Tsume ignored her in favor of approaching Kuromaru, keeping her center of gravity low and her weight on the balls of her feet to dodge if she needed to. "Pup?"

A quiver ran through Kuromaru's whole body, legs bending until he was huddled against the base of the tree. Slowly, he blinked. His lips trembled lower over his fangs. His eye, still dilated, focused on Tsume. As if moving out from under a ghost, he slipped forward and crept toward her, front feet rising in an oddly delicate movement as he lifted his chest and shoulders, rising momentarily on his back legs to flick his tongue at the bottom of her jaw.

Tsume took a breath and petted him, sinking fingers into his thick ruff. His tail waved hesitantly.

He was fine. He was coming out of the fear that had trapped him, so that was good. Tsume's head turned, shoulders stiffening as she glared at the kunoichi lurking at the edge of the clearing. "What," she said clearly, "is the matter with you? You don't go for a brand-new injury in the middle of what's supposed to be a light and friendly spar!"

There were so many ways to answer that question. Rising slowly from her crouch, Katsuko studied the pair. Kuromaru looked better, but Tsume more than made up for that with her wild-eyed glare. Oddly, it felt like she was being upbraided by her mother after a particularly stupid stunt of hers, although Tsume didn't look a thing like Ueno Hisae. Katsuko resisted the urge to shuffle her feet.

"Ah..." She wouldn't shuffle her feet, but she would take a step back. A rather big step. "I'm sorry. I didn't think that he'd react like that."

Best not to say anything else. Her mother hadn't liked long excuses, either.

She didn't think-- Tsume's eyes snapped, and she took a step toward the taller woman. "There's rumors circulating like mad and you didn't think he'd react like that? Explain to me how you think someone recently discharged from the hospital and missing a vital body part should--"

"I'm fine," Kuromaru said breezily, as if he hadn't been cowering a moment before. "We should go back to sparring."

Tsume rounded on her familiar. "You're not fine!"

He looked at her, seeming almost annoyed. "Of course I'm fine. Just a little startled, is all."

Tsume opened her mouth to speak, but Kuromaru cut her off with a wave of his tail and a happy announcement. "And I think I hurt her!"

"You didn't hurt her!"

"Yes I did. She smells hurt."

"She smells like she's in pain, not injured, and it's not from you!" If she couldn't yell at Katsuko, Tsume was happy to yell at her familiar.

"Well, it's gotta be from something. She didn't smell in pain before. Trust me. I got a good whiff." He turned to Katsuko, tail flagging again. "Spar?"

Tsume bellowed. "We're not sparring!"

The look Kuromaru turned back to her was total exasperation. "Why not?"

"Black-faced Wolf, Kuromaru, she just hit you in your blind spot and you want to go back to that?" She turned to glare at Katsuko, but spoke as if to her familiar. "Because if she hasn't learned how not to go for a weakness when someone's recovering--"

"Then she should learn now." He looked a little worried when he peered at Katsuko, though. "Just so you know, you only startled me. And it's not polite. Waki-sensei and that Hyuuga will get annoyed if we spar too much."

"Wolf's teeth," Tsume muttered, and stalked furiously away, tension coiling throughout her body. She didn't want Kuromaru hurt any more, and she didn't want to show weakness, and she didn't want her familiar arguing with her in front of a stranger! She turned away from everyone, dragging her hands through her hair and trying to regain some composure.

Katsuko's feet acted on their own, bolting her up the nearest tree and onto a branch a safe distance away from the arguing pair. It was several seconds before her mind caught up, fixated as she was on this burst of knowledge Kuromaru and Tsume seemed to have gained about her in the short amount of time since they'd startled her out of her sleeping-tree.

"What--gah---argh" Who was making those noises of inarticulate confusion? Oh, wait. It was her. "What the hell--" There were so many things to freak out about Katsuko didn't even know where to start.

Pointing. Pointing would help her get her point across. Jabbing a finger in Tsume's direction, Katsuko took a deep breath to say something--anything--and then Tsume snarled out something about her smelling like pain and Katsuko's mouth was suddenly too dry to get out words.

Slumping back, Katsuko took a deep breath. Right. Well, the Inuzuka obviously had an enhanced sense of smell, probably something to do with their very close bonds (i.e. disturbing symbiosis) with their demon-dogs from hell. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine that Tsume could smell her pain when she wrenched at her chakra.

....Kami on a fucking pogo stick, all Katsuko wanted was a nap. Instead, she'd managed to get on the bad side of an Inuzuka ANBU pair and draw attention to her fucked-up chakra system.

Kuromaru ignored his grumbling familiar and paced until he stood under Katsuko's tree, head tipped sideways. Now she smelled like stress as well as lingering traces of pain. His ear flicked up as she pulled as far away as she should get without actually taking flight. She didn't look good. In fact, she didn't smell good, either. Her scent was bordering on acid-sour strain, rather than unripe fruit. He used his very best soothing voice, the low grumble that calmed puppies.

"It's okay. Everyone has problems speaking sometimes." He eyed the tree, and the ninja within. "And probably there are some other shinobi who forget how to get out of trees, too. If you're stuck, we can probably get you down." After all, she'd fallen out of the last one.

Tsume plopped down on the ground, buried her head in her hands, and tried not to sound too hysterical when she laughed. She ignored the worried look Kuromaru shot her.

"Women," he muttered under his breath.

Oh. She...totally did not get this. At all. Resisting the urge to giggle hysterically—or start bawling-- when two hundred pounds of Inuzuka wolf tried to soothe her down from the tree, Katsuko opted instead for a tired, tense grin and said, "I'll stay up here, thanks." Just until the world stopped being surreal down on the ground, but she had a feeling that would go on for as long as Tsume and Kuromaru were here.

Eying the laughing Tsume with not a little trepidation, she sighed and decided to address the more coherent of the two. "She all right? We don't have to give her smelling salts, or something, right?"

If she fell out of that tree again, he was going to feel very vindicated. Kuromaru glanced at his human familiar, giving a mental shrug. "She's fine. I don't think she's in heat..."

Tsume flung a kunai at him. He sidestepped easily, jaw dropping open. Tipping his head back, Kuromaru let out a human laugh, dropped it into a yelping howl, and silenced. His single eye practically glittered with humor.

Tsume twisted her head to eye the treed kunoichi. "I didn't mean to yell at you." Her brow furrowed. "Though you really shouldn't go poking at newly healed injuries. People get tried and true partners to do that kind of pus-infected scab-over, not people they've just met."

Kuromaru sat down, looking up again. "That's true. Not that I was upset."

Tsume tried to ignore her building headache.

"Are you sure you don't need help down? I could come up there," Kuromaru offered doubtfully.

Katsuko winced. "Sorry, senpai." Plural. She didn't know which of them she felt most guilty toward. Every day was a learning experience, right? That was what Sensei said before giving her another ass-kicking in sparring. At least Kuromaru was keeping a sense of humor about it. Her and Tsume's nerves were wearing rather thin. Shaking her head in response to Kuromaru's offer of...assistance, Katsuko swung her legs over and lightly jumped off from the branch. She landed with rather more grace than the last time.

"So..." Hopefully, they wouldn't mention anything about the pain scent. "I'll just...get all my kunai and stuff." It looked like she'd been growing a garden of kunai all around the clearing, complete with scorched earth fertilizer. It'd take a while to gather up.

Kuromaru hopped to his feet to trot after her. "We could try hand to hand sparring. That might be better. Then we won't get in trouble for fighting too hard."

"You were hand to hand sparring," Tsume pointed out dryly, pushing to her feet.

"And no one got hurt!" Kuromaru turned to look at the taller woman. "Except you."

Reminded, Tsume turned to regard the woman thoughtfully. "He didn't hurt you, though. You get hit with something on a mission?"

"Pshaw," Kuromaru grumbled under his breath. "It was probably me."

Katsuko wasn't flinching, she was...wincing. Yeah, she was wincing. "Ummm..." If she made an excuse and left the clearing without her kunai, would they follow her? They probably would, and argue with each other the whole time.

Plucking a handful of kunai out of the ground where they were buried up to the hilt, she gave Kuromaru an agonized glance. He was looking much too curious for his own good, head tilted to the side as he gazed at her from his one good eye.

Really shouldn't have gotten out of that tree. Katsuko owed the Inuzuka something for putting them through that spar, she just didn't want it to be a detailed explanation on what was wrong with her chakra system.

The entrance to the clearing was right there. All she had to do was make a couple excuses, wait until they started arguing again and then she'd be home free.

Kuromaru sidled over to Tsume and spoke through the side of his mouth--no mean feat when you were a canine. "I think she has a speech impediment."

"You have a brain impediment," Tsume snorted, her eyes trained on the other woman. With the kunoichi giving off all the vibes of escape now!, Tsume felt on solid ground again.

Kuromaru leaned toward Katsuko as if that would help and nearly shouted, "It's okay! We can smell you're upset! You don't have to say complete sentences! Just nod yes or no!"

Tsume forced back the urge to crack up and walked five paces away, pulling a kunai out of the soft spring ground. She flipped it, catching the blade between nimble fingers, and offered it hilt-first to its owner. "You're not really going to take off just because I yelled and he's a moron, are you?"

"We're friendly!" Kuromaru shouted.

"Don't like it when people yell," Katsuko muttered, taking the proffered kunai, and if that made her sound about ten years old and whiny, well, she'd had a long day. "Usually ends up with them throwing things at me." She ducked her head to avoid looking Tsume in the eyes. Tucking the kunai into one of the numerous hidden leather holsters strapped to her person, she backed away.

Tsume looked distinctly amused and not at all like she was about to start biting things, and Kuromaru was treating her more like a treed cat than a potential threat. Well, a treed something, anyways. So why did she still feel like she wanted to run and hide?

Katsuko took a deep breath and determinedly went back to pulling her kunai out of the ground.
She made sure to speak when her face was turned away from the pair. "My chakra system's. It's. Screwed up. Hurts when I do minor jutsu."

Tsume's nose twitched as she scented, gathering knowledge about the young woman's mental state and weighing it against pushing. She trailed the path of the scattered kunai, far enough away to give Katsuko room as she gathered them up but close enough to scent lightning quick changes in the other woman's scent. She didn't know quite what to say about the chakra yet, so she started with the other. Her lips quirked in a sideways grin. "I might throw kunai at you, but it won't be because I'm angry."

Kuromaru gave her a bland, half-lidded look. "You throw things when you're angry all the time."

"Only at you," Tsume said. "I know you dodge well."

There was nothing quite like a canine snort.

The woman seemed to mellow somewhat with the attention off of her. Not that it was enough for her scent to change, but her shoulders relaxed. Tsume eyed her again. She glanced at Kuromaru, taking strength from him, trying to phrase the question without prodding too much or giving too much away. You had to give a little, but not so much as to imply weakness...

"Screwed up like... like, ah, surgery-needed screwed up?" Like had her pathways hacked off and re-routed completely? Wolf knew that Tsume wasn't making enough headway, practicing on her own. None of her and Kuromaru's major connections were reset, and learning how to route chakra through the minor ones and use what she could in her own still-warped system... well, it wasn't going as well as she'd like. But if someone else had been through it before...

Plucking kunai out of the ground was a lot like picking carrots from a garden, if you thought about it. Katsuko concentrated on that and not the frightening accuracy of Tsume's question, glaring at her planted kunai like they were the cause of all her trouble. They were, in a way. If she hadn't had to stay and pick them all up (kunai were expensive, dammit) she wouldn't be here, right now, stuck answering questions she'd rather not answer...Well, ever.

"You could say it was surgery." She answered roughly. Like taking a box and smashing it to pieces with a hammer was dismantling it. The pathways in her arms--already throbbing after that round she'd put them through with strengthening her clones--chose that moment to flare to life, searing new trails of pain down her arms. Biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, she shakily wiped a streak of dirt of the blade of her most recently picked kunai.

"But it still hurts?" Kuromaru asked, trotting over and sticking his face in hers the next time she bent for a kunai.


She rocked back, kunai untouched, and Kuromaru stepped forward to sniff her delicately.

"You know how you said I throw things at you, pup?" Tsume growled.

Kuromaru slicked his one ear back and stepped away. "I was just checking. She smells like she's hurting. And there's blood."

"Yeah, and you're not helping." Tsume slanted a look at Katsuko, who looked anything but happy. There was strain on her slim face, though her eyes were hidden by hair. "You can kick him," Tsume suggested.

Kuromaru huffed. "She's cut her lip."

"I don't think it's cut," Tsume said dryly. Katsuko looked, more than ever, like she was preparing to flee. This was why Inuzuka kept to themselves--the instant a familiar decided someone needed caring for, they threw caution out the window. But people didn't like it when they learned you could tell so much just by scent.

If the other kunoichi left, she took with her Tsume's chance to get help. She was looking like leaving was the foremost thing on her mind. "Look," Tsume said quickly, "there was a wreck of a mission, and ... and they amputated part of my chakra. It'll come back, eventually." She didn't need people thinking she was permanently weak. She took half a step back, felt her face harden in preparation to defend herself, tucked her chin to protect her throat, and tried to remember Katsuko was a teammate and not Inuzuka. She said the rest in a rush. "So if you've had chakra damage, and you figured out how to get around it, I wouldn't mind..." Asking for help didn't come naturally. She ground out, "pointers."

Tsume sounded more like she was getting her teeth pulled than asking for help. Katsuko looked up from cradling her throbbing right wrist--both her wrists hurt right now, but they took turns hurting the most from week to week--and studied the Inuzuka. There was no trace of amusement in Tsume's hard face right now, and she was obviously ready for a fight. What...?

Katsuko shook her head to clear the pounding that had started behind her eyes a while ago--funny how it coincided with the arrival of Tsume and Kuromaru--and rocked back onto her behind, tucking her knees up to her chest to show that she had no intention of getting up and doing whatever Tsume looked like she was expecting her to do. The tension in the clearing had abruptly skyrocketed when Tsume had made her request, and her mind raced as she tried to come up with a way to dispel it.

"I..." Gods she couldn't believe she was saying this, "I...was experimented on. My pathways are. Are. Permanently twisted. Your pathways'll return to normal, I'm guessing, so I can't show you most of the tricks I've learned." Deep breath. "But I can show you ways to strengthen the minor pathways. It'll speed recovery up."

Experimented on. Tsume had heard about people--like Orochimaru, fled from Konoha five--six?--years before--who did things like that. She shifted, weight rocking from one foot to the other, coming out of her ready stance.

Katsuko wasn't happy, but she didn't look about to bolt anymore, either. Tsume tried to shake her shoulders out, doing so with her hands, too. "That'd be good," she said at last, glossing over the rest. It wasn't her place to pry, even if she'd pried to get this far. "If you don't mind."

Thank the gods, she wasn't going to ask anymore. Katsuko sighed and rubbed at her eyes with the palms of her hands. The skin on her face felt tight, prickly, like it had been stretched thin over the framework of her bones. "Right." She said finally. "First things first. Help me with picking up the kunai?" She looked pleadingly up at Tsume. An extra pair of hands would make this tedious job go much faster.

Tsume glanced at Kuromaru and he gleefully bounced off, happy to be doing anything that needed movement.

"You don't have to," she said haltingly, plucking two kunai out of the ground and handing them back. It was obvious enough Katsuko wasn't happy in general, and it made Tsume herself uncomfortable.

Bloodworms, who was she kidding? The whole situation made her uncomfortable.

"I mean--I've gotten this far. We'll be fine."

Kuromaru dropped several kunai down--carrying them carefully by the hilt--and barked twice before going to run a circle around the field.

Tsume watched him rather than Katsuko.

"Now, why would I go to all that trouble to explain and not help?" Katsuko asked mildly. "We got this far, might as well finish it. The faster you heal up, the faster I can spar you and Kuromaru for real." It was easier to give Tsume a grin than she thought it would be. "I need someone to keep me on my toes. And as soon as your chakra pathways are back to normal I'll spar you with my katana and kodachi!"

Katsuko shook herself like a dog (hah), shedding the stress and exhaustion of the day like an old coat. Ahhh, it felt good to feel, if not good, at least a little better. Not bothering to get back onto her feet, she crawled on her hands and knees to the nearest row of kunai. With Kuromaru getting the farther flung weapons, they'd be able to gather them all up in minutes.

Tsume glanced at the younger woman--and her mild almost-rebuke--with amusement. She opened her mouth to say something when Kuromaru careened between them, leaping into the air and twisting violently before landing, dropping kunai, and running off with a howl: "We'll keep you on your toes, or we'll nip 'em off!"

Tsume barked a laugh and bent to gather the last few blades nearby, tension sliding off her shoulders as the scent eased up. "If you strain something I'm sending you to Waki!" she bellowed.

Kuromaru's only response was a yipping call.

Tsume's eyes twinkled as she handed the last of the kunai back. "But he's right. If you can help with my chakra, we'll happily bite your tail." She grinned, and there were teeth.

Aaand there were the fangs again. Katsuko flashed her own pearly whites in her most charming smile. "Looking forward to it!" She saluted Tsume with a kunai, and then tucked it into her belt pouch.

Let's see...with the bunch that Kuromaru had dropped off, and the handful that Tsume was getting now, that left only...Ah hah! Triumphantly wrenching her last two kunai from where they had embedded in the trunk of her sleeping-tree, Katsuko turned and waved at the Kuromaru's distant, frolicking form. "We've got em all!" She called, making sure her voice carried, and turned to face his master.

"All right, ready to get started?"


***


It took her half an hour to explain the basic exercises and an hour for her to run through all of them with Tsume and Kuromaru; by the end of it, Katsuko was ready to crawl back up into her sleeping tree. Doing all of the excercises at once after that spar probably hadn't been the best idea.

"S'good so far." She told Tsume, forming the last Ram seal with deliberately steady hands. "Do the exercises daily, till you feel the strain, and that should speed up recovery. Not that I'm a medic-nin, but it can't hurt."

Tsume was not the fastest ninjutsu student ever--at all--remotely--even close. But she'd learned years ago that Kuromaru was pretty good, and he'd been watching with a single gleaming eye. After he'd calmed down.

Tsume did her best to follow through Katsuko's instructions, adapting them for a dual pathway system the other kunoichi had no knowledge of. Even as exhaustion started to gnaw at her eyes and burn along her muscles, she kept going, feeling the chakra flow faster and smoother through the limited coils she and Kuromaru currently shared. She could pretend like she wasn't about to fall dead from fatigue. And as long as Katsuko was standing there, she would.

When she dropped the last seal she dropped her hands as well, anchoring them on her hips to hide the trembling. Her pathways felt raw and over-used, but the energy that was so vital to a ninja was moving better. "Every day. I can manage that."

"Me, too," Kuromaru added, scratching again at the empty socket where one eye should have gone.

Tsume stepped sideways and bumped him, frowning. "You're gonna rip things open and it'll be disgusting." It wasn't the first time she'd stopped him scratching, and she knew that as things healed they itched, but he seemed to be getting worse about it.

Kuromaru whined and gave her a mournful look. He'd never been as good at those looks as he could have been--he was just too big, with teeth too large--but missing bits of his face it was even worse. Or maybe better. She wasn't sure.

"It tingles," he mumbled, bending his head to rub the ruin of his missing ear against a foreleg. Then he looked back up, sulking at Katsuko. "You didn't say it'd tingle."

Tsume stared at him for a long moment. "You didn't do the handsigns," she said at last, and glanced at Katsuko. "Just moving chakra, without handsigns, that would make it tingle. Right?" Because otherwise--

Otherwise, it wasn't worth thinking about.

Katsuko frowned, confused. "Shouldn't tickle. You should just feel the chakra moving. Some pain if the pathways are scarred, but not enough to bother you." Kuromaru was rubbing at the ruined scab of his missing eye like there was a scratch somewhere in his brain that he had to itch now dammit, and looked like he was about two seconds away from going at it with his claws.

That wasn't good.

Tsume was staring at her familiar like something was wrong, like--like something was scaring her. Chakra exhaustion, maybe? Did she have any soldier pills with her? Katsuko dug into her belt pouch and fished out two lone soldier pills. She stepped forward to offer them to Tsume.

Tsume glanced down at the two pills settled in a callused palm, not quite seeing them.

If he was tingling--

It couldn't mean anything. Just because it was their first day really using their chakra, pushing harder than they had before. Just because moving chakra could cause any rot that was left from Ryouma's jutsu to blossom. Just because--

Solider pills. She took one, cracking it between her back molars, eyes skidding back to Kuromaru. Carefully, consciously, she did as much as she could to pinch off their pathways, using the chemical energy to push back any chakra flowing between them. Splitting energy like that, keeping the chemical chakra in her own body and out of the other half of their pathways, started a headache almost instantly.

A worse one than she already had.

"Where does it tickle?" she asked quietly.

He rubbed his face on his foreleg, twisting his head to rub the other side--and his missing ear--on his other leg. "In my head." Then, as if he'd scented her distress--probably had--he straightened up. "It's just a tingle. It doesn't hurt."

"It's not pain?" she pressed. "Because Katsuko just said if the pathways are scarred--"

His ear swivled back in annoyance. "It's not pain. It's just a tickle. Probably nothing."

But maybe something.

Her hands were shaking, now, with unused false energy. She put them in her pockets. "If you're sure it's not because of your exersises," Tsume said softly, glancing at Katsuko, "then we should probably wrap this up." Then she looked at Kuromaru. "We should get you back to the hospital."

He whined and lay down, ear flopping sideways. "I don't think it's anything," he mumbled unhappily. He didn't seem to notice when he lifted a forepaw and dragged at his missing eye.