Chapter 5: Meet the Team
The schedule pinned up on the bulletin board outside Tsuchiya Ryuuhei's office had announced that squad captains and rookies would be busy until 1300, when the other members of their squads would be expected to meet (and welcome/haze/intimidate) the rookies. Ordinarily Tousaki Ryouma would have shown up five minutes late for a scheduled team meeting, with rumpled hair and a cocky grin just daring Hayate to ask him where he'd been. But it wasn't every day you got a new rookie added to your team--and it certainly wasn't every day you got a girl.
So 1245 saw Ryouma sitting on the edge of Hayate's cluttered desk in Squad Six's tiny office, swinging one leg idly in the air and whistling a badly mangled version of "Kuroda Bushi." He'd picked up a bag of meat-buns on the way into HQ, and in between snatches of each verse he stopped for a bite or three. He was polishing off the second-to-last when the door's hinges squeaked, satisfyingly loud; Ryouma and Fukashi had once spent nearly a whole afternoon working on that squeak. Ryouma glanced over his shoulder, grinned, and threw the last meat-bun at the new arrival's head.
"You're early, Shou!"
Yamane Shou was, for reasons entirely different from Ryouma's, also habitually late. Usually because he'd been studying something or engaged in conversation, or just not able to tear his eyes away from that one last page of his manga before he had to leave. He was never seriously late, but he was never completely on time, either. He snatched the nikuman out of the air and took a bite with practiced ease, and headed over for his own desk, casting his teammate a wary look.
"You'll get an earful from Hayate about the ass-prints you're leaving on his desk, Ryouma," he said, pulling a folder from his satchel and laying it open on one of the two desks across from Hayate's. He pulled a pair of copper-rimmed glasses out of his satchel next, and perched them on his nose--little oval lenses framing light brown eyes, under a close-cropped head of wavy brown hair. The combination of his round, reddish cheeks and the rounded reading lenses made Shou look even younger than his nineteen years.
If Shou looked younger than he really was, Ryouma could have passed for a man easily half a decade older than twenty-two (a fact he never failed to rub into Hayate's face whenever the squad commander got carded). Where Hayate was slender, Ryouma was sturdy; where Shou was round-faced, Ryouma was square-jawed, with high cheekbones and brown skin. He was also currently drumming his heels against the desk-leg and cramming down the last few bites of his meat-bun like a child ten years his junior.
"Kid needs something to complain about to make him happy," he mumbled indistinctly, and swallowed. "I aim to please."
With the last of the meat-buns gone, though--and not even any crumbs for Hayate to glare at later!--Ryouma flipped a kunai out of his holster and started carefully paring his nails.
A glance at the clock told Shou it was already 1252, and Hayate, unlike Ryouma and himself, was usually punctual. "He said he'd be here at 1300, right? With uh... the woman?" He bent his head back over his folder, appearing to be the picture of studious content, uncaring what the answer Ryouma might give would be. He wasn't apprehensive about this new teammate, not at all. She was just another shinobi, right? And he'd worked with plenty of kunoichi before he joined ANBU last year.
Ryouma grinned. So that was how it was? They hadn't talked much about the new recruit--Hayate hadn't even told them until a few days ago who it would be, and the slim file he'd handed them hadn't been terribly informative on anything but her physical strengths, weaknesses, and mission data. Ryouma could probably have squeezed more information out of one of his contacts in the records office, but why spoil the fun?
And why hold back on the fun now?
"Ooooh," he said, stretching out to ruffle Shou's hair--the office was small and cramped enough that he could just barely reach. "Is Shou-chan scared of the cooties?"
"No." Shou ducked irritably away from Ryouma's hand, raising his own to straighten his hair with a few hasty finger combs. It figured Ryouma would go for the most obnoxious angle on things he could take. He'd been waiting for this shoe to drop, really, from the moment they learned that their new teammate was to be the much talked about woman Hunter from the recent trials.
"I'm a medic, Ryou," Shou said, as if that were some kind of code word for 'above all your nonsense.' "I'm hardly afraid of girls." He pointedly turned a page in his folder, pretending to read, but the document about tropical diseases of the skin was hardly holding his attention.
Yeah, right. Ryouma's brows lifted in clear disdain for what Shou was pleased to call logic. What did being a medic have to do with being scared (or not) of girls? It wasn't like Shou was an gynecologist--he'd been working as an ANBU field-medic for the past nine months. And as everyone knew (Ryouma had looked this up), there hadn't been a woman in the Hunters since Mito Izumi retired four years ago.
...Unless Shou was doing a little more than professional association with the middle-aged "girls" down in the ANBU infirmary, in which case, ewwww.
"So girl, maybe," he suggested, spinning his kunai idly around a finger. "You read her file, same as I did. What d'you think?"
"She's good. Got a good mission record," Shou answered, voice bland and detached. He stared unseeingly at his folder a moment longer. He could feel Ryouma's skepticism radiating like waves across the small office, and finally snapped the folder shut and looked up at his teammate.
"I don't exactly see why she wants in ANBU, though." Shou complained. "And to be a Hunter on top of it." Ryouma was older and more experienced, for all he acted like a child sometimes. Maybe he'd have some insight here that Shou was lacking.
Sometimes Shou really was thick. Then again, the Yamane were one of Konoha's wealthiest families; Shou had defied his family's express wishes in joining ANBU, and after serving together for six months, Ryouma had few doubts about the other man's (occasionally well-concealed) idealism.
Ryouma was a war orphan, "brought up" by an alcoholic grandfather who could barely remember the boy's name on his good days. He'd never had any ideals at all. And, after a back-alley fight at nine years old when an eight-year-old girl had stomped his face in (she was Uchiha and already attending the Academy, but that was no excuse) he'd had no illusions about female weakness.
He didn't say any of that, though; it was all clear enough (except for the fight, which he'd never told anyone). Instead he said idly, "Same reason as the rest of us, probably. Needs the money." He flipped the kunai once more and slapped it down against his palm, shooting a quick sideways glance at Shou.
"You're hard up for cash? Lost it all on cards and women again?" Shou couldn't let the opportunity to get a dig in at Ryouma pass, and for once the man had left himself open. Of course Ryouma knew about Shou's heritage. With a name like Yamane, everyone just assumed you slept on eiderdown and dined on delicacies. But Ryouma knew the truth. Shou had been cut off. He lived on his ANBU paychecks just like everyone else. So Shou could afford to tease.
Besides, knowing Ryouma, he was probably right.
He pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned, knowing he'd scored a hit. "Some of us are here because we're devoted to our village and our Hokage, you know."
Idealism aside, that was a low blow. "Hey, I don't always lose!" Ryouma protested.
There wasn't much he could say about the women, though. Girls were cruel. He kind of liked them that way; it made it easier for him when things ended, as they always did. But it meant he spent an awful lot of his paycheck on the dark-eyed beauty of the moment, and a lot of his spare time picking up the pieces of the newest broken vase of apology-flowers after he'd ignored her for a full month during a mission he couldn't ever mention.
Shou laughed at his teammate. What was that they said about people who protested too much? He was pretty sure he knew exactly how much money Ryouma spent on his vices, simply because they spent so much time together as teammates it was impossible not to. Besides, if he remembered accurately, and he was sure he did, Ryouma still owed him fifty ryou from the last time he'd gone out card sharking with Hayate.
Shou, for his part, while he was willing to stake his friend, had more than a healthy enough sense of self-preservation not to even try to play at the level their captain did. The man was scary good at cards, just like he was scary good at swords.
"You only lose when Hayate's playing, right?" he asked, with eyes alight with mirth. "It's that whole brown-nosing thing you claim to not do?"
Riiiight. Ryouma was a good player--more than good, maybe; as a boy he'd paid for his Academy fees and food expenses by odd-jobbing and playing cards. Most people had assumed that an eleven-year-old barely knew the rules, and they hadn't bothered to wonder where he'd gotten the money for his stakes. He'd cheated, too, but only after he got good enough not to be caught at it. All's fair in war and cards, after all. But Hayate never needed to cheat--and even with cheating, Ryouma could very seldom beat him. He consoled himself that at least he always got the girls. It would've been more of a consolation if Hayate weren't so superior about it.
So while Shou knew perfectly well that Ryouma never brown-nosed--and that he only kept playing and losing to Hayate because he couldn't give up on the idea that someday he might win--it was a convenient joke. Ryouma shrugged and grinned. "Gotta keep the captain happy. I'm not looking to dig the latrine pits every time we make camp for the rest of my time on this team."
Ahh latrines. It had been falling to the floaters on their team since Fukashi had died. Before that, well -- truthfully they'd all taken turns when necessary. Even Hayate lent a hand to the unpleasant work. But the lion's share of the hard work of setting up camp, including latrine digging, had fallen on Ryouma and Fukashi, and it undoubtedly would land squarely on Ryouma now.
"Unless this new girl is really gung ho about proving herself, I think that's gonna be you anyway," Shou said with a not terribly sympathetic laugh. "Won't be me, that's for sure." He held up his hands as if accepting surgical gloves. "I'm too important to waste on manual labor."
Ryouma grimaced. That was an old, old argument; Shou was certainly right about the importance of a medic's hands, but somehow Ryouma always lost his arguments about a ninjutsu user's hands being equally important. Perhaps more--most medical techniques didn't require that many seals, after all. It was true, though, that while Shou's hands were fine and long-fingered, perfect for surgery as well as seals, Ryouma's hands were blunt and scarred from years of alley-fights and training accidents. The calluses on his palms weren't as impressive as kenjutsu-expert Hayate's, but they were certainly no strangers to manual labor. Unfair as it was, he probably was stuck with the latrines.
...Although. Ryouma considered this for a moment, and then glanced at Shou in apparent dismay. "Hey, are we gonna have to dig two latrines from now on?"
The superior smirk fell from Shou's face with an almost comic crumble as he took Ryouma's meaning. A woman might indeed demand separate facilities, even out in the woods. Who knew how prissy she would be?
"Oh man. I hope not," he groaned. "You really think Hayate'd tell us to? It would be so inefficient..." And humiliating. And a major pain in the ass. And just like some woman to demand it.
Shou really wasn't living up to his claim of not being afraid of girls. All right, so maybe it wasn't the girl herself, but it was certainly all that attended her. Ryouma was pretty certain that Shou had never actually even actually flirted with a girl, let alone kissed one; his miserable failure with the hooker Ryouma and Fukashi had hired for him was enough to prove that. (Who was nervous of a whore?) Come to think of it, probably the extent of Shou's experience with women was with his socialite mother and civilian sisters, who probably spent two hours picking out their kimono and kanzashi and the rest of the morning getting bundled into them. No wonder he was wary.
And of course, guessing this, Ryouma never thought of letting up. Instead, he pursued this line of thought with a growing grin and an evident glee at Shou's discomfort. "We'll take twice as long getting washed up, too, 'cause we'll have to go in shifts. And I bet she'll be hell in heels one week out of four..."
He was going to enjoy this.
Well that at least was firm medical ground for Shou to stand on. He knew enough to know that Kunoichi bleeding in the field was something neither they nor their teammates wanted. Menstrual blood was just as scentable as an injury, if not more so, after all. No, this was one point he was confident about.
"She'll have to get an implant," he told Ryouma dismissively. "Most kunoichi already have them. It keeps them from cycling. Maybe two times a year, max." It kept them from getting pregnant, too, which was in many ways more important even than the not having periods was to a kunoichi. Still, those two weeks a year when they had their abbreviated little cleansings of the wombs....
"And she can take a medical for those two weeks. She'd better..."
"Y'know," Ryouma said conversationally, "you were doing pretty well up to that point. Nice medic-ly tone and all. But there--" he pointed at Shou with the tip of his kunai, grinning-- "you absolutely failed. Not scared of girls, my left foot. Admit it--the thought of a pissy kunoichi has you petrified."
"Scared is what keeps you alive in the field," Shou returned with the hint of a grin. He was quoting someone. Probably Hayate, actually, and countless legions of captains and squad leaders before him. But it was true. A shinobi who wasn't scared on the battlefield wasn't likely to be one who came back from it. And if that battlefield happened to be the one in the war between the sexes, well... He was gonna return alive, thank you very much.
Still, Shou was curious about what Ryouma, worldly man that he claimed to be, really thought of this new addition to their team. They hadn't discussed it much, but surely Ryouma had a few opinions on the matter.
"So what do you think of her, other than she's gonna make twice as much latrine digging work for us?" he asked, and leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him.
Ryouma glanced up at the clock on the wall. 1256. They still had a little time, probably, and if not... Well, what woman wouldn't be flattered to walk in on two guys discussing her in totally asexual terms? (That might change, of course, once they actually had an idea of what she looked like--but the file they'd seen hadn't had a picture, and Hayate had refused to tell.)
So he leaned back on the desk, one hand ruffling papers and shoving an empty curry bowl aside as he braced himself, and raised his other hand like a holy man delivering a homily. "Her mission record is outstanding, as you observed," he intoned gravely. "She's participated in a surprising number of A- and B-rank missions for a kunoichi of her age, and given her stated skills they're probably all combat missions."
Pause. A dropping of the hand, a slow grin. "And she broke Hayate's shoulder. I'm inclined to like her already."
Shou nodded seriously, with a look of grudging respect in his eyes. "She really did. Didn't just chip it a little, she seriously broke it. Nanao-sensei showed me the x-rays and told me to make sure he doesn't make it worse working out before it's healed." The medical charts he'd seen on their captain's clavicle fracture had looked bad. The kind of combat injury you expected someone to come back from a rough mission with, not a sparring injury. Hayate was damn lucky the nerves hadn't been damaged, considering he was a left-hander and it was the shoulder of his sword arm she'd broken with her well-placed kick.
"You think," Shou asked, looking just a little pale, "she's one of those kinds of girls?"
...Oh, gods. This was almost as good as the time with the hooker, when Ryouma and Fukashi had watched--or, more frequently, howled with laughter--from the other side of the bar while Shou painfully tried to pick his way through a conversation with an annoyed whore who only wanted to get upstairs and get it over with. Poor, innocent little Shou. Ryouma might have almost felt bad about corrupting him, if he hadn't been certain that someone else would do it if he didn't. Better for it all to happen where Ryouma could keep an eye on him and intervene if anything went too badly.
But he was freakin' amused now, and not making any effort to hide it. "One of those kinds of girls?" he repeated, snickering. "You mean, the ones who'll castrate a guy just for looking at 'em?"
He'd dated one or two of that type before. The rumors weren't true, but they weren't terribly far off, either.
"Yeah, or something like that," Shou agreed, nodding his head and ignoring Ryouma's mirth. Surely the other man could see what he was getting at here, and it was no laughing matter. Of course, most kunoichi were ball busters in their own special ways, but if this woman was gonna make a career out of it...
"I mean... She seriously broke his collarbone. Snapped it. And Hayate's slim, but it's not like he's any kind of weakling. I know Hayate's not the only captain who got hurt in the spars, but she broke Inoue's ribs in her spar with him, too." Maybe she liked breaking men's bones. She wouldn't be the only borderline psychopath in ANBU, if that were the case.
"Well," Ryouma pointed out, "Hayate's still mostly whole." He paused a moment, and then added with all the concern he could muster, "Unless there's something in his last check-up you're not telling me about?"
Oh man, and there was no question what Ryouma was implying there. Shou gave Ryouma an incredulous look and an exasperated little tsk. "Would you get your mind out of the gutter for five seconds?"
"Kiddo, that's nowhere near the gutter!" Ryouma protested, all injured innocence. Shou looked skeptical. Ryouma lowered his voice and leaned in.
"Gutter," he whispered, in the voice of a twelve-year-old telling dirty stories to his teammates around the fire when they thought their sensei wasn't listening, "would be thinking about exactly how much fun we're gonna have with ANBU's only woman on our team."
"Fun icing the stumps where your testicles were attached, you mean?" Shou asked, leaning back away from his doubtless soon-to-be-emasculated teammate. He arched an eyebrow and mimed a kunai strike at Ryouma's crotch.
Ryouma dropped a protective hand instinctively, and then shot Shou a dirty look. "You're no fun."
"I'm just saying if she's like that, you're asking for trouble if you even think about crossing the line with her," Shou replied, leaning back with a self-satisfied look. Not that he'd ever really hurt his teammate, of course, but he'd made him jump. And maybe the big idiot would get it that they weren't talking about just any new teammate, or any woman. This Uzuki Yuugao person could end up being a disruption of the highest order, if they didn't play things very carefully.
"Hey, relax." Ryouma scowled briefly--it was supposed to be him teasing Shou, not the other way round!--but managed to regain a little of his equilibrium. He leaned forward, unusually serious. "She's gonna be a teammate. I can behave."
...Well, given how he and Fukashi had teased their other two teammates unmercifully since the day Fukashi joined Six Squad, one month after Ryouma did, perhaps 'behave' was relative. He'd tried to fill in the hole Fukashi's absence had left, but though Ryouma would never admit it, he was probably the one member of Six Squad who was most anxious for the floaters to end and for Fukashi's gap to finally be filled. Maybe it'd help him stop missing his friend.
He glanced up involuntarily at the scorched boar-mask hanging on the wall, but when his eyes slid back to Shou's face his gaze was paired with that old cocky grin. "Besides, maybe she's not like that," he suggested. "You never know. Hayate didn't seem too scared."
Shou's eyes followed Ryouma's gaze, flickering up to the mask and hastily away. It was easier to focus on the matter at hand. "Actually... yeah. Hayate was acting like it was no big deal. Well except it is a big deal. But not, you know, a big big deal," Shou said, worrying at his lip with his teeth, and looking for all the world like an anxious Academy brat faced with his first date.
Ryouma looked like he was about to pounce on the opening Shou had so clumsily left, so to deflect his teammate's inevitable teasing, Shou threw the question back at Ryouma. "Anyway, you still haven't really said what you think of her. You really think she'll be a good fit?"
The kid really was worried, if he was pushing it this far. Ryouma gave the question his honest consideration, this time. "Solid skills," he said at last, with a shrug. And, after a moment's hesitation... "Going by her scores, she's better than Fukashi."
It felt a little like a betrayal. But the truth was plain; Fukashi had died because he hadn't been quite good enough, and none of the rest of them had been able to make up for his mistake.
"Maybe she'll last longer." For the team's sake, and his own, Ryouma desperately hoped so.
Shou almost flinched at the mention of their dead comrade's name. It took an act of will on his part not to look up again at the burned mask Fukashi had worn. Not to let himself relive that horror of exposed vitals and torrents of blood. Not to remember the moment when Fukashi had dodged right into the path of the renegade Sunagakure ninja's wind jutsu and...
He blinked and looked at Ryouma with a grim expression. "Fukashi was good. He just caught a bad hit. I should have been able to save him." Staring at his hands, he knew they both knew it was a lie.
Yeah, Fukashi had been good--he'd always been able to kick Ryouma's ass when they sparred with straight taijutsu. But bad hit or not, the fact remained that Fukashi had had a split second to choose which direction to move, and he'd chosen wrong. Ryouma and Hayate had taken his killer down with a vengeance, but liquefying the renegade shinobi's insides hadn't done anything to help Fukashi. It hadn't even made Ryouma feel better. He'd thrown up afterwards, even before they went back to find Shou trying desperately to heal what couldn't be healed. Hayate hadn't said anything about it; that was the one moment of weakness about which he'd never tease.
Ryouma closed his eyes and leaned back. "He lost half his ribcage, Shou. You couldn't've saved him." The rest of it, Neither could I, went unsaid. It was the only time Ryouma had ever wished his talents lay elsewhere than in viciously destructive ninjutsu.
"Yeah... Yeah, I know that, logically..." Shou knew it viscerally, in fact. The feeling of pouring his own chakra into Fukashi's lifeless body would never leave him. It came to him in dreams. It came to him when he worked a healing jutsu now, even for something minor. It came to him when he least could stand to have it near, and it came when he knew it would, when he passed the Hero's Monument, and couldn't help glancing at Fukashi's name, still sharp and new-looking, chiseled into the basalt.
He was silent a moment, listening to Ryouma's quiet breathing, to the tick of the clock on the wall, to his own heartbeat. Trying not to listen to his memories.
"It's too soon," he said simply, and curled up a little, hunching over his knees, staring at the floor between his feet. "Too soon."
Too soon for what? For Fukashi to die? He'd been twenty-four, older than Ryouma by two years, older than Shou by five. Twenty-four wasn't exactly young for a ninja, not when the average life expectancy was currently hovering around thirty-something. Still...death was always too soon. Fukashi hadn't been ready. Maybe Shou just wasn't ready to let go yet either.
Ryouma wasn't planning on letting go. But he wanted that hole in his life gone, and he wanted it gone for good. If this Uzuki girl could fill the empty spot on their team, and fill it well, he'd back her up against anything life or missions or enemies chose to throw at her.
He said flatly, "He died three months ago. You know how well the floaters haven't been working for us, since then. Last time, that kid nearly got us all killed." Hayate had politely but firmly requested that the rookie never again be assigned to his team. Ryouma was just glad his captain's diplomacy had saved him the trouble of frying the kid's brain.
Ryouma was right. Shou knew he was right. That last mission had been scary in a way most missions weren't. In a way it wouldn't have been if they'd had a well-integrated and competent teammate. And whatever Shou's misgivings about Yuugao, her record spoke for itself. She was skilled. And he trusted Hayate. There was no way Hayate would have selected someone for their team who wasn't good. Not if he had any choice in the matter. And the rumor-mill being what it was, it had already come down through a couple of different channels and with a couple of different slants on the information that Hayate had advocated for this woman in the cut meetings the captains held after the trials. Even after she'd broken his collarbone.
"I know you're right, Ryou," he said slowly. He sat up, taking off his reading glasses and setting them atop the unread medical journal still sitting on his desk. With a slow, deliberate turn of the head, he looked up at Fukashi's scorched and scarred mask hanging over Hayate's desk. "I just... I never want to see yours there. Or Hayate's." Or mine.
And that, Ryouma decided, was quite enough of the angst. He could think and talk about Fukashi, who would probably be irritated if he knew it but at least couldn't come back to thwack Ryouma in the head. But worrying about deaths still in the future was just borrowing trouble, and a childhood in Konoha's slums had taught Ryouma that borrowing trouble usually just led to pain, and probably not getting anything to eat again that day. You lived life as it came to you; you took what you could get and tried your best to ignore what you couldn't, and whether you lived or died, you enjoyed yourself doing it. What else could you do?
So he shrugged and grinned, the old cocky grin suddenly a little more feral with a few more teeth. "Well, I'll make sure that if they do get me down, there's not enough of me or them to lug back!"
Shou could see what Ryouma was up to, but really he couldn't help but follow where his friend led. It was always Ryouma who pulled them up when things looked bad. He was muscle on the team in more ways than one, and looking at his grinning face, Shou couldn't have been gladder. Fate was an interesting mistress, throwing them together. Or luck. Whatever had led them to be teammates.
He laughed, a little forced, but could feel his tension melting. "You're such an optimist, Ryouma."
"Hey," Ryouma protested, still grinning, "I'm totally serious!"
Shou nodded soberly. "I know you are. You probably know some nasty jutsu that would disintegrate everything within a five meter radius."
Ryouma grinned wider--of course he did! No sense in being unprepared--and then cocked his head suddenly, to a sound he could barely hear. He started spinning the kunai around his finger again, deliberately not looking at the door. "Ready for the man-eater?"
"I guess so," Shou answered, looking at the clock on the wall and his watch in turn. They agreed: Hayate and their new teammate were six minutes overdue. "What's keeping them?"
The door-knob rattled, as it always did; Ryouma and Fukashi had worked to loosen that, too. Ryouma glanced over his shoulder, and sang out, "Nothing at all!"
Hayate stood in the hall outside his office door, sensing both Shou and Ryouma inside. He reached out to jiggle the doorknob, in case Shou wasn't paying attention. He had no doubt Ryouma knew they were there already. "Please use a chair, Ryouma," he called. He was almost completely certain the tall man's seat was planted firmly on the captain's desk. Probably sitting on one of his maps, just to annoy. But they had someone to impress today. Although that was also doubtlessly why Ryouma would make an extra effort to be obnoxious. Shou he was less certain of. The younger agent was quiet, had been fairly noncommittal when Hayate had broken the news about Yuugao's joining Squad Six.
He turned to Yuugao standing just back of his left side, and gave her a reassuring smile. "Ready to meet the guys?"
Her new captain was...talking to a closed door. Well, she'd been warned that the ANBU were quirky, to put it politely (or daft, to use Suzume-san's words). Yuugao glanced at Hayate, then again at the solid oak panel in front of them.
"Were you addressing me, taichou?"
"About asking you if you were ready, yes," Hayate said smoothly. "The comment about the chair was directed at Ryouma, who has an unfortunate inability to distinguish types of furniture." He pushed the door open, which true to Ryouma and Fukashi's design gave a groaning squeak, and gestured at the tall, dark-complected man sitting on the large desk on the office's right.
Shou stood up from his place at one of two desks on the left and laughed a little nervously, offering Yuugao a brief bow, and trying not to stare.
She was pretty.
The tall man sitting on the desk didn't move, except to keep spinning a kunai around his index finger. He said cheerfully, "Takes too long to get out of a chair. Gotta be ready for action! See, if you'd been an intruder... I could've pushed Shou at you easier, from here."
Yuugao blinked. Ryouma was far enough away from the round-faced young man standing uncertainly in front of another desk that he'd have had to stretch--and probably jump off the desk altogether--in order to get any degree of force to his push. He was at entirely the wrong angle, too. She glanced a little uncertainly at Hayate. Is he always like this? her eyes asked.
She hadn't exactly thought she'd meet up with another Kotetsu in ANBU.
"And how often have you, in your vast experience, had to confront intruders within a captain's office in ANBU HQ?" Hayate gave Ryouma a steady look, one underlain with both affection and outright menace. "Off my desk before I force you off."
Shou was in his way, intervening in the space between Hayate and Ryouma, in a heartbeat. "Nanao-sensei said no sparring for you until..."
Hayate raised his hand and cut him off, using a compelling, if quiet voice. "Yamane Shou, Tousaki Ryouma, this is our new squadmate Uzuki Yuugao, and even if you can't be bothered to show me respect any more, perhaps you could do so for our rookie? She does get a 24-hour hazing-free welcoming period, if I remember the rules correctly."
Ryouma slipped off the desk at last to sketch a rough but polite bow, as if that were his only reason for moving at all. When he straightened, though, he took half a step backward and collapsed onto the hideously yellow vinyl couch, slinging one arm along the back and leaning his head against the wall. "Course we wouldn't haze our new teammate, Hayate," he said lazily. "What d'you take us for?" He didn't seem to want an answer to that; he went on, as if savoring the thought, "We get to gang up on everyone else's rookies."
His dark eyes flicked to Yuugao. "Good to meet the girl who took our captain down."
That, at least, was something Yuugao could latch onto. "I didn't take him down," she said, for what was beginning to feel like the five hundredth time. "He beat me."
Ryouma just waved one hand, narrowly missing scratching the couch with the kunai he still held. "Eh, details. He's the one in the sling!" He grinned cheekily at his captain.
Kotetsu and Anko's lovechild, Yuugao decided, if they ever stopped snarking at each other long enough to have sex. The thought was briefly terrifying.
Hayate merely nodded. It was best, he'd discovered, to simply let Ryouma wind himself down, like a hyperactive child who'd been given one too many cookies. Besides, he was amusing. "Indeed," he said with a smile, patting his arm in its sling. "Which means you two will be doing the heavy lifting."
Before Ryouma could respond, Shou stepped back and stood at stiff attention. "Yamane Shou," he said, and gave Yuugao a much more formal bow. His deeply ingrained social training coming back to him, Hayate guessed. He could just see the younger ANBU dressed in a five-mon kimono, addressing some wealthy family acquaintence.
"Pleased to meet you, Uzuki-san," Shou said, straightening from his stiff-backed bow.
Hayate interrupted the courtesies. "She may be Uzuki-san when you see her in the street, but she's in uniform now," he said. It was an important point he wanted them all to get. "She's Yuugao."
Yuugao knew that the little chill that ran down her spine was stupid, and childish, and worse than childish--as if she were some silly girl thrilling to the sound of her lover's voice! But she couldn't help the feeling that this was the first step on her path to acceptance among her new comrades, and that she wasn't alone. Gekkou-taichou stood beside her, and while the young Yamane man seemed stiff with formality, Ryouma slipped his kunai into his holster and gave her another casual two-fingered wave from the couch. Yuugao bit back a smile and returned Shou's bow as best she could. "Shou-senpai and Ryouma-senpai," she said, studying their faces. In a month, she hoped, she would have memorized their smell, their steps, their voices, their movements; she would be able to pick each man out of a crowd or a dark room or a rainy forest. She would know their strengths and, more importantly, their weaknesses, and she'd be able to fit herself into their fighting dynamic as smoothly as if she'd always been there. "I hope to learn from your guidance, senpai."
Ryouma gave a decidedly unimpressed snort and demanded of Hayate, "You brainwashed her on the way here, didn't you?"
Hayate grinned, leaning back on his heels. "Only a little, Ryou. I didn't want her to hate you on sight, after all."
It was only a little effort to keep the banter going, effort Hayate was willing to make. He was determined not to act any differently with Yuugao than he would with any other new recruit. She'd fit in the quicker if the team dynamics were unchanged, after all. Or as unchanged as he could make them, given that they were slotting in a new person now, as a permanent replacement. He glanced at her, standing still beside him, taking it all in with alert eyes. What was she making of them? Of him?
Shou cut in again with a nervous little bob of the head. "Ah.... uh.... would you like to sit down Uzu- Yuugao-san?" he asked. He pushed a pile of Hayate's newspapers off the end of the couch that Ryouma wasn't occupying to make room for her, then stood attentively, as if he had pulled out a chair for her at a fancy table.
Yuugao wanted to fit in with her team almost more than--anything, but sitting on the couch next to one of her lounging new teammates was a bit too much. Especially given that both Hayate and Shou were still standing, Hayate casually and Shou uncomfortably. "I'm fine, thank you, Shou-senpai," Yuugao assured him. She did take another two steps further into the room, though, and leaned her hip against the near desk while she looked around. It wasn't exactly tidy; there were old tea-cups on the desks, scattered papers, abandoned bowls of take-out curry. Newspapers littered the floor now, and the scorched mask hanging on the wall looked as if it were collecting dust. It was also hanging slightly crooked. Yuugao wondered if anyone would object to her straightening up.
A movement caught her eye: Ryouma, who was trying very hard to snag Shou's attention. If he noticed her gaze, he didn't seem to mind. He mouthed dramatically, Not castrated yet!
...Perhaps her lip-reading wasn't up to par. That couldn't be it.
Hayate almost laughed. Almost. "Alright, well... anyway, this is our office," he said, in a slightly cracked voice. Shou had blushed a delicate shade of pink, and was attempting to surreptitiously give Ryouma an ANBU hand signal meaning "keep quiet," but which Hayate was sure was more accurately read as "Shut up!"
"We plan our missions in here," he went on valiantly. "Do our paperwork here, sometimes eat and sleep here." He was sure she could tell that just from looking, really. I mean, why else would the office need a couch? "That's my desk," he continued, gesturing at the larger desk on the right that had formerly borne Ryouma's weight. "The other two are kind of communal property. We get our mission assignments delivered here, usually." He pointed at a relatively new-looking wooden box on his desk. It, unlike the rest of the clutter, was the one thing he was sure to keep well-organized. At the moment it was gratifyingly empty.
Judging by Shou's blush and the slight strain in Hayate's voice, Yuugao's lip-reading had been closer to the mark than she'd thought. Ryouma was smirking again, his arm draped along the back of the couch. Yuugao glanced away from the tiny drama to follow Hayate's explanation. Only two desks for the remaining three teammates; she wondered if they wrote their reports in shifts, or one of them used the couch. She would bet that if anyone lounged out to do his writing on the couch instead of tidily at his desk, it was Ryouma.
But the messiest desk was definitely their captain's. She couldn't imagine the state of the drawers. Hayate hadn't struck her as an untidy person--but then, he was a young man, and even Izumo was careless in every area but his kitchen. Yuugao refocused on the assignment box, the one starkly bare area of the desk. "How often do the mission assignments come? And what's the usual duration of the missions themselves?"
"A typical mission is six to ten days, including travel time, and I usually get at least a twelve-hour notice before we muster out. We usually get a seventy-two hour down period between missions, but they can last anywhere from half a day to a month, though usually not over that," Hayate answered, reaching over with his right hand to finger the empty box. "And as you can see we have no missions at the moment. Allows us to get you up to speed." He smiled what he hoped was a reassuring smile. So far Yuugao's questions had been astute, and the boys weren't behaving too badly.
Shou spoke up then, still looking a little apprehensive. "We um... sometimes camp, and sometimes we stay at an inn, depending on our cover and the mission and so forth."
"I'm the latrine-digger," Ryouma contributed, in a voice so bland that Yuugao gave him a sharp look. He met her eyes with a take-pity-on-me! look, and the corners of her mouth twitched upward at last.
She said gently, "That's awfully brave of you to have taken that task on. It's one of the most important roles in the team."
Ryouma's piteous face split into a wide grin. "It's the hardest, too!" he confided, as if he were proud of it. "And even when my hands are bleeding, Hayate won't let me stop..."
Poor Shou looked like he might die of mortification any moment. Hayate hoped he'd loosen up soon. Maybe if he led by example?
"Oh it's not that bad, is it Ryouma?" Hayate asked, giving Ryouma an amused look. "I let you eat any grubs you turn up, don't I?"
"That's all I get," Ryouma told Yuugao sadly. The man was capable of mood-swings faster than any PMSing kunoichi Yuugao had ever met. "You'd better keep an eye on your rations," he warned, "'cause Hayate here'll sneak 'em away when you're not looking."
Yuugao's tiny smile spread a little wider. "He certainly ate a lot at lunch. I'll keep your advice in mind, Ryouma-senpai."
Hayate cleared his throat, covering a sound that was suspiciously like a giggle. "Well I can see you two, at least, will get along well," he said and grinned, then walked over to Shou and patted him on the shoulder. "Cheer up, Shou, I won't let them pick on you." He continued into the room, squeezing past Ryouma sprawled on the couch, who only moved his long legs out of Hayate's way when Hayate pointedly kicked one of his feet. He pulled open one of the desk drawers and extracted a scroll, which he carefully unsealed and leaned across the desk to offer to Yuugao. "This is ANBU's current roll call. We usually operate as a unit and without support, but occasionally we take missions with other squads," he said.
Shou looked a little less tense, though he was still shooting the occasional disapproving look at Ryouma. Ryouma, for his part, looked happy as a clam.
Swallowing her smile, Yuugao took the scroll with a sharp nod and scanned it intently. Most of the names in the Hunter section were organized into squads of four, each identified with its number; there were twelve squads in all. Another 15 names were grouped together in an 'unassigned' pool; she guessed those were the floaters she'd heard mentioned. Two of the rookies had joined their ranks. A little further along, several dozen names were identified as T&I, and more were listed as medics and administrative personal. In all, she guessed there were over a hundred names on the roll. She didn't recognize more than a few of them, but she hadn't really expected to.
"You've been working with some of these unassigned agents recently, then?" she inquired. Her eyes flicked up to the mask on the wall, and then quickly down to the scroll again. The mask had hung there long enough to gather dust; how long had it been?
The glance was something Hayate couldn't miss. Nor could he miss the way Ryouma's eyes followed Yuugao's to stare at the mask, or the way Shou's face suddenly went blank and cold and still. Hayate's own breath caught for just a second on something rough in his throat, feeling Fukashi's ghost in the room with them. Well, it wasn't the first time he'd lost a teammate. Not the first time he'd lost a subordinate, either, though it was his first as an ANBU captain. It hadn't been easy for any of them. He supposed he should have considered that Yuugao's arrival would stir up Fukashi's ashes.
"We've been working with floaters for the last three months," Hayate said, looking at each team member individually, letting his eyes fall on Yuugao last. "And frankly that's not been great for us. We need a solid unit that knows each other's strengths and weaknesses." He paced in the space behind the desk, pausing in front of a wall-mounted weapons rack holding a trio of sheathed katana and short swords. "In fact, I think we ought to go do some training. We can do an indoor spar, or we can go out to one of the fields, but I think it's about time for you three to show off for each other."
Yuugao hadn't missed the change in her new teammates, either. Her fingers tightened on the scroll, until the thick paper crackled; she almost jumped. Very carefully, she rolled the scroll up again, smoothed the seal down with her thumb, and set it on Hayate's desk.
He was trying to distract them, she thought, to break the tension that her blunder had created. But while a little life crept back into Shou's face with their captain's words, it took Ryouma to crumple up the tension one-handed and toss it into the corner, as he inquired plaintively, "You're not gonna play with us, then?"
Before Hayate could answer, Shou was back solidly in his role as team medic. "Absolutely not! Not until your shoulder is healed," he barked, giving Hayate a look that almost made him shiver. The kid was definitely scary when he wanted to be. But he was also still a subordinate.
Hayate turned and gave him a slow, quiet look. "Did you get an earful from Nanao-sensei?" No doubt that was it, or Shou wouldn't be quite so alarmed.
Looking at Yuugao, Hayate continued, "Nanao-sensei is the medic I took you to after our spar the other day. She's... a little over protective."
"So I saw," Yuugao said dryly. She brushed her thigh with her fingertips, where liberal applications of ointment were helping the new scar to slowly fade. "I received quite the lecture when she stitched my thigh." She'd also learned that apparently breaking a man's shoulder isn't quite the way most girls express interest, but she wasn't going to repeat that. She'd blushed bright enough when Nanao-sensei had mentioned it, when she was having her stitches removed--and the medic, who was apparently a teenage girl at heart as well as a mother hen towards her patients, hadn't stopped teasing until Yuugao left. Yuugao was hoping it would be a long while before she needed to visit the medics again.
"Well, then!" Ryouma said, sitting up at last. "Hayate has to stay out of the fun. I say indoors. S'too hot outside, unless we're gonna practice water-walking."
"I think you're a little past the genin skills tests, Ryouma. Or at least I hope so," Hayate said, and turned to the wall-rack behind him. He carefully took down the mid-length katana, a beautifully balanced weapon, flexible and light, with an elegant cast-iron tsuba and a burnished lacquer sheath. He held the sword almost lovingly, cradling it against his sling-bound arm as he turned back to his team. It was easily his favorite weapon. "And I'm not completely sidelined, I could..." he started.
"Hayate!" Shou interrupted, sounding like a child begging for a favor. "Please, please please don't." He walked across the room, stepping over Ryouma's legs, which had once again stretched out to fill the small passageway between the edge of the couch and Hayate's desk, and put his hands on Hayate's shoulder, gently manipulating the healing fracture. "It's not completely stable yet. You could be looking at serious nerve damage and..."
Hayate winced and gave Shou a stern look. Not only did whatever Shou had just done when he put hands on hurt, but he really didn't need the other man making mountains out of molehills in front of Yuugao. "And you don't want to answer to Nanao-sensei for letting me make it worse," he said, as light-heartedly as he could manage. He turned to give Yuugao a smile, hoping she'd not taken too much alarm from Shou's concern. "Don't let this worry you, you'll get the hang of it soon enough," he told her.
That smile didn't cut it. Yuugao gnawed her lip, looking pale and unhappy with distress again. She'd seen Hayate's wince as Shou touched the injured shoulder; she'd seen his clumsiness at lunch, and she saw the obvious love in his hands as he held his sword now. She'd taken that from him, that grace and that speed and that soaring steely beauty--and for what? For her pride? She'd meant to incapacitate him, but not nearly that much...
"I'm sorry, Gekkou-taichou," she murmured, locking her eyes onto the sword cradled in his sling. "I didn't know--I didn't meant for it to be that bad. I thought..."
She'd thought she could wipe away a superior smirk that she'd only imagined. She'd thought she'd been pulling her blow enough to crack, not to break.
She'd thought wrong.
Ryouma made some kind of face at Shou, who evidently didn't get it, for he cast a bewildered look of noncomprehension back at his teammate. He did back off, though, for which Hayate was glad. It was obvious the whole thing was not sitting well with Yuugao. He supposed he could see why. If he'd been assigned to the team of the captain he'd fought when he was a rookie, he'd have been pretty uncomfortable, too. As it was he'd avoided Tobitake Tekkai for a month, ducking into empty offices when he passed the man limping around ANBU's halls, despite both Tekkai and Ryuuhei's explicit assurances that it was a good thing he'd taken that chunk out of Tekkai-taichou's calf with his sword.
"It's fine, Yuugao," he said, shifting the katana so it rested more comfortably in the crook of his arm. "I'm off missions another couple of weeks. And getting some chakra healing done on it in the meantime." Every day at 1700, to be exact. It was chakra healing and physical therapy, and as much as a pain in the ass as it was, it was also clearly doing a lot of good. Washing his own hair, for example, had been nearly impossible in the first few days, but now it just made him a little sore.
"Please don't worry any further about it," he said, looking right at his rookie recruit. "I told you you got in because you went all out."
"I think I could have gone all out without putting you out of commission for a month," Yuugao said wretchedly.
"Hey," Ryouma broke in loudly, "he said don't worry about it!" He climbed to his feet at last, challenging with more than just words. Somehow not even the height and the muscle and the spiky black hair could make him look menacing, though; perhaps it was the lazy grin that flickered onto his lean, angular face again. "And besides, this gives us time to laze around and laugh at him. We're fine with it anytime you want to break more of his bones..."
Shou gave Ryouma a sharp look. "How about not," he said, with finality, and turned his stern gaze on his captain. It was interesting just how much presence Shou could have, Hayate thought, when he was sure of his subject.
"Alright, alright, I won't spar today. But I'm still supervising," Hayate said, standing up straight. Being shorter than two of this three subordinates was a bit annoying, but then Genta was shorter than even Yuugao, and certainly shorter than his squadmates, and he managed to command his team with ease. Sometimes, Hayate thought, he really wondered if he actually had the kind of natural leadership ability his friend and fellow captain did.
Well, it didn't ever do to show waffling to your team, though. "Come on, all three of you," he said. "Yuugao, do you have the equipment you need?"
She could do this, she told herself, and pride stiffened her back and put a new crispness into her voice. "I've got kunai and shuriken-set, basic gear. I don't use much beyond that." It was her own weaponry, though she'd left her clothing with the quartermaster to be measured for more exactly-fitting uniforms. She hadn't had any weapons issued yet, which wasn't a problem; she trusted her own kunai and shuriken more, and she barely even knew how to hold the katana all ANBU were apparently expected to use.
With a captain like Hayate, she could already bet that she would really have to work on that. She had no hope of making it up to his level--even his one-handed and broken-shouldered level--but with practice and perhaps a few pointers, she might be at least competent by the time Hayate was ready to take missions. That wasn't much of a bright spot, but at least it was something to focus on.
Hayate walked briskly to the door, stepping around Shou and Ryouma, and stood in the doorway, still carrying his katana. "Alright then, Shou, Ryouma, shall we show our rookie how it's done in Squad Six?"
Ryouma just grinned one of those cat-who-licked-the-butter grins, but Shou looked pointedly at Hayate's sword, then up at Hayate. "Gekkou-taichou..." he said. Oh he was going to make a formidable parent someday, Hayate could see that at a glance.
"Ahhh...." Hayate said, and looked down at his katana, then up at Yuugao. "You've seen we're fairly informal within our squad. If he's using the formal address, I guess I must obey," he said with a little remorseful laugh, and went to put the katana carefully back with its mates on the wall rack.
They were trying so hard to put her at her ease--or at least Ryouma and Hayate were; she still wasn't sure what to make of Shou--that Yuugao couldn't help but unbend a little in turn. She wasn't sure if Hayate's last comment was a hint or not, but she was fairly sure that at the least it was meant to be a joke. Tentatively, she asked, "If I call you Gekkou-taichou all the time, then, does that mean that you'll obey?"
He might not obey, but Ryouma certainly would and did go bright red and convulsive with very badly-suppressed laughter.
Hayate also turned a bright red. He could feel the blush rising up his face almost to the roots of his hair. Curse his fair skin, he thought. But it was funny. A sound escaped him that was nearly a giggle. And it looked like maybe Yuugao would fit right in. "Only if you are also my medic," he said in an oddly low mumble.
Shou couldn't quite believe his ears. He stared open mouthed at the red-faced lunatics around him, and blushed a deep red as well. His ears stood out like hot little red flags alerting all to his embarrassment.
It really was a good thing all the ANBU wore masks on missions, or else their team could probably start a forest-fire just by the heat of their blushing. Yuugao could feel the burning rising in her cheeks in response--but even worse, she knew that if she looked at Hayate-taichou any longer, she wouldn't be able to contain her laughter. (Was that a giggle she'd just heard?) She crossed her arms over her chest and looked determinedly at the door instead. "That's reassuring. I won't need to worry about changing forms of address."
Ryouma had given up on suppressing his laughter by this point. He clearly hadn't had such an entertaining afternoon in far too long. Wiping his eyes, he suggested, "Well, you could always ask Shou to teach you some medic jutsu..."
One look at Shou was enough to send him doubled-up in paroxysms of laughter again.
Shou turned an even deeper shade of red, glancing at Yuugao and stuttering, "I uh... I..." He turned desperate eyes on his captain then.
"Enough," Hayate said, rescuing him. He choked back another giggle with a little snort, covered it with a cough, and held the door open. "Let's go, please," he said, and leaned against the door, gesturing for the team to exit, and still red as a beet.
Shou, who was only too glad to get out of there, scurried out the door as fast as a little mouse.
This was probably the first time Yuugao had ever been with another person as easily-embarrassed as she was--let alone two!--and she wasn't sure whether to feel relieved at the common ground or horrified at the prospect of death-by-blush. She was fairly certain that Ryouma was going to get the time of his life from watching them...
...And she was beginning to think she might, rather less obtrusively, enjoy herself too.
Still, as she ducked her head to Hayate and stepped through the open door into the hall, she managed to avoid meeting Ryouma's eye.