23 - Leadership Challenge

Fuyuka was not happy to be standing in front of a bunch of 8 year old academy students. Yozora got put in her team, obviously, along with a pair of twins from the academy.

Tanaka was an intelligent boy with short dark hair and eyes. His sister, Aiko, was more flexible and fast with braided dark hair and brown eyes.

Basically, they were background characters. Thankfully, they were not blonde, so Fuyuka's ever growing list of banana yellow acquaintances did not increase. Also, since they were eight year old kids, they were relatively welcoming to Yozora.

"Okay, so," Fuyuka began. "How are you all at transformation jutsu? I know Yozora can't use jutsu, but that's alright."

"I'm alright," Tanaka replied simply. Aiko made a show of scratching her head. "I can do some basic transformations!"

Fuyuka strolled around the village in no hurry, spending half an hour at a smoothie stand.

Her team stood awkwardly, having no idea what's going on in Fuyuka's head. What was going on in her head was something along these lines: 'Can't say I'm feeling like anything banana yellow these days, maybe raspberry...'

The blue haired girl made her move when she caught a glimpse of some chunin disguised as enemy ninja checking up on her team. She loudly suggested the team rest here for a while with their smoothies.

"Get rocks, prepare for an attack," she whispered under her breath, before walking away while pretending to look for food (like they didn't just spend a whole morning eating). The three children perked up at the thought of finally doing something other than wait at smoothie stands. Or sushi stands. Or lemonade stands. Or dango stands. Or dumpling stands. Or- nevermind, this list could go on forever.

Three 'enemy ninja' jumped down from a tree at once, only to be pelted by rocks before they could say a word. Fuyuka lunged out from behind the tree with a Triple Bind, kicking the chunin onto each other before tying them all up.

"Take the coats," she commanded.

The children, unfortunately, had to obey her orders, so they stole the green chunin jackets off of them. Fuyuka internally thanked the gods that the jackets were green instead of banana yellow, even though green didn't exactly go with blue hair.

"Okay, Aiko, Tanaka, try to transform into some adults," she ordered. The two academy students nodded, starting to get the plan to some degree.

The two kids got the proportions a bit wrong. Well, okay, Tanaka had legs twice as long as his body and Aiko's arms were the wrong way around. It took a few minutes to get the transformation right, before Fuyuka transformed into a generic boring adult and they fitted themselves in the chunin jackets.

"I'll do all the talking, got it?" she ordered. "Yozora, you just look sad and lost."

She dragged the team to find some chunin guards standing around, before appearing as innocent as possible. "Hey, this kid lost his, uh, cat in a place pretty far away. Wondering if you know any shortcuts."

Fuyuka showed them the map, making sure to cover the parts where it read 'Survival Challenge Map'.

Five minutes later, they were confidently striding on the outskirts of the forest with a new map with a straightforward route. Fuyuka summoned a Triple Bind before finding the nearest rideable animals- a pack of boars, and using her Stellar Snare as a rein.

"Buckle up, kids."

Kids, listen up. If a goofy blue haired girl with a smoothie obsession and a fierce hatred for banana yellow tells you to 'buckle up' on boars, say NO and run away.

In only an hour, they were at the mountain. Because Fuyuka Hoshino was 153 centimeters of pure, unadulterated, amazingness and awesomeness.

"Woah, Fuyuka-san, you're actually super cool!" Aiko exclaimed, eyes shining.

"Of course I'm cool," Fuyuka replied proudly. "Now we just need to find the document we're supposed to get, and return to the village."

"Fuyuka-san, I think it's going to rain," Tanaka announced, staring up at the rain clouds. "We're probably the fastest, so we should set up camp for now."

"Yeah, fine, get the tent ready," Fuyuka agreed, handing out the stakes. However, as the team began to set up a tent, Fuyuka noticed a certain something observing them.

A cat.

Who knew her 'this kid lost his cat' excuse would turn out to be reality.

Said cat was pale gray- practically white, with poppy red eyes. It sat in the shade of a tree, hissing when the four approached it. The fur around its neck was slightly poofier than the rest of its body, giving it the 'high collar' look.

In other words, it was a vampire cat.

"You kids keep working on the tent," Fuyuka commanded. The kids didn't want to do all the work, but then again Fuyuka did get them here pretty quickly, so they did what they were told.

In case it's not obvious, Fuyuka liked cats. She approached the red eyed cat with all her years of experience as a cat owner, extending a hand. The cat tilted its head curiously, meowing and trotting forward to sniff it.

"Aww, who's a good boy?" She patted the cat's cat, taking a step back to lure it to the now set up camp.

Half an hour later, the cat was sitting in the tent with the four humans while rain poured down outside. Fuyuka retrieved some fish jerky from her blue satchel.

"Don't eat too much," she told the kids, passing one piece to the white cat as well. "What should I name the cat? Because I'm totally keeping him."

Fuyuka quickly discovered that 8 year old academy students were not very good at naming cats. 10 minutes of generic pet names from Aiko and Tanaka and a few weird ones from Yozora later, she tapped the ground to gain the kids' attention. "We're naming him Kyuketsu."

"You're naming the cat 'bloodsucking'? Really, Fuyuka-san?" Yozora questioned incredulously.

"He looks like a vampire, it makes sense," the blue haired girl argued.

Before the rain could end, though, a bunch of chunin found them and announced that a storm was coming and the exercise was over. So much for Fuyuka's genius plan.

"So anyways," Tsunade sat in her office with Fuyuka and Yozora in front of her. "I decided to make an exception here and let Fuyuka train Yozora, because he lacks the basics of basics while being more properly experienced both mentally and physically. This is an unusual case, so it's best for him to be trained specially as well. I suggest getting help from your friends and sensei too."

Fuyuka nodded. She was slightly annoyed at having more work, but it's also better than being bored forever.

"Okay."