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Naruto wished that he could doubt it; he really did. But considering that Shikamaru had never been wrong before…

No time for that now. Naruto suddenly caught a flash of powder blue – was it? – yes, it was! – out of the corner of his eye. There was a person walking along in a kimono, and it was the same pattern as the stuff in the package Kakashi-sensei had stolen – er, "found" – when they first arrived in Tanyu! Naruto couldn't feel any chakra, but that was probably because Kakashi-sensei was using regular disguises instead of a jutsu like Henge, so that Ino couldn't find him so easily among the crowd of civilians. The hair was different, but that was probably just a wig – anyway, the person had the right height and bone structure, and you couldn't change that with physical means. And – yes, that was the Konoha smell on him; it wasn't easy to scrub out years of forest and tree sap.

"Found him!" Naruto – who was actually a clone – dispersed, and the real Naruto, who was finishing their mission with Shikamaru and Ino, felt the slight resulting shock.

"Where?" his teammates asked, quickly jumping into action.

"Powder blue kimono, four o'clock. Same one he stole earlier this week," Naruto said quickly, gesturing over to his right. "Smells just like oaks and pine."

"On it," said Shikamaru, and his shadow quickly snaked around the cobblestones to latch onto their target, drawing the person toward them. "Go check."

"How are you doing that?" Naruto asked, scratching his head. "I thought you could only make them imitate you…"

"It is possible to control movements while you stay still, or freeze them in place while you move, using a variation called the Shadow Clutch," Shikamaru explained. "It's just more difficult to use because it's extremely chakra intensive, and requires a lot of concentration. Technically I shouldn't be learning this until years later, but my mom made my dad start me early. It's not perfect yet – I can't get my shadow off the ground for very long – but I'm getting closer. It's all a matter of chakra reserves, and mine are still growing. It helps if I practice every once in a while."

"Oh."

"…That's not sensei," Ino said suddenly, as their target was dragged into visual range. "Naruto!"

Indeed, the person that Shikamaru had dragged towards them was actually a rather bewildered looking young woman.

And, upon second glance, Naruto realized, extremely pretty.

As in, even prettier than Sakura pretty.

And, judging from Ino's extremely jealous expression, prettier than Ino pretty, too.

Yeah, that pretty.

Uhhh…

"But there's that forest smell – " Naruto protested eloquently as his mind started going all fuzzy.

"Well, maybe it's just perfume designed to imitate that smell. And Shikamaru, let go of her! You're scaring her!" Ino hissed.

Shikamaru, who was, Naruto realized, still staring blankly, snapped his hanging jaw shut and shook his head as if to clear it. "Sorry, miss," he muttered, blushing.

The lady blinked at them, and then, without a word, ran in the opposite direction, too terrified to even speak.

They stared at her retreating form.

"Um. Well." Shikamaru scratched the back of his neck. Ino slapped the backs of their heads.

"Seriously. Boys. Even our resident genius is now rendered incoherent," she sighed.

"Hey – I don't see you not becoming an unintelligible mess every time Sasuke-kun walks by!" Shikamaru retorted, suddenly regaining his wits. "And for your information…"

"Sasuke-kun's different!" Ino argued hotly. "You don't even know her! And she's way older than all of us! You're not even thirteen yet!..."

"Whatever," Shikamaru sighed. The gong in the main square rang, signaling the start of the Daimyo's festival. "Hopefully we have enough to go off of when he comes back with the quiz…"

Holy crap, Naruto was still thinking, unable to even chase the words from his mind. She's even prettier than Sakura-chan.

Elsewhere...

...

...

Oh, my cute students, Kakashi sighed, wiping the makeup off the scar over his eye. You three were so close…

Tanyu

"Hmmm…How many stalls were on the west side of the square?"

I closed my eyes, trying to remember the scene. "Forty-one," I answered.

"Good. Ino – this one's for you. What did man behind the counter in the lantern shop on Sugar Street look like?"

I held my breath, but perhaps that had been unnecessary. Ino had kept an eagle eye on lock for the whole trip, as she had been in the most danger of suffering from extra training sessions with Gai-sensei. "Rather skinny middle-aged man," she answered immediately. "Scruffy-ish graying but not fully white beard with sideburns and moustache. He always wears a green vest with stripes while the store is open. Knobbly hands and glasses."

Kakashi-sensei smiled underneath his mask. "Correct. Naruto!"

"Yes?"

"Where was the Daimyo during this whole thing?"

"Ummm…" Naruto worried his bottom lip. He had had the greatest advantage out of all of us, since his clones were able to observe the entire city from various angles, but that also translated to a disadvantage, since his memory was the worst out of the three of us and the extra senses might have overloaded his brain. "I didn't see him outside anywhere, so he was probably in his palace the entire time."

Kakashi-sensei gave an approving nod. "I guess I won't be able to abandon you guys to Gai-sensei for once. I never thought I'd be saying this this early, but…three for three. You guys have exceeded my expectations."

"Whoa, really?" Naruto interjected. Kakashi-sensei cocked an eyebrow at him. "I mean, yeah, I knew that! And I totally didn't guess on anything…"

Ino breathed a sigh of relief. This had been the first time we had gotten all of the questions right without any mistakes. Then again, he had been relatively nice in his questions. Everything he gave us was limited to areas we had already seen. The last few times he had played this game with us while in Konoha, he had asked us about designs of the taps in certain bars in the less savory part of town. That we were too young to go into them didn't matter to him, since the counters of all the bars built in Konoha apparently looked the same – which we supposedly would have known if had we read the building codes inside the library.

And since the library was an open source reference building to people of all ages, all the information in it was also therefore completely fair game by his twisted logic. Of course, we had protested that building codes weren't exactly things shinobi should waste time looking up, but that had only led to him retorting that shinobi should always be highly aware of their own surroundings, which included architecture.

Still, today was an achievement to be remembered. Winning at one of his games, finishing certain milestones, and so on – I always felt this compulsion not to disappoint him. Kakashi-sensei was unpredictable, wild, and incorrigible – but he was also our sensei and we had to respect him on some level. There was no denying that the stunts he pulled were all so subtly effective that you actually ended up being surprised at yourself. If I didn't have Naruto and Ino as base comparisons from a third-person perspective, I never would have even realized how far I had progressed under his terribly successful teaching style.

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