“Nothing I can think of.” Genma handed over the note. “Except… Seriously, don’t toy with Kuroda. He’s got a lot of ego tied up in being in command.” He got to his feet with the help of his cane, testing the strength in his healing leg. The numbing effect of the work the medical team had done was wearing off. “You want a cup of tea before you go? I’ve got some really nice monkey jasmine from Tea Country. I figured I’d take my meds with something good before I sacked out.”

Ryouma glanced at the clock on Genma’s dresser before he made his decision. “Yeah. I'd like that. We've got those dorayaki, too.” He tucked both scrolls into the crook of one elbow, freeing his hands for seals. “Mind if I send your note off with a clone, first? So's Taichou doesn't miss visiting hours.”

“That’d be great,” Genma agreed. He thought about having Ryouma send his clone straight to Raidou’s moms’ house, but that seemed like a hit-or-miss chance of reaching the captain, not to mention an invasion of privacy. “Have your clone take it to HQ; they’ll have someone on staff who will know where to find Taichou and can send a runner.”

Ryouma waited until they were back in the front rooms before he created his clone. The way Ryouma shaped his chakra was familiar after their weeks working together, but this time Genma really focused on it, feeling the rusty-satin edges of Ryouma’s energy as he raised and released it. A really skilled sensor could probably have identified the jutsu without looking at this range. Genma felt the heat of Ryouma’s Fire nature, and the turbulence of Water. There was raw power there, tightly focused, but a little wild. It was what gave Ryouma’s offensive jutsu their punch.

When the clone was out the door, Ryouma turned a questioning look on Genma.

“I was thinking I should look for my scroll on chakra-tuning,” Genma said. “I didn’t really spend a lot of time on it — I mean I learned to tune my own for medical jutsu, but I didn’t study the parts for people with different natures than mine. And it’s kind of second-nature now. I’ll read it through before we meet up again, so I can explain how to do it without sounding like an idiot.”

“One idiot is enough,” Ryouma agreed. It sounded mostly wry, but there was a hint, as there always was with Ryouma, of genuine belief in his inferiority. That was another thing Genma needed to figure out how to deal with, and he didn’t think the key was in any of his scrolls.

“You're Earth and Fire, right?” continued Ryouma. “So at least part of it'll be similar.”

“Fire and Earth,” Genma corrected. “I manifested Fire first, when I was too young to remember. Scared my poor dad half to death. If Fire’s your base, too, we can definitely start from there.” He moved into the kitchen, getting tea canisters out of one cupboard and a pale ceramic teapot painted with wisteria from another.

Ryouma trailed after him, dropping the scrolls and pastry box off on the table and lounging hipshot against the counter while Genma spooned tea into the pot’s strainer with a wooden scoop. “I'm pretty equally distributed, actually.” He went silent for a moment, and Genma glanced up to catch a complicated expression on Ryouma’s face. “My dad was Water and Fire, and my mom was solid Fire,” Ryouma said. “She never made jounin.”

Before Genma could respond, Ryouma jerked his head towards the shrine in the living room. “That's your mom?”

Deflecting. Genma wasn’t trained in interrogation or psych, but he could recognize that much from a lifetime’s training as a ninja, where deceit was stock-in-trade. And he definitely needed to sign up for that counseling class. Honestly, he was getting the feeling it ought to be mandatory for officers.