| 保護 Protection |

Chapter Two [EDITED]

紅葉 Kouyou

She smiled fondly the whole time and knew that she would enjoy living here with Naruto.

That statement still held true through a grueling week of D-Rank missions such as walking dogs or delivering groceries. Of course, the three genin were the ones to do all of the work, but it was still boring. In that week though, Yoru had learned plenty of information about the genin, and even a little about their sensei.

Sasuke was from the prestigious Uchiha clan. She had heard of them before, although there was not much. They were mainly fire jutsu and doujutsu users. He was also the last of his clan, his older brother killed the rest of them when Sasuke was younger. Haruno Sakura was from a civilian family, but she seemed to be better at chakra control than either of the boys, from some of the small exercises they had done. She would turn into an excellent shinobi, Yoru could sense it. Kakashi was still sort of a mystery to her, she knew that Hatake Sakumo was his father, and she kind of respected him for that. Her father got the story from Kushina when he died. She also knew that he was trained under the Fourth Hokage up until his death.

Naruto was a different story, however. He was bullied when he was younger, up until recently. He lived on his own before this and never cleaned (Yoru had to teach him how). He also did not know how to cook anything except ramen, so Yoru had been trying to show him how to cook a new thing every night. To get closer to the rest of her team, she invited them over every night for dinner. They usually declined, but once Yoru dragged them all over there to help with dinner. That was where she found out that Sasuke's favorite food was tomatoes, and Sakura's was umeboshi. She did not have umeboshi at the time but did tell her that from now on they would always have some for her. Kakashi was still not very talkative, so Yoru did not learn his favorite food, but she vowed to get him to open up. She already knew Naruto's favorite was miso ramen, even though she did not like it. She did like ramen though, and she got him to try her favorite food.

At the end of the week, Naruto complained even more about the D-Rank missions. They were in the Hokage's office when the outburst happened. The Hokage was talking about available missions and Naruto was being disrespectful and talking about ramen. Yoru chided him and told him he should listen to the Hokage, and that was when it got bad. Naruto yelled about how the old man would not give them any harder missions and that he was tired of all of the D-Ranks they had to complete. He was not going to do it anymore. The Hokage laughed and called one of his guards to go get a man named Tazuna.

He explained that Tazuna was a bridge builder from the Land of Waves and had requested a C-Rank escort and protection mission. He needed to be escorted back and protected while finishing the bridge in his country. He explained that the bridge needed to be built because an evil man named Gatou had bought all of the docks and was slowly killing all of the people there with his oppression of trade.

Kakashi accepted the mission for his team and asked that everyone be at the main gates in an hour. Yoru told Naruto that she would meet him there and teleported, she had something special in mind. She always had a bedroll and extra weapons packed into scrolls for faster travel, so she did not need to worry about that. Instead, she started making unagi sushi rolls, fried green tomatoes, fried eggplant, and umeboshi to put in bento boxes for the team and Tazuna. She was not sure Tazuna liked any of this, but she hoped he would appreciate it.

Naruto made it home shortly after she was starting the eggplant and tomato. He tried to snatch one of the pieces of unagi, only to be smacked on the hand and told to go pack. He grumbled about it but did it anyways. It was almost time to leave when she finally finished the bento boxes and she asked Naruto to carry three of the bento boxes, those would be the ones for the children.