The Generations of Team Seven, Volume III
Team Jiraiya's first C-rank
Minato was grinning as his teammates met up where their jōnin-sensei had ordered them to gather that morning, Natsumi was instantly suspicious. She might not have been on the genin team for long, but she had the years from the academy to fall back on if she needed and she knew some of what genin teams did for the first couple months.
No one in their group missed Fugaku, Mikoto, Hiashi, and Hizashi complaining about the lack of interesting duties when they got their own teams after graduating. If they had crappy jobs given to them in a time of war, the rest of them knew they'd get the shortest end of the stick since the war ended.
"What?"
"We're getting a C-rank." The blond informed her cheerfully, jerking a thumb over his shoulder to the Hokage's Tower. "Sensei's in there arranging it."
Natsumi wondered if it was her knowledge from her past life or her ANBU installed paranoia that made a chill run down her spine.
Wasn't Jiraiya still injured? It was the whole reason he had gotten saddled with a genin team, he was too injured to go back and pitch in with the end of the war effort. What the hell was the man thinking?
Inoichi apparently thought along the same lines as her, his brow furrowed at the news. "We've been a team for less than four months and we've just replaced a member, how do we qualify for a C-rank?"
Minato apparently didn't have an answer for that. He opened his mouth, shut it after a long silent moment, and then merely shrugged in the end.
"Technically, I'm not exactly a D-rank kunoichi." The ex-ANBU agent informed her fellows slowly. "I suppose we're not really required to do twenty to forty D-ranks together before upgrading the risks we're expected to handle as a team."
'Twenty to forty more?' Minato mouthed to himself with a pinched expression.
He was ignored by his teammates.
"Sensei's not exactly jōnin either." Inoichi added thoughtfully, tapping his chin as he thought about it. "Okay, that make a little more sense."
Giving in to the impulse she no longer had to control due to ANBU regulations or uniform, Natsumi rubbed her face with both hands. "That makes no sense, Inoichi-kun. Even with that, I'm still mostly new to genin life. To be honest, I expected a solid month of stupid chore missions before anything like this happened at all. It hasn't even been one."
Natsumi also hadn't actually brought up the fact the Toad Sage smelled faintly of old blood and antiseptic to anyone just yet… but if the man was actually going to risk himself like that she damn well would.
"But you're… oh." Heaving a sigh, Minato corrected himself before he could say anything inane. "I suppose the fact you're my sempai wouldn't actually make much of an impact, huh?"
"Not officially, no. That's not a formal arrangement or anything."
Inoichi huffed slightly. "Can that be formalized?"
"Sure it can!" Jiraiya the Toad Sage, also known as the leader of Team Seven, boomed out from behind his pack of genin brats. "I just don't want to deal with the paperwork."
The sannin ignored their starts of surprise and the looks he earned for doing it. They were meeting at one of the benches outside the Hokage's Tower, a common meeting point for teams when getting a new mission, but it wasn't exactly busy enough for an ex-ANBU agent to miss getting spied on or two genin to miss the man's bright white hair or flamboyant red trimmed outfit.
"So now, has Minato-kun fill you two in?"
"Jiraiya-sensei," Natsumi started out a little awkwardly, turning to face the shinobi fully, "are you sure about this?"
The ex-ANBU Panther could have meant a lot of things with her question, but Jiraiya was both a ninja for longer than her and a fully grown man in charge of his own affairs. It wasn't really her place to buck orders or refuse on his behalf, especially if he didn't want her to.
The sannin was also a suburb spy in his own right, so Natsumi decided to leave it up to him to answer her concerns or not.
He knew of her convoluted history, he should have no problems picking up on the unsaid.
Indeed, from the small quirk of his mouth that looked much more natural than his usual cheesy or goofy grins told her he had picked up on her concerns. The obnoxious pats on the head she could've done without, though.
"It'll be fine, neko-chan. It's just a courier mission inside Fire Country, it will take us barely a week to finish." Jiraiya informed her easily, but with a measure of confidence that was hard to miss. "This is mostly to ensure the boys aren't knocked off track too much, they were due for a mission like this before we replaced the kunoichi of Team Seven with you."
Natsumi subsided with that news, feeling oddly guilty as well as thankful. While she had been surprised to be placed on Minato's genin team she really did appreciate it at the same time, but it hadn't occurred to her that her presence might have delayed a few things for the boys.
Apparently, certain Toad Sages had been practicing his spying on his own genin team.
"And I know they'll be fine, since you're not a usual genin yourself with the usual genin problems." Jiraiya continued without missing a beat, with a lavish wink for her before beaming at the rest of his team. "Now then, you boys know how to pack for longer missions yet?"
\V/
Their first night on the road wasn't so bad.
Once one got out of the protective Hashirama tree forest that surrounded the Village in the Leaves, you started to hit the more sheltered towns and cities, sources of both the food production and trade routes the Land of Fire managed under Konoha shinobi protection.
Jiraiya merely located a reasonably priced inn so they weren't roughing it out in the cold, renting just two room when Natsumi blandly informed him she didn't mind sharing since the ANBU barracks was pretty much mix gender and they couldn't have anything that would surprise her unless someone had webbed feet and hadn't mentioned it yet. She ended up sharing a room with two beds with Inoichi, and although slightly awkward at first they managed just fine in the end.
It was their second morning, the first time they ate breakfast together, that the ex-ANBU agent realized there had been more to the reasons the Toad Sage had got the mission for than he had stated.
"If I eat any more I'll throw up."
"You're a stick, neko-chan." Eying her thin frame as if to make a point, the sannin shoved another ration bar into her hand and immediately strolled away so she couldn't give it back.
Minato proved to be more of a morning person that day than Inoichi, and he agreed with their team leader even as Natsumi huffed and shoved the food into a weapon's pouch. "He's right, sempai."
"This is a lot less intense than what I have been doing." The ghost eyed kunoichi informed him tartly, ignoring the fact her left eye was twitching. "I'll recover given enough time, but that will take time."
Her kouhai reached back and kept Inoichi from walking into a fence as they turned back onto the main road they had been following last night. "It's… you still look a little unhealthy, please just eat some?"
"I'll nibble as we walk, but I wasn't lying when I said I'd throw up if I ate anymore."
Jiraiya had ordered a very large breakfast for them before any of his genin had tripped into the main room of the inn, and while Natsumi was still somewhat new to the whole genin thing she wasn't new to fussy team leaders. Sakumo had pulled similar shit on her too when they could afford doing things like that, just less inn provided food and more excess hunting and foraging results getting dumped on her lap.
Which wasn't very often, but it had happened enough time for her to recognize it.
Inoichi stumbled into her back, causing the ex-assassin to break off her mental train of thought and the budding fūinjutsu prodigy to huff.
"What's wrong with him?"
"Inoichi-kun pulled the graveyard shift on guard duty, remember?" Natsumi paused just long enough to give her fellow genin a hike up on her back, ignoring it as the Yamanaka heir pretty much crumpled onto her and fell back asleep. "It's pretty much the worst shift, because you don't get enough sleep no matter what you try to do."
Minato hummed, eyeing first her then their insensible teammate and finally their jōnin-sensei's back. "I had first… and you woke me up this morning… did sensei wake you up for yours?"
"He didn't."
"He slept while we pulled guard?"
She made a split second decision, before shaking her head enough to get her hair out from between her and Inoichi and to keep her other teammate's attention on her. "Jiraiya-sensei is skilled enough to wake up if anything had happened to us, we're really the only ones that need the experience in pulling guard duty on missions. He's also pretty much our only safety net out here, he has to be in tip top condition because shit happens even if you try to keep it from happening."
…and the man was still injured. He probably needed the rest.
Minato's irritated expression smoothed out at her explanation. "Oh."
"Minato-kun, take you teammate." Jiraiya called back to them, having glanced back and seen his genin's situation. "Neko-chan's a bit more of a threat, so I want her free to retaliate if she needs to."
Natsumi dearly wanted to throw him a glare, because it was entirely possible he just didn't want her expending the energy to support Inoichi as well as herself for the next hour or two if he had hopped on the 'stuff neko-chan' bandwagon. She still helped Minato transfer the mind walker to his back instead of her own, because it was entirely valid that she was more of a threat.
She wouldn't hesitate to kill if she had to, after all. Minato probably hadn't reach that milestone yet.
It seemed as if she had exchanged one fussy team leader for another.
Joy.
(ooo000ooo)
Inoichi turned a very fetching brick red when he finally woke up fully, still stretched out on his teammate's back.
He also muttered nasty things under his breath while Natsumi obediently nibbled on the ration bar Jiraiya forced on her under Minato's stern glare, up until the sannin called a temporary halt for lunch and finally filled the team in on why they were pulling a three man guard shift and not a four.
They took refuge in the grassy ditch, because there was little forest cover this far out and at least lower ground protected the genin if not the sannin's head and shoulders.
"You three know I'm not a regular jōnin." Jiraiya started off, surprisingly serious once he had smoothed a barrier seal for privacy down on one of the boulders Fire Country used as mile markers along the roadside. "That means there is likely going to be occasions I have to leave you on your own for a time. I'd rather you be ready and trained to hunker down and wait for my return, that's why we're going to do this slightly differently than normal. Tonight we will be roughing it, so neko-chan has the midnight shift since she's used to pulling that and continuing with the mission she's on. You boys can decide who takes first and last between yourselves."
Minato was passing out their food from his storage scroll of travel snacks, two apples and a skin of water each since they were only stopping for less than an hour. Natsumi still had half of her ration bar but she didn't offer that up to the boys, the Toad Sage glared at her when she opened her mouth to do so.
"We will reach our target destination tomorrow, sometime near noon. I have a few things to do on top of our mission, so while I do that you three are to get everything you want to do in the town out of the way quickly after you deliver the message to our client. Stick together, this isn't Konohagakure and sometimes the civilians out this far don't realize what shinobi really means. Defer to Natsumi-chan in a pinch, again she's been out this far before and probably farther and knows how to prevent any major issues. Keep your heads down, don't make waves, and do not tell anyone whose students you are. Any questions?"
"Where do you want us to wait for you if we're done quicker? Inside the village or on the outskirts?" Natsumi piped up swiftly.
"Inside, I'll designate a spot before cutting you all loose that is both easily defendable and open enough to prevent getting boxed in."
Inoichi raised a hand slowly. "What do you mean by the civilians not realizing what shinobi means?"
Jiraiya tugged a massive hand through his unruly white hair, heaving a gusty sigh. "Exactly that. They don't get regular ninja traffic out here, most of them probably haven't seen a ninja before you three wander the streets. The town is both too close to Konohagakure to see any foreign shinobi and too far to see any Leaf-nin patrols or teams pass by regularly. Sometimes the civilians out this far are a little… lacking in survival sense. Think of the worst of the hidebound civilians in our village, multiply it by a couple factors, and you have rural Fire Country civilians."
"He means don't be surprised if someone asks for my bride price." Natsumi helpfully informed her teammates. "It's happened before."
Minato inhaled his apple chunk, choking and wheezing even as she pounded on his back so he wouldn't suffocate.
"Not surprised." Jiraiya muttered lowly, rubbing at his jaw with a grimace. "What did Sakumo do to them?"
"Oh no, I was partnered with Jackal at the time. That poor civilian, he's a little mentally scarred from that. Perfectly alright physically, just scared shitless for a day or three… or forever."
"It's also not unusual to get threatened by a civilian for simply being in the wrong place," the sannin hastily continued before either boy could demand more of that story, smoothing the smirk from his face with a hand, "some civilians don't have good feelings for shinobi as a whole no matter what village of origin. Take that into account, and the fact that if you attack anyone without due cause it can be traced back to you and marked down on your records or get you arrested. Remember they are civilian, and remove yourself from any hostile situation before any incident gets out of hand."
Jiraiya checked the general time by glancing at the sky, motioning with one hand for his team to get up and removing his seal from the rock with another.
"You three understand? Behave, or I will sentence you all to a month or two of D-ranks."
He got three replies; one cheerful, one dazed, and the last raspy and gritted out. He ignored the last one, Minato had been choking on his food.
\V/
The next day wasn't as eventful until they reached the town they were delivering messages to, other than the fact Natsumi yawned more than usual.
Jiraiya did as he promised, pointing out an inn with an impressively wide and expansive front window, as well as four routes that could be used to escape the inside of the building with, to wait for him in once the genin were done sightseeing before leaving them to it after the delivery was over with.
Natsumi had seen rural villages before, both bigger and smaller than the one they were in, but she tagged along with her teammates as they got their urge to rubberneck around at a purely civilian town out of their systems. Minato got confused over why most of the houses had thatched roofs that needed a conversation about material availability verses common civilian usages, but Inoichi just seemed content to note and mentally log what kind of reception three genin of Konoha got.
His Yamanaka lavender, pupil-less eyes didn't help at all. It was almost as bad as Natsumi's own ghostly pale and mismatched pair.
It wasn't entirely pretty, but a war had just ended and there were possibly survivors of shinobi battles living and gossiping around the town. Whether or not they were lucky survivors was entirely dependent on what kind of ninja fight they escaped from or witnessed, and what they loss from them.
The ex-ANBU agent did steer their little group away from the small red-light district, because she had no desire to watch either pass out from blushing too hard or drowning in their own drool. They could go without her, probably with their jōnin-sensei on a future mission.
"We're being followed." Minato informed his teammates cheerfully, pointing at a nearby general store to cover their real topic of discussion.
Natsumi heaved a sigh. "I know, I was kind of hoping they'd get bored and leave."
Digging out his wallet, Inoichi shuffled through the money he probably got from his father for any souvenirs he might want to get. "They've been following us for a couple hours now, Natsumi-chan. I don't think they'll get bored. Come on, let's buy my okaa-chan a stuffed bird or something and see if the merchant will allow us out the back."
"We've had others that got tired of keeping an eye on the demon ninja children and left us to our own devices." She refuted, ignoring the wide-eyed look the clerk gave her for her words. "It was entirely possible they would wander away eventually if we gave it enough time."
"We're close to the time you gave sensei for us to return to our meeting spot." Minato informed her seriously, scanning the bin of plushy toys for any birds. "I don't think they have stuffed birds, Inoichi-kun."
"Do they have a stuffed fox?"
He blinked at her over his shoulder, but plucked one out of the mess of fabric. "Yeah, why?"
"You can give it to the hime then."
Kushina loved foxes, ironic given the great big one she hid from the world and probably hated thinking of.
A light blush dusted across the bridge of Minato's nose, but he shuffled a little woodenly to the cash register easily enough to pay for it and asked permission for them to leave by the back door. Asking to be let out the back cause the poor girl to stutter in protest, but the owner of the store apparently was nearby and sympathetic enough with Konoha's military forces to allow it.
Natsumi led them out but turned to them instead of immediately jumping up. "Running across thatched roofs is a lot like tree walking, but I'm not going to teach you here and now. I'm rather bad at it and Jiraiya-sensei will probably want to guide that lesson himself on something he won't have to pay damages for. So instead we'll be running across the wooden beams I know are present, those run along the apex of the roof. Make one misstep and you'll put a foot through so be careful. Now, follow my lead."
She got up via a fence, leaping up on the thankfully shale shingles the general store had. They delayed only to ensure their tails weren't looking up before starting to run across the roofs, easily putting several streets between them and the men that had been following them before dropping down to the streets again.
Inoichi was the first one to comment. "Well… that wasn't so bad."
"Kind of fun, actually." Agreed Minato, stuffing the fox plushy away hastily into his traveling pack.
"Now you've done it, you two have jinxed us."
"There are no such things as jinxes, sempai."
Natsumi gave him a level look. "Famous last words."
"What?"
"She's saying she doesn't believe you." Inoichi helpfully chipped in, opening the door to the inn they would be staying at for the night.
(ooo000ooo)
"How stupid do they think we are?"
"Probably as stupid as they are."
"Hush you both." Natsumi gave her teammates a glare each, then turned back to the group of yakuza trying to threaten the innkeeper and his wife about where the Toad Sage's traveling companions were.
One slight problem for them, no one on their team had checked into the inn yet or booked rooms for them. Jiraiya had their traveling funds and the shinobi wasn't back yet.
Neither one they were trying to squeeze information out of knew who they were or where the team was.
Still… the ex-ANBU agent didn't really want to tangle with that. She had maybe all of three weeks on the team, and while she and Minato had years of experience fighting with or around each other there was both her ANBU experience and Inoichi to take into account. Jiraiya had yet to help them smooth that all out, difficulties which would probably pop it's ugly head up the moment it would make everything worse for the team.
There were ten yakuza crowding around the elderly couple, and three genin lacking their team leader… and several bystanders.
Natsumi didn't like those odds.
Inoichi was more medium to long range since he preferred his throwing weapons to hand to hand combat, Minato could manage it well enough for a fūinjutsu user, and Natsumi was a competent close-quarters fighter in taijutsu. While it wasn't impossible, it was a risk that Jiraiya might not be pleased with them taking.
She finally sat properly on her chair, giving her teammates a serious look and informing them of the risks and what options they had.
"They're threatening the poor people running the inn, sempai."
Inoichi had to agree with that plan of action, if not the reason behind it entirely. "Might help a little with the village's reputation here rather than just sitting here watching this happen."
Natsumi wanted to groan, Jiraiya was going to get pissed off at her. "Alright, but only if they actually move to do harm."
Minato gifted her with a bright smile, sliding off his chair and making his surprisingly stealthy way around the common room. The Yamanaka heir gave a slight salute, sliding off in the other direction from his fellow blond.
She allowed herself a moment to hesitate, but slipped through the crowd easily enough to position herself at the back of the yakuza present.
It was a nice inn, the common room they had been eating dinner in before this was warm and comfortable without coming off as stiffly formal or freakishly clean. There were obviously regular customers, from the looks of helpless irritation or disgusted fear on the faces of the civilians bearing witness to the innkeeper and his wife being questioned roughly by the thugs that barged in without warning.
Natsumi despaired over all of it, and promised herself to help their team leader pay for the damages when Minato kneed a very jittery yakuza in the face before he could grab the elderly woman and yank her around. Inoichi held the door shut while his teammates went through the barely trained thugs from both ends, dealing most of the damage with their hands and feet because killing civilians in front of civilians was a very big no for Konoha-nin not on mission.
The fight was a bit dicey, but two trained genin against ten men who could be considered barely brawler level in combat when shock allowed Minato and Natsumi to take out four with little problem. Her by kicking out knees and follow up punches to the head and he by his flying knee and the one kick he managed to another's head before he lost the altitude. Natsumi fought dirty enough that she managed another two before getting backhanded across the face, and she took vindictive pleasure in kicking that asshole in the junk as hard as she could. By the time she could turn around Minato had downed another but was floundering a little with the last two tag teaming him, but bodily tackling the closer one to her gave him enough room to finish the fight with a pull to a leg and a drop kick to the last man's throat.
There was a ringing silence as the gathered bystanders absorbed the fact two kids just took out ten yakuza. Natsumi ignored it, touching Minato's shoulder to gain his attention. "Ensure they're out of it and separate them from any weapons. Tie them up once you're done. Ino-kun?"
"Still clear, as far as I can see."
She nodded absently as she dug into her weapon pouch, unsurprised. If the local yakuza knew enough to know Jiraiya had been traveling with others they probably knew the general looks and age of them too. Ten men against three kids might sound like overkill, but not ten men against three genin shinobi.
Digging out a decent amount to cover replacing the floor if needed from her emergency funds, the ex-ANBU agent turned to the couple that ran the inn and bowed deeply as she held the ryo out. "Yanushi-sama, our deepest apologies for the disturbance of your business. Accept this with our regret that our presence here has endangered you, your honorable wife, and your livelihood."
The poor man looked torn. On one hand, ninja who just beat up yakuza in front of him. On the other, she was a tiny child-sized paying guest trying to apologize for his town's criminals coming after them.
Natsumi didn't envy him that decision. He still took the money with a hesitant bow of his own in thanks, his wife seemingly torn between grabbing a broom and smacking them or the yakuza around or ducking back into the kitchen. A quiet word also secured a room for the night, making her dig a bit more into her emergency fund but she paid that without complaint.
They left the yakuza and their weaponry to the townsfolk, who all looked to want to express their own opinions to them now that they were disarmed.
"Should we stay here?" Asked Inoichi as they cautiously made their way to the large room Natsumi secured for them. "We did just get into a fight downstairs."
"Sensei told us to meet him here… and we did just paint a target on those poor people by interfering with that situation." She told them both tiredly. "Leaving would not only irritate our team leader but probably inconvenience anyone looking for revenge, encouraging them to take it out on our host and his wife if we're not nearby to target. Neither of which are good things."
Minato blinked his baby blues back at her, from where he was trapping the door to the inn's hallway. "So…?"
"Expect to be woken up tonight. Any revenge attack will need to wait until they realize those guys aren't coming back with us or our bloody heads. If sensei isn't back by then we're going to have to deal with that ourselves." Natsumi carefully considered her teammates for a long moment. "We'll pull guard on the whole building, so there will be ample warning. I'm staying up-"
"Sempai."
"I'm staying up," she continued over him stubbornly, "because someone needs to ensure whoever's asleep is safe and whoever's on watch has some kind of backup in reach. If we hit morning, or sensei returns, I'll go to sleep then."
Minato didn't look appeased at all.
Natsumi didn't blame him, she hated being sleep deprived.
There was no coffee in this world… it wasn't worth it.
(ooo000ooo)
True to her cautioned warning, they were attacked in the middle of the night.
Thankfully their attackers decided to ensure they were all awake by crashing through a window to get to the team. Inoichi, who had been asleep at the time, barely managed to roll under the other bedframe and avoid getting showered with broken glass and bits of wood.
Natsumi, who was pass the point of being merely tired and had moved on to irritable, threw one of the pillows she had been propped up on into the man's face hard enough to knock the yakuza backwards into the shattered glass mess on the floor. Inoichi rolled out from the other side of the bed she was perched on, close enough to use her weapon pouches if needed.
The two of them stared at the man on the floor, who was probably bleeding out or close to it. Either way, she rather doubted he was in any condition to actually bother them.
"Think he got lucky, or are they doing that to every window in the inn?"
Natsumi thought about it, and sighed. "Probably every window. I hate clearing rooms. I always miss something or someone until the last second."
Inoichi rolled up to his feet even as the screams started, as their fellow guests started reacting to both the loud noises and probably the bloody mess of people crashing into their rooms. "Left or right?"
"Minato-kun should've been near the back of the building, let's go that way first and pick him up." She spared one glance at the idiot that decided body slamming a window was a good way to gain entrance into a building. "If they're doing something that reckless, I don't think many who tried it are in any condition to actually fight us."
Window crashing was an art, almost. It took a lot of skill and stupid luck to do it without causing jagged wounds or losing pints of blood, neither of which it seemed as if these men had.
Just simply by traveling down the hallway Natsumi and Inoichi could hear which rooms had incapacitated intruders and which ones might need them to help a little. They only stuck their heads into the worst sounding ones, but oddly it was the yakuza men screaming in pain or fear instead of their fellow if mostly undressed guests.
Minato, when they found him sneaking peeks to ensure everyone renting rooms were alright, looked as pale as Inoichi did. "That… that is just wrong."
"That…?" Natsumi prompted after a moment, wondering where he was going with that.
"Who crashes through a closed window?"
The situation was so stupid she actually gave that question some serious thought. "Maybe… they didn't know shinobi use opened windows?"
Inoichi gave her a long look. "You need sleep."
"Yeah… I know. Let's get started, the sooner we're done the sooner we get to go back to what we were doing."
(ooo000ooo)
It took the three of them several hours to clear out every room in the two story inn, dragging the attackers out into the hallway and providing some emergency first aid when needed to keep people from dying before tying them up.
A few guests had done similar things, tying the men up with the ropes they had used to swing into the windows hard enough to gain entrance. Team Seven dragged them all off to join their initial group of ten yakuza apprehended the night before in the inn's basement.
Natsumi would forever blame the tiredness for getting taken hostage.
While her teammates were busy hauling unconscious or bleeding bodies around she had been speaking with the rumpled innkeeper about how he was going to deal with the men that assaulted his inn, in the common room with the wide windows that thankfully escaped being smashed through.
After the first ten yakuza swaggered in boasting on the top of their lungs and the next wave came with their own alarm of crashing glass, she hadn't counted on a nuke-nin who could blend in with the civilians well enough not to register on her impaired senses.
He had apparently not counted on the fact that the rumors of the inn's attack would have reached the Toad Sage by that point, so it had all balanced out.
Mostly.
Natsumi still ended up with an unforgiving bicep banded across her neck and her feet dangling off the floor as the man tried to talk his way out of the sannin's black book in front of his genin team using her as a bargaining chip.
"Neko-chan," a rumpled and ragged edged Jiraiya spoke through gritted teeth, "I think he deserves to know what you did before joining up with my team. Show him, would you?"
She blinked slowly at the order, then swung her lower body up over the arm holding her until her ankles and heels slammed into the man's head. A vicious twist of her hips and flexed knees snapped his neck, and the Toad Sage rescued her before she and the dead body hit the floor.
\V/
Jiraiya paid the innkeeper probably twice his inn was worth, snagged all three of his genin, and skipped town in a fast hurry.
All Natsumi knew was the onsen he took them to was one she had never visited before and they had a very nice looking bed before she passed out for a couple solid hours of sleep.
She woke up to Inoichi telling the others about the attack on their room the night before.
"…and I was pretty sure the guy was dead until we pulled him out of there later on. She didn't even blink, just snagged our gear from between the beds and walked out."
"You two can't use neko-chan as a benchmark," Jiraiya informed the both of them slowly, "you realize that, right? She's in no way normal for a genin."
"The hell happened, sensei?" Said neko-chan asked blearily, shoving her head up off the pillow. "We didn't do anything, but we got tailed and attacked anyways."
"That… was just a clusterfuck and a half." The sannin informed her cheerfully, rubbing the back of his head with a massive paw. "My informant tried to kill me, and wanted to make a clean sweep of it using the yakuza gangs he had bribed or coerced into his service. Thankfully he never knew just what kind of shinobi he had been dealing with, and hired idiots well below me in rank to try and knock me off."
Natsumi gave him a sniff. "The guy I killed?"
"Missing-nin from Lightning, their version of an academy dropout with way too many mental problems to have made it as shinobi. Made it just fine as a two-bit thug's assassin, but I guess he ran into a better one."
She blinked both eyes slowly, processing that and what she remembered from before she passed out. "Oh."
"Sempai?"
Natsumi stared blankly at Minato and his faintly worried look. "I just killed someone in front of you and you're worried about me?"
"It's the second time." He pointed out to her with concern, frowning at her continued blank stare. "That Kumo-nin during Kushina-hime's kidnapping, remember? He died before medical aid was given."
"…oh."
"If you two are quite done with your moment…" Inoichi drawled out like the brat he was, "can we continue with the debriefing?"
She thought about it for a long moment. "Can I go back to sleep?"
The three males of Team Seven looked at each other and basically shrugged.
Jiraiya reached over to ruffle her already messy hair with a, "Sure."