*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.

Hey, everyone, welcome back! Thanks so much for sticking with me. I've gotten a couple pieces of good constructive criticism so I'll try to work on the points that were brought up, starting in this chapter. Hopefully, it helps or it's better or makes the story more interesting or… something. XD Anyway, here's the newest chapter in which Team Ro gets their first mission together. I hope you enjoy it and that I'll see you again in the next chapter. :) -Nira

Chapter 4

Yuriko arrived at the training grounds fifteen minutes early and was surprised to see the Hokage standing alone in the clearing looking up at the clouds that were still tinged pale orange and pink from the sunrise in the distance. When he heard her approaching him, he turned to face her and she bowed in respect.

"Good morning, Hokage-sama," she greeted. "What brings you here this morning?"

"Good morning, Yuriko. How are you acclimating to the village?" he inquired in response.

"Very well, thank you. There isn't anything wrong that's brought you out so early is there?"

"No, no, of course not," he chuckled. "This is a good place to come to think at this time. There usually aren't people training this early. Have you come alone?"

"Yes, but Kakashi-senpai and Yamato-senpai will be here soon."

"I see. I'm glad to hear it," the old man smiled with a sigh and nodding his head in approval before turning to face the sunrise again. "There's a rumor going around that you've met our Naruto yesterday."

"Yes, I did and he's quite the character. Is there something I should know about him? While I was spending time with him yesterday I received quite a few strange glances and became the subject of many a whispered conversation. He was confused as to why I was so kind to him, too. It seems rather strange to me that a child would act that way."

"Naruto is a product of an extremely difficult time in Konoha's not so distant history. Many villagers still hold a grudge though it was not the boy's fault. He's experienced quite a bit of strife for it so I'm not surprised that he was suspicious of your treatment toward him when all he's had growing up was the opposite."

"I see… He's a good kid. He's only looking to be acknowledged by someone. He just does stupid things to get it."

"Like paint the Hokages' faces…" The elder man's gaze was accusing though not scolding as he turned his head in her direction, a slight smirk gracing his thin lips.

"With all due respect, Hokage-sama, it was funny," Yuriko giggled, picturing the vandalism again. "I made him clean it up, though, I swear."

"You should have made him do it all himself… Train hard, Yuriko."

With that and a smile on his face, the elder man walked away leaving Yuriko with a slight grin of her own beneath her violet mask while she waited for her teammates to arrive. She sighed and lay down in the still dewy grass, ignoring the coolness that seeped into her shorts and was directly in contact with the skin of her back through the fishnet undershirt. While she waited, she closed her eyes and simply took in the scents and sounds around her.

The air was crisp and fresh, making Yuriko's nose tingle with the sharpness of it, but the muddy richness of the ground below her was warm and inviting both muting and complementing the bite of the cool air. The birds were awake and twittering away as if having incessant conversations about whatever it was that birds talked about. Perhaps they were conversing like old ladies gossiping over tea about where to find the fattest, juiciest worms for breakfast since the ground was still soft, or maybe it was couples bickering about what materials to build the nest with or who was supposed to be watching the chicks while the other went searching for food, Yuriko mused.

The cartoonish image that came to mind of brightly colored birds in lace and ribbons sitting around a tiny table in tiny chairs made of twigs sipping from acorn teacups, gossiping about their husbands, chicks, and everyday life in general, made her giggle to herself. It wasn't long before Yamato showed up and stood over her with a smile, though, snapping her out of her daydreams of gossiping bird cartoons.

"Good morning. You look comfortable," he stated.

"Oddly enough, I am," she smirked in response. "Kakashi-senpai isn't here yet, though I figured he'd be late… I wonder if I should have knocked on his door as I was leaving…"

"Yes, it's a bit of a problem of his. He'll show up eventually."

It was another twenty minutes before Kakashi actually arrived. Never before had someone irritated Yuriko to the extent that Kakashi had been since they'd first met. Each time they'd met, he was later and later and she wondered if he did it to spite her.

"You're late, senpai," she growled.

"My apologies. I was lost on the path of life. Now that I'm here, shall we begin?" he responded, his carefree demeanor pissing her off even more that he obviously didn't care that he was wasting everyone's time in his tardiness, but she bit her tongue, though the venom was still present in her vicious glare.

They decided to do two on one combat starting with the males against Yuriko. Knowing that this training session would last all day, as Kakashi had mentioned the day before, Yuriko was conservative of her chakra and didn't put her all into the battles, opting instead, to observe and fight defensively rather than offensively. She calculated and observed everything, decoding each of their strengths and weaknesses separately and together, how they moved, their dominant stances and hands, how they interacted with each other and worked together in battle.

She'd noted that Kakashi was analytical and strategic, always thinking one step ahead of his opponent and Yamato was cautious but fought by trial and error. When it had switched to Kakashi and Yuriko both fighting against Yamato, the platinum-haired shinobi duo worked very well together. Yuriko was able to predict Kakashi's thoughts and strategies through his body movement and adapt her own attacks to fit and correlate with his. Just as she'd predicted, their chakra affinities were perfectly matched, especially with their ability to match chakra levels to create intensely powerful techniques. Yamato's wood didn't stand a chance against their fire and wind. When they had finally switched to Yamato and Yuriko against Kakashi, Yamato and Yuriko were good at working together to act as a decoy for the other to land a decent attack on Kakashi seeing as their affinities didn't match at all.

By the time the trio had called it quits, it was already beginning to get dark and they'd been training non-stop. They were exhausted and starving, all three of them beaten and battered. It had been a good training session all-in-all and when they'd finished, they all sat in the grass, panting and attempting to catch their breath.

"You are well rounded and adapt to situations quite well, Yuriko," Kakashi stated. "You will have no problem fitting into our team dynamics."

"Thank you, senpai. I look forward to working with the both of you."

Kakashi and Yuriko bid Yamato farewell and the two of them walked home together. When they'd reached his apartment, Yuriko continued on to her own apartment without a word of parting or even a glance toward Kakashi who had paused at his door to bid her a good evening. She had given him the cold shoulder and it hadn't gone unnoticed to the ANBU captain, but he brushed it off and made his way inside. When Yuriko had gotten into her own apartment, she took a shower and set the kettle on the stove to make tea while she started preparing dinner for herself.

After dinner, Yuriko walked onto her balcony with a cup of tea and her book and sat leaning comfortably against the banister, enjoying the warm summer breeze while she read. After a couple chapters, she closed her book with a sigh and turned to look out over the city. It was calm and quiet and only a few lights were on in other apartment complex windows and the sounds of crickets could be heard from all around as they orchestrated their arrhythmic symphony. She smiled, burying her face a little deeper into her scarf and thinking that she'd chosen her new home well before she looked up to the sky.

Kakashi had opened his balcony door, to let in a breeze and moonlight to read by while he relaxed on his couch in his loose pants, his mask pooled around his neck in case he had a surprise visitor and needed to cover up quickly and his nose buried in his favorite little orange book. He'd heard Yuriko open her balcony door as well and he could hear her turning the pages of her own book, so he assumed she'd stayed outside to read. At one point he heard her sigh and close her book and when he heard her voice, his attention was stolen from the words on the page with her first sentence.

"Can you see me from there in Heaven, Mom? I've found a new home again, but I'm hoping to stay this time. I think you would have liked it here, too. Everything you told me about it as a child is all true. The people are really nice and the atmosphere of the whole village reminds me of our little village despite this one being at least five times bigger.

"There's a kid here who reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age. He's a little rebel, to say the least," she chuckled, talking to the wind. "He painted the monument of the Hokages' faces and I couldn't help but to laugh and help him get out of trouble. It seemed like something Eiichi and I would have done. It had been a while since I'd laughed like that. The kid said he wants to be Hokage one day. He's a good kid, even if he is a bit eccentric, and I can't wait to see where his ambition takes him.

"My new teammates are something else… It seems there's a shortage of kunoichi in this village because both of them are male. Yamato-senpai seems decent enough, but I wonder about Kakashi-senpai. He doesn't say much and he's always late. I suppose I don't say much, either, though…" Her voice trailed off and she leaned forward to rest her chin on her folded arms as a wave of melancholy rolled through her. "He's lost quite a bit over the years… He hasn't outright said it, but I can tell… His eyes say it all, even if only one is visible… I wonder if he's seen the same kind of hurt in mine…"

Kakashi's breath caught in his throat and his eyes widened as he looked to his balcony door as if he'd look directly into her own eyes if he did. Unknowing of her audience to her prayer to her mom, Yuriko sighed and was silent for a moment before she continued, "I miss you. It's still hard without you sometimes, and you'd think it would have gotten easier since becoming an adult, but it seems I still have a lot to learn about what it really means to be one. I'm trying, though. Are you proud of what I've accomplished so far?"

It was silent for a while until she bid the heavens good night and walked inside, locking her balcony door and turning off the lights, heading to bed to sleep through the lonely. Kakashi walked outside onto his own balcony, looking over at the darkness of Yuriko's door.

"You hide so well, Yuriko… how long have you been lying to the world that you're calloused and rough around the edges just to make it?" he mused, staring for a moment before returning to the warmth of his apartment and locking up for the night, himself.

Team Ro stood in the Hokage's office for a brief of their first mission together. There was a rogue group of ninja from the Stone Village that was planning on ambushing a Konoha jounin team on their way to the Stone with a peace treaty, and Team Ro's mission was to engage the rogue group and eliminate them, ensuring a successful mission for the jounin team. As they were leaving, the jounin team was coming in and Yuriko paused, recognizing Kurenai as one of the three along with a man with thick eyebrows and a bowl cut hairstyle clad in a green jumpsuit and a spiky black haired man with stubble and an unlit cigarette perched precariously between his lips.

"Oh, Yuriko!" Kurenai smiled. "I see that you're official now. Congratulations."

"Thank you."

"Are you on your way out for your first mission, then?"

Yuriko nodded and gestured toward Kakashi and Yamato. "These are my new teammates. They're both quite skilled, so I'm eager to see how we work together in a real combat situation."

"Kakashi and Yamato? Then that means…" Kurenai stated, her eyes widening slightly and Kakashi beckoned Yuriko from a little farther down the hall.

"I have to go. Good luck on your mission," Yuriko smiled before running after her teammates, leaving the trio of jounin in shock.

"Who was that?" the man in green, Guy, asked.

"That's Yuriko. She's new to the village and asked to become a Konoha shinobi, so I helped her get some supplies and trained with her a bit before she had an evaluation to see where she'd be placed."

"She's only just gotten here and she's already joined Kakashi and Yamato? Hmm…" Asuma, the other man mused around his cigarette.

Yuriko and her team prepared their weapons and supplies and once they'd gathered all of their necessities, they made their way to the village gates.

"We're leaving before the jounin team, but we will wait until they've reached their destination before we make our move against the rogues. It'll be a long mission but remain vigilant. We will discuss tactics and strategies when we get closer to the rendezvous point," Kakashi ordered and the others nodded in understanding.

The three of them lowered their masks and took off. It would take them days to reach their rendezvous point but they weren't in a huge rush, seeing as the jounin team was still behind them and they stopped and set up camp for the night, knowing that the other team would be doing the same. While Yamato gathered wood for a small fire, Yuriko laid out sleeping bags and prepared to make dinner and Kakashi pored over maps, checking their coordinates and location to assure that they were on the right path.

When Yamato had returned and started the fire, Yuriko prepared a simple meal of ramen with dried squid and vegetables and while they ate they decided who would take which watch shift, starting with Yamato. When they'd finished eating, Yamato jumped to a tree to start his shift and Yuriko crawled into her sleeping bag, getting comfortable and looking up at the forest canopy before she closed her eyes with a sigh and began humming a song to herself that her mom used to sing to her to help her sleep when she was a child. It wasn't long until she'd successfully lulled herself to sleep and Kakashi looked over at her when she'd gone silent, watching her chest rise and fall with each deep breath that she took before he too allowed himself to sleep.

Yuriko was the next to take the watch, so when she awoke to trade with Yamato a few hours later she yawned and stretched, crawling out of the warmth of her sleeping bag. When she stood, she walked by Kakashi who was still asleep in his own sleeping bag and paused. His eyes darted to and fro behind his lids and his expression was tense and looked pained and his breathing was uneven.

Kakashi had been having a nightmare—the same one he had every night about when he'd killed Rin—but it slowly faded into a tender lullaby this time. The tune sounded familiar, and as he focused on it more, he recognized the tune as the one Yuriko had hummed to herself just earlier that night. He also felt a soft fingertip stroking between his eyebrows that he hadn't realized until then, were very tense. When she'd finished her song, Kakashi had relaxed, he'd recognized, and when he heard her stand and start walking away, he lazily opened his eye to watch her go, shocked that she'd stopped just to calm him but thankful nonetheless before he dozed back off into a dreamless sleep.

Yuriko had crouched down beside the slumbering Kakashi and wondered what he could have been dreaming about to make him seem so uncomfortable. She knew that expression, though, having had suffered from nightmares, herself, and her expression darkened to empathetic understanding and tenderness. She wasn't sure if it'd help, but her mom would often hum her lullaby and rub away the tension if Yuriko had been having a nightmare, so she'd decided to try it on Kakashi. When she'd seen him visibly relax and heard his breathing even out again, she couldn't help but to grin before taking her leave and jumping to relieve Yamato of the watch.

"You've done well, senpai. Thanks for standing guard. I can take it from here," she whispered.

Yamato nodded with a yawn and jumped down, preparing for sleep. Before he'd gotten comfortable, he looked back up at Yuriko and then over to Kakashi who was now sleeping restfully before smiling to himself and falling asleep. He'd watched her stop just to soothe Kakashi's tension, but he hadn't been able to see her expression. Either way, it was cute that she'd done anything to help him sleep better at all, he thought. Yuriko waited a few minutes, watching from the corner of her eye until she was positive that Yamato was asleep before she started talking to her mom. She'd done it every night since she had lost her. It helped her to cope when she was feeling lonely or unsure of herself. Usually, she would have written to her, but she'd lost or had to abandon so many journals now that it was better to just talk. It made Yuriko feel a bit closer to her to talk anyway. Yuriko's shift ended a couple hours later and Kakashi awoke to take the final shift before they set out again.

"Work hard, senpai," Yuriko yawned as she waved and he took her spot on the bough of the tree they'd been using as their watchstanding perch.

"Yuriko," Kakashi called out before she jumped to the ground, so she turned to look at him. "Thank you…"

"For what?"

He smiled and shook his head. "Nothing. Sleep well."