Naruko sighed as she sat down at a table with her tray. Ramen had not been on the menu as she'd been hoping it would be, therefore she'd been forced to make the best out of several poor choices available to her. Apparently, the people in charge of the cafeteria menu believed in the school's maxim of "A healthy mind, a healthy body, and a healthy spirit for a healthy future.". The food that was available for the daily meals that were covered by the school tuition consisted mainly of vegetables. Vegetables, and some sort of meat that was barely recognizable as such. She hated vegetables, and wasn't sure if she dared try the meat which she was almost certain was at least half soy byproduct.

Now, she understood why civilian children complained about school lunches. If she wanted something else however, not only would she have to sneak out, she would have to pay out of pocket from her severely depleted emergency funds as well.

Classes that morning had been trying even without the teachers constantly calling her out for not paying attention, and she couldn't wait for this mission to be over so things could get back to normal, she could become a boy again, and she could get back on the road with Jiraiya which was better than being here by far. She knew that knowing how to convincingly disguise herself as someone else was an integral ninja skill that she was somewhat deficient in, but she wished she could have started off with a different role, one that wasn't female. She had no idea how to act like a girl, and based on some of the looks she'd gotten from some of her classmates, she'd already made some sort of mistake.

"Is that...? I don't believe it! It is!" a voice exclaimed behind her.

She whirled to face the source of the voice and found three girls who were around her actual age standing behind her. Technically, she'd known they were there, since she wasn't that oblivious, but who the three were surprised the hell out of her. Standing behind her, holding their own lunch trays were Ami, Fuki, and Kusumi who had been in her class at the Academy. They, like most of the rest of her class, had passed the first Genin test but, had failed their final teamwork exam afterward. Unlike most kids who would have gone back to be retrained as members of the general forces rather than as potential elites and launched a mediocre career with little if any prospects of making it past Chunin, these three had washed out of the Ninja program entirely.

Standing there before her, the three girls were grouped together like they always had been at the Academy. Rather than being in the clothes he'd been used to seeing them in day in and day out at the Academy however, they were wearing school uniforms. That was to be expected though, considering where they were, but still surprising to her because he wasn't used to seeing them in such attire.

"What are you doing here?" Kasumi asked somewhat snidely, looking as if she'd just love to catch him out in a prank and get him into trouble like she used to do back at the Academy before Iruka had taken over their class.

The girl's auburn hair was as frizzy as ever, but the hair ornament that looked like it had been made out of a shuriken was absent. Either, the girl had gotten better at arming herself discreetly or - more likely - considering the fact that she'd been a middle of the pack student and a Sasuke fangirl, she had gotten rid of all of her weapons after dropping out of the ninja program altogether. The school uniform she was wearing looked worse on her than the purple dress with the standard mesh undershirt had.

"I'm here on a mission." she grumbled, silently vowing once more to make the person who had chosen her for this mess pay.

The girls looked shocked and incredulous for a moment before Ami started giggling. The next thing she knew, the three girls were surrounding her, and Fuki was doing the handseals for a low level Genjutsu.

"What do you want?" she asked nervously. If they were putting up a Genjutsu that redirects people's attention, that meant that they didn't want witnesses, which meant trouble.

"We haven't gotten any news from home since we got here." Fuki said. "We heard there was an invasion, but haven't heard anything from what we consider to be a reliable source about what happened."

She sighed before starting to tell the girls about what had happened back in Konoha since they'd left the Academy. She stuck to stuff that was pretty much public knowledge back home though. She knew that she was stupid, but she wasn't that stupid. She'd mastered the art of talking without saying anything long ago as a defense mechanism. It had only been recently that Jiraiya had pointed out its usefulness to her Ninja career, and she used it to a degree now in order to keep the girls form realizing that there were things she knew that she wasn't saying in case any information she gave out fell into the wrong hands.

In a room at an inn that was close to the school he would soon be attending, Deidara scowled as he applied the lip-liner which was of a relatively demure shade that didn't look like it belonged on a hooker. He wished he didn't know how to do this, but he'd been forced to disguise himself as a girl before, and there were times where a Henge or a Genjutsu wouldn't cut it. Without the change in hairstyle and the make-up that was part of the disguise, he looked like the adolescent male he was but, he fortunately had the sort of figure and face that would allow him to convincingly disguise himself as a female if he had to.

Right now, though he'd hate to admit it, he had to.

Eventually, the make-up and dressing job was done, and where there had been an adolescent male a couple hours earlier, there was a reasonably attractive and reasonably but not too well endowed female. One of the things that could destroy a disguise such as this one would be putting a little too much in the chest area, and that was the sort of amateur mistake he'd been careful not to make since the beginning, since running around with a rack like the new Hokage's would be asking for trouble, even if he weren't caught.

As soon as he was satisfied, well, as satisfied as he could be on this sucky mission which was certain to be one frustration after another since he couldn't do more than look unless he wanted to give himself away and fail the mission, he turned and left the room he had rented, picking his bag up on the way out. Less than an hour later, he was at the school, and after being given a tour of the facilities, he was led to the dorms since classes for the day were over. Until the lady who'd given him the two ryo tour of the campus had shown him where he would be sleeping, he'd had a somewhat nebulous idea of exactly where that would've been, since it had been arranged by his client that he would be sharing a room with the daughter. He'd apparently placed it within three rooms however, which was something he could give himself a pat on the back for later.

"I'm sorry about the sleeping arrangements, but you registered so late, and we weren't given much time to prepare for your and your sister's arrival. I'm sure that you should be able to sort things out between the both of you." the woman who supervised the dorms said as she guided Deidara to his new room where there wasn't room for a third bed, but just enough room to set out a small futon in a space where the person who was sleeping on it would be tripped over if someone got up in the middle of the night to use the toilet.

Being the gallant ninja who might have a chance with the Kunoichi he was supposed to be working with as soon as the mission was over if he could spin things just right, he of course would be taking the futon.

As he was putting the things he had brought with him away, the client's daughter entered the room followed by his "twin sister". The girl who only resembled him because of his coloring and the careful make-up job he'd done paused just inside the doorway, and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. She opened her mouth to say something, but he quickly checked her with an International Standard recognition signal that was used when ninja from different countries were forced to work together on a mission or on the battlefield during times of war to stop her from saying something that ruined the mission before it even began.

"Hi sis, I'm glad to see you, it's been awhile." he said as he moved to hug his "sister" and do a quick check to see if she were amenable to a little something more later on by surreptitiously brushing his hand across an area that a sister wouldn't normally touch unless it was by accident.

Based on his "sister's" reaction to that little touch, she wasn't up for any play after the mission, but looking wouldn't hurt.

Based on how she'd reacted to his presence as a whole, his partner on this mission had not been told that she wasn't the only ninja hired for the job when she'd been given the assignment, and hadn't been told he'd be coming, which would mean trouble, especially given the nature of the mission, and the fact that any ninja worth their salt would be able to spot the fact that he was male pretty quickly. Based on how suspicious the hot Kunoichi looked, and the fact that she'd only barely restrained herself from attacking him when he'd moved in for a hug to sell the whole sisters thing to their client's daughter and anyone else who may have been watching, he'd have to talk fast in order to convince her that they'd both been hired for the job before he was forced to defend himself.

This mission sucked.

"Let's go somewhere and catch up un." he said, as he led his new co-worker outside for their "discussion".

Edited 4/28/13.