| [Nov. 2nd, 2013|03:09 am] |
"I care about her boundaries, too," Raidou said simply. And if Katsuko ever had an issue with Ryouma, Kakashi, or anyone else, he wanted to make sure he listened, no matter how many times he had to slap her down for stepping over someone else's lines first.
Genma’s eyes dropped, and the faintest catch of color touched his cheeks. "Of course."
On Raidou’s other side, Katsuko blinked twice, then looked down and fiddled with the spread of maps across her desk, biting the corner of her lip—which was maybe, possibly, curving up just the littlest bit.
Well, that had shut the room up.
Raidou rubbed the back of his neck. "So, Hatake."
Katsuko snickered.
Genma took a sip of his water, settled his senbon back between his teeth, and visibly put the last moment aside to focus on the next. "Despite hating every single one of us, he showed a remarkable amount of teamwork when it counted."
"I could have lived without his disappear/reappear trick," Raidou said. "But he tracked well, followed orders, and managed to get the civilians and you out of the mines, which I’m going to call a win."
"Hm." Katsuko hummed thoughtfully. "He doesn't work well with people he doesn't respect. I think this mission earned the team some points with him. But he's prone to snap judgments. He's got a habit of underestimating people."
"Also, he might be the ballsiest motherfucker to walk the planet," Genma said. "He bluffed that demon queen into backing down."
Raidou paused. "He what?"
"Bluffed," Genma repeated. "I was paralyzed and bleeding, he'd blown her tail apart with a Raikiri and wrecked his arm in the process. He didn't have anything left, but he just charged at her like he was going to give her a second dose. I think he said something like "Well?" And she turned tail and ran." He clicked his senbon, voice level and factual. "If he hadn't done that, I would not be here making this report."
Katsuko whistled softly.
"That’s why she hauled ass out of the ground?" Raidou said, after a minute to contemplate that new reel of mental images. "Dammit, I need to rewrite my report."
Genma shrugged one shoulder. "Sorry, captain. Should have made you aware sooner."
"Put in that he helped me and Ryouma shower, too," Katsuko added helpfully. "Beneath all the seething misanthropy, he's a pretty decent guy."
"I think my worldview is starting to tilt," Raidou said. "Did he bake you personal mini-muffins, too?"
"No," Katsuko said serenely. "But he did tuck us into bed." Which had led to the morning-after hair-petting incident, Raidou recalled. That had not been repeated, to his knowledge. Between pacing the deck like a silent cougar and sleeping in strange places, Kakashi had spent his time on the boat heckling Katsuko and Ryouma into eating, drinking, and taking painkillers
Genma’s quiet voice broke Raidou’s train of thought. "He was compassionate to the civilians we had to euthanize. That was…" He hesitated. "That was a difficult situation."
Put through standard filters, that translated to something like: I’d rather strip my own skin off than do that again.
Raidou sighed. "I’m sorry I put that on you both. If I’d known—" He’d spent four days going over how he would have done things differently, without any good answers. He shook his head. "Either way, you handled it well, paralysis aside."
"Namiashi-taichou… If we'd known what was down there, we wouldn't have risked going in, and those civilians—and Hisa-san and Fujiyama-san—would have suffered unspeakably." Genma looked up levelly. "You made the right call."
Katsuko nodded once, silent.
Raidou felt his mouth quirk. "Thank you," he said. He shouldn’t have needed to hear it, but it helped all the same. He straightened up, pulling his thoughts back into line. "So the take away I’m getting from this is, 1) Tousaki is smart, potentially suicidally loyal, and lucky, and 2) Hatake is an unexpected creampuff." |
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