"... Apologies accepted," Kotetsu said, and didn't think about it.

Honestly, it didn't matter, and if the guy was big enough to apologise, Kotetsu could let it go. He fiddled with the chopsticks a bit, and shrugged. "I like my liver the way it is, anyway. So, what kinda job do you do in Intel? You're .... Intel, right? You said that."

Intel and Hunters - it was difficult to imagine anyone Doing anything not of the action-orientated. After all that there was the importance of Intel in missions, Kotetsu just couldn't comprehend it. Couldn't comprehend doing something like that at all.

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"I used to work Sabotage, when I first joined," Yuzuya said. He leaned back a bit and watched the chefs work behind the sushi counter across the room. "Strategical placement of explosive tags and traps. Now I'm maps and blueprints. Some of the work is done in the office, and some of it out in the field. I go out to collect information, or go with Sabotage if they need some support for a job that requires a little..." Yuzuya paused and glanced up at the ceiling, searching for the right word. "...finesse."

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"So you're Field Ops?" That's what they were called, right? Field Ops, Internal Ops. He piled another two chopsticks on top of his pair, the plastic clicking as he started to delicately layer a little wall, and braced them with toothpicks.

"Tags and traps." Oooh that was his area! "I do traps. But not as... Sabotage? Just Hunters. I go where they tell me and make it go boom when they want." He grinned cheerfully and added more toothpicks. He might need a little bit of string to hold it all together. He wondered if there was some floss. Maybe he ought to carry that around, since there really was no point wasting good wire on a ephemeral structure of cheap bamboo and plastic.

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"That's nice." Yuzuya replied, making a stern face at Kotetsu's chopstick and toothpick creation. "You know, people are going to use those to eat with," he pointed out.

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Kotetsu blinked. "no, really?" he asked, eyes wide and innocent. "I thought they used their fingers."

Man, the other guy was easy to tease.

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Yuzu gave Kotetsu a withering look. "So don't touch them? That's disgusting."

The waitress arrived with a large platter of sushi and their drinks. Yuzuya waited patiently for her to set the dishes on the table between them and selected clean chopsticks that Kotetsu's hands hadn't been all over. "Drink your tea, and let's eat, okay?" Yuzu suggested, dry.

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Kotetsu took his hands away from the chopsticks, making peace-gestures. Hmm. someone was touchy about things. He filed that away for a moment - it might be significant, it might not, but it was always good to know more about the people who might be your teammate on a mission, or you'd need to depend on.

"Sure," he said, taking a pair of chopsticks from the little structure. It was clean enough.

After eating for a moment in silence, KOtetsu figured that was enough to let the other guy simmer off any annoyance. "You've been here before? This is good." Because while any free food was good in Kotetsu's book, this particular sushi was really good. Light and evenly balanced in flavours, and still easy to pick up with deft touches of the chopsticks.

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Yuzuya reminded himself that his chopsticks were clean (or at least as clean as he'd get anyway) and slurped down another chu-toro with a nod. "I... I've been here before... a couple times." He didn't meet the younger man's eyes for a moment, concentrating on his plate. "'S too expensive for normal eating. Good for dates. Girls like it."

Chie had liked it anyway.

Yuzuya sank back in his chair a bit and pulled at his beer. "So... how long have you been in? You had many missions yet?"

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Kotetsu made note of that, 'expensive, good for dating', but he wasn't sure if it really WAS.

"Hafta trust you on that," Kotetsu said, slowing down to savour the food. Expensive food on someone else's paycheck didn't mean he could wolf it down like a barbarian. Fuuko-neesan would kill him. "Girls're alien."

He used that time of commenting on Yuzuya's previous words to think about the next answer. "nearly three months," he said. It wasn't that he kept stringent time about how long he'd been in, but if he fudged it juuuust a little, it'd sound longer, right? "Coupla missions. Not too bad." Nothing too much higher than his own regular missions, but he got to do them with a mask on. Which hadn't lost its novelty yet.

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"Three months, huh?" Yuzuya returned, lifting an eyebrow in surprise. "Wow. Well you seem to be doing pretty well for it." He signaled the waiter for another beer and more sushi. Either the kid was crazy, or the brunt just hadn't hit him yet. "Missions clean ones? Easy ones?" He nudged the last of the first plate of sushi Kotetsu's way. "Eat up."

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"They say they're easy." Kotetsu's eyes lit up at more sushi and wasn't about to stand on ceremony. "Thanks."

It took a while before his mouth wasn't full before he could talk again.

"Okay missions," he said, grinned. "Make it easy f' me, they say." He frowned, wondering for a moment. "Would it get a lot harder, d'ya think?" Because it would. It would, he was sure - there'd be a lot of gore and death, wouldn't there?

ANBU did that sort of thing. But it felt just like the same so far.

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Yuzuya grimaced briefly. "I hate to sound like a geezer, but my first three months were hell. Well, my first year was like hell. Maybe this is a slow time?" He paused to chug the last of his beer before the second one arrived. "Or to be fair, maybe you just are a really resilient guy." He shrugged. "If so, my hat off to you."

He pondered the foam left in the bottom of his mug for a moment and then regarded Kotetsu thoughtfully. "Well, I hope it stays that way for you, man. If you ever do have any problems, though, you know..." Yuzuya turned his mug around once, twice. "You need anything, just... ask, okay?"

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"Thanks," Kotetsu grinned at him and stabbed at another piece of sushi. "Totally hope so. I mean. Nothing we can't handle, right?"

Not like cold shoulders from the other Hunters would make the missions any harder.

A gulp of his tea, and he looked up at Yuzu. "Why... why was your year bad? They did the.Hazing? I thought it was illegal."

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"Rules against hazing don't mean much if there's no one who's really backing them up," Yuzu commented, quirking an eyebrow at Kotetsu. "But the administration is looking out for more of that these days. Took a council member's grandson getting beat on to make them start, though."

Yuzuya's second beer and another mixed plate of sushi arrived by way of the waiter, and Yuzu latched on to beer number two. "But anyway. I was just too young, you know? I thought of ANBU as like knights on white horses. First few missions on sabotage destroyed that pretty quick."

There was a brief pause as Yuzu gulped some of his beer. He nodded to the second plate of sushi. "Eat up, eat up."

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"Huh." A council member's grandson. Kotetsu wondered briefly about that - mostly because they moved in circles he didn't even know about. Hell, he didn't even know who the current council members were, just shadowy faces of people who did vaguely important things.

He could only hope that he wouldn't ever get hauled up in front of a council to explain anything.

"They only ever stand behind their words when something like that happens," Kotetsu shrugged. "I know what I'm getting into. ANBU's really cool and all that, best of the best, but we do things that others don't."

Easy to say, but he wondered how he'd really react if he had to do a mission like what Ginta and Kakashi came back from in pieces. As much as he disliked Kakashi, he was a jounin and a genius, and Kotetsu was chuunin and green to boot. He shivered briefly, and took a deep gulp of his tea to hide it.

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Yuzuya forced a tight smile. "I don't mean to bitch. You'll be fine," he reassured the younger man. Yuzu helped himself to another salmon, and slurped it down, relishing the tender texture. "Yum. Oh man."

"You've got muscles, you'll probably get a lot of girls. You know, I know a couple of nice girls who work down in the Intel mail room. You like brunettes?" Now THAT was a great idea. Get the newbie laid, and get those chuunin to stop breathing down his neck. Two birds with one stone! HALLELUJAH. Yuzuya patted himself mentally on the back. Wonderful idea, he should win an award or something.

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Kotetsu smiled back. "Hey, you managed right?" It wasn't meant to be disparaging of Yuzuya's abilities as a ninja or skills - just something to say as they ate. He wasn't so hungry now, so he could afford to slow down a little.

Then Yuzuya's next words made their impression and he swallowed a little too fast, a lump of rice going down his throat with an audible sound.

"Geh. Girls?" How to put this diplomatically? "I don't like girls. But the muscles, I could get." Though technically, few shinobi had that sort of muscles. They were mostly wiry, or rangy, or whipcord. Like Ginta.

Mmm.

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Yuzuya scratched his head. "You don't like girls yet? Late bloomer?" How old was the kid, anyway? "It's okay, I'm sure Matsumoto-- that's her name, the brunette-- would think that was cute. Um. You know. Show you the ropes, so to speak?" Girls these days seemed to like innocent guys more and more.

Yuzu leaned in and added at a discreet volume, "She's a sweet girl with a really, really nice rack. You can't go wrong."

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"I'm seventeen," Kotetsu growled, scowling. He was totally not a late bloomer in any sense of the word. He was downright perfect in the growth scale, the intelligence scale, the whole works, for a gay guy his age. So there.

"And I don't like racks." Why were they called racks anyway? It sounded like a totally weird thing to call it. Racks didn't bounce.

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