Under Anko's intense scrutiny, Shino and Hinata got their 'lovebirds' routine down quickly; Naruto wasn't far behind on mastering poker to Anko's satisfaction. After that she kept them up for another another and a half, demanding more and more contingency planning. She was by turns flippant, dismissive, and borderline contemptuous of their plans, especially the ones that Naruto proposed. The young genin's normal sunny smile disappeared half an hour in; by the time Anko shooed them all to bed he was hunched in on himself, looking as uncertain and miserable as Hinata ever had. He tossed and turned most of the night, unable to sleep as different scenarios kept playing themselves out in his head.

In the event, it went off without a hitch. Naruto went in dressed in clothes that made him look like the son of an upscale merchant or a low-level noble. He brought a hundred thousand ryo with him and proceeded to lose...and win...and lose...and lose...and win, and then lose a few more times. His luck was running ridiculously hot; he got two full houses in a row, followed by a straight, followed by three of a kind, followed by a flush in hearts, followed by four jacks—all of it straight off the deal, without needing to draw a single card. Hinata and Shino signaled him to bet high each time, but he ignored them and deliberately folded everything except the three of a kind, taking care to bid a few rounds on each other of the other hands just to establish himself as a big spender.

He also took care to leave on a losing note; he threw five hands in a row, dropping thirty or forty thousand ryo on each. After the fifth hand he tossed his cards down in disgust, bowed shallowly to the other players, and stormed out with a million and a half ryo in his pocket.

From the casino they went shopping; at Naruto direction they split into pairs. Shino and Hinata continued their lovebirds role, while Naruto henged himself a bit younger and trotted along at Anko's side holding her hand like a child with his mother. The basic gear they wanted wasn't an issue—rope, tents, canteens, it was all readily available. The storage scrolls were ridiculously expensive, but they managed to acquire one each. The problem was with the ninja-specific equipment; explosive tags had occasional civilian uses—demolition inside the city and removing unwanted tree stumps outside it, for example—but they were tightly controlled and couldn't be sold unless the buyer had a license from the city council. Even worse, kunai, shuriken, and ninja wire were purely ninja equipment, and there weren't any shops at all that sold them. The only supply, in fact, were the armories for the various ninja companies who lived in the city and hired out to various factions. Shino was in favor of doing without, but Naruto had set his teeth in the idea that they were not leaving without the gear they needed—he was unwilling to have his friends be underequipped if a fight became necessary, and none of them were carrying more than a dozen shuriken and half that many kunai.

"Naruto-kun, won't your clones appear with equipment?" Hinata asked. "Couldn't we use that equipment instead of trying to acquire our own?"

Naruto hesitated. "Yeah, I guess," he said, rubbing his head reluctantly. "But it would vanish when the clones did...I could make the clones completely solid, I guess, so their gear didn't vanish if it took a hit, but it would still disappear if the clone that created it was killed. I don't like the idea of your weapons suddenly vanishing in the middle of a fight—maybe while you're right in the middle of an attack. And I can't make them with anything that I'm not carrying, or with anything that has chakra in it—no ninja wire, no explosive tags, no storage scrolls or seals."

"Then, we will simply need to steal the equipment from the ninja armories," Shino said calmly. "It will be challenging, but I doubt it will be impossible—Naruto-san was, after all, able to steal the Scroll of Forbidden Techniques from Hokage Tower. A ninja armory should pose little challenge in comparison."

Naruto suddenly looked a little panicked. "You realize I was mostly able to do that because I've been in the Tower a lot, right?" he said. "I knew the layout really well, and I had the right to be there during the day. I went in, hid until after everyone had left, and then took the scroll. I even got caught on the way out, but I managed to fast-talk the guy who caught me."

"You might want to skip the 'getting caught' part this time," Anko casually suggested from her position on the bed. She licked a dango with exaggerated sensuality and an anticipatory moan.

"Sensei, you do realize that Hinata and I turned thirteen a few months ago, and Naruto-san won't be thirteen for several more months? The manner in which you are eating is rather inappropriate."

Anko looked him dead in the eye while slowly sucking the dango off the skewer. She chewed and swallowed with exaggerated motions. "I'm bored," she said calmly. "I could go back to drugging you and making you psychotically angry, if you want...?"

Shino suddenly looked alarmed. "No, thank you. On second thought, please eat in whatever manner you prefer."

Anko sighed and tossed the dango aside. "You're no fun." She sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. "Okay, putting the games aside now; training is suspended until tomorrow morning. I was going to wait until you were finished planning the next stage, but I think I'd rather do this now. Naruto, give me your assessment of how today went."

"It went okay?" he said hesitantly. "Security didn't bother us, no one protested how much I won. I guess I kinda chickened out on those good hands, but we still won. I could have bargained better for the storage scrolls, but I didn't want to take a chance on drawing attention. Um...I guess that's it? Did I miss anything?"

Anko smiled. "The only thing you missed is how brilliantly you did," she told him. "Naruto, this was a low-risk mission, but it was still a mission. You were operating under hostile-territory restrictions with a poorly equipped team, and I was deliberately piling stress on you. Not because I'm a bitch, but because I wanted to give you a good simulation of how much stress you would face on a real hostile-territory mission. Tell me, had you ever played poker before?"

"Uh...no," Naruto said, stunned. "I mean, I'd watched a couple of times, but never played."

Anko nodded. "That's what I thought. You went from no knowledge at all to being a pretty good player, literally overnight. Like everyone does, you started off with half a dozen very obvious tells and by the time you walked into the casino you had scrubbed out all but a couple of subtle ones. You had a very good poker face; none of those guys knew that you were cheating them blind, and that can be a hard trick to pull off. You were smart enough to fold multiple winning hands because they were too good to be believed—seriously kid, you have redonk luck at cards, you know that? When we get home, I want to stake you in one of the jonin games. I'd like to watch you clean Kakashi's clock, the arrogant bastard.

"Anyway. You played beautifully, and you were smart enough to leave on a losing streak so that everyone would remember you losing and not remember how much you won. Did you do that accidentally, or are you actually familiar with the peak-end rule?

"Uh...no?" he said, still looking poleaxed.

She shrugged. "Not super imporant at the moment, but the idea is that people remember two things about an experience: the peak, and the end. In a poker game, when people think about another player they'll mostly remember any really good hands that the player got, and how he was doing at the end of the game. You took care to win only on believable hands and to leave on a losing streak—you completely blanked their peak-end retention.

"From there, you split us into pairs to avoid notice," she continued. "I know I didn't suggest that; did one of the others, or did you think of it yourself?"

"Myself...?" he said.

She nodded. "Good move. Pairs attract a lot less attention than fours." She gave him a rueful smile. "Although, granted, I would like to think I'm a little young to be somebody's mother! Still, it was a good idea.

"So, to sum up: despite operating under severe restraints, a lot of external pressure, and very little sleep, you planned and led a hostile-territory mission that went slicker'n snot—really nice job, kid."

"Uh..." he said.

She chuckled. "Also, I won't give you such a hard time in the future. I won't say I'm sorry—you needed to see that you could succeed under pressure if you just focused and engaged your brain. You did that, and there's no point in me continuing to be a bitch." She paused, then raised a finger in admonishment. "Which doesn't mean I won't continue with the deception and alertness training. It just means I won't be so rude."

"Uh..." he said.

She snorted in amusement. "C'mon, Naruto, let's you and I go out for a bit. Hinata and Shino, stay together and stay in the hotel. Think about ways to get the ninja equipment you need. If you need something else to do, Shino can work on chakra control and Hinata can work on cardio; we need to build your stamina. In the very unlikely event that anything exciting happens—hassles with the manager, attack by rampaging wombats—escape and evade, then meet at that temple on the south side of the square that we passed on the way into the city. Wait there until sundown; if we don't meet you by then, E&E to our last camp in the mountains. Wait two days, then head back to Konoha if we haven't joined you."

"Yes, sensei," chorused the older genin pair, looking somewhat alarmed.

"Relax," she told them. "Seriously, I'm so confident that nothing bad's going to happen that I'm even willing to say 'don't worry, nothing bad's going to happen'." She gave them a wink and sauntered out, Naruto trailing along in her wake.

Naruto was still too stunned to start a conversation, and Anko was content to give him space. She led him on a winding trip through the streets until she found what she'd been looking for: a busy ramen stand. She waited until they'd gotten seated and Naruto was wrapped around his first bowl of ramen before she said anything.

"Have as much as you want," she told him. "It's on me. You've earned it."

He looked at her to be sure she was serious, then ordered a bowl of miso and a bowl of pork. She smiled and dug out her wallet.

"So, Naruto," she said. "As your jonin-sensei I was given a fair amount of information on the three of you. You, of course, know basically nothing about me, so let me try to balance the scales a bit.

"I told you I left the village to find Orochimaru so that I could be trained by the best. What I didn't tell you was that I washed out of the Academy in my first year. I was an orphan—my parents were killed when the Nine-Tails attacked the village on the night you were born. Washing out was the stupidest thing I ever did; I was nine, and I had nowhere to go, so I got a shit job bussing tables and sweeping floors at a sushi restaurant. Never thought I'd get beyond that.

"The reason I washed out was that I was good at kicking ass, but I had no discipline—I skived off anything that wasn't fun, so I failed all the scholastic subjects. Trap-making was interesting in theory but boring in practice because it required too much focused attention; I barely squeaked by on that one. I was top of the class for taijutsu and weapons, mediocre at ninjutsu, and third for genjutsu. The reason I'm beating on you to keep your brain engaged is that I was you, and I know what the consequences are. Sure, you're doing better than I did—you actually made genin. You can only go so far without thinking, though."

"I...actually didn't pass," he said quietly. "I failed the final exam. I couldn't make a Bunshin."

She shrugged. "Yeah, so? It's just a chakra control problem—from what I can tell, those huge reserves that your passenger gives you make it hard for you to do things that require only a little chakra. You totally rock the Shadow Clone, so who cares if you can't do a regular Clone? Anyway, your 'makeup exam' was pretty impressive. The Hokage didn't give you the forehead protector out of pity, you know—stealing the Forbidden Scroll was genuinely impressive, and beating a chunin into the ground was even more so.

"Anyway, going back to the story...even after I washed out, I wasn't the brightest kid. What I should have done was find a master to apprentice to—become a scribe, or learn a trade. Instead, I just felt sorry for myself and bussed tables. When I was twelve, I went to watch my former classmates graduate from the Academy and become full-fledged genin. Pretty much pure masochism, and I cried myself to sleep for a week afterwards. The eighth day, I woke up determined to finally get my ass in gear and do something about it; that's when I left to find a teacher. I decided to shoot high, to prove that I had what it took; the highest of the high were the Sannin, so I went looking for them. I knew Jiraiya was supposed to be a pervert, so I left him off the list and looked for Tsunade-sama; I figured a woman would be a better mentor.

"Took a couple months, but I found her. She was drunk as a skunk and broke from losing in the casino. She flat refused to teach me and told me to piss off, so I went looking for Orochimaru instead. Didn't take long to find him; he wasn't exactly low profile."

Her eyes got distant for a moment, and her expression was complicated. "It was hard to get him to accept me as a student, but after Tsunade-sama bounced me I figured he was my last chance. I kept pestering him until he finally agreed to take me on. After that, he wouldn't let me quit, even though I tried. A lot. I even tried running away; he caught me and brought me back."

"Why did you run?" Naruto asked curiously, absorbed in the story. "I thought you wanted to study with him?"

She shrugged. "Training under him was absolutely brutal; he's a passable medic-nin, which was good, because I needed him to fix something every single night. Bruised kidneys or liver pretty much every day, broken arms or legs a couple times a week, concussions every few days, and bad burns every time we practiced fire jutsu. I drowned at least six times when he started teaching me water jutsu; he brought me back each time.

"Under that sort of training I got the crap knocked out of me pretty fast. Learned to focus, got really interested in staying on track and learning quickly so that he didn't need to punish me for failing. Taijutsu training still hurt like hell—he never held back much—but at least he wasn't kicking my ass full-force because I was whining about how ninja didn't need calculus."

She went quiet for a long time before shaking off the memories and looking at Naruto intently. "After our first training session I spoke to your teachers, to the Hokage, and to a lot of the ANBU that chased you around when you were pranking. You've got way more focus than I did, and you're probably smarter. You're insecure as hell and you cover it by clowning around; sometimes that clowning takes the form of your mouth writing checks that your body can't cash. Pretty much all of the time it involves living in the moment instead of looking ahead to the big scary future where people might treat you badly. Living in the moment is fine if you're a poet, but it gets ninja killed.

"I warned you that I was going to push you all. My exact words were 'find all of your hot buttons and jump up and down on them'. That's what I've been doing to you, but I'm done with that now—the point was to pile stress on you before giving you the team-lead job, and it's served its purpose. I'm still going to push you really hard, and I won't let you get away with not thinking, but I won't do the outright abuse thing that Orochimaru did to me; it's not what you need."

She flashed him a sad smile and slurped up the last of her ramen. "So," she began. "Now that I'm done with the 'being a bitch' part of your training, I'm sort of hoping to move on to the 'mentor and confidant' part. Do you have any questions? About anything?"

Naruto's face was a study in shock. "Uh..."

The smile was back, but now it was amused instead of sad. "It's okay, take a minute," she said. She turned away to order a bottle of sake and give him time. When it came she made a production of warming her hands on the bottle, pouring herself a measured cup, and tasting it carefully.

"Why were you assigned to us?" Naruto finally asked. "Shino said that you weren't even supposed to be taking a team."

Anko considered her cup in silence. "That's...complicated," she said thoughtfully. "And it centers around some secrets that aren't mine to tell. About all that I can say is that it involves a very powerful man and the fact that the Hokage thought I wouldn't be at all intimidated by him. And that it's the reason we left on a C-rank right after you were assigned to me."

Naruto looked at her consideringly for a moment. "Is it because Hinata's father is beating her up?" he asked.

Despite years of deception and anti-interrogation training, Anko choked on her sake. "What makes you say that?" she asked innocently.

Naruto shrugged. "Our first morning, you saw that Hinata was all bruised up. You were pissed; you took her off, probably to the hospital, and the next morning we're out the gate at the butt-crack of dawn. On the road you said we were going to practice escape and evasion, and you specifically said to treat it as though someone with the Byakugan was after us. Also, you just said that this was all about 'a powerful man', and that it's the reason we were on this mission so quickly. Hiashi-sama is one of the most powerful men in the village, and somebody put those bruises on her. If it wasn't her family you could have done something about it directly, but if it was then your only option would be to get her out of the village."

Anko stared at him, slack-jawed. "Holy shit, kid, you can't just be saying things like that," she said.

Naruto eyed her seriously. "You're my jonin-sensei, and you said you wanted to be my confidant. Were you lying about that?"

She sighed and slammed the rest of her sake back before setting the cup carefully on the counter. "Crap," she muttered. "Look, this really isn't my secret to tell," she said. "But, you've already figured it out so...yes. I think that's exactly what's happening. He might not be doing it himself, but he's the strongest Byakugan user in the world; he definitely knows about it, and he's not stopping it." She paused, then added, "I don't think either of us should talk to Hinata about it yet. She wasn't willing to own up to it, and I think pressing her will just make her separate herself from the team."

Naruto nodded thoughtfully. "So what can we do?" he asked.

She sighed and toyed with her empty cup for a minute. "I don't know," she admitted. "All I can come up with is to help her feel self-confident enough that she'll admit it's happening so that the Hokage can do something about it legally. Alternatively, if we can figure out why it's happening, maybe we can arrange for Hiashi to get whatever it is he wants so that he'll stop. Beyond that, I can help her develop her taijutsu skills. I doubt that it's actually her father administering the beatings; from what I know of him he's a cold bastard, but more of a manipulator than a hands-on guy. He's probably having one of her cousins or some adult Branch House member give the beatings in the name of 'training'. If we can make her strong enough, maybe she can get herself out of the situation. Probably not, but it's all I've got."

Naruto's expression frankly scared Anko; it was too controlled, and she could feel wisps of killing intent leaking out of him. "Kid, you can't do anything about this yourself," she warned him. "Hiashi could crush both of us in a fight, and he's absolutely unassailable politically."

Naruto gave her his trademark grin and thumbs-up. "No problem, sensei! We'll just help Hinata-chan get so awesome that she can kick ass all on her own!"

"Awww, shit," Anko muttered, and signalled for another sake.

o-o-o-o

When they got back to the hotel, Anko walked in with an insouciant air and kicked her shoes off before flopping down on a chair. "So! Did my sweet little genin solve all our problems while Naruto and I were off gorging on celebratory ramen?"

Surprisingly, Shino nodded to Hinata with a 'go ahead' gesture. The girl blushed, but forced herself to keep her head up as she answered.

"We may have, sensei," she said quietly. "It occurred to us—this isn't a large enough city to have its own ninja school. The ninja who are employed here aren't natives—they've all been hired from somewhere, and it's almost certainly from Konoha. We might just be able to buy what we want from them."

Anko smiled and clapped. "Very good. But we're on a hostile-territory mission, remember? We can't afford to be identified."

"We can henge and wear big sunglasses," Shino said. "I would assume that there are recognition signals that jonin are taught in order to identify themselves as allies even when they cannot reveal their identities?"

Anko laughed and tossed him a two-fingered salute. "Indeed there are. Okay, that takes care of that. Naruto, when should we go make the buy?"

The blond frowned in thought. "You said we're here for a minimum of three days...are we actually leaving tomorrow, or will you be keeping us around?" She gave him an irritatingly self-satisfied shrug but didn't say anything.

Naruto sighed. "Okay. On the one hand, making the buy right before we leave would be good for keeping us under cover. On the other hand, if they won't sell to us then we wouldn't have time to find a fallback strategy. I guess we go today."

"A team lead needs to be precise," Anko warned him. "When today?"

Naruto nodded, glancing at his teammates. "Shino and Hinata-chan haven't eaten yet. Let's get some food and then we'll go. We'll need to pick up the glasses on the way, though." He looked sourly at Anko. "Can I rely on you to actually make the contact, or are you going to mess with us again?"

She laughed. "Don't think of it as messing with you, kid," she said with insufferable smugness. "Think of it as a prank war...and so far, I'm winning."

Naruto raised an eyebrow and his eyes suddenly lit up with evil light. "A prank war, huh? Okay, sensei. Game on." He grinned maniacally at her. "Now, can I rely on you to actually play fair on the contact and negotiations?"

Anko sighed and laboriously pulled herself to her feet with a put-upon look. "Fine, fine. I'll do the contact and negotiations, geez. C'mon, let's go get some food for these two before they faint from hunger-induced weakness."

o-o-o-o

The actual event was disappointingly banal. They henged, put on their tackily enormous sunglasses, and walked up to one of the ninja barracks in midtown. Anko flashed some hand-talk at one of the sentries and they were quickly escorted to the office of the barracks commander. Neither Anko nor the commander spoke; their conversation was limited to rapid-fire bursts of hand-talk, much of which Anko carefully shielded from the sight of her genin.

After five or ten minutes of the silent discussion, a guard was summoned, given silent orders, and sent out again. She returned quickly, carrying a box piled high with kunai, shuriken, ninja wire, and explosive tags. The genin quickly armed up while Anko passed over a fat wad of bills. Five minutes later they were on the street, walking quickly away.

"How much do we owe you, sensei?" Naruto asked, pulling out the storage scroll where he had stashed his casino winnings.

She waved her hand dismissively. "Meh, s'all good. This is what the mission expense fund is for." She turned aside to look at some brightly-colored scarves on sale at a street vendor's stall.

All three genin stopped dead in the middle of the street.

Anko turned casually back to her students. Naruto was outright glaring at her, Shino looked like it was her fault that he'd just bit a lemon, and even Hinata's Hyuuga calm was leaking signs of disapproval. "What?" their sensei asked innocently.

"Why...what...argh!" Naruto growled before going back to stomping down the street in rage. The other two followed him, seeming slightly less irritated—or, at least, better at hiding it.

What happens next? Guess correctly before the next chapter is published and you'll get mentioned in the next Author's Note. Only guesses in the forums on davidstorrs. com count.

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