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"Is there a problem?" Gyoza-san asked, scratching his head.

"No, sir," Ino growled, crumpling the note in her fist. There was a spark of a fire jutsu, and the paper ignited, smoking and shriveling like what remained of our hopes of having a semi-pleasant stay in Tanyu. Throwing the ashes to the floor, she ground the dust into the wooden boards with the heel of her sandal and stalked off.

"…Is she okay?" Gyoza-san asked, shaking. After all, normal twelve-year-old girls didn't set papers on fire with only their breath just because they were angry.

"Sir, we're shinobi. We're never okay," I deadpanned.

"But at least we'll do our best to make sure you are, right?" Naruto added, cheerful and morally upright as always. This seemed to placate him, and he retired for the night.

"How the hell are we supposed to do this?" Ino whined. "In our contract, we're supposed to be keeping an eye on Gyoza-san for the whole week as he does his business! How are we supposed to guard himand look for Kakashi-sensei at the same time?"

"Well, I guess we should have seen this coming, what with him disappearing and all," I said. He had played this version of I-Spy-Hide-And-Seek with us before – but never like this. Usually we'd have set boundaries like a certain range of blocks in Konoha or a certain expanse of forest. Never before had we had to search something as huge as the entire city of Tanyu, and never before had he put us at a whole half-hour disadvantage as he did now, seeing as he had abandoned us back at that square. "At least we have Naruto's clones, right?"

"I can make enough to search this whole city, if you need me to," Naruto said, puffing out his chest proudly.

"You do that. Have your clones send you a signal if they see something. Ino and I will keep observation watch." The way Kakashi-sensei played this particular game, if we didn't find him before time was up – and that was always, because it was basically impossible to find Kakashi-sensei if he didn't want to be found (unless your name was Maito Gai) – he'd give us a quiz on various random details instead, such as "Was the lady with the bright red bird-shaped hairpin traveling with a man or a woman?" or "Was that last question a trick question and was she actually traveling with both a man and a woman, or was she traveling alone?". The quiz would last until we got three questions right – one each – and every question we got wrong in the meantime was a day spent fulfilling one of Maito Gai's challenge requests.

I was mostly fine with it, because the challenges were good training, even if they were crazy, and Naruto was also mostly fine with it, because TenTen didn't hit him like Sakura did or boss him around like Ino did.

Ino, however, would do anything to avoid these days. Something about too much youthfulness and Lee not knowing when to give up. Lee had a massive and borderline-obsessive crush on her, which she did not reciprocate. And all of her efforts to look less pretty only served to intensify his admiration for her, because apparently, girls that walked around in baggy camouflage and tight braids were deserving of appreciation for being dedicated to their training.

"This isn't fair," Ino moaned, burying her head in her hands. "This just isn't fair. Sakura's sensei doesn't do this shit to her! That – bastard! That – ugly – stupid – evil – insane – bastard! Just this once, can't we get a break?"

"Huh? What's that?" Naruto asked, pointing to a second note that was fluttering to the ground. It had been tacked on the scarecrow's back, instead of the front as the first note had been. He picked it up and unfolded it.

"And mind your language, Ino."

Ino paused mid-rant to stare at the note. Her eye twitched.

I shrugged. "Told you he's always watching us."

This time, Naruto vowed. This time, I'll get him for sure.

He silently thanked Shikamaru and Ino for taking him aside and forcing him to learn chakra walking. It was way easier to scan for people from up here than while being stuck in the massive crowd.

Days had passed, with no sign of their sensei. After the first two days of no luck, Shikamaru had been forced to conclude that Kakashi-sensei was using a physical disguise instead of Henge, and that trying to feel for any chakra in the mostly-civilian crowd was useless. Not that they'd be able to find him that way if he was really trying anyway – Shikamaru had pointed out that by the time one reached Jonin level, learning how to suppress your own chakra was a must.

Meaning they were going to go by the old-fashioned way: smell.

Because they were supposed to be a "capture and interrogation team" as opposed to a "combat team" or an "intel team" (Naruto winced as the memory of Ino beating those particular team type classifications into his mind), Kakashi-sensei had tested all of their skills in this field early on. What he found was that Ino was the most chakra-sensitive of all of them, with Shikamaru somewhere in between and Naruto at the very end because his chakra control was, "to put it simply, absolutely abysmal."

However, to balance that out, Kakashi-sensei had also pointed out that his sight, smell, and hearing was way above par for someone without any formal training, so it made sense that Naruto and his clones were going to be running around here now. Naruto scratched his head. He knew he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes, but compared to back then, he felt he was a lot better. Some of the things that he liked to do back in the Academy seemed pretty stupid now. Maybe that was why Sakura always hit him.

But he'd show them! One day, he'd become the Hokage! And then everyone would respect him! Heck, Kakashi-sensei was respected around Konoha, and he was more of a jerkass than Sasuke-teme!...though in a not-quite-obviously jerkass way. Because everything he did seemed to be an accident. Even though Shikamaru always insisted that they weren't. Though Naruto couldn't quite wrap his mind around the fact that anyone could plan that far ahead.

Maybe it was just one of Kakashi-sensei's life lessons. "If something works in your favor, always pretend that it was all part of your plan. Even if it wasn't."

The weird thing about being on Shikamaru's team – on being on any team, really – was that your teammates' personalities started to bleed over to you a little. He liked Shikamaru. Even though the teachers were always going on and on about how he was the most brilliant person in the history of forever to pass through their hands, he never let it make him a jerk like Sasuke did. He didn't make fun of Naruto for not getting things the first time around, either. He just treated Naruto just like a normal person and expected him to figure out how to keep up.

Which led to Ino, who he found wasn't as bad as he thought she was at first, even if she was crazy about Sasuke. Being stuck with her in this team for a while, and vice versa, had led both of them to figure out how to tolerate each other. Sure, she was super bossy, but she was also super cheerful and pumped up about most things, except practicing with Gai's team. Which he didn't get, because that was actually really fun, even if Gai-sensei was arguably even weirder than Kakashi-sensei sometimes.

He didn't know what to think about Kakashi-sensei. The guy was even worse than he was. In pranks, that is. Or was it better, because he never seemed to get into trouble for it? He wondered how the Academy teachers dealt with a younger Kakashi-sensei – surely the guy must have started really early in order to be this good. Or maybe he was just crazy, like Shikamaru said. Naruto never pegged Shikamaru as the type to be a conspiracy theorist, and yet, when it came to Kakashi-sensei, the guy seemed to think that everything that happened was on purpose.

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