2 - The Genin

"Aaand... you pass."

The four gave their leader dumbfounded faces.

"We whatted?" Fuyuka asked.

"You pass. You were the only ones to support your team and disobey my orders," Kakashi explained calmly. "A ninja who disobeys orders is scum, but one who gives up on their teammates is worse."

Fuyuka was sitting around under a tree, mission-free, perfectly content with lazily reading manga and petting her cat. However, her attention was drawn to a trio of genin training with their sensei just below the hill she sat on.

She hadn't seen them around before, they appeared to be about a year older than her own team.

Their sensei was a woman with short strawberry blonde hair and red eyes. While Fuyuka didn't know the genin, she had seen this jonin around once or twice in the academy. Her name was Haruka Akemi, known for being incredibly positive and pushing.

Of the three genin, one was a boy with long chocolate brown hair and light magenta eyes. He had that 'I'm cooler than you' air around him, wearing a light purple shirt and gray jeans with a black cape, giving him that magician wannabe look.

The second was a girl with shoulder length hazel hair, her eyes not unlike the boy's, though leaning more to pink than purple. She wore a white shirt and light purple skirt, covered by a pale purple cardigan, a mischievous look on her face.

The third was not purple, thankfully. He had medium length mint green hair and amber eyes, wearing a sand colored jacket and dark gray pants. This guy seemed like the only one with a braincell, compared to the mocking girl and the magician wannabe.

The magician wannabe cast a clone jutsu, all dashing towards Haruka as a direction. Taking advantage of the crowd, the girl launched herself forward, trying to kick at the sensei's kneecaps. The jonin deflected her with a strike to the stomach, before ducking out of the way of a barrage of shuriken from the boy. The real magician wannabe was revealed when Haruka cleared a group of clones with a sweep of her leg, forcing the boy to jump back.

'Those guys look stronger than us. I wonder who they are.'

The team finished up their training and headed up the hill, towards Fuyuka. The girl noticed the blue-haired genin sitting against the tree, casting her a curious glance. "Oh, you're one of those new genin, aren't you?"

"That doesn't sound very cool," Fuyuka shot back, closing her manga book and placing it down.

"Mitsuka, come on," the magician wannabe called, the team having already gone ahead. "Who's that? One of the newbies?"

"Stop calling me a newbie, magician wannabe," the blue-haired girl argued. An irk mark popped on the long-haired boy's head. "What do you mean magician wannabe?"

Fuyuka's eyes widened slightly, surprised at finding someone who reacted so obviously to insults. This made him a prime target for random mocking.

Considering the glance the mint-haired boy shot him along with the facepalm, his teammates knew that.

Magician wannabe quickly shook his head, trying to look cooler. "You only became a genin a few days ago, no? Newbie suits you pretty well."

"Nii-chan, I'm hungry, hurry up." This time it was the girl's turn to rush her teammate. Were they siblings? They looked to be about the same age, perhaps twins.

"Stop rushing me, Mitsuka."

The mint-haired boy coughed a bit, stopping all out war from breaking out. "I apologize for calling you a newbie. We are genin of Team Haruka, my name is Terasu Shiomiru. These two are Naku Sora and Mitsuka Sora."

"Fuyuka Hoshino, Team 7," the blue-haired girl replied. Naku turned and marched away, the other two following suit.

The girl blinked as the older genin vanished beneath the hill. Her peaceful, lazy, manga-time just got disrupted by a purple magician wannabe with a superiority complex, a slightly less purple girl who looked like the mocking type, and a green guy who actually seemed smart.

A few days later, Fuyuka found herself dragged into a C rank escort mission. She was fine with doing menial chores, AKA D rank missions, but to be hauled onto a whole escort mission? How tiring, she won't be getting enough manga time on this mission.

The only good thing was that she could proudly brag about being the second tallest among the genin in her team. Suddenly, the girl felt a shiver.

"Watch out!" Just as she shouted out her warning, two ninja jumped out of a puddle they passed earlier. The two wrapped a surprised Kakashi in sharp chains, cutting up their silver-haired sensei into shreds.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura gasped, but she quickly moved to defend the bridge-builder Tazuna as Sasuke defended a paralyzed Naruto from the two ninja's attack.

The two, now deprived of their weapons, raised their clawed hands and lunged towards Tazuna. Fuyuka raised a kunai, racing after them, managing to parry away the strike. However, she was briefly grazed, thankfully not with their poison claws though.

The two tried to attack again, only for their necks to suddenly be clutched by Kakashi.

He casually dropped the unconscious bodies, shooting a brief glance to the cut-up log on the ground. "You all did good. However..."

The jonin turned towards Tazuna, who was thankfully unharmed. "We were attacked by ninja, who were explicitly targeting you. This makes it a B rank mission, perhaps even higher. This mission is not on our level, we should not have been assigned."

"Maybe we should quit this, let another team take over," Sakura suggested nervously. "And Naruto was scratched, and it was poisonous."

The blond shinobi frowned, clutching his injured hand. "No way, I'm not turning back and losing to Sasuke!"

Spotting the unconvinced stares from his teammate, Naruto retrieved a kunai and plunges it into his hand. "I swear, I'll never flee from a mission or enemy, no matter how dangerous. Believe it!"

"Nice that you figured out how to remove the poison, but aren't you going to bleed to death?" Fuyuka pointed out, gesturing to the badly bleeding hand. On that note, she glanced down to bandage her own less injured arm. A surprised, slightly fearful look flashed in her pale blue eyes.

'What the...'

Kakashi stepped forward to bandage Naruto's hand, an expression of confusion appearing on his hand. Fuyuka quickly bandaged up the steadily worsening wound on her arm. 'I'll worry later.'

"Well, fine. We'll keep going on this mission," Kakashi announced to Tazuna. "Now let's keep going."

Fuyuka sat in a room in Tazuna's house, one that she shared with Sakura, while Naruto and Sasuke were shoved into one room. She had contributed absolutely nothing in the battle against Zabuza earlier, ending up with Sasuke and Naruto fighting hard and Kakashi collapsing from exhaustion, while Sakura diligently guarded the bridge builder the whole time.

It wasn't a matter of strength, she just sucked too much at teamwork.

That needs to change.

She glanced up as Sakura waved in her face. "Hello, earth to Fuyuka. Kakashi-sensei is taking us to train, come on."

"Give me a second," the blue-haired girl replied, throwing on a cardigan and following her pink-haired teammate down the stairs to meet up with the boys.

Their sensei, now on crutches, led the genin outside to walk on trees. Yep, just another day in the life of a shinobi. Sakura proved a genius when it comes to chakra control, while Naruto had a small enough ego to ask for help. Sasuke suffered. Fuyuka did decently well, not as good as Sakura but better than the boys.

"Would you look at that, the girls are all surpassing the boys," Kakashi half-mocked.

This wasn't the training Fuyuka needed, though. Her biggest weakness was her Choji-size ego and generally antisocial personality.

'Be patient,' she told herself, reaching a high enough branch to take a seat and watch Naruto and Sasuke fall time and time again. She glanced upwards, finding Sakura three branches higher than herself.

That night, Naruto stayed out training. Fuyuka decided to go sit on the roof that night, wanting space to think. Okay, maybe she got distracted by stargazing and identified 17 constellations that night, but she did think a bit too.

What about her cut surprised her so much before?

She gently grazed a finger against a sharp point on a brick, glancing at the drop of blood seeping through. Like before, among the red liquid, was a drop of blue.

Fuyuka had half-blue blood, awesome. It was a dark shade of blue, indigo like a night sky, but definitely blue and not purple.

What's going on?

Everything had been fine before, but something was up now. Was it because she was on a mission? Did the chain she got scratched with have some poison in it anyways? Was it some inherent thing that happened to trigger at this age?

She would ask Kogane once this mission was over.