Ok – next chapter there'll be more action (probably). And don't worry, after the Chuunin Exams there'll be more team 7 again.

Hisana's schedule is swamped. Occupied. Full to the point of bursting.

Between Kakashi-sensei, Kohaku-sensei, Neji, and her ever demanding cousin, there's no way that she'll be able to take on an apprenticeship, no matter what Shizuha and Shiki say. She is a little curious though, because for tokubetsu jounin she'll surely need one. While Kohaku-sensei merely cautions her about spreading herself too thin, Kakashi-sensei has a different problem with it.

"Mou … InSab? But that's so boring."

Hisana wants to disagree. Infiltration and Sabotage did have an introductory course in the Academy, which she thought was rather interesting back then. Apart from that she's pretty much guaranteed a position there because of her Sharingan. No one forges documents quite like an Uchiha, after all.

"You can forge stuff later, if you really want. Much later, when you're old and nobody wants you in the field anymore. No student of mine is going to be a desk ninja."

He says 'desk ninja' like he says 'youth' – as if it's something obscene that nobody should ever hear him utter. No, according to Kakashi-sensei Hisana is going to be the best thing you can be as a ninja – "I'm making you a tracker."

"A tracker?"

She looks at him with not a little skepticism. Trackers are great, sure. But she has no special talent – no Byakugan, no Inuzuka nose, nothing that would make her any more useful at it than any other ordinary ninja. The only special thing about her are her eyes; shouldn't she be utilizing them? The jounin makes a dismissive noise.

"Don't rely on your kekkei genkai. It's a lesson the Hyuuga should have learnt ages ago. You are not your doujutsu. You are Hisana-chan."

It's a nice thing to hear, she realizes a little dimly. Kakashi-sensei is probably the first to have figured this out simply because he's been 'Kakashi' far longer than he's been 'Sharingan no Kakashi'. Most of the doujutsu users are 'Hyuuga' or 'Uchiha' at least as much as they are their own person. But if Kakashi-sensei thinks that she would be good as one, then she's not really inclined to disagree. For all his fooling around, he does seem to take her training pretty seriously.

"Of course," he tells her wryly, "If you screw up, what would the Hokage think of me?"

Probably that she's yet another student he's very inconspicuously trying to get rid of. Again, Uchiha-privileges, she thinks. If she were anyone else, it would be exactly the thing he'd be doing and there'd be no repercussions at all. For a moment she wonders if he hasn't been trying to bully her into giving up herself, despite his earlier words.

Then again, two things can be true.

"Tracking is an art," Kakashi-sensei says, and it sounds for once as if he means it. "It is also a trade, of course. But you will never be more than just an ok tracker if you don't transcend that initial stage and start thinking about it in a more abstract, creative way."

She nods, still not entirely sure where this is going.

"There are three methods of tracking: sight, scent, and chakra. As you probably know the Hyuuga track by sight, the Inuzuka by scent, and the Aburame by chakra."

Again she nods – the first two make sense, the latter comes as no real surprise. She knows that the Aburame are a tracker clan, and the bugs have neither a sense of smell, nor very good eye sight. But they do eat chakra – all chakra. Of course they'd be sensitive to it. Kakashi-sensei crinkles his eye at her.

"You, my dearest student, might be able to pull off two and a half of those."

Ok, so tracking is pretty cool, but also –ouch.

She's been trying, for more than two hours now, to channel chakra into her nose.

"You won't be as effective as an Inuzuka of course," Kakashi-sensei said, "but there are still things you'll have that they don't. And a jack of all trades is always welcome anywhere."

It's a weird feeling; it's not just her nose that she needs to enhance, but more the part between her nose and her throat. Kakashi-sensei watches her critically, Sharingan uncovered to check her progress.

"Further back," he instructs. "The secret of scenting something is not just in the nose. We smell with our nose and our tongue. If you can taste the scent then you're on the right track."

The first time she gets it right, she nearly hurls all over the jounin's shoes. Her brain isn't made for so much olfactory input; tears shoot to her eyes and she gags.

"Too much," she wheezes, "oh god, is it always like that?"

"You're young," he merely says. "Use less chakra until your brain has made the proper pathways to process this kind of information. But hey – you found the right spot."

She glares at him with watery eyes.

With less chakra it's easier, but also harder. The nausea is gone, but like this it's more difficult to tell where a smell is coming from. The training Kakashi-sensei puts her through to rectify this reminds her a lot of 'Looking at things with Kakashi'. Only this time it's 'Smelling things with Kakashi' – which sounds so wrong, she doesn't want to think about it.

The concept is really easy: The jounin hides a perfumed handkerchief somewhere, and Hisana has to find it. They upgrade to more difficult items eventually, after she's learnt to recognize them. When her sensei has her tracking particular flowers across the forest, Hisana spends two of her free afternoons in the Yamanaka Flower Shop and has Ino show her the different sort of plants that grow around Konoha – mucht to the girl's delight.

"This is so cool," Ino sighs. "I wish I could do that – I mean, I recognize flowers by their smell, but only, like, when I hold them to my nose."

"It's not so hard once you get the hang of it," Hisana admits. "Your team might need a tracker someday. You could try."

She almost regrets her kind words when the Yamanaka throws her a vaguely worshipful look.

"You think I could do it? Really?"

"Yes, yes. Sure you could."

Her team is a little less happy about Hisana's enthusiasm.

"Haru-kun, come here."

She takes her teammates arm and sniffs. The look he gives her is decidedly weirded out. The scent she picks up is familiar enough – after all Kohaku-sensei taught them how to track each other in a more basic way already. But like this she can pick up more things about him than just the general scent of the laundry detergent his mother prefers and the soap he uses. There's also what he had for breakfast and several things that he must have touched at some point today, as well as a base scent that she's come to associate with human skin.

"You should switch to a different soap," she tells him. "You smell like vanilla; I could track you down like that from miles away. And I'm not even that good yet."

"Oh good," Kohaku-sensei remarks somewhat offhandedly. "For a moment I worried that I might have to remove you from Kakashi-senpai's influence. I am relieved it is just that."

What did he think she was doing? No, better not ask. But after that she's a little more aware of how weird it must look.

Shiki thinks it's hilarious when Hisana turns up on her front door, formally asking for a sniff.

"A what?"

"I want to know what you smell like."

The Nara semi-discreetly sniffs her own armpit.

"Not like that you weirdo."

After Shiki has laughed herself stupid about Hisana's new vocation, she does allow her to sniff her arm. It's terribly awkward – strangely more so than with Hisana's own team – and the Uchiha hastily takes her leave when Shikano walks in on them, Hisana's nose in the crook of Shiki's elbow.

"No," he says, "no. I don't know what's wrong with you lately, but it's super creepy."

The whole thing is terribly embarrassing; still, she can't help but exaggeratedly sniff in Shikano's direction as she passes him by. He flinches almost violently, much to his sister's delight. Thankfully, after this Shizuha bears the whole thing calmly and doesn't even bother to ask questions.

"I am a tracker too," she reminds Hisana. "Go ahead."

Despite that reassurance it takes a while until Hisana is comfortable with the whole scent tracking business again.

"You realize," Kakashi-sensei says delicately, "that you don't need to ask everyone for permission? Nobody has to know that you're taking their scent."

No, but it kind of seems like a violation of privacy otherwise; she'd rather deal with a little embarrassment than feel like some sort of human predator. Even though that's basically what she's training for – in a sense.

Two months later Kakashi-sensei is looking at her with a self-satisfied expression.

"How do you feel about 'Looking at Things with Kakashi' season 2?"

"Not particularly inclined to a repeat."

"It's a good thing it was a rhetorical question then, isn't it?"

Tracking things by sight is bullshit.

"I am not touching that," she tells him, vaguely gesturing towards the wet spot on the forest floor.

"But Hisana-chan, it's just a little pee."

"YES."

Kakashi-sensei scratches the back of his head.

"You know," he starts innocently, "I really considered making this an official apprenticeship. But if you'd rather not …"

"What," she replies, not even bothering to make it sound like a question, "You mean it's not already?"

"Well no, not officially. What, did you think it would be as easy as just doing it?"

He watches her blank expression with polite interest.

"I just realized you're superfluous on my CV then," she informs him.

The jounin visibly wilts.

"I could have asked Gai-senpai," she muses, just to drive in the knife a little deeper. "I'm sure he'd gladly make me his apprentice."

She didn't think it was possible for a grown man to pout like that.

"All right," he finally caves, "let's start smaller then."

Animal tracks turn to human tracks turn to … pee, eventually. She does see the reasoning behind it – has from the beginning. That doesn't mean that she's all too happy to put her face near the puddle, just to see how far it's sunken into the soil. Thankfully it's just as easy to block her nose with chakra as it is to enhance it. There's no way she can look at it properly while smelling it too.

There's one bright silver lining on her horizon. One that outshines Sasuke's current moodiness, the humongous pile of paperwork for her impending apprenticeship, and yes, even Looking at Things with Kakashi: The next Chuunin Exams are only four months away. As travel takes about a week, and the official registering should be done rather early, Kohaku-sensei announced that they'd be leaving a little more than three months from now.

"Chuunin Exams," Haru breathes, a little paler than usual. "Are we ready?"

"Of course we're ready," Sora scoffs. "We're a whole year late actually."

Hisana has to agree; she feels confident. Of course it's always easy to feel strong when you're at home, your family and friends in easy reach, and no one is actively out for your blood.

"You will be fine," Kohaku-sensei says, and that is that.

Hisana lets her teammates believe it's because he has so much confidence in them; nobody has to know that the Exam after that is held in Kumo – another country that no Hyuuga is allowed to step foot into. Then again, she knows her sensei well enough by now to know that he'd have little scruples to make them wait yet another year. So maybe he does think they're ready.

"I want to come," Sasuke tells her, as soon as he gets the news.

Hisana sighs.

"I know. And I wish I could take you along, but I can't."

"Why not? You will be gone for almost two months – you've never been away that long."

"Suna and Konoha are not exactly the best of friends," she reminds him. "We are allies, but outside of war and trade that means nothing. Our team has Kohaku-sensei, so we'll be fine. But I can't be sure that I can always have an eye on you."

The noise that leaves Sasuke's mouth is more than derisive, but he doesn't say 'I can take care of myself', for which she's glad. It would only lead to an argument.

"We aren't allowed to take anyone along anyway," she tries to appease him. "It's classified as a mission."

She's not naïve enough to believe that Sasuke's silence is agreement. It's defeat, yes, but likely he's angry with her now. That doesn't really worry Hisana, but she does feel like whacking him over the head in exasperation. She loves Sasuke – he's just so difficult sometimes. It's been getting worse in the past few months. He's become easily riled half the time and withdrawn the rest of it. Genma assured her it's nothing to worry about though.

"The girls have been getting worse," he admitted with a sigh.

"Since the Yamanaka girl seems to have calmed down, they're without a leader now, so they're getting bolder. It's worse for Sakura-chan; Sasuke-kun can deal."

She's noticed it too. Admittedly, Hisana hasn't been home as often as she should. Apart from Sundays, which are usually off, she really does work hard. It's a strange deviance from the first few months of her genin career, and she's not sure if she likes it. At first she felt that she couldn't protect Sasuke, now she feels they're not as close as they should be anymore.

"I'm hoping I'll be here for your Chuunin Exams," she tells him, as if not even noticing his mood. "That's why I'm taking the Exams now – I might make proctor at yours."

"I don't need you babysitting me," he says, but the look in his eyes is interested. "What sort of proctor?"

She shrugs, unconcerned.

"Practical if I can. Maybe I'll just be security standing around somewhere, but I am angling for the public matches. Not sure if they'll let me with you there, but …"

This seems to appease him. Honestly, she's not entirely sure what's going on in his head sometimes. Hisana can't even be sure why exactly he wants to come along to Suna. Maybe he's just curious. Maybe he worries about her. Maybe it's something else entirely. It's a little disconcerting that she can't tell anymore when she used to be able to read him like a book. But he's growing up. It's probably normal.

As long as Naruto and Sakura still have influence over Sasuke, whatever is happening can't be too worrisome. Probably it is just the girl-problem. Contrary to popular blief Sasuke is not a complicated person, after all. People just like to read too much into him; it might be the broody tragic orphan thing. The dangerous thing about him is that his emotions run rather deep; anger doesn't fade easily, betrayal is never forgiven, and changing his opinion is like trying to move a mountain.

"I'd rather you be there," she says. "but the next Exams in Konoha are after your graduation. You really think I should wait that long?"

For a moment he looks at her as if he wants to say yes. Hisana isn't sure what she'd do then. But her cousin shakes his head.

"No. I just want –"

He makes a frustrated noise. There's a beat of silence in which he's visibly struggling to express himself.

"I don't like this," he finally settles on. "I don't trust Suna, I don't trust your team, I don't trust that you won't do something stupid out there."

The mix of indignation and fondness he provokes is a familiar one. She ruffles his hair, both of them aware that she can't promise him that it won't be so.