4/4

That most likely labeled her psychotic, or at least clinically insane. Unable to connect to the world like most sane people. Uncaring of the damage she would do outside of her small circle of important people. Unconcerned for what that meant for her in the end. She had died once and would do it again, that was inescapable.

She didn't care.

Her Hokage would survive, damn it all, and she would see it unless if her name wasn't Mesuji Natsumi now and Fiona Hanson then.

Now she had to think up a way to sell her supposed sanity to Inoichi-kun.

Nawaki babbled in her lap and slapped her across the face and Natsumi blinked her mismatched eyes at the half amused expression on the face of Senju Tsunade, who was standing in the doorway and watching her watch her little brother.

"Do I want to know what you were thinking about so hard over there, little shadow girl?"

\V/

Jiraiya thought that this little idea of twice a month gatherings was a good one and had plans to invite his teammates, Sakumo, and his sensei to it once everything was settled between the younger ninja.

Kami knew they would get a few kicks out of listing to the pack of brats talk to each other.

He had been aware that this little group of genin and a few chūnin met up when they could, but the lack of the war and the drain on everyone's time made it so it was immensely easier for them to coordinate when and where outside individual meetings. Now that Natsumi had informed him to what she knew of reincarnation and life after death, he was practically considered to have always been there even though this one was his first.

They were going through telling Uchiha Mikoto, apparently the last to know so far, and he felt rather impressed with the secret keeping they possessed that the two actual young girls of the group hadn't known before him.

Uzumaki Kushina was missing, and so was the current topic of discussion, but the Toad Sage knew that had to do with Uzumaki Mito's flagging health rather than any attempt to avoid facing their peers for whatever reason.

Natsumi was probably babysitting Tsunade's kid brother again, and Kushina was at the side of her one remaining relative in the village. The older Uzumaki woman would have kicked the bucket a lot sooner given the events of the past month but the news that filtered back to her, that ANBU agent Panther had went after the younger Uzumaki using a lead about the kidnappers' direction, had done a lot to relieve the ancient and frail fūinjutsu master from most of her worry and stress over the redheaded kunoichi's kidnapping nearly three weeks ago.

The Slug Princess' return to Konoha two weeks ago had helped immensely as well, keeping the old jinchūriki alive long enough to tell her replacement most of what she needed to be a good one.

Mikoto accepted reincarnation faster than he did, almost like one redhead everyone knew, but mostly because Fugaku didn't have a doubt about it. Then again, one didn't argue with a confident Nara without concrete facts, and sometimes not even then.

The conversation had turned to what short term plans they had after they were done assuring the Uchiha girl that Mesuji was working with the Yamanaka clan about the issues her past life was giving her when the flair of purple tainted chakra in a standard ANBU signal for off-duty and friendly let the older man sitting with his back to one of the Nara clan compounds' trees that the missing ex-ANBU assassin was back.

Natsumi strode into the clearing with an air like the cat that got the cream, swiped the canary, and blamed the whole thing on the dog. She had put on a tiny amount of weight under Tsunade's eagle eye already, and no longer looked like a stiff wind would snap her clean in two. Merely a hard knock now. "What did the fish say when he swam into a wall?"

Jiraiya's eyebrow rose incredulously, Minato's face lit up, and the rest of the brats warily exchanged looks except for Akimichi Chouza who took the bait the assassin offered, since from what the Toad Sage had heard the boy had genuinely thought the supposed girl's jokes were funny back in the academy. "What?"

"Dam."

Oh, that was so unfunny it hurt. Slapping a hand over his face, the white haired man groaned in acute pain. This was what he had willingly signed up for taking her on?

(ooo000ooo)

Inoichi was all but squirming in place to pick apart her new outlook, and Natsumi found it hilarious. He could tell something happened to the girl-woman's world view, and he wanted to know.

Her kouhai eventually ruined her fun and pinned her with a serious look with blue eyes over the campfire they started in the same hollow they had used almost four years ago once dusk fell. With a sigh, the misplaced soldier smirked softly at the blond mind walker. "I've decided it doesn't matter. Real or not, delusional or not, I'll do what I believe in and damn the consequences."

Isn't that all I'm really afraid of now?

The Yamanaka processed that for a silent moment, then started to smile. "Rationalization. I was afraid you might have slid back into disbelief again, cut off from everything as you were."

Personally, she was thinking she was still stuck on delusions... but that worked for her too.

"That was more like just putting time between me and my worries, since you don't really have the space to question the meaning of life there." She admitted slowly, thinking over the large space of time she had dissected and puzzled over the shinobi around her and not herself. She couldn't afford it then. "A nice break, if you discount a lot of the hazing."

Jiraiya snorted loudly, eyeballing her. Natsumi simply shrugged back.

"Wasn't too different from what I did before. A little more up close and personal, but the familiarity of the routine was comfortable for me."

The physically older man didn't argue, but he didn't look like he believed her either.

"So it put you back on an even keel, so to say." The Yamanaka heir tapped a finger against his lips as he toyed with the idea. "Probably around the age you realized what had happened to you. Five? Six? That would have given you a mental age of thirty-something, right?"

"I was always aware I was alive-err-ish, Inoichi-kun. I sort of came back to myself around three and didn't realize exactly what it meant until five when I stopped falling asleep every three to four hours." The former assassin tugged her high-tail, smirking faintly when Horse didn't try to stab her hand with a mildly poisoned senbon for the habit since the woman wasn't there. She really did need to cut the damn thing. "It was the first roof hopping ninja that had me worried about delusions, 'cause that wasn't possible when I looked around in my last life."

"Saa, so she's sane now?" Shikaku asked lazily, cracking open an eye and looking to the mind walker for an answer rather than the girl-woman he was lying next to.

Hiashi huffed across the fire next to his twin, since apparently Hyūgas were too dignified to snort. "She was never sane to begin with."

He ignored Hizashi's slight wince and Fugaku's firm nod of agreement.

"Hush…" Inoichi gave the marginally older twin the evil eye and glared momentarily at the Uchiha heir, before facing the Nara one. "In a manner of speaking. She was always functionally sane if slightly crazy, since she could keep up with day to day life without trying to murder one of us or cause herself unreasonable harm trying to keep touch with reality. Her outlook on life took a hit with the rebirth, and the insanity part she had been tripping over was more the disassociation with reality that had the edge to go that way than anything really wrong in her head. Heaped on top of that was survivor's guilt. She never was truly insane, merely thought she was. Though it will take a while to stop automatically doubting herself or me about her mental state."

Natsumi stared at him for a moment, slowly blinked one blue eye then her green one as she processed that, and then smirked.

"Aww, Inoichi-kun! I didn't know you cared!" She folded her hands over her heart, leaning over to place her head on his shoulder. "Sorry, though. The thirty years between us make it a little awkward to think about dating you."

The Yamanaka heir spluttered, turning beet red. Everyone else stared, even her kouhai.

Damn, she thought that was a good one, wasn't very perverted either.

Maybe it was still a bit too soon, or maybe her sense of humor was just too different?

"In keeping with the rather serious bent we have going on," the former ANBU agent ignored Shikaku's soft snort next to her, "Tsunade-sama just told me before I came out here that Mito-sama is no longer with us."

The blond mind walker slowly recovered as the group absorbed that. Fugaku was the one to look over at the girl-woman seriously and continue the conversation. "Uzu protocols, then? It's a good thing you're going to have a lot of free time now, Natsumi-san."

Mikoto looked around the quite group. That was likely news to her and apparently the sannin sitting just outside the circle of younger shinobi. "What are Uzu protocols?"

"Who else here has lost their entire world before, Mikoto-san?" Minato asked her lowly, jerking a thumb over to the girl-woman. "Natsumi-sempai helped Kushina-chan once before when Uzu fell, and she'd do it again even without us asking her too."

Natsumi's pale cheeks flushed a bit, internally damning the habits of always assisting her past life had left stamped on her soul and manners. "It was expected of… of what I was before. American soldiers always helped out, it was some kind of stupid unwritten law of the universe then. If you needed any kind of help, you found a dog soldier, a jarhead, a sailor, or one of the chair force."

Wouldn't the fly boys of her past be pissed with that nickname being the only thing they would be recalled by?

Her kouhai brightened even more than he had when she told that lame joke before, if that was possible. It was probably was the sharing of her previous life that pleased the closest thing she ever had to a little brother, painful though it was to think about. She had never done it before, finding the memories too sore to poke at.

"That's an awesome idea."

"Not very practical with shinobi, you'd never be sure who was really being helpful and who was scoping a place out." Jiraiya spoke up almost casually, still carefully inspecting her. Natsumi had maybe a moment to panic over what kind of psychology skills her sensei had before the man snorted out loud and his expression relaxed. "That's why you attached yourself to Minato-kun. He asked."

If it had been another life, the ex-ANBU assassin would have said it was a light bulb moment.

\V/

Tsunade smiled sweetly at her pervert of a teammate as she loomed over him. "My little shadow is missing again. You're not hiding her because you let her get stick thin while peaking in on the bathhouses again, are you? Jiraiya?"

The white haired sannin gulped and quailed a little on the inside, even if he knew he was in the clear.

His female teammate was as beautiful as she was scary, especially in her element as she was in Konoha's major hospital.

"She's over a hundred pounds!" He yelped as the evil woman flexed his knee the wrong way. He was in to get his finally healed injuries checked out to clear him for field duty again, and was mostly sure Natsumi knew he had been injured but kept it to herself. Another thing to wonder about, but one of the minor ones. Good thing the girl-woman had been ANBU once, otherwise it would have taken over six months for the team's first C-rank mission with only an injured, 'technically' jōnin ranked ninja for backup if something went wrong.

Another thing that needed sorting that was giving the man a headache the size of Fire Country. Where the hell did 'sannin' fall in traditional shinobi rankings?

"Does she still look like someone could knock her out with a glancing hit?" The Slug Princess asked archly as a flair of green told the Toad Sage she was checking the fractures he had gotten in his right kneecap.

"Yeah, but so do Minato-kun and Inoichi-kun. I think they're starting to grow." Jiraiya sighed and sat up when the blonde woman motioned for him too. "She's with Uzumaki Kushina right now, Tsunade-hime."

"Stop calling me that." The medical prodigy snapped, poking harder than necessary to feel for any breaks in his ribs even though she had been the one to heal those half a year ago. "And again? It's been a few months since Mito-sama died and Natsumi-chan damn near dropped everything to sit by her in silence. I want my babysitter back, Jiraiya."

"I should complain about unpaid labor." Konoha's only true remaining fūinjutsu user grumbled to himself, trying to ignore the slightly worried tone in his teammate's voice that gave away the lie to the cruel edge of the words until stern gold eyes pinned him in place and he relented.

He knew Tsunade liked Natsumi taking on Nawaki's care because the former ANBU assassin would probably happily butcher anyone coming after the younger of the two remaining direct Senju descendants, having a low tolerance for kidnappers if what she did during Kushina's had anything to say about it. The Slug Princess was many things, but a field capable iryou-nin first and foremost, then a kunoichi as ruthless as any shinobi could be, and a healer at the very end of that list of things she was.

Senju Tsunade-sama, a kunoichi of Konohagakure, was fretting more about the missing bodyguard for her clan's only other heir than free child care for said brat. Babysitting was just a convenient cover for having an extra ANBU on hand in case of emergency.

"It's not Mito-sama again, it's an fūinjutsu exercise."

The sibilant, hissing laugh from the doorway drew both of their attention to the last member of the sannin team come to check in on him. "Little Natsumi-chan? What is she up to with Kushina-sama?"

"Something to do with her Déjà vu no Jutsu. Mikoto-chan made a comment to Fugaku-san, who commented on it to Minato-kun, who told Kushina-chan about the supposedly hypothetical question during their twice a month meetings and the little firecracker ran with the idea and my little neko-chan all the way to honorable Mito-sama's fūinjutsu library. I'm supposed to go there and pitch in after this, according to R&D's near fanatical need for any information on the damn technique."

Jiraiya sometimes wondered about Orochimaru's interest in his female student who was actually a forty-year-old former soldier that probably saw him more as a comrade than a teacher. It had really only began when he explained what he knew of why the Uchiha clan was being so pissy and the Hyūga clan was acting so smug recently.

The outcome of that initial 'general melee spar' had surprising and far reaching effects for a scuffle between ninja children, clan or no.

Hatake Sakumo had first covered for his little soon-to-be-apprentice with the truth. Claiming it was a technique she had developed for classified work and not trumping the Military Police, which all ninja knew meant for ANBU or Hunter-nin reasons, and they hadn't know it could be used like that until she started testing it out on the best of the best of Konoha for her validation period before being credited for the creation of an original jutsu.

The shinobi corps dropped the issue then, but the civilians had continued to be upset some little quirk of Natsumi-chan's chakra nature had developed the damn near perfect counter to an Uchiha's eyes since 'they protected everyone in the village and some no named genin could get around them now'. Right on up until news leaked about the girl working with the Uchiha clan heir and his intended bride about possible counters.

Then the shinobi of Konoha had gotten curious about why she wanted one and the civilians dropped the subject as dealt with.

Shortly after that, though the Toad Sage was sure it was the work of his little ex-ANBU kitty cat herself there, news had somehow gone around that if Mesuji could counter the Uchihas, and the Hyūgas could counter Mesuji, there was a suspected fourth bloodline that could counter the Hyūgas and fall to the Uchihas.

It was a pretty piece of work really, taking advantage of the shinobi curse of rampant curiosity and the civilians near need to gossip about their protectors. All attention had been drawn to postulating the fourth kekkai genkai instead of an orphaned young girl that really hated the attention.

Although, if there really would be a bloodline named Mesuji a couple of decades from now Jiraiya would laugh his ass off.

He and Natsumi-chan had taken a day the team had off once and been forced to conclude that her purple chakra tint was carried over from her previous life, because Ma and Pa Toad both wouldn't be budged from that position once consulted about it. She had been as upset as her ANBU training allowed her to show him, because she wanted to teach the others what she could do and without that second store of spiritual energy, a sort of double layer impossible to replicate since it was backwards from any other possibility Jiraiya could think of, it was beyond anyone but Natsumi-chan's ability to use.

In other words, without the nearly thirty years of purely spiritual energy overlaying her near thirteen years of both physical and spiritual here and the ability to separate and use it independently from her main chakra network, the assassin wouldn't have been able to stumble upon the direct-able, double-sight-in-real-time jutsu to begin with. Though it had played hell with the reincarnation's ability to use any other kind of jutsu or chakra based trick until they realized the natural process used by her ANBU developed jutsu was screwing her up in molding the chakra needed for anything else besides that and a few E-ranked jutsus that didn't require much chakra to start with.

The large number of control polishing tricks and exercises she knew hadn't done much but increase the amount of that older spiritual energy she could bring to bear at once with her balanced chakra of her current body, and hadn't she been irritated to learn that?

Though maybe that was what young Kushina was up to, since the comment he had heard Minato report had been 'why couldn't they use Natsumi-sempai's spiritual energy without her chakra if she could'?

Naming the damn fake genjutsu so it could be properly sorted was a story in itself, something drawn from the descriptions given of the effects, and it still wasn't properly sorted as either a ninjutsu or an actual genjutsu like they had all thought except Natsumi-chan herself.

The scientist in charge of that were split down the middle about it and could only pick at the theoretical idea without the assassin present to demonstrate. On one hand, the jutsu affected the chakra gate near the eyes like a proper genjutsu based around sight but it didn't replace the field of view with the caster's imagined scenery. On the other, it only affected vision and not the rest of the target or anything around him or her so it really wasn't a ninjutsu. The mostly spiritual nature of the jutsu made it damn hard to detect or even dispel with a sharp release of both physical and spiritual energy, since that relied on the physical knocking each other off target.

He had only managed once with senjutsu, and that was when they were discussing it with Ma and Pa. It wasn't really even a kekkai genkai, since it was spiritual and not a physical quirk of Natsumi-chan's. The whole thing just gave him a splitting migraine every time someone brought up R&D, and he had been desperately thankful when the girl-woman had finally named it and kicked the mess over to R&D with her carefully edited notes about the process and effects.

Though with how much the scientific division was bugging him about it he was tempted to write up Natsumi-chan's needed notes of recommendation for reinstatement to ANBU if she would only murder the lot of them for him. Good thing Minato had been enthralled with his fūinjutsu work and was pouring over a number of journals and scrolls about it while practicing his calligraphy whenever he could and Inoichi had to spend a good solid month and frequent days on end with his clan developing some kind of mind walker trick he had dreamed up. If they hadn't had their own projects to work on, the attention the girl-woman had gotten the last few months would have at least dented the boys' relationship with her if not fostered some kind of resentment.

The flair and ebb of iryou jutsu soothed out the headache Jiraiya had building up again behind his hitai-ate. He quirked a smirk at the Senju heiress and the little furrow between her eyes that told him she was worried. "Natsumi-chan's getting a bit fed up with the attention on her again, so she'll be back in a few days, Tsunade-hime. Though I have a question for the both of you now that you both are here. Free next Saturday?"

\V/

Jiraiya finally bowed to the inevitable and furnished the jōnin standard apartment assigned to him once winter threatened Konohagakure with icy rain and biting winds. He had asked Natsumi first to help, but she had given him such a disgusted look and pointedly asked why did he think she ever make a good interior decorator if she had completely failed flower arranging in the academy, making her teammates snicker to themselves, while dragging the confused older looking shinobi to Mikoto.

Then the former ANBU assassin had to ride herd on the Uchiha girl's decorating impulses, and all three males made a mental note to never shop with the female sharingan user ever, ever again.

Now, the small group of chūnin and genin could use the space to meet up during the worst of the winter weather instead of Minato's or Natsumi's single room genin apartments like they had planned on doing.

Inoichi thought it was really awesome of their white haired sensei to offer, because last year when a number of them were still in the academy Hiashi nearly got frostbite from their twice a month-ish meetings and his own lips had turned blue before he even got home.

The Hyūga twins were now seated on one of the large couches with the Uchiha couple, Hiashi glaring at his twin for politely asking if he was warm enough while Fugaku listened to Mikoto explaining a genjutsu she had been working on. Shikaku was napping on the floor before the low table Minato and Kushina had taken over from Chouza's pre-dinner spread and were comparing fūinjutsu ideas and swapping tips and tricks on, and Natsumi was making tea.

She was still the only one Jiraiya would allow in the kitchen by herself, since Inoichi and Minato hadn't known that flour was combustible until they set a crock of it near the gas stove.

In other news, both he and Minato now knew how to make explosives if ever cornered in a kitchen by enemy ninjas and the Toad Sage would never get his security deposit back without a lot of work. Natsumi had been most unhelpful in pointing both out to all three of them after the fact with a lot of snickering once she heard about the incident.

The reincarnated soldier brought in the tea tray and started passing out hot mugs, taking one for herself and sitting next to Shikaku's prostrated form and taking a good look at the fūinjutsu spread out.

"Natsumi-chan?" A light blue eye glanced at him, and Inoichi counted that as a win since she always did get distracted like the rest of his team when someone started talking about seals around them. "Why are there five extra mugs?"

She blinked at him, but before she was able to say anything the door opened and a brown, toddler sized blur darted to Natsumi's side, planting a foot in Shikaku's stomach on the way and making the Nara heir wheeze out a choked cough. "Na-cha!"

The retired ANBU agent calmly reached over and tugged the kid into her lap with a small smile before answering him. "Sensei's bringing friends."

With a firm hold on the young Senju Nawaki, she was the only one not to suddenly face the doorway. Inoichi had this feeling that the night would be a surprised field test of Natsumi's mental health, and he wasn't sure if she had studied for it.

(ooo000ooo)

Sarutobi Hiruzen wasn't sure why Jiraiya had invited him along with his teammates and Hatake Sakumo to his apartment, but he had to admit the younger children, and a few of the older ones, sitting around his student's living room were amusing to watch in action.

After the first awkward moment when the young shinobi realized who was standing in the doorway, Mesuji barked at the Yamanaka heir. "Out of the chair, Inoichi-kun."

"Why?" The boy had spluttered, but getting up anyways and joined the rest of them scrambling upright around the table to show respect for the Hokage.

"Cause your back would hurt too doing paperwork all day, gaki." Apparently, Tsunade had been anticipated in her train of thought and she chivvied everyone properly into the Toad Sage's apartment. Once he had been settled in the squishy armchair and pressed with a mug of hot tea, everyone else found somewhere to sit. "Who made the tea?"

"I did, Tsunade-sama." The rather cheerful assassin had answered, looking a lot better than the last time Hiruzen had seen the waif. "Sensei doesn't trust the boys, and he didn't know if any of the clan kids could since they are, you know, clan kids."

Young Mesuji caught the pillow thrown at the back of her head from one of the Hyūga twins and threw it back without even looking around for her attacker. It hit the thrower square in the face.

A haughty sniff from the Uchiha kunoichi had broken the rest of whatever ice had held them silent in the face of the Sandaime Hokage-sama, and they started cautiously going back to whatever conversations they had going before their arrival. Sarutobi just listened in to the younger generation of shinobi talk to the older with a small smile on his face, sipping his tea peacefully.

It was a nice break from his own home and the continuing wails of his youngest son, though Biwako would have something to say to him for not telling her about this and getting her out of the compound for a few hours.

"Orochimaru-sama, do you know many fūton jutsus?" The former Panther had asked some time later, all the while picking out the pins holding her hair up in an efficient bun. Little Nawaki was making grasping motions for it and squealed happily when the dark hair fell down, nearly choking the unaware Nara heir laying behind her with the length smacking into his face.

The Snake Summoner peered down at the girl with a raised eyebrow, distracted from his conversation with the Uchiha heir about the mechanics of an activated sharingan eye. "Not very many. Fūton jutsus are more common in Wind Country than Fire, since most Suna shinobi have the wind element naturally. Do you need them, Mesuji-chan?"

"No, Orochimaru-sama, and it's Natsumi, please. Minato-kun does need them, though. Sensei had us tested for elemental affinities this week and he drew that, but there is very little on fūton in the genin level jutsu library." She smiled a lopsided grin and took back the pins the Nara passed to her along with a dry look. "I've heard you're a combat ninjutsu specialist, which would mean you'd have a better idea than anyone else would where to find some."

"I'll be fine with what we can dig up!" Protested the young Namikaze hurriedly as he went beet red, probably appalled at asking a sannin that wasn't his teacher about his troubles with elemental jutsus.

Jiraiya just poked his student in the side, looking over at the fūinjutsu project proposal by his blond apprentice and the Uzumaki girl laid out over his coffee table for him. "I was going to ask him anyways, Minato-kun. I don't know any fūton jutsus."

Sarutobi smiled behind the rim of his mug of tea. A few months ago, Jiraiya would have cut out his own tongue rather than ask his teammate for help on something jutsu related. He would have tried doing it himself, and only when he had exhausted any kind of possible lead would he ask him and not Orochimaru. Taking on a genin team was good for the man's pride, forcing him to take in the fact he had three young ninjas looking to him as their guide down the rocky shinobi path and not stubbornly clinging to the eroded sense of inadequacy he had felt on the much touted genin team he was assigned to after graduating the early ninja academy with average scores.

He probably would deny it later on, but Orochimaru all but preened under the admiring stares of the younger generation. Maybe the Snake Summoner would do well with the responsibility of a genin team as well. "I'll pass what I can find to Jiraiya-kun."

"Speaking of jutsus, Natsumi-chan, has R&D finally stopped running in circles around you?" Sakumo toed his ex-squad mate's shoulder with his question.

The girl bent backwards over the Nara heir to look at her old superior, letting the younger Senju settle for a nap on her stomach blanked by dark tangled hair. "Not yet, taicho."

Tsunade's head snapped up as she was reminded of something and she glared at the suddenly paling head of the Hatake clan, leaving the other girls she had been giving iryou-nin and kunoichi tips to their own devices so she could haul the ANBU captain away to lecture him on the minimum diet needed by young children, ninjas or not. Hiruzen made a mental note to assign Sakumo a month long mission out of the village at the very least, he was a good shinobi and ANBU captain and deserved a little help out of the hole he found himself in. Letting the Slug Princess dent him would bring down ANBU efficiency, and leave more than a few high risk missions uncompleted until he recovered.

"You're looking pretty comfortable over there, Natsumi-chan." Kushina remarked with an evil looking smile, given her age and temperament it was likely the redheaded Uzumaki girl was annoyed with the Slug Princess' distraction on behalf of the former ANBU assassin's continuing health concerns. "Is there something you two would like to share with the class?"

The young jinchūriki had pitched her voice enough to carry even to the Senju heiress and the cringing ANBU captain, drawing everyone's attention to the girl's admittedly awkward looking position of sitting on her feet and bent backwards over another young teen with a sleeping child reclining on her. Natsumi blinked her eyes one at a time, something that apparently others found as creepy as he did, then tilted her head up to eye the blanching Nara heir with a wicked looking smirk.

"You make a very comfortable pillow, Shikaku-kun. Every girl needs a pillow like you in their bed-err… life."

There was a beat of silence, almost as if no one believed they heard the girl right.

THWAK!

"Damn it, Tsunade-hime! I swear, she's doing that on purpose!"

"STOP CALLING ME THAT!"

Hiruzen sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as two thirds of his old genin team regressed to academy age children, the actual children started laughing loudly, and Orochimaru gave him a flat look at what I have to deal with stare. Maybe he'd hold off giving the Snake Summoner a team and tell his wife about this in a few years.

Kami knew Asuma-chan was probably quieter than this group.

AN#2 Since a lot of you won't be able to review to pose questions and before anyone thinks to ask: The chakra assisted jumping used by most ninjas is currently out of Natsumi's grasp along with a lot of chakra based skills and D or above ranked jutsus besides her one ace in the hole that has yet to be ranked. She can tree walk, but it fails about half the time and she just gets wet trying to water walk. What she was doing when running after Minato and while with ANBU is called free running, using forward momentum when sprinting to reach ledges and keep up with others by finding a similar but more complicated route. Not very efficient compared to most ninjas, and she was slower than her squad mates, but it will give her a bit of a leg up once she finally figures it out. It did do a bit of damage to her body as well as using a lot more energy than chakra assisted jumps do, which was really why she got so thin, but Tsunade's on the case now.

The ranks, I think, go like this: E for civilians with no training and the basic of basic ninja skills; D for genin, missions that take genin level skills, bandits, and Ronin; C for chūnin, the basics of elemental based jutsus and techniques like shunshin (considered the basics for really good ninjas that get above C-rank), missions involving unknown but hostile foreign ninjas, and taking on lesser trained samurai in a fight; B for special jōnin, the mid-level elemental jutsus that rely on elemental chakra manipulation to be used, teams of trained guards, main bases for criminal gangs, and most samurai; A for actual jōnin, terrain affecting jutsus, being able to use solely one type of ninja art like fūinjutsu or iryou jutsu in pitched combat, and the better samurais; S for anything above that up to kage's level and skills; and SS for ninjas or missions that could kill a kage without a lot of skill and luck.

So a genin team has a general rank of D, D, D, A; three genin and jōnin, evened out that would make the highest level of mission available right off the bat C, and possibly B if they're really good after developing teamwork between themselves and a number of successful C-ranks. I highly doubt a jōnin would take a C-rank for a team of fresh genin, though. The sannin here just got their S-rank for the fight against Hanzo, better than jōnin but not quite as good as a kage alone. Natsumi has an official ranking of D and an ANBU assassin ranking of B only because of her ANBU squad getting her to her targets, or leading them away to her for the actual killing, giving her an averaged C-rank as a kunoichi; in terms of genin level ninja skills, ANBU experience in fighting foreign ninjas, and the completed B-ranked assassinations under her belt. So she's technically better than genin but without many of the skills trained into one. The genin team the story is looking in on has at best a D, D, C, S rank right now. But with Jiraiya's S-rank so new and the man injured, Natsumi could only take on a C-ranked mission for her team with support of her sensei's reputation and the rest of her team. Alone, and mainly because of her time in ANBU, she would probably be a D to C-ranked assassin, able to (theoretically) go up against those around her own rank and slaughter civilians, but would probably die trying to off the B's she used to without her squad. Without chakra, she won't be able to go any higher.