Chapter Text
“Damn it.”
The snap of Iruka’s pencil broke through the monotonous drone of old laundry machines. Hissing in pain, he pinched at the embedded splinter in the pad of his finger. Unable to grasp it, he shoved his finger into his mouth, nipping at it with his teeth. No one did their laundry this early, but Iruka couldn’t help but scan the shabby laundromat to make sure no one witnessed his fumble.
Tension from lack of sleep pulsed deep in his temples and the throb from his finger beat to match. What a start to his day. Impatience winning out, Iruka bit down hard. Copper and warmth flooded his mouth, hitting the back of his tongue with a start. He spat out the blood and the splinter onto the counter. Crimson droplets splashed across the library book laid out before him.
“Shit,” Iruka muttered with the absurd worry he might disturb the early hour. Blood smeared as he tried to mop it up, making everything worse.
It was so early that the sun hadn’t so much as attempted to grace the horizon. A dive bar across the street had long since locked up, and Konoha’s streets lay empty save for a few grocers waiting on early-morning deliveries. The desolate street leading to the laundry featured only the figures of a peeling mural, depicting forever frozen, heroically posed Konoha shinobi from the Third War.
Using his shabby T-shirt with the holes around the neckline to wipe up the blood from the pages of Advanced Fuuinjutsu Technique Vol II with annotations from Master Uzumaki Heizen, Iruka tried not to feel the curdling embarrassment settle in his stomach. His only nice clothes were his uniforms, all of which were presently part of the washing load, and his soft pants and overworn T-shirt had been dirtied as he’d scrambled on the floor when a ryo had clattered away. He didn’t have much change left, if his turned out pocket meant anything.
The book had survived the worst of his idiocy and Iruka sighed into his sleeve as he wiped his forehead. He had gone through his katas while the clothes had been in the washer, moving with quick, strong movements, leaving his skin clammy from the sweat built up between his shoulder blades.
“Where was…,” Iruka murmured to himself, his voice distant as he traced the passages of complex sealing techniques, trying to smudge away the remaining blood. He had already devoured the first volume of the series with feverish intent. Now the second volume was half stuffed with tabs of paper marking pages he wanted to return to. He’d read nearly all of the books available to the general public on sealing at the library, and soon he’d be advancing into the specialty section if he managed to score the required permission from the Hokage.
Hunched over his seal practice, his shoulders ached. He flicked his soft brown hair out of his face, the strands too stubborn to stay tied in his ponytail.
His seal work had improved greatly since he’d first picked it up, and he could make the standard tags with ease, but he still hadn’t been successful at creating seals without the use of fuuinjutsu paper. He craved to improvise, experiment, even if it meant wasting the sorry stack of chakra paper he had left. A month ago, a fire had broken out at the lone factory in the Village, and Konoha wasn’t on good enough terms with the surrounding countries to get resupplies from them. It had gotten harder and harder to get his hands on the blank tags, so every scrap had become precious to him.
As the dryer spun quicker, Iruka scribbled in the margins of the book, unconcerned by what the librarians might think. He was the only one to check it out in three years. After scratching out theoretical designs, he finally picked up his old, fraying brush, soaked it with ink, and took a steadying breath. With painstaking care, he drew his design onto the slip of valuable paper.
The seal was a new creation he’d been tracing in his mind's eye for a week now. In theory, it would ground all electricity within a radius, causing a blackout of all equipment and storing the electrical charge within itself. A final tick in one corner would make the stored electricity inert and let it disperse harmlessly into nothing. Long gone were the days of trial and error experimentation where he’d gotten himself blown up by his unsafe seals. Now, he implemented safeguards whenever he could.
Iruka let out the breath he’d held the entire time, and relaxed his shoulders. He kept his brow furrowed as he looked over his calligraphy once more. Maybe his hand was shakier than he liked, and he’d definitely hesitated on this section here, but overall it looked correct. Time to test it out. He would have done the testing in his apartment, but his roommates had banned him from doing his experiments months ago, and the training grounds were always overbooked by teams of shinobi. The only option left was to train in the quiet moments he could snag. He slipped his brush behind his ear and stood up, glancing around.
The neon sign on the window declared the establishment was open all hours of the day was to be his trusty test subject. Carefully placing the seal on the ground by the sign’s plug, he shifted his weight and centered his mind. With careful movements, he made the earth release hand sign, one shuriken-nicked finger, one bitten, extended, and touched his seal. Only the smallest pulse of chakra entered it.
Nothing seemed to happen. Iruka sat back on his heels, biting his lip as he traced again over the seal’s marks. Maybe he didn’t account for the amount of chakra to activate the seal? He scratched the corner of his scar across the bridge of his nose and eyeballed the grounding tick in the corner. Maybe it was overcompensating and wasn’t allowing electricity to even enter. Flicking his wrist, he inked the mark that nullified the grounding tick, and braced himself, cracking his neck. He reached down with the same hand sign, and pressed the paper again, this time pushing more chakra through his fingertips.
The hair along his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. Static electricity buzzed around him. The sign blinked off. And then he was plunged into darkness.
“No,” he whispered as he watched the street ripple into darkness. Streetlamps, porch lights, and neon advertisements all blinking off. “Shit!”
He knew the breaker box for the laundromat was in the back supply closet. As he dashed past the machines standing in judgmental silence, he caught the chime of the rusty bells above the door. Iruka dropped to the floor, frozen, his eyes wide. Sometimes some of the local aunties and grannies would do their laundry in the early morning, but he couldn’t hear any of the shuffling footsteps that would precede them. And why would they enter when all the power on the block had just gone out! Slowly, Iruka inched forward on his hands and knees to look around the corner of the row of washers.
“Looking for me?” Said a deep voice in Iruka’s ear.
The shriek escaping Iruka’s control was immediately muffled by a clawed hand slapping against his face. The ominous glow of a porcelain mask tilted at Iruka, the grin of a dog mocking him. Anger and embarrassment zipped through him as he realized who it was. With a shove against solid shoulders, Iruka pushed himself away, his face burning as his hands shook. Hound sat back on his heels, and let out a scoff, his arms dangling between long legs.
“What the hell!” Iruka nearly yelled, but he stopped himself. Instead, he bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood. “What was that?”
“What are you doing?” Hound asked, standing up. His silver hair glimmered in the low light as he loomed over Iruka.
“Nothing,” Iruka was quick to retort, and jumped to his feet. Crossing his arms, he pointedly avoided looking over at where his seal tag still sat on the ground by the front.
“This wasn’t you?” Hound asked, stepping into Iruka’s space. His breathing halted for a moment as he rapidly blinked Hound’s mask back into focus. “You haven’t done anything in a while, and it’s making my skin itch.”
“Good, get a rash,” Iruka said, his voice hoarse.
“But then,” Hound’s voice dropped another octave, and Iruka could tell he was raking his eyes over him, looking for some sort of evidence that Iruka was up to no good. It was disconcerting to have the taller, stronger Anbu observing him so closely. “The whole neighborhood goes dark.”
Iruka kept his mouth clamped shut. If he didn’t say anything, Hound couldn’t do anything. Hound plucked the ink brush from behind Iruka’s ear in a flash and spun it in his fingers.
“What did you do?” Hound said, and he sounded exasperated. He held out the brush and Iruka snatched it back, his throat swollen shut.
“I….”
Stepping away at last, Hound gracefully jumped on a washer unit and scanned the room, his clawed grip clicking against the metal in his three point crouch. Iruka stood frozen in place, unwilling to make a move in any direction.
“You know there is an ordinance against training outside of designated areas,” Hound said.
Iruka’s stomach sank. “Are you going to report me?”
Hound briefly turned his mask on Iruka before looking away, still scanning, maybe even sniffing for the seal like the dog on his face. His masked face turned towards the front of the laundromat, zeroing in on the seal on the ground in the gloom.
Panic gripped Iruka’s throat. “I can fix this!”
That stopped Hound, and he looked over his shoulder at Iruka. “Really?” He sounded so disbelieving that it stung.
“Let me flip the breaker,” Iruka said, and dashed to the supply closet before Hound could protest. Pitch blackness swallowed him. Knee banging against a bucket, a mop slapped the side of his head. Cursing, he reached forward, feeling his way in the dark to the far wall, where a metal box sat.
Carefully, he searched with callused fingers until he found the switches and pressed them over. Blindingly, the closet was flooded with fluorescent light, spilling in from the main room. Triumph sizzling through his limbs, Iruka slammed the closet door behind himself.
Hound looked menacing in the harsh lighting, his mask shadowing itself, and his muscled arms in stark relief. He stood from his crouch on the washing machine and surveyed the laundromat again; a black smear against the piercing light.
“See? Nothing’s actually blown! People will just need to restart their breakers,” Iruka said, putting his hands on his hips, and blinked away the tears springing up from the brightness.
Hound ignored him as he stepped off the machine, his armored feet making no noise on the linoleum tiles. He stalked towards the window, and Iruka couldn’t help but scuttle after him, anxiety making his limbs stiff as tree trunks. With mounting horror, he watched as Hound slowly bent over, his heart beating rapidly against his rib cage. Hound peered at the seal as he crouched to get a better look. Iruka stopped short of hovering over his back, and he fidgeted with the worn hem of his shirt.
“Did you create this?”
The question caught Iruka so off guard, he didn’t answer until Hound turned, head tilted in silent inquiry.
“Yes,” Iruka finally mumbled. A part of him, deep down in a place he didn’t want to observe, suddenly hoped that maybe, just maybe, Hound was impressed.
“I’m not touching that.”
Iruka frowned and let go of his shirt to check over seal. It appeared the same as he had left it. “Why?”
Hound pointed at the corner of the tag with a single claw. “You fucked this part up. It’s not grounded, so if either of us were to touch it, we’d get shocked with a quarter mile radius worth of electricity.”
Heat enveloped Iruka, the anger hot and viperous. “I didn’t fuck up shit.” He said it so viciously, that Hound actually stood up.
“Cut the attitude, Umino,” Hound snapped, spinning on Iruka. “Do you have a solution on how to pick that up or do I need to call in R and D for clean up?”
Opening his mouth like a fish gasping for air, Iruka’s anger vanished and was quickly replaced by cold fear. If Research and Development were called in, the Hokage would be notified, and Iruka was suddenly looking at who knew how long of a probation. He couldn’t afford that! He had rent and groceries and supplies to pay for! Hound crossed his arms, waiting for Iruka’s response. His mind running a mile a minute, Iruka scanned the entire laundromat and his eyes landed on his pile of tags.
“A barrier tag,” Iruka said, and he was moving before Hound could stop him.
With feverish haste, he scribbled out the barrier seal on one of his remaining chakra slips, his strokes messy and extra ink blots scattered across the paper like the frustrated tears he could feel pushing at the corners of his eyes. But barriers had been the first seals he had learned, and he knew where he had to be careful and where he didn’t have to worry as much. Within seconds, he was blowing on the ink to dry it and rushed past Hound to place it right next to his electrical trap.
“Give me one of your kunai,” Iruka demanded, holding out his hand. When Hound didn’t make a move to follow his request, Iruka lifted his gazed. It hurt to say the word, but maybe Hound was on some sort of power trip. “Please?”
“Why?”
Gritting his teeth, Iruka stood straight. “I need to activate the seal somehow. Using a kunai is my best bet since metal conducts electricity." He tried to keep the sass out of his voice, but Hound folded his arms across his chest in response.
“Explain your plan, and explain it fast. I’m not giving you one of my weapons just because you asked nicely,” Hound said.
The urge to pull out his hair warred with Iruka’s patience, but he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I need to activate the seal with something - a kunai - at the same time as I activate the barrier. That way, the kunai can direct the electricity out of the seal and let it disperse into the ground. The barrier should keep us safe.”
“Should?”
“Semantics!” Iruka yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. “Let me do this!”
A hesitation sizzled between them before Hound finally relented and pulled a recently sharpened kunai from his thigh pouch. “Maybe I should throw this while you activate the barrier.”
“Fine! Whatever!” Iruka said, crouching back down. “On three. One, two, three!”
With a quick breath in, Iruka slapped his hands together just as Hound casually flicked the kunai at the electrical tag. A barrier popped up as the kunai flung itself with the force of an arcing lightning bolt, the impact shuddering through the barrier as if it might splinter under the blow. A sticky silence oozed between them as Iruka refused to look at Hound. Filled with too many emotions to name, they all weighed him down. He sensed the Anbu step towards the door.
“I wouldn’t play with things you don’t understand, Umino,” Hound said, and he left, the bells quietly chiming after him. Iruka felt sick.
On weak legs, Iruka turned back to the long-silent dryer. Still sopping wet clothes greeted him as he opened the door, and his heart sank. He had no ryo left to do another cycle.
He made sure Hound was gone, swallowed by the gloomy dawn, and began checking every washer and dryer for spare change shaken loose from pockets. He tried the detergent dispenser’s coin slot and even lay flat on his stomach to feel beneath the machines. Humiliation clung to him, but for his effort he managed to scrape enough lost ryo to pay for one more dry cycle.
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The rising sun quickly became obscured by clouds swollen and dark, belling out in ominous waves as Iruka made his way through the damp streets. His pack of laundry scrolls bounced against his lower back, and he kept his head ducked to keep the slow, fat raindrops from falling in his eyes. His apartment building loomed up out of the dreariness, a gray slab stained with years of leaky A/C units, broken pipes, and a dizzying array of electrical wires. Semi-permanent scaffolding clung to one side of the building, a not uncommon sight in Konoha. Even years later, the remnants of the kyuubi attack left devastating gashes through the foundations of too many buildings.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Iruka shoved his key into the lock and slammed the door behind him. The genkan was a mess of sandals and sneakers, but he quickly noted Kotetsu’s taped pair were missing, as well as the constantly mud-caked ones Mizuki refused to ever wash. Iruka sat to get his own sandals off. They barely fit, his toes almost jutting out over the lip of the shoe, and his heels rubbed horribly against the back. The skin had been constantly raw for months. It was getting harder and harder to get new equipment that fit. As a small genin, child sizes in clothing and shoes were in surplus, but now that he matched the size of the general population, the options were dwindling.
A growl and a twist from his stomach made Iruka open the fridge before he dropped his satchel. Shoved to the back were a few leftover takeout boxes, a carton of milk, and an old iced tea someone had brewed and forgotten. Iruka grabbed the remaining yogurt drink and chugged it before suddenly gagging. Rushing to the sink, he let the foul pink liquid spill out of his mouth, his throat closing in revulsion.
He coughed a few times, shivering as the taste lingered in his mouth. “Gross.”
Appetite gone, Iruka headed to his and Mizuki’s room. It was cramped, the feet of their beds dangerously close to touching. Turning around, much less dressing was no easy feat, but Iruka couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a space of his own, so he didn’t register it anymore, easily maneuvering around the furniture and dropping his scrolls carelessly on his unmade bed. Mizuki must have left at the crack of dawn, his own bedding neatly tucked. Iruka remembered he had managed to grab a full day escort mission.
Iruka changed out of his ratty T-shirt and into his uniform. He checked all his pockets for loose change, a misplaced ration ticket, or any scraps of fuuinjutsu paper he might have forgotten to pull out. Nothing.
Exiting his room, Iruka banged on Izumo’s door before heading towards the bathroom. The interrupted snore-turned-groan almost made him laugh, but then his eyes slid over Genma’s door. Knocking on it was pointless. He’d been gone a long time.
Dragging his attention away, Iruka slipped into the bathroom, and ruffled his hair with his fingers, trying to make it look like he at least thought about brushing it. With quick movements, he pulled it up into his regular ponytail, letting the shorter pieces fall around his face. He squeezed a measly smear of toothpaste onto his brush, and started brushing feverishly, until he glanced up at his reflection.
He couldn’t believe how bloodshot his eyes appeared; red rimmed and heavy bagged. His dark brown bangs had started to overgrow and brushed against his chin. His teeth cleaning slowed as he traced his face, his frown growing more prominent. He stared at his scar that dug a crack across his nose, the left side ending in a deep gouge where the wound had begun. He pulled at the skin, forcing the scar to spread even wider. Sixteen and he looked dreadful.
He spat in the sink.
Izumo banged at the bathroom door like he meant to beat it down. “Stop hogging. All the good missions will be gone if you don’t move your ass.”
“You’re the one that slept in,” Iruka said, his voice tight. He bent his head to the faucet, and let the water run over his mouth and up his nose, before he snorted from the blunted pain.
He grabbed a hand towel and scrubbed his face as he turned towards the door to let Izumo in. He stopped in his tracks.
The note taped on the backside of the door instantly made the hollow, aching pit of dread in his stomach grow deeper with each reread. He couldn’t move a muscle, his focus locked on the corner of a torn newspaper ad where Mizuki had scrawled the message, a picture of stylish sneakers with thick treads barely visible. Sneakers that would fit.
Rent’s due. Leave on table if not here tonight. -M
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“What the hell’s going on?” Anko asked, jostling up against Iruka’s back. They were packed into the mission desk room, filled with more shinobi than Iruka had seen in a good while.
“I don’t know,” Iruka said, pushing her back. He was already claustrophobic enough with the larger adults elbowing past him. The HVAC system was struggling in the room, or perhaps it was nonexistent, and the air was growing thick with moisture and body heat. “I just got here too.”
“Ew, this sucks,” she said, tugging the cuff of her long sleeves. “Hey, what’s going on, any idea?” She tapped an older shinobi’s shoulder, grabbing his attention. The man glanced at her, did a double take, his eyes raking over her face and neck, and quickly turned away.
“Hey!” Iruka snapped, reaching his hand out to grasp the other's uniform. “Don’t ignore us!”
“Ugh, don’t bother,” Anko said, flipping her hair to the side with a casual hand. But strain tugged at her mouth as her eyes roamed the crowd. He glanced at her neck: the cursed seal peeked out of her collar, the swirls marking her as something other. “People are so rude anymore.”
His face heating with fury, Iruka had to grip his hands into fists to keep himself from lashing out at the man in front of them. His blunt nails bit into his skin and he breathed sharply through his nose. “People don’t just get to make assumptions.”
“Unfortunately, they do though,” Anko sighed, standing on her tip toes to try and see over the heads of the crowd. It still felt weird that the older girl was shorter than him now, after another growth spurt. For as long as he’d known her, she’d been taller and cooler. She still was way more badass, but it was still weird. She also didn’t let the judgment from her comrades faze her like it would have Iruka, as she reached out and tapped a different woman’s shoulder. “Any idea what’s happening? We haven’t moved a foot in the last ten minutes.”
The girl glanced at Anko, her hitai-ate tarnished on the edges with an orange tint. That only happened in salt air, Iruka knew from experience. The woman must have been on a long mission along the coast. She looked away as Iruka and Anko’s full attention focused on her. “Genin teams were formed yesterday. You know they always get first dibs.”
“Shit,” Iruka said, his alarm rising. “They’re going to grab everything!”
“Only D ranks,” Anko said, trying to sound reassuring. “Maybe C, but I doubt it for first day missions.”
“But I don’t see the kids,” Iruka said, and leaned to the side to peek around the mass of bodies pressed together.
“Well, my team just got back from a few weeks mission, and we were a pretty big group,” the woman shrugged, her curly auburn hair spilling over her flak vest in shimmering tresses. “And I think I heard that some jounin scouting missions got back into town too. So….”
She trailed off, her pale eyes drifting to the side as she shrugged. The implication was clear: Too many shinobi in the Village were wanting work, and people with lower rank and less experience were bottom of the barrel. They were people like Iruka.
His chuunin classification was a mere few months old, and he’d managed to earn it with no help from his jounin-sensei or team. His sensei had always had a drinking problem, and now he was in a grave because of it. His old teammates, the twins, had invariably been more in tune with each other, and Iruka had found himself not only the third wheel, but forgotten altogether. Anko had it worse, Iruka reminded himself, folding his arms over his chest. She was more skilled than him and could easily rank up to jounin with her experience, but he knew no one was vouching for her. Her unwilling association with Orochimaru had put a black mark on her record.
“Do you think Genma is back?” Anko asked. Iruka’s dread grew deeper, more existential.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking behind them to scan the faces increasingly encroaching on their already cramped space. “He wasn’t at the apartment.”
“How long has he been gone again?” Anko asked. Iruka watched as she chewed her bottom lip, her eyes skittering across the sea of green vests, and he caught the bright red of blood bursting across the raw skin. She flicked her tongue out to swipe the blood away, but her skin grew sallow as she hid her mouth behind her hand. Iruka already knew about the forked tongue - another leftover of her jounin-sensei’s experiments.
Iruka shrugged, trying to refocus her attention back to him. “Long enough that I don’t like thinking about it. Do you think we’ll even hear if something went wrong?”
“It’s not like we’re next of kin or anything,” Anko sighed noisily through her nose and shook her hair around her face again. “But I guess you’d know if they came to grab his things from your place.”
Iruka avoided the thought. He shuffled his feet as the crowd moved forward a few feet, the murmurs ahead of them briefly sounding more relaxed, before receding back to disquieted malaise after a few more minutes of standing still. Iruka tugged at his vest and fiddled with a loose thread.
“Is there any point in waiting?” He muttered under his breath.
Tugging at her sleeves again, she shrugged, her face stony. “Do we have a choice?”
They didn’t.
It was close to an hour before Iruka was standing in front of the desk, face to face with an exhausted kunoichi with a long sheet of black hair and dark, heavy lidded eyes. She was one of the desk workers Iruka had seen and spoken to often, but he still didn’t know her name. She finished making a note on what looked like a never-ending list and then glowered at Iruka. “Name, registration number, and rank.”
“Umino Iruka, 011850, chuunin.”
After a few minutes of ticking off her list, she turned to the slots holding the mission scrolls. Iruka hated the sparse offerings behind her. After another moment, the woman selected two scrolls.
“I have a request for night security at a rice distribution warehouse, or training field cleanup.”
“That’s it?”
The kunoichi narrowed her eyes and dropped the two scrolls unceremoniously down in front of him. “We’re all out of options, kid. Which do you want?”
“When are they?”
She checked her list again, and then pointed at each scroll, “The warehouse is this weekend, and the training field is this morning.”
Iruka perked up and glanced over at Anko, hoping she had gotten a share of his luck. She was speaking stiffly to an older man, her face growing pale. Iruka quickly averted his eyes. “How much for field clean up?”
“It’s a D rank,” she said. “Payout is listed as 5,000.”
That wasn’t even a quarter of what he needed for the apartment. “Is there a C rank? B?”
The kunoichi tilted her head up at him, looking very much like a bird at that moment. “Umino,” she said, her voice quieting but not softening. “You’re five months into being a chuunin and you’re not on a registered squad.”
“So?” Iruka snapped back, and the woman’s face hardened again. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t have a C,” she said, turning away. “I know you won’t believe me, but I’m literally out of C ranks. And I can’t authorize anything over a B unless there is an empty slot on a team that’s already been assigned. You need more experience.”
“How can I get more experience when I’m still doing genin work?” Iruka could tell his voice was growing louder, but he didn’t care.
“Get yourself under control or I’ll ask you to leave,” the woman said sharply, her black hair shimmering as she snapped her head back towards him. “I’ve had a shit morning too. Don’t test me.”
“I’ve been waiting for ages!” Iruka’s anger reached a boiling point, but he couldn’t stop himself. “I can’t waste my time doing a mission for only 5,000 ryo. I need more!” He leaned forward against the desk and he could feel his fingers tingle as the blood flew up his arms.
“And I need a drink,” the kunoichi said, standing up from her chair. “Get out.”
Iruka couldn’t comprehend where her finger was pointing at first. He startled back, away from her outstretched arm, his instincts whispering to him he was about to get hit. After a beat, he realized what she had said.
“What?” He asked, glancing over his shoulder towards the door she pointed at. Her hand didn’t waver.
“I said get out,” she snarled, and all pretense of calm was gone from her features in a flash. “I’ve had to tolerate assholes all morning and I don’t need shit from kids. Get out, get your head out of your ass, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll give you a mission tomorrow.”
“You can’t -” Iruka said, panic coming into stride with his fight. “I need a mission!”
“Don’t make me make you leave,” she said, her obsidian black hair slipping over her hitai-ate into her face, casting her black eyes into voids. “I really don’t like using shadow jutsus in a crowded room.”
Iruka stared at her, then scanned the faces of the shinobi who had overheard the argument, including Anko. She watched him with such concern that it curdled his stomach into a mired mess. Spinning on his heel, he elbowed his way out of the room, and dashed down the stairs, his face burning.
The world tunneled down to a single, blurry speck, and his ears filled with the buzz of hornets as he raced down the steps. He couldn’t believe what had happened. And that look Anko had on her face!
He slammed face first into a firm and armored back. An oof wheezed out of both of them, and Iruka barely steadied himself as he rubbed at his nose. Whoever he’d run into was strong, muscled and lean. Looking up, he blushed all the way to the tips of his ears.
“No,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at Hound. “Not you.”
“Not me what,” Hound said, cocking his head and crossing his arms. Iruka barely clocked the other cat masked Anbu behind Hound, watching him.
“Don’t say anything,” Iruka said, clenching his fist to his side. Hound tilted his head the other way.
“I didn’t say anything,” Hound said, his cool façade wavering as he sounded exasperated. “You ran into me.”
“Ugh!” Iruka threw up his arms as he rushed past Hound and the other Anbu down the stairs.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” Hound yelled after him, but Iruka didn’t bother turning around, instead beelining out the doors.