Day one of border patrol is just them putting down roots; setting up a tent and other quality of life necessities. Luckily, Minato is a fūinjutsu-shi. This means he brought a large square tent and a propane camping stove, as well as various cookwares and dehydrated food stuffs, all in one scroll.
Fresh food and storage seals don't always mix well, though. He attempted to bring several bunches of bananas as an experiment, and they've all shriveled up and turned black.
There's a large mess hall like tent already in the border camp, but it doesn't hurt to have their own mini kitchen for privacy's sake. Sensei and Minato are VIPs and even Kakashi's been getting the occasional scornful glance, which she is monitoring closely.
Honōka, by comparison, flies almost under the radar. She's not being completely missed, just grossly mislabeled. In fact, she's willing to bet most the shinobi at the camp are convinced she belongs to Minato and is just along for the ride, like Kakashi. (They're wrong on both accounts.)
So, seeing as Sensei and Minato are talking strategy and Kakashi is listening to them rather than watching her, she decides to take a look around the camp.
"Little missy, you busy?"
She stares up at the large man, who's about the Hokage's age. His chakra is robust and rather dense for a man nearing fifty, she thinks. Perhaps it's an Akimichi trait.
She slowly shakes her head.
"I'm not busy."
"Do you think your jōnin-sensei will mind me borrowing you for a bit?"
She shakes her head again.
"Good. My brats ran off on me and these potatoes ain't peeling themselves."
She glances at the sack he's carrying—longer than she is tall—and then at the man's huge hands. One finger is probably bigger than the largest paring knife she owns.
"I can help."
He laughs; a surprisingly tame sound for his size.
"Come on, then. I got the buckets set up by the water pump."
He leads and they get straight to peeling—her with a paring knife and the giant man with a comically small vegetable peeler. She's not sure why he singled her out amongst all the other young chūnin. It didn't feel quite spontaneous.
"Oi, little missy," he says. "What's your name?"
"Tsunemori Honōka-desu."
"Tsunemori, eh? Any relation to the folks at Tsunemori-ya in the Steam District?"
Why does everyone know her family's bathhouse? Tenjin-ya is so much nicer.
"Yes."
He chuckles, oblivious to her discomfort.
"Thought so—you look just like Sachiko-chan's boy. 'Suppose it's him that looks just like you."
"Sachiko…?" It clicks then. Her sister married a man named Akimichi Nagihiko when she was… three? "Oh."
Her response gives him pause, the heavy set of his dark-rimmed eyes and cat-eared hat-and-hitai-ate giving him an almost feline look of distaste.
"Sachiko-chan don't talk much about her family."
She shrugs.
"There's not much to talk about."
He considers; a faint, unhappy, rumbling deep in his chest as he does.
"'Suppose some families are like that," he allows.
"Un."
"Akimichi Torifu, by the way."
"Nice to meet you, Torifu-san."
They continue peeling in silence. Torifu feels a small amount of irritation—with himself. He doesn't like awkward silences.
"So, who taught you how to peel potatoes?"
She rolls her shoulders. Her grandfather from a lifetime ago. "Learned by watching," she says.
"I'm pretty sure you're supposed to cut away from yourself, missy."
"It's faster to do it this way."
"…"
"…"
They're halfway through the bag. Torifu turns a question over and over in his head and Honōka turns a potato over and over in her hand, peel dropping into a pile at her feet.
"Do them eyes mean anything? Sachiko-chan's ain't like them but—"
The knife slips on the starchy potato flesh and catches on her palm. Blood wells up and drips off her hand in fat drops, then in a steady trickle.
Torifu dries his hands on his pants and digs in his tool pouch for a roll of gauze.
"Here, missy."
She numbly takes the gauze and applies pressure. It's a fairly deep cut.
"A child that doesn't resemble their parents is the child of an oni…"
"You say something, missy?"
She shakes her head and stands up.
"Sorry. I'm done. Thank you for the gauze, Torifu-san." She bows and bolts back to her team's tent.
They're still debating strategy. She sticks her bloody hand in Sensei's face, which he promptly moves to a more appropriate viewing distance. He clicks his tongue sympathetically.
Kakashi screws up his nose, a little wrinkle forming in his mask. "Stinks like raw potato."
She shoves her other hand in Kakashi's face and he recoils sharply, falling out of his chair.
"I see your clumsiness with knives extends to cooking."
"Sometimes."
Sensei doesn't push the issue and begins healing her palm.
"I met Akimichi Torifu."
"Did you now?"
"Sachiko-nē-san married an Akimichi."
He glances up and immediately knows something has upset her.
"I have a… nephew?"
"Indeed. His name is Kōen."
She jerks, surprised, maybe even feeling a little betrayed, and Sensei holds her arm steady in an iron grip. He continues healing her now very minor cut.
"I met him when I spoke to your sister in June."
"About our father?"
He nods. Kakashi and Minato awkwardly move to the other side of the tent, attempting to look busy at the camping stove.
"Does he…" she gestures at her eyes.
"No. He takes after his father in that department, I imagine."
"Oh. Torifu-san said that we looked alike."
Sensei compares them for a moment in his head.
"His coloring is very much a mix of his father and mother. Your facial features, however, are quite similar."
She nods.
He finishes healing her hand and pats her head, tousling her hair. "This unruly hair is by far the most similar."
She ducks her head, blushing. She can't help it if it's unruly. It does what it wants.
"…" Sensei wants to say something else to her, but can't seem to find the words. He settles for ruffling her hair some more. "You need a haircut, child. You look positively feral."
She pouts. "Haircuts are itchy."
He scoffs. That sounds like a challenge to him. "Minato, get me a pair of scissors."
"Ah, wait, leave this part though," she tugs on the longer part at her left temple. "It's cool, and Rin agrees with me."
She can feel the snarky comment already forming in Kakashi's head.
"Don't even try, Kakashi—I'll tell Rin."
He snorts. "You'll forget to tell her by the time our rotation is over."
She recites a conversation he had with Guy, word for word, and he plants a hand over her mouth. She raises an eyebrow at him and licks his hand.
"Gross, Honōka!" he shakes his hand out. "Okay, yeah, I kind of set myself up for that one… Jeez, you never let anyone live down anything, do you?"
"I prefer to think of it as holding everyone accountable for their actions—ack! Sensei—cold!"
He's holding a blob of water in one hand and scissors in the other. She shivers.
"Sit down and hold still. I would hate to take an ear off."
She sits.
He drops the blob of water into a bowl after wetting her hair and starts clipping. Given the back of her head is a mess through and through, he takes it all down to a couple of centimeters. Then he picks up the water in the bowl and collects all the itchy bits of hair sticking to her neck… She shouldn't be surprised. Sensei has a solution for everything.
"Will you properly brush your hair if I leave the top longer?"
"Do I get to keep this part?" She tugs the long hair at her temple.
He sighs. "Very well."
"Okay. I didn't bring a brush though." She doesn't tell him she doesn't own one.
"She's lying; Honōka doesn't even own a hairbrush, Orochimaru-sama." Kakashi tattles.
She turns to find something to throw at him, and Sensei points her head straight ahead. He sighs, again.
"Children,"
"They grow up, eventually, or so I'm told," Minato offers.
Sensei scowls and repeats himself—with feeling. "Children."
He snips at her mop for another few minutes, pausing every so often to collect the offensive clippings, and does not touch her future Jedi braid. She thinks it might be on the wrong side, but that's besides the point—and she's still kind of upset she missed the local release of Episode I in her last life. Ojī-chan promised to take her on July tenth for the theater release. She absently raises a hand to twirl it, and Sensei pushes her hand away with one finger.
"Done." Sensei announces. "Do try to keep it respectable in the future."
She shakes her head and it poofs up, ends turning out in random directions. Minato laughs.
"Kakashi, Honōka-chan's hair is almost as bad as yours!"
"What are you saying, Sensei? Honōka's hair is clearly worse."
That night, after they've laid out their bedrolls and put out the lights, Honōka turns over and pokes Kakashi.
"My hair is way worse than yours."
Kakashi feels confused.
"Yeah, that's what I said?"
"My hair is the worst, therefore it's better than yours."
"What? Why?"
She giggles and turns over again.
"Hey…! How's it supposed to be better if it's worse? Honōka…? Oi, tell me why—"
"Children. Do shut up."