Title:
Kunoichi Skills
Rating:
G
Pairing:
Anko/Ibiki
Word
Count: 567
Warnings:
none
Summary:
Anko can cook. Really.
Notes:
Written as a spectacularly
belated Christmas present for Quin, who writes the best Anko with
whom I've ever had the pleasure to play. It's set vaguely in the
Scarlet Spiral frame; apologies (and thanks) to all whose characters
I've borrowed (and distorted?). Murakami Sumire, by the way, is the
sole property of Rini, but I made up the rivalry on my own.
"You mean, you actually can cook?" Ibiki regarded her with the mild bemusement of one who's turned a rock over and found not slimy wriggling bugs beneath, but a note promising a fortune and a kingdom to any man brave enough to rescue a beautiful princess from her evil uncle and his, oh, fifty-man complement of jounin-rank bodyguards. Not alarmed, exactly, nor even excited, just…wary.
Anko thought indignantly that he'd have believed her if she said she could fight her way bare-handed and naked through said fifty-man jounin squad. Why should cooking be so far beyond the range of possibility?
"Of course I can cook," she said, planting her hands on her hips and tipping her head to glare at him properly. "Why shouldn't I be able to? You think I'm good for killing and that's all, huh? You think--"
"I never said that," Ibiki said, with just a touch of haste in his voice. Anko heard that haste with satisfaction; it meant she'd managed to throw him off-kilter even more, and just the slightest degree was a victory worth relishing when you were dealing with Morino Ibiki, the only man who'd ever been able to observe her patented Streaking no Jutsu without passing out from bloodloss. (He'd claimed he hadn't even noticed. Jerk.)
"Why're you surprised then?" she asked. "I'm a kunoichi, aren't I? How d'you think I managed to get through the Academy without learning to cook?"
"Sumire-san managed it," Ibiki pointed out.
Anko scowled. Sumire-san could manage a great many things, and none of them very good in Anko's opinion. And while nobody really seemed to care that Anko could kill people much quicker and more effectively than Sumire--which was really the only thing worth taking into consideration when you were weighing the relative merits of two ninja--Anko's ability to cook without blowing anything up ought to give her major points over Sumire, if you looked at things that way. Which a lot of men seemed to. Kurenai said this was because men thought mostly with their groins and their stomachs, and Suzume agreed but said it was the other way round, so either way Anko figured she had things at least on an even keel.
"I can cook, anyway," she said, deciding not to bring up this issue right now. Ibiki probably wouldn't laugh at her, but he would Look at her, and she wasn't going to let him distract her into an argument right now. She was trying to be nice, damn it, and if he wouldn't let her then she was going to have to pin him down and make him let her.
She pried the lid off the bowl and waved it under his nose. "See? Katsudon, still hot. And--" She scrabbled in a pocket of her trench coat-- "chopsticks. Eat!"
"Anko," Ibiki said gently, "I'm a vegetarian."
Huh. Perhaps she should've checked about that before she wasted half the evening. Ah well, she still owed Hayate dinner, and if he wasn't around maybe she could stop by Kurenai's apartment and ask her about that knock-'em-comatose-jutsu…
Maybe he'd be impressed with that.