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For all that she only made chuunin at sixteen, Iruka's a pretty good team leader. She knows that's how people phrase it - but as long as the last part comes through, she's been teaching herself to ignore the first bits.
She spends almost a year working with genin teams and with younger chuunin, leading fairly simple messenger runs or even easier D-rank missions when a jounin-sensei is sick or injured. (She seems to be the go-to person for replacing a jounin-sensei on Konoha-based D-ranks, which is maybe a compliment, or maybe just practicality: she knows most of the people who pay for those, these days, and the kids know better than to misbehave around her, after the first time they try something.)
Still, it means that when she gets tapped for her first A-rank mission it's a bit disorienting: she's been working with younger shinobi almost exclusively since she got her vest. But this is what she's wanted, so she shows up early and ready, hoping she doesn't look quite as green as she feels.
Theirs is a fairly straightforward messenger run - or it would be, but for the minor border-war that's broken out right along their path. They could go around, and lose six or seven days, but the information they're sending needs to get there within the week: within three days, if they can manage it. And that means going right through the middle of whatever's brewing out there.
They're a four-person squad: Iruka, Uchiha Tekka and an older chuunin Iruka doesn't recognize; their leader is young: probably only her age, seventeen, but she saw the ANBU tattoo on his arm, so she's not about to underestimate him: ANBU were the best of the best, and for him to be working with them unmasked, well, this was a serious mission.
When their team leader introduces himself as Tenzo, Iruka just files the name away, not recognizing him. It isn't until he extends a hand and extrudes a wood clone that she starts wondering. Iruka listens to Tekka's introduction with half an ear, worrying at the question of whether there's any reason Tenzo might seem familiar. She's worked with Tekka before: he's a bit of a snob, but then again, he's an Uchiha: it sort of comes with the territory. He's a good shinobi, and she trusts him to have her back. The other man is something of a mystery, and Iruka is relieved when he says he's a medi-nin: she's not bad at basic field medicine, but she's not a medic by any stretch of the imagination, and she'd hate to let someone down on a mission like this.
"Umino Iruka," she says, when it's her turn, "chuunin, generalist, not bad at traps." She could say more, but that sums it up, she thinks.
It isn't until they're in the middle of a pitched fight, when strands of wood coil up out of the ground to immobilize the enemy, that Iruka realizes why Tenzo seems faintly familiar. She just barely keeps herself from blurting it out then and there -- but she does, and helps bind the hands of the Iwa nin who had been hired to 'protect' this stretch of road. They're just doing their jobs, so her team will leave them here tied up: if they get loose, fine; if their opponents find them, well, their hands aren't tied all that tightly.
That evening, around a small, banked fire, inside a wooden dome that keeps the light and smoke from being a problem, Iruka sits next to Tenzo. (She ignores the glare Tekka gives her: he's been doing that every once in a while since she refused to go on a date with him a few months ago: she doesn't want to hear him talk unendingly about how great he is, so stab her.)
"Tenzo-san," she says quietly, "did you graduate the academy young?" He doesn't startle: he's much too good a ninja to do that, but there's a slightly different quality to the still way he's sitting.
"Excuse me, Iruka-chan?" he asks, all polite confusion.
"I'm sorry," she says, scooting back a few centimeters, putting a little bit of space between them, "it's just - you seemed familiar this morning, and I've just remembered that there was a boy in my Academy class who graduated when we were six." She shakes her head. "It's none of my business," she says, and moves to pick up her plate.
"No," he says, "it's all right," and motions for her to sit. "I don't think about it all that often, is all." They sit quietly for a few minutes, and then he turns and really looks at her: not at the scar across the bridge of her nose, but at the set of her features, at her frame.
"Yes," he says, "I think I do remember you. You played with the boys in our class, didn't you, not the girls." It isn't really a question.
"Oh," Iruka says, laughing slightly, "Yeah, that's me."
If they were better acquainted, Iruka thinks, they might reminisce about classmates, or teachers: but Tenzo graduated eleven years ago, and made chuunin within a few months, and Iruka only did a year ago. There's not that much they can really have in common anymore, she thinks.
"I was just wondering, is all," she says quietly, and finishes eating. Once they're all done, Tenzo reviews their plans and maps for tomorrow, and then they set up watches, and go to sleep.
Iruka wonders at something, but it doesn't come to her until she wakes up in the middle of the night, relieving Tekka: the boy she remembers at the Academy wasn't called Tenzo at all.