Genma checked his watch. “How long do we have? I’ll see if I can compress it into an hour.” He batted away another assault by the kitten, who decided to scale his back as retribution. “I’m pretty sure you can guess most of it. Tried to divide the team, antagonized Ueno and Tousaki, insinuated about a hundred times that the team’s leadership was a travesty, I was incompetent, and you were never coming back, and kissed up to Hatake.”

Raidou didn’t say anything, but he did refill Genma’s glass in a clear gesture of solidarity and a silent encouragement to keep talking.

“He showed up an hour before he’d said he would, I presume to try to catch me out, maybe go through the team’s lockers and desks. Fortunately I was there, although I wouldn’t put it past him to stage a raid on the office in the middle of the night. Since he couldn’t snoop that first day, he made me sit through an audit of every single one of the team’s documents — our mission reports, my medical reports, requisition requests, expense reports, map updates, personnel evaluations… He even raised a stink about Team Six’s ‘excessive consumption of toilet paper.’”

Raidou snorted, but Genma wasn’t finished. Not by half. He’d tried to complain to Asuma, but Asuma was too wrapped up in his own, much heavier grief, to listen. Aoba was conveniently away on a mission, the bastard. Talking to Raidou had been out of the question before today, and of course he couldn’t put any of it back on the team. And his dad, while supportive, just didn’t have the framework to understand. Or the clearance to hear almost any of the details.

He snatched the senbon from between his teeth and took a long swallow of his sake, holding the slender metal needle as if it were a cigarette.

“And then there’s the team. He appropriated Ueno as his personal aide, buried her under a mountain of office work, and harassed her until she was as close to breaking as I’ve ever seen. Which, you’d be proud of her — she never once let him see it. I heard from a friend in the mission office that Kuroda’s office staff were planning to buy her a thank-you gift for the way she dealt with him.” He stabbed the senbon at nothing. “If she never got it from them, someone ought to at least let her know they’d thought of it.”

“Also I’m pretty sure Kuroda has something on Ueno’s father. That was how we found out she even had family issues — Kuroda dropped some snide remarks about her being the daughter of a diplomat in front of the team, made it clear he expected her to be as worthless as he thought her father was. That was the one time he almost got to her. Her eyes right then — I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of her with that look in her eyes and a weapon in her hand. But she held it together even under that.”

Raidou's expression darkened like a thunderhead, eyes going as dangerous as Katsuko’s had. His lips thinned and he took a slow breath, visibly settling himself before he said, “The team's at stake. She wouldn't let herself be the weak link.”

“No,” Genma agreed. “She wouldn’t. She didn’t.” He reached for the sake bottle and refilled both their cups, abandoning etiquette for expediency. “But that man tried hard to get her to crack. He went right for her weakest skillset. If there was ever a ninja unsuited to office work, it’s Ueno.” He stopped himself. “No, that’s a lie. It’s Tousaki, and Kuroda made sure to go right after that weakness, too. He tried to put an end to Tousaki’s medical training, insinuated Tousaki was too stupid to get anywhere with it because he can’t read, and he set him a fucking literacy test.”

The rage Genma had been sitting on seemed unstoppable now that he’d broken the seal. It was a relief to see it reflected in Raidou’s eyes, to see the set of Raidou’s mouth draw down, and the flash of bright fury under lowered brows.