Tsume dropped the other woman's hand, glancing wryly at Kuromaru. "Insulting ninja skills is just how he shows he cares."

"I wasn't insulting anything," Kuromaru said with greatly injured dignity. He stepped forward, lowering his head to sniff Katsuko's feet, slowly working his way up. She took half a step away when he got to her knees and kept going. He just moved with her, ignoring the building scent of wariness.

"Kuromaru." Tsume's voice registered in ways normal peoples' couldn't.

Reluctantly, he stepped back and looked up at the new woman. "Do you know your pants smell like gunpowder residue? And steel. Gonna poke an eye out, falling outta trees with that many kun--"

Tsume growled.

He subsided, but looked terribly unimpressed with both women. As if he didn't care about either of them, he turned away and inspected a tree. If his single ear flicked back to catch their conversation, that was just coincidence. The scars on the other side of his head--angrily red, and still scabby in places--shifted as if his other ear would have moved too.

Tsume looked away. She had to look up at the new hunter in their ranks. The woman was just taller than Ginta--Tsume was eye level with her chin. Tall enough, for a woman. Probably going to have bad hips in another few years. Be running along a rooftop and, pow, one would grind down and give out--

She dragged her thoughts back. Wrinkled her nose and rubbed it as something tickled her sinuses. "Though," she said, "he has a point about gunpowder residue." She offered an apologetic smile and eyed the woman she'd been not-quite avoiding.

New people joining while she was so badly injured didn't exactly make her comfortable--especially not after what had happened with Morino Ibiki. He might not have been new, but he certainly made a first impression. But the lazy slope of shoulders under the long-sleeved T-shirt didn't imply challenge. The new woman--Katsuko--was thin, but not overly so. Medium bone structure--the kind, Tsume guessed from the breadth of shoulders and the lack of curves, that ended up looking jungle cat-sleek when muscled with shinobi strength. Brown hair, chopped chin-length, almost brown eyes. Fairly gender neutral, and didn't look like she cared. Looked, in fact, like she added to it--her jeans were baggy enough to hide hips.

Tsume related. She gestured to Kuromaru. "But really, ignore him. Tact isn't so big with canines."