Katsuko caught the bird automatically, fingers closing around its skinny neck. She peered into its dead, beady eyes with a mild sense of alarm. Her clones returned before she could decide what to do about it; three were laden down with herbs and vegetables, but the fourth was empty-handed. She threw the pheasant to that one. “How come you didn’t get anything?”

Her bunshin gave her a bland look. “The lieutenant said I was making too many faces, and then the captain told me to go away.”

“Stop bullying my bunshin, taichou!” Katsuko hollered across the clearing.

“You’re lucky I didn’t stab it!” Raidou shouted back, and then turned back to conferring with Genma over the maps. The beginnings of a diagram was forming between them, angles marked with pins and string.

She left them to it and waved a hand at her clones. “Carry on.”

The one with the pheasant gave her a dirty look, but sprang into action with the rest. She watched as they unearthed the collapsable cookware and started setting up a spit. The clone she’d set to peeling sticks stood up, its task done, and went to walk the perimeter.

Ryouma had moved on to the rabbits, cutting them into pieces to toss into the stewpot. Katsuko studied him for a moment.

“What’s up with you and Hatake?” she asked. “I know you met during the Trials, but that’s about it.”

Ryouma’s muscled shoulders lifted in a shrug. He snapped a rabbit’s joint between his long fingers. “We pestered each other in the first trial. He saved my life in the second, when one of the other candidates turned on us. You’d heard about that, didn’t you? They were saying most of ANBU was turned out to guard.”

Raidou had told her about it, that day on the wall. One of the candidates went rogue. Nearly took one guy’s hands off, and stabbed another.

Katsuko’s gaze flickered down to Ryouma’s right hand, which until this morning had been swathed in bandages. He’d taken his gloves off sometime after they’d made camp; it made him seem a little more vulnerable, now, especially with the newly healed scar standing out pale pink against tanned skin.

“Sounds like he has a soft spot for you,” Katsuko said, waggling her eyebrows. “You probably swept him off his feet during the first Trial and didn’t realize. He saved you from certain death so you’d notice him. ‘Oh, senpai’.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “‘Will Ryouma-senpai notice me today? Maybe I should be extra silent and judgemental’.”

Ryouma put his kunai down, bowed his head, and started shaking with laughter. He looked up after a second, still grinning. “I’ll be thinking of that from now on every time he glowers. But no— I don’t think he likes men. He turned me down, actually, in the first Trial. Not that I was really trying.”

Of course Ryouma would hit on Kakashi in the middle of tryouts for the village’s most lethal organization. “Maybe he was distracted,” Katsuko suggested diplomatically. “Or maybe he didn’t think you were being serious. Or maybe he thought you were crazy.”

“Probably the crazy,” Ryouma agreed. “Also I stank of corpse-rot at the time.” He tipped the rabbit chunks into the pot to sear and poured some water from the bucket to clean his hands. “What about you? Men, women, either, strange desert beasts from Western Wind Country? I’m not hitting on you now, by the way. I heard the captain’s warning.”

Katsuko chortled. “Either,” she said. “Both. I like ‘em smart and feisty, and I make no promises not to hit on you. But the team comes first.”

He looked up, quickly. “Glad to hear that. Both parts of it. Flirting’s fun, but this is my first time with a team like this. Rather not screw it up.”

“ANBU doesn’t make mistakes when they recruit,” Katsuko informed him. “You deserve to be here. Training this week proved that.” She grinned. “I’m looking forward to our first mission.”

“Hell yeah,” Ryouma said, and smiled back at her.