The sheer emptiness of her room in ANBU had finally gotten to her; Katsuko had hardly slept at all for the past few nights. When a glance in her mirror that morning revealed dark circles the color of used teabags under her eyes, she'd decided to get away from HQ for the day.

Hanging out at Nori's or Beni's apartments wouldn't work. They'd give her funny little glances and try to feed her, as if pork buns and sake would make everything all right. (Pork buns and sake? Typical. Her boys teammates were as uncivilized as always.)

Finally, in sheer desperation, she'd translocated over to the old training field that Sensei used to take them to. Her favorite tree was still there (complete with kunai and explosion note scars) and she still fit in the branches even though she was several inches taller and weighed a lot more.

She'd been having a nice dream this time. None of the stuff that made her doctors get that funny furrowed eyebrow look. There'd been a field of daisies, and she was pretty sure that Sensei and Beni and Nori had been there, and they were all happy and laughing and...

Something was nudging at her crotch.

Correction: Something was making snuffling noises and sniffing at her crotch.

Her eyes flew open at the same time the kunai in her hand flashed up and went for the jugular of the...

One-eyed dog?

One-eyed dog sitting in a tree?

She realized she'd lost her hold on the branches when she toppled off them, scrabbling and clutching at the leafy limbs like an Academy student on her first chakra training exercise. Focus, focus, siphon the chakra through the palms of your hands and the soles of your...

But-- One eyed dog!

The ground rushed up to meet her with a grassy thump.

Kuromaru tipped his head to see, and carefully gathered himself for a following leap down.

"Don't land on her," Tsume said wryly from not too far away.

He gave his human familiar an unimpressed look, but changed his trajectory. Before... everything, he'd have been able to leap without a thought. Now, with his chakra moving sluggishly and still weak from his hospital stay, he was a little more careful. Paws as large as a human's hand stepped up and down in place before he was sure he was coiled just right.

Nearly two hundred pounds of wolf-dog-demon-canine didn't land lightly so much as gracefully. He turned, single ear pricking toward the woman on the ground. "That wasn't terribly ninja-like," he said disapprovingly. "You could have hurt yourself."

"She's in ANBU, Kuromaru," Tsume said dryly. "I'm sure she doesn't need ninja lessons from you."

He had to swivel his whole head to look at Tsume, on his other side. "She fell out of a tree!"

Tsume shrugged. "She doesn't have claws. Probably much harder to stay in without them." Tsume held out one hand, bracing her feet as she offered to help the woman up.

"Dog...Tree...Crotch." Yeah, that summed the past minute up pretty succinctly.

Stupid tree. Stupid dog. Stupid gravity. Katsuko stared up at the unfeeling sky and silently cursed whoever had thought up tree-walking dogs.

A woman--rough voice, dryly amused--scolded the dog, (that talked what the fuck talking dog) before appearing in her line of sight.

Woah there.

Katsuko blinked as her eyes traced the prominent tattoos on the...woman's...cheeks and the pieces began to fall together.

An Inuzuka, huh? A ferally, toothy looking one, but that'd explain the one eyed talking dog, and the Inuzuka were supposed to be special, anyways.

Katsuko gratefully took the woman's paw hand and pulled herself to her feet.

After dusting herself off, Katsuko grinned broadly into the Inuzuka woman's eyes. "Nice way to meet, huh? Name's Ueno Katsuko. I don't think your familiar likes me that much."

Tsume dropped the other woman's hand, glancing wryly at Kuromaru. "Insulting ninja skills is just how he shows he cares."

"I wasn't insulting anything," Kuromaru said with greatly injured dignity. He stepped forward, lowering his head to sniff Katsuko's feet, slowly working his way up. She took half a step away when he got to her knees and kept going. He just moved with her, ignoring the building scent of wariness.

"Kuromaru." Tsume's voice registered in ways normal peoples' couldn't.

Reluctantly, he stepped back and looked up at the new woman. "Do you know your pants smell like gunpowder residue? And steel. Gonna poke an eye out, falling outta trees with that many kun--"

Tsume growled.

He subsided, but looked terribly unimpressed with both women. As if he didn't care about either of them, he turned away and inspected a tree. If his single ear flicked back to catch their conversation, that was just coincidence. The scars on the other side of his head--angrily red, and still scabby in places--shifted as if his other ear would have moved too.

Tsume looked away. She had to look up at the new hunter in their ranks. The woman was just taller than Ginta--Tsume was eye level with her chin. Tall enough, for a woman. Probably going to have bad hips in another few years. Be running along a rooftop and, pow, one would grind down and give out--

She dragged her thoughts back. Wrinkled her nose and rubbed it as something tickled her sinuses. "Though," she said, "he has a point about gunpowder residue." She offered an apologetic smile and eyed the woman she'd been not-quite avoiding.

New people joining while she was so badly injured didn't exactly make her comfortable--especially not after what had happened with Morino Ibiki. He might not have been new, but he certainly made a first impression. But the lazy slope of shoulders under the long-sleeved T-shirt didn't imply challenge. The new woman--Katsuko--was thin, but not overly so. Medium bone structure--the kind, Tsume guessed from the breadth of shoulders and the lack of curves, that ended up looking jungle cat-sleek when muscled with shinobi strength. Brown hair, chopped chin-length, almost brown eyes. Fairly gender neutral, and didn't look like she cared. Looked, in fact, like she added to it--her jeans were baggy enough to hide hips.

Tsume related. She gestured to Kuromaru. "But really, ignore him. Tact isn't so big with canines."

"S'all right. Long as he doesn't scare me out of any more trees." Katsuko frowned as something occured to her. "How'd you know I was in ANBU, anyways? Unless you're..." She peered at the woman. Inuzuka, Inuzuka, there was an Inuzuka living on her floor, right? Something Tsu...Tsubasa? Tsubame? Tsu...Tsu..."Inuzuka Tsume?"

Yeah, that sounded about right. There'd been rumors that some Inuzuka Hunter had been in a tough mission. Both she and her dog looked rather worse for the wear.

Not that that stopped the pair from sneaking up on her, though.

She grimaced at Kuromaru's observation of her hidden weapons stash. "Hey," she complained, "I like explosion notes." And kunai and shuriken and kodachi and katana and...

Katsuko examined Inuzuka Tsume, whose name she'd placed in a mental folder called, "List of Conspicuously Absent Floormates: Exhibit A in 'Why Does Katsuko Have No Friends?'" about two weeks ago, when she'd learned the special jounin had returned from that spectacularly insane mission. Katsuko knew that near-death experiences made everyone feel a bit...touchy...and had kept her distance from the woman.

Now, though...Katsuko took the opportunity to study her (until just now) invisible floormate. The first things she noticed were the scars. Scars everywhere on her bare skin; some were clean, long lines, obviously caused by bladed weapons, while others had that jagged edge to them that screamed claw marks. A combat-oriented fighting style, then? With those fangs and claws, Katsuko could see how Tsume would be a formidable hand-to-hand fighter. Her build didn’t lend much advantage in a fight, though. Tsume was built like bird, and the men’s shirt and pants she wore did nothing to hide it. It looked like it would be disturbingly easy to snap her in two. The way she held herself, though…Katsuko looked into her senpai’s assessing gaze and had no trouble believing that the Inuzuka woman could take down enemy shinobi three times her size. That air of barely restrained violence…as if Tsume was ready to fight at a moment’s notice. The woman practically radiated an aura of danger.

Well, that and her fangs were pretty damn huge, too.

Tsume tried to stand still under the woman's scrutiny, finally releasing the jutsu that kept her nails and teeth longer, her body slightly more feral, and feeling chakra slide wearily down her pathways. Always slightly inhuman, she smiled, a twist of her mouth that lifted one corner and exposed the point of an eyetooth. "That's me. You been studying the ANBU roster, or just listening to rumor?"

Not that it was hard to guess who she was--she was the only Inuzuka in the building, and the tattoos didn't exactly make her blend in. Tsume found herself angling her head this way and that, a subconscious drive to hide the still-healing wounds on her face and the missing half of her ear. She stopped purposefully, held herself still, and waited for an answer.

"I'm just saying," Kuromaru announced grumpily, "gunpowder is a great way to make all your friends dislike you. Makes people itch, you know."

Tsume relaxed in her annoyance, shooting a look at her familiar. "If you don't like the smell of gunpowder, you shouldn't go around sniffing people."

"She shouldn't talk about me like I'm not here." He looked over his shoulder, ears back. "My name," he said pointedly, "is Kuromaru-san."

It was hard to be wary when your familiar was making a moonfaced flea of himself. "Kuromaru--"

His ears came up, his tail waving once with idle pleasure. "Or maybe Kuromaru-senpai. You're new, after all."

Tsume scratched behind her good ear, and gave her familiar a dirty look.

"So sorry 'bout that, Kuromaru-senpai." Katsuko said dryly, flicking her eyes over where the one-eyed dog--Kuromaru-- sat. "It won't happen again." Could Inuzuka smell sarcasm?

No matter. Tsume and Kuromaru didn't seem hostile towards her in particular, and she'd just met the one of the few other female hunters in ANBU! Katsuko felt a pleased grin work its way onto her face. Except for the crotch-sniffing, her day was looking up. Now, kunai, kunai, where had she dropped her kunai...

There it was, over by the tree trunk. Good to see that she didn't need to walk far to get it. Whistling softly to herself, she strolled over to to get the blasted thing.

Kuromaru sniffed loftily and finally deigned to turn and look at the woman again. His tail flagged through the air once more. "It's all right. I forgive you."

Tsume managed to halt the exasperation from reaching her expression--just. Kuromaru, overly pleased with being called senpai, seemed to have missed Katsuko's undertone. His chest puffed out, head rising. His single ear arced up to trace the pattern of the new kunoichi.

"Well, we should get back to training. Let you continue your nap--" Tsume began, eager to remove herself from a strange ninja's presence--no one needed to know how incapacitated she was.

Kuromaru, bored out of his mind, had other ideas. "You don't smell like Genma, or Sumire before she left. You're like us? Not a mounter?"

Tsume winced and looked at the trees rather than the ninja with glinting steel in one hand. "Ah, seduction expert," she translated.

Kuromaru gave her an annoyed look. "That's what I said."

Mounter? What? Katsuko wheeled around from testing her kunai's edge to give Kuromaru a boggle-eyed stare. Her confusion was only slightly lessened by Tsume's translation. Well, whatever. When with crazies or Inuzuka, do what the Inuzuka do.

"Ah...No." she began eloquently, then stopped. Seduction expert? Not what she'd signed up for in ANBU. Nori'd been taking some seduction training when she'd last talked to him, but it had never occurred to her that... Well, stupid Katsuko. Of course there'd be mount--seduction experts in the Black Ops. They were the Black Ops.

"Ah...no, Tsume-senpai." Looking at Kuromaru would not help her in this conversation. She’d start giggling, or something equally hysterical. Looking at Tsume was safer, for all that the other woman seemed to find the leaves much more interesting than her. "I'm a hunter. Moved in March third, been on missions nonstop since."

Kuromaru puffed up yet again, his ribcage expanding and hackles rising. His words cut across any response Tsume would have given. Stiff-legged, he turned away from Katsuko and to his familiar instead. "You know what I find highly rude? When you say something to someone and they talk to another person instead. Dismissing you as if you were a moonfaced mutt. Like a stupid summons."

Tsume's gaze flicked to her familiar. She could agree with Kuromaru--who'd been, after all, carrying on a relatively intelligent conversation--or she could try and explain that Katsuko probably wasn't comfortable talking to familiars--something she'd explained a dozen times, that Kuromaru still couldn't grasp--or she could laugh.

The snicker shook her shoulders, and her pale eyes twitched from Kuromaru to Katsuko. "The seduction experts are hunters, too, so that doesn't really say much. Not used to working with Inuzuka, are you?" Her smile softened, lighting her eyes. "It's just Tsume."

"I'm still Kuromaru-senpai. Because you have no manners."

The snicker turned to a chuckle, and Tsume turned to lean weakly against a tree. Either the woman would have a sense of humor about it, or there'd be a fight. If they were fleabites enough to fight over this, she was just going to laugh at them.

Katsuko stood back and examined the spectacle that was an angry Inuzuka familiar. She sighed. What had she done this time? If Sensei or Nori or Beni were here, they'd slap her upside the head and tell her what she'd done wrong. Loudly. As it was, she was almost grateful when Kuromaru growled out the reason for his annoyance. So. No talking to the Inuzuka human when it was the Inuzuka dog talking to you.

She couldn't win, could she? Heaving a sigh, Katsuko massaged her forehead with the rounded handle of her kunai. "Again, very sorry Kuromaru-senpai." she apologized weakly. Okay. Time to go back to her nap now. Time. All she needed was time to process this...new discovery. What she didn't need was for Kuromaru to keep talking at her.

He peered at her from his single eye, head tilted, and sat down expectantly. His hackles were still up ever so slightly, making him look bigger without being terribly obvious. "Well. I'm not too upset with you. Even if it is rude."

"You're lousy at showing that," Tsume said dryly. "C'mon, pup. We should head back to the field." She smiled at Katsuko, nodding briefly and taking a step away.

Kuromaru didn't budge. He didn't look away from Katsuko, either. "You could help," he suggested loudly.

Tsume flinched and looked back at them. The woman stood beside the tree she'd come out of, tall and lanky and seeming slightly uncomfortable. Which meant she could be slightly uncomfortable or, given how well most ninja were at hiding their emotions, completely freaking out. Either way, Tsume wasn't thrilled with the idea of sparring against someone who, despite running many missions recently, looked in perfect health.

Even if Katsuko had called Kuromaru senpai, in effect--if not on purpose--giving him authority and acknowledging his role as the one with more senority.

"Kuromaru, she probably doesn't want to--"

"Sure she does." He hadn't looked away from her, but his hackles dropped and his mouth fell open, tongue lolling out between canine teeth the length of Tsume's thumbs. Finally, he twisted to look at his human. "You said we have to work on channeling chakra, right? We could do that in a spar." His golden eye lit up, and he turned back to Katsuko. "It just has to be light, or that Hyuuga and Waki will both skin us." His ear tipped sideways. "I'd hate to be a rug," he said mournfully.

...She'd just been volunteered to spar, hadn't she. What the hell was going on? Help? Did this have something to do with that mission?

Katsuko eyed Tsume when the Inuzuka woman flinched at her familiar's suggestion. Now that Tsume's hair was flipped back, Katsuko was able to see the missing patch of ear and the unnatural paleness of her dusky skin. Uh oh. Was Tsume even up for a spar?

Biting back the first excuse to avoid the spar that came to mind--every ninja had their pride, damnit, and Tsume knew what was best for her and her familiar--Katsuko settled for a noncommittal shrug and a grunt. "S'fine with me," she drawled nonchalantly. "If you two are up for it?"

"I'm up for it," Kuromaru declared confidently. He hopped up to his feet, looking enthused about sparring again.

Tsume eyed both ninja, instinct telling her to guard herself against showing weakness at all costs, and logic telling her that this ANBU was a teammate. Pack mind and human mind warred for a long moment, her gaze wary on the both of them.

Crotchticks, the woman was a teammate, and it would help in re-learning how to use her crippled pathways if she actually had someone to pit herself against. She wouldn't be as weak as when she'd sparred with Raidou; he'd shown her several tricks, pushed her into fighting decently, and she had chakra now. Not as much, true, but it was still there.

Tsume nodded once. "Sure. We've gotta keep it light. Minor jutsu." She hesitated another moment, then finally shrugged. "Chakra pathways were damaged. We're working around it until they're sure things are all right, and that Hyuuga--" she stopped and reworded, "Haruichi removes the final blocks."

Her katana and kodachi were still in her room at HQ, but hey! That was what all the kunai she carried in her pants were for, right?

Katsuko nodded in response to Tsume's caveat, stepping away from the Inuzuka pair as she started to plot her strategy. With Kuromaru in the mix, she'd be hard pressed to defend herself. Best way to get out of this with all of them unscathed was to keep her distance, spar one of them at a time. Now, how to separate them...

"Clones allright?" she asked, fingers already twisting into the familiar seals. Her chakra flared.

"There're going be a lot of them."

At least there was nothing wrong with her sense of smell, then. Tsume felt for the threads of chakra trickling down her limited pathways, pulling on them steadily. "Clones work."

"I love clones," Kuromaru said, tail whipping the air as he crouched, chest to the ground and haunches up. He sprang to his feet with a happy bark, dancing a circle. He didn't pause before launching at Katsuko, using the momentum he'd just built. Muscle rippled under heavy fur, forepaws outstretched as he howled, "Juujin Bunshin!"

Tsume flew through seals, trying to gather chakra through limited means. It took beats longer than it should have before she could realise the power through their links to Kuromaru. She shoved like she didn't usually have to, propelling it along.

He changed, limbs lengthening, mass dissolving, claws retracting into nails and snout pushing back into his face. A different, less dangerous form--but one with the vitals where Katsuko wasn't expecting.

And the surprises never stopped coming. Katsuko barely had time to complete her seals, popping her standard twenty clones into existence, before she had to duck to avoid getting a face full of human Kuromaru. No time to stop and stare, get your expendable clones in there woman!

She kawarimi'd with a clone as Kuromaru sailed over her head, directing a passel of five of her bunshin to surround him. Reappearing three inches from Tsume's face, she lashed out with a solid kick to the Inuzuka woman's midsection.

It was a clone--and then it wasn't. Tsume wrenched chakra around to lend speed, just barely dodging the blow to her torso and dropping, whipping a leg out to connect with Katsuko's knee. She felt the whisper of chakra back into her pathways, and realized Kuromaru had already dropped the Juujin Bunshin to tear a path through the dopplegangers. Unlike the last time, this time there didn't seem to be any stitches popping. She was gonna kill him if there were.

A clone was dangerous, but easy to kill. A real person, on the other hand... She grabbed for chakra, felt it respond sluggishly, and kept evading while reminding herself she couldn't just snatch at it; the pathways weren't big enough, weren't solid enough. She had to be gentle, mitebite it.

Something was wrong. Tsume was holding back. Katsuko frowned as she neatly rolled over Tsume's footsweep, one eye on the raging whirlwind of claws and fangs that was Kuromaru. Looked like she'd have to siphon more chakra if she wanted the bunshin to last longer. A feint and a quick rabbit punch to Tsume's head bought her some breathing room. Her face blanked in concentration, Katsuko took hold of her chakra and shoved it through her twisted pathways, the pain of channeling it so familiar now that she hardly even blinked.

The remaining fifteen clones, already looking worse for the wear, reformed and solidified with a nearly audible snap. There. It would take a lot more than claws and fangs to disperse them now.

Kawarimi'ing with a clone again, Katsuko flung a barrage of kunai at Tsume's unprotected back. Had to corner her first, then go after Kuromaru.

Tsume grabbed for the power to spin into a kawarimi seal of her own--and realized she was never going to manage it before the kunai hit her. She'd gathered some chakra, though, and now she shoved it into her muscles, vaulting out of the way of steel edges.

Clear from that danger, the quick bite of pain-scent of a moment before registered. For a brief instant she thought she'd caused it, but as quick as that thrill arrived it vanished. It had happened when Katsuko had firmed up the clones, not when Tsume had struck. Interesting.

She pulled away from the fight, dodging copies rather than engaging, leaving Kuromaru for the moment to tear into his opponents. He was enjoying it, anyway.

The real Katsuko had disappeared again, swallowed into the melee of chakra-created women. If Tsume got close enough she could identify the kunoichi by scent--clone-scent was always weaker, sometimes nonexistent--but it meant wading through all the others. She channeled energy, carefully coiling it as she dropped back, and back, prowling on the edges of the fight and avoiding dopplegangers as much as possible.

Her limited pathways strained and stretched, allowing chakra through grudgingly. When she had enough, she spun it into a basic Inuzuka jutsu, feeling her teeth and nails lengthen again, adding speed and strength without having to constantly draw for it. Then she whipped back into the battle, not bothering to engage the clones--getting close enough to scent if they were real, dispatching the ones she needed to, but mostly avoiding them.

Take down the wielder, and they would vanish, too.

Tsume was stalking the edges of the fray--scenting for the real Katsuko, it looked like. Katsuko would have to change her strategy. And-- Woah there. There was that jutsu again, the one that made Tsume all ferally. That was one hand-to-hand fight she would not engage in. Another pull of her chakra-- Ow ow fuck ow -- triggered the light explosive tags she'd planted all over the clearing with the help of her bunshin.

In the blinding smoke that followed, Katsuko reappeared on Kuromaru's blind side, driving into a chakra fueled side-thrust kick that hit him firmly in the haunches, knocking him off balance. She left her clones to Tsume. The more distraction, the better.

The feral-happy-glee Kuromaru had been oozing changed in an eyeblink, terror and fear-fueled rage whipping him around, sending him lunging for the woman faster than most humans could follow. A snarl ripped out of his throat. His single ear flattened against his head as his pupil dilated, the black overtaking the gold of his iris. His lips pulled away from his teeth, skin and scars writhing over his muzzle. It all happened predator fast, fueled by years of training to be faster, still. Predator-intent wasn't killing intent. Right now, it was worse.

Tsume bolted forward, cursing under her breath. She'd only seen him lunge-to-kill a very few times before. At Raidou, and she'd changed Kuromaru human. At Ryouma, and Kuromaru had backed down, afraid of the man's hands.

He wasn't afraid of Katsuko's hands. And Tsume couldn't change him human fast enough. But he wasn't thinking, either. His switch from playing to attacking was obvious enough to spot, but if Katsuko wasn't paying attention--

A clone stepped into her path. She couldn't get over there in time. "Kuromaru! Sparring!"

Nobody liked being attacked on their blind side, especially one-eyed demon-wolf things. Katsuko was already moving as soon as she'd landed the kick, flipping up and over Kuromaru's furious charge. She landed square between Tsume and her familiar. Tsume's shout caused her to glance at Kuromaru and do a double-take. Gone was Kuromaru's playful, slightly ridiculous demeanor--in its place was an enraged predator.

Time for a tactical retreat, then. The smoke from the explosion tags still permeated the clearing, obscuring sight but doing nothing to conceal her scent. Tsume was getting closer, by the feel of one of her clones discharging, and Kuromaru...was coming straight at her like a hell-dog out of hell okay time to go now.

Katsuko flung herself to the side and rolled out of the smoke, calling up more clones as she went.

Then there were more copies in her way, and she still couldn't get to Kuromaru, and despite the overlay of explosives and the ringing in her ears she could hear his snarl and howl and smell anger and--more than any of that--feel the predator intent in his chakra whirl down and into a tightly coiled defensive loop.

There was pain under that, but it wasn't coming from Kuromaru. Tsume slotted it to the back of her mind, trying to cut through clones--who had enough power to create this many solid clones? What was wrong with that woman?

"Truce, crotchbite!" Tsume bellowed, catching a flash of black plastered against a tree, tail tucked beneath his legs and teeth still bared. His single eye was so wide the white showed around it--something she rarely saw. "Call off your bear-stung clones!"

This spar had gone downhill and taken a left turn somewhere, and now Katsuko was hopelessly confused. What had gone wrong? Responding immediately to the urgency in Tsume's voice, Katsuko dispersed her clones and ran through a quick wind jutsu to clear the smoke.

Kuromaru was...flipping a shit over by that tree over there. Crap. Crouching warily at the edge of the clearing, in case either Inuzuka decided they wanted some payback for the spar-gone-wrong, she called, "Everything all right?"

Everything, of course, was not all right, but Tsume's response would tell her whether she needed to start apologizing or running.