"What--ouch!--did you have in mind?" Ryouma gave up on trying to pry the melted buckle of his shoulder-strap apart. The pain-killers worked all right as long as he tried his best to pretend his arm wasn't there, but even the slight jostle of his fingers against his burned shoulder woke the fire again. Water was probably going to kill. He gritted his teeth and set to work on the buckle at his opposite hip. With luck, he could open up the left side enough to peel out of the chestplate without cutting it open. He could reach the buckle on his left shoulder with that hand, at least, and with a bit of holding his breath and wriggling--

"You look like an epileptic stripper," Katsuko commented, setting her mask down on a low bench that held towels, scrubbing-brushes, and soap. "You don't really have to go through the whole writhing dance thing just to take your shirt off. I know it's a foreign concept, but--"

"Bite me," Ryouma invited. "Other shoulder, please." He set his teeth again, plucked at the mess of melted plastic sticking to his shirt, and strangled a hiss as his fingers brushed blistered, crackling skin.

Katsuko's sigh sounded suspiciously like a laugh. He didn't even see her palm the kunai before the cool metal was kissing his shoulder, slitting his shirt away from the wound and sawing through the reinforced straps of his armor. There was a tricky moment where the kunai skidded, and Ryouma's knees nearly buckled, but in a moment more the ruined armor was dangling from Katsuko's hand. Ryouma glanced quickly away from it--the Quartermaster was going to gut him--and down at his shoulder.

"Well," he said, when he was pretty sure he could trust his voice again, "at least when I go in for big-ass ugly scars, I get 'em matching."