"Yeah. Yeah, me too. Because we're supposed to go out for dango, I think. Or was it curry? Anyway it was something. And now dancing, too, only that might have to wait a little while. Plus I miss my own bed, and showers. You never know how much you miss showers until you can't have them. I mean, bed baths are all right, and at least they washed my hair for me, which was very nice. Last time I had to stay in the hospital for any length of time was about nine months ago. I got run through on an undercover mission. Ryouma was there, actually. I think he's bad luck..."

That wasn't the avenue he wanted to go down. Definitely not. When the elevator doors opened, he let Hiro maneuver him in, but then leaned forward and pressed the buttons for every single floor.

Hiro raised an eyebrow.

"Wait, did you really think we were going straight to the garden? I mean, we could go look at the newborns in maternity, that's always fun. And we could go see if anyone we know is on the regular units. I guess we can skip the cancer and heart attack wards, since they'll be depressing..."

Hiro's skeptical expression spoke volumes.

"Did you know you can channel chakra to the tips of crutches? I bet you can do it to the wheels on this thing if you try. What do you want to bet I can wall-walk this thing?" He gripped the wheel rims and tried to roll towards the closed elevator door just as they arrived at the third floor. The doors opened with a ding. There was a definite drag on the chair, with Hiro holding it resolutely back.

"Or we could just go down to the ground floor and go see if they have the garden lit up at night," Ginta said with a sigh. The doors closed.

The ding sounded as the elevator descended to the next floor. "Much better idea," Hiro agreed, and privately considered that his mad vision of ANBU hospital wheelchair antics might not have been too far from the truth. No wonder the nurses were nervous.

Embarking on the main floor--all four wheels still on the ground, thank goodness--they found themselves victim to an anxious, slow-moving crowd drifting in the opposite direction: regular visiting hours had just ended. Ginta's impossible-to-miss leg served to open up a clear path away from the main door and the vision of ANBU HQ lurking impassively outside; ninja maneuverability made up for the rest.

The nurses all seemed preoccupied with shooing out reluctant loved ones, so Hiro took the expedient of locating the gardens himself with a quiet rush of chakra to his eyes, finding an out-of-the-way entrance tucked into a corridor nestled between Pediatrics and Physical Therapy. That kind of made sense. He angled his unerring way towards it, ignoring Ginta's interjected pleas for digression, and stopped, surprised, as they pushed through the unmarked door.

It was a warm night; moonlight and soft, low garden lamps combined to paint the diminuitive landscape in gentle shadows. The sheltering walls of the hospital blocked out the harsher light from the rest of Konoha proper, and a faint breeze rippled fleeting reflections into the still water of a pond. Hiro could see the scales of sleek fish glinting beneath.

"Pretty nice place they've got hidden back here," Hiro said, not needing to look around. He was glad he'd come.

The first breath of garden air was the sweetest sensation Ginta had experienced since the day nearly two weeks ago when he'd been summoned away from his impromptu lunch with Hiro to take that ill-fated mission. It was rich and heavy with moisture, scented with cherry blossoms and damp earth, cool in his nose and throat, with none of the arid, processed feel of the hospital's antiseptic and urine tinged atmosphere. He took a deep breath, then a second one, and let his head fall back for a moment, eyes closed, sighing deeply.

There was a pond here; how could he have forgotten? There was a pond with koi, some of whom his grandfather had given to the hospital long ago. There was a gently winding path beside a moss-covered stone lantern, arching young cherry trees drooping under the weight of their pale pink blooms, sprays of yellow forsythia at the water's edge, slender maples just starting to show deep plum leaves that would turn vermilion in autumn... It was his grandmother's garden, a temple garden, a Hyuuga garden, in miniature. No wonder Hiro had wanted to come here.

Bless Hiro for wanting to come here.

"Let's go over to that bench by the pond, so I can see if all the fish are still here," Ginta said, pointing. As Hiro pushed, the chair rolled smoothly, crunching over stones so small they were nearly sand. A garden path designed for invalids, but somehow preserving the dignity of a traditional setting.

"Look, see that big dark red one? My grandfather bred him. We have his brother in the pond at the house. It's too bad we can't feed them. Ooh, look, there's a lucky coin fish. See the spot between her eyes? Although it might be male. But anyway, see?"

Hiro saw. He also couldn't help but see how the nervous tension in Ginta's stiff shoulders and restless hands was rapidly dissipating into the crisp evening air, displaced by genuine enthusiasm and quick ease in conversation.

Hiro appreciated the contrast.

Kneeling down on a broad, flat river-stone next to Ginta's wheelchair, he trailed a few fingers in the chill water. There were several isolated, water-blurred flurries of sharp motion down below, but the red koi Ginta had pointed out angled closer, unafraid. The smaller, black-spotted fish--male or female, and how did you tell anyway, on a fish?--hovered around the perimeter of the action, presumably involved in its own fishy business.

The Hyuuga gardens did, of course, have koi in ample supply, but never with this startling hodgepodge of variety. The Hyuuga koi were staid and stately, gleaming with health and sporting their coordinating scales in all the myriad variations of what, Hiro assumed, were the standard patterns. His mother liked them; she could sit for hours on one of the low, wide rocks like this one, just watching all the glimmering shapes intertwine.

"I've never seen one that color," Hiro murmured, pointing at the red one--really quite a striking scarlet--and looked up at Ginta curiously.

"You have to breed for it," Ginta said happily. "My grandfather taught me. It's easy to get orange, but you want deep red, with no white. Even one white scale is a defect." He watched Hiro trailing his hand in the water, envious of his ability to get so close. If he'd been even slightly more mobile, he'd have been right down there with Hiro, trying to see if the braver fish would come to investigate his fingertips.

The coin fish and a few of her friends started swimming towards the edge now, too; drawn, no doubt, by the promise that people at the water's edge might mean food. Ginta watched the shimmer and ripple of lamplight on the pond's surface, the hazy pink reflection of the cherry trees in the water, and the bright koi gliding below. It felt otherworldly and peaceful, just as a garden should.

Just as his grandmother's garden had two weeks ago, when he'd gone to tell his troubles to the koi there.

"Grandfather bred koi and grew bonsai. He said a ninja needs something to do when he's not on missions that has to do with life." Ginta's voice fell soft, thoughtful and edged with something almost bitter. "Because otherwise all we know is death."

A soft mist was rising from the pond's surface. The kind of mist that seemed filled with ghosts. He could still hear the delicate snap as Tsuyako's neck gave way under Kakashi's hands. Still hear the screams of the civilian factory workers trapped by the fire. The lamplight on the pond flickered like flames under the smoky mist.

"You have to have a hobby, like koi..." He trailed off, eyes tracking a pale golden fish as it zigged and zagged its way towards Hiro.

Stilling his fingers in the water, Hiro waited for the elegant golden koi to approach. In the gentle evening light, its glimmering scales truly looked like they were formed of precious metal; a delicate armor of gold plate, too fragile to yield any worthwhile hope of protection.

"I do a little bit of calligraphy, but I'm not very good at it," he admitted, his attention still focused on the coyly parading fish. "I apparently don't have the true artistic touch. But it's relaxing, you know?"

If he looked over at Ginta, Hiro expected, Ginta would remember that he had company, and would close up around this newly expansive mood faster than a flicker of delicate koi fins. But Hiro wanted to hang on to this chink in the mirrorlike surface: he was curious. No one could actually be as flighty all the time as Ginta appeared; at least not anyone as intelligent as Ginta, and Hiro knew Ginta was smart. That cryptography lecture had proved that, when Ginta had nearly made the Intel analyst walk out on her own class, not to mention their own rapid-fire back-and-forth afterwards.

Hiro had been intrigued enough, anyway; he supposed that was why he was here. Why he'd chosen Ginta's record to ask for, out of all the other little ways he could have shown Kotoe-san some resistance.

"I admit, I'm glad there's still room for hobbies in a life like this. Given the way some people talk, I wasn't sure." The gold-spun fish danced closer, and Hiro kept very still.

"What, you mean in ANBU? Actually the psych guys ought to make sure we have something besides work in our lives. I mean, you expect everyone to be twenty percent crazier here, but they want us functioning for as long as possible." Ginta stared thoughtfully at the fish. Big ones gliding with measured grace, and smaller ones darting under and around each other. As they surfaced, their mouths gaped, hoping for food. He wished he had a bag of pellets to toss to them. "When I run ANBU," he said contemplatively, "I'm gonna restructure it. Make organized squads with a strong leader responsible for each unit. Add hierarchy. But I'll let the unit commanders have leeway in how they run things."

And then maybe things like agents on the brink of burnout or suicide or worse would get taken care of before anything happened. Before they were as broken as Kakashi seemed to be. Before they went off the rails like Gou Sadao had.

Although that still wouldn't have caught...

Caught Ginta. But he wasn't crazy. That mission with the wife-beating merchant a month ago--the torture he'd inflicted on the man had been well within mission parameters, and richly deserved besides. And this last one, as badly as it had gotten out of hand, had been neither his fault, nor outside the expected when it came to ANBU. His debriefer had told him so. He just needed to stop remembering the screams of the factory workers burning to death. And Tsuyako's broken confession. She hadn't been crazy, either. She'd been unlucky. They'd been outnumbered. Anyone could break under torture. Anyone.

"You should keep doing calligraphy. I have some, actually. Some nice calligraphy, I mean. Stuff that's been in my family a long time. I have a scroll painted by Tachibana in my apartment. When I'm better, you should come see it. If you like calligraphy, I mean."

"I'd love to," Hiro told Ginta sincerely. He'd actually admired it briefly before, when he'd just moved into HQ--because using all available methods to take stock of your surroundings was what you did around potentially dangerous people in an unknown situation--but it was impossible to truly appreciate artistic nuances under washed-out Byakugan-sight. Besides, Hiro's own lingering discomfort at going to such privacy-invading lengths had hurried his gaze along.

He had to admit, though, that his reluctant initial evaluation of the inhabitants of headquarters had proved itself invaluable multiple times. And, since then, he'd been party to far more severe invasions of privacy in the name of ANBU Intel, so he supposed he was becoming inured.

In any case, having an actual invitation was nice.

"So, when are you planning to run ANBU?" Hiro asked curiously, as if it were an everyday matter. "Are you going to be the Hokage, or just take Arakaki-sama's position?" He pondered for a moment. The pale, moonlit-gold fish inched closer, sniffing--or whatever it was fishes did--at his fingers. "Regarding your plan, I'm not sure I'd trust squad leaders to do any better at watching their subordinates than Psych does--that's Psych's job, after all. And squad leaders would be ANBU, too."

He thought briefly on Kotoe-san, and all the debriefing-hours that the ANBU ninja spent under friendly-fire interrogation. "You know, some additional integration between Intel and Psych probably wouldn't be a bad idea, though. We all spend so much time debriefing, it seems like it's a waste not to have a trained Psych agent watching at the same time for stability cues. Get two birds with one kunai, and all, and it would relieve everyone's overworking problem a little."

Konoha had grown, after all, even with the enormous casualties from the Kyuubi attack and near-constant war; it didn't seem like the institutions had grown with it. Konoha was only a young village, by anyone's definition--maybe it was time to change with the times.

Interesting response. Ginta looked away from the fish and to the bowed back of his companion, who had successfully enticed the wary yellow fish to investigate. Red, having decided no food was forthcoming, had moved on. He started to remember why he'd been intrigued by Hiro in the first place: the Hyuuga had a mind as flexible and sharp as razor wire.

"I figure it won't be until I'm a bit older. Maybe ten or fifteen years from now. Arakaki's in his forties, and I'm only twenty-two, but yeah, in a few years I'll have his job. By then he'll be on the village council, unless he's dead. Which obviously I hope he isn't, but it's a risk, since I'm pretty sure he still takes some of the highest level missions. He's not gonna be Hokage, though. Neither am I. I'd rather be adviser to the Hokage than wear the funny hat myself. Arakaki's the same way."

He flashed a grin at Hiro. A fleeting thing, dancing over his face and gone when a night breeze rustled the budding leaves in the garden.

"So is that your plan? Integrate Psych and Internal Intel Ops? It's not a bad one. I think the real issue is finding enough people with the temperament to do the job. I mean, my handler for this last mission--he's been my handler on a lot of them. Older guy, Shiratori Daisuke. You know him? He's got the touch. But he's rare. Gotta straddle the line between being a psychologist and an interrogator. Course, most missions don't go so bad, so they go to the regular debriefers."

He shifted, trying to get his legs comfortable. The broken one still itched and ached, and the arrow-pierced one had the tingly feeling of damaged nerves. He reached a hand down to rub gingerly at his thigh. "They'd better be able to put this all back together properly. I think they're gonna do some chakra acceleration on the bones tomorrow, on the broken one. But I have to be active duty for my plan to work, you know? I mean, even if we implemented yours, too, I think my plan of promoting stable unit heads from within ANBU ranks will help. There are guys like me who thrive here, after all. Me. My friend Genma--" He stopped when he caught the tension in Hiro's back.

"You know Genma?"

Hiro started to suppress a flinch, then changed his mind and didn't hide it. "You could say that, yes."

He certainly knew every detail of Genma's file, everything that was below his security clearance. "I was his debriefer on two recent missions," Hiro explained. Including the most recent, disastrous one. Hiro's imagination involuntarily flared, sparked by remembered hoarse, even-toned words, and he had to clamp down on a reflexive shudder. "I don't know if that counts as knowing someone, but yes, I do."

He pushed the memories of Genma's words back where they belonged, in a boarded-up corner where the things he didn't want to think about resided. "He's a friend of yours, right?" More than a friend, Hiro thought, remembering Ginta's earlier words a few weeks ago and tracing down his imagined webbing of interpersonal connections. They were occasional 'sudoku partners,' Ginta had said, a continuation of that awful metaphor.

"I'm sorry," he said finally, offering sympathy, not sure what to say when talking to someone whose good friend had just been tortured. Not to mention, sorry that he'd been the one to run the debriefing; but that, of course, he couldn't help.

"Sorry he's my friend, or sorry you debriefed him?" Ginta asked. His words held just a hint of a challenge. A bit of defensive ire on Genma's behalf. But then he'd gathered things were bad with Genma this time. He'd overheard nurses. Asked for updates. Had his grandmother dig a little, but all she'd been able to tell him was that his friends were in 'guarded' condition, though stable. When he'd finally been allowed out of bed, he'd wheeled himself up to that closed door with Genma's and Raidou's names posted beside it: Namiashi in bed A, Shiranui in bed B. A pale blue sign on the door itself forbid entry without express clearance. Another, with a red border warned that CTI protocol was required. A third, hand-lettered in big, blocky kanji, advised checking with the nursing station before entering. A fourth said simply, 'quiet please'.

In the face of that, he hadn't had the heart to intrude. But if Hiro had been the debriefer...

"I saw the signs on his door. Him and Raidou. Are they both subject to CTI? They both were captured?" He swallowed. Call it what it was. He'd technically been captured, too, and there was no CTI protocol sign on his door. "Tortured? Or is it just because of Genma's history? If you debriefed him, especially more than once, you know his history." Probably Hiro knew more than Ginta did, really, but he wasn't going to volunteer that. He knew enough.

"He didn't break, I know that. Neither of them did. They wouldn't."

Anyone could break. Anyone. Tsuyako had broken.

Ginta's gaze twitched away from Hiro, back to the silently gliding fish.

"They were captured," Hiro confirmed after a minute pause. Most of the broad-brush details of that particular case weren't actually classified, except as needed to protect the privacy of the involved agents; there wasn't any reason to classify them. It had been an attack by missing nin, with no particular political implications or sensitivity, and the analysts hadn't uncovered anything fishy.

It had just been, essentially, bad luck.

That they'd been tortured, he let the nuance of his tone convey. As well as the circumstances. "They didn't break," he said evenly; better to make some details clear in rumor than to have anyone wondering or making up stories. Or worse, awkwardly asking.

Though, if they had broken, their friends wouldn't have been wondering for long. The village response, codified in law, was quick and decisive; no one had any use for a broken ninja. Better to be dead.

Like Kinjo Tsuyako. Hiro had certainly read about that in Ginta's file, and while he appreciated Hatake's crisp efficiency in bowing to the demands of necessity and taking care of the 'problem,' it made it harder to talk to Ginta about this. At least if they'd managed to bring her back to the village, there would have been closure--better for her companions, if not for her. Mission deaths were always worse.

He felt like he owed Ginta more information, though, if only to convey his own considerable respect for Genma against Ginta's stiff defense. But he knew that no details he gave would serve to soften Ginta's rigid posture and uncharacteristic silence; nor, in a sense, should they. Their lives were too bleak for that.

"I assume," he began with quiet hesitance, "you've heard of Sago the Undertaker."

"Sago Masami, Kirigakure interrogator. He went renegade five years ago, around the time of the Fox," Ginta answered in measured tones. He had that page of the Bingo Book memorized. Every ANBU who'd been in the service any length of time did. High profile missing-nin like Sago were the kinds of targets that could derail a mission. "He's supposed to be dead, betrayed by his own comrades and executed by Mist ANBU last April."

Hiro's face told another story.

"They ran into Sago?" Ginta felt a cold chill trace along his shoulders. If Sago was still operating, still alive, what other information in the Bingo Book was suspect? How had Sago's death been confirmed? What other supposedly dead ninja were still very much alive and a threat to Konoha?

What had Sago done to Genma and Raidou?

Or maybe it was a copycat. One of Sago's proteges carrying on his master's legacy of brutality.

"Sago was supposed to be running a mercenary crew in the south, near Tea County, when he was killed. Did some of his band escape? Did they find his implements?"

"Those details are classified, for the moment," Hiro returned apologetically. No way he was stepping into that minefield; let Intel sort it out. "I can tell you, though, that Sago is now definitively dead."

Unlike before. And Hiro left unstated his surprise that Sago hadn't been as definitively dead when they'd adjusted his entry in the Bingo Book to indicate that he was. Someone had done sloppy work, and it had cost two valuable ANBU veterans...

Well, it had cost them.

Uncomfortable with the notion that some of the crossed-out entries in the Bingo Book might not be quite so defunct after all--people were sometimes fallible, but Intel wasn't supposed to be--Hiro turned back to the unquestioning koi, and away from Ginta's still-calculating look.

"You know, you could have two agents attend every sensitive debriefing: one Intel, and one Psych." Hiro trailed a finger along the side of a preening orange-splotched koi, wishing he'd had a Psych companion to give him wordless cues while he'd been doing Genma's evaluation. "It wouldn't have to be just one, although obviously that would be more effective. I know they already send two, sometimes."

Ginta's eyes narrowed. "You said he's now definitively dead. That means he wasn't before, which has to mean Genma and Raidou killed him. Or their backup team did, if they had a backup team." He let Hiro's 'that's classified' gambit fall by the wayside. Obviously Hiro didn't want to talk about it: too bad. Ginta was going to keep talking about it, at least for now, because he'd finally found a source with some real information.

And it was much better to pry for information about Genma and Raidou than to continue to stew about his own complicated life and failed mission.

It wasn't a failure, he told himself. Not altogether. Reconnaissance and sabotage of the suspected munitions factory had been his and Tsuyako's objectives--they'd accomplished them.

But at tremendous cost. And with Konoha's footprints all over it.

It was a failure.

He shook his head, hair falling into his eyes again as soon as movement stopped.

Hiro was giving him a penetrating look.

Ginta just stared back, hiding inner turmoil under a layer of flash-frozen ice. "So they ran into Sago, who was supposed to be dead. And he nearly killed them. They were outnumbered. They had to be: they're both good. It must have been an ambush, since obviously their mission was something other than hunting Sago, since we thought Sago was a neutralized threat. And they were captured, not killed, so that implies Sago thought he had some use for them. Tortured, so obviously Sago wanted to coerce them into something, but they resisted."

Hiro's eyes were narrowed now, too.

"So how did HQ get the clue they were in trouble? Did they have a third teammate who got away to sound the alarm? Was there a rescue team? Kakashi got sent after me and Tsuyako because we failed two rendezvous checks in a row. Don't know why they sent only one to rescue two, though. I guess they thought we were already dead."

If Kakashi had been a half hour later -- a half minute later -- that would have been true.

"I said, it's classified," Hiro told Ginta with an edge to his tone.

Ginta could make unnervingly rapid and accurate predictions all day; Hiro wasn't handing out any more confirmation. He'd conveyed the important facts, which were that Genma and Raidou had been tortured by a skilled interrogator, but they hadn't broken. He wouldn't dream of depriving Genma of the opportunity to inform his friends, free from preconceptions, that the two of them had escaped under their own power; he imagined that the psychological benefits of verbally asserting that kind of control over a seemingly-uncontrollable situation would be incalculable.

As well, following the rule of minimum data and maximum impact, the rec room gossip should now be preoccupied with Sago's mysterious rise from the dead--and his equally mysterious return there--rather than prying too much into the details of Genma and Raidou's mission. If that put pressure on Intel's investigative division to start a few inquiries into the accuracy of their bingo book...

Well, Hiro had no problem with that.

He did, however, have a problem with the way Ginta was looking at him.

"Classified," he said flatly. "If you want to know more, you can ask them yourself."

Right, Hiro was Intel and he was a Hyuuga. If he wanted to shut down a line of questioning, he'd do it with imperious finality.

Ginta was fairly sure he was correct, anyway, at least about his suppositions. That Hiro didn't deny his conjectures outright went halfway to confirming them. And he could, as Hiro suggested, ask Genma himself for the details, as soon as Genma was in any shape to have visitors.

His own half-asked question still nagged at him, though. Classified or not, he was certainly cleared to know every detail about his own mission. Something told him Hiro knew the answer, too.

"They did, didn't they? Think Tsuyako and I were dead. Kakashi had to carry us both, because she was beat unconscious and both my legs were fucked. She was already as good as dead..." He trailed off, then added a fierce, "And don't give me your 'it's classified' speech. My mission was classified up the ass, but it's not like it didn't make the papers here that there was a big-as-fuck fire and explosion in a 'chemical' factory in Komatsuyama in Waterfall."

Was that a tiny flicker in Hiro's eyes? He knew. He must know. How much did he know?

"Tsuyako stopped breathing when we were holed up to stabilize injuries, after we got away from the fire." He wasn't looking at Hiro anymore, but at the fish. Losing himself in their slow, easy movements, following unseeable currents in the still water. "But Kakashi revived her. I made him. And then she told me... She cried, when she told me... They broke her. Don't know what she told them, and they're dead now anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter. She was dying and broken. I had to tell Kakashi."

He fell silent, seeing Tsuyako's ravaged, tear-streaked face. Hearing the sick snap as Kakashi broke her neck and ended her suffering.

"He couldn't have carried us both, and she was probably going to die of her injuries anyway. Maybe if they'd sent a team for us, and not just Kakashi. But they didn't. They must have thought he'd only have to bring back dogtags."

"They did," Hiro answered evenly. Ginta had already guessed as much, and Hiro sensed that, at that moment, he had a lot to gain from honesty.

Anyone could break; that was a lesson drilled into every young ninja's bones by the time they left the Academy. If you were strong, you could hold out for a long time; but if the enemy was good enough to keep you alive, you'd break eventually. Even the staunchest oak or most supple willow couldn't hold out forever.

Joining ANBU, they all learned their breaking points. The mandatory interrogation resistance training wasn't an initiation rite Hiro particularly cared to dwell on, but it had certainly been informative. With his tongue sliding along the sharp ridges of the hollowed-out molar the administration had bestowed on him along with his security clearance, Hiro was uncomfortably aware that he did not share Genma's broad-spectrum poison resistance.

"A backup agent was sent to recover both of you if possible, and to bring back your dogtags if not," Hiro stated clearly. If Ginta wanted stark honesty, that's what Hiro would give him. Hopefully hearing the words spoken in someone else's voice would let Ginta stop dwelling on them himself. "Kakashi was there to help complete the mission or, in the worst case, to cover up the evidence and minimize damages."

Hiro paused, re-inflecting his tone and softening the edges of his rote recitation of facts. "It wasn't the best case, but it wasn't the worst one either. Thanks to your safe return, Intel has been able to send out fully-informed agents to smooth out any diplomatic ruffled feathers. As far as we know, Tsuyako's interrogators are all dead, so anything she told them is a moot point. And now we know a significant amount about Waterfall's illegal munitions program; another set of agents have been dispatched to search for other, similar factories, which most likely would have been built using near-identical floor plans."

Even in Intel's books, it had only gone down as a partial failure--the reconnaissance had been successful, even if the object of that reconnaissance was now only a burned-out husk of rubble. Hiro didn't think that 'partial failure' would be a particularly encouraging phrase just now, however, so he kept his silence.

It was pretty much the same thing Ginta had heard from his own debriefer, Shiratori. But it sounded different in Hiro's mouth. Maybe because of that stark admission that yes, Intel had sent Kakashi there to clean up. That rescue hadn't been the first priority. Shiratori had skirted around that truth, maybe because Ginta had been in worse shape during his several debriefing conversations with the man. But it wasn't like Ginta couldn't figure it out.

It was strange how hearing it from Hiro made him feel better.

"That's what my debriefer said. About the fallout. That it was good recon. That blowing up the plant just saved them the effort of sending another team out to do it later. That sabotage was part of our original mission specs." He fidgeted with the IV line, running his fingers up and down smooth plastic tubing. Picking at the tape that secured the needle in the back of his hand.

"Shiratori said Intel doesn't think the guys that interrogated Tsuyako managed to convey any information they got from her back to their superiors. He said their interrogation was probably focused on getting her to tell them what our mission was, and what kind of threat I posed, since I was still running around. That even if she told them everything she knew about me, and they managed to convey it back to their HQ before they died, all it would do would be add a page to their bingo book."

Which meant... Had Tsuyako died in vain? If the information she'd given hadn't been all that damning... But no. He'd seen her face. Seen her pain. She'd told them enough it had broken her. And they'd broken her body as well as her mind. She wouldn't have survived the journey home even if they'd had a team of medics. Probably.

"She deserves her name on the stone," Ginta said. He shivered when a breeze blew over the pond's surface, rustling the leaves of new bamboo, scattering a few round cherry petals in its wake. The fish continued their complex dance under the rippling surface. "She wasn't a traitor."

There wasn't much Hiro could say to that. It was true that anyone could break, but that didn't make them a hero.

He'd wanted to ask about Kakashi--what was going on between the three of them, that the tension between those two hospital rooms was so oppressive?--but he knew that this wasn't the time.

Instead, he offered a suitable period of respectful silence for Tsuyako, then made a second attempt at changing the subject. "You remember that cryptography lecture?" He prompted gently, one finger still stroking along orange-and-white fishy scales. "You were going to tell me about the time when your transcription scroll caught on fire..."

It wasn't his most elegant transition, admittedly. But then, sometimes, you just had to be obvious.

"Oh... Wow, you remember that?" Ginta said slowly. He recognized the attempt -- the second time Hiro had tried for a change to a less volatile subject than recently failed missions. That, more than anything, proved Hiro wasn't here in an official capacity, but a friendly one. Ginta settled back in the wheelchair, let his head fall to the side, and took a deep, sighing breath.

Then he manufactured a grin.

"Okay, so this was a couple years ago. I did a whole bunch of undercover work, kind of half-Intel, half-Hunter sort of things, up until we pulled off a really giant job last summer and my alias got compromised. Also I nearly bit it then, and Ryouma and his team saved my ass. But that was a solo. Well solo for me. Ryouma's team wasn't ANBU, and he only knew me as my ANBU alias, which was different from my cover. Anyway..."

He chuckled, mood lifting as he got into telling his story. Was Hiro even following? Actually, it seemed like he was. He'd stopped playing with the fish and was looking right at Ginta.

"Anyway the cipher key scroll. So when I was running the Seishi missions--that was my ANBU alias--I did a lot of them with a really sharp Hunter named Ota Rokusaburo. Big weapons and taijutsu guy. He's serving as personal guard to the Hokage now, so you might have seen him. His mask is a tusked boar. Good guy. Anyway. So he and I had this mission up in that neutral region bordering Lightning Country." He saw the flicker of a question on Hiro's face. "It's okay, I'm not telling you anything that you couldn't find out for yourself. I know the line between classified and top secret."

That seemed to assuage Hiro's concerns. Ginta tugged his yukata a little closer where his fidgeting had loosened it from his shoulder. "Okay, so we were up there for two weeks, and our plan was to retrieve a coded transmission at a safe house up there, that would have new orders for us, based on Intel analysis that was taking place while we were in the field. You know how that goes, right? But we're maybe a day from rendezvous, and here comes this hawk." He waited for Hiro to nod. Everyone knew what that meant, when a hawk came to find you in the field. And it usually didn't mean anything good.

"So the hawk has a scroll for us. We look at it, and it's sealed up the wazoo. They coded it to Rokusaburo's and my chakra signatures, so we both had to cast a revealing jutsu on it at the same time to even get it to open. You seen any like that? I mean, they seriously weren't taking any chances with it. So we figure, this is a change of plans, obviously, and something they really don't want falling into enemy hands. So we're pretty sure we're unobserved, but we make extra sure, set up a few barriers, I cast this concealer genjutsu, Roku lays some extra traps..."

Hiro nodded. Listening intently. Ginta shook his head with a wry smile.

"So we cast the jutsu and open the scroll. It's a new cipher key. So wow, we get it now, why they had it so protected. And it tells us to go to a different outpost for our rendezvous, cause I guess the one safehouse was compromised somehow. Maybe under surveillance. Who knows, it didn't say. So we're like, fuck, we need to seal this thing back up, so in case something happens on our way to the new rendezvous point, no enemy is gonna get it." He paused, milking the tension, savoring it. It was a good story, after all.

Hiro's focus was as sharp as sunlight through a magnifying glass.

"So," Ginta nodded. He held up his hands, mimicking seals. "We go to cast a conceal on it, and we figure it's gotta obviously be a combined effort again, like opening it was. Only I think they had it miscalibrated or something. Or they didn't think we'd do that. I don't really know. But we cast our jutsu, and the thing sparks and flashes and pretty much blows up in my hands. Obviously I drop it." He grimaced. "So now I'm screaming like a girl cause I just burned my hands, and we're both flash-blinded, but Roku's a smart guy and he casts a water jutsu and douses the thing. Too late though. It was charcoal. Wet charcoal."

Hiro winced. Thought about it, and winced some more. "Had you at least memorized the cipher key first?"

Ginta, still cheerful, replied, "Nope."

That had to have been a lot more worrisome than Ginta was making it seem. Those codes were serious business--you couldn't just try and figure it out, even if you mostly knew what the message was going to say. And if Intel was going through all the trouble of sending an updated analysis, there had to have been something important to analyze.

Especially in Lightning Country, around that time period. As a Hyuuga, Hiro knew all too well what that meant. And wouldn't have wanted to be stranded out there, without communications, for anything.

"Well, now I certainly understand why you asked whether the new coding scrolls were fireproof. Did you manage to reestablish contact and get them to send another copy of the scroll?"

"Well," Ginta drawled, relishing the telling of his story to such an astute audience, "that's a good question." Dead teammates and love triangles and shattered bones faded to the background, in favor of a story with gripping drama and a happy ending. Hiro's obvious understanding of all the things Ginta wasn't saying just made it better.

"So we'd managed to memorize the new rendezvous coordinates, anyway. And we had the dead scroll, plus our original orders. We figured we'd go to the new rendezvous and hope there was some way to figure out what the new orders were without the key. Or get a message back, anyway. Worst case--well okay, not worst case, because worst case would have been us getting discovered and taken prisoner and breaking under torture and spilling really important shit and then dying." It was Ginta's turn to wince. For Tsuyako their last mission had been exactly that worst-case scenario, but with the added twist of dying at a teammate's hands.

He stared past Hiro, at the light reflecting in staggered ripples on the pond's surface, dragging himself away from the immediate past and back to the more distant. "Worst case, assuming it wasn't the worst case," he said dryly, "was we'd have to abort our mission early. We'd gotten two weeks of solid intel on our subject, and had a decent plan for implementing the take down. But obviously if Mission Control was sending us new orders, we didn't want to risk them being something like 'Abort, target has signed a treaty with Konoha,' or something like that."

Hiro's reaction this time was more of a sympathetic cringe than a wince.

"So we get to our new rendezvous, and there's no one there. We've been two weeks in the field by now, so we're, you know, a little tired. Hungry, dirty, sleep deprived, footsore. We were counting on having a day at the safehouse to eat and sleep and stuff. And there's no one there, but there is a big bloodstain on the steps, and obvious signs that something bad went down there; it's impossible to tell how long ago. So we set up more traps and concealer jutsu, and are taking turns taking watch. I mean, it's like I'm standing watch while Rokusaburo takes a dump. It was that kind of tense."

"They'd gotten to both safe houses?" Hiro leaned forward, away from the pond, towards Ginta's ungainly wheelchair.

He'd quite gotten into the story by now--not least as an example of how bad things could get, when you were stranded out in the field with no way to communicate. Assassinations weren't all that different from the kind of Intel field missions he tended to run himself; they really only differed in the last step, whether you gave the kunai that final twist.

"They can't have known about the new cipher unless they could read smoke signals... So it must have been some other weak link. An earlier, failed transmission? Or they were just really good at scouring their own countryside? It can't have been from a previous conflict, we would have destroyed the bunker..." Hiro pondered out loud, making guesses, his body language open and engaged.

This was surprisingly enjoyable, talking, sharing stories. Being generous with information, rather than hiding it. Conversing collaboratively, instead of trading verbal sideswipes.

It was too bad people didn't talk like this more often.

Ginta grinned. Hooked. He totally had Hiro hooked. "Nope. Good guess but that's not it." He took a deep breath, tasting mist and pollen, the essence of a spring night. So much better than the air inside that hospital room. "So we do a thorough search, right? And we turn up a scroll under one of the food bins. It's marked top secret, but the seal is already broken, so we decide screw clearances, we need to read it, 'cause maybe it will give us a clue."

Hiro had leaned in further, pale violet eyes shining in the garden lamplight. Ginta leaned forward, too, over the arm of his wheelchair, as if imparting a terrible secret.

"Ando Shigehara. Recognize it? His name's not on the monument, that's for sure. Know what he's famous for? He lost his shit and killed his whole family: mom, sister, girlfriend, and a neighbor. Then left on a mission. By the time the cops figured out what happened, he was already gone. So they sent a coded message to the agent who was partnered with him, only Ando opened it."

Ginta waited a long beat for understanding to write itself over Hiro's face.

"Misaka Jun's name is on the monument. Of course we didn't know anything at that point. The scroll we found was the one to Jun, telling him what happened and to keep an eye on Ando. Abort their mission and return to Konoha, and an ANBU detail would meet them en route. It was in the old cipher, so we could read it, me and Rokusaburo. But now we're even more freaked out, because it's only dated a a few days before, and whose blood is that? And where are Jun and Ando?" He paused again, blowing a thin stream of breath through pursed lips, clicking his tongue.

"And then here comes another hawk."