I had two seals submitted to R&D through Genma, and both were still being picked apart a week later rather than being lambasted in one day and returned with scathing comments. This was the ninja equivalent of getting my YA novel published by the same publisher as Harry Potter or something. It had a very 'senpai has noticed me' vibe to it that was slightly exciting and a bit sickening in a 'holy shit I better not fuck up' sort of way. But that wasn't the solution to my money problems, rather, Gai-sensei was.

Apparently his team liked to run C-ranks, but Neji sometimes trained with the Hyuuga and Tenten had other obligations as well. I hadn't even had time to go to a single training session with them before he approached Genma about stealing me to replace one of his genin for missions. It wasn't usually done on genin teams before someone was promoted to Chuunin, but Gai was odd so he got away with it. I figured it was because Lee was in the same boat as me money wise but that he would rather go without money for meals than miss training time to do D-ranks. It was the sort of underhanded ninja thing I should have expected from Gai, to go so far as to shift his team around temporarily so that his student would run missions and earn money.

Meeting Neji wasn't what I had expected it to be. Seeing as Gai dropped in at the usual 'Anbu window' to get me, I didn't even see him at first. Gai scared the shit out of the three other genin in my living room, Sakura looking up sharply from her book to blink at him owlishly before dismissing him in favor of whatever she was reading. Naruto hid behind Sasuke, who was doing his best to look unaffected as Gai bellowed that my sensei had graciously allowed him to steal me for missions since his 'youthful Tenten' was out sick.

I could feel the signatures of the two genin waiting on ground level, one excited and the other slightly irritated. I didn't want to aggravate the Hyuuga, so I grabbed my mission gear and waved to the genin,

"There's food in the fridge, you know the rules."

They parroted back automatically,

"Dishes in the sink or god help us."

I nodded before leaping out the window after Gai, landing lightly next to him and smiling as he introduced me, waving when he was done.

"Pleasure meeting you."

I didn't realize until we were out of the city gates, but I'd been chosen for a reason, and not just that Gai knew Genma. This was a higher level C-rank, had it been only chuunin they'd likely class it as a B-rank, but with Gai himself there it bumped down the ranking. We were to run a scroll to an outpost at the border, and speed was sort of important. We took to the tree's almost immediately, and through eavesdropping I learned Lee had been instructed to leave a good bit of his weights at home for this. Damn. That expert knowledge of where my chakra was going and when helped in keeping up, but it was a near constant drain on my reserves, and I resolved to up my speed training as much as possible. As much as I had weights applied through seals I still needed to actively work on it, and I'd forgotten that.

Nothing of interest happened on that mission, or the next one where it was Neji who I was replacing. He wasn't rude to me, and he didn't mention fate once, but he held himself apart in a way that said he didn't really think I'd make it far enough for it to be worth getting to know me. Lee was a different story, and if I ignored every application of the word 'youth' and every single metaphor he used then he became good company. Tenten I met on a later mission and was interesting to talk to, not only because she was a serious kunoichi but because weapons were the one thing I didn't have an advantage in, coupled with taijutsu, so I was more inclined to be frustrated by it. She was the only one I confided a certain developing technique in, and she was a major help with it in every single way.

She was also the reason I first took a life. A chuunin by the name of Sonada Nonami needed an escort from an outpost, and we were redirected from running a scroll to running her home. Sonada was a career Chuunin, twenty-eight years old, of average height, with blue eyes and bright purple hair that flared out in two spikes that curled outward on either side of her head. She had a scar running across her right cheekbone, though it didn't stop her smile from still looking friendly.

It began routinely enough, with little blips of life appearing at the edge of my awareness, though Gai-sensei had instructed me to keep it tighter around us than usual to avoid false alarms with civilian travelers, or even border patrol. Keeping it reigned in meant that when they got close I knew so much more about them. I was at the rear, with Tenten beside me, Lee on one side of Sonada-san and Gai on the other. I didn't have to raise my voice to make myself heard.

"Active chakra systems approaching."

He didn't even glance back at me,

"Exact numbers?"

I sighed,

"Seventeen total, four at least chuunin level, the rest maybe made it through two years of academy training."

"Hmm, chances of avoiding confrontation?"

I hesitated, running trajectory calculations across our current speed, comparing it to theirs, and then making a mental note to apologize to Iruka-sensei for thinking that none of this would ever be useful in the real world.

"Almost non-existent. They're ahead of us, either coming from Konoha or they had an early start and went around, because there's no way they have the reserves to have outpaced us."

He took the unasked for observation in stride, no doubt accustomed to it coming from my sensei.

"ETA?"

"...four minutes at most."

Sonada-san scoffed,

"There's no way they're outpacing us if it will take them four minutes to get here at the edge of what your sensei ordered to be a 'reduced range', whatever the hell that is."

Lee responded for me, shooting Sonada a beaming smile and a thumbs up,

"Asuka-chan is the best sensor I've had the pleasure of working with, even Hyuuga have remarked upon her accuracy!"

That was a slight exaggeration, seeing as Neji had once stated that I 'wasn't terrible'. But if he was willing to stretch the truth for me then I wasn't going to complain. We kicked up the pace after that and I gave updates, with us trying halfheartedly to weave around them, only for me to call out a warning,

"Fifteen seconds, on our one and eleven."

We stopped dead, ready to meet them head on, Sonada pushed to the back between Tenten and myself. Tenten already had several kunai drawn and slotted between her fingers, and I subtly pulsed chakra into the seals inked into the bandages on my body to release the training weight I'd still been able to keep on and manage to keep pace with the others. There was a war cry to start it out and I'm sure we collectively winced. No finesse. The first two in line were wielding rusted katana, and were obviously canon fodder for the next person to emerge, because they almost immediately threw out a doton jutsu.

Lee slapped a hunk of earth out of the air and Gai bellowed,

"Barrier three around the client, Asuka-chan!"

I threw out the tags immediately, barrier three being the one with a floor and a ceiling which kept people both in and out unless they were me. He apparently didn't trust Sonada-san not to try to jump into the fight, or maybe bargain the scroll for our lives, who knew. Either way there was no need to stick so close to the barrier, I'd know when it became strained, and until then our only problem was putting these weirdo's out of commission. I told Tenten such.

"My best friends field tested this particular barrier on Sharingan no Kakashi during training. It will hold against these guys no problem."

I ignored her surprised look, it wasn't uncommon for ninja to just not share techniques, hell, she probably thought that I was just a sensor, that's usually specialization enough for those with the right talent. The Q&A session would have to wait, however because we had other shit to worry about. Tenten was clubbing people over the head left and right, several of them went down with blades sticking out of non-lethal areas. Those that looked like they were going to get up I slapped knockout tags onto.

We worked beautifully like that for a while, but there were so many of them, properly trained or not. Eventually a chuunin slipped past Gai-sensei purely by virtue of his hitai-ate being in a more shadowed place on his body and easily ignored. I saw it though, rogue from Mist. The Hidden Mist spits out terrifying bastards in my opinion, and this guy opened with a water dragon, liquid pulled from god-knows-where. It wasn't a full sized one, but it was enough, slamming into the barrier, grazing Tenten on it's way past. She hit the ground hard and didn't move. I felt the sudden drop in energy from the barrier and saw Sonada with her back pressed against the wall, eyes wide.

I leapt forwards, kunai held in a backwards grip. The chuunin met my strike of course, jarring my arm and shoulder in the process. I leapt back slightly to gain distance but his attention was on me now, probably recognizing me as the castor of the seal. If I died, so would the barrier. He leapt for me and I used the replacement jutsu, seallessly, with one of his friends behind him. He wasn't expecting it of course, the lack of seals compounded with nothing that I should have been able to use so close to him. But the knockout tag was infused with my chakra, a definite link, and the guy I switched with was out cold, no resistance.

It was almost easy to jam my kunai at the base of his skull. He dropped immediately, and I just breathed for a few seconds, closing my eyes briefly and swallowing to prevent myself from vomiting. I only moved when I felt Tenten step towards me, perfectly fine, if a bit bruised. I cleared my throat, doing my best to shake it off, and opened my eyes to take in who was next.

The fight didn't end just because something traumatic had happened, but it made my tolerance for this decrease substantially, so when the bandits around us increased in number, annoyed by their fallen friend, I gave up on being gentle, sensing Gai had donen the same when a rogue Iwa Chuunin showed up. I'd been avoiding using jutsu because neither Lee or Tenten bothered with it, and even Neji stuck to the Gentle Fist, not to mention it was much harder to be nonlethal with them. But it was stupid to have an ace and refuse to use it. Especially since there were real ninja among these idiots. Tenten was probably more surprised than the enemies surrounding us when I took in a breath and released it as fire. Things only escalated from there.

I went from killing one person to killing six. Burning alive is a horrible way to go, I should know, it was one of the ways Itachi killed me in Tsukuyomi. I even used a few tricks I'd learned from that experience. It wasn't a good mission, with the parameters leaked and someone from the border snitching on who even had the scroll, it seemed. The first hit was directed straight at Sonada, after all, sparking the need for the barrier. I collapsed bonelessly onto the ground with my back against a tree, just watching the sunlight filter through the leaves of the Hashirama trees around us while Gai gathered the bodies that I hadn't already torched, separating them from those still living who would be picked up later and taken to T&I. It was slightly, darkly, amusing that they might even be used to test my very own interrogation seals.

There was a tapping noise and I glanced over and finally remembered Sonada.

"Ah, sorry Sonada-san." I wearily brought my fingers up, "Kai."

The seal shattered outwards, a stronger one than I'd used before in an actual mission, and the spark from the seal paper destructing was unnoticeable unless you knew to look for it. The biggest thing was the drain on my chakra suddenly ceasing. I still needed to refine the flow of this damn thing so that it would take an initial surge to activate and then...I wasn't sure. Maybe either take it from the person inside if it was a prison seal, or nature chakra if it was to protect. I wasn't too sure about fucking with nature chakra, though. That shit was dangerous.

I was snapped out of my theorizing when Sonada laughed,

"Nonami-chan will be fine for you, kid. You're one scary bitch when you really put effort into it."

I snorted,

"Thanks...I think."

She cast one look back at the scorched ground where the barrier used to be and then grinned at me.

"Definitely a compliment, kid."

Tenten was the only one injured, though it was quickly bandaged and forgotten. We took off for Konoha at a faster pace than before, with Gai having me widen my perception. We encountered only three more people, stragglers from the main force, and they were easily dealt with by Lee alone in the blink of an eye. We were met at the gate by Ibiki himself, who took the scroll from Nonami and vanished with it almost immediately. That wasn't proper procedure, but we weren't exactly about to tell that particular jounin 'no'. Our report was brief, and we were quickly released. I could feel Gai's eyes on my back as I left the mission room, just knowing some awkward conversation was coming my way about the lives I'd taken. Wanting nothing more than to avoid that I rushed to the first available window and opened it, eyeing the only chuunin in the hallway desperately,

"If Might Gai asks I took the left hallway, got it?"

He nodded with understanding, Gai was Gai, after all.

With one leap I was on the street, and it took me three seconds for the tower to be out of sight. From there I walked. Not home, for one that's where Gai would look first, if he bothered to. But also because there was no one there. I was oddly grateful this was the weekend Kakashi chose to take his Genin out on a real survival mission. Not quite a C-rank, but more training outside of the walls. I didn't want to be alone, but I also didn't want to relate anything at all about this mission to those three. Four, really. They roped Kakashi into coming over surprisingly often.

He'd looked distinctly uncomfortable, well ninja uncomfortable, the first time I'd walked in to find him sitting at my kitchen table. It wasn't the first time it had happened, I'd felt his lingering chakra there before, but this was the first time I'd returned from training or a mission to find them there still. The others were loudly arguing from the living room over a cookbook, so I felt safe grinning and asking, "Back again? Miss my cooking after all this time?"

He narrowed his eye,

"So you do remember me."

"Course I do. You were gone, after. Thought you might have been one of them."

I had actually entertained the idea he was some Anbu Uchiha for a while, before his identity was confirmed right after graduation, the chakra the Sharingan radiated made them similar after all. I shrugged it off, opening a cabinet and taking stock of what I had.

"Well, long time in coming, but it's nice to see you're still alive. I'll put away my gear and take over this enterprise before they poison us. Accidentally of course."

It had been a fun evening, Kakashi seemingly relaxing more after that. I had many theories about why, one of which being that they'd barged into my apartment when I was the only one absent rather than use one of theirs. It wasn't how we worked. We lived in one another's pockets, and when Naruto went on that training trip Sasuke and I would likely be a little bit lost.

I wandered the village for a while, covered in a light henge of course. I felt a few shinobi break the genjutsu and gave them a sour look for it. They only shrugged. It made sense of course, to make sure I wasn't an enemy sneaking in or some shit, but they left it alone once they realized it was just to cover up blood and gore. It was a common trick for those returning from a mission who didn't want to freak out the civilians.

When I figured it had been long enough I slipped into my apartment window, the one I had dubbed 'the Anbu window'. First order of business was to lay out my gear and replace everything that needed it. It took me almost an hour to re-ink all of the seals I'd used on this damn mission, and I started tea before finally, finally, stepping into the shower. The shower is normally where people contemplate life and all of their choices and mistakes but I refused. I'd started tea just to keep me from losing myself in thought here. The responsibility to keep the complex from burning down was enough to keep me from slipping into morose thoughts.

That doesn't mean I didn't swear a bit when I felt a familiar signature enter the apartment through the Anbu window. It wasn't Gai, but it might just be worse. I put on a matching plaid pajama set before pulling my wet hair into a bun and stepping into the living room where Genma was waiting, seated in front of the coffee table on the floor. I ignored him, crossing to the kitchen where I gathered the tea and two cups. I settled on the floor across from him and concentrated on my tea, dragging out pouring it as long as possible, wishing I could avoid this conversation completely.

It wasn't to be. Genma finally took the teapot from me, clearing his throat.

"Gai says you ran into some trouble on this mission."

I shrugged with one shoulder, staring into my tea and trying to ignore how the feeling of the kunai sliding in under that guys skull had felt. Genma sighed,

"It happens to all of us eventually kid. Gai says your teammate was down, and the client was at risk. We all know that barrier of yours can't take too many water dragons directly, Hatake certainly proved that for us."

I snorted, still not quite over the surprise that Kakashi already knew that jutsu and had not actually copied it mid-battle off Zabuza. Gotta admit, it must have scared the shit out of the nuke-nin to think that's what he was doing.

"What I'm trying to say is you didn't do anything wrong, so you can stop looking like a puppy who's expecting to get kicked any second now."

I scowled, finally looking up at him. The senbon was absent from his mouth and I caught a glint of light from where he was rolling it around between his fingers.

"I did go a little crazy with the fireballs."

He shrugged,

"I'll get you some new jutsu. Not your fault that's the only good one you know."

"...I've also got three other fire jutsu."

"Well they would have still burned shit, now wouldn't they?"

I beamed at him, and his unusual usage of expletives around me,

"Now you're talkin my language."

He huffed, replacing his senbon in his mouth and crossing his arms.

"Whatever kid, now that mess is out of the way, I've got takeout."

I don't know where he pulled it from, but he did indeed have takeout. The place wasn't cheap and I'd been there exactly one other time, when Genma had paid for it. The rest of the night was spent talking about books, the fiction kind. There was no mention of seals, or jutsu, or death. Just food and lighthearted conversation. It was exactly what I needed just then, and I couldn't help but adore my sensei just a little bit for knowing it.

~TimeLordOfPie