Kakashi didn't come back.

They were expecting that, by now. The door opened again and the vice-commander called for Abe Shintaro, then, twenty minutes later, for Matsumoto Haruka. When the door opened again and the vice-commander summoned Yamada Kasumi, only Ryouma craned his neck in a vain attempt to peer inside.

There was an advantage to staring down a menacing masked man, he discovered: you could blithely pretend you didn't know he was scowling daggers at you. The vice-commander seemed to realize it about the same time Ryouma did. The hard-muscled shoulders stiffened even more, and the vice-commander whirled and shut the door.

"Satisfy my curiosity," Ayane said, drifting up to Ryouma's elbow. "Are you really trying to be the first candidate rejected from ANBU for reasons of being a pain in the ass?"

"It'd be a good line for my entry in the Bingo Book," Ryouma said.

"Something tells me that's the reason behind sixty percent of what you do. The other forty percent is probably What would sound good on my epitaph?"

"Your math's off," he said. "There's at least twenty percent devoted to How can I get him/her/them to sleep with me?"

"Like I said," she retorted. "What would sound good on your epitaph?"

He surprised himself into a laugh. Her mouth twitched, and for a moment she looked as if she were about to say something else.

Hakone lounged over her shoulder like saturnine salvation. "Toriyama thinks we have to fight the Hokage next," he said. "He thinks there are corpses piling up like cordwood behind the door."

Toriyama had to be the brown-haired man with the glass butterflies, who was accumulating scraps of IOUs at his knee while the red-haired woman who'd brought the card-deck scowled. The only other candidate left was Kurosagi Kaito, who was doing a decent job of pretending to watch the game. Ryouma raised his voice.

"I think it's a strip-tease," he said. "Points for grace and rhythm and looking really good in a skin-tight outfit. Yondaime-sama's the hottest Kage in the Five Countries. He can't have his ANBU letting Konoha's image down."

Ayane smirked. "Guess that's about the only way you'd get in, Tousaki. Sew your mouth shut and stick you in a corner when the dignitaries come visiting. You missed out on tact and sense, but we've got to admit you're decorative."

"H'st!" Hakone's head was up, like a watchful hound. Ayane slid out from under his arm, stood ready.

The door opened. The vice-commander said, "Tousaki."

He didn't look back.