Once or twice in the night after their aborted stop in Hiraizumi, Kurenai had contemplated plans for the next time she shared a hot spring with Genma and Raidou. There would be a next time, she’d decided; the embers of interest at the nightclub and the izakaya were too bright to fade out entirely. It would need delicate handling, of course. She was beginning to grasp a better understanding of the complex dynamic of an ANBU team — rather more complex than most, in Team Six’s boundary-blurring case, but still not, she thought, immutable…

She hadn’t quite accounted for a shapeshifting tanuki god in their midst.

She hadn’t accounted for any of the rest of the past sixteen hours, either. Genma’s disappearance, that heartclenching chase, that instant when the grey wolf’s teeth crunched through Raidou’s armor, the moment the tanuki children led Genma back again. The scratch of Genma’s stubbled cheek against her lips, and the hard ring of Raidou’s arms around them both.

On the whole, she thought, it was probably better to have an ageless, inhuman chaperone here. At least to start.

She unzipped her vest. “You mentioned the hot springs were healing. Is that another tanuki magic, or just the salutary effects of minerals and heat?”

Himself shrugged through his soap suds. His snowy beard dripped down onto his chest, itself almost as thick-pelted as the fur of his previous shape. “It’s always healed my bruises. It depends on what you consider magic.”

And magic, Kurenai suspected, was a natural state for tanuki. In a world full of it, would they even need to distinguish its presence?

Chakra was a natural state for ninja, and she felt its absence like cropped hair: constantly unsettled by the missing weight, surprised every time she reached for it and found nothing there. The tanuki sake helped dull the edges of shock, even as it sharpened her senses. She felt the cool whisper of breeze across her skin as she tugged her shirt off, and then the fleeting warmth of an eddy of steam.

The ANBU were shedding their armor as well, building tidy piles of breastplate and arm-guards. A less baffling view, certainly, and more pleasant. Genma was bruised, a little stiff as he eased out of his tight shirt. He winced, stopping to press a hand to his lower ribcage, where dark contusions marked the results of his fight with Raidou. If the tanuki had healed his face, they hadn’t ventured lower.

Beside him, Raidou’s muscle-sheathed ribs showed only the pale lashings of old scars over summer-brown skin. No trace remained of the grey wolf’s horrific healing. Nor of the abrasions to his shoulders, those long pink scars he’d brought back from Mist Country. The wolf must have healed those, too.

She let herself drink them in for three deep breaths before she redirected her attention back to her own gear. At least her body could not visibly betray her. And she did badly want a bath.

The water from the pool, scooped out in heavy wooden buckets, was perfectly shy of scalding. Kurenai scrubbed, skin prickling with rough cloth and hot water and cool paving stones beneath her feet; enough of the tanuki sake fizzed in her veins that the very sensation of slick soap and exfoliating cloth felt intoxicating, entrancing. She had to remind herself not to lose focus. The tanuki god had brought them here to gain information. And Kurenai wanted more out of this evening, too.

She looked back at Himself. “You mentioned humans love hot springs. Have you had other visitors here, before Harubi-san? Or do you often visit the human world yourself?”

Himself appeared to think it over, scrubbing his barrel-muscled belly leisurely. “We visit the humans for the festivals, and we attend our shrines.” He shrugged dismissal. “But that’s not very interesting. I want to hear your stories. Tell me about the old battle-axe and her mates. I want to know how you ended up here instead of in your next incarnations.”

He seemed as naturally inquisitive as Kurenai herself. She glanced toward Raidou. Team Six’s secrets — and scars — were, after all, his to protect.