Welcome to Gaia! ::

Yuki followed his partner down the hall, until their departure was interrupted by the sound of their names being called. The Yamanaka had a sour look on his face, it had been a long day, and he would love to be curling up to a nice book right now before passing out.

"Hunting for us all day? I'm sorry, we were trying to keep the streets safe from the local thugs. My sincerest apologies for anyone who was trying to summon us." Yuki drawled on in his native language of sarcasm. He was about to add a small quip about how, as far as rules and regulations go, they shouldn't even be accepting another mission this late, however, that would mean they just finished their first mission illegally, since they were not a full team. Yuki left that argument ferment in his own mind, until Hisaki expressed his concerns with a rather generic reply from the Chuunin.

"Endurance training is the least of his worries. C'mon, let's finish this one before I pass out into a comatose via exhaustion." He said to his fellow teammate before turning around and heading for office three hundred and twelve.

Hisaki's chuckled, "Dude, you're a bigger slack-off than me sometimes, you know that?" He paused, stopping in the hallway for a moment, and said, "'Cept that you say it all fancy. Comatose from exhaustion? I'd just say that I'm ready to fall asleep or something... Well..." Hisaki paused again as we caught up to Yuki up the hall, "Anyways, I wonder who this teammate is gonna be... He did say it was a 'her'. So it's a kunoichi. Maybe it'll be a really hot chick!" Hisaki said with a laugh.

Hisaki approached room three hundred and twelve. As he double checked the numbers, he said, "Well, here we are. Lets see who we're picking up." Hisaki grabbed the doorknob and pushed the door inwards. From across the room, he saw a girl with long black hair, a fur lined coat, and White eyes just like his own. She sat in a chair across the room, and she introduced herself with a smile, "Hi there, I'm Aya Hyuuga".

Hisaki's face brightened up, "Hey Cousin Aya!" Hisaki noticed that she seemed just a bit out of it, so he added, "I'm Hisaki Hyuuga, remember? We met a family thing once."

(Quick background info: Hisaki doesn't live at the Hyuuga Estate with the rest of the family. His father, in his many quests, learned to remove his Side Branch curse seal, and was excommunicated from the family. Hisaki still gains some of the benefits of the Main House (seeing as he didn't do anything against the family), but isn't really classified as part of either house. On top of that, he isn't allowed to live on the Hyuuga Clan Grounds.)

Suddenly there was a loud pounding at the door. Hisaki looked over at the open threshold and saw the goofy Chuunin hanging around at the door with an older man. The chuunin was the one who knocked, it was obvious by his position, and the older man had a box in his arms. The chuunin entered the room, beckoning the man in, and said, "Ok, now that you've done whatever you needed to do, I'm assigning you to the mission. This is a D-Rank, in case you were wondering. And..." He said, pulling a scroll from his vest, "is the paperwork. Drop it off with Satoru after completion, got it?" The chuunin turned around and exited the room. The door slammed on his way out, isolating the older man with the three genin.

The room was dead silent until the man cleared his throat. He approached a nearby desk and put the box on top of it. He opened the box and withdrew a small cube. The small dusty box had pictorial carvings of different Kanji upon each side, one named for each element of Chakra. The sixth side was empty, devoid of any markings what so ever.

The man began to explain, "Hello, my name is Kagetsu Gokaroh, Family-name first. I'm a collector of rare artifacts, and I run an archeological firm here in Fire Country. Well, on a dig about a half a year ago, we found this. It's a puzzle box of some sort, that much I know. Now look, it has kanji on it, one for fire, one for water, one for lightning, one for earth, and one for air. Then there's a blank side. Now, here's the puzzling part: Theres no hinges, and it seems like it should move. Pieces of it wiggle and shift slightly just by touching them. I've been messing with that damned contraption, but I'm dumbfounded. I just can't figure it out for the life of me how to open it! So, now I've caved in. I need help solving this thing, bad."

"Here's a deal. I'll give you each a nice big reward if you can open it. It might take a while, I've worked on it for days at a time, and got nowhere. It's getting late though, If you don't solve it soon, we'll just call it a day, and I'll hire another team to do it?" He placed the box on the table, "Any movement you can get out of this thing would be much appreciated. I'll be back in a little while. If it changes a whole lot by then, expect a nice paycheck." The man then left the room. Now the challenge began!

Hisaki stepped up to the table, and picked up the small trinket Hisaki pressed down on some of the pads, but nothing immediately happened except for a small wiggle from the tiles. Hisaki rolled the cube around in his hands a little, looking at each side. The old man was right, this box definitely can move... Somehow. Hisaki looked at his two teammates. I don't really know how intelligent Aya is. I'd assume she's smart, but for the timeframe, I'll pass it off to Yuki. I know he's smart. From experience and stuff. Hisaki looked over at Yuki, and said, "So, Yuki. You're a smarty, right? You take a look at this thing." Hisaki smoothly tossed the puzzlebox over to the blonde genin, "Use that Yamanaka intellect and show us what's up."

"Hello Hisaki, yeah i remember you, we got told to go play with the other kids, that was years ago, i remember it because it was the first family gathering i went to". Aya added to what Hisaki had said, she didn't really talk much back then ether, she was then caught off guard as the other person with Hisaki got angry for some reason, before introducing himself. "Oh the last Yamanaka I worked with was really good, Phaeton was his name, and OK I'll forgive you". Aya had looked a little scared by the outburst and still looked a little unsettled now, she was also now fully away.

Aya just stood there as loud knocking come into the room, follow by one Chunin and a old man entered the room, after standing there for a little bit as the Chunin told them a little on the mission, there was a strange silent as the genin looked at the older gentleman that they were working for this time, he soon spoke up, informing them his name was Gokaroh Kagetsu, and that they were meant to open some type of puzzle box he was having trouble with.

Hisaki's jaw dropped, She got it... First try... Yuki didn't even get it right away, and he's the smartest genin I've met. Hisaki hid his surprise again and put a goofy grin on. He crossed his arms behind his head and looked at Yuki as he spoke, "Heheh, looks like you've got competition in the brain games now, huh? She figured out the puzzle in... what... a minute or something?"

Hisaki expected an emminent explosion from Yuki, so he tried to change the subject, "Well, while you guys chat about your smart-guy stuff, I'll just prepare the forms, alright?" Hisaki walked away and picked up the Mission Scroll from the table. Now getting a better look at the thing, he saw that it was fairly thin as far as mission scrolls go (considering it was a straightforward mission) and the sides were covered with D's (for D-Rank). He pulled open the seal on it and unraveled the scroll.

On the top was the mission description, and on the bottom was a place were the ninja who did the mission would be listed, as well as an area for the date and outcome of the mission. Hisaki pulled a pen from his pocket. The moment the pen touched paper, he completely zoned out from anything the other two were saying. Full concentration went into writing the names of the three ninja. After that, he quickly scrawled the date and outcome, Aya Hyuuga opened the aforementioned box. Mission Complete. He rolled up the form, and resealed the scroll, "One Mission down. A zillion more to go."

(156 lines)
(Oh, btw, I signed up for the chuunin exams on tuesday. You two should join too! :3)

Aya looked to Yuki as he spoke to her again, he seemed to be trying to know her, Hisaki had taken it on himself to do the paper work, which Aya was happy about, she did really like doing paper work, it always seems to drag on forever. Aya was listening to Yuki and looked to him as he spoke, she thought on his question for a bit before answering, it was rather hard now that she was thinking about it. "Well it's nether really, but I live in the main branch, I don't know my parents, so they don't know if I am from the Main house or a Branch".

Yuki barely registered what Hisaki said, he was exhausted both mentally and physically from today. He had hoped that Hisaki made it a quick trip, but knowing the goofy genin, he'd take as much time as possible.

The Yamanaka began tapping his foot anxiously, "In the future, what kind of ninja do you wish to be?" He asked. Yuki knows its a bit unorthodox to ask something like that, but he was truly curious, and even more curious on how powerful she was. An idea had just hit him, they could spar! All three of them, either a three-way fight or a two versus one if she was too powerful for her two genin comrades. A simple grin revealed itself on Yuki's face, for he knew she would be much more trouble than Team Kaju could ever hope to be.