The mission assignment bore Asuma's full name, but it was an illegible scrawl of kanji; even his personal name was almost completely indecipherable. His registration number wasn't much better. Natsumi signed neatly below it, considered asking the young woman staffing the desk, and decided against it. The girl had gone brusque to the point of hostility as soon as Natsumi handed over the brief and requested to sign up. If she knew, she wouldn't tell.

Besides, Natsumi really didn't need to acquire a reputation for asking personal questions about her attractively scruffy teammates. Ibiki would never let her live it down.

She left the prickly brunette to her paperwork and headed for the stairs. HQ was beginning to wake; she passed a bright-eyed boy in civvies evidently heading for the mission desk, an older man lugging a wicker basket of laundry, and a pissed-off kunoichi with a scorched chestplate. Natsumi silently wished her luck. Her own argument with the Quartermaster had ended in a mutually unsatisfactory stalemate; the chestplate she'd been issued was at least two sizes too small, but she'd wrung the name of the manufacturer out of him, and had scraped together enough money to commission one of her own. Given how expensive even this single piece of ANBU equipment was, next time it would probably be better to appeal to Arakaki.

The lobby channeled a steady trickle of agents either tromping down to breakfast in the cafeteria or heading into the bright morning sunshine to risk their stomachs somewhere safer. Natsumi hesitated a moment, watching the seconds tick past on the clock over the front desk, and decided to take her chances. Even the cafeteria couldn't mess up coffee, and the packaged muffins came from the bakery down the street. She carried her armload of cups and blueberry-studded breakfast back to the potted plant in the lobby and spent the next two minutes trying very hard to ignore the dust on the plastic leaves.

Asuma arrived just before her fraying nerve broke. He hadn't shaved, and dragging a turtleneck and armor over his head and then topping it off with a bandana had done no good to his hair. But somehow the sleek ANBU gear turned scruffy into--well, sexy was the only word that seemed to work. Gods help the world if Takeo ever discovered that particular effect.

"It's probably a good thing you waited to gear up until after you signed up," Natsumi said, offering him a styrofoam cup and a plastic-wrapped muffin. "I'm not sure your fan downstairs would have let you out, otherwise."