Raidou blinked, non-plussed, but Ryouma steadied Kakashi and said, “It’s with my gear.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards one of the ragged piles of gear stacked up against the opposite wall. “I think the sheath got wrecked with the rest of your armor, though.”

Kakashi’s chest clenched. “What about the blade?”

“It’s whole. Didn’t see any major nicks, but I wasn’t exactly looking closely.” Ryouma paused. “How come it didn’t melt? Your kunai did.”

“It’s made with a special alloy,” Kakashi said distractedly, craning his neck to try and see. There was a dark, muddy hilt jutting out from beneath a chestplate’s torn shoulder strap. The bindings didn’t look damaged, but it was hard to make out details under the bunker’s bad lighting. A second, equally terrible thought occurred, “Did you clean it?”

“No,” said Ryouma, exasperated. “And I’m not going to now, and neither are you. You’re high and we’re all sharing a bed and I’m not arming you. The mud’s dried, anyway. Another day won’t hurt it.” He glanced at the weapon’s dark outline. “Much.”

There were moments when Ryouma was kind, and moments when he emphatically wasn't, and you never knew which one was going to take you out at the knees.

Stung, Kakashi pulled away from Ryouma’s hands. For a second he thought about damning them all and getting up by himself, but he’d tried that once already and nearly snapped Katsuko’s shoulder in half. It was just a tanto—

He couldn’t finish the thought. A shinobi cared for his weapons, always.

Especially that one.

The image of the bare, blood-caked blade abandoned under sodden armor to rust actually made him feel ill.

"It's important," he said, and looked at Katsuko. She understood swords.

“Ah,” Katsuko said. Her eyes flicked to another stack of armor, where her katana and kodachi were dry and safely sheathed, leaning against the wall. “I get it.” She squeezed his shoulder with her good hand and whistled one of her nearby clones into action. It extracted Kakashi’s tanto from the armor, collected a cleaning kit from one of Katsuko’s belt-pouches, and brought both over to the bed-platform.

Wordlessly, Genma and Raidou shifted to make room. The clone settled down cross-legged in Kakashi’s direct eyeline, laid the tanto respectfully across its lap, and began to sort out cleaning cloths. It was also operating one-handed—Katsuko must have been distracted when she’d summoned them, to program her injury into her doppelgangers—but that wasn’t any particular challenge.

Despite himself, Kakashi made a slightly throttled sound when it began to tend to the blade.

“You’re not allowed to clean weapons when you’re high,” Katsuko and her clone said, in precise stereo echo. Katsuko glared at the clone, which didn’t appear to notice. “But if the clone cleans the blade where you can see, can you keep on playing? No cheating with your lie like taichou did.”

“But I lost the last round,” Kakashi said, watching the clone fixedly. “It’s the lieutenant’s turn.”

“Taichou hasn’t set your penalty for losing yet, or my prize for winning,” Genma said, giving Raidou a meaningful look. “Maybe the penalty is you have to take the next turn, Hatake.”

Or maybe the lieutenant just wanted to slither out of his turn and continue being a weird implacable force of nature.

Kakashi opened his mouth to express that opinion in detail, but Raidou cut him off. “I like that idea, since he can’t exactly do chores right now. Think you’re up to the challenge, Hatake?”

Kakashi glanced up and found himself on the business end of two weighing but not unkind stares. He snorted. Both the captain and the lieutenant were about as subtle as a brick—join in, Hatake. Have fun, Hatake. Play nice with the other kids, Hatake—but they were also trying to accommodate him, and offering a distraction from the faintly agonizing process of watching the clone. At his side, Katsuko smiled sunnily, as if everything were a great game, but her hand was still warm on his shoulder. Only Ryouma was looking away.

Gigantic black-headed sulker.

“Anything you can do, I can do right,” Kakashi declared, and leaned himself against Katsuko’s good side. “Fix the rest of my hair while I think, Ueno.”