Asuma kept glancing at Kurenai.
He was on her team.
He was—
Ibiki was his best friend, sure, but Kurenai was… Kurenai.
She was awesome.
She—
He just liked being around her.
And now they were on the same team together.
He couldn't stop looking at her as they walked down the street together toward Training Ground 15 where they were told to meet.
She smiled at him, then turned back to talk to Asahi.
Right.
Asuma had to remember that Asahi was on the team too.
That was fine—Asahi was a great sparring partner, and he'd never treated Asuma different for who his dad was.
Training Ground 15—which looked to be a poison garden, of all things—was busy when they arrived: dozens of Akimichi, Nara, and Yamanaka were hard at work, harvesting the various plants with gloves and even tongs in some cases.
Standing above it all was a sturdily-built woman in an apron and sunhat, managing the stacking of seals and boxes and joking with several of the other workers at the same time.
Asuma went to announce their presence (Dad always emphasized the importance of having a leader, and Asuma was the one in their team with the training to do it) when she noticed them.
"Team 18! To me! I'm your Sensei, Aki, and we're going to be on a tight schedule so no dawdling. First couple of weeks will be standard genin work—'bout a D-rank or two a day, until I get a feel of how you three work. Then we'll talk training."
"We won't be training for weeks?" Asahi said, barely keeping the words from coming out as a moan.
"No, but you'll be thanking me soon—you'll have dough in your pockets much sooner than any of your classmates."
Asuma didn't need 'dough.' He had money—what he needed was training. He was good, could be better, could be good enough to make his own name—but he needed training to get there.
And instead they'd be 'making dough.'
Asuma went to make just that point (their Sensei should be working with the full context) when Kurenai grabbed his hand.
Asuma blushed.
She hadn't—she hadn't done that before.
She was asking a question, now. Asuma tried to focus, to think past the feel of her hand in his. "Where do we start?"
Aki Sensei grinned at her. "Over there—see those seals? They need to be taken to Yamanaka storage. Once you get there, tell them you're Team 18. They'll have another courier mission for you today."
"But if we're leaving, how can you 'get a feel' of us?"
Sensei's grin turned sharp. "I have eyes and ears everywhere."
Asuma was about to ask another follow-up question—really, this was barely the sort of introduction he expected—when Kurenai nudged him, glancing toward the various Ino-Shika-Cho members watching them.
Oh.
Eyes and ears everywhere.
Right.
Asahi bowed, followed quickly by Kurenai and Asuma. "We're on it!"
"Should we report back at a specific time?" Kurenai asked.
Sensei waved them off—"My eyes and ears will let you know."
.
Ibiki nearly slammed into the wall as he careened through Konoha's streets.
He wanted answers, and there was only one place he could get them.
A genin was walking out of the building as Ibiki barreled towards the entrance, but she recognized him and got out of the way.
Only one hallway—one door—
"Aunt Sakura! Did you know who my genin Sensei was going to be?"
Sakura blinked, looking up from a giant spreadsheet of numbers. "No. Who is it?"
Should Ibiki believe her?
…Yeah, probably. Aunt Sakura tended to be honest with him, to the point that several of the other Yamanaka aunts and elders had chastised her about age-appropriate explanations repeatedly.
"Senju Tsunade," Ibiki said.
"Tsu—"
"I knew he'd come straight to you."
Her voice came from almost directly above him—she'd clearly gotten almost as close as she could before choosing to speak.
Ibiki hadn't had so much as an inkling.
He hated not being a sensor.
"You're a Sensei? To genin?"
"No need to act so surprised—I'm very good at everything I do, you know?"
Aunt Sakura looked… like she knew that wasn't true.
"Okay, fine. Everything ninja related," Sensei Tsunade amended.
Aunt Sakura's expression hadn't changed, but Sensei was now throwing herself over the chair Aunt Sakura kept in the corner, loudly bemoaning the stupidity of children.
"Sorry about talking your ear off, Sakura, but you know—sometimes you just have to let out a bit of steam!"
Yes.
Yes, you did.
Which was why Ibiki had come here!
First!
"I was here first!" Ibiki snapped.
Sensei barely glanced at him. "Not particularly polite, is he?"
Aunt Sakura shrugged. "I'm not, either, so I wasn't much of a teacher, and Juro wanted Ibiki to have some 'teeth', as he put it, so he didn't try very hard, either."
That… wasn't true, actually. All of his guardians tried very hard to instill manners, but when Ibiki was adopted he'd been… less than eager to learn them. Even as time went on, and his chakra had helped his trauma to subside, it had taken him until the last year or so to really get interested in diplomacy, in the idea that manners and etiquette and all that might actually have a purpose. Up until then, he'd all but blatantly ignored all his godparents' very real efforts to instruct him in manners and etiquette.
He didn't really want his Sensei to know that, though.
He loved his aunt for already knowing that, for misleading without a second's thought.
"What about the third one of you? Shishi? Shigu? Shin? He's a diplomat, right? He should want to make my job easier!"
Ibiki glared at her.
His Sensei didn't seem to care.
At least Aunt Sakura sent him a placating look.
"Shin's in the Capital most of the time. And he liked the idea of 'teeth' too."
"'Teeth'," Sensei Tsunade scoffed. "'Teeth'!"
"How are you?" Aunt Sakura asked.
"Busy. Exhausted. But a team is supposed to force me to spend some time 'relaxing', or something, so there you go—the reason you're fishing for."
"Was that so hard?"
Sensei glared at Aunt Sakura in just the same way Ibiki did.
Maybe he needed to stop glaring as much.
"Well, I'm off, anyway—two more brats' parents to meet, and then I'll go pester Juro at the pediatric ward just to make sure I get everyone."
"Sounds… productive."
Sensei grinned with all her teeth. "When am I ever not?"
Aunt Sakura snorted.
Ibiki didn't.
He hated the inside jokes of adults.
.
Yamanaka Hekima stumbled awkwardly as he tried to seal the last few papers into his storage seal.
He was in a rush—had no idea how long this opportunity would last.
When his mother had been gossiping, she'd specifically used the phrase 'chunk taken out of his leg', but she'd always been one for exaggeration.
Right.
He'd arrived at the hospital.
Now to find the Head.
Yamanaka-sama was up and talking, which was relieving. He was joking, actually, laughing at something Akimichi-sama said while leaned against the pillows in his hospital bed. Akimichi-sama looked better than Hekima had expected, too—about half his usual weight, and with a walker propped against his chair, but otherwise fine.
His eyes didn't take long to alight on Hekima—Yamanaka-sama had always been good at switching focuses quickly—and he grinned.
"'Sup, cousin?"
Hekima grinned.
"Hello, cousin."
Then his grin faded.
"Ah, work." Yaminaka-sama (Inoichi, still Inoichi, still the pesky cousin Hekima had grown up with, just bigger and more powerful) rolled his shoulders, sitting up even more.
"Are you—I don't mean to delay your recovery—"
"I'm good, I'm good! I mean, some of my leg did get torn off, which sucks, but it was a small bit, only one shark bite, and the hospital fixed me right up."
"A… bite?"
"Yeah, hurt like a—" Akimichi-san coughed, looking not so subtly at the door where genin and academy helpers could be seen skittering about the hallway with towels, meals, and other various sundries. "It hurt. But now I just got to wait for my body to like, get used to the fix or whatever—you know medicine has never been my thing—and then I can get back out there.
"If anything, this is the perfect time to get to work." Inoichi grinned again. "So, what's up?"
"Um."
How should Hekima begin?
He'd already tried, so many times, to bring this to the elders' attention, but he'd never been good with words, they always tripped him up, and every time they'd just ended up thinking he was making something out of nothing.
But—
But this was Inoichi.
His cousin.
Hekima swallowed.
"It's the orphanage."
Hekima watched Inoichi's eyes go from relaxed to sharp, alert in the same time it would take him to draw a kunai. "What about it?"
"I think… I don't have enough proof, it's all—I mean—"
"Hekima."
"There might no longer be kids going missing, permanently, but I think some of them are… off."
Akimichi-sama closed the door.
Inoichi leaned forward. "Can I mindwalk you?"
Hekima's shoulders slumped, relieved. If Inoichi saw what he saw, then he wouldn't need words at all. "Please."
Fifteen minutes later Head Akimichi Chouza stormed out of the hospital, with a sprinting Yamanaka carrying his walker and hurrying after him.
Some things couldn't wait.