Strength. Devotion to duty.” He consideredsense of humor, but dropped it. This wasn’t a personal ad. “Loyalty. Good boundaries. That’s the short list, sir.”

Modesty not included.

The blue-eyed stare fixed him again, but didn’t skin a layer this time. “I didn’t hear anything in there about being non-human, Namiashi. We say a shinobi must never show emotion, but that doesn’t mean a shinobi can’tfeelit. Regardless of whatever feelings you had or have toward Tousaki, do you have any doubts about your ability to set appropriate boundaries?”

Raidou gave that question the consideration it deserved.

“No, sir,” he said at last.

That earned him a direct smile—a warm, personal lift of the corners of Yondaime-sama’s mouth, which didnotmake Raidou flush, goddammit.

“Konoha demands superhuman feats from its shinobi daily, captain, but I don’t expect perfection. Do your best. If you have a complaint in three weeks—or he does—I’ll listen. For now, I’ll trust in your good judgment.” Yondaime-sama paused, then added: “Ifheattempts to trade on it, don’t hesitate to quash him. That young man could use a little humbling.”

Sagara-sama snorted, very softly.

Captains with good boundaries did not recall a specific instance of discipline, or consider making a joke about it. Raidou hauled himself into line and bowed gratefully. “Hokage-sama,” he said, and straightened, wondering exactly how far he could push his luck. “About Hatake…”

Minatolaughed. “I was wondering when we’d get to this. Yes. WhataboutKakashi?”

“How do youhandlehim?” Raidou asked, with throttled despair.

Minato was silent for a moment. “You ever seen a mother cat carrying her kittens?” he said, which gave Raidou confused, disturbing mental images of Kakashi with fur. “Gently, but with teeth.”

He sounded fond, which was both a little endearing and a lot worrisome, like a man crooning over his favorite poisonous reptile.

Still, Raidou thought he could work with that.

“How do you bring him back into line, if he needs it?” he asked.

“Directly,” Minato said, as if he’d had that answer waiting. “Kakashi usually knows when he screws up, and he’s harder on himself than you can ever be.” He paused. “Unless he totally missed the point, in which case you may need to hit him over the head with it. He doesn’t usually make the same mistake twice, but he’s pretty good at figuring out new ones.”

Which’d put him about on par with every other new rookie. That was actually slightly reassuring.

“I’ll try not to hit him too hard,” Raidou said, with a half-smile, before he remembered who he was talking to. He bowed again. “My thanks, Hokage-sama.”

“And you have mine,” Yondaime-sama said softly. He hesitated again, and just for a moment, Raidou saw the man underneath—the parent, really, because everyone knew Minato-sensei had taught Kakashi far longer than a lot of jounin even lived. “Kakashi can be difficult. But if you earn his loyalty—and I’ve no doubt you can—he’ll be worth it.”

A bow didn’t touch that gift of trust or level of responsibility. Raidou dropped back down to one knee, planting a fist solidly on the floor in the full shinobi kneel, and ducked his head. He had one more question, but after that, he didn’t think he could press it without being rude.

But if he didn’t, he’dwonder.

“Was there something else?” Yondaime-sama asked, when Raidou didn’t immediately rise.

“I’m sorry, Hokage-sama, I don’t mean to press,” Raidou said. “I just wondered— Why did you place Tousaki and Hatake together?”

A faint smile sketched back over Yondaime-sama’s face, but without the humor behind it. “I might have expected that. Insight indeed.” He rubbed his mouth and sighed. “Kakashi badly needs a friend. I have reason to suspect Tousaki might fill the need. Tousaki risked his own life to help Kakashi when he thought Kakashi needed it, and Kakashi returned the favor. Rather more successfully, as it happens, but—” He glanced sideways at Sagara-sama, whose blank face revealed nothing to Raidou. “You can stop radiating judgment at me, Okiku. If I ever do start a Shinobi Dating Service, it’ll be awildsuccess.”

Raidou paid close attention to the middle-distance again.

When Yondaime-sama returned to him, it was more intensely, with a thin undercurrent of worry threading through his voice. “I suspect you know Tousaki better than either of us. If you have concerns, I’ll listen.”

The one time in his entire life that Raidou had the Hokage’s full attention on a string, and it was because of a one-night-stand.What even.

Didhe have concerns?

What he’d seen of Kakashi had impressed and worried him. What he’d seen of Ryouma… had done much the same, actually. But he didn’t know either man well enough to predict how they’d mesh, or even if they would, though the seeds seemed to be there.

Katsuko, he suspected, was going to be delighted with them both.

He had no idea what Genma would make of things.

“It was one night with Tousaki, Hokage-sama,” Raidou said at last. “I couldn’t make an honest judgment call. They might clash, but Ueno is a good buffer, and a good person in her own right, and Shiranui holds his calm well. Konoha’s built better teams from much less. If they can’t be friends, they’ll at least be good teammates.” He rose to his feet again. “That I will promise you.”

Yondaime-sama sat back in his chair, and looked up at Raidou. The tension didn’t quite ease out of him. With a whole village on his shoulders, it probably never did. Raidou had just never been able toseeit before.

“I’ll rely on you, then, captain,” Yondaime-sama said. “Thank you.” His gaze went beyond Raidou, to the door. “Would you tell captain Usagi to come in?”

Raidou touched his right hand to his left shoulder, offering ANBU’s salute one last time, and collected the four personnel files Sagara-sama offered him before he turned for the door.

When he got outside and closed it, he took a moment to bend over, brace, and breathe.

Usagi gave him an alarmed look. “That bad?”

“I got Tousaki,” Raidou said distantly.

“That’s not—”

“AndHatake.”

Usagi snapped the wire she’d been working with. “Who the hell did you blow?” she demanded.

Actually, he blew me,Raidou emphatically did not say. He straightened up and grinned at her. “God. And it was mind-altering. Hokage-sama wants you next. Enjoy getting the dregs.”

“I hope Tousaki melts your stupid perfect face off,” she said, and clapped him on the shoulder as she went past, friendly as a handshake from a landslide. “Well done, Namiashi.”

He kept grinning when she shut the door.

TousakiandHatake.

He had no idea what he’d done to earn them, but he wasn’t going to waste them. He tucked the files carefully beneath one arm, walked calmly out of the Hokage’s palace, and then bolted to find Genma.

The gates of Konoha were always a welcome sight coming back from a ten-hour patrol. Genma rolled his shoulders and tipped his head back to let a hint of breeze caress his throat and filter up under the edge of his mask. At his left, Morioka-taichou in her bird-shaped mask did the same, while behind them the faint scuffle of footsteps suggested Imahara and Uchiha Yusuke were starting to let their fatigue show, now that home was so near.

The guard at the gate signal-flashed them with a mirror; Morioka lifted a black-gloved hand and returned theall clear. “It’s not going to be a complicated report,” she said, addressing the whole team. “I don’t think we need much of a debrief unless there’s something one of you saw and didn’t tell me about.”

“Not a thing,” Imahara said. “For a level-four security alert, that was a cakewalk of a patrol.”

“Speak for yourself,” Yusuke said. “I’m still suffering from that horrible thing you called lunch.”

“I’ll be sure to put it in my report,” Morioka told them. “Lieutenant Uchiha suffered a near-fatal incident involving a pickled egg.”

Imahara laughed. “Tomorrow we should make Shiranui bring the lunch. He’s got connections. How about some of those chestnut paste buns, huh Shiranui?”

Genma chuckled. “Sorry, I was just a loaner for the day. My team’s getting its new rookies tomorrow. But you can always stop by the bakery. Show my dad your tattoo and he’ll give you a discount.”

“Oh well, it was worth a shot,” Imahara said. “When do we get Ono back, captain?”

“I’ll find out tonight,” Morioka said.

They stopped at the gate itself, exchanging passwords with the guards.

Genma was surprised to find Raidou waiting just inside the wall. He was dressed in a regular jounin uniform, standing with his arms crossed over his chest and impatient look on his unmasked face. He had a set of folders tucked under one elbow. Genma waved him a salute and flicked a “hold” sign at him.

“That’s my captain,” he told Morioka. “And it looks like he’s got something urgent. Need anything else from me before I split?”

“No, we’re good. Thanks for filling in for us,” she told him.

“No problem.” Genma spun around to look at Imahara and Yusuke, and tapped his tattoo. “Thanks, guys. It’s been fun. Hi to Ono for me when you get him back.”

It had taken no more than thirty seconds to take his leave, but Raidou didn’t look any less impatient.

“Hi,” Genma said. “What’s up?”

The impatience dissolved into an enthusiastic grin. “We’ve got our rookies,” Raidou said.

“That good?” Genma asked.

Raidou nodded. “Let’s take this off the street. You okay to come to my place?”

“Works for me,” Genma said. “Especially if you’ve got tea or beer.” He fell in step with Raidou, surprised when they didn’t turn towards any of the residential districts, but headed in a straight line for the monument.

“You still live in barracks?” Genma asked.

Raidou shrugged. “It’s convenient.”

There were a small number of ANBU who stayed in the barracks after their rookie year, but it was mostly the agents in T&I, whose offices were only a few steps from the ANBU residences. Not many in the Hunter ranks wanted to stick around the spartan dorms when their rookie year was up.

Although if Genma didn’t find a new apartment soon, he was going to be seriously considering the ANBU dorms himself. At least the vets got their own wing, away from the chaos of the rookies.

The halls of the barracks were quiet. They smelled exactly the same as they had when Genma had lived there: an unmistakable mix of sweat and disinfectant, strong soap, blood, and dust, underlain with the faint ozone-feel of high-powered chakra.

Raidou’s door was unremarkable, but inside was another story. The walls had been painted a soft cream instead of the stark grey-white of the rookie apartments. It was much bigger than a rookie’s studio, too, with a kitchenette and a closed door that must conceal an unseen bedroom. The main room had a red and blue striped rug on the wooden floor and almost no other furnishings. Just under the window, a small kitchen table was decorated with a single candle and a soy sauce set. There were two chairs at the table, but it was clear which one Raidou usually sat in by the profusion of paperwork stacked up at one place.

The kitchenette was tiny, but bigger than Genma expected, and considerably more well used. Dishes dried on a rack, and pots and utensils were hung from hooks along the wall and under the counters, practically sparkling with order and cleanliness.

Genma took off his boots at the entrance, and slipped his mask off as soon as Raidou had shut the door, padding across the room to inspect a bookshelf overflowing with an eclectic array of reading material, and the cluster of photographs atop it. There was one of Raidou and Katsuko and the rest of their team, a couple others of what had to be Raidou’s previous ANBU teams, and one with a child-sized Raidou and two other genin mugging for the camera with their jounin-sensei. There were also a couple photographs of two women together, one of whom looked a lot like Raidou, and the other Genma recognized as an Academy sensei.

Raidou’s mom? Moms?

He turned away from his snooping to find Raidou watching him expectantly from the kitchenette.

“So? Who’d we get? Did we get Ayane?” asked Genma.

The sparkle in Raidou’s eye said it was better than that.

Genma raised an eyebrow and waited. Who would be better? Maybe Yamada? And there was Hatake Kakashi—no way he wasn’t joining ANBU, but he’d undoubtedly go to one of the veteran captains.

“Tousaki,” Raidou said, beaming.

“sh*t, seriously?”

Raidou nodded.

“That’s awesome. I think. I figured he must have washed out,” Genma said. “Or bailed. After that whole situation at second Trial, who could blame him? Is his hand even in good enough shape for active duty?”

“He’d have to be, or why pass him through?” Raidou said. He set the folders down on the small table, outside of Genma’s reach. Genma could see the edge of the first two kanji in ‘Shiranui’ on one of them, and Tousaki’s name on the uppermost. The other two were obscured.

“Huh. That’ll be interesting,” Genma said. “Tousaki.” He caught Raidou’s eye and flashed him a grin. “Bet the other captains were green with envy.” Or shaking with relief. He pulled a senbon free from his thigh holster, spun it around a couple times, and tapped the edge of the folders. “I know one of those is Ueno, and I can read my own name… Who’s our other rookie?”

Raidou laid down his ace. “Hatake Kakashi.”

That won the biggest reaction he’d gotten so far. Genma’s face went absolutely blank with shock, betrayed only by the widening of his golden-brown eyes, then he broke up laughing. It was a nice laugh, lighter than Raidou’d expected, with a smoker’s rough edge.

“No, really,” Genma said, when he’d calmed down. “Who’d we get?”

Raidou hooked Kakashi’s file out and showed Genma the name. “Hatake.”

Genma looked at the file, looked back at Raidou, looked at the file again, and finally let out a long, soft whistle. “Okay, I did not see that coming,” he said. “Is this a reward or a punishment?”

“I’m choosing to believe it’s a reflection of my personal magnificence,” Raidou said. “Or an overabundance of faith in our skills.”

“I can accept that,” Genma said, with dry good humor. “You got the assignment directly from Yondaime-sama himself?”

“And Sagara-sama.”

“Did they have anything….” For the first time, Genma visibly groped for words. “Any logic behind putting the two of them on one team?”

That was going to be the question of the day.

“Yondaime-sama thinks they displayed decent teamwork in the second Trial,” Raidou said, after a moment’s thought. “Or at least, the beginnings of it—Tousaki put his neck on the line when he thought Hatake was in trouble, and Hatake returned the favor when he knew Tousaki wasactuallyin trouble. I guess Yondaime-sama jumped on that with both feet.”

Kakashi badly needs a friend.

The fraught worry in Yondaime-sama’s eyes was too raw to share.

“Since Kakashi’s got such big fanclub, you mean?” Genma said, tapping his senbon thoughtfully on his lower lip. “I guess if I had to place Konoha’s biggest loner since Oro— Jiraiya-sama, on a team, I’d put him with someone he seemed to actually like.” His eyes flickered briefly at that near-slip, but he only added: “Especially if I was practically his dad.”

Someone was a tiny bit of a mind-reader.

Or Kakashi’s issues were just that well-known.

“Loner, maybe, but I don’t think Hatake’s running secret experiments in a basem*nt somewhere,” Raidou said, because they might as well yank the heart out of any worries Genma had right now. “Too many eyes on him.”

“I sure as f*ck hope not,” Genma said, with surprising sharpness. He seemed to realize he’d shown too much, because his eyes half-lidded, and his shoulders settled forcibly down. “But yeah, there’s no way two Hokages’ star pupils would go off the rails in the space of five years, right? That sh*t only happens in bad movies.”

“You want a drink?” Raidou asked.

Genma’s eyes flicked up, assessing. There wasn’t an ulterior motive for him to find, other than ‘you’re tired and sweaty and clearly have some issues to discuss, so let’s have a goddamn beverage’, and he seemed to hit on that same conclusion. He smiled slightly. “Thanks.”

Raidou waved the gratitude away. “Have a seat,” he said, and went for his fridge. He didn’t have much in the way of tea, but he could do beer. Might as well grease the wheels. He grabbed two Blue Mountain Drys and the fruit bowl, because vitamins never hurt, and dropped into his usual chair at the kitchen table. Genma sat down across from him.

Raidou popped the caps with his rings, and slid one beer across. Then, pointedly, the fruit bowl.

“Okay,” he said, taking a drink. “Hit me.”

Genma took a long swallow while he tried to decide what Raidou was fishing for. Raidou’d definitely noticed Genma’s bobble with Orochimaru’s name, but sworn to secrecy was sworn to secrecy, and there wasn’t much to tell there, anyway.I was the one who found Orochimaru’s half-dead student in an alley and sounded the alarm, and that’s why I think the man is a monster?Everyone in Konoha who knew anything at all about Orochimaru’s lab thought the man was a monster. His eyes strayed to the file folders again—was it mentioned in his personnel file?

“You’ve got decent taste in beer,” he said, playing for time. “I like that in a captain.”

“I like honesty in a lieutenant,” Raidou replied. He leveled a look at Genma that suggested he would stand for not even a microgram of bullsh*t. “If there’s an issue with Hatake, I want to hear it. Concerns about megalomania? Problems with his family history?”

That wasn’t even remotely about Orochimaru. Genma didn’t hide his puzzled surprise. “Hatake’s family? No. I— Oh. You mean Sakumo-san. You know, I really don’t. I’m more concerned about Kakashi being the Yondaime’s protégé than I am about his dad having made a bad judgment call on a mission and an even worse one in the aftermath.”

And sh*t, there were plenty of shinobi in Konoha who fully believed the White Fang had done the right thing by taking his own life. If Raidou was one of them, that was a stupid thing to have said. Genma rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Forgive me if that was out of line. It’s been a longish day.”

Raidou set his elbows on the table, propping his chin on his hands and looking Genma in the eye. “I agree with you,” he said. “I think that’s another reason why Yondaime-sama put Hatake on our team. We’re both too young to have known Sakumo-san, and I didn’t lose anyone in that mess. Did you?”

Genma shook his head. “My mom was a chuunin, but she died when I was little in that big landslide that buried Tateyama Village. That was way before the Fang’s… mistake, I guess. And my dad—you met him the other night. Until someone invents a way to make pastries battlefield-lethal, he’s a civilian. I guess there could be some distant connection with my mom’s side, but there’s nothing I’m aware of.”

“Exactly,” Raidou said. “So even if we have opinions, we don’t have a stake.”

“That’s smart. I’d figured Yondaime-sama would put Kakashi with one of the older vets, like Shikaku or Aburame, but they might have issues we don’t.”

Raidou nodded. He ran a finger along the silver rim of the enameled colander full of fruit, pushing it another few centimeters closer to Genma. Taking the hint, Genma drained his beer to half, selected a ripe-looking banana from the bowl, and used his senbon to start the top of the peel.

“So my concerns about the rookies,” he said. “One: is Kakashi going to be able to take orders from two guys who are not the Yellow Flash of Konoha? Two: is Tousaki… I don’t know. I’m not sure how to put this. I know it was a genjutsu, and it was asmartone, but I can’t get over seeing him take down Sato with that rot jutsu. And then he turned right around and walked into a trap. So is he steady enough for ANBU? And three: if Yondaime-sama is counting on there being some kind of bond between Tousaki and Kakashi, what happens if that bond gets broken?”

He had concerns about their third teammate, too, but those would wait a moment more.

Shiranui Genma was a deceptively smart cookie.

“Good questions,” Raidou said, turning his beer bottle gently between his hands. Condensation made his fingers squeak against the blue glass. “You have any tactics in mind?”

“Tactics for which problem?” Genma said steadily. “I just listed three.”

“Any of them. All of them,” Raidou said. “Tactics plural. What’ve you got?”

A faint wrinkle of annoyance barely creased Genma’s brow before it was gone again. He took a bite of banana, swallowed, and said, “Low-hanging fruit first, then. Keep Kakashi and Ryouma both on a short leash to start. Not so short it chafes, but not so long they can get into the weeds without one or both of us knowing.”

“Shock collars,” Raidou said dryly, before sobering up. “Training them into the dirt’ll help, too. Can’t bicker when you’re too tired to walk straight.”

And mutual trauma fostered bonding. Every military force knew that.

“Unless they rebel against the idea of training,” Genma said. “But I think Tousaki will take orders in a tight spot. He’s co*cky, but he’s got a clear understanding of hierarchy, from what I’ve seen.”

Someday, Raidou’s hindbrain was going to stop offering up double entendres whenever Ryouma was mentioned in the context of taking orders, but it wasn’t today. He covered his grin with a long swallow of beer. “Tousaki’s got pretty clear levers, underneath it all. He is co*cky, but he wants people to like him, and he won’t shy from a challenge. Keeping him from exhausting himself might actually be the trick. I don’t think there’ll be any issues getting him to train, especially if he wants to keep pace with Hatake.”

Genma nodded once. “Sounds about right.”

“As for Hatake. I don’t know his levers—” yet, “—but I can’t see someone of his level ducking training. Can you?”

“Ducking, no. But I’m pretty sure he’d rather take his own counsel about when and how he trains.” A smirk edged the corner of Genma’s mouth. “Not that he gets a choice, but I’ll bet you a ten-spot he’ll try.”

“Nooot taking that bet,” Raidou said. “But that does bring us back to your point about whether he’ll take orders from us mere mortals.”

“And?”

“I had the same concern,” Raidou admitted. “But if he wants to stay in ANBU, he’ll have to.”

“I guess if we have to, we bust his ass up to Kuroda-san. Although the vice tends to be a brow—” Genma checked himself before he saidbrown-noserabout their mutual commander to his new captain, to Raidou’s great amusem*nt. “Political player. That could backfire.”

Raidou propped his chin on his hand again.WouldKuroda try to curry approval from Yondaime-sama by favoring his former student?

Dumb question.Howwould Kuroda favor Kakashi, was the better question.

“If we have to rap Hatake’s knuckles, we should bypass Kuroda-san and bust him straight to Sagara-sama,” Raidou said. “You know she’d put the fear of, well, Sagara-sama into him.”

The look Genma have him held a wealth ofdon’t I know it. “Point,” he said. He contemplated his beer, peeling the blue and silver label off with a fingernail. “Tactics… What else? Did you get any hints from Yondaime-sama when you met him?”

“A few,” Raidou said. “He thinks Tousaki needs humbling. And Hatake needs gentleness.” He paused, and added, “With teeth.”

“Gentleness with teeth,” Genma repeated thoughtfully. “So good cop, bad cop?”

Raidou snorted laughter. “Might be a thought. The last concern you had—whether Tousaki’s steady enough for ANBU?”

“Yeah. I know that situation at the second trial would have shaken up anyone—hell, it shook me up—but there was something about Tousaki’s reaction…” Genma’s quick gesture tried to shape a concept that wasn’t coming easily in words. “He seems… volatile. Or fragile. That’s not the right word either.” He gave Raidou a frustrated look. “What do we know about his history?”

“Haven’t had a chance to look at the files yet,” Raidou said. “Yondaime-sama approved him.”

“Yeah, I got that from the fact you said he’s on our team,” Genma said dryly. “Are you saying you think I’m off-base here?”

Watch your biases, Namiashi.

“Break it down for me?” Raidou said. “I get the rot-genjutsu wasn’t fun to watch, but it was within the limits of the game. Walking into Akiyama’s trap was a dumbass move, I’m with you there. But the reasons were good, even if the execution was flawed. For his reaction afterwards—you mean when he was poisoned?”

“Okay, it sounds dumb when you put it like that,” Genma admitted. “It’s not the fact he used the genjutsu that worried me. Like I said, that was a smart move. And it’s not the walking into a trap. Thatisa concern, sure, but Akiyama was an order of magnitude more f*cked up than anything we were planning to throw at these guys. I don’t get the impression Tousaki is in the habit of ignoring risks.” He sighed, rolling the beer bottle between his palms, and took a moment to collect his thoughts, trying to put some kind of explainable logic behind his intuition; it wasn’t coming easily.

Raidou seemed inclined to wait him out—to hear him out, at least—since he didn’t interrupt.

“The thing about the rot jutsu—it just made me aware howdangerousthis kid would be if he went wrong. And I know Yondaime-sama and Sagara-sama are no fools, they wouldn’t have tapped Tousaki if they weren’t sure of him, but there’s something there that— I don’t know. Emotional. Something.”

Raidou nodded slowly. “Gut-feeling?”

“Yeah. Gut-feeling.” Genma let out a relieved breath, taking another drink of his beer. Even if Raidou didn’t agree with him, at least his captain wasn’t dismissing him out of hand. “It’s not anything I think we need to act on, necessarily. But you asked what my concerns were, and that’s one of them: I have a gut-feeling there’s something up with Tousaki Ryouma that bears watching out for.”

Raidou pushed one large hand through his hair, rumpling it into unruly spikes. “Okay,” he said simply. “I don’t see it, but I’ll keep a watch.”

“Thanks,” Genma said. He ate the last bite of his banana and folded the peel up onto itself, making a neat little bundle. “As for the other thing, that’s obviously out of our hands. If they end up forging some kind of bond, then great. I hope it’s one that includes the whole team.” He eyed Raidou for a moment before plunging ahead. “I guess the other thing we should talk about is Ueno.”

Raidou studied his empty bottle, then looked pointedly at Genma’s nearly drained one. “We’re going to need more beer.”

“That good, huh?” Genma said. He’d guessed as much. Whatever was going on with Katsuko was clearly complex, with long, deep roots. He wondered if her overly-bright chakra was tied into the problem.

Raidou grunted agreement as he stood and grabbed another pair of bottles from the fridge. Strong fingers made quick work of the caps, and he passed a fresh bottle to Genma. A little cloud of condensing vapor spilled from the open neck.

Genma drained the last of his first beer and took a long swallow of the second before he spoke again. “Her chakra is insane, and not in the ‘future Hokage’ kind of way. The night I met her at the park, she was egging on a civilian fight that was about to turn really ugly when I intervened. She had trauma written all over her on the wall the other day, but she clearly adores you, and from what I can tell, she was keeping an admirable lid on whatever panic attack was clawing its way up her throat because you were there.” He looked at Raidou calmly. “What gigantic thing am I missing here?”

Silence stretched out long and deep while Raidou chose his words. His fingertips drummed rhythmically against the edge of the label on his bottle, sending tiny shivers through the condensation beaded on the glass. “Katsuko,” he said eventually, and paused. “Katsuko doesn’t have middle gears. Her chakra’s part of it. I don’t have the full story, but I know she landed on the wrong side of an enemy medic-nin, and not recently, either. My guess is torture. She has that look, y’know?” The words spooled out, then halted.

“I know,” Genma said. He’d seen the look, too. She wasn’t any older than he was. Torture, not recent, could only mean she’d beenyoungwhen it happened.

“I don’t know what happened at the wall,” Raidou continued. “I’ve seen her stumble before, but never like that.”

“Do you know if she grew up in Konoha? Maybe she was in one of the outlying towns that was besieged during the war,” Genma suggested. It didn’t feel quite right, but it was the best guess he had at the moment.

Raidou shrugged and took another pull on his beer. “We haven’t shared much about family. I’m pretty sure she’s Konoha born and bred. I know her dad’s a jounin. Mom’s a civilian. Little brother’s an artist. That’s it.”

“I guess her dad being a shinobi explains her staying in the service after whatever happened to her,” Genma said. He matched Raidou’s rate on his second beer, feeling the alcohol starting to work on his mostly empty stomach. Maybe another piece of fruit would be a good idea. There was a ripe-looking mango in the bowl; Genma pulled it free and flipped a kunai into his hand to start peeling it, then hesitated. “Want me to do this over a plate?”

Raidou leaned back in his chair, grabbed a small cutting board from a hook on the closest cabinet, and slid it silently across the table.

“The boundaries thing you mentioned with her—I’m guessing that’s related, too?” Genma said. He didn’t like the next thought that came to mind, but he had to ask. “Rape?”

Raidou frowned. “Not that she’s ever told me.” He seemed to think for a moment longer, then shook his head. “I don’t think so, no. The boundaries thing is something else. She’s not great at— I don’t know how you’d say it. Self-limiting?”

Genma nodded understanding.

“She’sfantasticon missions, don’t get me wrong,” continued Raidou. “Whip-smart, always on point, lethal as a hurricane. But back home, with other people… Sometimes she doesn’t know when to stop. She needs her teammates to let her know where the lines are.”

“That ought to playbeautifullywith Hatake ‘Always Wears A Mask’ Kakashi,” Genma said.

Raidou evidently had a pretty big soft spot for Katsuko, but the man had been her lieutenant for a year. And if she was as good on missions as Raidou said, and was the fun-loving woman Genma’d spent an evening blossom viewing with a week ago at least some of the time, that wasn’t surprising.

Raidou grinned. “She’s going to think Hatake is a present designed purely for her to annoy. I’ll bet you that ten-spot that she and Tousaki create an unholy alliance from hell.”

“Nooot a bet I want to take,” Genma said, mimicking Raidou’s inflection from before. Raidou had a tiny gap between his front teeth, a really nice smile… Genma rolled his eyes at himself and ate a slice of the mango.

Focus, Shiranui. Also, from now on, no drinking on an empty stomach around good-looking superiors. Ever.

When Genma lapsed into quiet again, attention returned to the vanishing mango, Raidou took the opportunity to study the other man. He didn’t have a handle, yet, on what kind of lieutenant Genma would be—he didn’t really have a handle on Genma at all. ‘Ninjutsu guy’ still mostly summed it up, with the added subheadings of ‘medic’ and ‘poison user’.

Genma had been steady during the second Trial; he’d maintained his calm, followed Raidou’s lead, managed Kakashi and Ryouma’s injuries effectively. He hadn’t fawned over Yondaime-sama. He’d been watchful on the wall, careful around Katsuko, observant afterwards. He was clearly astute.

And yet, Raidou had no clue what made him tick. There wasn’t an obviousdrivethere.

At least, not a visible one.

“So,” Raidou said, discarding subtlety. “What do I need to know about you?”

Genma’s eyebrows winged up. “What do you want to know?” he asked. “I assume you got the basics from my file, but I have no idea what goes into those besides my service record and evaluations. If it’s got my Academy records, I just want to say I wasn’t there, it was a setup, Nobuhiro-sensei had it in for me, and you should talk to Hyuuga Haruhi.”

Nicely evasive answer, but Raidou laughed anyway. “That bad?”

“I was nine,” Genma said, as if that explained everything. Which it did.

“Fair enough,” said Raidou, entertained. “I haven’t read the files yet—I got the word and came straight to you. Figured you’d want to know. Though… I guess this might have been a more productive meeting if I’d done the homework first.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“If you’ve got some instant ramen or an egg or something, I don’t mind waiting while you skim it. Or we could get some takeout.” Genma smiled. “I’m kind of flattered you rushed out to tell me so fast.”

Raidou eyed the files. Genma’s was relatively slim, neatly ordered. Ryouma’s had a more scattered look to it, with a broken spine that suggested someone had done a lot of updating. Kakashi’s was a thick wedge of paperwork; someone had taken the liberty of adding tabs. Katsuko’s, unsurprisingly, had more than twice the amount of medical reports than the rest of the files put together.

“I don’t think a skim is going to do it,” Raidou said. He looked at Genma. “And I want to hear what you think is important about yourself. What are you going to bring to this team?”

Genma leaned back on his chair. “Can we still do that over ramen?”

Food-hound, Raidou added to his list. “Should be something in the cupboard. Help yourself.”

“Thanks,” Genma said. “It was a long patrol today, and lunch was a rat bar and some weird-ass pickled quail eggs Imahara brought and inflicted on us all. Uchiha Yusuke just about yacked his back up.”

Raidou’s wrinkled nose expressed his opinion on that succinctly.

“Let’s see, what am I bringing to the team?” Genma said, as he rummaged in the cupboard. “I’m a strong ninjutsu user, and I have a few specialty jutsu that involve metal manipulation. It’s not a bloodline or anything, just a blend of earth and fire jutsu to manipulate elemental metal.”

The jars and boxes neatly filling Raidou’s cabinets suggested Raidou was a dedicated foodie. “Is everything in here fair game?” Genma asked, holding up a cellophane packet of dried autumn mushrooms. “If you’ve got eggs, I’ll cook us both some.”

“In the fridge,” Raidou said. “Go on, what else?”

Genma set the mushrooms soaking in a bowl of water, and scrambled eggs in a second bowl, seasoning them with mirin and soy sauce and a couple of interesting smelling herb powders he found in Raidou’s cabinet.

“Field medic. You know that already. Assassin. More of the ‘kill from the shadows’ tradition than a shock and awe guy. I prefer throwing weapons—senbon and kunai mostly—and I use poisons on my weapons pretty often.”

Raidou gave him a flat look.Tell me something I haven’t already figured out.

“I’m organized, good at trail reading, pretty intuitive about people, and I can make a mean omelet?” He chopped up the softened mushrooms with a flourish and diced in an onion for good measure, twirling Raidou’s kitchen knife like a kunai before scraping everything into the eggs. “Is this where I’m supposed to tell you my strengths and weaknesses? My chakra stamina is moderately high, and my finesse is high, but my physical strength is a little under par. I kick ass at ninjutsu and seals, but I’m only average at genjutsu and taijutsu, which is why I’m a specialist, not a regular jounin.”

Raidou listened carefully, nodding and “mhmm”-ing at the appropriate places, clearly taking mental notes. When Genma ran out of steam, Raidou said, “I was actually thinking more— okay, I know whatIdid as a lieutenant, but I’m not going to be the exact same kind of captain as my previous captain. And I figure you’re not going to be the same kind of lieutenant as I was. I want to figure out the best way for us to work together, so we cover everything, and we’re not doing double-duty trying to cover each other’s jobs. Make sense?”

Oh.

“Yeah, makes perfect sense.”

Genma felt only a little bit like an idiot as he flipped the omelet.

“As lieutenant on Hajime’s team, I was responsible for all the logistical stuff we needed for missions, so Hajime could focus on mission planning and execution. I made sure we had maps and forms and supplies. And since I’m a field medic, I ended up doing a lot of minor medical care that I guess teams without a dedicated field medic send to the internal medical office. So I keep a fully stocked med kit in the office as well as one in my go bag.”

“Between Hatake’s eye and Ueno’s chakra, you might see some more medical oddness with this team than most,” Raidou said thoughtfully. “I can’t speak to Tousaki yet.”

“I’m nottouchingthat eye,” Genma said. “Not unless he’s going to lose it if I don’t do something. That’swayabove my pay grade.”

Raidou laughed.

“When you read his file though, if there’s a note in there for treating medics about it, give me a heads up?”

“Absolutely.”

“As for Ueno—Whatisup with her chakra? Is it unstable? I had to light her cigarette for her on the wall the other day. I guess if there are medical notes in her file, I’ll need them, too, if anything about her chakra affects potential field treatment.”

That was a good question, too.

“She’s pretty shelf-stable,” Raidou said. “Her chakra’s wild, but she’s got a good lock on it. I know she has issues with small jutsu, but I’d find it tricky to channel a river through the eye of a needle, too. And she does have a failsafe.”

Genma’s eyebrows lifted curiously.

“Seal,” Raidou said, brushing his fingertips just below his navel by way of demonstration. “Yondaime-sama’s work, I think. Supposed to clamp her whole chakra system down if something goes critical. She knows how to activate it. Our last captain did, too, so I figure it’s either in the file, or I need to track down Ozawa-san for a conversation.”

“Do you know if she’s ever had to activate it?”

“Not in front of me,” Raidou said. “Nothing she’s ever told me about, either, which… doesn’t actually mean anything. I’ve only known her a year.”

And for all that he knew Katsuko, and thought he knew her well, there was a lot they hadn’t talked about.

“If it’s in her file, or you talk to Ozawa-san, let me know if it’s something we need to watch out for,” Genma said. “I’d have to guess she reacts normally to medical jutsu or they wouldn’t send her out in the field, but if there’s something in there about that, I’d appreciate the head’s up, too. Last thing I want to do is accidentally detonate her seal trying to stabilize a sprained knee.” His mouth tilted at an angle somewhere between self-mockery and gallows’ humor. “Or, you know, burn out my own chakra when I connect with hers.”

“I’m against both of those things,” Raidou said, after a pause to consider that little mental portrait of horror.

“We ought to work well together, then.” Genma flipped an omelet onto a plate with a little spatula-flourish, and brought it to the table. “Speaking of which, since you brought it up, what would youlikeme to do as your lieutenant? Anything besides the things I mentioned already?”

Logistics, maps, and medical care sounded pretty good.

Loyalty, Raidou would have to earn.

“Be a reality check,” he said at last. “I’m not always going to get it right. I need to know when I’m wrong.”

Genma’s head came up, and Raidou didn’t know how to read the expression on his face. Surprised, attentive—pleased?

“Sure,” said Genma. “I can do that. Do you know your usual blind spots?”

“Is this where I’m supposed to tell you my strengths and weaknesses?” Raidou said wryly. He lifted a hand, three fingers raised, and folded them down one by one. “Temper. Stubborn asshole.” He hesitated, but gave up the last one. “Crap at genjutsu. So, it might need to be a literal reality check sometimes.”

Genma blinked. “Don’t recognize them, can’t cast them, or can’t break them?”

“Can recognize them, mostly,” Raidou said, taking a bite of his omelet, which was—distractingly good, actually. Baker’s son could cook. “Can cast them if I have to, but they don’t hold well. Can’t usually break them without pain. Are you making one of these for yourself?”

Genma eyed the omelet: it was a big one which he’d intended to split between the two of them, but if Raidou was that hungry… “Yeah. Glad you like it.” He headed back to the kitchen and dove into Raidou’s cupboards again, hoping to unearth another packet of mushrooms. “Good to know about the genjutsu. I’m better at recognizing and breaking them than casting, but I’m pretty good at breaking them on other people, too. So as long as we don’t need to do big area-wide genjutsu casting—or if Ueno or one of the rookies has skill—we’re probably covered.”

There were no more mushrooms, but there was a package of some kind of deep reddish dried vegetable ribbons labeled in Western Wind Country’s fluid and unreadable script. A small white sticker in kanji translated it unhelpfully as, “dry plant fruit – sea ear type.” When Genma slit the cellophane, an earthy saline scent drifted up. He shrugged and dumped the contents into the soaking bowl.

“So,” Genma said, as he whipped a second batch of eggs into a slurry, “we have a few known issues with this team, but it doesn’t sound like anything outside the normal bounds for ANBU. And we have some kick-ass potential. Honestly, if I didn’t get the idea you were above it, I’d ask who you bribed.”

Raidou grinned around a mouthful of omelet, looking like a cat who’d licked the butter. “Usagi wanted to know who I’d blown.”

“Did you tell her?”

“God,” Raidou said smugly. “And it was mind-altering.”

“Really?Yondaime-sama is into dudes? If that got out, that’d make alotof people’s fantasies just a little more based in reality.” Genma diced the rehydrated ‘sea ear’ and the rest of the onion, and added the vegetables to the egg.

“Better not say that in Hatake’s hearing,” Raidou said.

“If he hasn’t figured out his sensei inspires fantasies on both sides of the gender divide, he hasn’t got eyes,” Genma said. “But yeah, I hear you. I’d be creeped out if people were hot for my dad, too.”

“Your dad’s not bad,” Raidou said. “If you like them harried and flour-covered.”

Genma flipped the second omelet. “At least my mom thought so.” After a moment he added, “I’d assume that no fraternizing rule applies to family members of teammates, too? It’d be incredibly awkward if my dad turned gay for my captain.”

Raidou’s fork hung in the air, halfway to conveying a bite of omelet to his mouth. “Y’know, I don’t think that’s ever come up before.”

“I’m sure Intel has a form for disclosing it if it does,” Genma said. He dumped out the water he’d soaked the dried stuff in and slid the finished omelet into the empty bowl, rejoining Raidou at the table. His stomach growled long and loud as he sat. “Told you I was hungry,” he said, tucking into the eggs.

There was a sliver of red on Genma’s first forkful that looked a lot like—

“Shiranui, wait,” Raidou said hurriedly.

Genma put the fork in his mouth, paused, and very slowly looked down at his plate. A crimson flush crept up his neck and over his cheeks.

“That’s garyuu,” Raidou said. “It’s, uh, spicy.”

In the same way, say, that the world was big. One stick was more than enough to give a whole pot a good fiery kick.

Genma swallowed. “You don’t say,” he rasped, eyes tearing.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Raidou said, pushing back from the table. “And something else. I’ve got, uh—” A desperate need to go grocery shopping. “Leftovers, I think? I know I cooked stir-fry the other day.”

He crouched to pull a milk carton out of the fridge.

“Don’t worry about it,” Genma said. Raidou glanced up to see himtaking another bite. “This is pretty good, actually. Although if you have some leftover rice or something to buffer it a little, I wouldn’t say no. What’d you say this stuff was? I thought it was dried gourd.”

“Garyuu,” Raidou said. “Dragon-fang. It’s a hybrid from Wind. They grow them about yea big,” he spread his hands apart, measuring about a foot from one palm to the milk carton, “and use ‘em to torture non-natives.” He poured a tall glass of milk, grabbed a loaf of bread in lieu of rice, and brought them both back to Genma. “You’re a crazy man, by the way.”

“So I’ve been told.” Genma gulped down half the glass in two long swallows, and picked a few of the larger garyuu pieces out of the bowl, setting them aside on the edge of Raidou’s plate. “I guess I should have asked before I used them.”

“Pretty sure you got punished for it,” Raidou said, slightly fascinated by the way Genma continued to eat without dying.

A starving ninja wasn’t a picky eater. Raidou had eaten stink-badger during the war, and worse, but Konoha hadtake out dining, and ANBU had its own cafe. Perhaps Genma was just lacking gastronomic adventure in his life.

Or he was verging on too tired to care. There was the definite hint of an increasing slouch in those shoulders. Genma had run border patrol all day; he was probably desperate to shower the grime off and collapse for a few hours.

“You managed to get a place sorted out yet?” Raidou asked.

Genma sighed. “Ialmosthad a place over on Aomori Avenue, but the landlord decided she wanted to rent to a chuunin instead. I think she changed her mind because of my tattoo.”

“Probably thought you’d eat her in her sleep,” Raidou said, which was a comment that just didn’t go with Genma’s mellow attitude, or clean-cut, unthreatening face. Probably she was more concerned about her tenant failing to come back from a mission and stiffing her on rent. “Long-sleeved shirt next time? Or keep showing the tattoo. Could be your litmus test for asshole landlords.”

“Litmus test, I think,” Genma said, dragging the back of his hand over his eyes. Reflexive tears smeared with grime, making his face a faded rorschach test. “Last thing I want is a landlord who’s just looking for an excuse to evict me. Like the first time I end up missing rent because I’m in hospital after a bad mission, or some sh*t like that.”

Raidou pulled a face. “That’s one advantage of staying in the barracks—always got a place to come home to. You have somewhere to stay?”

“I’ve been staying on my buddy Yamashiro Aoba’s couch. Feeding his fish while he does missions. If I have to, I can always sleep at my dad’s but…” Genma shrugged. “You know how it is. He’s really civilian.”

And no mother in the picture.

“Yeah, one of my parents is a civilian,” Raidou said. “You’re welcome to hang out for a bit, if you want to keep working at your bowl of death there. Or you can head out if you want to crash. I think we’re pretty much done.”

“Thanks. I may as well finish this, if you’re cool, since I’m pretty sure it will go to waste otherwise.” Genma forked down a few more bites, visibly struggling with the heat, but also apparently enjoying it, judging by the grin he gave Raidou. “I defeat death one mouthful at a time.”

“If you go into cardiac arrest over this, I’m going to keep all your stuff,” Raidou said.

“What stuff? I lost most of everything in the fire at my old apartment,” Genma said. “Did you get your taste for this from your ninja parent?”

“Civilian one, actually. She’s got a love for everything foreign. If she weren’t married to my step-mom, I’m pretty sure she’d have uprooted and moved to the edge of the map,” Raidou said, watching Genma.

“Lucky for Konoha that true love won out over wanderlust, then,” Genma said, without even blinking. “Is that them in the photos?” He nodded to Raidou’s bookshelf.

Ninja. It figured Genma had already noticed.

“That’s them,” Raidou said, smiling at the picture of two women linking hands. Shun, his step-mother, wasn’t given overmuch to public affection, but Raidou could see the hidden happiness lurking at the corners of her mouth, and in her dark eyes. “Mom on the left, with the red hair. Step-mom on the right.”

“You look like your mom, but looks like you get your posture from your step-mom.” Genma tilted his head. “What service is she in?”

“Academy teacher,” Raidou said. “They’re both teachers.”

Genma winced faintly. “Yikes.Twoteachers? I thought I had it bad growing up with a baker. Your ninja mom wasn’t your Academy sensei, was she?”

“For about a week,” Raidou said, amused. “And then never again. I think it was worse on her than on me, but that’s up for debate. She was a new-starter when I was in school.”

“I guess I never had her as a sensei,” Genma said, studying the photo thoughtfully. “You’d think I’d have recognized her, though.”

“You were a few years behind me, right?” Raidou said. “She got yanked for the war effort right before I graduated. You might have missed her.”

Genma’s eyes flickered down, but he didn’t comment on Shun’s metal leg. She wasn’t the first war-parent to come back with something missing. More unusual were the ones who’d made it back whole.

Like Raidou, if it came to that.

“Two years behind,” Genma said, and then, quietly: “Glad she made it back.”

“Me, too,” Raidou said with a crooked smile, which faded. “I’m sorry yours didn’t.”

Genma shrugged. “It’s okay. I never really knew her. Sometimes I think I remember little bits of her, but other times I think I’m just making it up. I mean, I was two and a half. It’s just been me and Dad as long as I can remember.”

He winced as he ate another bite of seventh-level-of-hell flavored omelet; it felt like the garyuu was excavating new sinus cavities with every eye-watering mouthful.

Raidou eyed the diminishing mound of red-speckled egg with a look of extreme doubt. “I don’t want to stand between a man and his dining choices, but you look like you’re actually doing yourself injury,” he said. Genma was about to protest that it wasn’tthatbad when Raidou added, “Which’d be a little ironic in a medic.”

“You have a point,” Genma said. He reached for the bread—a thick-sliced toasting loaf—and gave his palate a rest. It was telling, perhaps, that the soft bread felt like sandpaper on his throat. “I like spicy stuff, but that’s practically a munition. I bet it’d make a nasty contact irritant. You picked it up on a mission to Wind?”

“Yeah,” Raidou said, amused. “Not for purposes of assassination, though. I was more thinking, y’know, curry.”

“Curry,” Genma agreed. “That’s definitely a better idea than my death-wish omelet.” He gazed ruefully at the unfinished egg, still hungry, but the thought of what was going to happen to the rest of his digestive tract if he kept going stopped him from taking another bite. And really, with the bread and milk, he’d taken the edge off the hunger. He could always grab something at the cafeteria while he was up here near the barracks. Maybe even shower and change at HQ before going back into town. Aoba would appreciate it if Genma didn’t use all the hot water.

“I should get out of your hair, I guess.” Genma pushed back from the table a little and drained the rest of the glass of milk. “You have anything exciting planned tonight? I think I have the office set up and ready for tomorrow’s meet-and-greet with the newbies, but if there’s anything you want me to do to get ready, I’ve got a few more hours in me, if I can get a shower.”

“Hell no,” Raidou said, waving a dismissive hand and shaking his head. “Take a night off, enjoy yourself. We’ve got it all to come tomorrow. Grab the break while you can.”

Nowthatwas a considerate superior officer. “Thanks, man,” Genma said. “Subdue the Honey is playing at Infusion Lounge tonight. If I can convince myself to go back out after I get cleaned up, I might go catch the show.”

Raidou’s mouth quirked wry. “Man?”

“Uh. Captain.”

“Thanks, dude,” Raidou said, so dry Genma couldn’t tell whether Raidou was amused or annoyed and making a point.

Right. Not Hajime. Genma picked up his bowl and Raidou’s plate, and stood up. “I can wash up, if you’d like.”

“Want to water the fern, too?” Raidou said, nodding at a lush-looking maidenhair overflowing the edges of a clay pot on the kitchen sink windowsill.

“Sure?” Genma said, entirely unsure, but willing to go with it.

“I’m so kidding. Go take your shower,” Raidou told him, cracking a smile.

“Yeah.” Genma looked down at the mud spattering his dark-clad leg, and could only guess how he smelled. “I definitely need one.” He put the dirty dishes down by the sink and went to put his boots back on, turning to tap a salute at the door. “Thanks, taichou.”

“Lieutenant,” Raidou said, returning the salute.

“See you at 0500,” Genma said. He got a nod from Raidou as he closed the door, and then he was on his own in the ANBU barracks hallway. A tall man in dress-greys and an interrogator’s sweeping black coat turned the corner, presumably heading to his own apartment after a hard-day’s torturing. He nodded a greeting at Genma as they passed one another. Genma nodded back, only a little sorry that he hadn’t put his mask back on yet.

And that was unfair. The guy was probably perfectly nice. And it wasn’t like Genma had never resorted to coercion in the field when he needed cooperation from a captive. For that matter, being an assassin wasn’t exactly a career with an express ticket to the Pure Land at the end of it. But still.

How could Raidou stand to live here?

Although, given the roster of rookies, it was probably a good thing he was on hand to the rookie residences. Genma wondered if that was a factor in the Yondaime’s decision, actually. At least when it came to Kakashi.

Well.

Lots to think about. Tomorrow would tell what this team was really going to be like.

Raidou tossed the dishes in the sink, gingerly disposed of Genma’s death egg experiment in the trash, and abandoned the washing up to grab a third beer. He’dearned it. He dropped back down at the kitchen table, and eyed the stack of waiting files.

Where to start?

Genma’s was the thinnest. Raidou fanned it out like a deck of cards, separating medical charts from aptitude tests and mission notes from Intel’s psychological conclusions. The service career was pretty standard—genin at ten, chuunin at thirteen, special-jounin at seventeen, ANBU at nineteen. He’d started field-medic training at fifteen.

The mission notes were the usual grab-bag of disasters and triumphs, with the occasional spectacular injury. Nothing permanently crippling.

Intel’s report was mostly favorable. In their opinion, Genma was steady, well-balanced, generally focused, and a little lazy. There were no notable triggers listed, and no traumas that weren’t shared by every ninja who’d grown up in a war.

He was allergic to spinach.

The only oddity was a single page report that had been heavily savaged by censors. Thick black bars obscured most of the text. Raidou was only able to discern a date—five years ago—and a few meaningless words: discovery, Konoha, building, two katakana that might have been half of a name,A-n.

Well, that was mysterious.

Why bother even leaving the report in the file if they were just going to make it unreadable? The stamped code in the corner presumably linked to a legible version stored in Intel’s archives, but Raidou doubted he’d be allowed to read it.

He shelved the problem, tidied the file away, and moved onto Ryouma.

It didn’t surprise him to find that everything, even down to Ryouma’s service record, was a mess. Father vanished at five, mother slain at seven. He’d joined the academy late, only to be yanked out long before he could graduate. It took Raidou several minutes to track downwhy, before he found the custodial release form granting permission for Ryouma’s grandfather to take his orphaned grandson out of the village. There was an attached form: compensation payment.

Three years later, Ryouma joined the academy again. There was no record of anything between, or what had happened to the grandfather.

Graduation at thirteen, much older than most. Chuunin at fourteen, special jounin at sixteen—promoted on the field for his jutsu, if Raidou was reading between the lines correctly. Jounin at nineteen. And he’d turned twenty this month, two weeks ago.

ANBU was a hell of a birthday gift.

There were alotof notes on Ryouma’s jutsu, which Raidou read with equal parts fascination and conviction that he never, ever wanted to be on the wrong side of one. Apparently there were three, and each was more violent and messy than the last. This one targetedorgans…

The missions were exactly what he’d expected—very little stealth, a lot of straight-up death. Ryouma was a hammer, not a scalpel, and Konoha used him as such. The injury rap sheet was long and painfully detailed.

Intel’s observations were a party.

“Wow, Tousaki,” Raidou said softly, reading down the list of conflicting opinions. It looked like two psych agents had gotten in a fight on the page, crossing each other out and scrawling corrections in increasingly aggressive kanji. He got as far ashyper-narcissismandare you blind, you screaming moron, it’s clearly traumatic masochism, and tossed the whole section aside. He’d form his own opinions.

There was one bright spot. A short, neatly printed letter of recommendation from Ryouma’s jounin-sensei, which ended simply, ‘Tousaki has potential and the drive to live up to it’.

Raidou shuffled the file back together, re-organizing it, and put the letter on top.

Kakashi and Katsuko’s files were both papery bricks. After a moment of debate, he chose Kakashi’s first on the theory that the Copy-Ninja’s story was a familiar one, and might make faster reading.

He was wrong.

He’d known the bones: youngest jounin in Konoha’s history, son of a disgraced genius, student to the Hokage, the only living person to wield a bloodline that he hadn’t been born with. He hadn’t known the details. Like the vehement letter from Hatake Sadayo demanding her son remain in the academy for one more year, written when Kakashi was seven. Kakashi had graduated a month later.

The incident report for Hatake Sakumo’s suicide was dated the next year; he’d killed himself in the family room, next to the kotatsu, while his wife ran a two-day mission. There was no mention of who’d found the body, but Raidou thought he could make an educated guess.

Five years after that, Kakashi had broken in his shiny new jounin vest by losing an eye, a friend, and whatever anonymity he’d had left. There were three incident reports for that mission. Nohara Rin’s, detailing her capture, rescue, and the frankly insane field-surgery she’d performed atthirteen, in small, neat script; Namikaze Minato’s, recounting the last minute rescue of his two surviving students; and Kakashi’s, which started messy and got worse, devolving into unreadable chicken scratch.

They must have had him on heavy painkillers.

Raidou flipped ahead through other reports and realized, no, Kakashi just wrote like that. Maybe theyhadgraduated him too early.

The injury list was even longer than Ryouma’s, with whole pages of notes in Rin’s hand devoted to the strange machinations of the transplanted Sharingan. He pulled them aside to hand over to Genma. The psychological assessments were surprisingly brief. One agent had made a few sketchy observations about introversion, perfectionism, and possible PTSD—the last based on a half-dozen accounts of Kakashi having issues in the hospital, which Raidou translated to ‘had nightmares’ and ‘jumpy around medics’. Which, yeah, Kakashi and the rest of the shinobi world. The remainder was basically note after note of ‘Hatake Kakashi does not talk’, ‘Hatake Kakashi deflects’, ‘Hatake Kakashi took a three-week A-rank mission to Suna and missed all his appointments’.

Hatake Kakashi was a diagnosed slitherer-outer, basically.

Raidou flipped through the rest of the file, reading increasingly extraordinary missions in an increasingly solo career, and wondered why Kakashi had decided to one-eighty himself back onto a team. Perhaps, on some level, he was lonely too.

Or trying to source a new well of uncopied jutsu.

He set the file aside and picked up the last one. Ueno Katsuko, freshly nineteen, already his subordinate for a year, with more paperwork to her name than Raidou had ever wanted to read.

Except, he couldn’t. Genma’s file contained one blacked out page. Katsuko’s hadfifty. Raidou stared at the massacred stack, most of them blue-bordered medical pages, and then set to pulling out whatever information was left. There was precious little. A few broad details of her rerouted chakra system; a single page devoted to the failsafe seal Yondaime-sensei had locked into place and the method of activating it, which Raidou devoted himself to memorizing; and one neatly written, rubber-stamped report that covered her capture, torture, and rescue from the hands of an Iwa medical ninja when she was—

Raidou double-checked the date.

Fourteen.

What?

He sat back in his chair, drained a long swallow of beer, and said, “Konoha, you are f*ckingup.”

He made himself read the rest. Genin at ten, chuunin at sixteen—delayed, presumably, by thegiant holeripped through her chakra, but that also meant she’d been taken from near the front lines as a genin, which, again,what?What the hell had her jounin-sensei been thinking? Raidou uncrumpled the page he’d accidentally balled up, smoothing it out, and continued. Jounin at eighteen, which beat him hollow, with her entrance into ANBU following shortly afterwards.

Chakra aside, her injury list wasn’t terrible. She overwhelmed most opponents before they got close enough to do damage.

Then there was the psych report.

Raidou got the impression that its author had given up. There was a page of generic, boilerplate observations—’Ueno Katsuko has trust issues’, ‘Ueno Katsuko displays mild paranoia’, ‘Ueno Katsuko is skilled at masking her true mental and emotional state’. Stapled to that was a bundle of medical incident reports charting Katsuko’s issues with everything from standard vaccinations to one particular event with a scalpel, and the resulting property damage. And then there was a picture of a duck, which Katsuko had apparently drawn during a counseling session. She’d colored it with a blue crayon.

Raidou propped his chin on his hand and read the whole thing again, just to watch one poor bastard’s slow spiral into infectious madness.

Maybe the agent had retired. He might have a farm somewhere, raising critters.

Probably not ducks.

Raidou closed the file, stacked it with the others, and looked at them. That was Team Six. His first ever team, not counting the few chuunin squads he’d run with back on the front lines, when promotion usually followed a commanding officer’s messy death. This time, he’d been hand-picked.

Do your best,Yondaime had said.

Raidou let out a long breath. “Oh man,” he said, threw back the last of his beer, and read through them again.

Chapter 8: Take the Mask

Chapter Text

April 19, Yondaime Year 5

The night before oath-day, Kakashi didn’t sleep.

He hadn’t had mission-related butterflies foryears, and he didn’t now. These were tigers chewing on his spine. Excitement with teeth. And tense, over-thought—

Notfear, exactly.

He wasn’t afraid.

Maybe, for once in his life, he was actually ready for something.

He left the skeleton-crew boxes of his packed apartment when the moon was still setting, and went to the Hokage’s Monument, picking out a seat on stone spikes of the Sandaime’s hair. When dawn came, he had a perfect view.

Tuesday was fire-day, the namesake day of Fire Country, and someone had given nature the message. The sun rose in a blaze of orange and gold, draping Konoha in molten light. The river glittered. The forest swayed in a warm eastern breeze. Even the heavy crags of the carved Hokage faces looked less severe.

And Kakashi was late.

“sh*t,” he said, and ran for it.

He was the last candidate to arrive outside the Hokage’s office, and the only one not dressed in ANBU armor. The quartermaster was waiting for him.

“Finally,” said Morita, and yanked Kakashi into a side-room. “After all this work, if you’d stood me up, Hatake, I don’t evenknow.”

“I was—”

“Don’t care! Strip down!”

Nakedness and the Quartermaster seemed to be a theme. This time, Kakashi didn’t argue. He yanked hastily out of his jounin blues, dropping them onto an indicated chair, and accepted the sleek black underpinnings. They felt like cool silk against his skin when he pulled them on, but with the deceptive strength of woven steel. The shirt was reinforced at front and back, making him stand straighter. The pants came with black leg-bindings that went from the knee down to a pair of dark, reinforced boots. Long, fingerless gloves were last, cinching securely at his biceps, with a metal plate curving over the backs of both hands.

It was the most well-fitted thing he’d ever worn.

“Armor now. Put your arms out.”

Kakashi did as ordered, standing like his own namesake. Morita strapped the ANBU vest on first; it almost felt like a jounin vest, but heavier, sturdier, with flexibility built in via articulated plates hidden beneath tough cloth. Stretching panels down the side allowed for breathing and easy movement. Arm-guards went on next, laid along his forearms from wrist to elbow. Then knee-guards made in the same tough-but-flexible style as the vest. A thigh-holster. A sturdy utility belt with more pouches than a typical jounin’s belt, to replace the pockets an ANBU chest-plate lacked. A standard-issue kodachi went at his back, hung at a cross-angle from the belt.

Morita tugged a loop hard, making Kakashi take a steadying step backwards. “You can put a tanto here,” he said. “In the small of your back. Or I can alter it, if you want to have it between your shoulder blades.”

Kakashi blinked. “Thank you,” he said.

“Yes, whatever,” said Morita brusquely, and slapped him on the butt. “You’re done. Get out there.”

Kakashi jolted like a startled horse, but went when Morita flapped at him. The armor felt strange, but comfortable, like something he could get used to.

When he walked back into the waiting room outside the office, there were less people. Only f*ckui Ayane, stern and pale-faced; Shibata Hakone, the son of the T&I commander, Kakashi had learned; and Ryouma, who managed to look both leaner and taller, somehow, in the white and black lines of ANBU armor.

No one had a mask. That must come later.

“f*ckui, Shibata,” Kakashi murmured, with a nod. Then, to Ryouma, “Idiot.”

Ryouma grinned, or at least bared his teeth. “We’re at nicknames already?”

“Not today,” Ayane said sharply, glaring at both of them.

Hakone’s face didn’t change. If he noticed them, he was doing an excellent job of not caring.

“Right, sorry, I forgot,” said Ryouma, unrepentant. “Today is a day for solemn ceremony.” He crossed his arms, tucking his bandaged hand underneath, and tapped his good fingers restlessly against his bare biceps. The bandage was smaller today, less of a club, more of a glove. He must have had another healing session.

The cut at his temple where Akiyama’s scalpel had sliced was already half-faded to a scar. Medics didn’t usually bother with the small stuff, but someone had made an effort for that one. Kakashi couldn’t blame Ryouma for wanting it off his face.

Behind Ayane, the Hokage’s doors opened. Sagara stepped through, fully armored and masked, and looked at Kakashi.

“You’re late,” she said, with death-knell judgment.

“I was—”

“I didn’t ask,” she said. “Follow me.”

Good luck!Ryouma mouthed, abandoning solemn ceremony to be a ridiculous human being.

If she’d been here, Rin would have done the same.

Kakashi folded that thought up, put it away, and followed on Sagara’s heels. The door slid closed behind him with a final click.

Standing in front of the desk, backed by the rising dawn light shining through the bank of windows, Minato was every inch Konohagakure’s fourth Hokage. The man dressed in unburning flames. He ducked his head slightly, a shadow falling across his face, and then Kakashi could see the teacher he knew—proud, excited, and a little sad.

“You grew up,” Minato said quietly.

Kakashi felt his mouth tug. “You made me.”

“Well, you were kind of a brat when you were ten,” Minato said reflectively, which couldn’t be part of the standard ANBU oath. He reached behind him without looking, and picked a white, curved mask off the desk, holding it so that Kakashi couldn’t see the face. “Kneel, candidate.”

Slowly, Kakashi settled onto one knee, planting his right fist on the sun-slanted wooden floor.

“The Special Assassination and Tactical Squad is neither Konoha’s oldest division nor its noblest,” Minato said, with a conversational air, and Kakashi realized this wasn’t a prepared speech. This was just Minato laying out the facts like he always did, grounding the extraordinary in regular context. “Even inside the village, ANBU are feared more than they’re respected. Citizens of our own village still call them baby-killers. Some ANBU have earned that title, under my command. You may.” He paused. “I have given those orders personally. Every order the ANBU receive comes through me. Sometimes the command is to protect the village, or to conduct a high-risk mission into enemy territory, or to assassinate an exceptionally strong ninja. Sometimes it’s to sustain the village’s lifeblood—to accept a mission so foul I can’t offer it to the regular forces, to work for a client whose motives and methods are reprehensible but whose coin will feed and protect our children. You’ve accepted that first kind of mission, and excelled. Can you accept the second?”

“Yes,” said Kakashi, without hesitation.

“You’ve made a name for yourself, Sharingan no Kakashi.” Minato’s voice warmed with a smile Kakashi couldn’t see. “And for Obito. I don’t thinkyou’llhave any objections to an additional mask, and you’ve never been a glory hound—but once you swear the ANBU oath, there’s no glory to be had at all. You’ll work as a member of a team, and the barest rookie at that. You’ll obey your captain’s orders, you’ll support your teammates, and you’ll damn well get along with them on-mission and off. There are no lone wolves in ANBU.”

So be warned.

Kakashi nodded, silver hair falling into his eyes without the hitai-ate to hold it back.

Minato sighed, very softly, and the mask turned over in his careful, clever fingers. “Take the face you will present to the world, and swear your allegiance.”

It was a lion-dog.

The flat-muzzled face was painted in black and scarlet lines, with a curling mouth and slanted eyes. Two streaks made whisker-like marks at the cheeks, and sharp little ears lifted up at the temples. The eyes were cut wider than other masks Kakashi had seen—to accommodate the Sharingan, he realized. The left eyehole had thin black mesh stretched over it, completely opaque, but he could feel the subtle hint of chakra in it.

That last thing was the only thing about it that made sense. Whyred? Why not just a wolf?

At least it wasn’t a co*ckroach.

He took it carefully from Minato, cradling the light ceramic-polymer weight, and felt Sagara step up at his back. She leaned over him, put her hand over his hand, and brought the mask to his face. “The mesh will burn away with a thread of lightning chakra and the Bird seal,” she said quietly. “There should be self-adhesive replacement patches in your gear. See the Quartermaster when you need more.” There were black straps fixed to both sides of the mask; he held still as she tied them firmly behind his head. The world narrowed slightly. His breath curled back against his face.

“Repeat after me,” she said, letting go. “I am Hatake Kakashi, ANBU. I have no face but this face.”

More face than he’d ever shown before. He repeated it, steady-voice.

“I have no heart, but the heart of Konohagakure.”

That had always been true. Kakashi repeated it.

“I have no will, but the will of my Hokage.”

Softly, Kakashi said it.

Konoha had forged him, Minato had sharpened him, ANBU would use him. Kakashi just had to get out of his own way and let them.

Minato laid a hand on his head, one thumb resting against the edge of a ceramic ear—this wasn’t the familiar hair-ruffle Kakashi had learned to tolerate, then secretly appreciate. This was the weight of a leader accepting a new fealty, and the warmth of it twined around Kakashi’s bones.

The hand fell away. “Rise, Agent Hatake.”

Kakashi drew in a breath, lifted himself off his knee—and had every last scrap of air driven out of him when Minato yanked him into a crushing hug. For a moment, Kakashi froze. They didn’tdothis unless there was blood on the ground and a rent where something whole had been taken. But Minato didn’t let go, only gripped tighter, and Kakashi—

Was not his student anymore.

And never really would be again.

He wrapped his arms around Minato’s shoulders and ducked his head, pressing the side of his masked face against the wild golden hair. Minato was shorter than him, narrower across the shoulders, but his chakra was immense. An inferno wrapped around Kakashi’s pale blue flame. And yet, for the first time, Kakashi actually felt stronger.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“You say thatnow,” Minato said, but there was a catch in his voice. “I’m not doing you any favors, you know.” He leaned his head against Kakashi’s, just a little. “Wait until you meet your team.”

Whoever they were, they couldn’t touch his former team.

And Kakashi might never get this chance again. He tightened his grip, until Minato made a laughing, gasping sound as the breath accordioned out of him, and whacked Kakashi between the armored shoulder blades.

Kakashi released him, and stepped back. “Hokage-sama.”

The blue eyes were just a little too bright. “Go out and come back safely. I’ve got too much paperwork to go chasing after you these days.”

Behind the mask-over-mask, Kakashi smiled. Then bowed.

“Agent Hatake,” Sagara said, and led him to the door that led to the antechamber. “You’ll wait here to meet your team.”

The room was empty, but it smelled like stress and fresh armor. They’d been doing this since the first oath, he guessed.

“Sagara-sama,” he said, with another bow.

She closed the door.

The mask was actually a little warm. Kakashi gave it a careful tug, resettling it better, and sat down in one of the empty chairs to wait.

“Come on, taichou,” Katsuko wheedled, following Raidou and Genma up the stairs. “Not even a hint?”

Raidou sounded like he was rolling his eyes behind his mask. “If that didn’t work the last thirty times, why would it work now?”

“Hope springs eternal,” Katsuko said. “Like my curiosity.”

“I think I remember some kind of cautionary tale about curiosity and cats,” Genma said helpfully. “Or is that rats?” They pushed through the door and started down the hall towards the Hokage’s office and antechamber.

“I’ll cat your rat,” Katsuko muttered underneath her breath, readjusting her mask. Then, louder, she added, “I’m starting to think our rookies are either really weird or really special, taichou, if you’re going this far not to tell me. Does one of them have a tail?”

“If he does, you’re not allowed to chase it.”

“So one of them’s a guy?” Katsuko sighed. “Well, maybe the other one can be a girl. It’s lonely, being the only paragon of femininity on this team.”

Genma looked at her, then at Raidou. “Paragon? Really?”

“Femininity’s a complex concept,” Raidou said calmly. His crescent-moon mask, like the rest of him, offered no further clues. He wasinfuriating.

“Mrrgh,” Katsuko said, which at least was better than ‘Sometimes I want to set your hair on fire’.

Fortunately for Katsuko’s rather tenuous grasp on her patience, they reached the antechamber thirty seconds later. She refrained from trying to crane around Genma’s shoulders to catch a glimpse as Raidou opened the door; she wasn’t actually twelve anymore, no matter what Raidou might say. Still, she couldn’t help hoping. Raidou hadn’t outright said the second candidate wasn’t a girl. It’d be too much to expect the new kenjutsu user, f*ckui, but she’d heard about the kunoichi whose genjutsu nearly fooled Raidou.

When she filed into the room after Raidou and Genma and saw who was waiting for them, though, she understood immediately why Raidou had been so closemouthed. The new recruit getting to his feet was wearing his mask—a lion-dog, done in streaks of black and scarlet—but nobody else in Konoha had hair that white and gravity-defying.

Katsuko studied Hatake Kakashi, hands propped on her hips, and grinned in delight. It wasn’t every day a girl got a living legend on her squad. “Pretty cool,” she decided. “I love presents. Don’t you, taichou?”

The Copy-nin had been staring at Raidou and Genma, but now the lion-dog mask turned to take her in, too. If she had to hazard a guess, she’d say the expression under that painted face would be stark disbelief. Unless he was wearing his normal cloth mask underneath the ANBU one, in which case it’d be a covered mouth and skeptical brows.

After a moment’s silence, Raidou said, “Less than two seconds to cross a boundary, Ueno. New record.”

“I do my best to surpass expectations, captain,” Katsuko said gravely.

“And you’re done talking,” Raidou said, stepping in front of her. “Hatake, welcome to Team Six. I’m Namiashi Raidou, captain. That’s Shiranui Genma, lieutenant. And Ueno Katsuko, problem.”

Kakashi looked at each of them in turn, nodding slightly at Genma and Raidou before turning his focus on Katsuko. “What’s going on with your chakra?”

She’d been asked that before, frequently, but never in the first five minutes of meeting someone. Katsuko blinked. “Enemy medic-nin with way too much time and creativity on his hands. What’s going on with your hair?”

“Genetics.”

“Neat,” Katsuko said. “Welcome to the team.”

Kakashi didn’t seem very impressed. “Don’t ANBU teams usually have five members?”

“I was wondering that, myself,” Katsuko said. Whichever rookie it was must have made an impression during the Trials, to be assigned alongside Hatake.

Genma glanced over at the door that led into the Hokage’s office. “I guess we got here a little early.”

That got Kakashi’s attention. Sharp eyes behind the mask followed Genma’s gaze to the door. The slightest edge of suspicion entered his voice. “It’s another candidate?”

“A shinobi is in all things patient, waiting for the moment when the truth reveals itself,” Genma said, voice desert-dry.

“It’s another candidate,” Raidou confirmed.

Whoever their second rookie was, Kakashi already had an idea. That was enough for Katsuko to guess that things were going to become wildly entertaining in the next ten minutes. It was shaping up to be an excellent day.

Kakashi’s head turned and she found herself the center of his knife-like focus again. “Is your chakra always this loud?”

Sensors always did like to complain about her chakra presence. Katsuko returned Kakashi’s stare. “I’ll tell you on one condition.”

He tipped his head slightly.

“Address me for the next three hours as ‘Your Luminescence’, and we’ve got a deal.”

Kakashi looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, “I’m going to assume that means ‘yes’.”

“Snarky,” Katsuko said, cheerfully. She couldn’t wait to spar against him. “I like that.”

Genma gave Raidou a speaking look.

“Down,” Raidou told her mildly.

“Sorry, taichou.” Katsuko straightened and saluted. “How long until our second rookie joins us?”

The door opened before Raidou could reply. The man who stepped through was all lean muscle and broad shoulders, wearing a stylized red ram mask. He was tall, too, with a couple of inches on Raidou. Katsuko eyed his dark, spiky hair and the way the ANBU armor molded to his body and felt her mouth quirk up in a grin.

And it wasn’t even her birthday.

Four masked faces turned to study Ryouma like a wolf-pack scenting prey as he stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him. For a moment, he thought of backing through the door again.

Two of those masks he already knew. The sturdy man in the red crescent moon mask who’d steadied him as Yondaime yanked them through worlds, and the long-haired field medic with the grinning tanuki who’d first treated his wrist and countered Akiyama’s poison. Between them stood a wiry, boyish woman with a wild tumbleweed of dark hair and a sharp-faced mask like a rodent with a red spiral on its forehead.

Facing them, staring at him, Hatake Kakashi wore a mask like the cheerful lovechild of a lion and a housedog, and a shoulder-slumping cloak of despair. “Of course,” he said.

Apparently Akiyama wasn’t the only one who’d observed them talking throughout the Trials. Was Ryouma supposed to be some sort of Growth Experience for Kakashi? He’d be the world’s worst Good Conduct prize.

“Oh, lovely,” the woman said. She had a low, pleasant alto voice, and she sounded fiendishly entertained. “It looks like you two are friends already.”

Kakashi tipped his masked forehead into his gloved palm. “I’m going to file a complaint.”

“There’s paperwork for that,” the veteran in the crescent moon mask said cheerfully. “Tousaki, welcome to Team Six. I’m Namiashi Raidou, Captain. This is Shiranui Genma, lieutenant.” He tipped his head to the left. The tanuki-masked medic nodded briefly.

“Ueno Katsuko, continued problem.” The woman waggled her fingers.

“And you already know Hatake Kakashi,” Raidou concluded. “We need to get out of here before the next team comes in.”

“Sure,” Ryouma said, and stepped away from the door.

He was three inches taller than Raidou. The spiky brush of hair revealed itself as reddish-brown, in this light. Solidly muscled arms and shoulders, broad and capable hands. And that deep, smoky baritone, easy on the syllables of a family name Ryouma had never known, and a personal name that couldn’t bethatcommon…

“Good to meet you,” Ryouma said. “Again.”

Raidou pushed his mask aside and grinned, dark eyes dancing. He’d lost the black eye somewhere in the last six months; the split lip had healed without a scar. “Glad you made it in,” he said. Then he pulled his mask back down and headed for the door that led to the hall. “Follow me.”

Raidou’d been good at giving orders the last time they met without masks, too—but Ryouma shut down that line of thought quickly. There’d be time enough later to overthink things, and likely there was nothing to overthink at all. Katsuko was already heading out the door on Raidou’s heels. Ryouma fell in behind her.

The medic, Genma, followed at Ryouma’s back. Kakashi trailed behind him, radiating disgruntlement. Possibly, Ryouma charitably assumed, because he kept trying to put his hands in the pockets he didn’t have.

“How’s the hand?” Genma asked, as the antechamber door swung shut behind them. Katsuko, just ahead of Ryouma, looked back curiously.

Ryouma raised his hand. Asuka-sensei had taken the bandage-club off last night, after another intensive healing session and repeated promises of good behavior. It was gloved in tightly wrapped bandages now, still a little too stiff and bulky for the sleek black ANBU gloves, but his fingers curled nearly to his palm. “Improving. I should have full function by the end of the week. Back up to seal speed in a week after that, if I do my exercises right.” Which hewould, possibly in place of sleep.

“I can help you with the exercises,” Genma offered. “And you’ll want to ice it after workouts.” Ryouma ducked a grateful nod.

“How d’you know the captain?” Katsuko demanded. She was walking nearly backward now. Over her shoulders, Raidou’s spine was stiff and straight.

Ryouma chewed the inside of his cheek. “Shared a drink a few months back,” he said at last. “Then he and Shiranui and Kakashi all saved my life—and my hand—a couple days ago. Sorry I bled on you,” he added cordially.

A little of the tension leaked out of Raidou’s spine. He lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug. “‘Doubt it’ll be the last time.”

“If I had a hundred ryou for every ninja who’s bled on me, I could live like a daimyou,” Genma said wryly.

Katsuko’s masked face tipped from Ryouma to Raidou. She shrugged, and about-faced again just in time to avoid a potted plant on a plinth. “Bleeding on each other is a team bonding activity,” she said.

“Guess I’m making a good head start, then,” Ryouma said.

“Keep it up and you get a sticker,” Raidou said, wry.

“By stickers he means bandages,” Katsuko said.

“Making a start on that, too,” Ryouma said, quick on his feet, making Katsuko chuckle. Raidou grinned behind his mask. Looks aside—which wasn’t easy; Ryouma had alotof looks—he’d known she’d like rookie number two.

Rookie number one was still a silent question mark.

They reached the stairs. Raidou led them down into the labyrinth of hallways, moving at a brisk pace until they found ANBU’s hidden door.

“Sagara-sama showed you the seal, right?” he asked.

“Horse-dragon-horse,” Ryouma said, and twitched his bandaged fingers. “But don’t look at me.”

“How often does it change?” Kakashi asked.

“At random,” Raidou said, flicking through the correct seals. The door slid seamlessly open. “Usually every ten days to two weeks. Captains get the word and pass it down.”

Which was a very minor thing to add to his growing list of things to remember, but still, one more change. They kept cropping up in odd places.

The run-order changed as they went through the tunnels. Raidou kept point, with Katsuko dog-tagging like a bright shadow at his heels. Ryouma loped along just behind her, footsteps scuffing slightly as he shortened his stride to avoid overrunning them. Kakashi clearlywantedto be last, but Genma slipped back behind him, taking the lieutenant’s customary rearguard position.

It wasn’t actually a bad line-up, Raidou thought. They’d front-loaded their heavy-hitters, but Genma was a strike-from-the-distance kinda guyanda medic they wanted protected, and everything Raidou knew about Kakashi’s lightning attacks said they required a run up. This would be a good field order.

He wasviciouslytempted by the training field, when they crossed it. But they had a prior engagement, and Ryouma’s hand really needed to finish healing before Raidou let someone whale on him. In theory, Kakashi was also getting over a recent poisoning, even if he didn’t much show it.

ANBU’s HQ was bustling.

Raidou wove his team (his team!) through the scattered crowd of curious onlookers, a mix of veterans and rookies whoclearlyhad too much time on their hands if they could stand around and stare at newbies, and took them down to the third level sub-basem*nt, where the hallways got distinctly colder. It had been a while since he’d crossed this particular patch of ANBU, but the electric lights still flickered above the right door.

“Front and center, new guys,” he said, and rapped the door just above the brass spiral symbol.

Ryouma came first, standing just to the right of Raidou’s shoulder. Under his breath, he muttered, “I thought we were done with T&I…”

The door opened before Kakashi moved, or Raidou responded.

“Perfect timing. I was just running out of victims,” said Sakai Nanami, one of ANBU’s two tattoo artists, brandishing a long silver needle. “Who’s ready to scream?”

“ANBU’s combining Torture and Interrogation with tattoo artistry these days?” said Ryouma, after a beat. “Efficient.”

Nanami looked at him, thoughtful. “You’ve had work done before,” she said, which Raidou knew to be true, but couldn’t tell howsheknew. Ryouma was covered solidly from head to foot, with the exception of bare, unmarked shoulders. “Couple pieces, right? Probably at least one big one.”

“Three,” Ryouma said. “All done by Shisei Takumi, down on Water Street. He studied under Horimasa Rei.” Ryouma’s expression wasn’t visible, but the tilt of his head and the tone of his voice suggested he was watching Nanami keenly.

“I know Takumi,” she said calmly. “Does good work. You can go second, then. Nowyou—” She pointed the needle at Kakashi, who twitched. “You look like a virgin. Step up, kiddo.”

How did she—?

Tattoo virgin, right. A disadvantage of the ANBU uniform, Kakashi had discovered, was its complete lack of places to putIcha Icha, or his hands. He could only slouch and hope it looked casual.

“All right,” he said, not to be outdone in the company of three people with one visible tattoo apiece, and one man with three hidden designs.

The woman grinned. “That’s what I like to hear. Grab a seat,” she said, indicating a black, leather-bound chair behind her that looked like it belonged in a dentist’s office. Or a torturer’s dungeon. “I’m Sakai Nanami, student of Akoya Nobutake. You can call me Nanami or ‘you bitch’, depending how you feel in five minutes. Just be aware I might bite you for it.”

She had exceptionally white teeth, Kakashi noted. Though not as sharp as his.

He stepped past her, carefully, and settled into the chair. The room was small, but highly personalized. A green and orange beaded rug lay over dark wooden floorboards, counter-contrast to the grey carpet in the hall. Hand-inked prints lined the cream walls, depicting scenes of—Konoha, mostly. The Hokage’s Monument dressed in shadows. The wind-blown forest in autumn. A deep blue section of the river, with bright fish flitting below the surface. The Hero’s Stone covered in snow. And a neon-lit grocery store, which Kakashi raised an eyebrow at.

“I like slices of life,” Nanami said, even though he hadn’t asked.

“That’s nice,” Kakashi said.

Set against one wall, a long table was covered in a mixture of art supplies, medical bric a brac, and what looked like half a dozen toolboxes that had been cannibalized to make storage shelves. Three different lamps cast good light. Nanami reached into a drawer and withdrew a pair of black rubber gloves, putting them on with a cheerful snap.

This was not shaping up to be the shadow-drenched, esoteric ceremony Kakashi had pictured.

Nanami herself was not the tattooist he’d expected, either. She was, maybe, in her mid-thirties, built short and exceptionally curvy, with solid muscles in her shoulders. Her face was round, with high cheekbones and a wide, careless mouth. Her hair was mostly black, twisted into a hundred complicated braids with bright colors woven through to make a peaco*ck rainbow. Her skin was the color of dark sandalwood. She wasn’t wearing ANBU armor. She wasn’t even wearing a jounin uniform. She was dressed in a pink tee shirt and blue jeans.

And flip-flops.

She picked up a cotton swatch soaked in alcohol, and advanced on him. “You identify as male, right?” she asked.

Not actually a stupid question in a village where people could, technically, craft themselves into any shape they wanted. “Yes,” he said.

“Left shoulder, then,” she said, and vigorously rubbed the bare stretch of his left upper arm with the alcohol swatch. The Trials must have left a scratch or two, because it burned. “Anything medical I need to know about?”

“Oomukade poisoning two days ago,” Genma said, from where he was leaning against the doorframe.

“That thin the blood?”

“Not noticeably,” Genma said.

“Anything else?” Nanami asked.

Kakashi shrugged.

“Okay, then. Here’s how it works—I cut, I ink, I do a little jutsu work.Don’tfight me. Tell me if you feel weird. Definitely tell me if you think you’re about to faint. I had one guy chip a tooth today, and I don’t want to make it two for two. You haven’t had any alcohol in the last day, have you?”

“I don’t drink,” Kakashi said.

Light brown eyes regarded him skeptically. “You must be a barrel of fun on weekends.”

“Weekdays, too,” Ryouma said. He’d slipped inside the room to study the art on the walls, mask tipped curiously to one side. Katsuko had followed him, but only far enough to find a wall to lean against; she lounged casually beneath a picture of civilians surrounding a camping fire.

The captain in the red crescent moon mask, Namiashi Raidou, stood away from the walls, watching Kakashi.

Nanami plucked a scalpel from an autoclave on the table. “Ready for this?”

“You don’t use the needle?” Kakashi said, startled.

“What, this?” she said, turning to show the silver needle jammed through her braids, which had been gathered into a loose knot. “It’s a hair-stick.”

“Oh.”

Nanami turned back, hooked a rolling stool over with one foot, and sat on it by his shoulder. “In case you were wondering, this is really going to hurt,” she said, comfortingly. “Most rookies like to reflect on their oath while we do this.”

“Or you could curse,” Katsuko said, equally helpful. “Bonus points if you’re extra creative.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Kakashi said.

Nanami smiled and, without any ceremony, laid his skin open. The sharp-metal sting dulled in a wash of warmth down Kakashi’s arm, as blood flowed—which didnotseem conducive to applying ink, but perhaps that was where the jutsu came in. Lots of rituals required blood. His muscles twitched. He breathed out silently, holding himself still as Nanami carved the outline of the distinctive spiral free-hand into his arm. The pain wasn’t bad, but thesittingwas difficult.

The scalpel was set aside, and a green-glowing hand swept down Kakashi’s arm, staunching the blood. A wet cloth followed, bathing the open cuts in something astringent-smelling. Nanami rolled her stool down towards the end of the table, collected a bowl of dark crimson ink, and rolled back to Kakashi.

“Holding up?” she asked.

“I get stabbed for a living,” he said dryly.

“Still nice to ask,” she said. “That’s the easy bit over with.”

She dipped her gloved fingertips into the ink, lifted a red-dripping hand, and retraced the scalpel’s path, pressing the ink hard into the wounds. It burned like red ants crawling beneath his skin, and he realized there was chakra already embedded in the ink, unshaped and formless, ready to soak up a jutsu.

“Take a deep breath,” Nanami said, stripping the gloves off and lacing her fingers together.

The Sharingan was already open behind the mask. Kakashi flicked Sagara’s seal and was gratified when the protective mesh instantly crumbled to nearly invisible dust, freeing his vision. The world tilted sideways into a field of shifting blue fatelines. Nanami’s hands moved blurringly fast as they went through sixteen separate seals, but he caught the pattern. She set her left hand to his shoulder and her right to his elbow, and released the jutsu.

Really hurtwas a slight understatement.

The ink blazed white-hot beneath his skin and spilled through the design, filling in the blank stretches of skin between the carved lines. The open wounds healed, sealing smooth like melting plastic. Only a faint ridge remained, slightly darker red than the rest. The chakra arced deep into his arm, connecting to the branching pathways of his own energy lines, twining around meridian points. It blistered like fire the whole way, and the chair creaked as Kakashi’s fingers dug deeply into the leather-padded arms. A dull crack sounded as he broke something doubtlessly important.

Oaths and swearing—now he understood why people reached for both. But he’d wanted this foryears, and he refused to do anything but stand it.

He felt the moment when the jutsu closed and connected, completing a full circuit. Three new awarenesses blossomed in the back of his mind, faint but persistent—Genma, Raidou, and Katsuko. Or, more specifically, their tattoos. He couldfeelthem.

“Gotcha,” said Raidou, sounding pleased.

ANBU was the one organization in Konoha that had never been infiltrated by outside agents. Now Kakashi knew why.

The shivering agony faded slowly, replaced by a widening expansion of this new sense. Beyond the room, he could feel the faint firefly lights of other ANBU, and even get a rough idea of where they were in space, if he really focused. It wasn’t nearly as acute as the three here, within reach—well, two. Katsuko’s was a barely-felt glimmer in the storm of her overwhelming chakra. He couldn’t tell if the difference between them and the outside ANBU was the distance, or if Nanami had somehow calibrated him to his new team.

When he looked down at the tattoo, a gleaming scarlet double-curve draped down his arm, fully healed. His own ANBU mark, with unexpected bonuses.

Nanami thumped him on the shoulder in a friendly way. “Well done,” she said, turning away to wash her hands at a small sink in the corner. “Get up when you’re ready. It doesn’t need any aftercare, but keep it out of the sun if you can, or the ink’ll fade. Bring it back whenever you like for touch ups.”

Kakashi unpeeled his fingers from the chair and stood, shedding the last nerve-twitches of lingering pain. It hadn’t beenthatbad. He didn’t see why people—why people—

“Hatake?” Raidou demanded.

Metal flooded Kakashi’s mouth, and a high buzzing drowned whatever Raidou said next. Kakashi put a hand out to grab the chair, missed, and fell.

Later, Katsuko wouldn’t be able to say who leapt to catch Kakashi first. She pushed off the wall, instinct overcoming startlement. She and Ryouma were the only teammates close enough to make a grab for Kakashi in time, but Nanami got there first. The tattoo artist caught Kakashi in her arms, letting out a small grunt at his weight, and eased him down onto the floor next to the chair.

Genma was there a second later, checking Kakashi’s pulse. “Should have warned you he’s a fainter,” he said to Nanami, hooking a finger underneath the edge of Kakashi’s ANBU mask and sliding it off. He bent his head to listen to Kakashi’s breathing and nodded. “His respiration’s okay. I’m gonna try to rouse him.” At Nanami’s nod, he flew through a quick set of seals. The green glow of a medical jutsu settled over Kakashi’s upper chest, sinking underneath his skin at the heart chakra node.

Kakashi’s mismatched eyes snapped open. The wheel of the Sharingan spun as his hand shot up, closing around Genma’s throat like a vise. Raidou was already moving, seizing Kakashi’s wrist to hit the pressure points there. Kakashi’s fingers loosened, but didn’t release; Raidou didn’t let go.

“We’re your team,” Raidou said tersely. “You fainted. Let go of Shiranui.”

Kakashi blinked. “Oh.”

In the moment of silence that followed, Katsuko fought the unbalanced urge to snicker. Raidou was an impassive, unyielding statue, and Genma’s only reaction to Kakashi had been to go as still as a man facing down a feral animal. The medic stared down at Kakashi patiently, like he was waiting for him to stop being foolish.

Ryouma, on the other hand, had stepped back once it was clear that Kakashi wasn’t in any danger. He stood with one hip propped against the counter and his arms crossed over his chest, radiating nearly palpable amusem*nt at the situation.

“Welcome back, petal,” Katsuko told Kakashi, relief making her cheerful. “Do you always choke people out when you wake up?”

The strip of pale skin above Kakashi’s mask tinged red. He released Genma, lowering his hand when Raidou let go of his wrist, and looked at her. “I’m considering it.”

Genma eased back, rubbing his throat before he cleared it. “Did you eat this morning?” he asked Kakashi.

Kakashi hesitated. “No.”

Ryouma snorted softly, turning his attention to the mess on the counter. He fished a needle from the pile and started to poke at the fingertips of his bandaged hand, testing his nerve reactions while the rest of the team stared at the legendary fainting Copy-nin.

“Oath-day nerves?” Katsuko said. She gave Kakashi a sympathetic look. “I didn’t eat at all before they swore me in. Walked into the walls a few times right after I got my tattoo.”

“Are you sure they were related?” Kakashi asked, rather more dryly. He ignored the hand Genma offered him and pushed himself to his feet, deliberately steady.

“Not even two hours since we met, and already you judge me,” Katsuko sighed. “I would cry, but I sold my tear ducts to science.”

“Hope science pays well,” Ryouma murmured. At least one person here appreciated her humor.

Genma produced a small squeeze packet of glucose gel from his belt pouch and handed it to Kakashi with a tilt of his head that promised dire consequences if Kakashi didn’t eat it. He unearthed a meal bar as well, and gave that to Ryouma with a brisk, “You eat, too. This floor is small.”

Ryouma’s shoulders set as he put down his needle and accepted the bar from Genma. “I’m pretty good at standing,” he said, and put the bar down on the counter. Katsuko didn’t blame him. Those things were nasty.

Katsuko used her best deadpan voice. “Maybe Hatake could take pointers from you.”

“Didyoueat this morning?” Raidou asked Ryouma.

“Leftover curry rice and three cups of coffee, sir,” Ryouma said seriously.

Katsuko had vague memories of scarfing down a custard bun and a glass of water sometime between rolling out of bed and reporting to the Hokage’s Palace, but she decided not to volunteer the information. Raidou would only lecture her about protein intake again.

“We should make the rookies take us out to lunch after this,” she suggested instead. “As part of our super-secret hazing ritual.”

Ryouma’s painted ram mask tilted towards her. “I was just starting to look up to you, senpai,” he said, voice heavy with disappointment. “Don’t break my heart already.”

Katsuko cackled. “I’m not looking to break your heart, Tousaki. Just your wallet.”

“Not to interrupt this lovely banter,” Nanami said. “But I have a quota to hit and other things to do before lunchtime, so can the next victim get in the chair?”

Ryouma ducked his head deferentially and took the few steps from the counter to the tattoo chair. “Left shoulder,” he told Nanami, sliding into the seat. “No alcohol in the last day. No medical issues above the wrist.”

Nanami’s smile was a little alarming. “Good. You heard the spiel earlier—cut, ink, jutsu. Don’t fight me.Tellme if you feel faint, for the love of god. And don’t expect this to be like a regular tattoo, because it isn’t. Any questions?”

“Not like a regular stabbing, either, I take it.” Ryouma craned his neck to look down at his shoulder, tipping his head a bit further to compensate for his mask. “Takumi does some jutsu with his ink, but that’s mostly for the color. What’s this one do? Location tracker? Instant death for oath-breakers?”

“Wait and see,” Nanami said, mysteriously.

“Maybe if you ask nicely, Nanami-san will let you customize your tattoo,” Katsuko suggested. “I asked her for sparkles and ink blood streaks before I got mine.”

Ryouma co*cked his head to get a look at Katsuko’s right shoulder. Dark eyes glittered with faint amusem*nt behind his mask. “I’m guessing you didn’t ask nicely.”

“I’m always nice,” Katsuko said, quite seriously. “But my old captain told me sparkles would ruin ANBU’s image. What do you think?”

“I dunno.” He relaxed against the headrest. “The more I see of ANBU’s image from the inside, the more I think sparkles might be appropriate.” His attention flicked over to Nanami. “Though not for me. I’m more of a flames-and-daggers type of guy.”

“Original,” Nanami said, a little teasingly. The flash of metal snagged Katsuko’s gaze right before Nanami laid Ryouma’s skin open, flesh parting beneath shining steel in precise lines.

Ryouma set his jaw as the scalpel sliced its curving lines, but he didn’t twitch. It was at least quicker than the standard tattoo, though he missed the adrenaline buzz bleeding into the endorphin high. He’d stick with Takumi for his next tattoo, he decided. Maybe on his hip. Nanami was probably right about the advisability of a flaming dagger but a bloody knife wouldn’t be bad…

The tattooist traded her scalpel out for the blood-staunching jutsu, then for astringent and ink. It was the dark red color of venous blood, and it stung like salt in raw flesh. Kakashi hadn’t flinched; he didn’t, either. He nodded short and sharp when Nanami glanced up at him, and then he clenched his hands on the armrests and gritted his teeth tight.

Kakashi hadn’t cried out. He clung to that, as fire lit up his arm and his chakra system. Kakashi’dfaintedbut he hadn’t made a sound, and this was one challenge Ryouma wasn’t going to lose.

He nearly yelped, all the same, when his chakra sense rerouted. There were live embers smoldering around the edges of the tiny room, within the normal clouds of their chakra-presences: two behind his left shoulder, one nearly within reach by his side, another lurking near the table. Nanami was chakra without an ember, smaller, softer—chuunin level maybe, he thought, though it was clear she’d chosen in-house work instead of a career in the field. Tiny, muted flickers like star-glimmers wandered somewhere above his head. Other ANBU, in the upper storeys?

His head felt damp, when he rocked it against the leather headrest. Sweat stuck his shirt to his back and shone on his arm, around the dark red ink of the new tattoo. He said hoarsely, “Guess that’s the end of lying about getting a quickie in the bathroom. Can you turn it off?”

Two of the chakra presences instantly winked out, dampening the smoldering new embers down to the barest glow. Ryouma had to look over his shoulder to be sure they were still there. Genma was slouching against the wall near the door, just within reach of Kakashi, who was leaning against the doorframe itself. Kakashi’s chakra-ember—ANBU-ember?—was still alight, though flickering, as if he were trying to copy Genma’s trick. Nearer, by the table against the wall, Katsuko in her chakra storm wasn’t even trying.

Raidou stood in the center of the room, almost close enough to reach out and touch. “Takes a little practice,” he said. “But it’s not impossible.” His ember compressed further, down to a hard nugget of ash, and then was gone.

Looking at him was like staring at Ryouma’s own hand, and not being able to feel it. Ryouma swallowed, queasy, and thumped his head back against the back of the chair. “Useful in a fight,” he said, half at random. “No more getting distracted looking for each other.”

Genma’s tattoo-ember flared hot again, though his chakra aura stayed clamped down. “You can do this, too,” he said. “So another ANBU can ‘see’ you, without giving your presence away to the enemy.”

“Makes it a pain when you’re trying to sneak up on another ANBU, though,” Katsuko said cheerfully.

“Boundaries, Ueno,” Raidou said. “Remember boundaries?” His chakra was still dampened out, but the spark of his tattoo blazed up. Ryouma could almost fix it in space now, without looking, and he was beginning to sense the subtle differences between the four of them, like pinewood burning beside oak, or the unique read of their chakra signatures. Genma’s was a little cooler, Kakashi’s less controlled, though he had it nearly three-quarters clamped down by now. Raidou’s had jagged edges around a steady core, and Katsuko’s—

Well, it was there, beneath her chakra. That was about all he could tell.

“Right,” she drawled, leaning back, arms crossed over her chest. “Boundaries.” Dry skepticism saturated her voice.

Nanami scooted her stool back and stood, clapping Ryouma gently on his good shoulder. “I’m going to wash up. Take all the time you need before you stand up. You did well.”

“You too,” Ryouma said, which was probably in the running for one of his lamest rejoinders ever, but at least he hadn’t passed out yet. He took a moment more to breathe, as water ran in the sink at the corner. Then he swung his legs over the side of the chair and stood up, with a hand on the armrest.

His knees stayed steady beneath him. “Hah!” he said, inordinately pleased. “It’s a triumph for coffee and curry rice.” He took a step, leaving the chair behind, and decided, “And me.”

“Congratulations,” Kakashi said sourly from the door.

Grinning at him didn’t do much good when there was a ceramic mask in the way. Ryouma flipped him a cheerful thumbs-up instead.

It would not be good teamwork to stab Ryouma in the brain, even if his giant air-bubble head made a tempting target. Kakashi settled for looking as disinterested as possible. Ryouma didn’t seem to care.

“One out of two,” Nanami said cheerfully, toweling her hands off. “I’ll take it.” She smiled at Kakashi. “And I can say that I dropped Sharingan Kakashi with one jutsu. That’s gotta be some kind of record, right?”

Tomorrow, he wasdyeing his hair.

“There’s a club,” he said. “I’ll add you to the membership list.”

Her grin widened, flashing white teeth against dark skin. “Enjoy that ink,” she said. “And thanks for letting me be your first artist—I love popping cherries.”

Kakashi lifted a hand and slid out of the door before the conversation reached a higher plateau of excruciating. He lost his grip on the half-smothered spark in the process, and felt it flare to life again, marking him like a tiny beacon. That was—not something he liked.

A low alto chuckle followed him: Katsuko.

Genma followed him in person, while Ryouma stayed behind to thank Nanami. The hallway wasn’t empty: two masked, unmarked teams watched proceedings curiously, waiting to be attended. Kakashi recognized Ayane in one group, wearing a dark ferret mask, and the torturer’s son in the other group, wearing a mask of abstract blue and green slashes. Genma stepped close, broaching Kakashi’s personal bubble, and murmured, “Feeling steadier?”

“If I start to succumb to the vapors, you’ll be the first to know,” Kakashi said, rather than a more truthfulno. He wasn’t about to pitch over again, but steady wasn’t today’s operable word. This was—ANBU was—

He’d expected something different.

Genma shrugged and moved back, ignoring the other teams to watch the door. After a moment, Ryouma stepped through, rubbing his shoulder thoughtfully. He spotted Ayane and Hakone, and nodded, but didn’t engage them. Hakone nodded back. Ayane just tilted her head slightly. Raidou and Katsuko came out a second later, with Katsuko calling back a cheerful farewell to Nanami and—asking her out for drinks?

“I’mmarried, Ueno,” Nanami said, laughing.

Katsuko’s voice warmed with a hidden grin. “Your husband can come, too.”

“Not an open relationship!”

Katsuko shrugged cheerfully, and found her place back in the team.

“Fall in, Hatake,” Raidou said, and set off down the hallway, with Ryouma and Katsuko on his heels.

Kakashi sighed. “Yes, captain.”

Genma fell into step behind him.

It was a short, twisting journey up two flights of stairs to Raidou’s undisclosed destination—a plain door with an uninformative ‘37-B4’ stamped into the wood. The door to the left said ‘14’. The door to the right said ‘WAQ-2’. Apparently you just had to know. Raidou tossed a key to Ryouma, who caught it reflexively with his good hand, and a second to Kakashi. The door had chakra seals embedded into it; Raidou released them with two quick hand-seals that Kakashi memorized, and unlocked the door.

“Welcome to Team Six’s home base,” Raidou said, pushing the door open.

It was an office.

One large desk took up a corner, complete with a comfortable office chair and a locked cabinet. A second, slightly smaller desk rested up against the wall, placed kitty-corner, also with a chair and cabinet. Captain and lieutenant, clearly. Three smaller desks—not even desks, more like worktables—made a loose L in the opposite corner. Their rolling chairs were wooden, and unpadded. There were no cabinets there, though someone had conscientiously placed three small trash cans down. A clean blackboard took up most of one wall. There were maps pinned to another. A battered reddish-brown leather couch looked like it had already done duty as a nap station; it was long enough that even Ryouma could probably lie down without his feet hanging off the end. In the final corner, a tall green plant bore one defiant white flower.

They were still on the first sub-basem*nt level, so there were no windows. But if Kakashi had to guess, he would bet that second door led to a bathroom.

“No TV?” Ryouma said, disappointed.

Raidou shed his crescent moon mask, revealing evenly handsome features and a wry smile. “If you find yourself with time to watch movies, I better be in the hospital.”

“That’s not an invitation to mutiny, in case you were wondering,” Genma added, removing his tanuki—red panda? Tanuki—mask and hanging it on a peg by the door. His face was more delicate than Raidou’s, a touch younger, animated by light eyes and lazy amusem*nt.

“I’ll do my best to remember,” Ryouma said, with mock gravity. He stepped further into the room, running curious fingers over the polished wood of one desk, then dropped carelessly down onto the couch. He pushed his mask up to one side, further disheveling his hair, and looked like he wished there was a coffee table he could put his feet up on. His face was paler than Kakashi had expected, sweat-streaked. Not completely unaffected by Nanami after all, then. “Guess we’ll just have to amuse ourselves in the meantime. With pushups, I assume.”

Genma gave him a sidelong look. “One-handed pushups for you.”

Ryouma waved the fingers of his good hand. “I like showing off.”

No news there.

Katsuko sprawled down on the three-quarters of the sofa not taken up by Ryouma, tipping her head back against squashy couch cushions, and slid her mask off like an afterthought. Her face was sharper than Kakashi had expected, with an angular jawline cutting down to a pointed chin. Her nose was long and narrow, unbroken, and her mouth was thin. At a glance, he would have judged her as a delicate boy, rather than a handsome woman.

Trouble, Raidou had called her.

She caught Kakashi’s eye, and winked.

Kakashi took himself to the other side of the room and leaned against the wall, which had so far expressed no desire to get into his pants or under his skin.

Raidou raised an eyebrow at him. “Prefer to stay hidden?”

Hidden? He was completely visib— ANBU mask, right. Kakashi was almost tempted to sayyes, just to see if Raidou would let him keep it on, but that wasn’t actually a fight he wanted to get into. He undid the strap and lifted the mask free; it was body-warm now, light in his hand. He clipped it to the special notch on his belt.

“Better?” he said.

Genma glanced over from where he was sit-leaning on the edge of his desk, and nodded once.

“Nine out of ten,” Katsuko said, sprawling further out on the couch. It edged her feet into Ryouma’s territory, but he didn’t seem to care. They both had the aura of touchy-feely people.

“I think I’ve just figured out why they assigned us together,” Ryouma said contemplatively, dark eyes glancing from face to face. “We’re the Hot Team now.”

Katsuko laughed. “I’m not complaining.”

They were going to high-five in a moment, and Kakashi was going to have to kill himself with that potted plant. This wasn’t what he’d pictured atall. Minato had said there was no glory in ANBU, but there was still supposed to be nobility, or dignity, orsomething. The Hokage’s most feared soldiers. This was the whetstone to sharpen himself against, but they were clowns.

Wait until you meet your team.

Why would Minato put him here?

Raidou wasn’t an expert in Kakashi-speak yet, but the restless look in that one visible grey eye said it was time to intervene.

“Sit up, Ueno,” he said. “You haven’t earned a nap yet.”

Katsuko shrugged and levered herself up, curling her legs up and wedging herself comfortably into the far corner of the couch, which left a tidy acreage of space between her and Ryouma’s spread knees. Raidou was half-tempted to ask Kakashi to sit with them, but that was a hornet’s nest of issues that didn’t need kicking quite yet.

“Ground rules,” Raidou said instead, and knew he’d picked right by the way Katsuko groaned, Ryouma frowned, and Kakashi’s shoulders relaxed the barest inch. Raidou grinned and glanced at Genma.

“This is our office,” Genma began dryly. “There are many like it, but this one is ours. You’re welcome to come here at any time.” His eyes flicked to Katsuko. “Even if you just want to sleep.”

“Assuming we can find it again,” Ryouma muttered, mostly under his breath.

“We needed permission to sleep here?” Katsuko said, hurdling over the point like usual.

“You’ll learn,” Raidou said to Ryouma. He ignored Katsuko; if you paid attention to everything that came out of her mouth, you’d be chasing fictional butterflies for days. Better to rap her knuckles when you caught her in the act of an actual wrongdoing, which was less often than people thought.

Ryouma gave a dubious nod.

“Desks are personal and private,” Genma continued. “Lock something inside and it won’t be touched. Leave it out in the open and it’s fair game.”

“That said, if I catch someone deliberately thieving on this team, I will dislocate the first joint that presents itself,” Raidou said mildly.

Genma gestured to the filing cabinet sat beside his own desk. “Maps, scrolls, and forms are in here. Disorganize them at your own peril.”

Raidou could see the question forming in Ryouma’s eyes, edged in subtle worry, but let it wait for the moment.

“Pegs on the wall for anything you don’t want to wear while you’re in the office. Masks, too.” Genma nodded to where his mask hung on the wall, sharing space with a short sword. “You’re responsible for your own day-to-day weapon and armor maintenance, but major sharpening, serious damage, and replacements for expended kunai, shuriken, senbon and so forth, you requisition from the quartermaster. Req forms are in the cabinet I mentioned before.”

Katsuko had started her inevitable slide down into the sofa cushions, as if she hoped they might swallow her. Ryouma, at least, was raptly attentive. Kakashi was watchful and silent.

Genma toed a cardboard box out from under his desk, and lifted the flap to reveal rows of bars wrapped in muted brown paper. “This is a case of field rations. Tell me your preferred flavors and I’ll try to keep them in stock. The cafeteria is 24/7. And I keep a full medical kit in the bottom drawer of this cabinet. If you use something from it, replace it.”

It would be unprofessional to draw little hearts around his lieutenant, but Raidou still wanted to.

“Chocolate,” Katsuko said instantly. “No, vanilla.Caffeine. Do they have that?”

“Peanut butter,” Ryouma said.

“Anything’s fine for me,” Raidou said. “Sesame-ginger, if you can get it.”

The room looked at Kakashi. After a long beat of silence, he conceded, “Jerky.”

“You like dried fish?” Genma asked.

Kakashi looked faintly surprised. “Yes.”

Genma leaned down and unearthed a vacuum-sealed packet of dried herring, which he held up by way of demonstration. “Me, too. But you have to balance them with some carbs. I recommend the millet-konbu bar if you don’t like the nut-flavor ones.”

A thoughtful flicker crossed the visible quarter of Kakashi’s face.

“Seriously, are there caffeine ones or not?” Katsuko said. “This is information I need to know.”

“You’ve never needed caffeine,” Raidou said.

“I’dlike caffeine,” Ryouma said. “Or just soldier pills. Can you get those in flavors other than gross?”

Genma looked sharply at Ryouma. “Soldier pills are controlled access for a reason. If you just need a buzz to stay awake, caffeine tabs are available from the QM. Or you can do what I do and chow down on a couple of coffee beans if you’re in a bind.” He glanced at Raidou, eyebrows lifted—asking permission? Raidou shrugged one shoulder, and Genma kept going. “I know you got a safety lecture on them already, but soldier pills are dangerous. Too many will damage your blood’s ability to clot, and if you can’t clot, no medical jutsu in the world will stop you bleeding to death from one well-placed kunai strike.”

Well, now was as good a time as any to re-visit that little safety talk. Soldier pills were relatively new technology, only recently developed from the few recipes the Akimichi clan had been willing to hand over from their family’s personal archives. They weren’t fine-tuned, and they were definitely dangerous. Most jounin didn’t use them, except for rare cases—clearly Ryouma had. ANBUdiduse them, but ANBU had a habit of diving headlong into risky-but-useful and reevaluating later.

The set of Ryouma’s broad shoulders shifted very slightly, from relaxed to bulldog. “My best combat jutsu is pretty chakra intensive. I can only do it three times before I wipe myself out, if I’m not using soldier pills.”

“Then you know to be careful,” Raidou said.

Ryouma looked at him, dark eyes narrowing. He nodded once.

“You’ll get an allotted dose from the in-house medic,” Genma said. “If you need more—”

“We’ll discuss it,” said Raidou.

Ryouma’s jaw worked stubbornly sideways, but he nodded again, and settled back against the couch. “I can work with that. I don’t always need ‘em, anyway.”

For obvious reason, Katsuko never needed them, and her expression of patient suffering said she was only putting up with this conversation because she was a good person, and also too lazy to get up. Raidou glanced at Kakashi, who just shrugged noncommittally. No surprises there.

“Back to ground rules,” Raidou said. “Practice is every morning at five a.m., except for Sunday, which you get free. Don’t be late. Acceptable excuses for missing practice are a) you’re dead, or b) you’re actively on fire. Nothing else counts.”

“Except if we’re on mission,” Katsuko said.

“Or that.”

“Or in a mission-briefing.”

“Katsuko.”

“Or in hospital.”

“Stop helping,” Raidou said.

She waved encouragingkeep goinghands at him. Raidou flattened the urge to roll his eyes. “In theory, you covered ANBU’s general rules when you signed your initiation paperwork, but we’ll hit the important points again. Ueno, what am I about to say?”

“Respect your teammates’ boundaries,” Katsuko recited, in a voice like withered leaves.

“Gold star,” Raidou said. “ANBU is not like the standard rank and file. We’re an insular group and it’s easy to cross a line here, whether you mean to or not. No ANBU agent is permitted to fraternize with a senior officer. Same-rank liaisons are allowed but not encouraged, particularly within your own team. Harassment isnottolerated. We’re home to morally grey whackjobs, but whatever we’re asked to do in the field, consent is required here. If I hear of any one of you flouting that, I will personally drop you off the wall myself.” He looked at each one of them in turn, landing on Ryouma at the end. “That said, if any one of you ever has an issue, come to me, or to Shiranui. We will take it seriously.”

“Agreed,” said Genma.

Katsuko nodded, all traces of impish delight buried for a moment of actual respect. He’d have to mark that on his calendar. Kakashi dipped his chin in masked acknowledgement.

Ryouma’s mouth curved in a faint, crooked smile. He met Raidou’s eyes and nodded, too. “Understood.”

Relief made Raidou smile back.

“Likewise, if you have a general concern, raise it,” he said. “If you can’t talk to Shiranui or me, then your next highest authority is the vice-commander, Kuroda Ushio.” And good luck catching his attention. “If you’re injured, no matter how minor, weneedto know. I won’t have martyrs on this team.”

“Especially head or neck injuries,” Genma said. “If you get your bell rung even a little in a combat or a spar,tellsomeone.”

“If you have concerns about a teammate’s fitness for duty, we need to know that, too,” Raidou went on. “You are responsible for your mental and physical fitness, but Shiranui and I are responsible foryou. If you’re having problems eating or sleeping, if you’re sick, if you’re getting nightmares that won’t go away—come to us. We’ve seen most of it before, and we will do our best to help. Nothing is an automatic strike. You won’t get kicked out of ANBU for having a bad week.”

“Understood,” Katsuko said quietly.

If he’d been sitting next to her, that would have been the moment to toss an arm around her shoulders.

Ryouma’s cheek dented; he was chewing his mouth on the inside. After a moment’s thought, he shook his head and looked up, smiling. “Team Dad and Mom. Got it. Which one of you do we report to when Kakashi wets the bed?”

“I’m not into watersports,” Kakashi said calmly.

Katsuko choked. Ryouma’s smile broke into a full grin. Genma let out a crack of startled laughter, then sobered up immediately, leaning against the desk like nothing had happened when Raidou turned to stare at him.

“Moving on,” Raidou said, after a beat.

A faint gleam of amusem*nt lingered in Genma’s eyes. “Paperwork?” he said.

Katsuko made a throttled-cat sound of distress.

“Paperwork is to be doneon time,” Raidou said ruthlessly. “And legibly. You do not want to test what kinds of creative punishments I will come up with for tardiness.”

Katsuko muttered something that sounded a lot like “—hair onfire—” before subsiding back into a glower.

Ryouma’s grin had faded while Raidou spoke, replaced by the slow creep of returning worry, though it twitched back for a moment at Katsuko’s antics. “Does paperwork have to be done byme?” he asked. “Or can I dictate and get someone else to write it out?”

“I’ve arranged for an Intel debriefer to take dictated reports from you at the end of every mission,” Raidou said, thankful he’d done his homework on that particular issue. “You don’t have to write anything.”

Ryouma let out a long, slow breath and leaned back against the couch. “You’re making this no-fraternization thing really hard,” he complained. “If I can’t pledge you my undying love, can I bring you coffee in the morning?”

Well, that solved the question of whether he was going to be awkward about things.

“Perhaps bring the whole team some,” Raidou said, amused. “Everyone needs a little extra love at 5am.”

“You can’t write?” Kakashi asked, from behind Raidou’s shoulder. He sounded more puzzled than accusatory.

Ryouma found a middle-point of nothing to look at, meeting no one’s eyes. “My name. Simple sentences in kana. Couple handfuls of kanji, maybe, though I usually miss some of the strokes.”

Kakashi stepped away from the wall, engaging for the first time. “But you can read,” he said. It was almost, but not quite, a question.

Dark eyes flicked to Kakashi, then to Raidou. “I couldn’t read the mission scroll in the second trial,” Ryouma admitted.

“Then how—” Kakashi began, then realized: “You got someone to read it for you.”

Ryouma shrugged one shoulder. “Lost a few hours and nearly got my head taken off, too. Turns out even hardened killers’ll pause for breakfast, though.” To the rest of the team, he said: “I’m really good at roast rabbit.”

Katsuko’s hazel gaze flicked over to Ryouma, weighing him. “Smart,” she judged with a grin, sounding genuinely impressed.

Ryouma hesitated, searching her face for a darker motive, and smiled when he didn’t find it.

Copy-ninja Kakashi, ruiner of moments, crossed by Raidou’s shoulder and stood in front of the pair on the sofa, looking down at Ryouma. He made the blank gesture of a man with too many questions to juggle and not enough time to ask them all, and settled on, “Buthow?”

Ryouma shrugged again, this time with both shoulders. “The guy who found me, Abe Shintaro—he’s not a bad guy. Most people aren’t. Give ‘em a smile, they’ll go out of their way to help.” His expressive mouth twisted. “Good thing I didn’t run into Akiyama first, I guess.” He glanced at Genma and Raidou. “Or either of you.”

Raidou exchanged a glance with Genma, who smirked.

Kakashi shook his head and settled into a crouch, surprising Raidou. On anyone else, it would have put him at head-height, but Ryouma was ridiculously tall, so it actually dropped Kakashi’s eyeline to about chin-level. “That’s not what I meant,” Kakashi said. “If you can’t read— I mean, scrolls. And signs, andmaps. Menus. Money.How?”

Raidou suspected Kakashi had not had many friends in childhood, because seriously, social skills. There were none here.

Genma caught Raidou’s eye, light brown eyebrows lifting in a clear question:Are you going to let this play out?

Raidou dropped a hand:Wait.

Any other issue, he’d step in. But this one would affect missions. In some places, they couldn’t afford to protect sore spots. Ryouma had raised the subject in-group. In theory, he had a game plan to deal with the fallout.

“Ask a teammate to read the scroll,” Ryouma said. “Ask the waiter for the special. Puzzle it out myself, if I really have to and I want a headache.” He settled further back into the couch, making a show of unconcern, but he looked more like a man who wanted to step outside of the conversation he was having. “You can do all the reading, since you’re curious. We can start with that book you’ve been hauling around.”

That better not be the book Raidou was thinking of.

“So you can read, just not well,” Kakashi pressed.

A thin line drew down between Ryouma’s eyebrows. “If it’s all written in kana, but I’ll be slow and I’ll make mistakes. They tend to move. Kanji, I know maybe one in fifty. Trust me, we’re better off if you do the reading.”

“No, I get that,” Kakashi said, and made that same open-handed gesture again—too many questions, not enough words to shape them. What understanding was he trying to reach? “You created jutsu. You created a whole newclassof jutsu. That doesn’t just fall out of the air. It takes research.”

Ryouma’s expression darkened.

At that extremely obvious clue, Kakashi finally seemed to realize that his captive audience wasn’t a happy one. He sat back on his heels, and—smiled, visible eye curving in a friendly arc. “What I’m trying to say, is that’s smart,” he said. “I didn’t know you had that in you.”

Raidou resisted the urge to put his hand over his eyes. Genma cleared his throat pointedly.

The little moment of silence stretched—Genma cleared his throat again—as Ryouma gave Kakashi a long, flat look, and finally drawled, “I’m more than just a pretty face.”

“Are you guys going to start beating your chests next?” Katsuko asked, fascinated. “Or is this a verbal contest only?”

Ryouma thumped his ANBU chestplate with his good hand. “It loses something without the shirtlessness,” he said sadly, and co*cked his head at Raidou. “What’s next, taichou?”

Katsuko leapt on that with the light of mad glee in her eyes, opening her mouth—

Genma got there first. “No,” he said, quietly firm.

The change from firecracker joker to professional shinobi was smooth as silk. “Training,” Katsuko said, as if that had been her intention all along. “What are we going to do while Tousaki’s hand heals?”

Raidou swallowed an odd bite of disappointment. It wasgoodthat Genma was learning her cues, and that she was letting him. It couldn’t always be Raidou’s job.

And yet.

“We’ll train like normal,” he said. “Fighting with your off-hand is good practice. In fact, we should do a bit of cripple’s run this week—come with a handicap in mind, and we’ll train around it.”

Kakashi rose to his feet. “You mean, other than my blind side, Ueno’s chakra, and Tousaki’s personality?”

“Screw you,” said Ryouma amiably. “Katsuko’s chakra is awesome.”

“Enough,” said Raidou. “Hatake, consider blindness for your disadvantage. You can practice relying on your teammates. Tousaki, you can show me how you’d work supply lines without being able to read the logs. Ueno—”

“Small jutsu?” Katsuko said, with a sigh.

“Small jutsu,” Raidou said. “Henge, maybe.”

“Also, you need to learn these,” Genma said, and opened his filing cabinet of paperwork and mysteries, extracting two photocopied booklets that had been neatly bound in tough, weatherproof canvas. The field guide to ANBU’s specific hand-signs and trail-codes. He handed one each to Ryouma and Kakashi, then seemed realized at the same time Raidou did that the reading required was going to be a problem. “Ueno will drill you both. It’ll be good review for her.”

Katsuko’s yelp of outrage died, half-throttled, under the combined weight of Genma’s level look and Raidou’s raised eyebrows.

“Oh yay,” she said bleakly.

“You get the rookies to yourself,” Genma pointed out.

Katsuko brightened up.

“Hazing is still a no,” Genma added.

Katsuko’s brightness did not temper any. Kakashi gave her a look that, on any other man, would have been apprehensive. Ryouma just grinned, careless.

“If the Quartermaster gave you any weapons, feel free to bring them to tomorrow’s session,” Raidou said. “In the meantime, you’re free. Tousaki, Hatake, you should get yourselves settled in at the rookie dorms—the rooms are assigned, so they should be ready.”

Genma tossed two keys across with a faint smile. “You’ve got a corner room, Tousaki. Congrats.”

Ryouma’s grin broadened.

“We’ll meet tomorrow on Training Field 15,” Raidou said. “You know what time; don’t be late. Assuming Tousaki’s hand heals on schedule, we’ll be expecting our first mission in ten days, which is enough time to get into sync with each other—don’t say it, Ueno.”

Katsuko closed her mouth with a click.

“If you need me, I’m housed in the veteran’s wing. Shiranui rooms in the village—I think your housing situation is still in flux, right?”

Genma nodded once. “If you need either one of us and can’t find us, the administration office can summon us, but only in a genuine emergency.”

“Realizing it’s three a.m. and you don’t know how glitter is made does not count,” Raidou said, looking at Katsuko. “Or deciding you need to hunt stoats for unknown purposes. Or because you can feel your hair growing and it worries you.”

“In fairness, I was drugged that time,” Katsuko said.

“Right,” Raidou said, remembering. “I take it back. That one counted.”

“If you can feel your hair growing and it worries you, the medic office is staffed around the clock,” Genma said, sounding faintly alarmed. “Go there.”

Kakashi raised a hand. “What’s the resource for someone wishing to switch teams?”

Raidou was honestly surprised it had taken him this long to ask. “There’s no switching. If you have a problem with your teammates, you come to me. If you have a problem with me, there are higher channels you can go through. I’d suggest making sure it’s an actual problem first, though.”

Katsuko chuckled, soft and just faintly evil. Kakashi stepped away from her.

“I think that’s it,” Raidou said. “Any questions? Comments?”

Blank silence greeted him. Despite the mid-morning hour, both Ryouma and Kakashi were starting to look a little weary around the edges. Katsuko looked like she wanted to say something, but held her tongue.

“Then welcome to Team Six, and consider yourselves initiated.”

Genma straightened out of his slouch and tapped his hand to his shoulder, over the crimson tattoo. “Captain,” he said.

Surprised but grateful, Raidou nodded at him.

Katsuko unfolded next, pulling herself out of the depths of the couch, and smiled when she saluted. She was his one familiar anchor in this sea of change, lean and loyal in her magpie uniform. “Taichou,” she said, like she was proud of him.

Ryouma hesitated, then stood in an easy stretch of tall muscle, looking every inch the bright young soldier. He saluted with his bandaged hand. “Sir.”

Kakashi weighed Raidou for a silent moment, grey eye level and implacable, then he dropped his gaze and tapped his shoulder, and said nothing.

Well, it was a start.

“This is a beautiful moment,” Raidou said, with a crooked grin. “Now clear out before I give you tasks.”

Chapter 9: One Minute More

Chapter by ANBU_Legacy, Nezuko, saunterleftside

Chapter Text

April 19, Yondaime Year 5

As soon as Raidou had dismissed them, Kakashi was gone. Off to plot a way around the ‘no team switching’ policy, Genma guessed. Ryouma and Katsuko took a moment longer, but the unholy alliance Raidou had predicted seemed to be forming already, as Katsuko promised Ryouma a tour of the cafeteria and introductions to the servers most easily charmed into doling out an extra portion or three, and who was likely to have ‘secret pie’ available for a winning smile.

When the door had shut, Raidou made a beeline for the couch, collapsing onto the creased and faded leather with a sigh. “That went well,” he said, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t sure he believed himself.

Genma shrugged and dropped onto the sofa at the opposite end from Raidou. Dry springs deep in the frame whined. “You were expecting something different?”

“Honestly?” Raidou glanced at Genma sidelong, then let his head loll back and draped an arm over his eyes. “I was kind of surprised they didn’t just laugh me out of the room.”

Genma raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?” he asked. “That’s what seemed off to you? I was going to go with Kakashi passing out on Nanami, the cricoid bruise he gave me when he came to, or maybe his complete lack of anything resembling social skills. But you? You were great.”

Raidou lifted his elbow just enough to expose one brown eye. “Cricoid?”

“Throat cartilage.” Genma raised his chin and tapped the tender spot below his Adam’s apple—Kakashi had definitely left a bruise.

Raidou uncovered his eyes altogether and sat up, leaning across to very carefully touch his fingertips to Genma’s throat. “Lucky he didn’t grab harder. You need arnica for this?”

“Probably,” Genma said. He got up and went to his cabinet to get the bruise cream from his med kit.

“I should’ve put that in the rules,” Raidou said. “‘Don’t choke out your team medic, dumbass’.”

Genma chuckled. “That’s a good one. I like the ‘dumbass’ part.” He sat back down, detached his gloves from their sleeves at the wrist, and tugged the stretchy fabric of his uniform away from his neck to smear the astringent-smelling paste over the bruise. “How’s it look?” he asked, turning his head to show Raidou. “Anything visible yet?”

“Couple of fingerprints, maybe,” Raidou said, squinting critically. “We can get you a scarf, if you want. New fashion trend for April.”

“Eh.” Genma eased the turtleneck down, rubbed his fingers dry on the back of his hand, and recapped the arnica tube. “I’m more of a ‘let the bruises show’ kind of dresser. When I’m not in uniform.”

“Or that,” Raidou said, looking amused. “So how doyouthink it went, fainting and throttling aside?”

“Well.” Genma stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back. “Actually. It could have been worse. Ueno was wildly inappropriate, but she reined it in when we called her on it. Tousaki didn’t commit justifiable assault despite being clearly provoked, and Kakashi, for all he’s a complete ass, didn’t outright refuse to take orders. And both Tousaki and Kakashi were pretty heavily stressed, given the last several days. All of us have been when you consider the situation at Trials and the current threat level the village is under. So…” He spread his hands. “Well. It went well.”

“Hooray, mediocre success is ours,” Raidou drawled, waving one hand in a half-hearted celebration. “Actually, I think you’re right on every count. Did I say thank you for being on top of things? Becausethank you. You are my favorite lieutenant.”

“I’m your only lieutenant,” Genma said, trying to hide his pleasure.

“Still counts,” Raidou insisted.

“Hajime and Gojo get the credit. Stepping into Gojo’s shoes as lieutenant when she got hurt was good training.”

“You only served as replacement for three months, right?” Raidou asked.

Genma nodded.

“The higher-ups did well making it permanent.”

Genma rubbed the back of his neck, unprepared for the compliment. “Thanks.” It had been a lot of work getting organized, actually: he was glad it had paid off. His filing cabinet, after five solid hours, was a thing of beauty. The case of rat-bars under his desk was a trick he’d stolen from Gojo, who’d always had a box of her own personal favorite flavor available for anyone who was hungry.

“I meant it when I said I thought you were great, you know,” he said. “Your whole talk about boundaries… I’m guessing that’s one Ueno has heard before?” It was as soft a lead in as Genma could come up with for the question that had been burning at the back of his mind ever since Tousaki and Raidou had exchanged those oh-so-telling smiles when Raidou mentioned the no-fraternization policy.

“Manytimes,” Raidou answered, with a fondly exasperated head shake. “I figure if I repeat it enough, she’ll learn it by rote.”

“Looked to me like Kakashi could use to have listened to it, too. He waswayover the line with Tousaki.” A second, more topical question presented itself, one that was maybe related to the first. “Why’d you let him run with it for so long? Wanted to see how Tousaki would handle himself when pushed?”

Raidou winced. “Partially. Wanted to see if Hatake would get the clue and rein himself in, too—which, obviously, no. But I kind of wanted to hear the answers myself. I’ll crush it faster next time.”

“Itwasinteresting to see how Tousaki handled it,” Genma said. “If you’re going to survive as a functionally illiterate jounin, you’d better have a pretty broad set of coping mechanisms.”

He grabbed a senbon and stuck it between his teeth, clamping the slim metal needle between his molars. It clicked against his false lower bicuspid, rattling into the tiny grove in the implanted tooth where years of chewing senbon just like it had worn away some of the ceramic.

puss*footing around the issue wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Better to just out with it. Raidou seemed like a straight-forward kind of guy, at least so far. “Is there, uh… any other reason you might have let that drag out?” he asked. “You and Tousaki were both mighty relieved looking about that no-canoodling-your-superior-officer rule.”

Raidou’s head snapped up. He stared at Genma for a second, expressionless, and then visibly gave it up, cracking a crooked smile. “I was hoping you’d missed that.”

A double punch of relief that Raidou hadn’t busted him for overstepping, and sympathy for a guy in an awkward situation made Genma smile back. “I, uh. Yeah. I don’t need details or anything, but… One-night stand, or bitter exes? Or amicable exes?”

Raidou looked across the room, gaze fixed on the clean chalkboard, and didn’t answer immediately. The longer the silence dragged out, the more Genma second-guessed himself for having asked. But then, “Leaning more towards the first.”

Genma nodded.

“The higher-ups are aware of the potential conflict,” Raidou continued. “After today, I don’t anticipate it being an issue.”

“Sounds good,” Genma said. “I’ll forget we ever discussed it.”

“Discussed what?” Raidou asked, dry, but with half a smile.

“I have no idea,” Genma said. “Let’s see, what else? I was surprised Tousaki already had experience with soldier pills. I guess it makes sense—his jutsu are chakra-intensive—but he seemed pretty cavalier about it. He strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn’t take a warning seriously until he’s already dealing with the consequences.”

Raidou rubbed his face thoughtfully, rasping fingerless gloves over the faint stubble on his chin. “That’s probably more accurate than I’d like,” he said. “Y’know, the thing that surprised me was that Hatake wasn’t more interested. Chakra drain is supposed to be his issue.”

“Yeah, I wondered about that, too,” Genma said. “He seemed to be doing his level best to act like there was nothing new under the sun, though. We’ll see if he comes asking for them once we’re running missions. Or more likely, uses them without telling anyone.” He could just imagine how that would play out in the field.

“Oh god,” Raidou said, lying back at an angle across the couch. “‘Sorry about your student, Hokage-sama. We had to bring him back in a jar because he doesn’t know how to use words.’”

“Hah,” Genma said, envisioning a thousand different ways he and Raidou might have to explain Kakashi’s death to the Hokage. “All kidding aside, maybe we’d be better off if they did let him switch to someone else’s team. He’s certainly going to try.”

“And put him where?” Raidou asked.

“In a special squad of one? Although I’m pretty sure giving a spoiled kid the thing he wants isn’t actually good for him.” Genma shrugged. “Maybe your early morning training sessions will knock the chip off his shoulder.”

“Or they’ll make him extra pissy,” Raidou said. He covered his eyes with his arm again, looking weary. “Either way, fun times.”

“Hey, it could be worse,” Genma said. “He’s just one guy, and he’s one of us. Like it or not, he’ll get that eventually. Once we start running missions, I bet he’ll shape up. He was sharp as a new kunai in the field when that sh*t was going down with Akiyama.”

Raidou’s arm lifted just enough to reveal one shaded eye. “Did I just earn a pep talk?”

“Maybe,” Genma allowed. “I’m pretty sure that’s one of my responsibilities as your lieutenant.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Raidou said, sounding amused. He let his arm fall back, and gestured vaguely with his other hand in a ‘go on’ motion. “What else is shiny?”

“Let’s see,” Genma said, looking around the room. “On behalf of your and my asses, I got us practically new office chairs. I switched them with a couple from the conference room next to the exploding-seal lab that no one uses.”

“Our asses surely thank you,” Raidou said dryly.

“We’re scheduled for Wall duty tomorrow evening,” Genma went on, even though standing watch over Konoha’s gates could hardly be called shiny. “Assuming it’s another night of watching nothing happen, Tousaki’s hand shouldn’t be an issue.”

And if somethingdidhappen, Tousaki would have to help defend the walls, injury or no. Even a one-handed ninja could run messages and tend to the wounded. But despite the heightened tension and massively increased patrols, there was still no sign of Orochimaru, or any other significant threat to Konohagakure.

Raidou nodded from under his arm. “I’m subbing in as a general hitter for Sumeragi’s team tonight. Nakamura’s down with food poisoning or flu, or something. I think it’s just a patrol, though. Nothing too heavy. What about you? The schedule keeps changing faster than I can keep up with it.”

“No kidding,” Genma said, “Yesterday I thought I was supposed to fill out Morioka’s roster again this afternoon, but I saw Nara-san this morning, and he said I was assigned with him for a night patrol.” He looked over at Raidou. “Did they even bother to clear it with you before they yanked me on for that? I may have a conflict with being at an 0500 training if I’m still out with Nara.”

“I’m sure there’s a memo somewhere with my name on it,” Raidou said. He hauled himself back upright with a tired yawn.

Contagious. Genma yawned, too. No one in ANBU had gotten a decent night’s sleep since the incident at the Trials—and the Trials hadn’t exactly been a cakewalk.

“Thanks for that,” Genma said, when he could close his mouth again.

“You’re welcome. I’ll be back around 0200 if it’s uneventful,” Raidou said. “I’ll run training without you if I have to, but get there if you can.”

“I think I’ll be getting back about exactly 0500,” Genma said. “Good thing you suggested the rookies bribe us with coffee.”

“Yeah, I’m not holding out hope,” Raidou said, in the tones of a man who planned to bring his own coffee and a lot of it. He glanced at the wall, where a clock should have been. “What timeisit?”

Genma pulled a slender pocket watch from his belt. “Just about 1100. Sorry about the clock. Whoever had this office before didn’t leave one. I req’ed a new one.”

Raidou shrugged, evidently unconcerned.

“If you don’t need me for anything else,” Genma said, “I was thinking I might catch a rest.”

“Have at,” Raidou said. He lurched to his feet and stretched, cracking his back. “Couch is all yours. I’m gonna crash on an actual bed.”

“Thanks,” Genma said. “I’m starting to forget couches aren’t real beds. Soon as they stop double-shifting us and I have time to look, I’m finding a new apartment.” He stood up, too, saluting Raidou with a brief tap to his inked shoulder. “Have a good patrol tonight, captain.”

“Safe hunting, lieutenant,” Raidou said, returning the salute.

When Raidou’d gone, Genma unhooked his utility belt and shucked off his armor, hanging it all on the pegs by the door. He lay on his back on the couch, studying the ceiling, ticking things off on his mental list of tasks. Meet the rookies, done. Orient Team Six, done. Debrief with the captain, done. Next up, nap. He yawned again, set the alarm on his pocket watch to wake him in six hours, and closed his eyes.

Chapter 10: Take a Number

Chapter by ANBU_Legacy, Nezuko, saunterleftside

Chapter Text

April 19, Yondaime Year 5

Kakashi hadn’t seen Rin since the night before the first Trial, when she’d wished him luck, told him to make friends—”Justtry.”—and kissed him on the cheek, which she only did when she was worried.

He’d missed her at the hospital after the second Trial, or she’d missed him. She’d been in surgery, he’d found out later, patching up someone’s near-fatal disaster. She’d tried to visit him at home, but he’d been asleep, and she’d been exhausted, which was sort of how it always went lately.

She’d left him a folded origami crane on the counter, resting on top of a new set of shining kunai, a fresh pair of combat gloves, and a medical kit. When he’d unfolded the crane, he’d found a message: YOUR SHELVES ARE EMPTY AGAIN, GO SHOPPING, HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE.

Which was—sweet?

It was Rin, anyway.

He should have made a better effort to search her out before the third Trial, but there was training, and extra duties with the threat of Orochimaru, and—

He hadn’t gone, and she hadn’t visited again.

Now, though, he desperately needed a friendly shoulder to lean on and plot murder with. He wound his way out of ANBU’s treacherous maze, stopped at his old apartment just long enough to lock his ANBU armor and new mask in the weapons trunk, change clothes, and wash his face, then he made tracks for the hospital. He could move to the ANBU barracks later.

For the first time in memory, Rin was actually at her office desk.

He paused at the half-open door, taking a moment before she noticed him. She was paler than the last time he’d seen her, tired-looking, purple clan tattoos dark against her cheeks. Her thick brown braid hung over one shoulder, tendrils slipping free from their ties; she fiddled absentmindedly with it. Her lower lip was chapped, stained slightly blue by the pen she was chewing on. Normally, she wore the standard medic’s uniform, but today she was dressed in a plain black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, leggings, and shinobi sandals—which suggested a frantic morning dash to the hospital, or someone had thrown up on her again.

Despite that, she was smiling faintly at the report she was writing.

At least someone’d had a good morning.

Kakashi let his foot scuff the floor as he pushed the door open. “I need help vanishing a body,” he said.

Rin tucked the urge to smile away and finished her paragraph. “Who did you offend this time?” she asked, mock-exasperated. She glanced up as Kakashi made his way across the room to sit on the corner of her desk.

“Why do you always assume it’s me?” he asked. He was in his usual jounin uniform, the curve of his spine accentuating the way the material hung off his lean frame. Was it looser than normal?

“Because there’s a weapons manual where your manners should be,” Rin said, and frowned. “Have you been eating enough? I saw your kitchen.”

He waved her concern away. “Can we focus on my semi-genuine desire to murder Minato-sensei? Because he might have actually hated me for years without telling me, and now he’s punishing me with idiots.”

“Your new team?” Rin said. She put down her pen and reached over the desk, taking Kakashi’s right hand. The bandages wrapped around his wrist were still fresh; she looked up at him for permission before she pushed his sleeve up to his elbow, calling on her chakra. “I thought ANBU was the best of the best.”

“So did I,” Kakashi said, a trace of real despair behind the theatrics. Rin looked up, searched his face to find the telltale downturn at the corner of his eye and the slight slump of his shoulders. He hadn’t looked this disillusioned since before the Fox. She made a sympathetic noise and sank her chakra into his system, expanding her senses. The familiar electric edge to his coils was a comfort after all this time.

“If Minato-sensei picked them out, they can’t be completely incompetent,” she said. There were still minute traces of poison in Kakashi’s system, an acrid tang that was fast losing its bite. With his developed immunities, it wouldn’t even be enough to give him a headache. Rin purged it anyways, sending her chakra through his pathways in steady waves. “I take it your first day didn’t go like you’d hoped?”

Slowly, Kakashi started to relax underneath her hands. Obito’s Sharingan always tended to strain his system a bit, though he was loathe to admit it. “It was… different than I thought it would be.”

“What about the oath-taking ceremony?” Rin asked quietly. “Did Minato-sensei say anything to you?”

After a moment, Kakashi said, “That there’d be no glory in it.” He looked away. “And no lone wolves.”

The last of the Oomukado toxin dissolved, filtering out of Kakashi’s bloodstream. Rin reached up and squeezed his shoulder, offering silent support. “I missed you,” she said. “Tell me a little more about your new team.”

Rin always smelled like soap and early spring, the edge of frost under new growth. Her chakra was a cool waterfall around his ragged edges. She was a fixed point; always had been.

Except she was changing, too.

Kakashi let out a breath and put his hand over hers, curling his scarred fingers beneath her calloused palm. “Kind of classified to talk about here,” he said. “Can I steal you for a while?”

She smiled and glanced down at the open report on her desk. “I’m one sentence away from finishing this. Then I’m all yours.”

He let her hand go.

It must have been an important sentence, because she spent a minute in thought over it, absently chewing the corner of her blue-stained lip. Then the pen flicked and a row of neat kanji marched down the page, ending with a restrained flourish. Rin signed the report and tucked it back into the file, stacking the whole thing in her out-tray.

“Patient survived?” Kakashi asked.

“No,” she said. “But it was a good surgery.”

Well, that put his issues in perspective. “Doyouneed to talk?”

Rin came around the desk and bumped her shoulder companionably against his arm; the top of her head barely came up to his throat. “Later,” she said. “We can trade classified secrets over food.”

“The Cellar?”

“Of course.” She glanced at the door and the hallway beyond, where a secretary was eyeing them both curiously, and turned to the window instead. Chakra barely sparked as she disengaged a seal and slid the window back. She stepped out onto the ledge. Her hair whipped in the wind. “Run with me?”

Kakashi’s mouth quirked. “You spend too much time inside.”

“A little fresh air wouldn’t hurt,” she admitted, smiling. She held her hand out. “Come on.”

Kakashi took it and let her pull him outside.

Rin’s office was three stories above the ground, overlooking one of Konoha’s main streets. A few civilians glanced up as they vaulted from the ledge to the building opposite and ran along the wall, horizontal to the ground. Kakashi let Rin take the lead; she needed to stretch her legs more.

She took them up over the rooftops, graceful on tiles and catwalks and washing-lines strung between buildings, towards the outer edge of the village center. When they reached a squat stone building with boarded windows, Rin dropped back down to the street, and Kakashi followed a second behind.

There was so sign on the building. The door was scarred, desperately in need of painting, and blackened at one corner, as if fire had been a past feature. Rin knocked.

A slender, balding, unremarkable man opened it, and bowed slightly. “Nohara-san,” he said, standing aside to let them enter. “Hatake-san. Welcome.”

Rin nodded. “Toshiyuki-san.”

Kakashi twitched one hand in a little wave.

The entranceway was raw brick and unfurnished, barring the small wooden stool Toshiyuki had been sitting on. An abandoned paperback sat next to it. A door led through a large empty hall Kakashi was pretty sure the owners used for training, or storage, or movie nights. They didn’t go that way. A second set of doors opened onto a freight elevator. Rin hit the button; Toshiyuki returned to his stool, settling back with his book.

The elevator had two sliding grates that needed to be opened and then closed before it would move, and it rattled like a death trap. Kakashi leaned against the wall as it jolted them slowly down. The air warmed, filling with the smell of miso and cooking meat. A dull murmur of noise drifted up.

Rin inhaled with a slow, easing sigh. “This makes up for all the times I had to yell at Oguchi-sensei this week,” she said. “I don’t even want to strangle her anymore.”

“I thought you liked Oguchi-sensei,” Kakashi said.

“I do,” Rin said. “If I didn’t, I actually would have strangled her.”

Kakashi laughed softly.

The elevator screeched as it came to a halt. They wrestled the gates open, and stepped through.

The Cellar wasn’t like any of Konoha’s other restaurants. It wasn’t pretty, it didn’t cater to civilians. The walls were grey slab-rock. The floor was poured cement, scratched and battered from years of use. There were no romantic lamps; fluorescent strip-lighting hung from the ceiling, banishing shadows. There were no windows, either. The tables were made from heavy dark wood, and bolted to the floor. The three waiters had lethally restrained chakra signatures and, between them, nine limbs.

There were maybe a dozen ninja scattered about the room, most of them alone, all of them scarred and quiet, entirely focused on their food.

Kakashi and Rin were the youngest people here.

“Hatake, Nohara,” said the first waiter to reach them, a grizzled older man with a steel-shod peg where his left leg should have been, and three fingers missing from his right hand. “Corner table?”

“Thank you, Mahito-san,” said Rin politely.

Mahito settled them next to the open kitchen, where they had an easy view of the food being prepared. “The usual?” he asked.

Kakashi traded a glance with Rin.

“Can I get a glass of wine, too?” she said, the way injured people saidI need air.

“Of course,” said Mahito, and raised his eyebrows at Kakashi.

“Water’s fine,” said Kakashi.

Despite the false leg, Mahito still managed to sweep gracefully away. Rin watched him go, mouth curving, then turned her attention on Kakashi like a scalpel. She settled in her chair, steepled her fingers, and lifted one meaningful eyebrow. “So.”

Kakashi propped his chin on one hand, amused. “Where’d you want me to start?”

Rin pursed her lips at him in mock severity. “Start with what made you stagger into my office like you wanted to collapse. Did they put you on a team with an Uchiha? Did they give you a chicken mask?”

Kakashi paused, sidetracked from what he’d been about to say. “Why a chicken mask?”

She shrugged. “I’dwant to kill someone if I had to wear a chicken mask. And I know there’s a squirrel mask and a grasshopper mask. It wouldn’t be a big stretch.”

“The quartermaster did threaten me with a co*ckroach,” Kakashi said. “But I got a lion-dog.”

Rin considered this, and smiled in amusem*nt. “I’m sure you could have pulled that off. I guess a wolf would have been too cliché.”

“I guess,” Kakashi echoed doubtfully. The hand not propping his chin up rested on the tabletop. Rin reached out to give it a comforting pat.

“At least it wasn’t a co*ckroach,” she said. “And a lion-dog is almost as dashing as a wolf.”

His mouth curled up in a smile behind his mask, fleeting but real. “There is that.” Then he sobered. “I’m on Team Six. No Uchiha, but do you know Namiashi Raidou, or Shiranui Genma? They’re both veterans.”

Rin frowned in thought, rifling through the mental files she kept on the Hokage’s handpicked elite. “Namiashi, I’ve treated once or twice. He’s durable, but all taijutsu users are. Never heard of Shiranui. Why?” She raised an eyebrow. “Or should I ask, which one’s your captain?”

“Namiashi,” Kakashi said. “I think it’s his first time.”

Rin felt the corner of her mouth twitch. “What makes you say that? It’d make more sense to give you to an experienced captain.”

“You’d think,” Kakashi said. “He felt new, andhappy. This whole team are babes in the woods.”

Rin didn’t point out that all his ANBU teammates were probably older than him. Everyone was older than Kakashi. “Maybe Minato-sensei sees something in them,” she said. “He has a reason for everything.” Even if the reason was a painful lesson intended to make Kakashi grow as a person.

“Or he lacked options,” Kakashi told her darkly. “Or he had an early stroke. I haven’t even told you about the other two.”

Mahito returned with Rin’s wine and Kakashi’s water, setting the drinks down on the table. Rin waited until Mahito had swept away to lean in. “They’re that bad? Are they jounin or special-jounin?”

Kakashi’s visible eyebrow creased in a frown. “I’m not actually sure. Tousaki Ryouma and Ueno Katsuko. I think Tousaki’s a jounin. I’m not convinced Ueno’s human.”

Ueno, Rin knew about. She’d never met the woman, but the team of specialists at the hospital assigned to Ueno’s case were very vocal about the headaches caused by a chakra system mangled beyond repair.

Rin took a sip of wine. “Why? Does she have wings and a tail?”

“She has chakra like Kushina used to,” Kakashi said. “Just without the demon.”

Kushina’s name didn’t make Rin’s throat close up in grief like it used to, not after this long. The little spike of melancholy in her chest, though, would probably always be there.

“That could be useful,” Rin said. “As long as Ueno has control over it. What about Tousaki?”

Kakashi made a face of extreme doubt at the mention of ‘Ueno’ and ‘control’ in the same sentence. He turned his water glass between his hands, stalling. “How much did Minato-sensei tell you about the second Trial?” he asked at last.

Rin studied him, then the bandages on his wrist. “I know you saved a candidate’s life,” she said. “And that another candidate stabbed you.” She left out the part about how shocked and furious she’d been when she’d heard—Kakashi could read it in her expression. Injuries on the battlefield were one thing, but Kakashi shouldn’t have been attacked by someone who was supposed to be a Konoha ninja. Not after all he’d given to the village. “I know that without your built-up resistance to poisons, I would have lost you.”

“Ye of little faith,” Kakashi said, mouth quirking. “I would have thought of something.”

Rin took a sip of her wine. “Before or after you sustained brain damage?”

“I would have thought of somethingreally fast,” he said, which didn’t do much for the hard, angry lines cutting around Rin’s mouth. She had her own family—a mother and a father who were still living, both ninja, and loved her—and they both had Minato and Naruto, but it wasn’t the same. If Kakashi losther—

He couldn’t lose her.

Gently, he tapped the back of her hand, still lying on the table. “We’re both still here.”

Rin glanced at his left eye, safely hidden behind the slanted hitai-ate. Her smile softened. She knew who ‘we’ meant. “Keep it that way.”

He flicked a two-fingered salute, fingertips brushing one temple, and looked up as Mahito returned with a tray of small dishes, which he laid out neatly. Sesame-tofu in miso paste. Miso-eggplant. Spinach in sesame sauce. Agedashi dofu. Skewers of grilled pork cheek. Salted, grilled smelt. Steamed rice. The waiter bowed, vanished, and then returned with one final plate, which he placed in the center of the table.

A salt-fried red snapper, perfectly cooked, lay gently steaming on pristine china.

Kakashi blinked. “We didn’t order that.”

“For the celebration,” Mahito said. He sketched a quick, curling spiral on his right shoulder. “Congratulations, Hatake-san.”

How did he—

Kakashi abandoned that train of thought. Nothing was secret in a shinobi village. And nothing he or Rin did ever stayed unremarked on for long, no matter whether it was actually remarkable. Part of it was Minato-sensei’s reflected light. But part of it was just… them. They were good stories, in success or failure.

Especially in failure.

Happily, not today’s issue. Kakashi started to incline his head in thanks, stopped, and tapped his left shoulder instead. His instinct was good; Mahito’s mouth curved, and he echoed the salute.

“Enjoy your meal,” the waiter said, and stumped away.

Rin watched him go thoughtfully. “I always wondered if he was ANBU.”

“Me, too,” Kakashi said. He couldn’t feel an ANBU tattoo-spark from the older man, but perhaps the jutsu was removed when you left the service.

“Itadakimasu,” Rin said, picking up her black lacquered chopsticks. She selected a bite of sesame-tofu. “You didn’t finish telling me about Tousaki. Actually, you didn’tstarttelling me about Tousaki.”

“Itadakimasu,” Kakashi murmured. “Tousaki was the candidate I saved.”

Her chopsticks paused. “Oh?” She considered for a moment, then said, “Was he targeted, or was he in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” Kakashi said quietly. The Cellar was private and uncrowded, and the open kitchen was noisy, but still. At least with Rin’s back to the room, and his mask, no one could lip-read their conversation. “Whoever primed Akiyama and set him off wanted my eye, but when he couldn’t catch me, he went for Tousaki’s hands as a consolation prize. Are you familiar with Tousaki’s jutsu?”

“No,” she said. “Is it a bloodline limit?”

“Not that he’s said. I hope not, because I want it,” Kakashi said. “He’s the face-melter. Little older than us, made some waves in the war.”

“The rot ninja?” she said, eyebrows flicking up in surprise. “Huh. You didn’t copy it already in Trials?”

Kakashi glanced down, studying his chopsticks intensely.

“That’s your guilty face,” she said. “What’d you do?”

“What?Nothing,” Kakashi said, stung. “He punched me first.”

Rin’s bark of laughter got an answering clatter from the kitchen, as a startled chef dropped something. “What?”

“Imighthave used the Sharingan during the first Trial,” Kakashi said. “There was this section on jutsu demonstrations, and some of them were actually pretty good. But he got a little pissy about it, and doesn’t know how to use words.”

“So he punched you,” Rin said, delicately selecting a piece of the red snapper. “Did you useyourwords?”

Kakashi thought back. “I’m ignoring your tone, because I actually did, even when he called me an asshole. I was practically polite.AndI didn’t copy his jutsu.” He picked up a neat parcel of spinach, because Rin was a bear for vegetable eating. “And I saved his life later, so I win on all counts.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a point system,” Rin said, which was a lie. There was always a point system. She waited until he’d made the spinach disappear behind his mask to ask, “Why would Minato-sensei put Tousaki on your team?”

“Because he’s always secretly hated me and now he’s found his moment to strike,” Kakashi said darkly.

“If Minato-sensei really hated you, he’d fine you for every minute you were late to anything,” Rin said, and started in on the miso-eggplant. “Does Tousaki still want to punch you for copying jutsu?”

“I—” Kakashi started, then paused. “Well, he hasn’t punched me again. But he’sso annoying.”

Rin popped another piece of eggplant into her mouth, enjoying Kakashi’s aggravation. “What did he do?”

“Told me good luck just before I took the oath,” Kakashi started with, like it was damning evidence. “Won’t share his jutsu. Talks all the time abouteverything, but he doesn’t take anything seriously. And he keeps flirting with me.”

Because she was a highly trained shinobi, Rin didn’t even let her expression change. “Is he attractive, at least?”

“Rin,” Kakashi said. “Can you stay on topic? He’sruining my life.”

After this, Rin was going to exercise her privilege as the hospital’s lead surgeon and pull up every single file they had on Tousaki Ryouma. “So he’sveryattractive,” she said, pleased when Kakashi’s exasperated look intensified. “He’s trying to make friends with you, Kakashi. Have you tried talking back?”

Kakashi groaned. “You sound like the captain.Don’t step on a boundary, just use words.”

“He told you that?”

“Or something roughly similar,” Kakashi said, dismissive. It was clear he thought the issue lay with the rest of the team and not himself. Given the way he kept everyone but Naruto, Minato-sensei, and Rin at arm’s length, it wasn’t hard to understand why. Rin made a note to pull the rest of ANBU Team Six’s files up, as well. Minato-sensei’s judgment was sound, but it never hurt to double-check.

“Namiashi seems like a sensible man,” Rin allowed. She took another sip of wine. “Does the rest of the team have issues with boundaries, then? Besides Tousaki.”

Kakashi propped his chin on his hand. “Ueno asked me to address her as ‘Your Luminescence’.”

“Ah,” Rin said, and put her glass down. Maybe Minato-sensei had cracked under the stress of raising a child and running the village at the same time. Maybe he actually had an explanation for assigning Kakashi to a team designed to push all his buttons at once. “And did you?”

“No.”

Rin narrowed her eyes at him. “Anything else you want to tell me about your first day?”

“No?” he said, startled. Then he amended, “Well, I don’t actually recommend the tattooing.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Rin said, and smiled. “Because I heard from someone that you fainted.”

The strip of pale skin above Kakashi’s mask flushed red. “Heard from who?” he demanded.

Rin arched a brow. “I have my sources.”

Kakashi eyed her for a moment. “You’re friends with Nanami, aren’t you?”

“We’re getting off-topic,” Rin said sweetly. “Ignoring the fact that you forgot to eat, again, and fainted, again, how did your team react when you blacked out?”

He blinked, then paused to actually think about it. “Shiranui’s a field-medic. He did something medic-y, brought me around, and had that exact judgmental face,” Kakashi said, nodding at Rin’s expression. “Ueno told me about walking into walls when she got her tattoo.” When Rin nodded for him to go on, he added, “Namiashi didn’t say much. Tousaki just kind of snorted.” His eye narrowed slightly, as if Tousaki’s reaction had bothered him the most.

Rin had expected Tousaki to be the teammate most concerned about Kakashi’s well-being, after the whole fiasco at Trials. But it was a pleasant surprise to learn that the rest of Team Six had tried to reach out to Kakashi, even if he didn’t recognize their efforts as such. And Kakashi… did not react to disappointment well, and made no effort to hide it. That probably had something to do with Tousaki’s reaction: even gratitude for a life saved couldn’t last long in the face of unyielding scorn.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” she said at last. “And I’m not going to lecture you. But it does sound like you don’t hate Tousaki—or the rest of your team—as much as you want to.”

Honestly, he would’ve preferred the lecture.

“I didn’t say Ihatedthem,” Kakashi said, and ran out of words. He didn’t know what he felt, besides frustrated. Which was dangerous for a ninja—if you didn’t know what your internal landscape was doing, you couldn’t master it. But shinobi weren’t supposed to have emotionsanyway.

Weapons probably complained a lot less than he did, too.

He sighed once, softly. “You’re probably right, about everything. And Minato-sensei’s doubtless got a plan which he’s also right about. And it’ll turn out this team contains actual adults who’re good at what they do, but it’s not—they’re not—”

Rin’s face wiped clean of expression. “We can’t have Team Minato back, Kakashi,” she said. “Not like it was.”

He knew that.

He knew what that emotion was, too, and all the multicolored ways it hurt.

“Well,” he said. “It’s not like we were much of a good team, anyway.”

“That’s because you were stupid,” Rin said, like the thought made her fond. “You and Obito. My stupid, idiot boys.”

“We did save your life,” Kakashi pointed out.

“In the most spectacular fashion possible,” Rin agreed quietly. “I didn’t say being an idiot was a bad thing.”

In all the worst ways, it had been the best thing possible. Obito was the one who’d gone back for Rin, dragging Kakashi along behind him on a tether of guilt andI believe the White Fang was right!Obito had thrown the mission over for a teammate. Obito had activated his Sharingan just in time to make it a gift. Obito had saved Rin, and fixed Kakashi, and died for them both.

He’d been an idiot, and he’d paid for it.

And Konoha had gained a revolutionary medic and a genius with bonuses. Everyone won, except the one problem kid, who’d gone down in the history of the Third Great Ninja War as a footnote.

Now Obito’s memory was leverage for the Uchiha clan, when they wanted to pry into the remains of Team Minato, and a thorny, painful tangle between Kakashi and Rin, who’d had five years to get over it and still hadn’t.

Wouldn’t ever, probably.

“Guess I’ll try to be smarter this time around,” he said at last.

Rin leaned forward, careful of the still mostly uneaten dishes, and curled strong, calloused fingers around his. Her chakra rippled beneath her skin, water and fire, but so closely blended they were almost indistinguishable. She just felt like a waterfall of light.

“If they don’t treat you well,” she said, very calmly. “Tell me. I’ll take care of it.”

Kakashi tilted his head. “I thought medics took an oath to do no harm.”

“Civilian medics do,” she said, and sipped her wine with her free hand.

Distantly, Kakashi wondered if other brand new ANBU had this problem, or if he was the first one in history to have a high-level medic offer to subtly eviscerate the people who were mean to him.

Then he thought about Rin meeting Ryouma.

And Katsuko.

And, somehow, things seemed much brighter.

“Thank you,” he said, and squeezed Rin’s hand before letting go, picking up his chopsticks again. A seedling of her chakra stayed pressed into his palm, spreading warm, calming tendrils through his coils. “If you ever do go after Tousaki, you should shave him bald. He seems like he’d be hair-proud.”

“Then that won’t be the only thing of his I’ll shave,” she said sweetly.

Kakashi paused, laughed—and kept laughing. He had to lay his chopsticks back down and put a hand over his face, shoulders shaking. It wasn’tthatfunny, but the tensions of a long, difficult week ruptured like a bubble, and the future contained the possibility of Ryouma sunburning his shiny bald head (and other things), so laughter, low and hoarse, spilling up like a fountain that didn’t stop until he dissolved into a coughing fit.

When he pulled himself back together, Rin was watching him, soft and a little worried.

Kakashi cleared his throat. “So, if you don’t practice that, it injures you.”

“I thought I was going to have to give you rescue breathing,” she said, worry shading into amusem*nt.

“Just dinner,” Kakashi said, reaching for another bite of red snapper. “You are paying for this, right?”

Rin’s look would have skewered a lesser mortal. “We’ll go halves,” she said, uncompromising as an iron girder.

“Who do I go to when you’re not treating me well?” Kakashi inquired.

Rin smirked. “Try Minato-sensei.”

Might as well try carving sympathy out of a mountain face; one that would landslide and thenmock him. Kakashi gave up and said, “Want to get dessert after this?”

Rin smirked. “We’ll go halves on that, too.”

“Which one of us is getting the doctor’s paycheck with excessive benefits again?” Kakashi said. “Because I’m pretty sure it’s not me.”

“And which one of us gets free appointments from the hospital’s top medic? And also an ANBU’s pay raise?” Rin said. “If you’re not going to finish the red snapper, I will.”

Kakashi gestured with his chopsticks. “Have at.” He watched her drag the dish over to her side of the table before saying, “Howisbusiness as a top medic? You said you lost a patient today.”

Nawada Kojirou, age thirty-four, special jounin. Rin sighed and put her chopsticks down. “Poison. It’d already reached his heart by the time I developed an antidote. On the plus side, now we have a new counter-agent against the chemical attacks Mist’s been using.”

“Guess that’s a new immunity to add to the rotation,” Kakashi said, but gave her a sympathetic look. “Did you have any good luck today?”

“Mm.” Rin picked up her chopsticks again. “They’re firing Mamura from Intensive Care. Good riddance. Bastard wouldn’t know what proper medical procedure was if it hit him in the face. And they want to give me my own team.”

Kakashi blinked. “Your own medical team?” He lit up. “Why did you let me talk about bullsh*t for ages when you hadthatup your sleeve? That’s fantastic.”

Rin smiled, a little giddy. “I get to choose from the candidate pool. Cream of the crop.” She leaned in. “I’m going to haveminions, Kakashi.”

He laughed softly. “Poor minions.”

Rin rolled her eyes at him. “I’m better than some of the other surgeons. I’ll even give them days off.”

She couldhearKakashi grinning behind his mask. “To cry?”

“To train,” Rin said. “I don’t hire slackers.”

“To cry alot,” Kakashi said. “And question their life choices. What are you going to do with your team?”

“Research, mostly. Lab-work.” She broke into a grin. “Anything I want, really, within legal and ethical bounds.”

Kakashi rested his chin in his hand, thoughtful. “Does that mean you’re getting away from surgery? Or planning to work both?”

“Both,” Rin said. “If I’m going to make Director of the hospital before I turn forty, I need to make at least as many advances in the field as Tsunade-sama did.”

Kakashi touched his hitai-ate with two fingertips, where it slanted over his left eye. “Transplanting a viable bloodline for the first time in recorded history is probably a good start.”

“And making an enemy out of every Uchiha in Konoha. Don’t forget that part.” Rin smiled to herself. “I still have a bone to pick with that clan. And a Director has a lot more power than a surgeon.”

He eyed her. “I might be wrong, but I’m almost certain the Director isn’t allowed to have biases against patients.” After a beat, he added, “Not that I’magainstit, exactly.”

“An Uchiha brought to the hospital won’t be treated any differently than my other patients,” Rin said. “The Uchiha elders, on the other hand…” she shrugged. “I’m not fond of bullies.”

Kakashi’s smile this time held no cheer. “Me, neither.”

“Hm.” Rin polished off the last of her rice. “Konoha’s still stuck in the old way of thinking. Minato-sensei’s changed some of that, but he’s only one man. Surgical operation procedures and policies haven’t been updated since Tsunade-sama left Konoha, and we lost extremely talented medics during the Fox. We need more people and more resources if we’re going to keep up with the other Villages.”

“I’ll try and kidnap you a few medics the next time they send me across the border,” Kakashi promised her.

“I do love presents,” Rin said, amused. “Any foreign medical jutsu or scrolls you can get would be nice, though. Live medics are too much of a hassle. What do you want for dessert?”

Kakashi thought about it for a second. “Ice cream.”

Rin hid her smile behind her hand. “What flavor?”

“You need a battle plan for frozen treats?” Kakashi quirked an eyebrow at her.

She smirked. “Like you don’t already have one? Be honest.”

Kakashi picked up a serene bite of tofu and made it vanish. “Smart tacticians keep their strategies secret.”

“So modest,” Rin said, and finished off the last of her wine. New ANBU teams and plans for the future could be set aside for today. Right now, she just wanted to enjoy one of her rare free nights with Kakashi.

Chapter 11: After the Tornado

Chapter Text

April 23, Yondaime Year 5

Minato was late for the briefing that morning, though it wasn’t strictly his fault. He shouldn’t have let Sagara schedule it at 0730, but with a conference with the ambassador from Rain Country set for 0900 and a shinobi’s funeral at 1400 there wasn’t much room anywhere else in the day. Unfortunately, Naruto demanded breakfast precisely at 0700, and a small child’s schedule was even less malleable than an ambassador’s. Naruto threw louder tantrums, too, when his favorite over-sugared cereal ran out.

Saya-san, the housekeeper, was mortified. Minato was impatient. Naruto was inconsolable, until a turtle-masked ANBU slipped through the kitchen window and set a bulging cloth shopping bag on the table. “It’s 0732, Hokage-sama,” she murmured.

Minato bit his tongue on one of the words he was trying very hard not to use around Naruto. “Thank you,” he said. “Give the receipt to Saya-san, please. Bottomonthe chair, Naruto. Saya-san—”

“I’ll get him ready, Hokage-sama,” the housekeeper promised, wiping flustered hands on her apron. She was new, and still nervous; Naruto tended to terrorize her. She tried to coax the little devil off the table and back into his chair with murmured promises about preschool and wouldn’t he have fun with his friends today, and if he just ate his breakfast like a good little boy—

“‘m not a good little boy!” Naruto declared mutinously. “‘m a ninja!” He launched himself off the table with a ferocious howl and a butter knife. Minato snatched him out of the air just short of Turtle, smacked him on the bottom, and stuck him in the chair.

“Next time you try that on the ANBU, you might get hurt,” he said, leaning over his son. “They’re not your playmates. They are very dangerous, and they are here to protect you, not to let you climb all over them. If you try to misbehave, they have standing orders to restrain you as they think best until I return. Do you understand, Naruto-chan?”

Naruto’s bottom lip trembled. He sucked it in, and stared down at his toes.

Minato sighed. “Say thank you to Turtle-san for bringing your cereal.”

Naruto wiggled his toes, and didn’t speak. He had all of Kushina’s stubbornness and all of her fire, and if this were any other morning Minato could steal at least a few more minutes to cuddle him out of the sulk, but Minato was late already and Turtle was waiting stiff and anxious by the door.

He rested a hand on the small golden head, and then stooped swiftly down and kissed his son. “I love you, Naruto,” he said. “Be good and listen to Saya-san, and I’ll be back for dinner.” He sent Saya a quick glance of apology, ruffled Naruto’s hair once more, and headed out the door.

Turtle vanished somewhere between the kitchen and the outer door, back to her silent patrol. Lynx was waiting in the hall outside the Hokage’s apartments, with a folder under his arm and the Hokage’s hat in his hand. Minato waved off the hat, as always; Lynx sighed, as always, and handed over the folder instead.

“The captains are waiting in the large briefing room,” he said, unnecessarily. “Sagara-san, Oita-san, and Shibata-san are there as well. And—” He hesitated. “Shimura Danzou, Utatane Koharu, and Uchiha Fugaku have come as representatives of the Council.”

Outside of Naruto’s hearing Minato could swear, and did. “Didn’t Sagara tell them this is an ANBU-only event?”

Lynx lifted a shoulder. “Danzou-san seemed disinclined to wait for the Council briefing.”

Danzou was being an ass, as usual, Minato translated. Well, he could deal with the old hawk. Or—use him, perhaps. Why not?

The low murmur of voices in the large briefing room cut out instantly as Lynx opened the door, replaced by the scuff of cloth and armor against the wooden floor as more than two dozen ANBU captains, three division commanders, and three village Councilmembers sank to one knee in salute. Sagara was the first to rise, but Danzou and the Sandaime’s old teammate Koharu, in the front row, weren’t far behind. Minato nodded briefly to them as he took his place on the raised dais. “My thanks to the Council’s representatives for attending,” he said, before Danzou’s opening mouth could shape the words he’d undoubtedly practiced. “You’ll be doing me a great favor by briefing the full Council in my stead. I trust I can rely on you to take accurate notes, Danzou-san, and supply them to Koharu-san when she addresses the Council?”

Danzou’s mouth thinned into an annoyed slit. “Of course, Hokage-sama,” he said.

Which took the week’s most irritating task neatly off his schedule. Minato smiled sunnily and looked over their heads to his ANBU, who were settling down cross-legged to listen.

“First,” he said, “my thanks to you, and the village’s gratitude as well. Many of you have stood double and triple shifts with your teams this past week, guarding our village against a whispered threat. Some of you participated in the ANBU Trials and then went straight to the walls without pause for rest or food. You’ve taken on rookies, you’ve run missions, you’ve patrolled Konoha’s forests and Fire Country’s borders, and thanks to you Konoha’s walls are secure and our citizens at peace.”

Well, as much peace as they ever had in a shinobi village, but that went without saying.

“You all know that initial reports indicated the missing-nin Orochimaru might be behind the attack at the ANBU Trials,” he continued. “ We have been unable to substantiate those reports. The rogue Akiyama Jiro left no evidence behind of any connection. He did run three solo missions in the two months preceding the Trials, to northern Wind Country, f*ckuoka in Tea Country, and the border of Grass, but we have no reports that he met with anyone suspect during his time out of the village. Intel will, of course, be conducting further investigation.” He shared a brief nod with Oita Gennosuke.

“Our patrols—many of which wereyourpatrols—have uncovered no unusual activity near Konoha. We still don’t have reliable reports of Orochimaru’s whereabouts, but that’s not unusual, either.” Jiraiya’s only message—delivered in the middle of the night by an extremely cranky toad—was that he had a tip that the snake bastard had been sighted in Wave Country last month, and that he was following up.

For an accomplished novelist, Jiraiya’s communiqués from the field left much to be desired.

A squirrel-masked captain raised two fingers near his shoulder. Minato nodded.

“How far has word leaked of the…complications, at the Trials?” Squirrel asked. “If wordhasleaked.”

“Who have you told?” Minato inquired.

A few of the ANBU chuckled. The Councilmembers frowned. Minato said, “We can’t hide the fact of our heightened alert over the past week, and I have no intention of doing so. I have a meeting with the ambassador from Ame this morning, in fact, during which I plan to tell him that an attempt to disrupt a village training exercise was met with swift and brutal retaliation. Orochimaru’s suspected involvement has not spread beyond ANBU and it will not spread beyond the village Council.” He stared flatly down at the Councilmembers. “I trust I can rely on you for that.”

The Uchiha’s eyes dropped, then rose again. Koharu frowned deeper, but Danzou met his gaze without a flicker of heavy eyelids. “You can, Hokage-sama.”

Danzou had been another candidate for the position of Fourth Hokage, five years ago—and for Third Hokage, years before Minato was born. He was an argumentative ass on the Council and, Minato had heard, a disturbing and disturbed man in his private life, but he was loyal to Konoha, if not to its current Hokage. He wouldn’t spread sensitive information—and he wouldn’t let anyone else do so, either. Satisfied, Minato looked back to the ANBU.

“As matters now stand, we have no proof of Orochimaru’s involvement, no sign of his whereabouts, and no indication of further attacks. I am therefore scaling down the threat level from S to A as of this morning. We will maintain two extra ANBU teams on the wall and one on patrol for the rest of the week. If all remains quiet, as I expect it will, the threat level will scale down at the end of the week to the normal B and we will resume business as usual.Includingall those missions that have been piling up awaiting your availability. So get your rookies whipped into shape, captains, and work out any kinks in your team structure now. Any questions?”

“Can we use actual whips?”

Sagara turned sharply to stare back into the ranks of captains, trying to identify the one who’d spoken. Minato said blandly, “I don’t interfere with captains’ training methods, Rabbit.”

Sagara, who would and did, settled slowly back, with the promise of vengeance in the stark line of her shoulders. Minato bit down a grin. “If that’s all, captains, you are dismissed. Councilmembers, you may direct any questions to Director Oita. Good day, and good luck.”

He headed for the door with Lynx a silent shadow at his heels. It was twenty minutes to nine, and if he was quick, he’d get to see Naruto again before preschool and the ambassador from Rain intervened.

At the very back of the room, seated among the newest, most junior captains, Raidou blinked. He leaned sideways and whispered to Usagi. “That’s it?”

“Guess so,” she said with a shrug. “You wanted more?”

In his heart of hearts, Raidou might have been nursing a sheltered hope that Minato would ask a question only he would be able to answer, wittily, with crucial information. But Usagi didn’t ever need to know that. Instead he said, “Seriously, whips?”

“Have you seen my rookies?” She stood, stretched in a long, muscled arch, and righted her rabbit ANBU mask from its crooked tilt.

The councilmembers were clustered around Oita like irritated hornets vying for the attention of an unflappable daisy—and Raidou possibly needed coffee, because that was the weirdest thought he’d ever had about the head of Intel. The senior captains had already filed out. Minato was, disappointingly, long gone.

“How areyourminions?” Usagi asked, as they trailed out into the hall.

“One’s injured, one’s surly, and one’s Ueno,” Raidou said. “They’re my tiny parade of joy.”

Usagi laughed with the bright, brassy enjoyment of not having his issues. “Mine tried to give me flack the first day. One of ‘em had issues about having a woman in charge, but he changed his tune.”

“What’d you do?”

“Knocked three of his teeth out,” Usagi said. “Now he brings me breakfast rolls every morning.”

“That’ll do it,” Raidou said dryly.

“You should try it sometime.”

He stepped around a scurrying courier hauling an armload of black-bordered files. “I’m actually attempting this system where I use words.”

Usagi snorted. “Words don’t get you bacon.”

“I didn’t say it was a perfect system.”

She lifted her arms up, stretching again, and yawned loudly behind her mask. “So Orochimaru sounds like a bust. You reckon he really tried to infiltrate us with one dumbass recruit, or did someone get his facts wrong?”

Raidou glanced at her sidelong. “I reckon this isn’t hallway conversation.”

“Oh come on, it’s the Hokage’s palace—”

“Which is a throughway for foreign diplomats.”

Usagi made a sound likeppbbbh. “Fine,” she said. “What’s your plan?”

He’d cut training short this morning to attend the meeting, but pushed the team extra hard to make up the difference. Genma’d had his own lieutenant’s briefing to attend, something about supplies and logistics, or Raidou would have just left him in charge. There was time blocked out for wall-duty later, but perhaps that wasn’t needed any longer—though doubtless the new teams would continue to get the short end of that stick. “Figured I’d go talk to the kids,” he said. “Two of them are going to be pretty interested in the news.”

Usagi flicked two fingers across her wrist, and then mimed taking a knife to the shoulder. “Those two?”

“Yours is a subtle nature,” Raidou said.

He could hear the grin in her voice. “I blow sh*t up for a living. When do I ever need to be subtle?”

“Point,” said Raidou. “Speaking of which—when you have a sec, I want to get some more updated tags from you. The latest crop we’re getting is pretty weak.”

“Yeah, the rain f*cked over our supply train in Kaijiyama last month. Don’t expect decent explosive ink until May. I can swing by tonight, if you like.”

“I’ll buy you dinner.”

“Screw that, you’llmakeme dinner.”

“Are you sure your rookie just didn’t like you because you’re mean?” he said, amused.

She tapped her knuckles against the mouth of his mask. “I can knock your teeth out too, Moon.”

“Not disproving my point.”

She laughed, punched him hard on the arm, and vanished down into the depths of the palace, heading for the tunnels that connected through to HQ. Wanting to feel a little sunshine, Raidou made for the open roof, where he could take a dimension-step to the rookie barracks.

He was surprised to find a muted signature he recognized, wrapped around a half-smothered ANBU spark. Kakashi was lying on his back in the shadow cast by an upstanding portion of the roof, dressed in standard jounin gear; his familiar orange book was balanced on his chest. He turned a page without looking up. “Captain.”

“Hatake,” Raidou said, noting the complete lack of salute. “You come up here often?”

“Sometimes.”

After four days, there was one theme with Hatake Kakashi:everyconversation was like drawing blood.

Raidou cut to the chase. “There’s news on Orochimaru.”

“I know,” Kakashi said.

“You know classified information from the meeting that ended thirty seconds ago, which you weren’t a part of,” Raidou said flatly.

“I had dinner with Minato-sensei last night,” Kakashi said, because of course he had. And of course he hadn’t thought to mention anything about it during their training session this morning.

“Any other pertinent village news you’d like me to not be aware of?” Raidou asked, irritated.

Kakashi glanced up at the sky. “It’s going to rain later.”

It was a narrow struggle not to kick his skinny, obstinate teenage butt right off the ledge.

“Give me your book,” Raidou said, and when Kakashifinallylooked at him, eyebrow raised, Raidou added sharply,”Now.”

The grey eye narrowed. Kakashi sat up, closed the slender paperback, and reluctantly handed it over.

Raidou tucked it into one of his belt-pouches. “Pick an exercise.”

“Running,” Kakashi said, who’d clearly figured out where this was going.

“Fine, thirty miles. If you bring me back a stamp from the northern border house in an hour, you can have your book back.”

“This is juvenile,” Kakashi said.

“Then it’s a perfect fit,” Raidou snapped. “Don’t translocate. I want your feet on the ground for every step.”

Kakashi’s glare was like hot ice before he shuttered it. He turned away, preparing to walk down the side of the building.

“Salute your commanding officer, Agent Hatake,” Raidou said.

Kakashi turned, performed a salute so sharp it was like a razor, turned away, and vanished in the next eyeblink.

Raidou waited five seconds, until he could no longer feel that half-hidden spark, and swore quietly. Then he translocated to the rookie barracks.

The really great thing about living in the ANBU rookie barracks wasn’t the rent, which was negligible, or the access to hot ninja, who were mostly off-limits. It was, as Katsuko had explained with missionary fervor on the first day’s tour, the unlimited hot water in the communal showers. The water was hell on blisters but bliss on bruises, and after just two hours of Raidou’s harsh training regimen Ryouma had plenty of both.

He made it halfway into clothes, afterward, before the bed turned too inviting. Raidou and Genma were both in meetings, Katsuko and Kakashi were both off on their own, and he hadn’t slept more than five hours in a stretch—or had more than thirty minutes of downtime—since the ANBU Trials. Two hours, he promised himself, and sprawled onto his stomach, with his bad hand curled up against his throat. He could finish the long-delayed unpacking later…

Missions sometimes came at midnight, with a rap on the door. Ryouma lurched off the bed, found the doorknob mostly by accident, and blinked dazedly into the strong light of an interior hallway and the half-masked face of his ANBU captain.

Raidou paused, then slipped the crescent moon mask off over his brows and clipped it on his belt. He’d been wearing grubby training clothes when Ryouma’d last seen him, but he was sleek and polished now in ANBU black and bone, reddish hair clean and just touched with gel. Sun-lines crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Did I wake you?”

“Uh,” Ryouma said eloquently. He rubbed a hand over his face, raked his fingers through quite dry and appallingly rumpled hair. “Yeah, I guess.” He must have been asleep at least an hour, for his hair to dry. It felt like five minutes, or fifty years. He knuckled his eye. “We got a mission already?”

“Not until that heals,” Raidou said, glancing down at Ryouma’s bandaged hand on the doorknob. “I just have some news. I can come back?”

“Hell no,” Ryouma said. “I love news.” He stood back, holding the door open, and caught sight of his bare shoulder, the silver gleam of the ring below.

sh*t.

“Sorry,” he said, dropping the door, dodging back. There was a black tee shirt draped over a box on the floor, just short of the hamper; he caught it up and pulled it on. “I wasn’t—”

Wasn’t trying to seduce you, right. That sounded far worse.

“Fell asleep after the shower,” he said, instead. He was wearing pants, right? Well, loose athletic shorts. That was just as good. “What’s the news?”

Raidou was staring at his chest, looking fascinated. “Zombie dolphin. That’s new.”

Ryouma glanced quickly down. No, not a new tattoo, just a lurid graphic print on the tee shirt. “Feral Porpoises,” he translated after a moment. “It’s a band.”

“Right,” Raidou said, and dragged his eyes back up to Ryouma’s face. “Mind if I come in?”

“No,” Ryouma said. He pressed the heel of his hand between his eyes and blinked very hard. “I mean, sure. I don’t mind. Come in.”

Adrenaline was usually a much better cure for exhaustion than this. It wasRaidou alone in his roomclogging his thoughts, andRaidou’s shoulders in ANBU uniform,and the sharp counter-cut ofNo ANBU agent is permitted to fraternize with a senior officer.

He’d been relieved, when Raidou first listed that rule. It answered all the questions neither of them had to ask: noWhere do we stand,noI don’t really do second nights. Ryouma didn’t typically approve of other peoples’ rules, but they were infinitely preferable to explanations.

Except apparently his libido had woken up before his brain, and his brain was having a hard time in the resulting fog.

He stepped sideways, bumping his hip against the counter of the tiny kitchenette, and groped for the first appliance he’d set up, before he even got his weapons rig unpacked or his stereo hooked in. “Coffee?”

“Please.” Raidou stepped inside and let the door swing shut as he stooped to unlace his boots. He glanced around the room, undoubtedly cataloguing the boxes still half-unpacked, the unmade bed, the training gear dumped haphazardly wherever Ryouma’d been standing when he stripped it off.

“Place looks like it’s coming together,” he said, lining up his boots neatly in front of the door. “How’re you finding it?”

The barracks, or ANBU? Maybe both. The answer was the same, in any case. “Not bad.” Ryouma dumped grounds into the filter, added water from the tap, and switched the machine on. “Bed’s too short,” he said, leaning back against the counter. His voice came out remarkably even. Even the promise of caffeine was a kick to the brain, apparently. He added more cheerfully, “Someday I’m gonna just sit in the shower and see if endless hot water reallyisendless. When’s our next day off?”

“Day off?” Raidou repeated, with the polite blankness of a man presented with an intriguing notion and wondering how it worked.

“It’s a thing,” Ryouma said. “Some of us use it to do laundry. Visit the Old Shinobi Home. Get blind drunk and—”

Apparently coffee fumes weren’tquiteenough. He caught himself just in time. “And lose at pool. Or do science in the shower.”

Raidou waited a second, as if to make sure he was quite done. “Sounds dangerous,” he said at last. “Better not.”

“Aww,” Ryouma muttered. “You never let us have any fun.”

Raidou’s mouth quirked. “I brought news. That counts.”

News. Right. He was here as captain, not as—anything else. Ryouma kicked up a bare heel against the lower cupboard. “I did say I like news. What is it?Swords at Sunsetis getting a re-release? Kakashi pulled favors and got himself transferred off our team already? Somebody found out it was Katsuko set that tree on fire and now we’re banned from the training fields forever?”

“Hokage-sama’s downgrading the threat level,” Raidou said. “Intel hasn’t found one snake hair. If it holds, we’ll be back to B in a week.”

“Oh,” Ryouma said. For a moment he could think of nothing else. “So Akiyama was working alone?”

Raidou was frowning at Ryouma’s chest again. No—at his hands, which were locked together in front of him, left thumb pressed protectively over bandaged right wrist. Ryouma pried them apart and turned to switch off the coffee maker and rinse out mugs. “How d’you take it?”

“Black, one sugar.” No rustle of movement, either of settling down on the rumpled bed or clearing off the weapons locker for a better place to sit. His gaze prickled on the back of Ryouma’s neck. “There’s no concrete proof that Akiyama was working with a partner, but the reports you and Hatake gave seemed pretty definitive. So, it’s either a rabbit hole, or his backer—Orochimaru or otherwise—got cold feet. Either way, doesn’t seem like attack is imminent.”

Mugs in hand, Ryouma turned just in time to see Raidou brush his fingertips over the cluttered wooden surface of the weapons locker. It was an unexpectedly superstitious little quirk, but he accepted the steaming coffee mug without a flicker of embarrassment.

“Maybe he only wanted Kakashi,” Ryouma said. He swept the litter of unsharpened kunai and chipped shuriken off the locker, dumped the spare jounin vest in the corner where he was even less likely to remember to take it in for repairs, and retreated two steps to the edge of his bed. “He didn’t confront anyone else at the Trials, did he? And there’s no point in his backer attacking the rest of the village if the first attempt failed and all you really want is a transplantable Sharingan eye.”

The Uchiha might want to watch their backs for a while longer, though. So would Kakashi’s new ANBU team.

Raidou settled on the locker, broad hands wrapping around the smooth white curves of the mug. “That’s one theory. But if Hatake was the end goal, why switch to you? Why not just get into ANBU and attack him on a mission, when he’s not primed to expect it?”

“See,” Ryouma said, “this is why we’ll never be evil masterminds. The ways of villains and traitors are mysteries to us. At least before caffeine.” He took a long drink, rolled the taste on his tongue, and said thoughtfully, “How’d you vote for him after the first trial? He wasn’t one of the ones I’d’ve picked.”

Raidou’s mouth tilted in amusem*nt. “Why am I not surprised you had opinions?” He sipped his coffee, thinking it over. “Akiyama was borderline. Pretty good, not great. He would’ve done better in last year’s Trials, without you heavy-hitters skewing the curve. I didn’t vote for him.” He lowered his mug between his knees and ran a thumb over the rim. “Which might be a reason he didn’t wait. If he knew his chances of making it through weren’t high, then knocking you out of the way could only help. Or, if he couldn’t get Hatake, at least he could bringsomethingback to his string-puller before he got knocked out of the running.”

Ryouma stared down at his coffee. “I was thinking I was just bait for Kakashi. Cutting my hands off wouldn’t tell him anything, beyond maybe the patterns of chakra-scarring in my channels. He was totally willing to kill me, anyway.” He swallowed against a sudden harshness in his throat, remembered the coffee, and took another gulp. Distantly, he thought of another drink, stale water from a steel canteen, a strong hand and shoulder steadying him.

“I didn’t realize that was you, there in the canyon,” he told his mug. “Thanks for holding me together.”

“Didn’t take much,” Raidou said, remembering the way Ryouma had looked at his wrist and saidI’m a ninjutsu man. But that was the only thing he’d done. No crying, no raging, no panic. Just the one quiet acknowledgement:Oh, my career might be over.

Shock could level a man with calm, but so could a life on the guillotine edge.

Still, Ryouma had been flat on his back, drugged half-comatose while a lunatic (comrade) wielded a blade over him, and rescued only by a slice of good fortune. His wrist was mending, but who knew where his head was at? Raidou should’ve come to talk to him sooner.

In all their copious free time, with all his copious psychological training.

“I’ll bet you one thing,” he said. “If there’s a guy out there who could wring jutsu out of someone’s hands, it’d be Orochimaru. Even if you were a second choice, you were still a valuable target.”

Ryouma’s head pulled up, startled. His mouth twisted. “Thank you. That’s very comforting.”

“Score one for team self-esteem,” Raidou said, and tried a new tack. “How is your hand doing?”

Coffee steam coiled up gently as Ryouma took his hand away from the curve of the chipped blue mug and held it out, palm up and open. Flesh-colored flexible bandages covered most of his palm and wrapped a few inches up his wrist, most likely to keep him from bending the joint too much. He curled his fingers inwards, tapping the pad of his thumb to each one. The middle two fingers were a hair clumsier, but not much.

“Still hurts a little,” he said. “But it works. I’m doing seal exercises. Going slow, but I can make the shapes.”

Not bad for only four days’ healing.

“And how’re you doing?” Raidou said.

Ryouma’s eyes flicked away, dropping to the floor. He laced his fingers around the mug again, took a sip, and kept the mug pressed against his mouth, shoring up whatever words he didn’t want to spill. “All right,” he said finally, lowering it to his chest. “Had a few nights of bad dreams once the drugs wore off, but 0400 wake-up calls don’t give you much time for cold sweats. I’ll be fine by the time we’re heading out.”

That was more than Raidou had ever thought he’d reveal.

“Vindication for the training schedule,” Raidou said, stepping carefully over raw ground. He’d seen Ryouma stripped down before, but that had involved fun, and consent, and nothing that bled. This was different territory. “You want to talk about it?”

Ryouma’s thumbnail scraped his mug. He shook his head. “Nah. I cried on you once already. That’s my quota for the next ten years. I’ll get over it.”

“Fair enough,” Raidou said, because sometimes you had to know when to not push. “That does circle us around to the other conversation we should probably have, though.”

Ryouma groaned and slumped backwards on the bed, managing not to spill a drop of coffee. “Do wehaveto? I thought ‘I don’t sleep with subordinates’ pretty much covered it.”

“And yet,” Raidou said, with a tilted smile, because sometimes youdidhave to push. “I just want to make sure we’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Ryouma said, staring up at the ceiling. There was a yellowed water splotch on the dingy tiles, pockmarked around the edges where some previous occupant had amused himself trying to outline it with kunai or senbon hits. Good aim, for the most part. He squinted, trying to turn the splotch into a shape. “We’re good. I don’t really do relationships, anyway.”

“You and the rest of ANBU,” Raidou said dryly. “We’re not really a relationshippy bunch. But you knew that already.” A pause, as he sipped his coffee. “I was more thinking— Look, I don’t expect to have issues. We haven’t been, and I don’t intend to make any. I just want to lay some fair groundwork. If you have a problem, I’ll listen. And if you can’t take it to me, there are other options.”

Ryouma laughed softly. “ ‘Lieutenant Shiranui, I think the captain touched my butt when he was trying to break my neck today…’ “

Raidou made a very ungentlemanly sound halfway between a laugh and a snort, and thumped the bedframe with his foot. Ryouma’s coffee sloshed; he rescued it hastily before it stained the quilt any further. “You know what I mean, jackass,” Raidou said.

“Yeah.” Ryouma sighed, and sat up. “Sure. S’what I expected, anyway.”Boundaries,like the captain and Katsuko’s mantra. Raidou was a good captain, uncompromising but fair; he wouldn’t let a six-month-old memory distract him, and he wanted to make sure Ryouma knew it.

It wasn’t his faultRyoumakept getting distracted. Three weeks and counting of enforced abstinence, maybe—Ryouma hadn’t so much as kissed anyone since Ayane, before the Trials. He was recovering, his libido was returning, and it was only natural to shiver at a little slice of memory when he looked at Raidou’s broad, scar-knuckled hands, or when Raidou shoved sweaty hair back from his forehead and grinned like a tiger at the end of a hard training session, blood beading on his split lip, light sparking in his eyes. Ryouma’d done pretty well so far at looking away, finding something to tease Katsuko about, a question to ask Genma. This morning was the first time he’d been awkward about it, and apparently Raidou hadn’t even noticed.

He tapped his fingers against the smooth, warm curve of the coffee mug. “You— You’ll let me know if I step out of bounds, too, won’t you? I mean, I know you will.” Possibly with a boot to the head, judging by his response to a slightly-too-dangerously-clever move Kakashi had pulled in training yesterday. “I just—”

I’m not used to being told not to lust after my captain,sure, that’d go over well.

He took a fortifying gulp of coffee, and backed up. “I don’t intend to cause any issues, either.”

Raidou didn’t—quite—smile, but his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Just accidental ones. How is your leg, by the way?”

Ryouma scowled at him. “Bruised.” Most of the damage was visibly purpling on his lower calf and shin, where Raidou’sDotonjutsu had wrapped a shackle of earth around his leg before tossing him into the trees. His shoulders were probably pretty colorful by now, too. They were certainly sore. “Most normal captains just say ‘Good morning,’ y’know.”

“Normal is boring,” Raidou said with a shrug. “Ueno managed to dodge.”

Ryouma bit his tongue on two unwise comments about Ueno. “What’s it between you and her anyway?” he asked at last. “You were her captain last year, too?”

“Lieutenant,” Raidou said easily. “This’ll be my first year as a captain.”

“Huh. I thought—” Ryouma shook his head. Probably best to avoid comments on command style, and Raidou’s fluency with giving orders. “How’re you finding it?”

The crinkles at the corners of Raidou’s eyes deepened. His mouth curled, and broke into a full-fledged grin. “I got the forest fire girl, Sharingan no Kakashi, and the kid who melts faces. Not bad for a first-timer. And, in theory, one of you will eventually listen to me.”

“I’m listening,” Ryouma said, before he could stop himself.

“Yeah?” Raidou said, amused, because Ryoumawouldpick the moment when Raidou didn’t actually have anything else to say. “Guess there had to be a first time for everything.”

Ryouma’s mouth twitched. “There’s a joke in there about first times. Notice how I’m not making it?Boundaries.”

“I am so proud,” Raidou said dryly.

Ryouma’s coffee mug lifted in a salute before he drained the remainder. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Actually, of the three ducklings, Ryouma seemed the most inclined to pay attention, engage, and question, at least during training. Katsuko was an old hand at Raidou’s methods; teasing the rookies was more interesting to her. And Kakashi was still half-enigma, half-brat, all problem.

Speaking of which.

“Have you eaten?” Raidou asked, standing and collecting Ryouma’s mug.

Ryouma’s eyebrows quirked. “You’re not forgetting your promotion already, are you? I thought nagging the rookies about nutrition was the lieutenant’s job.”

“Sometimes I can multitask,” Raidou said, taking both mugs to the tiny kitchenette sink. Ryouma had only been in the room for four days, but there was already a clutter of unwashed dishes lurking at the bottom, growing fur. Cautiously, Raidou used a pair of chopsticks to turn a plate over. Dried flecks of what might have been curry rice dropped into the plughole.

Yeah, no.

He flipped the water on and unearthed Ryouma’s dish soap. “I was actually going to say, I need to hang out in a visible place fairly soon. Hatake’s supposed to find me in—” he glanced out of Ryouma’s one window, gauging the sun. “Twenty minutes or so.”

If Ryouma had opinions about other people doing his dishes, he didn’t voice them. “Is that an ‘I should head out now’ or a ‘You can come with’?” he asked.

“It’s a ‘want to come eat with me and also be a witness so I don’t give into the temptation to beat our charming teammate with his own book?’” Raidou said, stacking plates into the drying rack.

Ryouma lounged up off the bed and came over, leaning against the closest wall. He stretched his arms up, unkinking his back with a series of snapping pops, and eyed the soapy dishes like they were a shiny new concept. “I dunno,” he mused, “I might prefer seeing that. What’d he do?”

Pissed me off,Raidou thought.

“He was rude,” he said, and shut the water off. “Food?”

“I never turn down food,” Ryouma said. He thought that came out pretty casual. “A shinobi avails himself of provisions and rest when the opportunity offers, in preparation for action to come.Always liked that Rule.” He handed Raidou a mostly-clean towel. “Normal-Kakashi levels of rude, or something more?”

Raidou dried his hands and flipped the towel back. “Rude enough to warrant a long sprint. Kid needs to drag his head out of his ass.”

“No arguments there,” Ryouma said.

Except…

He bunched the towel up and tossed it on the counter. “He can be pretty decent, when he wants to be. I mean, rude’s still his default, no question about it. I’m still trying to decide if it’s a defense mechanism or if he just enjoys pissing people off. Could be both, I guess. Just…”

Raidou snorted. “He’s defending against the wrong people.”

Maybe. Ryouma thought of Kakashi at the first ANBU trial, the sardonic drawl on insults that stung without drawing blood, the hesitation just before he’d turned down Ayane’s offer to join them for a drink.Kind of weird. Mostly rude.He’dwantedto join them, or at least thought about it, before he shied away.

They’d talked at the third Trial, but not much since then. Well, there’d been that uncomfortable interlude in Team Six’s office on the first morning, when Kakashi wanted to know how someone who looked as dumb as Ryouma did could create a jutsu without stealing other people’s work from scrolls, but that just went back on theMostly rudeside of things. Kakashi’d gone back to mostly silent and stand-offish for the last four days of training and wall-duty, and Ryouma—had been distracted, really, by the newness of a team and the unsettling memories of his captain.

Maybe the newness of the team was throwing Kakashi, too. Everyone and their grandmother in Konoha knew what’d happened to his last team, and that he’d worked mostly solo since then, or with Yondaime-sama or a few other high-level jounin on one-off assignments. He hadn’t been forced into close company with strangers for an extended, indefinite period of time since—well, probably since he’d left the Academy. And if you weren’t very good with people to begin with, and the fierce and bloody-handed team you’d been psyching yourself up for turned out to be mostly too-early training sessions and boxes of ration bars under the lieutenant’s desk, wrapped up in awkward banter and (hilarious) jokes…

Ryouma scratched uncomfortably at the side of his jaw. “He started off with Yondaime-sama and an Uchiha and a medical genius, and it still ended badly. Can’t really blame him for thinking we won’t measure up.”

Though you could resent the hell out of it anyway.

“I can and do,” Raidou said, draining the last of the water from the sink. “It’s a dumb-ass ninja who doesn’t see the talent in front of him because he’s too busy looking at someone else’s. This is a good team. Might even be a great one when Hatake realizes we’re worth working with.”

He turned to see Ryouma rubbing the back of his neck, dark eyes glittering with badly concealed delight.

Didno oneever compliment him? That hadn’t even been a good one.

“Y’think so?” Ryouma said. “I figured Kakashi and me could be great all on our own, and Katsuko’s been pretty impressive so far in training, but s’good to hear you think you and the lieutenant will keep up.”

Then again, he did sort of inspire the desire to smack him upside the head.

“Y’know, you’re right,” Raidou said. “I guess we’ll just have to push ourselves harder. Maybe double the training sessions.”

Ryouma just looked thoughtful. “Longer training sessions wouldn’t be a bad idea if they’re scaling us back on guard rotations. I think most of us are spending the afternoon in individual training, anyway. Well,” he corrected, “I know Katsuko and I are. Maybe Kakashi’s just reading.”

Raidou felt his mouth quirk.Not right now, he isn’t.

“I should go change,” he said, running a thumb under one armored shoulder-strap. “Alarms the civilians when they see spooks doing regular things, like eating. I’ll meet you at—” He paused, searching for a decent place.

“There’s a good noodle house by the main gate,” Ryouma offered. “I think I’ve just about filled up my Buy Ten Get One Free card. If we eat at the tables outdoors, Kakashi should spot you on his way back in.”

“Soba Yatai? That works. Tackle Hatake for me if you see him first?”

“Sure,” Ryouma said easily, like that was a perfectly normal request. “Meet you in ten?”

Raidou nodded, picked his way through the minor maze of boxes, and let himself out. It was barely a two-minute jog to get down the hall, across the courtyard, up the veteran’s hall, and into his own apartment, where he leaned against the wall and let out a long breath.

“That actually went better than I pictured,” he told the spider-fern on the window ledge.

If it had an opinion on the matter, it kept quiet.

No time to dance about it. He hung up his sword, shucked his armor, and tossed the black underpinnings into the laundry basket. Took the necessary four seconds to wash his face and drag a palmful of water through his hair. His hair stood up in wet, offended spikes; he needed to get it cut.

Going for the emphatically-not-a-date route, he left it to its own devices and found his most battered pair of jeans, with the hole split across one knee. A black tee shirt and a regular pair of boots was about as non-suggestive as he could get without resorting to a uniform or a burlap sack. He grabbed wallet, keys, weapons, and left.

Almost immediately, he returned for Kakashi’s book.

And, because he couldn’t quite help himself, flipped it open to scan a page.

“Wow,” he said distantly, eight pages later. “That is not safe sex.”

Or sane sex.

Maybe that explained something about Kakashi. It was certainly more information about Jiraiya-sama’s inner landscape than Raidou had ever, ever wanted to know. He shoved the book into his back pocket and—running late now, dammit—dashed for the main gate.

He slowed down at the corner, strolling to the restaurant Ryouma had picked like a captain with a grasp of time, rather than a captain with a grasp of someone else’s p*rn.

Ryouma was already there, sitting easily at one of Soba Yatai’s sidewalk tables, shaded by the broad striped awning and chatting to the skinny teenage waiter. He glanced up with a broad, relieved smile when Raidou got near, as if he’d thought Raidou might flake on him. White teeth flashed against sun-browned skin, and Raidou thought,oh.

Boundaries, idiot captain.

He settled across from Ryouma, to the visible disappointment of the waiter, and sent the kid off with an order of green tea. “Already made your pick?” he asked Ryouma.

“Tempura soba,” Ryouma said, running a finger absently around the rim of what looked like a glass of barley tea. “Haven’t seen Kakashi yet.”

Raidou glanced at the sun. “He’s still got twenty minutes.”

“Before what?” Ryouma asked.

Raidou freedIcha Ichafrom his back pocket and laid it on the table. “Before I get to keep this for another day,” he said. “You’re not the only person I bully.”

“Lucky him,” Ryouma said dryly. He glanced at the shabby orange cover, with its distinctive red stop-circle and the frolicking figures behind it. “That’s the one he was reading at the Trials. Isn’t he done by now?”

Ryouma couldn’t read. Of course he didn’t know whatIcha Ichawas.

Well good, they could cap the last conversation by starting this one with, if Raidou was feeling charitable about it, erotica.

“I think it’s a personal favorite,” he said, deliberately vague, and thanked the waiter when the kid resurfaced with green tea. “I’ll take whatever the special is.”

The waiter bowed and zipped away.

Raidou turned his attention back to Ryouma, who was nearing a sprawl in the slotted sunlight. Short, dark hair was mattress-tousled, but he’d taken a minute to swap the zombie dolphins for a tamer shirt; this one had a Shuriken Force band logo silk-screened across the chest. There were faint shadows etched beneath his eyes, legacy of four days short sleep and hard training on the back of Trials. His mouth was still wide and reckless, slightly shiny from drinking his tea, and the cheekbones would still make an angel cry.

And for four days, Raidou had done really well at not noticing that.

He cradled his tea and inhaled the warm, slightly grassy scent, letting the thought wash away. Ryouma was off-limits,beyondoff-limits, and Raidou genuinely wanted to do right by him, for the sake of both their careers and the village, not to mention Team Six’s mental health.

Maybe in a year, if they were both still breathing, he’d think again.

“Guess it’s like listening to the same record over again,” Ryouma said musingly, looking at the book. “Though at least I listen to different records in between. He said there’s a movie coming out soon. Maybe we should all go as a team. Show him we support his interests.”

Raidou choked on his tea.

“What, it’s not aterribleidea,” Ryouma said, grabbing napkins to mop up the spray of tea. “He thinks we’re morons, we demonstrate that we appreciate his taste, he thinks we’re less of morons, he stops being such a gloomy pain in the ass at 5 a.m. He’s not a bad guy when he’s not fed up with the world. Besides, he spends all his downtime reading that, it’s got to be good—”

Raidou was coughing, red-faced, pounding his chest with his fist. “Oh my god,” he strangled out, and coughed harder. “It’s p*rn, Tousaki,” he croaked, when he finally had enough breath back to approximate human sounds. “He’s reading p*rn.”

Ryouma stared at the flat orange cover, the laughing woman running a little ahead of a disheveled-looking man. “It comes in books?”

Maybe he’d been missing out on that whole reading thing.

Raidou blinked once and then slouched back, wry mouth twisting sideways. He took a throat-soothing sip of tea and wiped his lip with the side of his thumb. “Pretty sure p*rn comes in every human medium available. There are probably dirty cave etchings somewhere.”

“Yeah, but that’s pictures. Justwordsdon’t —”

“Kitsune soba,” the waiter, Jin, announced, settling a steaming bowl lavishly decorated with golden slices of fried tofu on the table in front of Raidou. “And your tensoba.” He gave Ryouma a shy smile along with an extra plate of tempura. Ryouma smiled back automatically. The boy darted a glance at Raidou, hesitated for half a second, then bobbed an awkward bow and fled back into the shop.

“You’re cramping my style, taichou,” Ryouma said, and took a very petty pleasure in Raidou’s fleeting frown. He shoved the plate of crispy-fried vegetables into the center of the table in recompense. “Tempura?”

Hopefully the extra plate hadn’t come out of Jin’s wages. Ryouma’d have to overpay to make up for it.

“This is bad for your heart,” Raidou said, mouth crooking sideways again. He took two slices of sweet potato anyway.

“Not plannin’ on living long enough to worry about it,” Ryouma said, sliding his disposable wooden chopsticks out of their paper packet and splitting them apart. His right middle finger didn’t quite have all its dexterity back, but it worked well enough for chopsticks. He ate a battered prawn in two bites. “So, okay, maybe not a p*rn movie with the team. We don’t want to shock the lieutenanttooearly. An’ Katsuko’s still young and impressionable, we can’t go giving her vulgar ideas.”

Still. Kakashi.p*rn.And he thoughttheyweren’t quite the exemplary ANBU he’d idealized?

“If you can find something to shock Ueno, you’d be the first,” Raidou said dryly. He stirred his noodles, and shook his head. “We should change the subject.”

Because boundaries, right. Ryouma scowled at his prawns. Werealljokes off-limits, then, not just references to that night in Ryouma’s apartment? Maybe just sex jokes, in which case long stakeouts were going to be eternally longer.

Maybe they could get Kakashi to read aloud.

He ate another prawn, and chased it with a broth-dripping bundle of noodles. “So. Threat level’s back to B at the end of the week, if nobody tries to level the village in the meantime. Does that mean we’ll be getting missions? My bandages should be off by then.”

“If the medics sign you off, no reason we wouldn’t.” Raidou sliced a piece of fried tofu in half with his chopsticks and looked up with a faint smile. “Getting antsy?”

“Nossir,” Ryouma said, wide-eyed. “What would make you think that, sir? Ilovestanding on the wall for eight-hour shifts.” Granted they’d only done that twice, but it had been acutely miserable both times. Especially when it rained.

“That’s good to know,” Raidou said calmly. “I’ll make a note in your file.”

“I love sailboats, too,” Ryouma told him earnestly. “And Shuriken Force concert tickets, they’ll be in Tanzaku no Gai next month.”

“Such a shame you’ll probably be standing on the wall, then.” Raidou slurped his noodles.

Well, it was worth a try. Raidou still hadn’t laughed, but he’d done that eye-crinkling smile more than twice, and that was—

Not something Ryouma should be angling for, from his captain.

Ryouma stirred his noodles again. “When did you say Kakashi was supposed to show up?”

The lines at the corners of Raidou’s dark eyes fanned a little deeper as he squinted up at the sun. “Should be soon, unless he’s run into idiocy.”

Or danger.HadIntel missed something, in their exhaustive search? Kakashi could almost certainly take care of himself, but—

It was easy, suddenly, to remember the gleam of a scalpel in cold light.

The chopsticks cracked. Ryouma flinched back to himself. He exhaled slowly, deliberately relaxing muscles, and got to his feet. “Gonna grab another pair. You want anything?”

Raidou had set his own chopsticks down on the edge of his bowl; his hand was lightly curled on the table, ready for action. A faint line etched itself between his brows. “You okay?”

“Sure,” Ryouma said. He drew another deep breath and looked around for someplace to drop the splinters of broken wood in his hand.

And spotted, from this new vantage-point, an untidy mop of silver hair and a jounin uniform slicing across the street. Kakashi’d identified them already; he reached the sidewalk and its shaded tables in just a moment more, and leveled an icy glare at Raidou and the book by his bowl. “Captain,” he said.

“Rookie,” Raidou said, with half an eye on Ryouma.

That had beensomethingthere, and not just a muscle spasm. But without the ability to peel into Ryouma’s skull and take a look, Raidou couldn’t fathom what.

And there was Kakashi to handle, with his continued streak of perfect timing.

One of Kakashi’s favorite tactics up until now, besides radiating his particular combination of surly and judgmental, was misering out words like they cost him money. This time, working with leverage and an abundance of time, Raidou was prepared to wait him out.

Several silent heartbeats stretched. Ryouma hesitated, left, and returned with new chopsticks. He sat down, watching the tableau curiously.

Kakashi cracked. “Can I have my book?”

“Did you get the stamp?” Raidou asked.

Kakashi offered an arm, turned over to show the inside left bare by the three-quarter jounin sleeve. Green ink had smudged with sweat, but the unmistakable fire-leaf stamp of the northern border house was clearly visible on pale skin. Apparently they hadn’t had paper.

Raidou felt his mouth twitch. “How do I know you didn’t forge that?”

Kakashi’s control was a thing to watch. Despite his clear desire to eviscerate Raidou, take the paperback, and run for it, he slouched backwards and dropped his hands into his pockets, a study in casual disinterest. “Easier to run.”

“But not timely,” Raidou said. “You’re late.”

“You said an hour,” Kakashi said.

“I did. You took an hour and two.”

The clocks had chimed. But more importantly, unless Kakashi had blistered the roads, there was physically no way to get from Konoha to the northern village border house and back in an hour without a translocation to cut the distance. The terrain was too difficult, and the border patrol would talk the ear off anyone who wasn’t a cow, rock, or tree. Raidou knew, becausehisfirst ANBU captain had set him the same challenge, and it had taken him thirty minutes longer.

Kakashi shifted once. “I hit delays.”

“Making excuses?” Raidou said ruthlessly.

Lean shoulders tightened, then dropped, defeated, because shinobidid notmake excuses, and Raidou was prepared to bet Minato never suffered them. Kakashi glanced away. “No, sir.”

Across the table, Ryouma’s dark eyebrows had risen incredulously, but he wisely said nothing.

“All right then,” Raidou said, prepared to take that little gift horse and run with it. “What do you suggest we do?”

“What do you want?” Kakashi asked.

“Sixty miles,” Raidou said. “I’ll give you three hours. You can hit the east and west border houses, and—” He paused, then nodded. “Take Tousaki with you.”

Chopsticks clattered against porcelain. Ryouma made a sound of startled outrage. “What didIdo?”

Nearly killed me with a beverage.

“You agreed that longer training sessions would suit the team, you’re getting restless without anything to do, and you need to improve your conditioning if you want to start taking missions next week,” Raidou listed off. “Plus, the more you two practice getting in sync, the better you’ll work together in the field.”

And it wouldn’t hurt Ryouma to get out of his own head for a few hours. It probablywouldhurt Kakashi to leg-lock a training partner to him, but it’d be a growing pain.

Ryouma’s long, aggravatedaaaaarghtook a little translating, but Raidou suspected it meant:Everything you say is right but why. “That’ll teach me to talk to a guy who actually listens,” Ryouma muttered, taking a last bite of noodles and standing. He pulled his wallet out and shucked a handful of bills onto the table. “You owe us lunch if we get back in time.Bothof us.”

“I’ll consider it,” Raidou said.

Ryouma pocketed his wallet, took a final persecuted prawn, handed the plate of tempura to Kakashi, and swept off into the crowd. After three steps, he broke into his familiar ground-eating lope.

Kakashi looked down at the plate of fried vegetables in his hand. “What just happened?”

Street theater, Raidou thought, vastly amused. Perhaps that had even taken the shine off any lingering affection. It was hard to lust after a captain who made youwork.

“Better catch him if you want to save your literature,” he said. “You need to come back together.”

“Couldn’t I just run ninety miles?” Kakashi said, sounding plagued.

“Nope. Go make nice with your teammate.”

Judging by Kakashi’s expression of growing alarm, Raidou might as well have asked a fish to bicycle.

He lowered the bar. “Don’t actively traumatize him.”

“I make no promises,” Kakashi said, setting the tempura down on the table. He raked sweat-soaked hair back from his face and glanced down the street, eye narrowing thoughtfully at Ryouma’s back. “Three hours?”

“Three hours,” Raidou confirmed. “If you’re late, I’ll hold your book for ransom until you demonstrate you can be a pleasant human being.”

“I’ll be back in two,” Kakashi said, and darted off.

“WithTousaki,” Raidou yelled after him.

One hand flicked up in wordless acknowledgement, then the lean, fast-moving figure vanished into the crowd.

If Raidou didn’t know better, he’d’ve said Kakashilikedbeing given tasks. That had barely been an argument.

“Um,” said the skinny waiter, tentatively reappearing. He cast sad doe eyes over Ryouma’s abandoned seat. “Was it not… good?”

“It was fine,” Raidou said, more than a little sorry for him. Being sixteen, awkward, and built entirely out of rubber-bands and pointy joints was hard on anyone. But growing up civilian in a shinobi village where everyone was strong and talented and, for the most part, spectacular looking, never did much good for a guy’s self-esteem. Still, the kid had the bone structure. He’d be handsome when he was done, and another pretty face could come along and rip his heart out.

Raidou sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Can I get another tea?”

The waiter gave a bobbing head nod and hustled back into the restaurant.

Raidou looked back down the street. He could see the upper arch of the gate and the broad sweep of Konoha’s wall stretching out beyond it. Doubtless, Kakashi and Ryouma had already passed through.

One rookie who maybe liked him a little too much, and another who hated him.

Maybe they’d rub off on each other.

More likely they’d come up with new problems to vex him with.

He put the thought aside, willing to let it rest for three hours, and tuggedIcha Ichaover the table. Despite himself, he opened the cover again—and paused. There was an inscription inside, dated three years ago.

Don’t get dead, kid.

Jiraiya-sama’s signature was a broad flourish underneath.

Maybe it wasn’t just about the p*rn. Carefully, Raidou closed the book and laid it facedown. He’d give it back in three hours, when Kakashi was good and tired and maybe even remorseful. And he’d keep a closer eye on Ryouma, in case that chopstick-snap turned out to be anything deeper.

In the meantime, he’d eat noodles and drink tea, and maybe go find Katsuko for a piece of sane company.

First time for everything.