“Reports, yes.” Genma took a deep breath to clear the unexpected heat from his face. There was absolutely no explanation for the flood of emotion — of course Raidou was counting on him. As a captain should count on his lieutenant. “I was working—” his voice cracked, and he grabbed for his tea, embarrassed all over again.

“I was working on performance plans,” he said, when he had his unruly vocal cords under control. “It’s been four weeks, and with everyone on medical leave I figured there was no point waiting.”

Raidou slid off the edge of his desk and dropped into his chair in a single, fluid motion, catching one of the desk legs with his foot to swivel himself into a comfortable position. He leaned one elbow on the desk and propped his chin on his hand, visibly interested. “Can I see?”

“Sure.” Genma reached for the sheaf of partially completed forms and a notepad covered in dense, neat writing. “Who do you want to start with? Ueno’s was actually the easiest to prepare, surprisingly, but I’ve got notes for all three of them.”

“Dealer’s choice,” Raidou said.

“Ueno’s then.” Genma shuffled the right form to the top of the stack and handed it over. “Since it’s closest to finished, and you’ve done performance evals for her before, so you can tell me if you think I’m on track.”

Raidou nodded, eyes flicking over the page. As he read down, a hint of a proud smile lurked at the corners of his mouth. She’d been his rookie a year ago.

“I’d love to see your first eval of her when she was a rookie a year ago,” Genma said.

Raidou chuckled. “I think it was mostly, ‘Why, heaven, why?’ over and over again.”

“Marked improvement, then,” Genma said, amused. “Was she your only rookie?”

“At first, yes,” Raidou said. He stretched out his legs, flexing booted ankles. “But then we had a team-shuffle in the mid year after that disaster at Hirakata — you remember that?”

Genma nodded, grimacing at the memory. Three teams scrambled after one was lost entirely on a mission that was still shrouded in secrecy. In the end, out of sixteen ANBU sent into the field, only eight came home, and only six were still serving the Hokage under the mask.

“Our more experienced guys were needed on other teams,” Raidou continued, “so we traded them for two more rookies, and got nothing but straightforward missions for the rest of the year.”