*Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of the characters in it. I simply borrow them for my own musings and fantasies and do not get paid for their use in said musings or fantasies.

Thanks, everyone for the support! I'm so glad to see that this story is going so well already. Six reviews, six favorites, six alerts, and 150 views for only 2 chapters in less than a week is an amazing accomplishment for me and I'm so excited that you all like this enough to keep up with me. It really does mean a lot to me, especially after going through a long 2-year streak of writers' block and lack of motivation/ inspiration. Please continue to be the awesome fans that you are and I'll continue to give you a (hopefully) awesome story! Enjoy the next installation! It's even longer than the last one (eight pages). I'll try to keep them at an even six pages per chapter starting in chapter 4. Anyway, please don't forget to review and let me know what you think. Thanks, and you rock! :) -Nira

Chapter 3

Yuriko stood at the front of a dark room lit only by torches dressed in her training gear with about 100 other members who had removed their masks and were kneeling to the Hokage who stood beside her. It was a secret room hidden by a concealed door in the Hokage tower that apparently only the ANBU, Hokage, and one of the Hokage's advisors who was in charge of an even more top secret group of elites called NERVE knew about. She'd received her Konoha headband from the Hokage and picked a mask, a fox with gold-outlined purple swirls dividing the mask in half diagonally, prior to the meeting and now he was introducing her to the team.

"I would like you all to welcome our newest member Yuriko Kobayashi. I expect that you'll all treat her well starting today and show her the ropes. She has proven to be extremely skilled, almost on par with Kakashi, and since they have already fought and gotten to know each other a bit, I am assigning her to Team Ro."

"I will do my best," Yuriko stated with a courteous bow.

When the Hokage dismissed everyone, she followed Kakashi to the locker room where he showed her where she would be keeping her supplies and where they would meet to brief before departing on each mission. Her locker was across from his and as he was showing her around, a man with large dark eyes and short, spiky brown hair came over to introduce his self.

"Hello. I am Yamato and I am your other team member. I look forward to working with you, Kobayashi-san," he smiled.

"It's nice to meet you," Yuriko bowed in return. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to train with the both of you at some point soon so that we may get to know each other's strengths and weaknesses to better utilize them in battle."

"I agree that would be a good idea. I don't have any plans for today. What do you say, senpai?" Yamato inquired.

"Let's talk first. We don't need to spill everything to each other about our pasts, but as much as we're comfortable telling would be good. Yamato and I have been working together for a long time, but I think it would be beneficial for all of us to start building trust. We can start training tomorrow," Kakashi stated.

"Understandable. Where can we go to have this soul-bearing conversation?" Yuriko's tone of voice was sarcastic as she was already not looking forward to it.

The trio agreed to meet at Yuriko's house by 10 o'clock to give her time to go grocery shopping, not wanting to be rude and invite guests over but not be able to provide snack and beverages. She supposed it would double as a housewarming party, so she was glad she'd cleaned everything and made her apartment livable literally the day before. When she'd gone shopping, she'd bought everything she thought she might need or want and then some and ended up spending hundreds on food that would probably only last her a couple weeks, for the most part, she thought, but she figured it was worth it to spend practically the last of her money on food.

When she'd gotten home, it took her about 15 minutes to put all of the food away and immediately afterward, she changed into a yellow sundress with white daisies along the bottom and replaced her mask with a purple scarf around her neck, still keeping her face hidden. She also donned a light blue apron with light purple butterflies embroidered on it before grabbing ingredients and beginning to prepare vegetables and eggs and bacon and a pot of vanilla and lavender tea. Shortly after she finished cooking there was a knock at the door. Looking at the clock, she wasn't surprised that it was already a quarter past 10 and she was glad that she'd had the forethought to put cooking off until the last second, knowing that they'd be late with Kakashi's reputation. She answered the door and forced a smile despite her irritation at their tardiness.

"Sorry we're late," Yamato chuckled nervously. "Senpai was too interested in his book and was a lot more relaxed than I thought he should be despite the time. I didn't realize you were neighbors."

"Don't worry about it. Please make yourselves comfortable," Yuriko forced an even wider smile and disappeared into the kitchen to make the plates.

"You cleaned this place up well. It seems… warmer, now," Kakashi stated, looking around and admiring her simplistic taste in decorations, completely ignoring the fact that Yamato had thrown him under the bus about why they were late, or even that they were late at all.

"Thank you. It was a task, to say the least," she stated, plating the last omelet and walking with three plates perfectly balanced in one hand and along her arm to the living room and silverware in her other hand. She set everything down on the coffee table with the skill and grace of a trained waitress before walking back into the kitchen for the tea and teacups. "I hope it's not too bland. If you need anything, just let me know."

"Thank you very much. It's been a long time since I've had a home-cooked meal," Yamato smiled, taking a bite.

"So, who would like to go first?" Yuriko inquired as she sat on the floor opposite the men who sat on the cough.

When she'd gotten comfortable in a cross-legged position, she hesitated a moment about whether or not to lower the scarf and eat, or to wait until they'd both left since the topic of conversation was not going to be a pleasant one and she wasn't looking forward to bearing everything to these strangers, even if unintentionally through her facial expressions. Her growling stomach won the internal struggle, so she reluctantly pulled the fabric down and began eating, making a point not to look at or make eye contact with her teammates.

"Seeing as I've finished, already, I suppose I will," Kakashi stated and Yuriko wondered how he'd eaten the whole plate so quickly and still managed to keep his mask on, and then she wondered what he actually looked like underneath it but she quickly pushed the thought aside as he started talking. "I was very strict on following the rules after the death of my father for a very long time. In my eyes, anyone who disobeyed the rules was scum, regardless of the situation. On a mission, though, during the Third Great War, I was captain of my team and everything that could go wrong did. I was faced with the decision to either abandon the mission to save my comrades or abandon my comrades to accomplish the mission. I chose to abort the mission…"

He trailed off then, and Yuriko finally looked up from her plate to observe him, feeling a change in the atmosphere of the room. She watched the cloudiness of guilt and sorrow shadow his visible eye and the critical and questioning gaze she'd intended to give him for both starting and stopping in the middle of the story and obviously being extremely selective about what he said, softened and fell. Seeing just his one visible eye was more than enough of an expression for her to know then that the outcome of his mission had not been good and she contented herself with that little bit of knowledge and pushed it out of her mind to ask for more details. She made a mental note to keep an eye out for him as a comrade who had seen the darker side of war and come out of it badly scarred just as she had and be the listening ear if ever he needed one. After a pause and coming to the conclusion that Kakashi had finished sharing what he was comfortable sharing, Yamato began his story.

"I was an experiment for a crazed man who strove to know and possess every jutsu there is, especially forbidden ones. In his attempt to gain that knowledge, he often kidnapped children from villages and used them as test subjects, and I was one of those children, though I don't remember where I came from or how old I was. He had been implanting those children with the cells of the forefather of Konoha in order to create an impressionable child who could be taught and used as a weapon with the chakra affinity for wood. Before he'd succeeded, however, he'd been forced to abandon his experiments and I was almost left for dead despite being a successful experiment until Danzo-sama found me. I am a prior NERVE shinobi but after a failed mission, I resigned my position with the help of Sandaime Hokage-sama and Kakashi-senpai and I came to work in the ANBU instead," Yamato explained.

Yuriko sighed, realizing that it was her turn and paused, thinking about what she wanted to tell them that wouldn't be too much. Before she began, she took a long swig of her now cooled tea, pulled her scarf back over her nose and started. Kakashi noticed that her bright personality clouded over as soon as she'd re-covered her face and her eyes lost a bit of their life and luster as she spoke. He knew that look, having had just made the same expression, so he knew that her story would be painful as well.

"I'm from a small, unnamed village in the Land of Snow. We weren't much of a village, more like a collection of people with nowhere else to go, but we all got along and were friendly enough. My parents had been shinobi but they deserted and left the Land of Water to move north, dissatisfied with the way the Mizukage was running things. Growing up, they taught me ninjutsu and taijutsu in secret, knowing that the world was still in turmoil and wanting me to be able to defend myself if need be. After the war broke out, many small villages were pillaged and destroyed… Mine was no different."

It went silent. The echoes of the screams of her village and the children crying haunted Yuriko, chilling her to the bone despite the warmth of her tea still clasped between her hands. She could hear fire roaring as it consumed homes and the wails of torturous agony as people were buried under the raging wreckage, their houses collapsing on top of them burning them alive. They were her neighbors, her friends, her family. And the laughter of the invading shinobi… the wicked, sinister cackling amongst the despair as if they were demons raised from hell with the sole purpose of causing chaos and destruction. And her mom…

Kakashi watched as the life slowly faded more and more from Yuriko's expression as if she was reliving whatever it was that had happened in her past to cause her such pain and her hands gripped tighter around her teacup, trembling.

"Yuriko… Yuriko, come back to us," Kakashi cooed and Yuriko blinked, looking up at him flatly from her spot on the floor. "Welcome back," he smiled empathetically beneath the mask as her eyes refocused and slowly regained their lively luster.

She quickly changed the subject, burying her face deeper into her scarf and asking if they wanted more tea as she stood up and gathered the dirty dishes in an attempt to hide the tears that threatened to spill over her eyelids and Kakashi felt his heart wrench for her.

"Would you like any help with those?" Yamato asked as he noticed the dishes clattering in her trembling grasp.

"No, it's okay. You're my guests. How was the food, by the way?" she probed, forcing strength into her voice and pushing the sobs back down into her chest.

"It was delicious, thank you."

Yamato watched, having had witnessed the whole ordeal himself, and feeling a pang at his heart for her. He noticed how heavy the atmosphere had gotten and was trying to lighten the mood by helping her to change the subject.

"I'm glad," Yuriko forced a smile that would have been genuine if her mind hadn't been preoccupied with less pleasant matters and took the dishes into the kitchen. She took a moment to run some dishwater and place the dirty dishes in it, allowing herself the time to recompose and dry her tears before readjusting her scarf over her nose and mouth and bringing the still hot teapot out to refill her guests' cups. "So, Yamato-senpai, you have an affinity for wood chakra, correct?"

"Yes," Yamato confirmed.

"And Kakashi-senpai, since you have the Sharingan you are able to copy almost any ninjutsu, correct?"

"Correct."

"Do you have an affinity for fire or was it a copied jutsu?"

"A little bit of both," he stated, pointing to his covered Sharingan. "My own affinity is lightning."

"I see why Sandaime-sama put me in a team with you, then. My water can amplify your lightning and my wind can amplify your fire."

"That would be beneficial… We'll have to train together a lot to get it right, though."

"The sooner we start, the better. We never know when we'll get a mission with there still being animosity among the nations after the war. It's best to be prepared before we're thrust into a situation and have to figure it out on the fly."

"Very well. We'll meet at the training grounds tomorrow morning at six o'clock sharp. Expect it to be a long day."

Yuriko nodded in agreement, but she realized that she was really struggling to squash her emotions. She couldn't quite shake the memories, so she decided that it'd be better to be alone and attempted to politely kick her teammates out; "Well, I'm sure you're busy so I won't keep you any longer. Thank you for being my first guests."

"It was our pleasure. Thank you for being a great hostess," Yamato smiled, taking the hint that she wanted them to leave. He could see that she was struggling to remain in control of her emotions. "If you need anything, let me know."

"Thank you. See you tomorrow, senpai."

She walked them to the door and when they'd both left, Yuriko sighed and leaned against the door for a moment, biting her lip and clenching her fists until her nails dug into her skin and drew blood. When she'd calmed down, she made her way to the kitchen to do her dishes. She didn't have anything else to do after finishing them and it was only midday, so she decided to go for a walk around the village again to clear her head and become more familiar with it and Kakashi followed from further away, still under orders to keep an eye on her.

She found herself standing at the bottom of the cliff that had the faces of the Hokage carved into it looking up at it. She closely examined each of the stern stone faces and paused on the third's carving. There were splashes of brightly colored paint vandalizing its surface turning the stern expression of the elder man into something that couldn't be taken seriously no matter how hard you tried. She stared at it perplexed for a moment before she cracked a smile that quickly grew into raucous laughter and Kakashi was taken by the surprising outburst.

The sound of someone running and being chased caught the attention of both shinobi and Yuriko turned in the direction of the sounds, seeing a young boy with wild blonde hair and big, bright blue eyes dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit running toward her with an open can of paint grasped in one hand. Kakashi instantly recognized the child as the orphaned son of the fourth Hokage and watched, interested to see how Yuriko would interact with him.

She smiled, instantly realizing that he was the culprit who had defaced the monument, but she whistled to catch his attention and motioned him over. He was quite a bit further ahead of whoever was chasing him so it would be easy for her to distract his pursuers with a clone. He glanced at her suspiciously but when the voices of the people chasing him got louder, he picked up his speed and followed her into an alleyway and Kakashi followed from the rooftops. She quickly made a clone of the kid and sent it running while she took the real kid down a different road, a huge smile on her face and determination and mischief in her eyes as she shielded him from view with her own body. When his pursuers took the bait and followed the clone, she relaxed a bit and looked down at him and Kakashi observed from the next building, crouched to remain out of sight.

"You shouldn't do that, you know," Yuriko stated and the child pouted and looked away, crossing his arms.

"Then why did you help me?"

"Because it's funny," she chuckled. "It's been a while since I've laughed like that. Thanks."

"Who are you?" the boy asked, eyeing her suspiciously again.

"You can call me Yuriko. What's your name?"

"Naruto Uzumaki…"

"It's nice to meet you, Naruto-kun. I'd be a bad role model if I didn't do something about that, though, so let's go clean it up, 'kay?"

"What?" he asked perplexed.

"Let's you and me go clean it up together. As funny as it was, I don't think Sandaime-sama would be very happy with me if I let you get away with it, especially since I just became a citizen of Konoha. If anyone else had caught you they would have made you clean it all by yourself."

Naruto grumbled but nodded in understanding and the two of them started making their way back to the scene of the crime. Yuriko noticed that he kept looking up at her as if she was an anomaly of some sort and she could see all of the questions running through his head. He was quite expressive even when he didn't say anything, but eventually, the curiosity got the better of him and he spouted out the first question that was then followed by a string of them.

"You're really confusing, you know that, lady?! First, you laugh and say that it's funny that I painted the old man's face and help me get away from my stupid sensei, and then you turn around and make me clean it up but you said you're going to help me with that too! Why do you even care if you're new to Konoha?! And everybody else ignores me or looks at me like I'm some kind of monster so why are you so nice?!" he demanded, his voice trailing off at the last question and Yuriko paused as she could hear the sadness and rejection ringing clear in the feebleness of it and a tender grin graced her lips.

"Because when I look at you I see a kid who just wants to be noticed by someone," she stated, remembering when she'd been that kid doing stupid things to get any kind of attention. It didn't matter if it was trouble or something good. It was just nice being seen and acknowledged and it hadn't been that long ago that that had been her reality. "And like I said earlier, it had been a long time since I'd laughed so I wanted to take some of the slack off of you knowing that it would have been worse if someone else had caught you as a thank you."

Kakashi smirked and took his leave to report his observations to the Hokage and left Yuriko to her own devices. The rest of the walk to the monument was in silence between Yuriko and the young misfit. Despite him being younger than her, Yuriko could feel that they had a strong connection. She'd understood him and his intentions and he'd been able to sense a small glimmer of her own childhood pain through their brief but heartfelt conversation. When they got to the monument he dumped his paint and cleaned the tin before filling it with clean water. He rappelled down the face using some rope that he'd brought with him and Yuriko used chakra concentrated in her feet and a simple water jutsu and they began scrubbing.

When they'd finished a few hours had gone by and they were covered in paint and their arms were sore from scrubbing so much. Yuriko sighed and wiped the sweat from her brow and when she heard a loud rumbling sound, she was startled from the comfortable silence they'd been in. She looked over to Naruto to see him blushing beet red and holding his stomach so she laughed.

"I'm hungry too. What do you want to eat? I don't have much money, but I'll treat if it's something cheap."

"You mean it?!" Naruto beamed, obviously excited.

She nodded and he punched the air in his excitement. The duo packed up what we were doing and Naruto told her about his love for ramen as they walked through the street and the scenery looked familiar to Yuriko. When they'd reached their destination, a grin came to her face as she recognized the little ramen shop that Kakashi had taken her to just the day before.

"Hey, Naruto-kun, how old are you?" she asked out of curiosity as they sat at the counter and both ordered the barbecue pork ramen.

"Eleven. Why?"

"Just asking. How old do you think I am?"

"I don't know, eighteen?"

"I'm flattered. I'm twenty-three," she smiled, taking it as a compliment that he thought she was younger.

"You're a shinobi, right? You've gotta be since you made that clone and were using jutsu to clean the monument with me. I bet you're pretty high ranking, too."

"What makes you say that?"

"You made your techniques look so easy. You didn't even have to try!"

"I've been training for a long time now with a lot of different people. It wasn't always easy. Are you attending the academy?"

"You better believe it! I'm gonna be Hokage one day and it'll be my face you see up there on the mountain!"

Yuriko smiled wider under her scarf and placed her hand on his head, ruffling his hair a bit. "I like you, Naruto-kun. I'm sure you'll make a fine Hokage one day."

"Do you really think so?"

Yuriko nodded and she saw the pride and emotion swell up in him as he got teary-eyed, though the wide smile never left his face. She paid for their meal when they'd finished eating and before they parted to go their separate ways, she waved to Naruto and told him not to get into too much trouble and that she'd see him around. Yuriko couldn't help but to notice the strange stares she'd gotten upon saying it and the whispered conversations that it brought up but brushed it off as she made her way back to her apartment.

She took a shower and dressed in a violet silk nightgown before making a cup of tea and walking out onto her balcony with the book she'd bought the other day. She read a single chapter before closing it and looked up at the starry sky. It was a warm, clear night and she smiled wondering how her next day would play its self out before locking up and going to bed.