Early the next morning - although he'd actually been half an hour late because he'd overestimated how much give there was in his old ANBU uniform - Kakashi found himself alone with Genkei in his boss' office, which always put him on edge. He had a sneaking suspicion that if he didn't expect Genkei to be about to kill him ninety percent of the time, they could've had a much better working relationship.

As it stood in that moment, Kakashi was holding his ANBU mask in one hand, and fixing Genkei with a single bloodshot eye; his boss stared back through his mask's eyeholes. Kakashi wouldn't have been surprised to see static electricity sparking between them, the atmosphere was that charged. Genkei had just delivered the mission detail to him, and Kakashi was, to say the least, unimpressed.

"Is there a problem, Hatake?" Genkei said smoothly. On the surface, all seemed calm, but Kakashi knew that his boss was probably imagining beating him to death with his desk chair.

There was a problem, actually: he thought that the mission was a steaming pile of crap, and he'd almost have actually preferred another stint in an office cubicle to dragging Tenzou, kicking and screaming, through it. He did not say this out loud.

"I don't think it's wise to send Tenzou on this mission," Kakashi said, a little impressed at how diplomatic he'd managed to sound.

"Protective of him already, hm?" Genkei taunted derisively. Kakashi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. No, he wasn't protective (at least, he tried to tell himself this), but he also wasn't a sadist. "He's not a child, you know. He will be able to cope."

He was only eighteen! Eighteen year old boys still lived with their parents, Kakashi thought furiously. Then he remembered that he wasn't protective over the kid, and tried to smooth the livid wrinkle that had formed in his forehead.

"What if he's traumatised by it?" Kakashi said levelly, mentally adding and then I'll have to deal with it. If Genkei actually gave two shits about the kid, he was doing a really, really good job of not showing it: his boss just stared onward, emotionless. Still, Kakashi thought, they were ANBU operatives… and ANBU ops were tools first, and people a distant second.

"I suppose you're just going to have to make sure that he's not… unless you'd like to spend another six months in administration," Genkei replied darkly. It was all Kakashi could do to not childishly shout all right, fine, then stamp his foot and storm out.

He donned his ANBU mask, and pulled a face at his boss behind it. The bastard was doing this on purpose because he loved to watch Kakashi suffer - five years of working under Genkei had taught Kakashi that nothing could please the man, and he was so stubborn that it was pointless trying to change his mind.

"I'll do my best, boss," Kakashi promised with a schmoozy grin, before flickering out of Genkei's office.

This was not exactly what he'd been expecting.


Kakashi had been hammering Tenzou's apartment door for five minutes now, but still nothing. A quick glance at the clock down the hall had informed him that it was six thirty in the morning, and Kakashi couldn't help but feel a little sorry for the kid; this day wasn't going to be any fun for either of them - and he wanted to get it over with fast, but that first involved getting Tenzou out of bed. His knuckles were starting to sting, so he refocused his efforts on the doorbell, which had an ear-splittingly loud and irritating tune that he could hear crystal clear even from behind the door.

He could've just broken in and dragged Tenzou forcibly out of bed, but that seemed like a pretty horrific way to get his new partner to like him. As the seconds ticked by, though, it was looking more and more a favourable option.

"Tenzou?" he called, now jabbing at the doorbell repeatedly so that its tune overlapped and repeated itself, "I know you're in there."

He knew because he'd put Tenzou to bed himself; he'd ended up having to carry the boy home because he had passed out. He hesitated on the doorbell as he thought he'd heard movement over its blaring song, but it was just Tenzou's upstairs neighbour, who sounded like they were jumping up and down on Tenzou's ceiling.

"SHUT! UP!" they hollered. Kakashi mentally thanked them, because there was no way Tenzou would be able to ignore that. He rang the doorbell once more for good measure, and then removed his mask and stood back, waiting.

A few minutes passed.

"Tenzou?" he called, and was met by silence.

Kakashi was an easygoing guy, usually. (Sometimes). But he'd had about four hours of sleep, he had a headache, and his boss was an asshole. Having to try and force a hungover teenage boy out of bed - what was he, the kid's dad? - was the last straw, and he aimed a brutal kick at the apartment door, which hit it with such force that the whole thing bowed inwards as though it might break.

"I'm coming," Tenzou yelled sleepily.

"That's disgusting!" his upstairs neighbour bellowed in horror, and then fell silent. Kakashi would've facepalmed if he had the energy.

Finally, finally, the door clicked and swung open, revealing Tenzou, who was wearing a t-shirt and boxers, hilariously under-equipped compared to Kakashi. Kakashi stared determinedly into the kid's eyes; Tenzou's expression quickly faded from barbed and fuming to confused and a little disturbed.

"Why are you here?" Tenzou mumbled, squinting at him, puzzled.

That was a very good question.

Kakashi decided to let Tenzou down gently because, by the looks of him - with his bloodshot eyes, heavy eye bags and hair that was jagging in every direction - he hadn't had a lot of sleep, and Kakashi didn't hate him enough yet to want to force him to suffer. Although, it was probably only a matter of time.

"I thought I should come and check up on you, as you were totalled last night," he said, and Tenzou's red eyes widened a little as though in horror. Strange.

"Wh - what happened?" the kid asked groggily, absently rubbing his cheek, which was still sticky with bar dirt.

Unfortunately, Kakashi hadn't been drunk enough to forget the whole thing.

"You were too drunk to notice that the bartender was ripping you off, so I tried to take you home, but we were attacked by two enemy ninja," he explained quickly, "We dealt with them, and then I brought you back here."

Kakashi didn't add oh, and by the way, I'm your boss now. He could sit on that one for a little while longer.

"Is that all?" Tenzou said, husky and uneasy, a sceptical glare fixed on Kakashi. Kakashi stared blankly at him: what the hell was this kid trying to imply? Had his reputation of being a pervert really carried this far?

"That's about it," Kakashi said.

"So what's this sticky stuff in my hair?" Tenzou demanded.

Oh, God. Kakashi frantically tried to think of something, because he'd just figured out exactly what Tenzou was suggesting, and that was not good. He didn't need rumours like that spread about him. Then the memory dawned on him gloriously: that weird ninja in the green cloak.

"It was a technique," Kakashi quickly attempted to explain.

"Is that a euphemism?" Tenzou said warily, and Kakashi genuinely would have rather died than have this conversation.

"No, I mean it was a ninja technique, that one of the guys who attacked us used," Kakashi said, now feeling a little affronted. He wasn't the type to take advantage of drunk people. For all his sarcasm and meanness, he'd always thought of himself as a pretty genuine guy.

"That's a relief," Tenzou breathed, looking Kakashi up and down. Kakashi's jaw tightened. Was there something wrong with him? Sure, he'd gained a little weight being off-duty for so long, but that didn't make him any less of a stud - Tenzou apparently disagreed.

"Yeah, well. You might want to get dressed," Kakashi said back, any desire to be kind to the boy having just upped and left.

"Why?" Tenzou said, tilting his head.

"We have a mission," Kakashi stated, relishing the look of bewildered horror on Tenzou's sleepy face.

"But I don't - you're not - wha-"

"As of today, you answer to me… kohai," Kakashi said, slick.

"You chose me?" Tenzou blurted, staring at him with an aggrieved expression that reminded Kakashi of a dog that'd done wrong.

That's supposed to be an honour, kid, Kakashi thought tersely, but he nodded.

"Because we got drunk and fought ninjas together?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Kakashi said, realising even as he said it that this may not have been his greatest idea to date. Still, Tenzou was a one-way ticket out of the office job. He put his mask back on and peered at Tenzou through its eyeholes; Tenzou stared back at him as though he thought Kakashi were out of his mind, which was more or less a reasonable assumption.

"All right… give me a minute," Tenzou said.


Clad in their ANBU uniforms, the pair of them walked through Konoha's quieter streets, heading for the village outskirts. Even though the buildings around them cast them into shadow, the brilliance of the late August sunshine was persistent in the strip of sky above them, and Kakashi winced in irritation. He could only imagine how horrific Tenzou must have felt - he had actually been so drunk last night that he was still swaying a little bit as they walked.

"You should probably quit drinking," Kakashi advised, as Tenzou stopped to lean against a wall.

"Probably," Tenzou said gruffly, removing his ANBU mask for a second to rub furiously at his eyes. Once he'd replaced it, he said, "What's our mission, anyway?"

Kakashi sighed. He couldn't keep it a secret forever, obviously, but he had been dreading that question from the instant Genkei had given him the mission detail. Their task seemed to have been tailored specifically to cause Tenzou the maximum amount of turmoil, and this was just another reason why Kakashi really wanted to assault his boss with a staple gun.

"We have to infiltrate one of Orochimaru's abandoned labs and recover any research he left behind," Kakashi explained, sounding as disaffected as possible - there was no point beating around the bush. Tenzou stared at the ground, looking put out, and this for some reason made Kakashi compelled to apologise. "Listen, I didn't choose it. Actually I tried to convince the boss it was a bad idea."

Tenzou shrugged. Kakashi was no mind reader, but he was perceptive, and he could tell that the kid was having second thoughts about this whole thing, too. Kakashi had no idea what dark secrets to do with Orochimaru were locked up inside Tenzou, but from the looks of things, they weren't the kind that he liked to be reminded of when he was unprepared.

"Let's just get it over with, okay?" Kakashi said, with a brisk sort of kindness, and Tenzou pushed himself away from the wall.

"All right," he said.

They walked on for a little while longer, through alleyways that seemed to get narrower the further they went. Soon, Kakashi stopped - he was pretty sure that this was the right place. They stood facing a manhole cover, and Kakashi mentally cursed Orochimaru for being the kind of freak who operated in a sewer.

"Do we really have to -" Tenzou began, but was cut off as Kakashi pried open the manhole cover, answering his question. They'd barely been out for twenty minutes and already the kid looked utterly defeated, and Kakashi couldn't blame him. He wasn't too enthusiastic about the idea of delving into a sewer, either.

"It's disused, so don't worry," Kakashi said, although this was probably not much comfort. "I'll go first."

The ladder was rusted and worryingly shaky, but he picked his way down it without much trouble. He glanced up at him to see that Tenzou had started to climb down, too, and he wondered if this was what Tenzou had been expecting when he'd signed up as an ANBU recruit. Poor kid. It was something he saw all too often though, working with ANBU - the recruits would arrive one year, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and by the next year, the ones that were still alive looked as though they'd had their souls worked right out of them.

As they went down further into the cavernous tunnel below, the heat rose to meet them in waves; it was stiflingly, chokingly hot. Kakashi's brow was already sweating, and it'd been less than five minutes. Not only was it like dropping into a furnace, it also smelled - not like a sewer, which was a relief, but like damp and mildew. A few incandescent lights, full of dead insects, were buzzing lowly, fixed to the walls; in their flickering light, Kakashi could see that the curved tunnel walls were patchworked with swathes of mould and splattered with what was definitely blood. Well this was just charming.

He hopped down from the ladder, followed by Tenzou who slipped on something mysterious and wet on the ground. After righting himself, he said, "Which way?", and Kakashi cast his stare up and down the tunnel.

The map he'd seen of this place had been astonishingly complex, but luckily he had his nose to guide him. He gave it a little twitch, and channelled a little extra chakra to it, activating his enhanced sense of smell. The stench of damp flooded forth, enhanced by what seemed like a thousand times and making him wince. And then, the comparatively refreshing smell of soil and leaves - was that Tenzou? - followed by a whiff of what he was searching for. Orochimaru smelled like plum blossom and rust, and Kakashi's nose pointed him in the right direction.

"Follow me," he said, and the two of them set off.