"I'm just going to stay here and die," Kotori decided.
She collapsed her exhausted body on the bench in the women's locker room. It seemed as good a place as any. She hoped her friends would lie for her at her funeral. If she died in the ANBU facilities would it not be considered classified? Kotori died a valiant death fighting a rogue shinobi. It sounded much better than Kotori died of exhaustion from her sadistic captain's training.
"Oh no you don't," Yugao said, peering over her. "This is our first weekend off in weeks! No missions, no training, no boys. I have plans for us."
There was a gleam in Yugao's hazel eyes and Kotori realized that perhaps their captain wasn't the only sadistic member of Team Ro. They deserve each other, she miserably thought. If Yugao thought she was in any shape for a girls' night out in the village then she was sorely mistaken.
Kotori's plans for the weekend included sleeping and not much else. Every one of her muscles cried out from sheer exhaustion. There were bruises on top of her bruises from her last sparring match. Already the thought of making her way back to her apartment seemed like too much effort just to sleep in a bed. The bench was good enough. The ground was good enough. She didn't really need a bed. ANBU training was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. She had thought the ANBU Bootcamp was hell, but it turned out her captain was somehow worse. Every day she was pushed past her limits and expected to come back the next day and do better.
That was excluding the absolute hell that was torture and interrogation training. She had been granted a week off to recover from it. It had nearly been enough to make her give up on ANBU altogether. Kotori had been contemplating turning in her mask when her captain suddenly showed up on her doorstep with a summons for her very first ANBU mission. The mission had needed both of their focus as they tracked a group of rogue shinobi through the Land of Rivers to recover a scroll containing a forbidden fuinjutsu technique developed by Uzumaki Mito. Before she knew it, it was two weeks later, they had the scroll in hand and she had forgotten her original intention to quit. She had come back too caught up in the thrill of a successful first mission.
Although days like these made her wonder why she stayed.
"You doing okay?" Yugao's eyebrows pinched together.
"Living the dream."
A hesitant knock on their door interrupted them. It creaked open and footsteps shuffled inside as if purposely trying to alert them to the newcomer's presence.
"Cat, we're needed in the Hokage's Office," came the voice of Tenzo. He was holding his hands in front of the eye holes of his mask. "Captain Hound received a summons."
"And I just got undressed and everything," Yugao dramatically whined. She let out a sigh. "Fine, I'll be ready in a few minutes."
The girls gave each other an amused grin when Tenzo quickly nodded, his ears turning red. He retreated from their locker room rather quickly after that. They dissolved into giggles. They were still fully dressed in their ANBU gear, but it was so easy to fluster him. It also bought Yugao a few minutes to complain about this last minute summons.
"I could cry right now," Yugao said. "I really wanted the weekend off. How did you get out of this one?"
"Probably because Captain Hound hates me and thinks I'm useless?" Kotori joked. It was a little too close to the truth to be funny. She had only been on two missions so far. She tried not to take it personally; the others had been working together for much longer. "There's no other explanation for it."
"He doesn't hate you," Yugao said, hiding an amused smile behind her hand. "And he certainly doesn't think you're useless. He's like that with everyone."
Yugao respected their captain. That much was obvious. Kotori tried to hide her more ungenerous thoughts. She didn't want to put a rift in their new friendship by insulting Kakashi.
She had guessed the identity of Captain Hound almost immediately. From the silver hair to the single sharingan behind the mask, he was very distinctive. She supposed the ANBU mask wasn't to conceal their identity from each other, but rather from enemy shinobi. Anyone who got close enough to notice the sharingan didn't live for very long. Kakashi used their names interchangeably with their codenames so Kotori figured he didn't care either way. He was less uptight on protocol than other ANBU captains, but more strict in other ways.
He was a cold captain. Kotori tried not to pay much attention to the rumours that circulated around the ANBU Headquarters. She heard them all. Cold-hearted Kakashi. Friend-Killer Kakashi. She defended him and denied the rumours whenever she could. She felt that her new captain deserved her respect and loyalty. She remembered some of the other women laughing and calling her naive in the women's locker room.
"You seem like a nice girl," Rabbit had said. "We thought you should know what happens to girls like you."
"It's not a rumour, he killed that girl on his genin team. Ask him about it," Llama had challenged.
"I'd ask the Hokage to switch if I were you," Sable had told her. "There's an opening on my team."
Of course, he made it very difficult to defend him. His entire demeanour towards her was like she was a waste of his time. She tried not to take it personally. He seemed to be that way with everyone on their team. Cold. Aloof. He didn't join them when they took breaks or ate together. Didn't seem interested in talking to them outside of work. She waved at him once in public and she might as well have not existed for all the reaction she got.
More than once he had knocked her down during sparring and when she asked for a moment to catch her breath he gave a cold reply.
"If you can't handle it, maybe you should quit."
"Do you think the enemy is going to give you a break?"
She had learned to push herself off the ground and keep going. Kotori thought she was good before this. She had been one of the top among her age group. Kakashi was on an entirely different level. He was incredibly graceful and agile in his movements. While his sharingan gave him precognition, he didn't seem to need it and kept it closed most of the time. His mind was always several steps ahead of her. He was able to anticipate how she would react to his moves and then proceed accordingly. Every sparring match ended the same. He would knock her around and then at some point decide it was enough. More than once she had woken up in the infirmary in ANBU headquarters.
It wasn't just him though. Everyone on her team was noticeably better. Tenzo was creative with his ninjutsu, the only limitation to his Mokuton was a modest chakra reserve. Yugao was a kenjutsu prodigy. Satoshi used his size to dominate in taijutsu. Haruki had a mastery of the Gentle Fist technique. Genma was a wild card and his unpredictability kept her uncertain how to counter him. She might have justified it with everyone having been ANBU for years, but then there was Itachi. It was embarrassing to lose to a child the age of an academy student.
Kotori, well, she had her birds. It was laughable.
Yugao gently patted her on the arm, bringing her focus back to the present. "If anything, I'd say he might actually likeyou. He spends so much time training you; he must see something in you. I'd be jealous if I didn't have Hayate privately training me."
Kotori's head whipped over so fast she nearly got whiplash. That was interesting. After weeks of being knocked into the dirt over and over again her ego was feeling more than a little bruised. She was not ashamed in needing a little confidence boost.
"Maybe that's because I need more work than everyone else."
"I don't think that's the case," Yugao thoughtfully said. "Kakashi would have had you kicked off the team by now if he had any doubts. Lord Third respects his opinion. You're still new, it's been only three months? Everyone else has been doing this for years. Give yourself time. You don't see it yet, but you belong on this team just as much as any of us."
Yugao left on a mission with Tenzo, Itachi and Kakashi that night. The four of them were still gone on Monday when Team Ro met for their usual training. Only Genma showed up for training, explaining that Haruki and Satoshi had been sent away. They worked individually throughout most of the morning, focusing on their individual skill sets. Kotori felt at peace zipping through the trees on the back of Raiden, shooting arrows from above at targets. At some point Genma got bored and started throwing senbon at her so she shot arrows back at him until they agreed to a truce.
She silently dropped onto one of the trees to join Genma when they stopped for lunch. She was a little nervous. Genma enjoyed teasing everyone. He held back with her and Itachi, as if still testing the waters. He was merciless when it came to the others. Kotori had noticed that Kakashi always seemed easily agitated by Genma.
"Oooh, does the little bird want to come out and play?" Genma joked, like he found a new toy to play with. "The big mean scarecrow isn't around, you can come out of hiding now."
She sat down on the branch, her legs dangling beneath her as she joined him. "Bird puns? How original."
She didn't like that glint in his eye or the way he smirked around the senbon sticking out of his mouth. On the other hand, she should make friends with more than just Yugao. It was lonely being the new girl on the team. Attempts to bond with Itachi over their shared status as new were only met with the same bland politeness he gave to everyone on their team.
"Have you figured it out yet?"
Kotori tilted her head.
"ANBU usually operates in pairs or quads," he explained. "Kakashi, Tenzo, Yugao and Itachi are our heavy hitting A-Team. They'll mostly be working with each other and get sent out on all the fun, S-Rank stuff. Haruki and Satoshi usually work together, they have a good system, which just leaves - "
"Us."
"The stealthy B-team," Genma agreed. He looked up at the sky. "We should use the time to work on our partner work then. I imagine that's what Kakashi intended."
"What makes you think that?"
"I've known him a long time," Genma vaguely replied. "Anything you'd like to get started with?"
She tilted her head, contemplating his question.
"This might be a bit unorthodox," Kotori said, a smile pulling at her lips. "But have you ever tried breaking into the records room?"
There was a glint in Genma's eye. "I knew I would like you."
So they spent the rest of the afternoon plotting to break into one of the records rooms. The one Genma wanted to target was in the highest room in Hokage tower, accessible only by a guarded staircase. The only other way in was a window that was locked from the inside. As an ANBU, no one questioned her as she made her way through the Hokage Tower. She casually waved at Bull and Rooster who were on guard duty. Once she was past them, Kotori opened one of the vents and crawled inside. She was just petite enough to fit. She made her way through the vent system until she was able to drop from the ceiling into the records room. From there, she unlocked the window and opened it, finding Genma waiting on back of Raiden. He climbed inside and followed her through the rows of shelves.
"There's different categories of shinobi in our village," Genma explained. "Up until recently, you were rated B-rank. It was easy enough to get clearance for your file in one of the less secure rooms. Now that you're ANBU you're A-rank with the rest of us. If you want a challenge, try getting hold of a S-Rank file like Kakashi or Tenzo."
They had found the files for herself, Yugao, Genma, Satoshi and Haruki with the majority of the lower ranked ANBU. It felt like a total invasion of their privacy. They were her team. So she opened Genma's in front of him. He had hers. They might as well get used to each other and their skillsets.
"You used to be the guard for Lord Fourth," she read. That was impressive. He couldn't have been very old at the time.
"Yeah," he said. He seemed less keen to talk about that, so she dropped the subject. The death of the Fourth Hokage was a sore topic for many in the village.
"Huh," Genma said as he flipped through her file in front of her. "You know, I always thought it was interesting that Kakashi would make random detours to spy on a team of kunoichi. At first, I thought he was just being a pervert and Icha Icha wasn't cutting it. There's more than one guy with a fantasy about the three of you. But Satoshi said something the other day that made me think."
He showed Kotori her medical section. The details of her hospitalization after the nine tails attack had been filled out and signed by Kakashi. Sorano was conscious on discovery, lost consciousness during transportation.
"Right, he was the one who found me." She didn't remember being found, only waking up in the hospital. He couldn't have been checking on her though. All these years? She was just a random kunoichi he found barely alive and brought to the hospital.
"What's his deal?" She had observed that Kakashi and Genma knew each other outside of ANBU. She trusted his opinion more than the random whispers she had heard from their fellow ANBU.
"Kakashi is so full of angst and guilt that he is one bad mission away from exploding and getting kicked out of ANBU." Genma's eyes looked faraway. "Sometimes I had even wondered if he was too far gone."
Genma was quiet as he closed the folder and put it back.
"I'm sure you've heard the rumours by now. We all have. They're not without some truth to them. But what Llama and the others don't get is that his teammates' deaths destroyed him. He'd do anything to prevent it from happening again."
"Including knocking my ass into the dirt every week?"
Genma grinned. "Exactly. Although, I think that'll be my job from now on. Partners and all."
Chika dee dee dee
One of her birds she had positioned around the tower sang outside, alerting them that someone was coming. They carefully put everything back in place and left, quietly locking the window before Raiden flew them to the training grounds as if they had never left. Genma flopped down on the ground and Kotori sat in the tree above him. It made for a pleasant afternoon as they blew off steam and laughed about some of their missions.
"Incoming!" Kotori said as she caught a glimpse of a head with silver hair walking through the ANBU training grounds in her mind's eye.
It was the only warning they had before Kakashi body flickered into their field.
"Don't you guys have training to do?" He asked, a hint of annoyance in his otherwise even tone. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "You're ANBU, not genin, you don't need hand holding anymore."
"Team bonding is an essential part of training," Kotori quipped.
The hound mask stared blankly up at her. The mismatched eyes caught hers. She dreaded his response. He was either going to verbally annihilate her or kick her ass in a sparring match.
He did neither.
"Well, you got me there." His hand awkwardly ruffled the back of his hair.
Kotori nearly fell out of the tree.
Genma looked like he was about to choke on his senbon from surprise. He recovered quickly enough. "So that's it? All these years we just needed a pretty girl to - "
"That's not - !" she could practically hear him rolling his eyes behind the mask. "She has a point. Teams live or die on their ability to work together. It's good to have bonds. I need to report to the Hokage anyway. I'll see you both tomorrow."
"Not so fast," Genma said. "We're having a team bonding night. I have an idea."
Naturally Genma's idea of team bonding was going to the Rusty Kunai later that night. Oddly enough, everyone else agreed to it. They even managed to round up the others who were resting after their mission. It was fun to see everyone out of their ANBU uniforms for once. Yugao had been delighted. It wasn't the girls' night she had wanted, but any chance to go out was a good one. Genma shoved Itachi into the corner of their booth and told him to keep his hood up. While the Rusty Kunai turned a blind eye to underage shinobi, there were limits to how much they could ignore.
Kakashi sighed as he looked at the ceiling. "I'm about to become the worst ANBU captain in history. He's eleven."
"Tsk tsk, corrupting the youth," Genma said. "How irresponsible."
Kakashi's eye crinkled as he sat across from Genma and Itachi. "Actually, that would be you. I'm still underage. I've never stepped foot in one of these establishments before."
"Like hell you haven't," Genma dryly replied. "Anyone else I'm corrupting tonight? Little Bird? Purple?"
"You've shattered my poor innocence," Yugao joked. There was a sly smile on her face. "Also, I heard a rumour that Tenzo has never been to a bar before."
Tenzo groaned at the attention suddenly being put on him. Genma looked delighted, hauling him into the booth next to him.
Kotori slide in next to Kakashi and Yugao followed after her. It was a tight fit. These booths were meant to fit six comfortably and they were squeezing eight once Haruki and Satoshi joined in. Kakashi was in the corner and awkwardly lifted his right arm and rested it along the back rest behind her. Kotori's knee bumped into his. Any closer and she would be sitting in his lap.
They kept sending Satoshi or Haruki to the bar to order a round of drinks for everyone. Well, everyone except for Itachi who stuck to water. He looked resigned to being trapped here until they were done. He kept a polite expression on his face, his eyes occasionally darting around the bar. Genma and Kakashi went pale at one point when the door opened and Uchiha Fugaku came in. Even Itachi slide down in the seat, trying hard not to be noticed.
When Fugaku left, the entire table let out a sigh of relief.
"That was a close one," Kakashi pointed out.
"I think I saw my life flash before my eyes," Genma agreed.
Kotori felt pleasantly tipsy from all the alcohol. For the first time since she had joined the team, she felt a rush of affection for these people. She had spent almost every day for the last three months with them. It was nice to finally have a day where everyone was relaxed. Perhaps Genma's version of team bonding was working. She adored all of them. Even Kakashi. He was nice when he wasn't trying to kill her with training. She told him so.
"You should switch to water for a while," he awkwardly said in response.
When it was Kakashi's turn to buy a round, Kotori tried to sneak a peak at the Konoha identification card he carried in his wallet. If it was anything like the rest of theirs, he would have been forced to take off the mask for the picture. Unfortunately the photo was strategically hidden by the fabric, but she found something far more interesting.
"Why didn't you tell us it was your birthday?!"
"Huh? Oh, I suppose it is. I forgot."
She playfully dug her finger into his side and poked him. "You know we're going to have to sing to you now, don't you."
He caught her hand and stopped her. She was amused to see a blush over the top of the mask. "Please don't. I don't like making a big deal out of it."
She looked up into his eye as he let go, feeling a tingle like electricity where his hand had briefly touched hers. "Fine, but this round is on me."