| [Sep. 14th, 2013|01:05 am] |
A distant flicker-spark announced Ryouma’s return a moment before he loped into camp, maskless and freshly washed, with a missed streak of trench-digging dirt still smudging his cheek. A bucket of clean water dangled from one hand, and two dead fireback pheasants hung from the other. He looked thoroughly pleased with himself. “Found some— Oh. Hah,” he said, spotting Kakashi’s rabbits. “Wildlife stew?”
“Can you cook?” Kakashi asked.
“Well enough,” Ryouma said, which probably translated to I only burn half the things. He set the water down carefully down by a swept-clear circle in the center of their tentative campground, and hunkered down with his pheasants, laying them over a flat rock for plucking. “Unless anyone else is up for the job. What happened to that roaring fire you promised me, Ueno?”
“Thought about it,” Katsuko said serenely. “Decided I wanted to find my inner peace instead.”
And they were going to banter again. After a week of their constant back-and-forth, Kakashi still hadn’t figured out if the stream of words was a bonding ritual, an aid to general functioning, or a symptom of a larger problem. Either way, there didn’t seem to be a place for him between them.
He tuned them out and turned to Raidou. “Do you need me for anything?”
“Can you cook?” Raidou asked.
“I can gut, skin, and roast,” Kakashi said. “If there’s a fire.”
“Better make a fire, then,” Raidou said, sliding his mask off and clipping it to his belt. He raised his voice over Ryouma and Katsuko (“—could’ve gotten in touch with your inner self and burned things.” “I could touch your inner self.”). “It’s early yet, kids. I don’t care how you break down the jobs, but food better be ready in an hour. Otherwise, your time is your own. Try not to wander off and get lost.”
Genma leaned over Raidou’s shoulder. “Do I count as a kid in this equation?” he murmured.
“Only if you really want to babysit cooking hour,” Raidou said.
“Not particularly,” Genma said.
“Feel free to join me at the adult table with the maps, then,” Raidou said, tilting his head towards a fallen, moss-strewn log. “I was going to read up a little more.”
Katsuko unfolded from her seat. “Relax,” she told Ryouma. “Your sad face is giving me hives. I’ll make the fire.”
“You could set the forest on fire,” Ryouma told her breezily. “Taichou didn’t say we couldn’t do that.”
“I'm under standing orders not to set any more forests on fire,” Katsuko said, laying an armful of firewood down in the center of the swept circle, and setting kindling to her liking. “It doesn't tend to make very good first impressions.”
Kakashi didn’t want to know.
There was another flat rock nearby, a little distant from the arsonist twins—though not so far he couldn’t hear them. He laid his rabbits across it, settled down, and put a blade to work. |
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