"This is incorrect." Professor Ayame tapped her blueprints in the dim light of his office.

Takamaru waited for Yasahashi at the door while she met their professor for a quick corrections session. The jittery boy distracted himself by looking at the scraps of vellum and designs that were on a large drafting table next to the window.

Professor Ayame took a large, red marker, and circled an area on Yasahashi's plans. "You make this, you kill someone."

Yasahashi glared at the paper, and then at her teacher. But she looked at what she had done with seriousness.

"Do you understand why?"

Yasahashi nodded, "I think so. It's because of how I connected the support joints?"

"No. Look at the material you chose."

"I don't see what you mean."

"That material will not stay in to strong weights."

"But, the weight is less than that threshold," Yasahashi argued.

"Yes. For now… Always think of what would happen if someone landed on the roof. You are in a ninja village, after all."

"Right…" Yasahashi grumbled and began folding up her paper and packing it away in her backpack. It seemed like a nitpicky mistake to her, but she understood now what he meant.

Professor Ayame leaned back in his chair and addressed both Yasahashi and Takamaru. "You cannot know how a building may become revised in the future. We can hope that the inhabitants and our future inheritors will put care into any additions and proper calculation, but we can also extend a branch to help them along. An addition of a water tower, for example, is a very common one to anticipate."

"Takamaru, let's go," Yasahashi said, stomping towards the door.

"Bye, sensei!" Takamaru waved. The professor waved his hand up in a brief gesture, looking after the two students in something of disapproval.

"I want to see the plans revised tomorrow, Koizuma."

When they were out of the classroom, Takamaru looked at Yasahashi in amazement. "Did you see those designs that were on Professor Ayame's desk?"

"No."

"They were amazing… I didn't really know what I was looking at, at first.. But I think he's designing some kind of new Konoha!"

Yasahashi's head was more fixated on roofs and support beams to think about the big picture.


She found it hard to get out of bed. There was a crack in the ceiling on the far end of the room and she just stared at it, wondering if the building was going to come down. Finally she heard Naruto fall out of his bed with an OOF, causing the ceiling to jitter.

Yasahashi turned over, her eyes falling on the photograph on her bedside. She forced herself up, walked over to her desk, and pulled out Professor Ayame's plans, as she had done for months upon months to copy, learn from, and refine. But, try as she might, she found she couldn't move her pencil.

Her professor's severe tone echoed through her mind, warning her about her designs. She tried to think of times in the past 5 years when she might have accidentally forgotten to listen to those warnings.

After about an hour, she heard Naruto crooning upstairs about some big mission he was finally getting to go on. The previous night, he'd asked Yasahashi to water his plants for him while he was gone. She looked at them at the windowsill and saw the shadow of the kyuubi kid dart away, across the roofs of Konoha. She took that as her cue to stretch, get ready for work and head out the door.

The urban planner's feet fell into regular pathways.

Her eyes focused on the ground as she contemplated the challenges which awaited her in the classroom. Try as she might to convince ninja kids that they didn't need to be all brawn, this mess was bigger than her. The other day, Mifumi had called her a f** and jumped out the window. She didn't care what the kid said, but it was how he said it that bothered her. Because, she knew that it was not only directed at her, but also at himself.

"Yasahashi?"

She looked up and saw Takamaru. She was no where near the ninja academy. Instead she was staring at the entrance to the Civil Engineering Department. She had inadvertently followed her old route while she was lost in thought.

The two stared at eachother in stupor until the man suggested coffee. They grabbed a quick cup at a shop down the road.

Takamaru seemed to study her face, noticing her lost expression.

"How's teaching?" He asked.

"Challenging, Takamaru. I can see why Ayame-sensei had his work cut out for him."

He laughed, "You really made things hard for him, didn't you?"

"I suppose I did." She smiled, "Though, you forget, I'm dealing with a whole class of ninja. Back then, I was just one ninja he had to deal with in a class of full of wimps."

"Hey!" Takamaru clicked his tongue.

She rose her hands up and laughed, "Hey, nothing wrong with being a wimp."

She finished her coffee and held her mug, still warm from their conversation.

"You having regrets?" Takamaru asked, "You can always just come back to us."

She sighed, "No… I just wish I could get that through to some of these kids…" she sighed.

The two drew quiet and Yasahashi looked at her wrist watch.

Takamaru glanced at her playfully. "Now I'm trying to imagine what Professor Ayame would do if he had to deal with a class full of young Yasahashi's."

"Tch. I hardly know how he handled one. I gotta go, by the way."

Takmaru nodded kinda sadly. "Yeah, me too. But I'm glad I got you to laugh- you seemed kind of out of it. What brought you over here?"

"I'm... not sure," Yasahashi gave pause, and signaled that she was about to leave, but then stopped and faced her friend again, "Takamaru, did you ever get called a f** when you came out?"

20 minutes later, she arrived to a half-full classroom and began setting up for the day, sluggishly dragging chalk on the chalkboard and beginning to take attendance. Students were not excited for their first period math class and entered the classroom like zombies. She looked over at her windowsill where she had placed some lush, lovely ferns and wondered if mint was in season. Golden light trickled in through the foliage and bathed the classroom in beautiful greens. The sight reminded her why she was doing this.

"Goodmorning," she said.

After work she had to meet up with a representative in the intelligence department as requested by Shun. He had promised no Kimura, and she had hoped he was honest about that. She wasn't equipped to deal with her older brother today.

The civilian entrance to the intelligence department was a nondescript lobby with an off-kilter secretary behind plexiglass. He had red eyes, punk hair, and his face was covered in tattoos.

"I'm here to see someone on behalf of Shun Koizuma," she told the man behind the desk. He nodded emptilly and hit a glowing red button.

"Take a seat," said the secretary through sharp teeth.

Yasa remained standing.

A few minutes later, a scary looking upper level ninja with scars all over his face appeared at the interior doorway. He didn't so much as acknowledge her, but nodded and gestured for Yasahashi to follow him.

He led her through a dark narrow hallway and passed some seals and sensors which she had to touch and finger print. Finally, they arrived in a dimly lit, windowless office laboratory. There was a desk which the man walked behind. He gestured to a chair on the other side and she took a seat.

The scarred man shuffled some papers and layed a large map down on his desk, then he cleared his throat. "Yasahashi Koizuma, during project Snakes Nest, were you instructed to account for tunnel structures in these locations?" He tapped a couple of locations on the map which had been marked.

Yasahashi leaned over the map, trying to recall the specific overlays from all those years ago.

"They look familiar," she said, "You do still have the original files from the project, correct?"

The man didn't reply.

Someone entered the room and they both turned to look. A slight blush crept onto Yasahashi's face. It was Anko.

The purple haired woman shot her an annoyed glance as she walked over to another desk deeper in the room.

"We just need verbal confirmation that you designed all these tunnels." The scarred man said, "A discrepancy has arisen which requires confirmation from one of the urban planners involved."

"Well, if they were, they should be in that file." She looked closely at that part of town. She didn't quite remember designing tunnels for that section. It bothered her the more she looked at it. Something else bothered her about the map too, but she couldn't quite reason what it was.

"Get her the damn file, Baki," Anko said. There came a faint scritching noise as the purple haired woman worked with something on her desk, "How long ago was that project? I can't remember what I had for breakfast last week!"

The man sighed and stood up, "I'll be right back." He left the room.

Yasahashi shuffled uncomfortably in her chair. She glanced down at the map, thinking of how different the jumbled plans of Konoha looked from her professor's idyllic tracings. Her eyes fell on the flagged locations in scrutiny.

"So what's your deal, anyway?" Anko asked, still wearing a sour face.

Yasa looked back uncertainly at the woman. She was doing something on her desk that involved a floating, glowing object.

Baki returned to the room before she could respond. He plopped down a file on the table and opened it up. Yasa leaned forward and peeled through the documents, the details coming back to her between the transparencies and blueprints.

After studying the files and comparing them to the map, she tapped the one at the disputed intersection, "I did not design for this tunnel," she said. She looked Baki in the eye seriously. It was very strange for there to be an extra tunnel that they hadn't accounted for, unless there was something that Yasahashi didn't know. Which could very well be the case.

The intellifence officer didn't seem the least bit surprised, but nodded after a moment.

"Thank you for the confirmation, that's all we needed from you."

"Wow, we could have totally just figured that out ourselves!" Anko whined as Baki lead her out of the room. "No need to bother this poor lady."

Yasahashi glanced at the woman one last time and couldn't help but sense a slight smile on her features.

She had to go teach at her mothers gym that night, though she wanted to swing by the ninja academy really fast. Something was pressing on her mind. It had been haunting her for days now. Seeing that map and trying to recall projects at various intersections… she couldn't wait another minute. So, quickly, she entered the teachers office of the ninja academy, pulled open the student files and rifled through for Mifumi Tatsuyo's. She copied it down his old address- the one at which the roof had collapsed, then stuck it in her pocket and hurried across town.

Yasahashi rushed into the main gym, wearing her gi sloppily. She tightened her hair into a bun and ignored her mother's gaze, which was sure to be judgmental.

"Sorry, mom…" she apologized briefly, and started walking between the sparring partners, correcting people's forms. She didn't see that her mother was smiling.

"Yasahashi-sensei!" called a familiar voice. She turned to see a familiar looking boy. After looking past the green suit and bowl cut, the boy's intense eyes clicked into place. It was Rock Lee. He was sparring with a girl his age who she also didn't recognize.

"Kid-" she nodded, "I heard you passed, congrats!"

The boy nodded and teared up, "I sure did! And this is one of my teammates in my new unit, her name is Tenten!" He introduced the girl, who seemed exhausted from sparring with the hyperactive boy.

"Nice to meet you," Yasa nodded.

"You too," Tenten panted, leaning over on her knees, "I'm a… long distance…. weapons specialist…"

Yasahashi looked at Lee, "You wanna spar?"

His face lit up, "Oh yes!"

Tenten looked relieved and headed to the water cooler for a well deserved break.

The two taijutsu specialists bowed and began to circle one another. Then Lee attacked, surprising Yasahashi with his speed and technique. He immediately proved to be a great challenge to her.

"Great!" she yelled as he blocked her kicks expertly. The rest of the students in the gym gathered around the two, watching the battle proceed.

She felt all the troubles of her day leave her as was she faced this challenge. His moves were different than what she was used to here at her mothers gym. She could tell that he had found a great taijutsu instructor, and whoever that person was, they were present in Lee's fists now.

Yasahashi just barely was able to defeat Lee, knocking his shin in a deft move and pinning him. As her leg pushed up against his shin, she felt something heavy underneath his leg warmers, the detail left her mind just as soon as it entered.

She and Lee bowed to one another and then she patted him on the back while catching her breath.

"Great job, kid!" she said, "You've improved a lot! I just barely beat you, you know."

Tears streamed down his face as he hugged her, "Thank you, sensei! It means so much to hear you say that!"

Yasa smirked and looked away, she caught the smiling face of her mother and had to double-take. Her mother rarely smiled.

"I gotta question for you, though kid-" She looked back at the boy.

"Yes?"

"Why the outfit?"

After the class, Yasahashi met a tall, muscular man wearing a suspiciously similar green jumpsuit. He was large and imposing and stuck his hand out in a boisterous thumbs up.

"Yasahashi Koizuma" he said jovially, "So you're the one who helped inspire my beloved pupil." She could have sworn his teeth shined in the streetlight. "Konoha's handsome blue beast, Maito Gai, at your service!"

"I'm gay," she said.

His eyebrows twitched, "That has nothing to do with anything I just said."

"Sorry, it's a reflex."

"Right- well, I just wanted to say thank you, personally, for giving Lee the push to seek me out as a taijutsu instructor. I understand that you were similar to him in the academy?"

"Yep, no ninjutsu and everything."

"I'm happy to hear that he has a friend in you, Miss Koizuma. Rock is a kid that won't quit, no matter what! He could use all the encouragement he can, especially when things get more challenging down the road."

"Did you design that outfit you guys wear?"

"The boy is welcome in my gym anytime, Gai," Yasahashi's joined them at the gym entrance.

"Miiyako," he bowed to her, "It's good to see you."

"Enter him into the chunin exams," her mother said.

"I was planning on it!"

Yasahashi stuck her hands in her pockets and felt the paper with Mifumi's old address in it. When she got home, she threw it on her desk next to Professor Ayame's plans, then went to sleep, completely beat from the evening's work out. After she had curled up and gotten comfy, her eyes suddenly shot open as she had the realization that Lee was probably wearing weights underneath those leg warmers.


Kakashi's Prius here! The instability of the gig economy is really getting me down! I hardly have the time to work on my great novel titled, "Konoha car mechanics" It's about a silver-haired jonin who quits his job with the ANBU to build a prius factory.