Authors Note: Thank's for the reviews guys! Hope you Like :)


So much had happened in the two weeks since the 5 refugees were stabilized. The Hokage had placed them all in a house in the shinobi district of the city. They had all been filled in on how things worked in the city, in the new world they were permanently a part of.

Numerous test had been run each of the refugees. The experiments that were run on them in the facility, as they were all prone to calling the place before for lack of a better term, had resulted in each of them having a large amount of potent elemental chakra in their systems. As was evident with Nicole, they had little control over it with their moods. It was decided that they would begin rudimentary shinobi training to, firstly, make sure they had control over themselves, and secondly, to see if there was any potential in the 5.

It had taken them all about a week to get released from the hospital. The second week during their stay in Konoha was mostly spent getting accustomed to their surroundings, getting to know the rookie 9 as they were called, and becoming comfortable in their new homes.

Nicole stretched her limbs and let out a yawn as the soft morning light filtered into the room. She glanced over at the modest clock on her night table. 8:00AM. She had two hours before they were all supposed to meet at the training grounds for their first day of training. The whole scenario was ridiculous to her. But she had felt the power in her body that day in the hospital and new that she couldn't really control it. Especially if she continued to have random bouts of anger at her new roommates. She could tell they were all younger than her, at least the girls. This was their first time being away from their parents. The amount of trauma they had all gone through didn't help the house-hold harmony either.

Nicole pushed her legs out of bed and grabbed her towel. Since she was up so early the shower would be free (only one bathroom in the house). Her room was small, and barely furnished. She had only a few clothes that the girl with hot pink hair had given her. They seemed to be their standard ninja-outfits.

Her shower was quick, and brief. She stepped out and dried herself off while glancing in the mirror. Her hair had grown a lot, which she guessed meant she had been in the facility for at least 5 months. There was a light blue tattoo on her stomach, which she stared at from time to time. It was a product of the facility. She had lost a lot of weight there as well. This both pleased and disturbed her. It still wasn't that pretty of a face staring back at her. But what was the point in looking good when she was in some weird sort of hell.

Nicole quickly put on the baggy pants, shirt and vest. Pulled on the little boots and left for the kitchen. The quiet was nice to hear for once. Just bird's chirping outside and the distant sounds of a city in the throws of morning. She grabbed some water in the kitchen and quickly ate a couple pieces of toast before leaving the house. Nicole wanted to spend as little time there as possible. She hated being around the girls. The guys were not too bad, but she just wasn't comfortable there.

She set out to wander the village. Heading in the general direction of the training grounds. The village was bustling in the early morning, villagers going about their business, Shinobi on their way to and from the village. The whole thing was surreal in Nicole's mind. She was still having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that this was her new life. Everyone she had met here was nice. Just nice. Nothing more. She had not had enough time to really make an opinion of anyone. The girls all got along together really well. Sakura, Ino, Hinata and Tenten just seemed to all click with the two refugees she was living with. It was likely because they were all around 18 years old where as she was nearly 25. That was one of the weirder aspects of this whole ordeal. No one seemed to be her age that she had met.

Shortly Nicole found herself in the training fields. No one was around yet and she didn't expect anyone for at least an hour. Nicole found a spot under a tree on the outskirts of the training ground, lay down staring up at the clouds and just enjoyed the silence.

"Nicole-chan!" Startled, Nicole opened her eyes. She must have dozed off. She glanced up and saw Naruto running towards her, Sakura was trailing behind him. Nicole waved a hand in greeting, cringing at the loud, energetic voice of Naruto as he approached her.

"You're here early! Super pumped for some training with the greatest ninja ever?!" Naruto's big smile stretched from ear to ear. Nicole saw Sakura roll her eyes.

"Good morning," Nicole said, subdued.

"Where are the rest of you?" Sakura asked, smiling.

Nicole shrugged. "Dunno." She watched as Sakura's smile stayed on but her face seemed to really force it. Naruto laughed and scratched the back of his head.

"NARUTO!" someone yelled from off in the distance. Nicole squinted and could see her 4 roommates approaching. She let out a disgruntled sigh, thinking to her self "great, it starts." She looked up and saw Sakura watching her, Nicole forced a smile and pulled herself up from the ground as everyone gathered.

"Hey everyone!" Naruto cheerily smiled at them all. "I thought we'd start with introductions like when we were genin." He gestured to himself and Sakura.

"But we already know each other," Nicole said dryly.

Sakura forced another smile on her face. "Include your favourite thing, your dream, and something you hate. So we can know each other a little better."

"Yea! I'll go first" shouted Naruto. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, I love ramen, I will be Hokage and I hate not eating ramen!. "

Everyone laughed before Naruto gestured for the next persons turn.

"Margot Humphrey" said the cheery blonde girl next to Nicole. She was a typical, pretty young 17 year old girl. "I love dressing up, my old dream was to be a movie star, and I hate bitches." The dark haired girl next to her snickered and she pointedly looked at Nicole. Nicole rolled her eyes looked away.

"I'm Nina Woods. I love music, wanted to be a doctor in our world and dislike bitches too!"

Nicole wanted to crawl in a hole and never come out.

"Colby Patterson, I liked video games, but they don't seem to exist here, I wanted to be a lawyer, and I dislike olives."

Well, at least the guys really were not that bad. Colby was a dusty blonde, shaggy haired hipster who looked out of place in the uniform.

"What are olives" Naruto asked.

The group laughed. "Just a nasty food from out world Naruto-chan." Margot stated happily while eyeing Colby. Nicole could almost see the little hearts in her eyes.

Finally the last male refugee spoke. "Brayden Boyde. I didn't really dream of doing anything, I like a lot of things, and I hate living with a bunch of girls." Nina began giggling wildly at list and playfully slapped Brayden's hand, who just looked back at her incredulously. Sakura smiled as the situation reminded her of how she used to be. These kids have a lot of growing up to do, she thought.

The group all turned to look at Nicole, waiting for her introduction. She sighed inwardly in annoyance, thinking to herself that this was so stupid. "Nicole, no need for a last name as it doesn't mean anything here." She paused and saw the girls roll their eyes at her. "I like reading, wanted to be a writer and hate being here."

Naruto, to his credit, just laughed awkwardly while slapping her on the back and pushing them into their first training.

The first few weeks of training had the 5 refugees learning the basics of chakra control and taijutsu. Nicole found herself catching on to the chakra control faster than the others, but her taijutsu progress was much slower. They practiced every day with either Sakura or Naruto, depending on who was out on missions, sometimes even Shikamaru or Kiba would monitor them. Usually the group would go get ramen or go out to a shinobi bar afterwards, except for Nicole. Nicole chose to stay back in the training grounds more often than not to practice taijutsu alone. Sometimes she just wondered the village. It wasn't that she particularly disliked any of the shinobi that she had met, she just didn't seem to click with any of them.

It was a sunny afternoon and everyone had packed up to go to Ichiraku's except for Nicole. She had been practicing kunai throws for 2 hours against a tree. One in 15 making its target. Finally, frustrated she angrily huffed as she chucked all her remaining kunai before flinging herself on the ground. Off in the distance, in a nearby tree, a masked man reading a book chuckled lightly at the frustrated girl before going back to his passage.

Every day passed much as it had before. Slowly the five refugees started making progress in at least one ninja-art. Nina took quite well to medical ninjustu to the delight of Sakura. Nicole had also shown an aptitude for medical-ninjutsu but didn't have the same level of interest as Nina.

Today Naruto had gathered Ino, Shikamaru, Sakura, Kiba and Hinata, as everyone else was out on a mission, to go over the process of discovering their chakra natures with the group. Hinata dutifully handed out the chakra papers to each of the refugees.

"Alright," Sakura began. "You are each-"

"Wait Sakura-chan!" whined Naruto.

"For what?"

"Kakashi-sensei promised he'd come" replied Naruto.

Sakura scoffed. "He will show up once we are done likely. There is no point waiting."

Shikamaru yawned loudly. "Yea Naruto, there's no point waiting for him."

Naruto relented. "I guess so…"

"Okay," Sakura continued where she left off before. "Just focus your chakra into the paper so we can see your natures. Once we know what your nature is we can pair you off with a jonin trainer to focus more on each of your talents."

Nicole smiled at this. Apparently they had been progressing more than the higher-ups had expected, so the Hokage had decided to start letting them do lower level missions under a jonin instructor. She had heard that they might be paired off together and really hoped that she didn't land herself with Nina AND Margot.

"Yes! Did you see that Kiba-kun!" Margot pretty much screeched. She had evidently developed quite the crush on the Inuzuka. "I got fire, just like my fiery personality." Kiba smiled enthusiastically back at her, clearly enjoying the attention.

"Alright Brayden! You're gonna' be with me!" Naruto yelled as Brayden's chakra paper ripped from his wind chakra nature.

Nina's chakra paper pooled over with water, and Colby's crumbled up into dust.

Nicole concentrated into her hand and paper burst up with electrical energy. Cool, she thought.

"That's weird, Naruto-kun." Piped in Hinata.

"Eh, what is?"

"They all have different chakra natures."

"Yea," Sakura said. "Didn't you have a weird blue mark on you as well, Nicole?" Sakura moved to where Nicole was standing.

"Uh, yea, it wasn't there before I came to this dimension at least."

"Huh me too, except mines red."

The refugees all nodded in agreement that they each had a mark on them somewhere that had not been there before. The colour co-ordinating to their chakra nature.

"I'll have to pass this along to Shishou." Sakura said contemplatively.

Naruto and Brayden had paired off to start discussing wind chakra nature. Margot had snuck off to sit with Akamaru and flirt with Kiba. Sakura was talking with Nina about pursuing the medical field while Colby and Ino flirted shamelessly.

Nicole knew that the young ninja had experienced things she could never fully understand. They were all nearing their 20s and had lived through a gruesome war. She supposed that she was immature in comparison to them, but they shared googly eyes like teenagers. Not that she was opposed to that, the options so far were just far too young.

She felt a presence next to her and recognized Shikamaru out of the corner of her eye. The pair of them just stood there in silence for a while.

"You'll get to go on missions soon." Shikamaru stated mater-of-factly. This was unusual, Nicole thought to herself. Shikamaru was not one to start small talk. She glanced around at the rest of the group and saw some of the Shinobi glance that way knowingly. This must be some butter me up attempt to bring me out of my shell again.

Periodically one of the rookie 9 would try to hang out with her, or talk with her, or share some personal information. It wasn't unpleasant it was just awkward. Nicole didn't mind talking to Shikamaru though.

She realized that a few too many seconds had passed since Shikamaru had said anything and that the silence had become tinted with awkwardness.

"Yea, I guess that's a good thing. Get to earn money so we are not charity cases anymore." She hastily replied.

Shikamaru smirked. "The grouping is going to be weird though. It's normally three man teams with one jonin. You are going to be five to one."

Nicole's heart sank. "Fuck, really?" she forgot to censor herself, again.

Sakura glanced over with a scowl on her face.

"Why does that bother you?" Shikamaru asked.

Nicole sighed. She had not been very open with her feelings to anyone. The whole situation was just weird, and she didn't like being indebted to the people here. She also didn't appreciate being forced into the military service. She decided that maybe for once she'd actually try being sincere with her words.

"I just don't really see a place for me on a team of those children."

Margot overheard her at this point and angrily stalked over. "You are such a fucking bitch, you know that."

Nicole just stared back at her, silent.

"You act like you are so much better than us because you are what, two years older? You're just a sad little fat girl forced to be here and work out. So you got all mopey about it, just suck it up for once. It's not like any of us want you on our team anyways."

Anger welled up inside Nicole, but she swore not to act on it. Instead she just stayed quiet.

"Hey now, there is no need for this guys, you are supposed to be a team!" Naruto said while trying to place himself in between the two.

"We are never going to be a team with her." Colby said, Ino just smiled at him while glaring at Nicole.

Great, Nicole thought to herself, now one of the Ninja hate me too. She audibly sighed and slouched to become even smaller than she already was in terms of her height. (She was the shortest among the group). "I honestly don't think we can be a team either."

At those words Sakura angrily huffed over. "You don't even try."

"Sakura-"

"What, Naruto? We've been discussing this every single day it feels like. But because they've all be traumatized, apparently her the most from the talks she has with Shizune during therapy, we haven't been saying anything to her."

Ah, so that was it, Nicole thought. They've been on eggshells because I'm apparently mentally messed up after all the stuff I saw. Why she saw more than the others she'd never know. "There's no need to hold anything back, Sakura-san, or any of you. I realize that I don't try but you also need to realize that you all clicked instantaneously. And it's hard for someone to try to warm up to the glares and snide comments. Even from the people who are supposed to be teaching us. Flirting off with each other all the time. I'm sorry, you may be experienced shinobi who have seen some shit, but you are still teenagers getting their first boners for each other in my eyes."

There was a moment of silence as what Nicole said sunk in.

"You're right, Naruto. This group is … interesting." A voice from above said. They all looked to where the voice was coming from and saw a lazy looking, masked shinobi lounging on a tree branch with a familiar orange book in his hand.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto said happily, forgetting the awkward situation from before. Nicole watched the white haired masked ninja, Kakashi, languidly drop from the tree and approach them – his one visible eye crinkled up in a smile.

"How long have you been up there," demanded Sakura.

Kakashi just shrugged in response before stopping to stand near Nicole. Nicole was casually staring at the newcomer. She couldn't place his age since his face wasn't visible and he had white hair. He casually leaned in closer to her and placed his arm around her shoulders, "So what's this about boners?"

Nicole's face tinted pink at both his proximity and his words. She laughed awkwardly but still didn't say anything.

"We've been having a problem with her," started Sakura.

"I see." Kakashi said. He viewed the group silently. His presence had quieted the young refugees. Shikamaru seemed interested in what Kakashi was going to say, Ino was staring at him with mild interest and Kiba had a big smirk on his face as if waiting for someone to get lectured.

"You have a lightning nature, correct?" Kakashi asked Nicole. She nodded mutely. Still slightly bothered by the man's proximity. He removed his arm from around her shoulder and stepped back with a thoughtful expression visibly in his one eye, or at least Nicole thought it was thoughtful.

Sakura seemed to catch on to his thought pattern. "You can't be serious?"

Kakashi met her gaze lazily but said nothing. Naruto looked back and forth between them, scrunched up his nose and whined "What, what, what is he serious about, Sakura-chan?"

Sakura ignored the blonde. "Shishou said –"

"The Hokage and I have talked about this Sakura. I've been watching this girl practice in the evenings for a few weeks." Kakashi said.

"That's creepy." Nicole said before she looked shocked and covered her mouth. She hadn't meant to say that out loud.

The masked ninja chuckled softly. "She's practicing a lot, and we already suspected that she was lighting natured. It only makes sense to pair her with me in the long run for chakra training."

"I guess that makes it a bit easier to manage the team," Sakura said thoughtfully. "I wanted to focus on training Nina as a medic so the other three could easily go under Naruto."

"Yeeah! Team Ramen!" Naruto said gleefully, while simultaneously discharging the situation from before. Nina, Margot and Colby separated off with happy expressions on their faces, clearly enthralled by the team choices. Brayden eyed Kakashi with interest before shrugging at Nicole and moving to follow the rest. Kiba, Ino and Shikamaru started following the group back towards town while Sakura hung back with Kakashi and Nicole.

"Is this going to be okay?" Sakura said to Nicole, a little gruffly.

"I hope so," Nicole said truthfully, a small smile fluttering across her face.

Sakura seemed surprized by Nicole's show of emotion, even if it was small.

"Thanks for everything, though." Nicole smiled, genuinely.

Sakura briefly looked shocked before sighing and looking at Kakashi. "You better be good to her sensei!" and stalked off after the others.

There was silence as the pair watched the group fade off out of the training grounds. It wasn't awkward, they both just didn't need to speak. Kakashi moved forward at a leisurely pace and Nicole slowly started walking behind him. They were nearly out of the training grounds before either of them spoke.

"So you've been watching me?" Nicole asked.

"I've seen you practicing after everyone else leaves." The Copy-nin replied. "You seem quite dedicated."

Nicole pondered this for a short while. Kakashi took this opportunity to pull out his little orange book. Nicole smiled and thought, "at least he reads".

"I guess you could say I'm dedicated." Nicole said. "I just want some form of self sufficiency."

"In other words you want out of the house full of children,"Kakashi said. She could tell he was teasing her.

"That came out the wrong way," she sighed. "Sakura and them are all amazing people. They've gone through things that wouldn't really happen in my world. It's pretty surreal for me to even think about, really. But the kids from my world are just that, kids. This is the first time they are out of their parents' houses. Not even out of high school yet. I know that doesn't mean much to you guys but it's a big difference where we are from."

"So you've been on your own for a while?" Kakashi asked.

"Sort of. I had room-mates at school. Lived with a boyfriend for a couple years, but it didn't work out. Then I ended up here so… I guess I've been technically out of my parents house for a few years, yea." As the words left her mouth Nicole realized just how much she was saying. She'd never really talked to any of the Shinobi about where she came from. But no one had really asked her as they got all those details from the others.

Kakashi stored that information away for future use. He had known she was different than the other refugees, clearly not getting a long with them all. Tsunade had expressed concern to him when he brought it up in passing during a mission debrief. She had also informed him of the level of intensity that Nicole's electrical chakra formed when she was agitated.

"Well, we can start off tomorrow with a simple D-rank mission to get you some more money. Maybe get you some clothes too." Kakashi smiled beneath his mask.

"What's wrong with my clothes?" Nicole looked down at the baggy ninja uniform she wore.

Kakashi silently shrugged and lead them back towards the village.