Rin inched herself closer to the flames and sighed as she watched her two teammates hissing at each other over the fire. Hissing because the shinobi rule book states : When camping in enemy territory, shinobi must keep noise to a minimum. They happened to be in enemy territory and one of her teammates at least always followed the rules. This was one of the rules they had learned early on to respect if they didn't want to be on the wrong end of something sharp.
Rules happened to be what her teammates were arguing over... again.
Obito waved the stick he had intended to add to their fire. "Come on Kakashi, it's freezing! If we don't make this fire any bigger, we'll be turned to ice before tomorrow!"
"It's already too big." was the answer, followed closely by a quote. "Any fire built in hostile territory must not exceed 43 centimeters in height." Kakashi really could have made a lot of money if had decided to go into the legal business instead becoming a ninja.
"So you've already said! Three times! But it's freezing! I can't feel my fingers."
It was freezing, thought Rin. Why had they got the retrieval mission in Frost anyway? She'd rather be anywhere else than siting in this driving snow. In fact a small skirmish in Wind country sounded good right now, or perhaps even a big battle.
Unfortunately, Kakashi didn't see things the same way. "The rules say nothing about temperature being a factor in the height of the fire."
"Well they should! Anyway, what kind of idiot decrees fires should only be 43 centimeters high? What was wrong with 40 centimeters or 45 centimeters? Or even better, just saying a reasonable hight, that way people can decide cold is a very important factor when they decide on how bigger a fire to have."
"Reasonable is not quantifiable." was Kakashi's response.
Obito turned to Rin, searching for an ally. "You tell him, I can see you're freezing too."
Rin had quietly been wondering how you could measure a fire anyway : to the tallest flame? An average of the hight of the flames? To the median hight of the five percent of tallest flames? If you only measured the burning wood pile, you could make a considerably bigger fire and it would still only 43 centimeters. It all seemed so pointless. In fact she doubted anyone apart from Kakashi even knew about this rule. And if they did, they certainly didn't care and chose to ignore it when it wasn't convinient. Broken out of her idle thoughts she just shrugged her shoulders : there was no way she was getting involved in this... Even if she personally thought it was snowing hard enough to hide light and smoke from a burning house, let alone a camp fire.
The loss of a helping hand didn't put Obito off for long. "How do you even know it's 43 centimeters tall?"
Kakashi calmly pulled out a tape measure, held it up near the fire and put it away again in less than five seconds. No chance for a second opinion. "That's how I know."
"You always have an answer for everything!" Obito was angry now. "What does it matter if the fire's a bit bigger than usual?"
"The rules are the rules."
"That's the stupidest th-"
They were abruptly cut off when they were plunged into darkness. Not one of them had heard their sensei approach.
"What did you do that for, sensei?" Obito demanded.
They stared with fire blinded eyes at the smoking pile of earth that marked the grave of their only source of heat and light. Their teacher must have killed it with a small earth jutsu.
"Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt your friendly storytelling moment but it's time for bed." There was something false and sarcastic about Minato's cheerful tone. "Kakashi, Obito, you're both on first watch, wake me up in four hours." A not so subtle way to get at them for arguing. They weren't near enough to any enemy strongholds for two guards to be necessary. "Oh, and give Rin your spare blankets, she's going to need them."
They both stared at him for half a second, but knew better than to argue with their sensei, especially when he was being cheerful. So they silently handed Rin the extra covers and headed to opposite ends of the camp, muttering under their breath about people too stupid to even follow simple rules and narrow minded idiots.
Meanwhile, the girl slipped into her sleeping bag and wrapped the three blankets around it, making sure to bring one up to cover her head. Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to feel guilty for depriving her teammates from their warmth, it was their fault that she had been unjustly deprived of a fire after all.
The next morning, she was unsurprised when it was two sheepish, shivering and sniffling boys that dragged themselves out of their sleeping bags. For them, the rest of the day was just as bad as the night. To their greatest embarrassment, they spent the rest of the day sneezing… loudly. So much so that Minato decided to leave the two of them behind while he and Rin retrieved the scroll they were after.
Rin couldn't help thinking of how smoothly and quietly that particular mission went. No arguing, no stumbling, no one quoting rule books... Just in and out without being noticed and then they were picking up their abandoned teammates on the way back towards Konoha. If only the boys could get along together, missions could be so much easier and she would even save a fortune on headache medication. At least with the sneezing she had blackmailing material for a few weeks, perhaps if they got into the habit of cooperating... Oh well, she could always wish.
That night, if Obito added extra wood to the fire, Kakshi was busily looking elsewhere.