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"You're kidding, right," Kakashi said flatly in a way that implied he had little hope his Hokage was joking and was instead banking on using his one uncovered eye to light her on fire. White Hatake chakra had been known to have some unusual effects, after all.
No such luck. Despite his best efforts, Tsunade remained stubbornly not-on-fire.
The two kunoichi who had been paired with him for the mission tried not to snicker, but the woman behind the desk made no such concession to his dignity. Tsunade smirked up at one of her top ninja, fully prepared to send him on a mission far below his caliber in a relatively transparent attempt to force him to calm his nerves after what she classified as a minor breakdown.
"I don't joke, Hatake-chan. Have your cute little apprentice help you with your hair. Don't worry, it'll all wash out when you get back and apply the second bottle." He frowned down morosely at the dark red hair dye in his hands. "If you weren't so distinct looking, this wouldn't be necessary," she claimed with far too much enjoyment in her voice and no apparent notice for the irony of that statement coming from a woman with an incredibly rare hair color and breasts that had actually inspired several songs and stories (not counting Jiraiya's complete works, which Aiko was relatively sure were all one long love letter to Tsunade's chest and the woman herself to a lesser extent). "Besides, no one would believe a man with white hair and a woman with purple hair had a red-headed child."
"It's silver," he muttered rebelliously.
"Maybe I should color mine too," Aiko added cautiously. "My hair is far lighter than Anko-senpai's or that dye."
Tsunade gave her a lazy once-over, eyes darting between her features and those of her 'parents'. "You'll be fine, brat. We don't need to match exactly. That's almost as suspicious as not being in the same color family. Now shut up." She turned her attention back to the adults in the room. "As I was saying, you three will be posing as a family on vacation. A certain noble client has become concerned that there is an informant in their household, passing compromising information through their hotel and spa."
She rolled her eyes at the thought, adding in a rather scathing tone that, "The family is concerned that their attempt to marry into some other noble family will be sabotaged. A lot of money is on the line here—if this merger happens, our client will be getting a big fat wedding present in the form of a diamond mine." (Anko choked on the bamboo dango skewer hanging out of her mouth, eyes popping out in surprise) Tsunade grinned at the shock on the other two kunoichi's faces, pursing her vividly red lips prettily before she continued "It's your job to make sure that doesn't happen, or that if it does the person who doesn't isn't passing the gossip through the spa. Anko, make sure Hatake unwinds. This mission should be well within the capabilities of a team far less talented than you three, so I expect there to be no screw-ups."
"Hai, Hokage-sama." She shifted her weight to one hip, examining her cohorts. "Would it be acceptable for me to use henge to look a little older, or are we concerned about enemy nin?"
Aiko tried not to show amusement at that thought. 'Kakashi-sensei could pass for my dad in a pinch, (a young, hot dad, just barely old enough to be the father of a 13 year old) but Anko is definitely too young to be my mother. She would have been nine or ten when I was born.' She shuddered.
"Henge will be fine." The Hokage shrugged, shuffling around in her desk. "This is all civilian in-fighting. If they had hired ninja to get that information, those nobles wouldn't know anything was wrong. Any other questions that your mission brief didn't answer?" At the negative answers, she nodded decisively. "Good. Now get the hell out of my office."
As it turned out Kakashi-sensei did not want or need any help with his hair, showing up only half an hour late at the gates with pretty reddish hair that shone like Kankuro's in the sun and a slouched, defensive attitude that suggested a pout was hidden underneath his sky blue scarf. Aiko tried not to cringe while the Chuunin gate guards gave double and triple takes, Izumo gawking with his mouth hanging open at the moment he seemed to figure out who the fit redhead he'd been checking out was. Seeing her teacher out of uniform was strange enough, but Kakashi was wearing an eyepatch. 'I know he has to have his funky red eye closed, but… that looks terrible.'
Unfortunately they had to walk for even the first part of their journey like civilians instead of traveling at ninja speeds and then getting into cover. At least their destination was relatively close within Fire Country.
All three of them were dressed as relatively well-off civilians for the trip, packed lightly with minimal weaponry. The two kunoichi were in yukata. Aiko tried her best not to stare or laugh—it was hard to believe that Anko had actually owned a butter yellow yukata with green and blue butterflies and Lotus blossoms. The fabulously big, extravagant bow on the accompanying pink obi dwarfed her tiny frame. Her own clothing was a little plainer. It was almost entirely a faded purple with pink threading that suggested a vine pattern. In other words, it was suitable for travel, but still girlish enough to make her look like less of a threat.
'Maybe Anko has to wear ridiculously feminine clothing to get the same effect,' she hypothesized, carefully not spending too long looking at the older kunoichi and her carefully henged visage— an incredibly subtle confection that included tiny pore imperfections that suggested the use of makeup to compensate for age.
When they stopped for the night after and she looked at her teacher across the campfire, she'd had enough. "Stand still, tou-san."
Kakashi looked warily at her when she invaded his personal space with a brush. "What the hell are you doing." He stepped back defensively.
Aiko gave her fellow kunoichi exaggerated puppy eyes. "Kaa-san, help me. He can't wear that eye patch. He looks like a reject from an off-Broadway production of Pirates of Penzance." She looked a bit baffled, but Anko eyed up their sole male companion. Other than the eyepatch, he looked good. The role they were playing was a family of relatively new-monied civilians, so he was wearing black slacks and a blue shirt under a thigh-length coat. Some of the very wealthy families wore expensive traditional clothes regularly, but new money was often accompanied by foreign clothing. The role he was playing probably didn't include any rough accidents that would cause the loss of an eye.
"I don't know what the hell the kid said, but she's right. It looks terrible, anata," she drawled. "Be a dear and let her play with your hair."
"Just keep your eye closed." He sighed, but obligingly went limp and read his book with his dark gray eye and kept the other pressed closed when she tugged off his eyepatch and gave it a scathing look before tucking it into the front pocket of his tan coat. Then she wondered why he had to be dressed so warmly. It was only fall. She tried to run her fingers down his scalp and got them caught almost immediately. The feeling of his hair between her fingers set the hair on the back of her neck up- it was so tangled that he couldn't possibly have done anything with it in at least a week. At least it was soft.
'Does he back-comb? How on earth did he dye his hair? Did he just fill the sink with dye and dip his head in? Because this is definitely not hair that has been combed in the last week. Oh god, did no one teach him to comb his hair? He was an orphan at like six, wasn't he?' She attacked his hair with her brush, forcing it to obey gravity and fall over his forehead instead of arcing up, arranging it to cover his Sharingan eye and so that a few strands brushed over the rest of his forehead. It didn't want to obey, but she forced it. He patiently endured her attentions in the long-suffering manner he had adopted after about a year of trying to avoid physical contact when stuck with a little girl who liked to hold hands as a student.
"That's better." Anko pulled out her own dirty yellow book, kicking back on her bedroll. "Come to bed, love." Their team leader groaned. Aiko pouted that she couldn't have brought her own book.
The mission dragged on and on as they walked to the neighboring town where they actually hired a horse-drawn carriage to take them to the spa, (an extravagance that only the ridiculous, pretentious people they were portraying would be able to indulge in) and Aiko couldn't help but pout. She didn't complain aloud, however, because there was really no big reason to be upset. The missed training time could be made up for at home, and the spa itself was lovely. She received her own room with an adjoining door to the love suite where Anko had gigglingly dragged Kakashi with a deceptively delicate, pale hand on the first night and then proceeded to have what appeared to be an amazing time making theatrical noises. (The boy who had carried the luggage Anko had managed to buy upstairs had made an 'icky' face and not returned since).
She knew why they had gotten such a frivolous mission, of course. Posing as a family was the least conspicuous way to go on a vacation, and despite the likelihood that nothing dangerous would happen it was always possible that when nobles and money were involved, so were enemy ninja. The two adults with her were both highly skilled, and Aiko herself was capable enough to hold her own against average opponents. Although it seemed as if it might be a waste of an elite like Kakashi, the mission would also hopefully give him time to stabilize and repair some of the recent trauma. As far as Aiko could tell, Tsunade was the type of person who would take good care of her soldiers—not necessarily because she was soft, but because it was efficient to do so and she saw no use for either stupidity or cruelty.
Really, the woman was scarily perfect to be a military dictator. Assuming one could forgive her for the alcoholism and fits of violent temper, at least.
While undercover and unable to talk shop, avoid each other, or do shinobi type things, Aiko was amused to discover a strangely amiable chemistry between the three of them. Anko's undercover behavior varied the most from her normal actions. She was still a little raucous, but in a much less trigger-happy way and she gleefully recounted the scandalous interactions of their imaginary neighbors (especially that Hashimoto woman down the street who actually did her own gardening, can you imagine?). Aiko was going to have a talk with Anko when they returned to Konoha about her neglected talent as a writer—the woman had a knack for storytelling and a vivid imagination.
On the other hand, Kakashi-sensei's chosen cover wasn't actually that different from his usual behavior, with the exception of his deference to Anko. Though he was nominally in charge of both the mission and in the family they were portraying, Kakashi seemed content to slip into a slightly hen-pecked and affectionately long suffering role, allowing Anko to bully him into stopping at what seemed to be every 'adorable' tea shop in the Fire Country and hinting at a gruff fondness for his 'daughter', but mostly remaining as silent as he usually was, occasionally patting his hip sadly as if reaching reflexively for the book that he had not been able to bring with him now that they were in public.
For her part, Aiko took every opportunity to snuggle up to her sensei, both as part of her cover as a doting daughter delighted to get to spend some time with her slightly distant businessman father and in service of her private belief that her sensei really needed a lot of hugs. Anko leapt into the fray as the parent Aiko must have inherited her touchy qualities from, which meant that Aiko got to bask in hours of hair brushing and really silly braids and amateur geisha hair-dos.
"Mummy," Aiko called, clicking her knuckles against the door to the other two nin's room. At the muffled reply, she pushed the door open and stepped through, trying not to look too enviously at the luxurious suite. Her teacher didn't look up from his position on the bed. He was lying on his back with an Icha Icha book up to his face, reading desperately as if to save up enough happiness to get him through the rest of the book-less day. The older woman walked out of the bathroom still slipping on an earring, face rouged and in a fluffy pink bathrobe dotted with rhinestones at the hems. Aiko tried not to choke with laughter and wildly hoped that Anko would take it home and incorporate it into her wardrobe once this mission was over. The amused look on the other girl's face indicated that she had caught the amusement.
"Oh, I'm sorry darling, I'm running a bit late," Anko pouted, tugging open the folded closet door and extracting a silver and green yukata. "I'll be ready in just a moment." She sailed back into the bathroom and clicked the door behind her. Aiko pressed her lips together and breathed in deeply through her nose, struggling not to let any amusement show. The older kunoichi had really taken to her role as a trophy wife. The role worked for their investigation, however.
She perched on the edge of the bed, being careful not to wrinkle her yukata. When the surface dipped under her weight, one visible gray eye slid to her in what could have been a brief show of despair. Then she blinked and he was focused on his book again as if he'd never stopped. Aiko rolled her eyes and swatted playfully at his hair like a kitten, enjoying the way it bounced back. His hair was like a living thing—it had only taken one day for it to be nearly as tangled as it was when she'd first fixed it. When Anko was finally done primping, the two kunoichi would be taking advantage of their frivolous roles in order to investigate one of the employees that their client was worried about—a woman who, by all accounts, was a fabulous manicurist.
Life was pretty good.
~~~
"I haven't been out in the field for months," Inoichi grumbled, keeping an easy pace with his long-time teammates. Despite the long break in Interrogations work, he had worked with the other two men for so long that there was no chance he would forget the rhythm of travel they fell into or slip out of formations they had developed over twenty years ago. "Has it always been so cold outside?"
Choza chuckled. "You're getting out of shape, old man. I didn't know that interrogations work made you so soft. Don't complain." He made an extra large leap, playfully shaking the tree he landed on. The hefty Akimichi Clan Head had also been on the inactive roster for missions like this, due to clan obligations and the never ending politicking of his position, but he was delighted by the change in routine instead of inconvenienced. Shikaku rolled his eyes, wishing his teammates were a little more mature for once. They noticed his poor attitude, slowing down and dropping out of the trees to approach the Daimyo's home on foot. It was considered rude and possibly hostile to sneak up, after all.
"What's your problem, Shikaku? Is something wrong?" Inoichi probed, dusty blue eyes searching for signs. Signs of what, Shikaku didn't know, but he didn't appreciate the scrutiny either.
His long-time teammate scowled half-heartedly. "Don't pry, you miserable old gossip. You know I'd tell you if you could. You'll know soon anyways."
The blonde knew him too well to be put off by the rudeness, merely shrugging. He dropped the subject- classified was classified- and merely protested being referred to as a miserable old gossip. While the two lanky men bickered, Choza explained their presence to the samurai guarding the traditional gates and had a message sent to the Daimyo asking for a reception. He placidly returned and explained to his companions that they would have to wait a while.
When they were finally led in for an audience, the other two clan heads fell in line behind the Nara. He wasn't their team leader, precisely. They were an interesting team in large part because they were all alpha personalities but seamlessly traded places in the chain of command hierarchy to put the most suited man in charge. At the moment, that was Shikaku, who had all the information about this mission and about what Tsunade had hoped to accomplish by sending them here. It was no coincidence that she had sent three clan heads on this mission. Aside from the fact that it was more respectful to the Daimyo, they were each a pointed reminder that Konoha's strength was in its clans, and each man represented at least a hundred shinobi. It wasn't a threat, precisely, but it might make him leery of dismissing the rights of the large clans in favor of three seventy year olds.
The audience itself made Shikaku wish that Tsunade had allowed him to brief his teammates. He knew why she hadn't—it was her intention that the Daimyo would be able to see the visceral reaction of disgust and anger that the news caused in his teammates. Knowing not only how the clans would react to the news and that too many people to be easily silenced knew about the council's murderous misbehavior would probably factor into his decision.
Granted, Tsunade probably also knew the three men well enough that she had planned it this way so that they had burnt off the worst of their anger before they got back to Konoha and didn't irritate her so much as they might have otherwise. Shikaku admired the woman for her unique mix of laziness and pragmatism, in a terrified 'I-would-run-away-from-her-if-only-I-could' sort of way.
Shikaku knew better than to be surprised or disappointed by the non-committal response the Daimyo gave to the information. The man would almost certainly confer with his most trusted advisors, weighing the most politically viable and intelligent options before weighing with anything so petty as his personal opinion or human decency. The news delivered, the three clan heads backed out in bows and left the capital in a rush. Shikaku consciously did not look at his companions, clenching his jaw imperceptibly.
Choza was the one to break the silence. "When did you find this out?"
Shikaku answered the man honestly, explaining that Tsunade had summoned him to her office before he had even made it home from her inauguration.
The large man gave a low whistle, eyes fixed straight ahead at the treetops they were rushing through. "That's sick," he said with finality and a grimace.
On the other side of their triangle formation, Inoichi agreed quietly, thinking of his own family. "It's horrific," he said lowly, rumbling from his chest at an unusually low pitch. Pale lips pressed together unhappily, and then he gave a derisive laugh. "I almost wish it weren't true or that I didn't know. I don't care what Fugaku was up to. What Danzo ordered was monstrous far beyond the pale." He did his level best not to think of the mass funeral that had been held and all the tiny coffins involved. It had been a sight that sent chills down his spine— at the time he had been a full-grown man who had killed dozens of people in his life, and was still shocked wordless at the sight.
"It's obscene," Shikaku agreed curtly. "I want everyone involved or complicit out on their ear."
"But that can't be done without ruining that poor boy's deep cover," Choza worked out in a displeased rumble. "He'd be dead before the day was out if the Hokage made this public knowledge and tossed them out on their wrinkled asses like they should be." The Nara acknowledged his logic with a nod.
Inoichi sniffed imperiously and frowned. "Doesn't mean they can get away with this," he muttered darkly, mind already working on possible solutions.
~~~
The Fifth Hokage was the strangest human being that Uchiha Sasuke had ever met, and that included his genin sensei. Oh sure, at first glance she seemed relatively normal in comparison to people like Kakashi or his Eternal Rival, but after he had spent a few weeks in her company regularly it became quite clear that she had even less impulse control than Naruto did.
"They probably should have skipped the middleman and made Shizune the Hokage," he muttered to the civilian secretary when he dropped off her coffee. Keiko snorted indelicately, then straightened, mortified by the slip in professionalism, apparently ignorant to the fact that she had been hired precisely because she had no chance of outfoxing any of her shinobi coworkers. "She can't hear," he reassured quietly, trying not to smirk. Tsunade had fired every office worker in the tower to start over with an entirely new staff that she vetted personally, so they were all still a bit jumpy and mildly concerned that another round of firing was on its way.
Personally, Sasuke approved of Tsunade's apparent paranoia. For the moment the personnel switch was causing a lot of extra work—no one really knew the nuances of the old system—but it would be worth it to ensure information security. Once the old employees had made it through her security system, they would all be offered new employment in other office buildings, so he didn't feel particularly sorry for them. One man who had sold information had already been ferreted out by the interrogators and was cooling his heels in prison, so obviously the paranoia had been justified.
Besides, picking up slack in things like getting drinks for the three women who were habitually in the office (the secretary, Tsunade, and Shizune) didn't bother Sasuke. He left for lunch every day anyways, so it wasn't much of a hassle.
His apprenticeship was rather eclectic. He still did his physical conditioning and speed training with Aiko (and now Karin) in the early mornings, but Shizune had taken it upon herself to teach him to use her two favored weapons, senbon and a sword. He did chakra control exercises and assigned reading (both medical and political, to his displeasure) on his own, but his actual mentor did step up at least once daily in order to beat the hell out of him in a taijutsu spar (one of the few excuses Shizune would accept for taking a break from paperwork and boring meetings) or watch him demonstrate the next stage of the medical techniques she was having him work through. He wasn't overly pleased about learning medical jutsu, but they were necessary precursors to Tsunade's unique fighting style—near invulnerability, the ability to store enormous amounts of chakra, and the strength to break through any defense sounded pretty damn good to him.
Unfortunately, there was also a lot of busywork involved. Since his security clearance had been upped, he was now available to go through all sorts of records that needed to be updated. After the disastrous Chuunin Exams that had done massive structural damage and taken a big chunk out of their active reserves, the Jounin who would normally do that sort of thing were spending more time in the field. Even three man genin teams had been broken up into groups of two for D-class missions, a bullet he had barely dodged by dint of his new assignment. He still wasn't sure if he had been lucky or gotten screwed.
After he gave Shizune her coffee (flavoured generously with chocolate) and braved Tsunade's office to ungraciously hand off her tea (giving her attitude was almost as satisfying as poking Naruto into exploding), Sasuke slouched off to his own work space and gave the paperwork on his desk a morose stare. He wouldn't have to do most of the work himself, of course, but he did have to figure out where it needed to go and occasionally compile reports so that the Hokage didn't have to read everything herself to get the important information.
One such project occupied that afternoon—the bureaucratic mess of making sure their records for the statuses of all their active duty nin was updated after Orochimaru's failed invasion. Sasuke silently cursed the man to hell while he painstakingly picked through missing persons reports, autopsies, promotions, and hospital reports of career changing or ending injuries. When he was all done, he scanned through the lists of inactive ninja (very short, considering that they had almost all been called to active duty), active genin, Chuunin, Tobeketsu Jounin, and full Jounin, and then ended it off with finalizing the lists of fatalities and forcibly retired ninja. Then he frowned.
"Something's not right," he muttered to himself, leafing through the missing persons reports and comparing them to the autopsies. Three genin were completely missing— They hadn't been reported as missing, injured, or dead, but they also hadn't been relisted on the active duty roster when they should have reported in. A shinobi village thrived on information and noting details, so it seemed unlikely that no one would have noticed the oddity in the month since the incident. It wasn't as though no one knew the three genin— one of them was the hospital director's son. Yet somehow none of them had been reported as missing or killed in action.
"Where's their sensei," he hmmed, pulling out the appropriate file. 'One person not being noted missing is a strange incident. Three… either criminal levels of incompetency or conspiracy.' Even if absolutely no one else knew they were missing, their sensei should have noted. When he found the appropriate file, Sasuke frowned. "Well, shit," he said with finality, irritably piling the relevant papers up to stalk to Tsunade's office. He rapped on the door and pushed it open without waiting for an answer.
The woman inside hurriedly pushed something off of her desk and pinned him with a sneer, amber eyes narrowed at his audacity.
"Put me in my place later," he grumped, handing over the folder. "I found something strange. An entire genin team that was completely unaccounted for but somehow not listed as missing. I wondered why their sensei didn't report the disappearances if nothing else. Turns out that their genin sensei was found dead in his home after the exam. By all accounts, he'd been dead for months." He raised an eyebrow. "You would think that they would have noticed that."
Tsunade groaned, running a hand through her hair and staring blearily at the papers he had handed her. "Why don't you people ever have any good news," she groused, glaring at the papers accusingly. "It's never 'we have record numbers of enrollment' or 'the peasants want another holiday in your honor.' Nooo, all you people ever tell me is what's wrong." She sighed heavily, dropping the papers and making a grab for her stash of hard candy, Shizune's most recent attempt to wean her off the hard liquor during business hours. She popped an orange candy in her mouth and sucked on it, clearly thinking. "The obvious explanation is that those three are traitors and they jumped ship," she eventually conceded, frowning darkly, "though that wouldn't explain why no one reported them missing." The woman groaned again, letting her head fall back on her chair.
"Someone covered it up for them to give them time to get out," Sasuke surmised easily. "Or covered up the kidnappings, if that's what happened to them. The Sound did make attempts on bloodline users that would have been easy targets—hospitalized genin and Chuunin, generally teenagers. Those three are on the older scale, but still within the age range we know was targeted."
"Did any of the three have bloodlines?" Tsunade frowned, gesturing for him to pass over their personnel reports. He easily acquiesced. The blonde frowned, resting her elbows on the table and scanning the papers. Sasuke tried not to stare too obviously at the way her shirt fell open at the movement. That was, like, half a foot of cleavage. It was mesmerizing. 'Is it a genjutsu?' he wondered seriously, eyes flicking between her face and the hemline of her shirt. Luckily, he was looking up when the women cursed like a sailor and threw the papers in a fit of temper. "Two of them were from minor bloodlines," she exhaled. "Orochimaru always did like playing around with genetics."
Sasuke frowned. "But he's dead," he said abruptly and a little viciously.
"I know that," his mentor snapped irritably. "The kidnapping idea is unlikely, unless we are also assuming that the combined intelligence of those three is low enough that they would fail to notice their teacher was dead for a month. Orochimaru probably promised them something, a place in his stupid Sound village most likely, in exchange for intelligence." She hissed a long breath out between pursed lips, staring off into space in a way that implied her mind was elsewhere. "Which means we need to figure out what they had access to and probably work on updating codes and procedures under the assumption that Sound possesses them."
When she gestured, Sasuke obediently propped open the door so she could yell to the secretary to clear her schedule for the next hour, and then whistled for one of her ANBU guards and promptly demoted him to fetching the head of intelligence. Sasuke watched, nonplussed. When she finally noticed him again, the woman huffed. "Good job, gaki. Don't you have work to do?" She gave a start at something remembered, and then a wicked grin. "Actually, I think you're ready to move on to human autopsies. Why don't you join the group with Homura Mito in…" she tilted her head to see the clock on the wall between the bookshelves. "half an hour. I think I remember signing off on the paperwork for supervised analysis of a Mist nuke-nin today. Try not to get sick."
Sasuke rolled his eyes and sauntered out, passing a rather flustered Shizune who was arguing on the phone with someone who was apparently far too important to have their appointment pushed back.
~~~
"This bites," Ino groused, delicately hefting plywood over her shoulder (a bizarre accomplishment) and grimacing at the potential for splinters. Her partner for the day rushed back and forth from the construction site and the lumber piles with far too much energy to be entirely appropriate. "Lee, just watching you is making me tired."
Tenten gave an amused laugh through the nails held in her teeth, hammering away at the joint her partner was holding in place. Neji grimaced slightly in a way that implied he could commiserate, but he didn't comment verbally.
Granted, she had not been foolish enough to believe that repairing damaged infrastructure would be glamorous (the village wide D-class assigned to all genin while their instructors rushed to fill border rosters and take high-paying missions and academy students picked up the slack on other menial missions). But the stupid reconstruction missions seemed to be never ending.
"We should all just get certified as architects once we're done here," Tenten joked once her mouth was empty of metal pieces, wiping at her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand. She didn't mind hard work, but she was a little bummed that the two boys who had been promoted in the exam were younger than she was. The Aburame and the Nara boys had both left for border patrol, which she only happened to know because they had left with Gai-sensei, who would be the senior nin at the outpost.
"That is an excellent suggestion, Tenten-san," Lee huffed cheerily, grabbing the end of the wood he was carrying and whipping it around his body, letting go at the perfect time so that it soared directly to Neji, who snatched it right out of the air and used it to prop up the sagging roof. Then he bounded up the side of the nearly-finished porch and landed neatly on the roof, beaming down at his partner. "Ino-san! If we cannot finish tiling this roof before Neji-san repairs the porch, we should do one hundred laps around the lake!"
The Yamanaka dropped the last armful of wood as if it burned her and let it clatter to the grass, already on the roof and yanking the hammer out of Lee's fist. "No way, eyebrows!" He immediately fell to his knees beside her and began laying tiles out in rows, scooting sideways just a little faster than she could hammer them in place.
Neji rolled silver eyes at his kunoichi teammate, hammering at his own task a little faster but making no comment. Tenten sighed fondly, fluffing out her bangs and gamely propping up the triangular brace that was going to scallop the edges of the porch. When he paused in his rhythmic hammering for a moment before picking up the pace angrily, Tenten curiously looked around for what had bothered him. All she could see was that the team working on a house across the street (an Akimichi and the Inuzuka from the last Chuunin exam) had been joined by a redhead and his shy little cousin. Tenten eyed the girls pensively, wondering why Neji even cared. He had always seemed to dislike the brunette, and she had never even met the redheaded girl in the purple dress before. Then she noted a slight oddity, with the laser-like precision of Academy-trained nosiness and anal-retentive attention to detail.
'Didn't Hinata-san used to wear her forehead protector around her neck?' Tenten shrugged. She'd remembered because it had seemed rather unusual. 'It looks good on her forehead,' the older girl noted. 'She looks more serious.'