Raizume does not bounce on her way to the fort. But she's excited and nervous and a little manic, and also ten years old, but also thirty-one and technically in her forties now, though she feels like she's definitely ten. Reincarnation is so weird.

And she's a really shinobi now. She has her headband, and a sensei and teammates. And today is their first Official Mission.

Raizume still doesn't really know what to make of Sasuke. Naruto is old hat, and she loves him and knows him, but Sasuke... she still feel immense guilt about not being able to do anything about his whole family dying. She's been able to divert that guilt into other things previously... hopefully she can continue to do that.

She arrives at the fort with plenty of time to spare, lost a little in her own thoughts.

Naruto does bounce! He has a new friend and is a real ninja, it's a bouncy day! He doesn't arrive quite as early as Raizume, but he isn't late, either.

Sasuke has his hands in his pockets and is rolling his eyes at Naruto's everything, but he doesn't seem too annoyed, and greets Raizume with a nod before looking around.

There's a lot to take in. Naruto and Raizume have spent a lot of time here, building and decorating. It reflects both of their personalities. Bright colours and a lot of detail, weird little nooks and crannies. A little messy, but very comfortable.

"I'm kind of buzzing. A little," she says in way of a greeting.

"I know! I'm! So! Excited! When do you think he's gonna be here, huh, we need to get started - "

"Yo," says a voice from directly behind Naruto's shoulder.

It seems fairly impossible that Kakashi should have been able to wedge himself back there without anyone noticing, and yet. There he crouches. The top of his hair brushes the roof, and he has a genial expression on the quarter of his face that's visible.

Naruto jumps, eeps, and then laughs. "Hey Kaka-sensei!" he says, hoping no one comments on how he just nearly hit the ceiling.

"I see we're all energetic on this fine spring morning. Sleep well?"

"Yeah! Well, I'm really excited so I was up some, but mostly!"

Sasuke had been jittery and had stayed up before crashing. He probably got enough sleep. He wouldn't call it quality, though.

He doesn't respond to Kakashi's question out loud.

She ignores the question, and inspects their sensei.

"How about you, Kakashi? Regret your decision to pass us yet?"

He looks the same as he always does, which is to say, like he rolled out of bed about five minutes ago.

"Not yet! But there's still time for you to change my mind, if you try hard and believe in yourselves."

"I've been told I'm really good at being annoying!"

"You're the best at it. In an artistic and hardworking kind of way."

"It's a skill. Must be developed like any other."

"Speaking of skill development." He reaches into his jacket, pulls out a mission scroll, and flourishes it between two fingers. "You have a mission today."

"Oh! What is it what is it are we guarding a PRINCESS!"

"Are we going to break into a neighbouring country to steal their precious scrolls?" She plays along.

"That's two guesses. Care to venture a third, Sasuke?"

"Chores."

"We have a winner!" He unrolls the scroll ostentatiously. "Ahem.'Kurosawa Mari to the village of Konoha, blah blah blah, contract, et cetera et cetera, weed, plow, and seed the western field by end of day. Payment on completion to be...' well, you don't need to worry about that... Yep." He wraps the scroll back up and tucks it away again.

"That doesn't sound very mission-y."

"How long do we have to do d-ranks for?"

"Until your kind and generous sensei deems you ready, my cute and clever genin."

"Or until Naruto's whines, my judging stare, and Sasuke's unimpressed face annoys you enough that you bow to our pleas?"

"Yeah! When will we be ready?"

"Like I said. But you've got work to do now, so you'd better hop to."

"Ugh. Where're we going anyways? Don't know the name."

"Part of being ready for real missions is learning how to do reconnaissance. I'll see you there." Kakashi disappears in a puff of leaves.

"Argh. Do you guys know where it is? Or how to find it?" he asks his team.

"We could go to the source and ask whoever is handing out the missions. Which is at the Hokage Tower, I think."

"That's smart! And yeah, hopefully they'll accept 'our jounin-sensei's a jerk' for why we don't know..."

"'Our jounin-sensei wants us to do to reconnaissance and figure it out ourselves.' Might even make him look good."

"So he gets to be a jerk and sound good?"

"Best to get on his good side? At least until we've learned as much as we can from him."

"Yeah. Good point."

"Think the Hokage will be happy to see us?"

"Probably! The old man likes me, I think."

"At least he has one thing going for him."

"Aren't you the one always telling me to be polite?"

"Only when people can hear you."

"Never assume no one can hear you in a ninja village."

She looks down at her wolfdog.

"Do you hear anything, Inazuma? Any big, bad, ninja eavesdroppers?"

They walk over to Sasuke lazily and nudge him with their snout softly.

Leery glance. Also he is not an eavesdropper. If they forgot he was here that's their fault.

But he does glance around - and doesn't see anyone. Of course, he grew up assuming his family was tracking his every move, so...

"Sasuke isn't going to tattle on me. That's just not team-ly."

Of course he won't. Does he even look like someone who likes the Hokage.

Externally, he rolls his eyes.

She smiles at him and then looks between him and Naruto.

"To the Hokage Tower then? I promise I'll keep my treasonous thoughts to myself."

"Yeah! Onwards!" he declares, bouncing.

Sasuke hums and follows.

Raizume lets Naruto lead the way. He is the one that spends the most time in the tower, after all.

The guards and secretary types seem to know him pretty well, and he gets fond eyerolls as he bounces around until he finds someone in charge of D-ranks for the day.

Raizume is on her best behaviour. No treason here.

Naruto either annoys or charms the location for their mission out of the desk person. Which is unclear.

Inazuma helps. They and Naruto are a team.

Best pup!

Once location is successfully acquired, he bounces back to his team to announce where they're going.

"So, what's on the agenda today? Saving pretty damsels from bandits?"

"Just farm stuff. Gotta list, too, but the person there wants to talk to us so I guess we'll get it explained again?"

"Dammit. I was hoping for some heroics."

He laughs. "Yeah, same. Maybe we can heroically rescue the field from weeds?"

Raizume rolls her eyes. "The Mighty Killer of Weeds. People will fear us."

"Every legend's gotta start somewhere."

"Are we gonna be legends now too? I kinda thought you had dibs on that," she teases.

"Whole legendary team."

"You up for that, Sasuke?"

He nods. He might be smirking a bit.

"Excellent. The world isn't gonna know what hit it."

He laughs, and then quickly enough they're arrived at the farm.

Raizume hasn't super been outside of the city or surrounding forests much before. So the farm is a new sight to her. It reminds her of another life. Another home.

This one's more crops than cows, at least.

Naruto puts on his serious face and listens as intently as he can to the instructions, though he's still left glancing, a bit unsure, at Raizume.

Yeah, she's off in another world.

"Uh, Raizume? Hello?" He waves his hand in front of her face.

Sasuke, meanwhile, has already started work.

She blinks at him, stricken from her daze. "What?"

"The mission? Did you get the briefing?"

She takes a moment and the recites exactly what their client said. She wasn't actively listening, but thanks to her reincarnation perks, her memory is perfect.

"Sorry. Not a very good moment for me. Especially for our first mission."

"It's okay? We can talk if you wanna while we do the thing..."

He might need help breaking the instructions down into smaller bits, though.

Raizume knows how he works and does so.

"Heavy thoughts," she says after she finishes. "Probably not something I should unload in the middle of our first mission."

"Well, I'll be ready to listen later."

"You don't need to. My brain is a wild place at the best of times."

"I like your brain! It's a nice brain."

"Ditto, my brother. Wanna get this mission going? I can already feel Sasuke glaring at us for slacking."

"He's totally glaring."

Sasuke rolls his eyes.

And onwards to mission completion!

Kakashi shows up about halfway through and flops under a shady tree to read.

Naruto waves at him but is otherwise halfway decent at focusing on the mission.

He's guessing Raizume wants to take over wrapping up?

Inazuma can help do that! They are so very very helpful. And pretty.

Prettiest most helpful puppy!

They're gonna be done super fast at this rate.

They are! Raizume makes sure she does a large bulk of the work to make up for the slacking off she did before.

"This is kinda mind numbing. In a good way through. Relaxing. But maybe next time we should figure out a way to make it harder on ourselves. Can't use our feet or something. The ground could be lava!"

He laughs. "That sounds fun!"

She looks towards their sensei. "Was there anything else today, Kaka-sensei?"

Kaka-sensei is motionless behind his book. He hasn't turned a page for a while.

It's hard to tell from over there, but his one visible eye might be closed.

Inazuma sneaks over and cautiously sniffs him.

There's a soft snore.

"We should draw things on his face," Naruto whispers to Raizume.

"Do you think he has fangs underneath his mask? Some sort of monster-like teeth because of a mysterious jutsu accident and he wears the mask so he doesn't scare everyone?"

"Only one way to find out. Bet he has duck lips."

Kakahsi slumbers on, to all appearance blissfully unaware of the foul plots against his dignity.

"Sasuke, do you have anything to draw with - " Naruto hisses to their so-far silent teammate.

Sasuke narrows his eyes at Naruto... Then holds out a pen.

Raizume snatches it up. "I've seen this episode. It does not end well for us." She taps the pen against her palm. "We're ninja. We should think of something cleverer."

"We could get him to take it off himself! That'd be hard but talking people into things is fun!"

"I don't think he'll take it off for us..."

"I wonder if we can recruit any of his friends..."

"Do you know where Maito Gai lurks during the day?"

"Who?"

"The Green Meanie. Well, not really mean. He's this tall jounin that wears a bright green jumpsuit and orange legwarmers. Huge eyebrows. Pretty sure he's Kakashi's best friend."

" - Loud, likes to run around the village at weird hours?"

"You've met then?"

"I've seen him! I think I know where he does his runs every morning?"