"We're looking at I kick your ass if you do it again and I report you. But for now I'll just bust your balls about it. Stupid rookie kid. You always were trouble." Ginta grinned under serious eyes. Asuma's gesture--that touch of fingertips to cloth--was telling. It was hard enough to come back in when you'd been on an extended undercover job; must be hell to come back when you'd spent the last three years in someone else's private army.

"Fire Daimyou is my daimyou, too, right? So that makes us a we, whether or not you remember you're a Leaf nin. But it'd be a hell of a lot better for everyone if you remember."

There was a chance, still, that Asuma's loyalties were divided. But it seemed remote. What Ginta knew of the coup plot, and Asuma's role in it, came from reliable sources in the Hokage Palace. And there was no way he'd have been inducted into ANBU already, if he weren't under pretty tight scrutiny. Too many security risks.

He played with his coin, feeling it heavy in his fingers. It was thick and silver, with a raised pattern of wild-flowers on one side, and an intricate geometric criss-crossing of lattice on the other. They had a whole different aesthetic in Lightning Country.

It had been hard to come back in, after some of his missions there. But he'd never forgotten what his tattoo meant.