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.

He was grateful. 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 you have to 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. "Your hand'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 others' 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."