"You're pretty observant." Ryouma shouldered the door open and held it, waiting for Hayate to recover himself enough to follow. The kid's thin shoulders shook with the force of his racking coughs. Maybe there was another reason for the cough-drop candy. A cold would explain the reddened nose--although if Hayate was actually sick, he'd be one of the few ninja Ryouma knew who didn't curl up in a sniffling tangle of blankets and whining the second the medics put him on sick-leave.

Not as much of a pansy as he looked, then.

"Sadly, Reiko's is happily married, and Sayuri's dating someone. I think." Ryouma frowned briefly at the door frame. He hadn't actually asked Sayuri out for almost a month. There'd been the mission, of course--and she'd turned him down with a laugh and a smile only a day or two before he left--but even after he'd recovered enough to start hanging out around the Mission Desk again, the gossip had never quite turned around to who was dating whom, and why he couldn't date her.

That was Tsume's fault, or Kakashi's, and he was done thinking about this right now--

He pushed away from the door, wheeled, and slammed straight into something that went "Oooph!" And then jabbed an elbow into his gut.

Rock-hard abs or not, when a knife-sharp elbow hit a tender new scar, it hurt.

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Up until two seconds ago, her day had been going just fine. Katsuko had slept until it hurt to sleep anymore, rolled out of bed wearing what she'd tumbled into it with, and thumped grumpily downstairs. She hand't bothered to look in the mirror or check what time it was. All she knew was that it wasn't morning (take that, normal sleep patterns), she didn't have any missions, and she was hungry and grumpy enough to kill some small forest animal with her bare hands and eat it raw.

After stalking angrily around HQ for a while, Katsuko realized she'd forgotten where the cafeteria was. She'd never actually eaten there, just heard the horror stories, so she guessed she had an excuse. Kind of.

Strangely, everyone she stopped and asked for directions had something else to do...somewhere else...far away from her. It could have been her spiking level of killing intent, but Katsuko bet it probably was because she hadn't brushed her hair.

Rounding the corner of yet another endless, drab hallway--why the hell didn't ANBU post signs?--she caught the tail end of a wheezing cough. Sounded like somebody was dying.

Frowning, Katsuko sped her amble up to a walk and listened again for the source of the noise. She didn't have to wait long, as a door a few feet away from her opened and a freakishly tall man with spiky black hair stepped out, talking to somebody inside the room--presumably her potential dying person.

Sighing--because if she didn't check to make sure the person was okay her conscience would prick her until the end of the day--she went to step around Man-Mountain, trying to see into the room behind him.

And that was when Man-Mountain shoved away from the wall and slammed into her, knocking her ass-first to the floor in a fall that jarred from her tailbone all the way up to the base of her skull.

Bastard. She should have jabbed him harder.

"What the hell, gorilla-man. Bulk like yours, gotta watch who you're running into!"

Okay, so Gorilla-Man-Mountain wasn't really bulky, per se. More lean muscle than bulk. But hell, from where she was sitting now he looked tall enough.

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