He should have smelled it a block away, but Konoha was always a busy melange of social odors. He could smell it now, a powerful combination of rotten brine and oily fur, with a distressing edge of privy carpet.

The shape suggested cat, but the evil yellow eyes had a gleam of intelligence that made him think, Summons.

Or the bastard offspring of one.

“Friend of yours?” he asked warily.

Katsuko sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “That thing’s been camped in front of my door since this morning. Forgot to warn you, sorry.” When he looked at her doubtfully, her mouth was twitching in humor. “I don’t know why it’s acting like this with you. All it did with the messenger from HQ was sit on their boots.”

That seemed like threat enough.

“Probably smells dog on me,” Kakashi said.

Katsuko made a considering sound. “Ninken?”

His pack were less well known than his stolen eye and lightning hands, but not by much. Maybe Katsuko just didn’t pay attention to rumor. Of everyone in Team Six, she’d been the most unimpressed with his history, on the rare occasions she’d bothered to acknowledge its existence.

“Wild social life,” he said. “Inuzuka are fun.”

Katsuko gave him a long, silent look that nevertheless managed to speak volumes. At last, entirely deadpan, she said, “Hah.”

Kakashi smiled, eye curving, and Katsuko’s mouth twitched at the corners. She stepped over the cat, pulling out a set of keys.

He’d seen the outside of her apartment a few times, on secretive tracking jaunts that balanced the line between reconnaissance and stalking (same as he’d done for Raidou’s apartment and Genma’s sad rental of Aoba’s sofa, so at least it was equal opportunity invasiveness), but he’d never gone inside. The exterior step was swept clean and unremarkable, ignoring the presence of homicidal cats.

When Katsuko unlocked the door, the civilian facade vanished. There were layers of protective seals embedded into the building, so many that even Kakashi felt the sheen of paranoia. Katsuko disengaged most of them with a focused chakra flicker, but several stayed active. The frisson of their attention was a lot like getting a faceful of spider webs. Like guard-dogs, they were complex enough to stay passive unless Katsuko signalled otherwise.

If he’d ever given into the passing impulse to break through a window, Kakashi suspected they’d have been sponging his remains off nearby rooftops.

Katsuko stepped inside, toeing her shoes off in the narrow hallway. Kakashi regarded the fluffy guardian at the gate.

“Going to let me pass?” he asked.

The cat arched its back and said, Mmmmmrrrrrrawr.

“I’m in four Bingo Books,” he said. “Consider yourself warned.”

He walked forward. The cat swelled like the first microseconds of an explosion, fur puffing out in a greasy threat display. Undeterred, Kakashi stepped past it — and snapped a hand out to catch the feline detonation before it clawed his face off. The cat managed to get impressive air. Kakashi snatched it by the scruff and lugged it, screaming and flailing, into Katsuko’s apartment.