Cacophonous Harmonies Bordering on the Eldritch

Madara had learned since then. He had said he’d let the ceasefire expire if Haruka didn’t live up to her word, yes, but that was on the assumption that he’d have a formal truce offer from Hashirama by then, at least. It had seemed like a safe bet at the time, with Senju Butsuma long since out of the way (and good riddance). Based on Izuna’s analysis, Tobirama seemed either loyal enough to follow where his clan head led or at least too smart to move against him openly, so he could likely also be dismissed as a potential rabble-rouser.

Madara would take his brother’s insight over the pet theories of the rest of their spy network put together, anyway. And to be fair, their intel on the internal dynamics of the Senju main family was spotty at best, so Izuna’s semi-regular personal contact with the Senju’s so-called demon gave him a better perspective than most. Madara was aware a number of his shinobi still insisted that Hashirama was a puppet ruler who Tobirama would someday depose so he could rule openly and wreak bloody terror on all enemies of the Senju, for example.

He usually managed not to snicker when any of them tried to win him over.

(That theory relied too much on Hashirama being as stupid as he acted.)

He may have changed over the years, as Izuna often reminded him (unnecessarily) at great length and volume, but Madara knew what it was to be isolated by power that still was never enough to keep his most precious people safe. Hashirama dealt with it by playing the fool, the same way he did when they were brats splashing in the river. It was obvious to anyone who had seen him like that.

Aside from Madara, that group probably included Senju Tobirama and very few others.

It made for a valuable object lesson in how confirmation bias impaired information gathering, and a joke he couldn’t share with anyone.

“...Nii-san?”

Madara shook himself and looked over to find Izuna leaning back on his hands, head cocked and a measuring look on his face as he looked him over. “Nothing.”

Izuna vented some more annoyance (he had plenty! He could do this all night!) by yanking a chunk of his big brother’s hair like they were brats scuffling in the training yard again. It was entirely reasonable for him to sneak in a few more petty jabs in the wake of realizing that he was going to have to spell it out – and do it now, before he was put to bed like an unruly child. His annoyance was justified – he could excuse himself for not having realized the obvious immediately; Haruka had really only stabilized him for travel, and even as quickly as he healed he’d be down for a while without her coming back to finish the job. Of course he wasn’t at his best right now. But Madara?

Frankly, it was alarming to see how badly his death would endanger his big brother, but at this point the evidence was clear: the prospect of losing Izuna turned the most dangerous person he knew into a giant idiot.

That was unkind and overly dramatic, perhaps, but in the silence of his own head Izuna would give himself a pass.

"Anyway, you’re worried about the wrong thing.” That got him a sharp look, but nothing that made Izuna think Madara had suddenly made the connections that had occurred to him in between his bouts of unconsciousness this evening. He sighed, shrugged off the supporting arm, and plopped himself back down. “Nii-san, you have to have realized this was a setup."

It wasn’t until [Hashirama] stood on the bank in full view that he realized that he hadn’t really made sure that the other boy was alone, even though he was pretty sure by now that he’d snuck off from somewhere to cry in private. The Tobirama voice (that Tobirama would claim was what other people called their common sense and just sounded like him because Hashirama didn’t have any) was telling him that he was an idiot again, but oh well.

The other boy was staring at him, looking him up and down with a look on his face that Hashirama couldn’t make any sense of. After a minute, Hashirama waved. “Anyway, my name’s Hashirama,” he said, “what’s yours?”

Hashirama thought he might not answer, but then he shifted his weight just a little, standing centered like nothing would move him instead of keeping his feet light and ready to spring in any direction. “Madara.”

Now that he was closer, he could see that the skin around Madara’s eyes was a little red, and he had a streak of dirt on one side of his cheek like he’d been wiping his face. The boy’s shoulders went rigid, and Hashirama knew he’d been caught looking.

He wasn’t going to be a jerk about it, but Madara didn’t have any way to know that. Rather than say anything, he kicked his sandals off and dug his feet into the loose mix of rocks and sand on this side of the bank, watching his toes wiggle through to the surface. “So what were you throwing rocks for?” he asked.

Madara was still giving him a suspicious glare when he looked back up, reminding Hashirama of nothing so much as the giant grumpy old cat that liked to sleep in their garden back home. He would bite hard if you annoyed him, but once Hashirama had gotten the trick down of sitting peacefully until the cat decided you weren’t going to cause problems he’d found out that the cat’s belly fur was the softest thing in the world, and that when he petted it the cat rumbled so loud that you could feel it through the ground.

[Hashirama had gotten a lot of practice with his control using doton trying to figure out how to rumble back at the cat without scaring him, and he’d gotten so much better with it that Chichi-ue had spared him a few words of rare praise for finally getting serious about his training. That had nearly made Hashirama admit the real reason for his improved control just so he could see Butsuma’s face before he took all of it back (because getting recognition for the wrong reasons was almost as bad as the usual not-living-up-to-your-potential speech, when Hashirama heard all the time from everyone but his father about how strong he was and how proud he’d make the clan.) But that was stupid and Hashirama wasn’t actually dumb enough to get himself in trouble on purpose just because his dad didn’t have any room in his head for anything but the war and the pride of the Senju.]

He kept all of the tangled up feelings around that off his face, though, and did his best to put calm in his chakra like Tobirama said he did when he was trying to make friends with the cat. It worked, he thought, or at least when he accidentally slow-blinked at Madara, the boy blinked back at him. It might have just been reflex; he drew back all flustered a second later, but when Hashirama didn’t say anything about that either his shoulders went back down and actually answered the question. “My big brother died.”

"Waa, your hair goes poof like Madara-ji's!"

"Kagami," came a quiet, tired-sounding voice from a side room, but the boy paid it no mind, already chattering on.

"- but it's all shiny and ripply and stuff, instead of pointy like teeth."

Haruka had been mostly intent on plowing her groggy way through breakfast and that was the only thing that had managed to preserve her straight face thus far. She blinked at her bowl, all two active brain cells furiously trying to strike a spark. Off to her side, Izuna snorted softly, looking at whatever expression his brother was wearing after hearing that description of his hair.

Once she was certain she could hold her expression, she looked to her left at the tousle-headed Uchiha child staring openly at her hair. He redirected his attention up to her face as she blinked down at him.

"Why?"

"Why my hair is different?" Haruka guessed.

He scrunched his little face up in a frown, shaking his head. "Why..." he trailed off, looking at her eyes. "Your eyes are weird too," he informed her.

Haruka bit her lip to keep from laughing as a second, scandalized, "Kagami!" sounded from the other room.



>Self Indulgence Sandbox< 
 

"You heard what the ghost likes, you'll make a prettier bride than me."

Hyuuga glared, but could feel the shift in opinion in the form of relief that someone else had said it; Keikou was good for that, unfortunately. "You're just saying that because you don't want to do it." 

"Oh, that too," she agreed shamelessly, beckoning him over. "But I also won't be able to see if you put me in the wife box until the ghost is on top of me - shut up, [Yamanaka?] - so it's tactically sound, too. Come here, I'll do your makeup."

It said a great deal about the improved cohesion of their team that (Hyuuga) walked over with nothing more than a mutter (--"it's a palanquin, not a wife box, you disgrace"  --"close enough!") and put himself in the hands of a daughter of the Uchiha who, for her part, was painstakingly careful to telegraph her motions and talk through the steps of each application once it came time to apply powder to his face, color to his lips, and a rich red shade to his eyelids that beautifully set off the mirror clarity of his byakugan.

"I feel like I should take a picture for posterity," (Yamanaka?) joked as Keikou put the brush down, (Hyuuga's) eyes staying closed for a breath more as they both visibly released the almost uncomfortable intimacy of the moment.

"They'll hang it in the Academy with some pompous title about inter-clan cooperation and the Spirit of Fire, and Hyuuga (Name)-sama will have a mission offered to destroy it the moment he finds out it exists," Keikou said with a dry smirk. She kept her eyes on her brushes as she wiped them clean to avoid staring at the ethereal beauty that had taken shape under her (admittedly inexpert) hands.

"If Uchiha Madara-sama wouldn't do so as well," (Hyuuga) retorted, more out of habit than conviction.

Keikou snorted, able to look at him more easily with the illusion shattered by (Hyuuga's) reserved baritone. Civilian's henge indeed - Myoukou-sama wasn't joking.

"No, he'd set Myoukou-sama to critique my color choices or something, as if I have a full kit with me for a mission that was supposed to be a simple rogue ninja turned bandit problem."

"For shame," (Yamanaka?) said, trying and failing to look stern.

"You said it, not me."

"I said it, but you didn't argue," Izuna retorted, nabbing a snack from the plate Hikaku brought in.

"I don't see a reason to argue about your elder brother's hair care habits."

Struck by an idea, Izuna answered, "Or you could just say that he doesn't look like a walking haystack, we're playing, I'm not expecting a scholarly treatise here."

"How fortunate for me," she said dryly, and turned back to her reading.

"When your little brother said you can't lie - it would be more accurate to say that you can't say things that aren't true, isn't it?" Hikaku asked, returning with a tray of tea and snacks to go with whatever correspondence he deemed non-sensitive enough to have open around an outsider.

Just like that, Haruka's porcelain-smooth mask slotted back into place, seamless by the time that she had fully raised her head from the scroll she was reading. "That is the usual meaning of 'lying', yes?"

Hikaku didn't glance his way, but he didn't need to; he could read the sudden hunting tension in the air as well as Izuna (as well as Haruka probably could too, if she felt the need to withdraw so obviously). Hikaku took point, a quick, smug flick of watch and learn in his fingers as he spoke.

Hikaku gave her one of his terrifying smiles, the gentleness of the expression reaching nowhere near his eyes. "I think we both know that there is some flexibility to the definition, Haruka-san."

"This conversation is very philosophical for a joke about your clan head's hair."

Izuna smiled. That wasn't an answer, and the blatant dodge clearly implied...

Madara walked in just then, the perfect demonstration. Izuna choked down the budding hilarity and challenged her, "Say it, then."

Haruka's mask relaxed just enough to allow a scowl through without cracking her face, and she remained stubbornly silent.

Madara looked between them and Izuna couldn't contain himself any longer. "Don't mind us, Nii-san," he managed to choke out between snickers. "We're just confirming some points of intel."

"Madara-sama's resemblance to a haystack is hardly news," Hikaku said, earning himself a thunderous look from Madara that he returned blandly. "However, the parameters of Haruka-san's reported inability to lie may be of interest."

"And the fact that she agrees!" Izuna gasped, and then sat back and laughed until tears came to his eyes.

Haruka looked from the two of them in varying states of smugness up to Madara, standing there scowling and slightly off balance. "I would complain that I'm being bullied, Madara-san, but I see have nothing to complain about in comparison."

Madara snorted and stole Izuna's snack, ignoring his belated squawk of outrage. "I recommend throwing them in the koi pond."

Haruka looked over at Hikaku and Izuna, sizing them both up pointedly. Hikaku gave her another bone-chilling smile, and Izuna winked. It had been a while since he had gotten to tease Madara like this. It felt homey, in a way that their house seldom did with the day to day crises of this way. The armistice had been good for them for this much, at least.

"...I might have to make some modifications to that approach."

Izuna scowled up at him. “Well? I know what happened while I was getting stabbed. I was there.”

Madara clearly didn’t appreciate the reminder, but relented anyway, voice clipped as he gave Izuna another lukewarm glare. “Your squad tried to cover your retreat, but he tried to follow you when you ran. They wouldn’t have been able to stop him, so I intervened.”

Intervened was such a tepid word for what it looked like whenever his elder brother was done. “The tree let you disengage?”

Analyzing that was better than dwelling on the fact that he ran because he could tell he was a dead man and was determined to make his death count, but instead of honoring that, his squad had immediately tried to waste the opening he gave them.

He could still feel the airless don’t follow me that he had spat through the blood in his mouth, still see the stricken faces of his squad as he turned to draw the Senju after him. Izuna unclenched his jaw when gritting his teeth began to send bolts of pain from his teeth to his eyes, the flavor of the pain so bright that he couldn’t hear Madara over its shrill fizzing.

Madara was speaking when Izuna’s senses reconstituted themselves from that useless soup, but Izuna found he had missed less of the conversation than he would have thought. Madara’s eyes were heavy on him and he raised his eyebrows pointedly as Izuna focused on him again, earning himself another offended glare. Of course his nii-san noticed and waited out most of the flare. He wasn’t even upset by the consideration, not really, but being irritable at Madara was better than being irritable at himself for needing it. (He was going to do both anyway. Of course he was.)

Madara’s vision shifted into cut-glass clarity before he had even consciously processed the words. “How long has Hashirama had you following me?” 

Mito looked up at him, gaze settling on the lower half of his face, steel in her expression. “He does not know. He told me that he had felt something amiss in his mokuton-sense, and I took it upon myself to investigate.”

“And you expect me to believe that you didn’t immediately report whatever you witnessed.” Madara’s voice came out flat in his ears. He had been resigned to – not leaving immediately, necessarily, but preparing for it tonight, making sure that he and any Uchiha with an ounce of self-preservation had a way out of this village that was the corpse of his shared dream. Now it seemed that the option to leave on his own terms was rapidly spiraling out of reach.

He could defeat Mito in combat, without question. Doing so without raising an alarm, when she had clearly planned and prepared specifically for confronting him? Unlikely.

He moved to brush Mito aside and she latched onto his wrist, small hand nevertheless gripping like iron as she leaned in with no thought to propriety and hissed up into his face, "I expect you to be suspicious and unreasonable, but you have never been stupid, Madara. I didn't intercept you to argue in the street. You are being deceived. Follow me and I can prove it."

"And with Hashirama itching to be rid of me, I'm supposed to believe that you of all people are going to this length to keep me in the village," Madara parried, the words burning his tongue.

"Like you, my husband is being a fool, and I will not stand for it."

• There's a place I've seen where the soul burns clean: 998 words
• sandbox ficlet collection, no title yet: 1061 words

The flat clack of a fingernail against his armor brought Madara back to himself, and he looked down to find Izuna’s drawn, bruised face tipped up to his, eyebrows creased in a frown that was trying to be thoughtful but Madara strongly suspected was covering for a post-mangekyō migraine.

“All clear?” he asked first.

Madara let his voice carry to the rest of the squad as he answered. “Mostly clear. Only a pair of Inuzuka near the borderlands, keeping their distance for now.”

The outrunners nearest that position flashed back signs of acknowledgment, shifting their spacing to better account for a possible human and ninken interlopers with a wordless discipline and fluidity that still gave Madara some satisfaction to see, even if it tasted like ash in his mouth after the near miss that he had been unable to prevent.

Izuna held his peace until Madara looked back down to him. “What did I miss?”

Madara raised his eyebrows, and he elaborated, “After I drew off the Senju. What happened?”

“Oops.”

“What do you mean ‘oops’ you can’t just say something like that disarming a trap and not-”

The grinding roar of compacting stone swallowed her words and then her team.

---

Keikō woke to total darkness, unable to tell for a panic-stricken moment whether her eyes were open or closed, or...

She blinked hard, squeezing her eyelids shut and feeling them press against the surface of her eyes. Moving on, then.

She would swear that she’d heard voices when she was first waking up, but if anyone was in the same space as her now, they were silent. They might even be holding their breath (breaths?), because Keikō could make out no sound in the room besides her own heart pounding in her ears. She considered the risks, letting her eyes drift closed again and her body sag in the bonds keeping her wrists secured above her head to the stone wall at her back, playing at passing back out, and activated her sharingan.

• Founders Era fixit (Naruto): 1236 words - Been doing more structure and plotting work on this than actually getting words down, but! This is titled now! This project is now "There's a place I've seen where the soul burns clean"
• Orochimaru Spitequest (Naruto): 226 words, bleh

“The healer is coming with us.” He eyed Tobirama, daring him to argue.

“Does she know that?” Tobirama turned again to regard Haruka directly, pointedly dismissing Izuna. “Whatever he told you, you are not actually obligated to go with them if you would rather not.”

Haruka glanced between them and stepped up without a single change of expression, her motions slow and deliberate as she moved to stand equidistant from Madara and Hashirama, turning the invisible line between the two clan heads into a triangle with herself and her brother at the third point.

Well. That was fairly blatant, as statements of intent go. And possibly an indication of social standing? Hmm.

“I do know, thank you,” she said. Her eyes flicked over Tobirama’s face, and she added, “I wasn’t- ” she paused, frowning faintly, “threatened to go along, if you were worried about that?” Her tone made it clear that she didn’t think he’d been concerned but was too polite to tell him outright to take his posturing elsewhere, with his implied offer of putting the travelers under Senju protection if Haruka chose to turn her back on the Uchiha after all.

Of course he couldn’t pass up an obvious chance to try to draw a wedge between the Uchiha and an unknown, potentially destabilizing factor. Izuna would have been disappointed in his rival for letting the opportunity slip by, otherwise.

Tobirama turned his eyes to Izuna for the merest moment, somehow managing to convey with his mostly expressionless face that he was thinking judgmental thoughts that he knew better than to share. Izuna was doing the same, so he ignored him.



> Orochimaru Spitequest < 

Cacophony in two parts descended again, both Naruto and Sakura shrieking with outrage over being so cruelly de-aged, with the accompanying line of Sakura being appalled at agreeing with Naruto, and Chisaki attempted to drop back to walk with Kakashi. He stopped her with one palm on her back, voice smiling mirthlessly as he told her, "You started this" and shoved her back up to the epicenter of the chaos.

"And here I thought the torture wouldn't start till after I arrived," Chisaki muttered.

"Foolish of you," Kakashi agreed.

Sasuke had not made a sound through the entire ordeal, and was walking a loose enough patrol around the edge of the group and looking fixedly enough away from them that one could ostensibly mistake him for being unconnected with their group at all.

~~

They were on their way into the onsen when Naruto- well, Naruko, she called her girl-self- chirped, "So this whole thing with you getting to work with Oro- ow! With Anko-nee's sensei means we're all friends now, right?" 

Chisaki lifted her eyebrows at Naruko, who beamed back at her, retaliatory swipe from Sakura already forgotten. "Don't push it, kid. I've still got a lump on my head the shape of your little baby fist." 

Naruko pouted and Chisaki ducked around her, slipping through the door into the changing room for the onsen.

• Founders Era fixit (Naruto): 9832 words
• Tatsuki Was Robbed (Bleach): 643 words

Mito finally looked up from her tea as the unusual studious silence stretched on, watching as Haruka worked quietly on the conversion matrix for their next trial run. She didn't seem outwardly distressed or even what Mito would consider listless, if she didn't know her well enough by now to mark the absence of any extraneous motion- no fidgeting with the beads in her hair, no tapping of the pen she favored in rhythms to whatever song was in her head, no absent-minded, under-the-breath snatches of song or humming.

Her people seemed to favor a direct approach, so Mito just asked. "Haruka-san, is something wrong?"

She didn't respond immediately, finishing a complicated symbol, and her eyes when she looked up were blank. "Not particularly. Why do you ask?"

Tobirama glanced up from the fortress of scrolls and bound collections surrounding his desk- he was feeling uncommonly social, tolerating not just herself and Haruka in his workspace, but even Hashirama had yet to be ejected while he sat quietly reviewing the sealed scroll that Mito knew contained the most recent draft of the Senju-Uchiha treaty. Tobirama still seemed content to defer any actual response to Mito despite his show of interest, much as she expected. "You've been quiet today." 

Haruka's face stayed almost empty of expression, which told Mito as much as anything else that she was right. "I found out last night that my sensei died," she said after a pause that went on long enough that Mito wondered if she wasn't about to just resume working instead. "That's what the song was." 

"Song?" Hashirama chimed in, looking innocently curious.

Haruka threw him a dry look that had only a trace of her usual attitude, but still answered, "Yes, the song that would have been clearly audible to whoever you had watching us last night." 

They all knew that the stupid ploy was more to draw her into engaging more than any real attempt to deny that the Senju were monitoring the Kitaalo enclave in their midst, but evidently Hashirama wasn't satisfied with that. He put the handle of his brush to his lips in a would-be thoughtful gesture, ignoring Mito rolling her eyes and his brother's quietly exasperated sigh from the back of the room, and after a moment of theatrical musing, announced, "Nope! I have no idea what you're talking about." In a gentler tone, he added, "But I am sorry to hear about your sensei."

"So was I," she said. The subdued moment passed, and Haruka quirked an eyebrow his way, more expression than she'd shown most of the morning. "And you should probably talk to your spy network about that, unless you mean to perch on our roof yourself tonight, in which case you may as well come in." 

Hashirama beamed. "How kind. I may do that."


>Tatsuki was Robbed < 


Tatsuki snorted and took a swig of her water bottle, watching Ichigo stagger off to Orihime for healing. "Still can't believe the crybaby I spent years kicking around the dojo grew up to be such a beast. I'm gonna have to kick his ass once he puts his body back on, keep him humble."

The arrancar straightened from his lounge, weirdly bright blue eyes wide and intent. "You're saying you could beat Kurosaki?" 

She rolled her eyes. "Sure, when he's human." She eyed the line of tension running through the hollow's body, experienced eyes cataloguing every twitch. "Don't worry, I won't come between the two of you. When he's in his spirit body, he's all yours." 

He sneered at her in response, but he still asked after a beat, "So what're you, then?" 

"Just human," she said absently, preoccupied for a moment with the sight of Orihime's shun shun rikka settling, gleaming, back into her shining hair. If Tatsuki were a poet, that would have become a poem, something about flowering stars coming to rest in silk the color of the setting sun... but she couldn't get the words to do it justice, never could.

• Founders Era fixit: 4712ish words (bluh, editing)
• Superhero AU: 758 words

"I can get up, Aniki, I'm fine." In the face of Madara's skeptical expression, Izuna rounded on Haruka. "Tell him I'm fine!" he demanded.

Haruka didn't look up from what she was doing, but probably had line of sight on most of the room's inhabitants in her peripheral vision, at least. Her tone was mild as she answered, "Ordinarily I would take a patient having the energy to be combative as a sign that they were recovering well, but you were still arguing with me when you were bleeding out, so that doesn't seem to be a reasonable conclusion." 

Izuna gritted his teeth. "What is that supposed to mean?" 

Haruka did look up at that point, her expression bland. "It means that the body when under great strain only maintains the most necessary functions, and contrariness seems to be one of yours."

Silence fell at her words, and Madara let it stretch as the attendant healers and [Guard] sat like statues waiting to see how he would take her daring. Once Izuna's expression shifted from mildly stunned to glaring at him for not having already cut her off at the knees for her temerity, Madara allowed himself to crack a faint smile and gave voice to a quiet, "Oh?"

Tension drained out of the room as everyone else took their cue from him, and he caught the ghost of a grin flick across [Guard's] face at their cousin being so deftly burned to the ground mid-tantrum. The healers retained a certain amount of stiffness around their shoulders that Madara read as unwillingness to be amused at an outsider verbally outmaneuvering their clan heir, but neither of them voiced disagreement with her assessment, either. Good enough.

Ebisu's face was beginning to shine at the temples with sweat, and Homeowner was clutching her laptop to her chest like she expected Jiraiya was going to swoop in and try to snatch it from her. "Ah, I see you have been fooled by his cover!" Ebisu exclaimed, valiantly attempting to pretend at perfect composure. "Jiraiya-sama is well aware that he cuts a rather intimidating figure, you see, and to make himself seem less imposing will frequently make use of a persona that appears to be nothing more than an older man inclined to drink and with a keen eye for female beauty, you see, which inspires far less reticence in bystanders. It is a respected technique in spycraft, you see, to hide in plain sight, and-"

"And whether he is actually unable to find porn that isn't loaded with viruses to download or is just filling my computer with malware for verisimilitude, I still end this scenario with a computer full of viruses and a search history full of things I do not need to know about your esteemed spymaster's tastes. My answer is no."

Homeowner seemed to have struck Ebisu speechless, and used the moment of gaping silence to retreat to her bedroom and close the door amid scattered ANBU snickering.

"Ah, Ebisu, your eloquence is wasted, my friend, but that was a most youthful display in the defense of the Toad Sage's trustworthiness with our esteemed host's computing device!" Gai exclaimed, clapping Ebisu on the shoulder.

Genma, loafing on the couch and looking over Iruka's shoulder as he finished setup for the jury-rigged home defense system they were installing after their baby-faced assassin stuck himself to Homeowner's ceiling last night, just laughed. "Jiraiya dug his own grave before you even got here, man, don't worry about it."

Ebisu started and turned around. "You mean Jiraiya-sama has already been here?" 

Genma snorted. "Not here, but he stopped in at the brewpub and got escorted out for harassing the waitress, so he's doing a great job keeping a low profile." 

Ebisu's look of dismay was priceless, but Genma was pretty sure he could make it better. "Guess who the waitress was." 

Iruka, mostly ignoring them up to that point, snickered and closed his laptop. "Of course," he said.

Genma inclined his head lazily back so he could see Iruka's face better. "You're done?" 

Iruka nodded, a vicious gleam in his dark eyes that drew an answering smile out of Genma on automatic. "Done," he confirmed. He glanced out to the kitchen, partly visible from where they sat on the couch, and added with a small, tight grin, "I almost hope someone tries us; it's been a while since I've gotten to rig up a civilian home instead of something designed to be a secure installation." 

"And you were rigging it from the other side last time, I'll bet," Genma drawled, digging his elbow into Iruka's side.

Iruka dipped his head sideways, neither saying yes or no. "Well..." he hedged, but the shifty troublemaker's grin said it all for him.

Gai bellowed out a laugh as Ebisu looked primly disapproving. "I admire your youthful spirit of mischief, my friend! And you are now using your skills to defend the innocent! YOSHI!"

Genma rubbed the ear nearest Gai, wincing theatrically. "What he said," he said, gratified when Iruka's ears darkened slightly under his tan. He kinda wanted to nibble one to see what would happen- aside from Ebisu getting a gushing nosebleed, that was a given for anything spicier than white rice- but restrained himself.