Ibiki took a deep breath, hunching his shoulders, then letting them drop. He stripped off the leather gloves and pushed them into the pockets of the coat, then removed the coat and hung it on a heavy wooden hanger in a closet near the door.

The thing to do was to figure out how to answer her to get the most desirable reaction. To tell her enough of what she wanted to hear to pacify her, without tipping his own hand too much.

No, the thing to do, because this was Natsumi, his friend, was to leave all that sort of thinking in the basement where it belonged.

What Natsumi probably wanted was exactly what she was asking for anyway. The truth, unvarnished, heavy as a bludgeon if need be.

"I didn't think you had the chakra reserves to make special jounin." He pulled two glasses down from the kitchen cabinet and opened the refrigerator. "And I didn't think your parents would let you join ANBU, or that you had the will to defy their wishes. You still like pineapple juice, right?"