The walk to the teahouse was fairly straight forward, no twists or turns and as it turned out, a favorite spot for Inori and Kaito as well. We walked silently for a few paces, until Ryu barked quietly. He trotted closer and his ear flicked the back of my hand. With a practiced gesture I placed my hand behind his ear, cupped slightly so he could flick his ear rhythmically against my palms.Watched. Keeping my posture relaxed I scratched the back of his ear. We'd come up with this silent communication system a few weeks after coming to Konoha, it was a modified version of the basic code the ninja were taught at the academy. Sensei? I tapped back. He responded with a whine. No. well if it were a hostile signature Ryu would have been more urgently warning me. Glancing about reached with my chakra. Civilian levels surrounded us as they bustled to and fro and a few off-duty ninja as well but no one specifically…...there!

Close enough to overhear but small enough of a chakra store to be genin, keeping pace. Observation then. I grinned beneath my mask, before skipping a few steps to wrap my arms around the necks of my new teammates. Pulling them close, in a friendly headlock, I tucked my thumbs back against their chins.

"What the….." Inori started attempting to duck out of my hold. I tightened my hold subtly, tapping quickly against the bottoms of their chins.Tail. Few paces behind.The boys stiffened slightly, Kaito catching on quick and grabbing my wrist below his chin.

"Nanako-chan what are you doing." he said, all the while tapping the inside of my wrist. Inori blinked twice, glanced down at where he saw Kaito tapping, and I saw understanding settle in his gaze. Purpose? Kaito tapped again so Inori could see. This trying to hold a vocal conversation while silently conversing with your team was difficult, and we were definitely going to need some practice.

I eye smiled and giggled, like the preteen airhead I'm sure most ninja thought new graduate girls were. "I'm just so excited we get to be ninja. And I'm the luckiest girl ever I got both Kaito-kun and Inori-kun on my team. The other girls must be so jealous." Tail seems recon only.

Inori pushed at my head, in a show of trying to make me release him. "Nanako-chan if you don't let me go we are going back to a last name basis again." his fingers tapped my cheekbone in time with Kaito's on my wrist. Corse of action?

I widened my eyes, exaggerating my eyebrows and adding a whining keen to my voice. "Inori-kun that's so mean." Misdirection. Give false info. The signaled back their affirmative before twisting out of my hold, Inori playing up his frustration, as he usually displayed with his little fan stalkers. Kaito blushed and looked away. I raised an eyebrow at that, he was good.

We stayed in character even as we settled into cushions at the teahouse. We spent time rambling nonsense, me prattling on about the outfits I wanted to put together for my ninja uniform, Inori banging his head against the table, and Kaito had pulled out a paperback novel. We probably spent almost thirty minutes with the performance before I felt the chakra signature that had been following us leave. I held up a finger, instantly silencing Inori mid-rant.

"Ryu."

He nodded, "Right away princess!" and he trotted off outside. After a minute or two he bounded back and laid down near my feet under the table.

"All clear Princess." he huffed and curled his nose under his tail, completely relaxed.

Kaito opened his mouth, but I held up a hand. The booth we had and a canopy, like most did at the teahouses that catered to the ninja population. But just because we weren't visible didn't mean no one else was listening. Leaning out the booth I flagged down one of my regular waitresses.

"Rei-chan, would you mind bringing us a privacy seal please."

she bowed, "Of course Hatake-sama." she hurried off before I could grimace at the honorific.

"Sama?" Inori asked.

I sighed, "Last year Kakashi Nii-san actually filled out the paperwork, I know shocking, and officially named me the heir. But really it's not that big a deal, there is only two of us in the village."

Rei arrived at set a written seal against a symbol etched on the table, along with bringing us a teapot and some small sandwiches. "Will you be requiring anything else for now Hatake-sama?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Does dropping the honorific count?"

Rei gave me a small, if mischievous, smile. "Clan heirs deserve respect Hatake-sama."

Scowling I waved her away and pushed a little chakra into the paper. The privacy seal activated sealing all sound inside the booth.

The boys and I relaxed, and I twisted my head to the side, cracking my neck. "Good lord," I groaned, rubbing at the bridge of my nose. I opened one eye, peaking at Inori. "Those annoying sounds your fangirl's make gives me a headache, even if I'm the one making them."

He chuckled, leaning back, and resting an arm across the back of the booth. "You're telling me, I swear that giggle haunts my nightmares."

Kaito set his book back in his leg pouch, bracing his elbows against the table and propping his chin on his folded fingers. "What do you think our tail wanted?"

I hummed, tugging absently at my ear. A habit I picked up while deep in thought. "Their chakra was genin level at best, and non-hostile. With our sensei test being tomorrow I'd bet they were assigned to figure out what our plan was, if we had one."

Inori frowned, "Why spy on us though, we just graduated."

Pulling my mask down briefly to take a sip of my tea I hummed. "What do you know about the Jonin test?" I asked my boys.

Inori shrugged, "The genin Sensei use tests, created based usually on their specialization and, or based off a skill they deem necessary for a team to be ninja. They use these tests to determine whether the three students are worthy of being officially promoted into genin, sent back to the Academy for further training, or even dropped from the program altogether for overly poor performance."

I nodded, taking a bite of a sandwich, passing a bit to Ryu under the table. Kaito hummed in thought. "So, we need to figure out what the test is going to be if we want to excel."

I grinned, "Ninja must look underneath the underneath."

Inori pulled a piece of paper and a pen from his pouch, scribbling as we talked. "So, what do we know? And what can we speculate?"

I crossed my arms and leaned my head against the back of the booth, looking up at the ceiling. " She said 'We are meeting tomorrow at 8 am for your finale test, if you pups impress me then we will be a team.'".

Kaito nodded holding up his envelope. "Then she handed us each one of these."

Pulling mine out I flipped it open and blinked. "It's just the meeting location." I glanced up and the boys nodded. I furrowed my brow in confusion.

Inori looked up from his notes. " Alright, so what would Kegawa-Sensei what us to display?"

"She's an infiltration specialist, she's and earth chakra nature, and she's got Kokai." Kaito listed.

Ryu popped his head above the table, "Who is an amazing ninkin as well, he can henge into just about anything and hold it for long periods of time."

"Odd that she'd want to meet us by the river, then. Seeing as she's earth nature, if I was setting this up I'd want as much ground I could cover as possible."

I blinked, sitting up at attention, "River?"

Inori blinked glancing and seeing Kaito looking as confused as I was. "The river." He repeated, lifting his paper. "It's where she wants us to meet at 8 tomorrow."

I frowned, turning my page so my boys could see, "Mine says we are meeting at training ground 6."

we turned to Kaito who huffed. "Top of Hokage mountain."

"Why give us all different information?" I asked

"Not much of a promotion for the teamwork angle." Inori muttered.

After several minutes Kaito tugged aggressively at the tufts of hair sticking out from under his bandanna. "This is getting us nowhere."

Inori tapped his pen absently against the table in thought. "So, lets change the angle we are observing the problem from." At my raised eyebrow he elaborated. "Let's look at it as if we are Sensei and what she would do."

"Ah," I nodded, "Alright, she's an infiltration specialist so most likely that is what their gearing our team towards."

"That or reconnaissance or scouting." Kaito added.

"So, what are important to Reconnaissance and infiltration missions?"

"My cousin said most of the Jonin tests involve a teamwork aspect." Kaito shrugged. "But I'm not sure how that can be the test if she's sending us to different locations."

I straightened quickly, "No wait!" I tapped the table excitedly. "It is still about teamwork. Sensei wasn't expecting us to have a planning meeting, if we hadn't had this meeting we all would have shown up to the locations none the wiser. So, what would an infiltration specialist do with a situation like that?"

Inori was the first to catch my train of thought. "She's gonna have impostors of us at each of the locations."

Kaito face palmed and groaned. "Makes sense. If we are supposed to be an infiltration and recon team then we should be able to pick up on something being different."

Ryu nodded, "And it plays the teamwork angle as well, if your team is acting off, ninja should immediately know."

"She's probably going to throw some bogus goal at us to divert our attention." I added.

Kaito laughed, crossing his arms behind his head. "We would have been caught totally off guard if Nanako hadn't requested this meeting."

Placing my mask back above my nose I held out my hand. "So we go to our respective locations, ace this test and become the most bad-ass Infiltration and reconnaissance team Konoha has ever seen!"

They placed their hands, and Ryu's paw, over mine, and we whooped in a team cheer.

Inori folded away the notes and put them back into his tool pouch, "So how do we tell if we are real or an impostor?"

"We need a team code, preferably a string of them, something no one else would know. That way we can use it even outside of this test in future missions."

We brainstormed a few ideas before I dove into Alice's memories, anime hadn't been her only passion and if I wanted a way to ensure my team had info no one else in this world had I'd use every bit of info I had. Leaning forward eagerly I grinned, "I've got an idea, my family were farmers before, traveling village to village. But there were some remote towns that had their own folk stories." My grin turned wicked, "How about I tell you about the tale of the Dragon Age."

I relayed the tale as Alice remembered it from her videogame. Inori and Kaito helping me pick out phrases and codes from it that only we would know. By the time we headed home, and Ryu and I settled into bed that night I had a confident, and contented smile on my face.

We even came up with a team name out of it.