Wrong Wolf

 "What were you thinking? Kyubi-sama told us to throttle it down if we started to overload. Do you want to die?"

He'd appreciate at least getting to swallow before he had to lay out his defence. Lachlan deliberately turned away the chopstick pointed in his face with a finger, chewing a mouthful of rice, and pointedly plucked out another slice of beef to go in with it.

"Too much Ki will rip your soul apart, gaijin. You're lucky there are safety measures in place now, otherwise we would have had to recover a corpse," his Highness bit out, joining the ambush.

At least Drake was very pointedly minding his own business. The biggest one in the room, and he somehow managed to blend into the background.

"Good thing you didn't, then." He gathered up another mouthful. "I'm still alive and well, here to haunt you."

"We were told on the first day not to go higher than you can handle. It's the first rule." Ariake stabbed his plate instead of Lachlan's face this time.

"It's also a little hard to remember when you're hallucinating the devil and the seven circles of hell," he shot back.

"All you need to remember is to pull the damn throttle back—"

"Kore kore, you think I don't know that? I can't go back and yank it out of my own hand." Maybe this was just the way the teen worried, but damn, he hadn't felt this exasperated since the knotted shoelaces saga with Rial. "I won't do it again, I never planned to in the first place, and I'm sorry they had to stop the whole damn exercise because of it. There, happy?"

For a moment they all went silent, and he finally got to eat in peace. Having your soul flayed within an inch of its life made for a good appetite, and he'd rather not talk about this at all, ever again. The next person to come up and interrupt him mid-chew with anything from a lecture to a pitying "are you okay after all that screaming, Buronnewan-san?" would get a chopstick to the eye.

"Perhaps it's a good thing it was called off," Eden finally put in, and he mentally readied said chopstick. "After all, it wasn't only the gaijin who made mistakes. Our flag-bearer should have made it back before it became a problem."

Hm, did it still count if he was mentioned off-hand? Ariake had frozen, his expression going stiff. "I had to take the longer route through the streets—"

"You were hesitating," Eden cut him off. "You can't afford to do that. Not against the oni, not against anyone."

"I needed to be ready to help!" A hand flung out towards him. "Gaijin over here is always harping about us being a team and working together—I was following orders!"

Well, on one hand that was a good step forward....

"No, that is exactly what you were not doing." Eden's eyes narrowed behind the sharp glint of his glasses. "The plan was to bring it back to base. A plan you did not follow."

Alright, this had gone far enough. He cut in just as Ariake's expression twisted, chopsticks ringing on his ceramic bowl. "Maybe he didn't, but Takanashi-san still has a point."

They all looked at him, Ariake practically blindsided, Eden narrow-eyed, and Drake looking up. He exhaled, putting the chips down. "We're supposed to work as a team. We're supposed to look after each other. Because out there in Kaijan, they expect their teams to be a unit. They expect us to watch each other's backs like brothers, and if we can't do that, we'll wash out. No top of the class, no honours, and no chance to make it out there. If we want to win, we have to be willing to get along, and like it or not, that means not just tolerating each other and sometimes working together when we feel like it, it means unity."

"Unity is earned, gaijin. Respect is earned." Eden's eyes held his with a clear challenge.

"I know." He smiled back, letting a hint of teeth show. "And I'm willing to earn it. But I make mistakes, I'm not perfect like you seem to think you are. And until you can get down off your high horse and onto our level, you won't become a team player no matter what I do to earn your respect. I can't make a sword out of a rock that refuses to melt."

"I doubt you can make a sword at all." Eden's face settled into its familiar scowl, his face rock-hard.

"Have a think about whether you want to be in a team at all, Nokami," he advised. "Samurai work in fours, and I don't think it's the quality of the people in this one that's the problem."

The kid locked down like a steel wall and pushed away from the table. "Say what you like, gaijin. Play noble team leader if you want to. But it takes more than words to create anything out of a talentless group of fools."

Ariake snorted as he stalked away, curling his lip and poking at his rice. "He has a stick for a spine."

"In Wilind we call that a 'rod up his arse'," he said with a wry smile, thinking back to a time a few weeks ago when it'd been Ariake pushing away and stomping off. It was funny, Eden had called the lad a hothead, and now he pulled the same act himself.

For a long moment Ariake just looked at him, squinting vaguely, Drake throwing a little sideways look at the lad. "Are you speaking Angaelic?"

He said in Angaelic, with a heavy accent. And here Lachlan thought he couldn't understand it at all. "What d'you think I'm speaking in?"

Ariake visibly mouthed that out, squinting hard enough to go blind. "Is this that other language you keep using?"

He threw up his hands, Drake breaking out into a full-blown laugh he'd clearly been fighting for a while. "Hell's blind eyes, what's wrong with you people? D'you expect me to speak with a perfect Angaelic accent? It's barely that far off from yours— my own mother wouldn't recognise my voice over a telephone anymore!"

And maybe more of it came back as he went along, Doresu Sukaato threatening to laugh himself into his tray, but it wasn't that hard to understand. He'd had to pick his way through a couple of Nihonjin regional dialects before, and it wasn't that bad.

He resigned himself to this being the way of things and never speaking Angaelic again.

_________________

Speaking of Nihonjin, when he sprawled back on the couch that evening to run over his writing exercises after a fruitless hunt for a potential akuma that turned out to be a mischievous and completely un-possessed cat, he felt Drake staring at him. Which he seemed to have been doing on and off throughout the afternoon.

"Alright, I'll bite. What is it?" He looked up at where Drake sat at their little common room table with his own homework given to him by his language tutor, and lifted an eyebrow.

The staring continued for a moment. "Are you okay?"

There was no doubt what this question was about. He threw a glance around, muttering, "Where are my chopsticks?"

"...What?"

He sighed. "White as a whale's arse. Do you want a one-to-ten chart on how bad it feels to have too much magic in your system, or just a review?"

Drake blinked.

"I'll give you an overview: it hurts like hell and I'd rather not think about it." He flipped over a page, tapping it against his raised knee and resisting the urge to growl at radicals and stupid kanji some drunken idiot had dreamed up. "It's been a long feckin' day."

There was silence for a long moment. He didn't mind it, really, despite the probable cause. Silence would be nice right now, especially after a day of cold shoulder from Eden, the aches in his hands sticking around as a bone-deep twinge no amount of painkillers or subtle yuurei activation could get rid of, and assignment bullshite. Answering a few questions on grammar or whatever Drake was stuck on had been the most he was prepared to dredge for.

"...Can you howl?"

What.

"What," he said out loud, successfully poked from glowering at the paper to peer at Drake's openly curious expression.

"You have a wolf for a yuurei," he said, just as innocently. "I'm just wondering if you can howl."

His eyebrow cocked. "I'm not sure if you expect me to make a trip up to the rooftop to howl at the moon every night or if the drunken singing was that bad. Can you breathe fire? I've never seen you do it."

"Yes," Drake looked deliberately around the room, "but I can't demonstrate it in here."

"Neither can I, unless you want the base woken up." This lad. He shook his head to himself, going back to reading the dry page. Doresu-san could be bold when he stopped blending with the wallpaper.

"It's only eight, no one's asleep yet." That was definitely a hint of mischief.

He smiled to himself. We're playing this game, eh? "My throat's a bit sore. Never was that good at yodelling, anyway."

Drake sighed. A tad dramatic. "It's just, I used to hear them back home, out in the forest. I'd fall asleep to it. It's the kind of sound you can't get anywhere else."

"That so," he said drily. "I could always sing you a lullaby if you're that desperate."

"If it's sung by a wolf...."

"Does it count if the wolf is a tired obake who'd prefer not to switch while he's comfy on the couch?"

"That depends on how good he is as a human, and I don't think he is."

"Insults of the highest degree." He tipped his head back on the armrest. "Awoo."

"I've been proven right. He is terrible."

He laughed. "Alright you bastard, what're you trying to swindle out of me? Is there a bet on?"

Drake actually went suspiciously and subtly still for a moment. Damn, he wouldn't have thought they'd be friendly enough to start a betting pool. Though with him as the subject, maybe it was a little more likely. "No, I'm just curious, that's all."

He hummed. "Was it on whether I would or wouldn't? Who's on which side here?"

"...Maybe it's on whether you can or can't."

"Ouch." A tipsy bet made after the trip to the pub, then. What a blow to his pride. "Which one're you betting on?"

"That you can but you won't."

"Anybody bet on whether I can and would?"

"No, so I'd win if you did."

Alright, colour him petulant. "Is Nokami a part of this?"

"He'll be rich if I lose."

Lachlan lifted his head to look at him suspiciously, but the big lad's poker face was good. "Now I'm not sure if you're leading me on or not."

Drake put his face in his hands and sucked in the breath of a man with regrets. "My wallet's gonna be empty. I'll have nothing left."

Well.

"Alright." He exhaled heavily, slapping the papers down beside the couch. "Suppose I should help a mate out. Wouldn't want Nokami even higher and mightier than he already is."

Rolling off, he thumped onto all fours, shaking out a rumpled pelt. Ah hell, now it started shedding. "Dammit. You can repay me by cleaning this up."

And he threw back his head to set the noise complaints off. Started off a bit rusty—it'd been a while since he'd done this, and he couldn't say he'd done it all that often, either, but after a bit of blowing the gravel out, he managed to hit the pitch of a fire engine. A sound worthy of the wolves back in Scandin. It had Drake reaching for his ears, grinning like a little child, and he aggressively pushed the pitch further, feeling his ribcage just about vibrate from the force of using it as an improvised trumpet.

And then Ariake's door burst open. "What the hell—"

Lachlan blasted him back with his sonic weapon, and Drake laughed his head off at the stunned look on the lad's face, just about killing himself from the looks of it when Lachlan added a little yodel to the end and trailed off.

Ariake was left speechless. Amazing.

Eden's door opened less forcefully, his judgemental gaze scouring over them all before landing on him and scowling. "What are you doing."

Lachlan rolled out his tongue and grinned. Then he threw back his head and gave him a smug round two. Could and would, and had.

Drake was just about sobbing into his knees by the end, two stunned and confused Nihonjin and an entire base about to start knocking on their door if he kept this up, from the sound of murmuring in the hallway.

"I think I've made my point." He shook himself again, resisting the urge to scratch or roll and making a mental note not to take this form for the next couple weeks. At least ghost fur couldn't come out everywhere. "Time to pay up, lads."

"...What?" Ariake asked, still sounding a little stunned, and maybe deaf.

Eden narrowed his eyes at him. "Pay who?"

...He'd had a feeling about this. Swinging around to look at Drake, he found the big lad grinning sheepishly at him, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. "Maybe I lied?"

Silence filled the room.

He debated reverting to hands for strangling, or giving in to spreading fur everywhere. "Really."

He decided on hands. Better to strangle with.