Chapter 2: Making the Cut
By the time Hayate was finally let loose from the medics' care, with his arm bound by a bandage and sling, and strict instructions to stay off missions for a month--a month!--he was famished. Yuugao was long gone, escorted out of the ANBU buildings with a crutch, and a row of stitches and a clean white bandage decorating her thigh. He supposed he shouldn't have told her he'd look for her. He had a meeting to go to now. A captains' meeting was waiting for him, and hopefully some dinner, where they would be culling through the candidates who'd made it all the way to the end of the trials.
He was definitely recommending Uzuki, he thought, as he headed down the dimly lit corridor on the way to the briefing rooms. He saw Yamanaka Hiroshi, Squad Eight's captain, limping along on crutches ahead of him.
"Hiroshi, wait up," he called and caught up to the taller man. "You're going to the meeting, too, right? Are they gonna feed us? I'm starved."
Hiroshi glanced round, brows rising and gloomy frown lifting as he saw the other captain's sling-bound arm. His day was suddenly looking a little brighter. "Tsuchiya mentioned sending one of his boys out for dinner," he said, and then didn't restrain his curiosity any longer. "What happened to you? You had the Uzuki girl, right? Gods, Hayate, you must be slipping if you could get your ass handed to you by a chick like that..."
Ah, Hayate thought, it was starting already. Well he'd known it would. At least he could honestly say he'd taken the hit cleanly. He'd been fighting hard, she was just that good.
"Screw you," he said without malice. "She was good. And it's not like you did any better than I did. Least I still have both my eyebrows." He eyed his comrade's singed face with a mixture of amusement and concern. "Don't you know how to dodge a katon yet? And what'd you do to your leg?"
"Sprained knee," Hiroshi grunted, scowling down at his splinted leg. He resisted the urge to reach for his poor, abused eyebrows; the medics had slathered his face with burn cream and told him sternly not to touch it until he reapplied the ointment that night. Not like he could do anything now anyway, with both his hands occupied with his crutches.
Ah, well, at least he'd come out of it better than his candidate had. Hiroshi's kid had only managed to knock his mask off and then singe him with a katon; he'd sprained the knee himself, twisting too fast as he evaded yet another katon. But the boy was lying in the infirmary now, out cold with a bad concussion, a broken wrist, and a torn hamstring. He wondered how Hayate's girl had fared.
"If she was that good, she's gotta be running around Konoha now telling everyone how she smacked down an ANBU captain." He attempted a cheerful leer at Hayate, and turned it into a wince. "Don't tell me she got off without even a bruise."
"I ended up slicing her leg up a little, " Hayate admitted. "And she was about to drop from exhaustion when we finished. I felt a little bad about that. Left her in the infirmary, but she was gone when I got out." He hoped she was alright. The medic who'd treated her had told him she'd be fine with a little rest and a decent meal or two. She'd told Hayate the same thing about himself, too.
"You off missions? I am. Oda-sensei was a bastard about my arm, too. Guy's a total sadist," he said and grinned at his companion. "And I hear your candidate is a complete mess. You've got no finesse at all, have you?"
"You must've been going easy on her," Hiroshi scoffed, completely ignoring his previous claim that Hayate hadn't even been able to stand up to her. "What, got the hots for her? About time you found yourself someone to roll--we were starting to wonder if you'd taken vows of celibacy or something."
That hit a little close to home. Hayate blinked, and covered his reaction by pushing the door to the briefing room open. The other captains were ranged around a long oval table, eating pizza. Pizza was good. Hayate's stomach rumbled loudly at the scent, and he leaned against the door, holding it for Hiroshi.
"Go ahead, gimps first," he said with a smirk.
"And of course I was holding back. I actually want my candidate to join the service, not spend the next three weeks in the hospital."
Ribbing Hayate was no fun at all. The man was only a year younger than Hiroshi, but he seemed almost as calm as an old sage at times. Perhaps he really was taking vows of celibacy. Hiroshi sulked to his chair, cajoled Squad Seven's captain into pulling it out for him, and was reaching for pizza almost before Hayate made it to the table.
"Gekkou's going soft," he announced to the room at large through a mouthful of melted cheese. "He thinks the point of this rigamarole is to actually recruit."
At the head of the table, Tsuchiya Ryuuhei snorted and set his own slice of pizza down, wiping his hands on a paper napkin and reaching for a stack of file folders. He passed one down the table to Hiroshi, and sent another skimming across the table to Hayate's place. "Whatever could've given you that idea?"
Like most of the other captains sitting around the table, Squad One's commander--and the overall division commander of ANBU--was a young man, barely out of his twenties. Ryuuhei nodded a greeting to Hayate and reached for his pizza again. "You gave a good show out there, Hayate. I heard some of the candidates clapping at the end."
Hayate used his elbow to snag the papers before they went hurtling over the edge of the table, winced a little, and reached for a piece of pizza. One of the pieces loaded with meat and veggies and little unidentifiable green squiggles that were probably some kind of seasoning. He hoped.
"My candidate was a strong fighter," he said and grinned a little at the compliment. Ryuuhei didn't hand them out lightly.
He looked around the room, noting they were nearly all present, and took a huge mouthful of pizza, eating with the abandon of a starving man. As long as there were one or two captains still absent, he had time to eat.
"Where's Ibiki?" he asked Genta, the commander of Squad Three, flicking through his papers.
"Still evaluating, I think," the other man replied. "The interrogation evals always take longer than the combat. We can just kick asses and tell who's good and who isn't, they have to do all that psychology bullshit."
Hayate nodded and spread the papers out on the table in front of him. There were sixteen candidates who had made it as far as sparring with the captains, including Yuugao. There was even another woman, though he could see at a glance that she'd already been cut. The marks from the other captains on her performance were fair at best, in that final round, his own included.
He pulled Yuugao's sheet out and read it over, pleased to see that the captains who'd evaluated their spar had given her high marks. Good, it wasn't just him and parts of his anatomy not used for combat liking that woman.
"That's your purple-haired chick, huh?" Genta said, pointing at the profile. "She was pretty good. Although you could have taken her leg off if you'd been a little less careful."
"You saw that?" Hayate asked. "But I was careful." He grinned. "Unlike Yamanaka. I'm assuming his guy is off the table?"
Hiroshi growled inarticulately around his pizza, and refused to answer. Beside him, Satoru of Squad Nine laughed. "Latest reports have the kid still out cold in the infirmary. Medics say they're gonna wait and let him wake up on his own." He rubbed his neck self-consciously. "I got a guy in there, too. Broken arm. But he walked out on his own."
"Bet Gekkou would've liked to help his chick out," Hiroshi said snidely, his mouth clear at last. He shuffled through his own papers, leaving greasy fingerprints behind, until he found Yuugao's profile. "Hah!" he said triumphantly, stabbing a finger at the ID picture. The girl's face was serious, set; she looked as if she'd stayed up late memorizing all the Shinobi Rules and was trying to embody each one of them as she posed for her official photograph. Hiroshi's face fell again (painfully). The girl's features were pretty enough, but she looked so stony that it might be easier coaxing a Jizo statue to put it out. Well, everyone knew Hayate hadn't had any action in a long time; maybe he thought this was the best he could get...
Probably Hayate really was in training to be a monk. But Hiroshi liked his theory better.
Hayate was saved from having to answer that by the door opening once again. A tall man with a forbiddingly scarred face and a long black leather coat entered and looked around the room.
"Oi, it's the drama queen from T&I," Genta whispered to Hayate. "Guess we have to start the meeting."
Ibiki just grinned at Squad Three's commander. "I'm sure you'd know all about drama queens, Sakamoto," he said, and helped himself to a piece of pizza.
The other captains chuckled, including Genta, who took the ribbing good naturedly. After all, he was actually getting some action, unlike tall dark and scary, right? Who cared with whom?
Hayate laughed quietly, and reached for another piece of pizza himself. "Well, what's the protocol? This is the first time I've done one of these recruiting drives," he said, and looked expectantly at Ryuuhei.
Ryuuhei passed another folder down the table to Ibiki, and shrugged. "Not much protocol at all. We've got the marks everyone gave on all the candidates; some of 'em bear some discussion, and some of 'em are pretty clear. At least five of us observed every candidate, so we've got a pretty broad spectrum of opinions." He glanced to his left, where Tenzou of Squad Two was quietly eating his pizza and flipping through the profiles. "You had the first candidate, Tenzou--Tanaka Hiromi," he added to the others, and they scrambled through their folders to find the appropriate file.
Tenzou set his pizza down and cleared his throat. He only ended up coughing. Genta shoved a glass of water towards him, and he took it gratefully. "Sorry about that. Um, Tanaka. Well, his genjutsu's solid, but his taijutsu could use some work..."
Over the course of the next hour they talked their way through each file, sometimes passing or rejecting a candidate with only a few comments, sometimes arguing fiercely for ten minutes at a time. The pizza boxes disappeared from the table; someone produced a box of dango and passed it around. Ryuuhei took three.
Hiroshi discussed his candidate briefly (decent ninjutsu, sucky taijutsu, strength but no speed; recommended rejection) and then it was Hayate's turn.
"Uzuki Yuugao," Hayate said, and picked up her file. "Well you can see she has some impressive taijutsu and speed." He made a wry face and glanced down at his arm in its sling. "Her ninjutsu was quite skillful, too."
"That's not all you were impressed by," Hiroshi teased. Hayate just gave him a look.
"She performed extremely well on all her tests and trials," he continued. "I recommend we give her a Hunter position."
"What about her genjutsu?" Tenzou asked. "Is it solid enough?"
"I"d say so," Hayate answered. "As long as we balance the squad she's assigned to to make sure there's a specialist genjutsu user in her unit, I think she'd make an excellent ANBU. She's got every qualification we've said we were looking for."
"Except she's a woman," Ibiki put in. "We have few women Hunters. Women tend to come to my department. Are you prepared for a female in your ranks, gentlemen?"
"I don't see how that matters," Hayate protested. "She's a good ninja. One of the best at these trials."
"She'll be living and working on a team with three other men," Ryuuhei pointed out. "Her captain and comrades will have to make some considerations for that." His dark eyes glanced thoughtfully down the table. "How would you feel about having her in your squad?"
Tenzou shrugged. Genta grinned. "I'm probably the only one who wouldn't worry. But I can see my squad getting a little fussy over it."
"It'd be awkward," Tanabe Satoru of Squad Nine confessed. "I mean, my girlfriend's bad enough--can you imagine having a kunoichi on your team that week of the month?"
Several of the men shuddered. Satoru added wryly, "I take missions that week just to get away."
"There hasn't been a woman Hunter in ANBU as long as I've been in," Hiroshi finished, with all the worldly wisdom that three years' experience could give him. "S'better that way. Being a Hunter is a man's job." It was an opinion not altogether unique in the rarified confines of the ANBU.
Ibiki looked sharply at him, but he didn't speak.
"There have been females on ANBU units since Konoha's founding," Ryuuhei remarked mildly. "I am asking about this set of commanders and the current squads. I take it that's a no from you then, Hiroshi and Satoru?"
Both men shook their heads.
"Any others? Hayate?"
"I'm fine with it," Hayate answered, and didn't give it much more thought.
"Then we agree, Uzuki Yuugao is in as long as we place her on a squad where she will fit in," Ryuuhei said with finality, and turned the copy of her profile over. "Next candidate, Akimichi Touji..."
It wasn't until two days later, when Hayate was reading through the list of assignments of the newest Rookies, that he realized what he'd agreed to. There in black and white, with Ryuuhei's and the Hokage's seals affixed at the bottom, were the orders for the new Squad Six:
Captain, 011671 Gekkou Hayate
Hunter, 010243 Tousaki Ryouma
Hunter, 012161 Uzuki Yuugao
Hunter and Medic, 012104 Yamane Shou
And his orders:
Gekkou Hayate on medical restriction until 06-17, to conduct new Hunter orientation starting 06-03.
Ryuuhei had put the woman on his squad. Well, he'd wanted her in ANBU, and he'd wanted to see her again. Just... not quite like that.
He rolled the assignment scroll back up and carefully placed it in his pouch, still mindful of his arm in its sling, and went to look for Ryouma and Shou, to tell them the good news.