Haruka had been walking around, stretching her legs a bit as she waited for her damn replacement to show up. The morning air was still damn with dew and she wished, not for the first time in her life, that she could actually do something with her water-based chakra other than smash boulders and uproot trees. What was the point in having a chakra nature when her chakra was useless for nature transformations, anyways? It was just sadistic, having her take the test for no reason other than curiosity.
Kenta had always been a bit of a sadist, she thought to herself with a small, nostalgic smile. He was not sadistic in the wants-to-hurt-people-for-fun, sort of way; that had always been more of Suzaku's forte, even if the golden-eyed boy had preferred to do it verbally over physically. Kenta was more discreet with his sadism; human-experiments kind of sadistic. Luckily, he never really acted on those impulses. It had to be hard, being so kind-hearted and yet having the urges to cut people open to understand what was going on inside of them.
She shook the thoughts of her old teammates out of her head, sighing a bit at the uselessness of those memories. Kenta was an instructor now; he taught medical ninja just like himself. Suzaku was long gone from the village and she probably would not ever see him again, even if she tried to find him. He had always been good at hiding things.
The worst part about her faulty chakra, she mused silently as she flexed and clenched her fingers a few times, was the fact that it was not really faulty. It worked fine and there was plenty of it. She could sort of walk on water and all that. She was just too [i]stupid[/i] to mold the chakra and form it into techniques. Her chakra just would not answer to her.

She was startled out of her slightly depressing train of thought when someone spoke to her. Heck, she was a shitty ninja; she had not noticed the young man walking down the path right next to her. She probably would not even have noticed a full army sneaking in through the “gate” once she was in thinking mode. She was glad she rarely thought.
The boy told her his ID number and all; very professional. She almost wanted to snort at him. After all, she had been sound asleep just a little while ago. Nonetheless, she checked her pad of ninja-on-mission to make sure his number checked out and looked over the papers she offered him, like a good little guard. Everything was good.
His attempt at socialization was a bit awkward, at best, and she vaguely wondered why he bothered with small-talk if it was not really his thing, but decided to let it slide.

“I've had a delivery of sugar come through; that's the most action I've seen for the full three days I've been stationed,” she responded dully, lazily offering the young man a crooked smile, “Luckily, my replacement should be here any minute now,” she added, looking back at the “gate” over her shoulder to confirm that he had not shown up.
“You have a good mission?” she offered as counter-small-talk. She had already been able to tell from the papers that his patrol had been just as boring as her guard duty, but it was polite to ask anyways, right?