"So… this club is cool with girls, right?"

Ino turned the car off and nodded. "Oh yeah. I mean, there's definitely more guys involved than girls, but the guys we have are pretty cool. If anyone tries to come in and be creepy we kick them out pretty quickly."

"And it'll be okay that I haven't played before?" Sakura asked as she unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the car door.

"Forehead girl. Relax. If you aren't enjoying yourself, flip everybody the double deuce and go to the Starbucks next door, and I'll drive you home after. Okay?"

"Okay."

As they walked in together, Sakura awkwardly holding the character sheet that Ino had helped her assemble, a lot of people turned to wave or say hello to them. Seemed like Ino was pretty well known here.

"Shikamaru? How'd they wrangle you into doing set-up?"

"Temari bitched at me until I agreed, because Kankurou's at some kind of performing arts festival this weekend. Troublesome." A harassed looking guy with a spiky ponytail twisted a sign-in sheet around towards the two of them.

"Ooh, Kakashi is DMing table 7, and he's playing 3.5, which is what I had you prepare. We'll sign you up for that one, Sakura! He comes up with the craziest adventures. Besides, I can see Naruto and Sasuke have the other slots and they never play clerics." Ino was already writing down her name in the last slot before she could protest that she was hoping they could be in the same adventure. "And I'll be at table 10 with you, Shikamaru."

"Oh joy."

"So which table is it?" Sakura said, still clutching her character sheet and the bag of Ino's extra dice like an extremely inadequate shield and mace.

Ino pointed to a rectangular table with three guys already sitting down. Two sat together on one side: one a tanned bleach blonde in a Land Of Fire University sweat shirt, talking a mile a minute to the other, a devastatingly handsome man, pale and brooding, who was arranging a row of dice in front of him with utmost care.

"Wow."

"If you're looking at who I think you're looking at, that's Sasuke, and don't waste your time. Naruto is his boyfriend."

"Oh." Well, she wasn't joining the club to find a date anyway.

On the other side of the table, partially concealed behind a cardboard screen, slouched a man wearing a surgical mask and a fedora slanted forward over one eye, reading a book. As Ino pulled Sakura over towards the table, it became apparent that it was Icha Icha Violence, from the famous smut series. Alarm bells about creeps were going off in her head but it was too late to catch Ino's eye and bail. She was already saying, "Hey guys! This is the friend I was telling you about last time, Sakura! I finally convinced her to give it a try, so don't scare her off, ok?"

"Hey, Kaka-sensei! You should tip your hat and say m'lady dattebayo!"

Sasuke gave him a disgusted look. "Why would he do that?"

"Because it'd be funny!"

"It would be stupid, stupid," muttered Sasuke, adjusting one of his dice a millimetre.

"Shut up bastard," Naruto said cheerfully, whacking his boyfriend on the shoulder, then turned back to Sakura. "He goes on Reddit, you know, and white knights for the girls in Icha Icha," Naruto said conspiratorially towards the girls. "For hours."

"I don't do that," said Kakashi, not lifting his eyes from his book.

"You told me that was what you were doing last time you were late to our tutoring session!"

"Maa, I lied," said Kakashi, finally lifting up his head and smiling at Sakura, gesturing to her to have a seat next to Naruto. Ino gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze and dashed off to talk to another table.

"What?! Then why were you so late?"

"Let's see… it was because…" Kakashi looked at the ceiling with great concentration, then suddenly smiled. "Oh yeah. I hate you."

Naruto sputtered and Sasuke cracked an unwilling smile.

"So uh… do you want to see my character sheet, or…" Sakura said.

Kakashi put out a hand to take it and scanned it while Naruto said, "Remind me why I'm paying you to tutor me again?"

"Because he's the only one who can get anything through your thick skull, dobe," said Sasuke. To Sakura he added, "I don't know why Ino put you at our table." While it wasn't exactly friendly, it didn't really come off as a personal rejection either.

"This will be interesting," said Kakashi, his visible eye crinkling. "Ino rolled up a level 1 human cleric for her."

"But this is a Rokugan campaign and you told us to prepare level 5s," objected Sasuke.

"No, no, I can work with this," said Kakashi, handing Sakura back her sheet and busily scribbling into a notebook.

Sasuke scowled. "You better not be planning to dumb this down."

"You're such a fucking minmaxer," said Naruto.

"If you want another TPK go play at Guy's table," Sasuke shot back.

Minmaxer? TPK?

"A minmaxer is someone who is obsessively focused on gaming the system to produce the strongest character. TPK means total party kill, a complete wipe of everyone playing," said Kakashi, as if he read her mind. "Cool it with the jargon, kids."

"Whatever you say, old man," growled Naruto, then suddenly brightened. "Hey! Check out the minifigs I made for my character!" He fished around in a backpack and produced two Lego figurines. "This is for when he's in human form, and this is for fox form!"

"The fox form is out of character knowledge for the rest of you by the way," said Kakashi. "Let's get down to business. So. You all meet in an inn–"

Sasuke and Naruto groaned loudly.

"You all meet in a fucking inn, and don't think I won't make you take a penalty for being drunk if you piss me off," warned Kakashi, shutting up both guys effectively. "You are all mercenaries waiting to be hired. An old man comes in, saying he's a bridge builder who needs an escort. He's already hired one bodyguard, named Kakashi–"

"What, we're using our actual names for our characters?" said Sasuke.

"It'll be easier for Sakura starting out."

Naruto pouts. "Aw, but I picked a really cool name this time. Kurama!"

"You'll live. Kakashi, the bodyguard, says he needs more people, but the bridge builder, Tazuya, is on a budget. So all he can afford is you three."

"Where does he want to be escorted to?" Sasuke asks, pulling a hardcover book titled Oriental Adventures out of his bag and opening to the index.

Kakashi mockingly waggled a finger at Sasuke. "No such luck this time, Sasuke-kun. It's not in there. You're going to the Land of Waves."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, we haven't established something very important here yet." Everyone looked at Naruto expectantly, and he said earnestly, "Are there any hot people in this inn?"

When they took a snack break, Sakura had to admit that it was more fun than she expected. Since her character was signficantly weaker than the rest of the party to begin with, it didn't matter so much if she made mistakes, because she was practically a second escort NPC to the rest of the party. But she also had the excitement of being the only one to level up, when a combination of a natural 20 and some good roleplaying made her the first to master a new skill that the NPC bodyguard was teaching the player characters.

"So what did you think?" said Kakashi. He was slouching against the wall by the snack table with his hands in his pockets. "Good enough to come back next time? I would hate to have your character die a horrible death off-stage. I prefer to kill my players in front of me, where I can watch them curse my name and the names of all my dogs."

"Do you really have dogs?" Sakura popped a Cheeto into her mouth.

"I have eight dogs," he said. "I like dogs more than most people. In both senses. Here, do you want to see them?"

He pulled out his phone and Sakura exclaimed suitably at picture after picture of some truly cute dogs. "Wow, everything from a pug to a shiba to a bull mastiff."

"You like dogs?"

"Yeah, I do, but I never had one growing up. My mother's allergic. I went through a phase where I got all these books about dog breeds out of the library and researched them obsessively, deciding what dog I would get as soon as I was grown up."

"And what did you decide?"

"I could never decide," she laughed. "You're lucky to be able to have eight. You must have a big house."

"So do you have a dog now?"

"No, unfortunately. No pets clause."

"Where's the Mountain Dew?!" came a shout from the table. Sakura turned to see Naruto surveying the snack table with dismay.

"Kankurou's not here, remember? Drink water for once. How the hell do you stay looking like that when you consume nothing but ramen and sugar anyway?" a girl with a wild, spiky blonde hairstyle who was sitting in Shikamaru's lap said.

"Temari-san is right!" said a guy with an unfortunate bowl cut wearing a green tracksuit. "You must preserve your youth! Guy-sensei, you must give him the recipe for your famous protein shake."

"I'll hit the vending machines!" said Naruto in a panic, as a similarly track-suited guy stood up as if to give a speech.

At the end of the night, when they were all packing up (Naruto throwing everything into his backpack and chattering about how awesome it was that the NPCs named the bridge after him, Sasuke silently placing his dice into colour-coded velvet bags), a good-looking but very irritated man stalked up to their table. "Let me join your table next time, Kakashi."

"Hello to you too, Neji," said Kakashi, lazily folding his screen. "Usual good time with Guy?"

"We all died. Again."

"I am sure that your downfall burned brightly with the flames of your–"

"Don't even say it. Yes or no? Otherwise I have to catch Asuma or Kurenai before they go out for a smoke."

"Hmm. Let me talk with Guy. Maybe we can come up with a way to get everybody in our campaign."

"Oh, like a tournament? That's awesome! Do a tournament!" Naruto turned and shouted, "Hey, who wants to do a tournament campaign with Kakashi-sensei?"

There was a general atmosphere of approval. A man who had a packet of cigarettes in his hands–presumably Asuma–said, "Awesome, then I don't have to DM anymore."

"Do you see this?" Kakashi fanned a notebook at Naruto. "Do you see tournament plans in this? Look at this map I drew for the next mission. Look at it."

"But a tournament is more fun dattebayo! What do you think, Sakura-chan?"

Amazing how she was already Sakura-chan to him. She couldn't help but notice that Sasuke frowned slightly whenever Naruto used the affectionate suffix with her name. "I, um… my character's quite weak, so I don't see how she could keep up with the rest in a tournament…"

To her surprise, Kakashi's visible eye widened, and then he pulled out a pen and began scribbling viciously in the notebook.

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"Don't talk to me, I'm having ideas." Kakashi tapped the end of the pen against his mask and scribbled some more. "I think we'll be doing it. I'll text you."

Sakura excused herself to visit the restroom, and when she came back, most of the people were gone, except for Ino, who seemed to be exclaiming over an engagement ring on the finger of a diminutive, dark-haired girl, and Kakashi, who was still writing away in his notebook.

She walked up to him to pick up her stuff and said, "Um, Kakashi, do you want my number?"

His head jerked up and she could see a blush spreading behind his mask, so she hurriedly added, "I mean, for the game? Since you said you wanted to text us about it?"

"Oh, right, the game," said Kakashi, looking down at the notebook he'd just been writing in as if he'd never seen it before, and then looking back up. "But uh… would it be alright if I texted you… not about the game? Like… friendsish stuff." He immediately winced and put a hand to his forehead. "Friendsish stuff. Unbelievable."

"Looks like you rolled a 1 on that one," she teased, pulling the pen out of his hand and scribbling her name and number across the top of the page. "But fortunately for you I rolled a 20 on sense motive. Friendsish stuff sounds good to me."

He lifted his head back up, and his fedora had shifted such that she could see both eyes, and the left one actually had a scar vertically bisecting it.

"Wow, that scar is–." She stopped herself. "Sorry, that was horribly rude of me."

"Don't worry about it." He gave her finger guns. "I'll text you the story about it tonight?"

Now that was a lot smoother. "Sure," she said.

"Okay, Forehead, let's hit the road," said Ino, strolling back over casually.

"Forehead?"

"I'll trade you that story for the scar one."