Ayane moved first, scooping up her sheathed katana with the face of a woman who’d just found her lost child. Kakashi was behind her, there and then back again, settling a straight-bladed tanto into the sheath at the small of his back. The light steel was wet, like everything else. He’d have to clean and oil it later, but if he was unhappy about it, the mask gave nothing away.

Ryouma moved slower, finding his kunai holster, the shuriken pouch. They’d landed in one of Hanzo’s puddles; the waterproof pouch had opened, spilling shuriken into the mud. He scrabbled them up and stuffed them back in, mud and all, and straightened just in time to avert an attempted headlock.

“Punk,” said Norita Takeshi, who was five foot three and would’ve had to climb a tree to get a lock on Ryouma at any other time. He was bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, nearly vibrating with energy. “Suicidal punk, maybe. I saw you mouthing off to the vice-commander.”

“So’d everyone else,” Ryouma said. “Think you’re special?”

“Poor, maybe,” Ayane said, behind him. “He bet me fifty ryou you’d take a swing. I’m calling in that debt now,” she told Takeshi. “I’m thirsty.” She eyed Ryouma appraisingly. “I’ll stand you one, if you like.”

"I might like," he allowed. "Mouthing off is thirsty work." He hooked the filthy shuriken pouch on the back of his belt and looked around. “Hatake! You coming?”

Kakashi was on the very edge of the group, watching. His brow came up. “To drink?”

“Liquid late lunch,” Ryouma said, shrugging. “Or actual food lunch, if you’re as hungry as I am.”

“Liquid,” Ayane said, decisively. “And snacks. And then a bath, and then bed.” She glanced at Kakashi, her mobile mouth pursing a little, and surprised Ryouma again.

“You should come,” she said. “First round’s on Takeshi.”

Kakashi hesitated. They saw it, the slight tension in his shoulders, as if he were about to turn toward them; the squelch of mud, as he shifted his weight. But he shook his head, wet hair falling over his eye again, and didn’t push it back. “I can’t. Another time.”

“Sure,” Ayane said easily, and hooked an arm through Takeshi’s. “Come on,” she said. “There’s rain in my blood. I need it to be beer.”

A few of the others moved with them, already talking, analyzing each others’ techniques, the earlier sparring, the commander’s ominous plans for the morning. Ryouma hung back, just for a moment. “Another time,” he said.

Kakashi’s eye curved, under the curtain of wet hair. “You can show me your jutsu,” he said.

“Screw you,” Ryouma said. Kakashi’s eye-smile deepened. He lifted two fingers and was gone in leaves and smoke, rain filling in the mud-tracks he’d left behind.

“I mean it,” Ryouma said. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, hissed at the sting of the forgotten cut on his shoulder, and turned to trudge through the rain after the others, towards beer, and food, and bed—maybe not even his own.

At some point he really ought to take his shirt off, anyway. Take a look at that cut, see if it needed stitches. Get the shoulder healed and clean, ready for an ANBU tattoo.