Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

'How did I get here?' Kakashi lamented, flipping another page in his book.

He had been hoping this year to be freed from his candidacy as a jonin instructor, but noooo, he just had to be given a team with Minato-sensei's son, the last Uchiha, and a genius kunoichi with a civilian background. When would Lord Third realize he wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing?

Naruto Uzumaki.
He hadn’t seen the kid in years until recently. He was boisterous and reckless, and liked doing things on his own. As far as his actual skills went, it wasn’t bad. He lacked experience, but he had boundless potential. No, his skills weren’t the problem here, the problem was he wanted to do everything himself. The thought to team up with Sasuke and Sakura hadn’t even crossed the boy's mind once.

Thirty minutes had passed since the test had started. Naruto had fallen for his trap and was strung up in a tree, but Sasuke and Sakura were both on the move. There had been zero attempts at teamwork so far.

He’d take care of Sakura first, then move on to Sasuke.

Sakura Haruno.
When he had looked at her assessment papers, he’d been impressed with her scores. She had been the best student in her year as far as the theoretical tests went. Her ninjutsu and genjutsu scores had been high as well, but her taijutsu had received a low score. Apparently she hadn’t done well in spars either, so it was the application of what she knew that was lacking.

Again, that wasn’t the problem though. The problem was her focus wasn’t on being a ninja. She was distracted by a crush on "her Sasuke," and it had caused her to miss an opportunity he'd given her to help Naruto out. She was also missing the concept of teamwork.

Both her and Sasuke had moved elsewhere, and they were both good at hiding their chakra signatures at the very least, he’d give them that, but Sakura's pink hair was a dead giveaway (as well as the loud noises she was making as she made a mad dash to find Sasuke.) A harmless little genjutsu of Sasuke bleeding to death put her out of commission. He certainly hadn’t expected her to faint though. Oops.

Maybe it was a bit much for a civilian girl to handle, but he’d expected her to break out of the illusion easily enough.

Oh well. Two down, one to go.

………

It seemed Sasuke had given up on running away, and was instead waiting out in the open for him.

Sasuke Uchiha.
He was the most promising student from his year. He’d been able to make two clones during the graduation test, and everything else he’d been tested on he’d passed with flying colors. Kakashi was looking for teamwork though, and so far Sasuke wasn’t any better on that front than Naruto or Sakura.

There was also another thing he needed to check with Sasuke though. Iruka had given him high praise in his assessment, but there had been no mention of the sharingan in his list of talents. Lord Third had asked Iruka about it himself apparently, but Iruka had never seen Sasuke using his clan's dojutsu.

A course, Lord Third had asked Kakashi to confirm to him on wether or not Sasuke had awakened the sharingan;(although Kakashi suspected it was the counsel that was more interested in this subject and the Hokage was asking more for their sake.)

Sasuke was quite arrogant, but skilled, Kakashi could begrudge him that much. The little brat even managed to touch one of the bells. Still, the little Uchiha hadn’t used the sharingan, even during close combat. It was possible that he hadn’t awakened it after all, but Lord Third has asked Kakashi to check on it, so Kakashi decided to push him a bit more. To break a genjutsu, he’d probably use the sharingan if he had it, so Kakashi got some distance between them and cast the genjutsu while Sasuke was distracted by a substitution.

He had a good idea of what would make Sasuke emotional enough to use the sharingan.

A perfect image of Itachi, dressed in his old anbu gear (sans the headband) appeared behind Sasuke. As soon as Sasuke caught sight of it, he froze. His eyes went wide, and his whole body tensed. The illusion took a step forward, but Sasuke was still not moving. He was locked in place and—oh shit, he was shaking. Maybe using Itachi in the genjutsu had been a bad idea?

Scrambling to make the genjutsu a little more…genjutsu-y, Kakashi gave the fake Itachi a voice that sounded nothing like him.

"It’s been awhile, Sasuke," illusion Itachi spoke. Jerking backward, Sasuke was finally able to move, and with shaking fingers, made the release sign.

So no sharingan then. Lord Third will be disappointed to hear, but it can’t be helped. Some Uchiha never awakened the sharingan. That might not be Sasuke's case however, he could end up being a late bloomer instead, like Obito.

Sasuke fell down to his knees, his breathing erratic as he clutched at his chest. Maybe he’d leave him to calm down, and in the meantime check on Naruto who was moving suspiciously close to where he’d left the lunches.

………

'Okay, so maybe it was a bad idea to show him Itachi,' Kakashi finally admitted to himself.

In his defense, he had certainly never claimed to be good with children. When he was twelve he’d been able to handle much worse, so he’d assumed it would be fine.

'But these children have never seen war,' he reminded himself.

Sasuke hadn’t even touched his lunch yet. His eyes were unfocused and he was breathing quickly. Sakura and Naruto hadn’t noticed yet, he was being quiet, but Kakashi has seen that look on enough men and women to know what's going on.

He’d seemed fine when he first came back with Sakura. He’d glared so harshly at him when he’d glanced over that Kakashi thought he’d attack him. After Kakashi announced that they’d failed so badly he’d make sure they never got another chance to become ninja, the kid had rushed him, so he shoved his face into the dirt and made an example out of him for Sakura and Naruto. He’d hoped the display, along with his lecture afterward would help them figure out what to do next.

Unfortunately, Sasuke hadn’t been okay, and Sakura didn’t seem to want to share her lunch with Naruto either.

All three of them would fail as there was no real second part in this test; lunch was their second chance. Sakura finished eating, and even though Sasuke hadn’t touched his food yet, it was over.

He wouldn’t make an exception for this team, even if Lord Third wanted him to. If they didn’t understand the value of teamwork, he wouldn’t train them.

They had failed.

Chapter Text

"Um, so can one of you untie me?" Naruto asked nervously.

Sakura turned to look at him. She’d forgotten he was still tied to the post.

She pulled a kunai out and cut the ropes off.

"Thanks, Sakura."

"Yeah, sure," she mumbled in reply. She snuck a glance at Sasuke, who was still hunched over with his back turned to them.

When Kakashi-sensei declared they had all failed the test, Sakura had been shocked. She thought he was going to give them a second chance, but apparently lunch had been their second chance. How was she supposed to know that?!

Apparently he had been lying about not letting them be ninja though. They would still keep their headbands and genin status, they just wouldn’t get special training from a jonin and all the perks that came with that.

Sasuke looked like he might attack the man again, while Naruto started on some loud tirade, but the jonin was suddenly gone in a swirl of leaves, and all three of them were left behind to wallow in defeat.

Now, Naruto walked a few feet forward before stopping and turning to face her. "What do we do now?" He asked, scratching the back of his head. Like she should know. Sasuke would know. She turned to look at the Uchiha, but he still had his back turned to them.

Naruto followed her gaze and frowned. "Well who even cares if we don’t get a jonin sensei! That won’t stop me from becoming Hokage someday! Believe it! He probably couldn’t have taught us anything anyway, we’ll be fine without a stupid sensei like him!" Naruto declared without a single shred of doubt in his voice.

She wished she could be as confident. A part of her was glad she was still with Sasuke, but another part of her knew that Ino was going to pass her test, and gloat about it, and that thought really pissed Sakura off.

Ugh! She hated this. She had finally managed to pull ahead of Ino and now she would be set back again, all because of stupid Kakashi-sensei and his stupid test, and those STUPID BELLS!

Whatever. You know what? Naruto was right, they’d be better off without stupid Kakashi-sensei!

She got to her feet and brushed off her dress. Ino might get a jonin-sensei, but Sakura was the one on a team with Sasuke, and there was nothing Ino could do about that.

"We should probably go to the tower to get instructions on what to do," Sakura said.

Jonin usually handled the paperwork and getting missions for the team, but they’d have to do all that themselves now. They’d practiced writing reports at the academy, so she knew how to do one, but the process was still intimidating. What was she supposed to even do once they got there? How should she ask? Sasuke might know what to do.

"Alright," Naruto agreed easily.

"Are you coming, Sasuke?" Sakura tried asking. Sasuke slowly got to his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets. He didn’t answer, but he started walking, so Sakura fell into step behind him. Naruto walked next to her.

She was quickly realizing how exhausted she was. She had skipped dinner last night and breakfast this morning, and the lunch she just had wasn’t enough to satiate her hunger. She hadn’t been able to sleep much either because she had been too nervous to go to sleep at first, and then had to wake up so early, (Only for Kakashi-sensei to show up late anyway.)

She was really starting to hate Kakashi.

Naruto didn’t know what to do at the tower, so he trailed after Sasuke and Sakura. Sasuke looked like he knew what he was doing, so he left it up to him. He was really hungry, and just wanted to get a bite to eat at this point. His stomach kept making noises and now people were staring.

A bento was suddenly shoved in his face.

"Here," Sasuke said, staring at the floor to his left.

"Isn’t that your lunch?" Naruto asked, unsure.

"I’m not hungry, you can have it."

The box was shoved aggressively into Naruto's hands. Naruto's stomach made another noise, so he didn’t protest again and took the box gratefully.

Taking care of the paperwork for their team took Sasuke's mind off… other things, so he took up the task earnestly. Once he was done getting their team onto the active roster, he was informed they could apply for missions starting tomorrow and was given free additional gear such as ear pieces and blank scrolls.

He was then given a bunch of forms to sign for shinobi health insurance benefits they could apply for. It basically amounted to free healthcare if they got hurt during a mission.

He took that information, the forms, and the gear, back to Sakura and Naruto. Sakura and Sasuke finished filling out their forms, but Naruto was having a hard time understanding the terms used, and hadn’t even filled out half of his yet.

"You have to put your birthday here…You have to add the year you were born too," Sakura eventually tried explaining to him. "Are you an idiot?" Sasuke interjected helpfully. "It’s not my fault! If they wanted the year then they should have said so! How am I supposed to know what they want?" Naruto crossed his arms and stuck his chin out defiantly. "They expect you to not be an idiot," Sakura muttered under her breath. Sasuke smirked in Naruto's direction, which a course set him off again. "You’re not allowed to laugh at that, bastard!"

Sasuke was about to retort with another insult about Naruto's low IQ, when two chunin strolled over to interrupt. "Do you need any help over here?" One of them asked, leaning unnecessarily against his partner's shoulder to peer down at the form in front of Naruto.

"Oh, I remember these, they can really confusing," the chunin with a bandage across his nose said, plopping down next to them (uninvited) to look more closely at the papers. "Right?!" Naruto exclaimed with the all the enthusiasm of an idiot who’d found another idiot to relate to. "The questions don’t make any sense, Sakura was just explaining it to me."

There were too many people around now, so Sasuke left to use the bathroom. He stayed there for exactly ten minutes before deciding the coast was probably clear.

Somehow, the two chunin were still sitting around his team, laughing at something Naruto had said. When Sasuke got closer however, it looked like the form had been completely filled out.

"Are you done now?" he asked, more at the chunin than at Naruto. Thankfully, one of them took the hint and started to move away, dragging his companion with him and making some excuse about desk duty.

Finally they were able to turn in the forms and call it a day. Once they agreed on a meeting time at 7:00am tomorrow, there was nothing left to do, so Sasuke went home.

Now he could sink into his thoughts in the quiet of his apartment and review the test from this morning in his mind.

He had been so close , he had even touched one of the bells. But then that illusion…

He wished he could blame Sakura or Naruto, but he couldn’t realistically. Kakashi had told them in plain words why they had failed. He hated it so much. He was going to fall even farther behind that man now.

He’d wanted his jonin to teach him to become stronger, strong enough to kill that person. Kakashi was really good, probably better than the average jonin, he could have made Sasuke strong, but now he had ruined that chance for himself.

'Father would be disappointed. Itachi never would have messed up this badly.'

Showering helped clear some of the thoughts. He kept going over the part of the fight where he was just a fingertip away from the bell. If he had just reached a little farther, been a little faster, he would have gotten the bell.

"If all three of you had come at me together, you may have gotten the bells."

…

Then there was that illusion. He’d only been able to break it when he heard the voice. He knew what Itachi's real voice sounded like, he could still hear him perfectly clear in his dreams.

Sighing, Sasuke turned the water off. He shook his head trying to dispel the image of Itachi that was beginning to conjure in his mind.

It didn’t matter now. He couldn’t let this set him back. He’d just have to work harder. Sakura and Naruto wouldn’t hold him back either, he wouldn’t let them.

Chapter Text

'7AM is a much better time for a meeting,' Naruto thought to himself as he stumbled out of his apartment and rushed down the stairs.

They’d decided to meet in front of the tower to make it easy for everyone. Naruto hadn’t really liked Sasuke bossing them around, but Sakura was on board with the decision so Naruto was okay with it too.

Sasuke was already there waiting when Naruto arrived. His bangs were covering his eyes and Naruto wondered for a moment if Sasuke was sleeping.

Sakura came running up a minute later shouting "Good morning, Sasuke!"

Sasuke jerked upright, but didn’t say anything in response. Rude bastard.

"Good morning, Sakura!" Naruto called out instead.

"Let’s just go inside now," Sasuke muttered, turning to walk into the tower.

"Hey! Don’t boss me around!"

Naruto made it a point to follow Sakura into the building, not Sasuke.

Team seven made their way over to the mission desk. The chunin behind the desk looked up at them, bright eyed and alert.

"Ah yes, I have a D-rank for you, the details are in this. Here," the chunin handed Sasuke a small scroll.

He moved to a corner of the room to unfurl it while Naruto and Sakura read over his shoulder.

The Daimyo's wife had lost her cat, Tora. The scroll had details such as a description of the cat's appearance (a photo included) and its last known location.

"We’re just supposed to find a lost cat?" Sakura asked, "Is that it?" She sounded skeptical.

"This is so lame," Naruto whined.

Sasuke hated that he agreed with them.

"Let’s hurry so we can get this over with and apply for a different mission," he said, pocketing the scroll.

Finding Tora wasn’t the problem, capturing the creature was the difficult part.

Sakura genuinely thought her morning wouldn’t get any worse, yet here she was, covered in dirt and scratches as Naruto finally wrangled that stupid cat into a hold.

Earlier, she had been on her way to meet Sasuke and Naruto when she had run into Ino.

"I heard you failed the test, Forehead. You must have really held the team back if you caused even Sasuke to fail."

"Shut up, Ino-pig, I’m not in the mood."

"You know my sensei is the Hokage's son, Asuma Sarutobi, Who's yours again? Oh riiight! You don’t have one!" Ino snickered behind her hand.

Sakura ground her teeth and seethed. She was just about to retort with a scathing insult, but Ino continued talking.

"You do realize that means you’ll be stuck as a genin forever now, right? People like you don’t make it out of the genin corp. A course Sasuke won’t have that problem though. He’ll make chunin soon and leave the dead weight behind. I’ll probably become a chunin soon too, and I’ll outrank you, Forehead."

"I don’t care if I don’t have a sensei, I’ll still find a way to make chunin before you, Ino-pig! There’s no way I’m letting you beat me!"

Sakura had quickly left after that, but Ino's words kept ringing around in her head all morning. It wasn’t fair. Sakura had worked so hard in the academy to pull ahead of Ino. She scored better than her in their graduation test, and yet, even though she was better than Ino in almost every way, Ino got a sensei instead of her.

She hated how much Ino's words hurt her. It wasn’t so much the words themselves that stung; it hurt because Ino was the one saying it. Ino, who had inspired her to be confident in the first place. Ino, who believed in her first, before anyone else, even her parents. Ino, who motivated her so much. Ino, who made her want to be strong enough to protect her special people, who at the time included Ino (and still does.)

Ino was Sakura's standard to measure herself against, her rival. If she fell behind, then Ino wouldn’t care about her at all anymore. She would move on, find a different rival, and that thought scared Sakura more than she wanted to admit.

She felt like crying all of a sudden.

"Are you okay, Sakura?" Naruto asked, looking concerned.

No, but she wasn’t going to cry, she was a shinobi now and shinobi didn’t cry, especially over something so silly.

"I’m fine, Naruto, just don’t let go of that cat."

They gave the cat back to its owner while Sasuke gave a small verbal report of probably less than eight words, (one could only wonder why reports for a mission like this were even required,) and Sakura could suddenly see why the thing had decided to run away. She’d probably run away too if she was that woman's pet. She would feel bad for the cat, if the scratches on her arms and legs didn’t wipe away all sympathy for it.

The Third Hokage was handing out missions now that it was later in the day. They went to apply for another one, but when Lord Third listed some options, Naruto refused.

"I don’t want to do another boring mission. Give us something better Gramps!"

Sakura could hardly believe what she was hearing.

"Naruto! Speak more respectfully to Lord Third!" She whisper yelled, smacking the back of his head.

"Ow! Sakura!"

"Stop being an idiot!" Sasuke hissed.

Lord Third just chuckled before launching into a slow lecture about why different ranks existed and the purpose of the classification system.

Sakura really didn’t care, and the Hokage took forever rambling on about it, but she’d never say that out loud.

"Hey, let’s get Ichiraku ramen after this, I’m starving," Naruto whispered to her and Sasuke.

"Really? Ramen?" Sasuke whispered back.

"Hey! What’s wrong with ramen? It’s the best food in the world! Believe it!"

"Are you even listening to me?!" Lord Third suddenly demanded. Sakura quickly assumed a demure look, trying to seem uninvolved.

Sasuke crossed his arms and turned to frown at the wall, but Naruto turned around and started yelling at the Hokage!

"Why do you always lecture me like you’re my grandpa or something?! I don’t wanna do these little kid missions! Give us something better gramps!"

"Naruto! Stop being so disrespectful!" Iruka-sensei yelled, standing up out of his seat, "You just graduated from the academy, you can’t take higher ranked missions! On top of that, without a jonin on your team, you’ll be restricted to D-ranks only for a while until you can prove yourselves capable."

"But—!" Naruto got ready to protest, but was immediately silenced by the glare Iruka-sensei leveled at him.

"Iruka is right. Focus on proving yourselves on D-ranks for now. If you perform well on your D-ranks, I can begin to entrust you with C-ranks in the future," Lord Third said as he gestured for Iruka to sit back down. "Now, would you like to take your next mission?"

They got a 'mission' to clean out some old guy's flowerbed of the weeds that had started taking over. It was the only mission that Sasuke found the slightest bit interesting. There was no way he was taking that babysitting job, or cleaning the public restrooms.

Sakura seemed to agree, and Naruto agreed too once he saw the other options. It was surprisingly quiet for a little while as they worked their way around the small garden, pulling out the weedy looking plants. (Sasuke might have accidentally pulled a flower or two, but he wasn’t going to draw attention to it by saying anything. The man probably wouldn’t realize they were gone anyway with all the other junk in here.)

"Naruto! That’s a daisy! Put it back!" Sakura suddenly screeched.

"Um, oops," Naruto scrambled to shove the flower back into the dirt. Sasuke was pretty sure the stem had already been disconnected from the roots though, and it was too late for that poor flower. He just shook his head at the blonde and kept moving along.

After completing the mission, Naruto insisted on them going to Ichiraku's for ramen. He was really hungry, and Sakura and Sasuke begrudgingly agreed (if Sasuke's 'hn' could be considered that) after Naruto loudly argued for it. On the way out of the tower, he ran straight into a taller girl with twin buns, and fell backward at the collision.

"Watch where you’re going, loser," Sasuke was quick to reprimand.

"It’s alright, I wasn’t looking where I was going either," the girl replied sheepishly, smiling at Naruto and helping him up.

She jogged away to join up with two other guys and a jonin, and Naruto couldn’t help but gape as he spotted a man with the biggest eyebrows he’d ever seen. Even worse, one of the other guys had big eyebrows too, and was matching haircuts with the jonin. To top off all the weirdness, they were even wearing matching green outfits.

"Did you see how big that guy's eyebrows were?" Naruto asked in a loud whisper as they continued toward the ramen shop.

"Which one? There were two of them," Sasuke responded, sounding disturbed.

"Jonin are really weird," Sakura added, "Do you think that genin was his son?"

"He must have been, they looked so similar," Naruto answered, "Those eyebrows have to be genetic or something."

An hour later, Team seven went their separate ways. Instead of going home, Sakura went toward the library. She’d been able to forget about Ino's words for a little while, but now she was thinking about it again. She wasn’t about to get left behind, and if a jonin wouldn’t teach her, she’d just have to learn something herself.

She didn’t really know what she was looking for. Her lowest scores had been on taijutsu, but a book couldn’t teach her about that. Maybe she should try learning more ninjutsu? Or genjutsu? Mizuki-sensei and Iruka-sensei did say she was good at genjutsu. Sakura decided to start there.

Now that she was a genin, she was allowed access to more books. There should be something she could get started with.

She was completely engrossed browsing through some books trying to find something that caught her eye, when a voice startled her so badly she almost screamed.

"Do you need help looking for something?"

Sakura whirled around, to find a young man standing behind her leaning against a shelf.

"Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you," the man said apologetically.

"It’s fine," Sakura replied, trying to get her heart rate back down.

"It seemed like you were having trouble finding something, I was just going to help you look."

"Oh, well, I'm trying to find books on genjutsu."

"Genjutsu? I think I know where that is."

The man pushed his glasses up his nose as he looked down the row of books.

"Ah, here," he said, pulling a book off the top shelf. He handed the green book over to her and she read the title, Genjutsu Theory I .

"Is this what you were looking for?"

"Yes, this is perfect, thank you!"

Sakura flipped open to the table of contents, reading all the headings of sections. This book was exactly what she’d been looking for. She was already getting excited thinking about studying it later.

"You’re welcome. Gotta help out our fellow leaf shinobi after all," the man replied, pushing his glasses even further up his nose.

"Is there anything I can help you with then?" Sakura asked, wanting to return the favor if she could.

"I’m actually looking for history books on the founding clans of Konoha."

Together, they walked over to the history section.

"I’ve been interested in Senju Hashirama lately. He was quite the amazing shinobi," the man continued.

"The First Hokage? He's like, the greatest shinobi ever, right?"

The man chuckled. "He sure was, no one could stand against him in his time."

They geeked out together over Senju Hashirama's mokuton for the next half hour. Sakura was happy to finally have someone to talk to who actually understood how fascinating this stuff was.

She ended up also checking out a few books on people she hadn’t even heard of before on the man's recommendation. As they exited the library together, Sakura realized she didn’t know the guy's name yet, nor had she given hers.

"I’m Sakura Haruno by the way, it was nice meeting you," Sakura said holding out her free hand.

"My name is Kabuto Yakushi," the man said, taking her hand, "Hopefully we run into each other again sometime."

Chapter Text

Sasuke examined his appearance in the bathroom mirror. Maybe wearing white was a bad idea if they kept doing missions that required digging around in the dirt. His arm warmers were slightly stained, as were his shorts. He decided to think about it later, and grabbed some clean clothes to change into.

He’d gone down to the dock earlier to train his fireball jutsus, so all that was left to do today was shower and eat dinner. Once he was done he went to bed, and let sleep take him.

The night sky was blood red. Black clouds drifted across a full moon. The streets were covered in shadows so dark it was almost impossible to see the ground in front of him. Sasuke was running as fast as he could but he couldn’t catch him. He never could. The shadowy figure was always too far ahead. He tripped over a corpse—Auntie Uruchi—and fell face first into the pavement.

The sound of bells jingled in the far distance as the figure came to a stop, turning to look back at him. A murder of crows suddenly burst away from the figure, and Sasuke closed his eyes on reflex as they came flying straight toward him.

When he opened his eyes again a moment later, he was at the training grounds. The sun was almost blinding as it shone from a cloudless bright blue sky, and Sasuke squinted against the sudden light. Once his retinas stopped burning, he was able to realize Kakashi was now in front of him, holding a familiar pair of bells. Wait. This wasn’t right. Where had that man gone?

Kakashi strolled right up to Sasuke, crouching down and dangling the bells in front of his face. The sound of the bells was hypnotic. He remembered now. The bells, he had to get the bells. All of his limbs felt heavy. He struggled to lift an arm and reach out. Kakashi was laughing at his ridiculous attempt. He reached as far as he could, but he couldn't reach the bells. Why were they so far away? The bells were right in front of him, he should be able to grab them. Why couldn’t he move his body properly?

The sky started bleeding, slowly changing into the color of blood. His arm was too heavy to hold up anymore, and it dropped back down to the darkening ground. The black clouds had returned, moving unnaturally fast and building in number until they almost completely covered the…moon? Sun? The bells jingled again—

Sasuke woke up with a gasp, sitting up and reaching out for nothing. He stayed frozen with his arm extended out for a few seconds before he realized. Just a dream.

Sasuke was too tired to deal with the mission desk today. Sakura eventually hesitantly accepted the mission instead. They were supposed to run deliveries all day for a bakery on Minato St. Sakura tried to hand him the scroll, which listed all the addresses for the deliveries, but shoved it into her weapon pouch after he glared at her. He was too tired to feel bad about it.

When they got there, the baker took one look at them and demanded to be sent a different team. Sakura hesitantly tried to explain that they’d already taken the mission, and if he had a complaint he’d have to go to the mission desk himself for that. The baker muttered about how troublesome that would be before giving in and letting them take the cart, but not before glaring harshly at Naruto and reminding them that if they messed up he’d make sure they weren’t paid.

Sasuke glared right back at the man when he made eye contact. Naruto didn’t say anything back, but Sasuke noticed the way his jaw tightened and his gaze fell to the ground. Sasuke was too tired to think too much about that though, so he shoved Naruto toward the cart instead.

"You can make the first delivery."

"WHAT?! Why do I have to?! You do it first, asshole!"

Sasuke crossed his arms and looked away. He was not hauling it first, not because he cared that much about the cart, but because he wasn’t letting Naruto win this argument.

"I’ll do it first, I don’t trust Naruto to not spill everything," Sakura said, stepping forward and taking the cart.

Sasuke grinned smugly at Naruto, who in turn growled like some feral animal.

They took turns hauling the cart all morning, which went by without incident for the most part, except for that one lady who yelled at Naruto when he brought a delivery to her front door. When Sakura and Sasuke questioned it, Naruto nervously muttered something about possibly pranking her in the past. Sakura decided to hand over the deliveries herself after that, in order to avoid another incident with one of Naruto's potential victims.

By midday, after a brief lunch of snack bars, Naruto and Sasuke had switched from fighting over the other hauling the cart, to trying to take it themselves. Naruto insisted on taking it twice in a row because, "You look tired already, Sasuke. Don’t worry, I’m strong enough to pull this thing around all day!"

It might have sounded like a nice thought to anyone else, but Sasuke took it as a personal slight, (as Naruto intended it.)

Sasuke immediately shoved Naruto in retaliation, and tried to grab the cart away. After a brief struggle, Sasuke managed to get the cart, and quickly walked away before Naruto could grab him again.

It went like this for the rest of the day. Sakura didn’t interfere, as it meant she didn’t have to lug the cart around anymore, and just got to stroll alongside it. She brought the boxes to the customers once they arrived at the address, so it wasn’t like she was doing nothing.

Naruto and Sasuke eventually agreed to a game that decided who pulled the cart each time. Rock, paper, scissors.

They came out with an equal 3-3 by the time the last delivery rolled around. They both looked tired by now, but were still stubbornly adamant about making the last delivery. They both went for scissors on the first go. And the second go. And the third. Again and again and again, they both went scissors. Sakura eventually sat down to watch the most ridiculous game of rock, paper, scissors she'd ever seen. Neither Sasuke nor Naruto looked away from the other's eyes.

After two intense minutes of this, the look on Naruto's face changed slightly. 'Finally,' Sakura thought in relief.

Naruto had gone rock. Sasuke had gone paper.

"WHAT?! BUT HOW?!"

Sasuke smirked.

"You're too obvious, idiot."

Naruto grumbled about how Sasuke must have cheated somehow as they made their way one block down to deliver the last box.

Feeling a bit bad about not helping out much, Sakura insisted on taking the empty cart back to the bakery. The rude baker barely acknowledged them when they got there, and Sakura hoped they never had to work for him again.

Still, they were finally done. After they reported back to the tower, there was nothing else to do, and she could finally go home to try out some things from the book she’d gotten from the library.

She’d stayed up late last night reading up on genjutsu theory. Some of it was things she already knew, but there was a lot she didn’t. There were many kinds of genjutsu, and many different ways to cast one. Certain sounds, smells, feelings, sights, or tastes could trigger a genjutsu on someone.

The book also went into detail on what signs to look for if you believe you are under genjutsu. Do you see flowers, but you can’t smell them? Is the air not moving the same direction the grass is being blown in? It also went into great detail on how to make sure your own genjutsus don’t have these flaws.

Sakura wanted to get back home as soon as possible so she would have enough time to practice some of the exercises in the book. Next time she saw Ino, she was going to impress her with a new genjutsu.

"Hey, Sakura, do you want to go get dinner with me?" Naruto asked, stopping her from leaving. Sasuke had already left, and now it was just the two of them.

"Not today, Naruto, I’m busy. I’m going to go train actually."

"Oh, that’s cool," Naruto grinned, "I should probably go train too. Hey! Sakura! Maybe we could train together?"

Sakura cringed slightly. She wanted to try this stuff out on her own without anyone bothering her, and Naruto would probably just be annoying and distract her.

"Maybe another time, Naruto. I’ve gotta go now, see you tomorrow!"

She left quickly after that, but not quick enough to avoid seeing Naruto's smile fall off his face, and that sad look return to his eyes.

She tried not to feel bad about it. It wasn’t like she was obligated to spend time with him or anything, and she really did have to go…but…

'…He’s all alone.'

Sasuke had made her understand what that meant just a few days ago. Naruto was being annoying because he was lonely and wanted her to spend time with him. He wasn’t even being that annoying, it was just—ugh! Why was she feeling so guilty over this?

…Maybe she could try training with him another day. After all, it would be beneficial for both of them anyway. She’d worry about it later though, right now, she’d put her focus back on studying.

It seemed like the most important thing was chakra control, and there were chakra exercises to help with chakra control in the book. She felt like her chakra control was pretty good already, Iruka-sensei had even told her as much, but on a scale of 1-10 she didn’t know how to measure herself on how good exactly she was. Sakura decided she’d just keep doing these chakra control exercises until she felt confident.

One was sticking a leaf to different parts of your body. They’d done something like this in the academy, so Sakura was familiar with it, but instead of one leaf, the book suggested multiple leaves in different locations. After a few attempts she’d been able to make every leaf stick at once, and kept them sticking to her for fifteen minutes like the book said.

Huh. That’d been pretty easy. What was next?

Naruto was nearly at Ichiraku's when he spotted a familiar face waiting outside the shop.

Iruka waved to him from the ramen shop and Naruto jogged over to greet him.

"Hey, Iruka-sensei!"

"Hello, Naruto. I figured you’d come here, so I was waiting for you. Do you want to get some ramen with me?"

Naruto immediately agreed, and they went to sit down on the two stools they always sat at.

Iruka wanted to hear all about the test and how he was getting along with Sasuke and Sakura, so Naruto told him all about their missions while they waited for the ramen to be served.

Naruto told Iruka about Kakashi's bell test while they ate, gesturing wildly at the most exciting parts.

"I wouldn’t worry too much about that test," Iruka-sensei comforted him after Naruto ended his rant, "actually, Kakashi has never passed a team before."

This was news to Naruto. He was definitely going to tell Sakura and Sasuke about this later.

Iruka-sensei walked him home once they were done, and Naruto couldn’t find it in himself to complain about the babying. Iruka-sensei bid him good night once they reached Naruto's apartment, and left after reminding him to brush his teeth.

The apartment seemed more empty than normal, so Naruto hummed to himself to chase away the silence.

It was nice seeing Iruka-sensei. He had the sudden realization that he wouldn’t see much of him now that he'd graduated. He wouldn't see Iruka-sensei in class almost everyday anymore, or get ramen with him as often either. He wouldn’t get detention anymore, which meant he wouldn’t get to sit next to Iruka-sensei during detention, and learn how to make paper bombs under Iruka's careful instruction.

His prior happiness felt sapped away, and with it, all his energy. Naruto changed into his pajamas and was about to climb into bed when he remembered what Iruka-sensei had told him.

After brushing his teeth, he jumped into bed, and rolled into the covers. Iruka-sensei had once told him that instead of thinking about things that make you worried, you should fall asleep thinking about what makes you happy so you can have good dreams.

Naruto fell asleep in the middle of compiling a mental list of all the ramen flavors he wanted to try.

Chapter Text

A whole week had passed since Team Seven had officially been formed. In this time, they’d managed to complete five D-rank missions.

At the end of the week, they’d been given their first payment, based on the amount of missions they’d done during the week. Sakura and Naruto had been ecstatic about the meager pay, while Sasuke had accepted his with a small 'hm.'

Naruto immediately dumped the cash and coins out of the envelope into the mouth of his frog wallet, and then insisted on going to Ichiraku's so he could finally pay with his own money.

Caught up in Naruto's excitement, Sakura immediately agreed and went skipping out the door with Naruto. Sasuke followed behind them in a more subdued manner, but if anyone looked closely, they’d see a small smile on his lips as he watched his teammates ahead of him.

Teuchi and Ayame heartily congratulate Naruto on his first payment when Naruto excitedly tells them why he's here, (as if he isn’t here almost everyday anyway.)

Naruto orders an extra large miso ramen with extra pork, and Sakura orders a normal miso ramen. Ayame turns to take Sasuke's order, but he just shrugs and asks for the same thing Naruto had gotten.

While they eat, Naruto asks what they should do after, seeing as they can't do any missions.

(Before they'd received their pay, they’d been told at the mission desk that there weren’t any D-ranks left for them today. Naruto had tried asking for a C-rank instead, but had been denied instantly.)

"We could train," Sakura suggests shyly, glancing over at Sasuke. Naruto finishes slurping up his noodles before exclaiming, "That’s a great idea, Sakura!"

"I don’t know where we could train though. We don’t have permission to use any of the training areas," Sakura sets her half empty bowl down and stands up, "You can finish mine if you want Naruto. I’ll go ask if we can use one of the training grounds."

"Thanks, Sakura!" Naruto grabs the offered bowl and returns to stuffing his face as Sakura dashes away.

When Naruto finishes both his and Sakura's bowls, Sasuke slides his own unfinished bowl over to Naruto. Naruto gulps down the remaining ramen in seconds.

When Sakura came back with a permission slip to use one of the academy training areas, only Naruto was still waiting for her.

"Where’s Sasuke?" She asks as soon as she reaches him.

"He said he was busy and had something else to do, and then he just left," Naruto answers, scrunching up his nose.

"Oh," Sakura deflates a bit.

"It doesn’t matter, we don’t need him to train anyway," Naruto tries to reassure her.

Sakura sighs, trying to not feel too disappointed. There'll be other opportunities to train with Sasuke after all.

Sasuke follows a path through the woods that leads him to a now familiar training area. He’d been using this one lately to practice his shurikenjutsu.

It's a small clearing just outside of the woods near the Naka River. There are old wooden training posts with new circular white targets that Sasuke had brought recently. The old ones were too worn out to be used. Some targets are attached to branches on trees that are at the edge of the woods so he has more odd angles to practice with.

This far into the woods there are no prying eyes to watch him train, so Sasuke lets himself become fully immersed as he goes through his katas to warm up. His mind only focuses on important things, like his form, and definitely not on wondering where Sakura and Naruto are training right now or what they're working on. Nope. Only on his form.

It’s not like he could have trained properly if he’d gone with them anyway. His self-enforced training schedule required him to use this particular training ground today.

'You could have invited them to train here though,' a small voice in his head tried to argue.

'But they would have been distracting. They'd just slow me down,' he argued back.

'You’re distracted by them now though, and they aren’t even here, so what’s the difference?'

Sasuke huffed and shook his head, trying to dispel these useless thoughts.

He moved to shurikenjutsu practice next. He held three kunai in each hand and threw them one right after the other to hit all the targets right in the center. After several minutes of throwing the kunai, retrieving them, and throwing them again, Sasuke started to throw them while moving around, utilizing the targets on the trees as well as the training posts.

He imagines Itachi is standing in the target's place, and it motivates him to throw every kunai perfectly, because nothing less than perfect will beat Itachi.

Sasuke dodges an imaginary fireball midair. As soon as his foot touches the ground, he spins in a perfect 180, hitting another target with his final kunai. Bullseye.

Leaning over, Sasuke places his hands on his knees to steady himself as he pants, trying to catch his breath.

When he straightens back up, he observes the targets all around him. Every target had been hit dead-center, not a single kunai had missed. His training schedule was paying off, his shurikenjutsu was almost perfect.

Now began the arduous task of retrieving all his kunai from all the targets. The ones on the ground were easy, but he has to climb each tree carefully to get the ones in the branches. Some of them are quite high, and by the time he has climbed up the last tree and retrieved the final kunai, he is out of breath again. Maybe he should do more stamina training?

He carefully climbs back down, ignoring the way the bark scrapes at his exposed skin, and snags his shirt. The next part of training today is on his ninjutsu, but he needs to make his way back to the lake for that. Well, he might as well run there, it would be good for his cardio.

Sakura and Naruto jump straight into target practice as soon as they got to the training area. Naruto primarily uses shuriken while Sakura sticks to kunai. Naruto is getting all his on the target, but Sakura's are more accurate, hitting center or near center while Naruto's often ended up in the outer rings. Sakura takes it as a small victory over Naruto even if they aren't technically competing.

Other genin are training nearby too, but it only becomes distracting when a spar between two teammates starts. Sakura stops to watch, as do several others. Naruto notices a moment later and comes to stand next to her as they watch the two genin roll around in the dirt, each trying to get the upper hand.

'That's Asahi and Haru,' Sakura realizes, recognizing her former classmates.

"Who do you think will win?" A random teenager next to them asks his friend. "I'll bet five hundred ryo on Asahi," his friend replies. "Nah, you haven’t seen how hard Haru's been training lately, I’d put money on him," a third boy joins the conversation.

Naruto and Sakura glance at each other. "Do you want to bet on the fight too? Winner chooses where we go to eat after our next mission," Sakura challenges. "Ichiraku obviously! I’ll bet on that guy," Naruto points to Haru, the scrappy looking kid with dark hair. "Fine, I’ll bet on Asahi then."

"Come on Haru! Get up! Kick his ass already!" Naruto loudly voices his encouragement as the spar gets more intense. Other spectators are cheering too, getting more and more into the fight.

"Come on, man! I bet five hundred on you!"

"Stop playing around and take him down already!"

"Come on, Haru! You got this!"

"Let’s go, Asahi!"

A chunin instructor from the academy pauses to watch the fight from just outside the small crowd.

Haru goes for a jab and misses. Asahi uses a small opening to land a solid hit on Haru's face. Haru is only fazed for moment before he flips backward gaining some space between him and Asahi. Asahi doesn’t give him any time to catch his breath, pushing his advantage. Haru catches him with a knee to the chin however, and Asahi stumbles backward.

Now Haru pushes the advantage, punching wildly as he sends Asahi sprawling to the ground in an undignified manner. Haru doesn’t allow Asahi to get back up. Using his body weight to hold Asahi down, Haru grabs the front of Asahi's shirt, pulling him up slightly, and starts punching him in the face repeatedly.

Maybe someone should have realized sooner, but it wasn’t until tears started pouring down Haru's face that the spectators around the fight realized. This isn’t a normal spar. The chunin instructor is there the next instant, pulling Haru off Asahi while a third boy runs over to help.

The cheering has stopped completely, the whole place going extremely quiet. The silence is only broken by Haru sobbing and the other boy trying to help Asahi sit up without much luck. Asahi was probably knocked out cold after the second hit. Blood is dripping steadily from his nose, which could be broken, but it’s hard to tell from this distance.

"We should go, Naruto," Sakura whispers, grabbing Naruto's wrist to lead him away. The small crowd begins to disperse almost guilty, whispering as they go.

A jonin with sunglasses arrives and immediately demands to know what happened. Sakura tugs harder on Naruto's wrist, pulling them away before they somehow get in trouble too.

"Sakura, wait! I left my kunai back there," Naruto digs his heels in and starts pulling in the direction of their training area.

"Hurry up then and grab them, we have to go," Sakura relents, letting go of his wrist so he can run back for his kunai.

Naruto is quick about it, only pausing for a moment to watch the chunin take Asahi away while the jonin squats down to say something to Haru.

"Come on, Naruto!" Sakura hisses, snapping Naruto's attention back to her. He jogs over, and together they slink away behind the other genin.

The next day, as they are re-painting a white fence for a cranky old lady, Naruto tells Sakura about the conversation he overheard at Ichiraku's last evening. Apparently Asahi had somehow found out that Haru's older sister—who worked in the intelligence division—had been sent on a honey trap mission. Asahi proceeded to spread this fact around, starting rumors about her. When Haru found out about it, he challenged Asahi to a spar, and…well, they had both seen what happened after that.

Sasuke, who is working a little further down along the fence, tilts his head in their direction, no longer trying to be subtle about his eavesdropping.

"Poor Haru, I hope he doesn’t get in too much trouble," Sakura sighs.

"He shouldn’t have to get into trouble at all! That jerk had it coming," Naruto huffs, crossing his arms.

"Yeah," Sakura dips her paintbrush back into the paint can. It’s quiet for a few moments as they focus on painting, until Sasuke shuffles back up near them to also re-dip his brush.

"So, who won the fight?" He asks, swiping the excess paint off the brush and back into the can.

Naruto and Sakura both nearly snap their necks with how quickly they turn to look at him. Naruto glances over at her, and they make eye contact for a second before Naruto finds his tongue.

"Haru won! Believe it! He beat that guy up so bad he had to go to the hospital," Naruto doesn’t even take a breath before he’s whirling back to face Sakura, "That’s right! I almost forgot, I get to choose where we eat today! We have to go to Ichiraku after!"

Sasuke raises an eyebrow at Sakura who explains the bet she made with Naruto.

"A course, I would have bet on Haru if I knew what was really going on," she clarifies quickly, waving her paintbrush around frantically and sending flecks of paint flying everywhere.

Sasuke makes a 'hm' noise before returning back to the post he was working on before.

Somehow, painting the fence takes them all day long. Naruto might have spent more time talking than painting, and Sasuke was perhaps being too meticulous about his sections of the fence, and Sakura may have been painting a bit slowly while she daydreamed, but as the sun began to get lower and lower in the sky, the three genin realized just how bad their situation was. They tried to work faster once they realized how late it was getting, but it was too little too late.

Only about three quarters of the fence was done, and the day was almost over. It all went to shit as soon as they heard the front door of the old hag's house slam shut.

The old lady had snootily asserted that the fence be finished before the day was over when they first arrived. At lunch time, she had inspected the fence with a haughty look, clearly unimpressed with their progress thus far. She then left to do some shopping, but before she left, threatened them, that if the fence wasn’t finished by the time she came back, she’d make sure they got no pay and would leave a complaint about them at the mission desk.

It hadn’t been enough motivation for them to get their act together soon enough, but now reality was setting in. Sasuke, who has a streak of dried white paint in his bangs and flecks of paint on his clothes, tensed up, turning slowly to look at the house. Naruto’s eyes went wide as he looked between Sakura and Sasuke, and then at the unpainted sections of the fence. Sakura dropped her paintbrush as her eyes met Naruto's, an insane plan forming in her head as the desperation set in.

"Naruto, go distract her for a bit, buy me some time!" Sakura turns around, forming a hand sign and closing her eyes to focus.

"O-okay!" Naruto leaves behind his paintbrush and races off in the direction of the house. Sasuke just stares at her with a bewildered expression.

"Naruto can talk someone to death, but even he won’t be able to distract her long enough for us to finish," he says, gesturing to the rest of the fence.

Sakura needs to focus, so she blocks out his voice and begins to conjure up an image in her mind.

When Naruto returns only a minute later with the old hag, he wasn’t expecting Sakura and Sasuke to have actually finished painting the fence, but somehow, the whole thing is done.

Sakura is smiling and giggling weirdly as she greets the old lady, and Sasuke looks distinctly uncomfortable, like he’s trying too hard to act normal.

The old hag narrows her eyes and approaches the fence. "You can’t touch this part, it's still wet," Sakura says hurriedly, smiling in a way that looks more like a grimace. Sasuke exchanges a glance with Sakura, and seems to understand something. Naruto has no idea what’s going on.

"Hmph. I suppose this is good enough. You'll leave now," the old hag waves them away with a flick of her wrist, turning back toward her house.

"Yes, ma'am!" Sakura breathes out, while Sasuke grabs their painting supplies.

It’s only now that Naruto realizes how Sakura is holding one of her hands stiffly behind her back. Something strange is definitely going on, so as soon as the old bat is out how hearing range, Naruto comes up next to Sakura and whispers, "What’s going on? How did you guys finish the fence that quickly?"

"Genjutsu," Sasuke answers for her, holding their paintbrushes and the can of paint.

"Oh wow! I didn’t know you could do genjutsu like this Sakura! You saved us!" Naruto exclaims, looking back over at the fence.

"It’s hard for me to keep it up with one hand," Sakura explains, bringing both her hands back in front of her and using both hands to hold the sign. She has a strained look on her face as the genjutsu wavers slightly. She closes her eyes, breathing deep as the blurry areas come into focus again.

"We can’t stay here. If she comes out and finds us, our cover will be blown," Sasuke sounds concerned.

"I can keep the genjutsu up until she goes to bed. She’s old, so she probably goes to bed earlier. We can finish the fence after, we just have to be quiet." Sakura opens her eyes, looking a little less strained now.

"We need to hide for now," Sasuke looks toward some hedges, "can you keep the genjutsu up from over there?"

"I think so," Sakura nods, and begins to walk backward toward the hedges. All of them squeeze behind what turns out to be prickly holly bushes, and sit down on the ground to wait. Sakura explains more about her genjutsu to Naruto while they sit there.

"If my illusion is touched or disturbed in any way, it’ll disappear. I haven’t figure out how to make them tangible yet. I also don’t know how to change it while it’s already up, so the shadows might become an issue soon. I’ll just drop it and reform it if I have to though."

"Won’t that drain your chakra?" Sasuke asks, frowning.

"I’ve been working on my chakra control," Sakura blushes suddenly, "If I don’t put too much chakra into the illusion, It'll be fine."

Sasuke 'hms' and leans back on his hands.

Time passes slowly, and since Sakura needs to focus in order to maintain the genjutsu, Naruto can only talk to Sasuke, but he really doesn’t want to, so he ends up drawing in the dirt with a small stick to pass the time, making little animal faces.

He looks up eventually to find Sasuke watching him. Sasuke looks away quickly, but Naruto already noticed. Naruto grins, but decides to not say anything, and returns to drawing. He doesn’t have to look up this time to know Sasuke is watching him, he can feel it.

He draws an angry stickman with arm warmers, and duckbutt hair. The offended noise Sasuke makes when Naruto is almost finished with the hair is all Naruto needs to hear to know that Sasuke realized what the drawing was. He giggles and adds cat ears just before Sasuke wipes the drawing out with his foot.

Sasuke makes a ‘tch' sound, and looks back toward the house. He suddenly jolts upright, as if realizing something.

"Sakura, the lights are all off now," he says quietly, standing up and grabbing their paint brushes. Sakura opens her eyes and looks at the house, noting the now dark windows. With a sigh of relief, she drops the genjutsu and rolls her shoulder back, trying to get the stiffness out.

"Alright, let’s do this," Naruto whispers, crawling out from behind the bushes.

The sun has gone down completely, and they only have moonlight to work by now. None of them are slacking off or worrying about minor details anymore. The only goal is to finish as fast as they can so they don’t get caught.

It's dark even with the moonlight, and Sakura is glad the paint is white, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to see any of their work. She still has to strain her eyes, and from the way Naruto and Sasuke are squinting, they aren’t having an easier time. The paint brushes have gone stiff with dried paint, and it’s harder to use them, but they just have to bear with it.

They work close together, Sasuke paints the top rail of the fence, Sakura paints the bottom rail, and Naruto takes care of any missed spots.

They whisper to each other when they need to, trying to stay quiet. The crickets are loud enough to cover up the noise they make and the occasional stomach rumbles all three of them end up getting.

After what must have been a few hours, they are finally on the last section. They are all tired and very hungry at this point, and starting to get snappy with each other. Sasuke 'accidentally' steps on Naruto's hand, so Naruto retaliates by swiping his paintbrush across the front of Sasuke's shirt.

Sasuke gasps in shock, before growling and raising his own paintbrush against Naruto. He manages to get a swipe of paint across Naruto's cheek. Naruto makes a frustrated noise and grabs the entire paint can next. Sakura sees what’s coming just in time.

"Stop it!" She yanks the paint away from Naruto, but loses her balance in the process, falling backward into the freshly painted fence.

The wet paint clings to her shoulder and the back of her dress, but Sakura will worry about the dress later. The worst part, is the paint that gets into her hair.

She reaches back and feels the paint in her hair as Naruto tries to apologize, and Sasuke comes closer to grab the paint can she dropped next to her. A little of the paint from her hair comes off on her hand, and in a fit of rage, Sakura wipes the paint on the nearest target of her anger.

Sasuke is the one who ends up with more paint smeared on the back of his shirt. His arms are full with the nearly empty paint can, so all he can do is gape at her.

Sakura is so angry that’s she doesn’t even realize what she did yet. "Idiot!" she seethes, "If you dump out the paint we can’t finish the fence!"

She gives Sasuke an extra hard shove for good measure, forcing him back a step, before feeling her hair again. Hopefully she can wash it all out when she gets home.

Naruto and Sasuke exchanged scared looks with each other. Sasuke sets the paint back on the ground and grabs his paintbrush. Naruto joins him quickly as they work on finishing the fence again in silence. Sakura is still seething, but picks up her own paintbrush as well.

"Sorry, Sakura," Naruto whispers. Sasuke makes a weird noise at the back of his throat.

Sakura sighs in frustration, and Sasuke and Naruto scoot closer together a bit farther down from her.

When the fence is finally finished, they all step back to check their work for a minute. This mission was successful. Sticking around any longer made it more likely for them to be caught though, so they leave quickly.

They sneak out of the neighborhood and head toward the tower to report the mission as complete. They pass a dumpster on the way, and Sasuke discards the nearly empty paint can inside, as well as their brushes.

Naruto's stomach growls as they slowly walk toward the tower. "Can we get some food first?" Naruto whines, dragging his feet, "Ichiraku is close to here."

Sakura and Sasuke stop and look at Naruto. "Weeeelllll, you did win that bet, so I guess we kinda have to," Sakura says. Sasuke's stomach decides to also growl at that moment, so it seems it’s decided.

When they get to Ichiraku, the shop has already been closed.

"Noooo!" Naruto cries out dramatically, collapsing against the front of the shop, "My miso ramen!"

"It’s not the end of the world, Naruto, we can eat somewhere else," Sakura pats his shoulder, ignoring the weird looks they’re getting from the civilians passing by.

"But I wanted Ichiraku," Naruto pouts.

"We can get Ichiraku tomorrow. I promise," Sakura tries, pulling him up off the ground. Naruto sighs heavily, conceding to being led away.

Yakiniku Q is still open, but none of them really feel like making their own food right now, so they keep looking as they get closer to the tower. Almost everywhere else is closed, except for a few places with loud drunk adults inside.

They do end up finding a suitable place that is still open, but it looks kind of expensive. When Sasuke starts walking toward it, Naruto grabs his arm to stop him.

"Are you kidding?! This place is way too expensive!" Naruto protests. Sasuke yanks his arm out of Naruto's grasp and rolls his eyes. "I’ll pay," is all he says before he's gone through the doors. Sakura and Naruto exchange a glance before hurrying after him.

They ignore the weird look they get from the employee behind the counter and go to order. When Naruto sees ramen on the menu, he immediately orders it. Sakura gets onigiri, the same as Sasuke.

"You should really try other foods sometimes," Sasuke reprimands Naruto, but there’s no heat behind the words like there usually is.

Naruto shrugs and replies petulantly, "Don’t need to when ramen is the best food there is."

Sakura and Naruto find a table while Sasuke pays. Sakura sits down at a booth farthest away from the two other people in here and Naruto sits across from her as they wait for Sasuke to come.

It’s nice to sit down finally, and Sakura rests her head on the table for a moment. Maintaining the genjutsu earlier took a lot of energy out of her.

She must have fallen asleep, because when she opens her eyes again, the food is at the table and Naruto is tapping her arm.

"You awake, Sakura?" He asks. She sits up and stretches her arms for a few seconds. "Yeah 'm awake."

Sasuke is sat next to her, and hands her the tray with her food. There’s no need to talk anymore as they all devour the food in front of them. Naruto finishes first with a satisfied sigh.

"It's not Ichiraku, but this was really good, in my top three for sure,"  Naruto says contentedly before reaching for his glass of water, and gulping it all down in one go. He lets out a loud burp when he’s done.

Sasuke hides his face behind the collar of his shirt while Sakura wrinkles in nose in disgust. "Have some manners," she says, kicking him under the table.

Naruto laughs before locking his gaze onto Sasuke's last onigiri. Sasuke notices and snatches it out of Naruto's reach. "If you want more food, then order your own," Sasuke warns, sending Naruto his best death glare.

Naruto pouts, but sits back in his seat and waits for them to finish.

When they get to the tower, Iruka-sensei is one of two chunin at the mission desk. He takes in their bedraggled appearance with raised brows as they report the mission as complete. Sakura covers a yawn with her hand, willing this to be over quickly.

"Go home and get some rest," Iruka prompts, smiling fondly at Naruto in particular.

Sakura straightens up instantly at the mention of home. She’d completely forgotten about her parents. They were probably already asleep, so she’d have to be extremely quiet when she got home.

Before they go their separate ways, Naruto suggests they meet later tomorrow for a mission since they worked so late tonight. Sakura has no problem agreeing to that, and Sasuke shrugs, so he's probably fine with meeting later too.

Sakura manages to clean the paint out of her hair, and scrubs all the paint off her hands before going to bed.

When she gets up the next morning however, she considers doing something with her hair to keep it out of the way when she has to do missions like yesterday's. Maybe Mama can help her decide what to do with it.

She’ll also have to go shopping later for new clothes since her dress was ruined. She'll think about it more later, after she meets Sasuke and Naruto for a new mission.

…

Oh no.

The vivid memory of her yelling at Sasuke and shoving him yesterday flashes into her mind, freezing all other thoughts.

How was she going to face him now?! That was so embarrassing! He's probably really mad about it!

…Although, he didn’t say anything yesterday, so maybe it's okay? He kinda deserved it anyway, both him and Naruto.

Yup! This was perfectly fine. If he didn’t say anything about it yesterday, he probably wouldn’t today either, so she would just pretend it never happened.

Everything would be just fine. Probably. Hopefully.

Chapter Text

Team Seven manages to fall into a somewhat regular routine. They take a D-rank mission in the morning, and if they finish quick enough, they’ll eat lunch together somewhere. (Where they eat is decided by a game of rock, paper, scissors.) They’ll split up afterwards. Sasuke goes to train, Naruto goes off to who knows where, and Sakura returns home to practice her genjutsu.

On days when the missions take longer, they’ll sometimes eat dinner together as well, and Sakura will practice her genjutsu while they eat. Naruto always thinks her genjutsu are, 'really awesome,' and Sakura always ends up feeling better about her basic techniques afterwards.

Some days they have no missions at all, and on those days Sakura and Naruto train together at one of the training grounds. Sasuke always leaves on his own to go train, and Sakura has given up on inviting him along for now.

Sakura and Naruto spar sometimes, only with taijutsu, because Sakura thinks Naruto's shadow clone jutsu makes things really unfair. Naruto ends up winning most of the time anyway, which is annoying, but she still has him beat in shurikenjutsu, so there’s that.

They still haven’t gotten a C-rank mission however, and Sakura feels as impatient about it as Naruto. She's pretty sure Sasuke is annoyed about too, even if he doesn’t complain about it out loud like they do.

All their classmates who have jonin-sensei have already gone on C-ranks. Sakura only knows about this because she ran into Ino the other day, and Ino had told her all about it.

Ino had gotten some courier mission that had taken her to one of the big cities. It sounded cool, and Sakura was extremely jealous.

At least Naruto understands her when she vents to him about it the next day on the way to their mission.

"—And they haven’t even done as many D-ranks as we have, but they got to go on a C-rank because they have a jonin-sensei," Sakura pauses in the middle of her rant to take a breath.

"That’s so unfair!" Naruto agrees with her, and Sakura feels a bit more vindicated in her anger at the unjustness of it all.

The subject gets dropped when they arrive at their mission.

A middle-aged lady had hired them to plant some shrubs for her. The lady's name is Ms. Aiko, and since her arm is in a cast, she needs help digging the holes and situating the shrubs. She is very particular about where they go and how they are to be planted, but she isn’t rude or too demanding about it.

Sakura is glad she decided to start bringing a hair tie with her on all her missions. She ties her hair into a low ponytail, and it’s enough to keep her hair out of the dirt while she helps Naruto plant an azalea.

Sasuke digs a hole with a shovel a few feet away for another azalea while Ms. Aiko hovers nearby.

"Actually, can you dig a little more to the left please? I want it to be centered between the two rose bushes," Ms. Aiko explains. Sasuke obliges with a small grunt, making the hole a bit wider on the left side.

Naruto and Sakura untangle some of the azalea's roots before sticking it in the hole, and shoving dirt around it. Once they finish filling up the empty space with dirt, they give the ground a few pats for good measure, before moving to the next hole Sasuke has just finished digging.

The rest of the mission goes smoothly as they finish planting three more shrubs and one thorny rose bush. Naruto volunteers to water the plants with a hose, so Sasuke and Sakura put away the tools in Ms. Aiko's shed.

They all wash their hands off with the hose when they’re done, and get ready to head back to the tower.

Ms. Aiko thanks them for the work, and offers them some homemade oatmeal raisin cookies as a treat before they go. Sakura accepts the cookies shyly, handing one to Naruto and one to Sasuke. She keeps the biggest one for herself.

Sasuke thanks Ms. Aiko quietly, and Sakura and Naruto follow suit.

"How many more D-ranks do you think we'll have to do before we can get a C-rank?" Naruto asks, returning to their previous discussion as they walk back to the tower.

"Hopefully only a few more," Sakura sighs, "I want to do real ninja work, like being a bodyguard, or even courier missions. It’d be cool if we could travel to some of the big cities too."

Sasuke stays silent, but he agrees with her. D-ranks are not only boring, but how is he supposed to get stronger if he never does any dangerous missions? He won't beat that man by planting flowers and painting fences.

"Iruka-sensei said we have to prove ourselves dependable and capable by doing D-rank missions, but I feel like we’ve already done that, ya know," Naruto frowns, "I mean, we’ve done all the missions they gave us, that definitely means we’re capable, and we’ve haven’t failed a mission, or gotten a bad report, so that makes us dependable already too!"

"That’s only because of Sakura's genjutsu on that fence mission," Sasuke points out.

"Well, yeah, but they don’t know about that," Naruto argues, rolling his eyes as they enter the tower.

It’s the weekend, so Iruka-sensei is one of the chunin at the mission desk. They go to him to mark their mission as complete.

"Iruka-sensei, when can we get a C-rank?" Naruto asks just before Sasuke turns to leave.

"Well, I’ve been hearing all about how hard you’ve been working and it sounds like you’re doing great work. I’m sure Lord Third will allow you to go on one soon. In fact…" Iruka trails off for a minute, looking thoughtful.

"I might have a C-rank in mind for you actually. I’ll have to clear it with Lord Third first a course, but—" Iruka is cut off by Naruto leaping across the mission desk and throwing his arms around him.

"Really, Iruka-sensei?!" Naruto shouts excitedly. Iruka smiles and ruffles Naruto's hair.

"I haven’t cleared it with Lord Third, so don’t get too excited yet."

Naruto lets go of Iruka and steps back, but his bright smile doesn’t falter at all.

"When do we go?" He asks instead, practically bouncing on his feet. His excitement must be infectious, because Sasuke feels it too.

" If, you go on this mission, it'll be tomorrow. I’ll summon you," Iruka explains, sitting back down at the desk.

"Alright!" Naruto pumps his fist in the air, and turns to look at Sakura and Sasuke, his eyes bright with enthusiasm.

Sakura grins, and gives Naruto a high-five.

As they leave the tower, Naruto asks Sakura if she wants to train with him, since it’s still early in the morning, and Sakura only hesitates for a moment before agreeing.

"We can prepare for the mission tomorrow!" Naruto suggests, and Sakura smiles at his excitement. "I'll go ask for permission to use a training area," she says, turning back toward the tower.

"You don’t have to," Sasuke blurts out before he can stop himself. Both of his teammates look at him, and Sasuke shoves his hands in his pockets, staring resolutely at the ground.

"I have training grounds," he tries to explain. 'Why are my hands sweating so much?'

"You’re saying we can use your training grounds?" Sakura asks, excitement seeping into her voice.

Sasuke nods and then shrugs, "If you want."

Naruto crosses his arms, "So are you going to train with us too then?"

"What? Afraid you’ll look bad next to me?" Sasuke taunts, and watches Naruto's whole face scrunch up.

"No! If anything, you’re the one who’s going to look bad compared to me!" Naruto predictably yells back.

Sasuke is able to relax as Naruto and him exchange familiar insults while he leads them toward his clan's training grounds.

This was fine. He had just invited them to see if they’d been slacking off or not. He couldn’t have teammates who were weak after all. If they weren’t training properly, they’d end up holding him back. So he was just checking. That was all.

Sasuke takes Naruto and Sakura to a training ground near the Naka River. He doesn’t say anything to them once they get there, he just starts doing katas. Sakura decides to warm-up too, doing some stretches and katas they learned at the academy. Naruto tries to do some stretches too, but gets bored and finishes much quicker.

Naruto walks a little bit away from them. He makes a hand sign and calls out, "Shadow clone jutsu!"

Another Naruto pops into existence. Sakura watches as both Narutos grin before getting into a fighting stance. Sasuke is also watching from the corner of his eye.

Naruto begins to spar with his clone, using only taijutsu. The clone matches Naruto's movements perfectly, but after a minute, it seems the real Naruto gains the upper hand. The clone pops after Naruto lands a few solid hits.

Naruto makes the hand sign again, and makes another clone to spar with. When the second clone pops, Sakura walks over.

"Do you always train like this when you’re alone?" She asks once she’s near him.

"Yeah! Well, since I figured out I could do this I have been anyway."

"But if you only fight yourself, you can’t prepare for opponents with different capabilities," Sakura points out.

"Mmm, yeah, but I don’t have anyone to else to spar with except you. Besides, when I fight my clones I have to get better every time so I can beat them. My clones are always getting stronger whenever I get stronger."

"I guess that makes sense. So what is the shadow clone jutsu anyway? It wasn’t taught at the academy, and they aren’t like regular clones. How do you make them?"

"I just followed the instructions in this scroll. I cut my chakra in half and make the clones out of that chakra. Then my clone makes a clone that makes a clone that makes a clone, and so on. Once I figured out how to distribute my chakra, it was actually really easy to make them."

"But you made so many clones when we fought Kakashi! How did you not run out of chakra?"

"Iruka-sensei said I have lots of chakra, so I can make hundreds of clones really easily," Naruto scratches his nose.

"But—that’s insane! Do you know how much chakra you’d need to make that many clones and not pass out?! That’s not normal!" Sakura protests.

Naruto laughs nervously, a strange look crossing his face for a moment.

"Where'd you learn that jutsu?" Sasuke asks, coming up behind Sakura, his gaze fixed on Naruto.

"Um, from this scroll…" Naruto looks away guiltily.

"The Scroll of Seals?" Sasuke presses, raising an eyebrow at Naruto's obvious discomfort.

Naruto shifts a little, pursing his lips.

"What’s the Scroll of Seals?" Sakura asks, looking confused.

"I don’t know much about it," Sasuke answers, "I just heard about it when that academy teacher stole it. It has powerful and dangerous jutsu inside. Only the Hokage can read it, or allow others to read it."

Sakura looks even more confused. "I don’t understand. Which academy teacher? And how did Naruto read it?"

Sasuke shrugs, looking toward Naruto. Sakura also looks at Naruto.

"Naruto, did you get that jutsu out of the Scroll of Seals?" Sakura prompts.

"Uh…I'm not really supposed to talk about it," Naruto mumbles.

"I won’t tell anyone. Promise," Sakura holds out her pinky finger. Naruto stills looks unsure, so Sakura adds, "We won’t tell anyone, right, Sasuke?"

"I won’t tell anyone," Sasuke affirms.

"Promise?" Naruto asks.

"I promise I won’t tell anyone," Sasuke says, rolling his eyes.

"You have to pinky promise."

"I’m not doing a pinky promise."

"Fine. I’m not telling you then," Naruto crosses his arms and juts out his chin defiantly.

"Tch. Fine, I’ll pinky promise," Sasuke makes a disgusted face, and holds out his pinky with Sakura.

Naruto smiles triumphantly and links his pinky with both of their's.

Naruto tells them everything about the incident with Mizuki (except for the part about the nine-tails being sealed inside of him.) They end up sitting in a circle on the ground while Naruto tells the story.

"I had no idea Mizuki-sensei had done that," Sakura frowns down at the ground.

"When you read the scroll, were there any other powerful jutsu inside?" Sasuke asks.

"There was lots of jutsu, but I just needed to learn the clone jutsu to pass, and there wasn’t enough time to check out the other ones, but the scroll was really big!" Naruto spreads his arms out to indicate the size.

"Uh, listen, guys, you really can’t tell anyone what I just told you. Old man Hokage told me to not tell anyone, so I’ll get into a lot of trouble if anyone finds out about this," Naruto scratches the back of his head, looking nervous again.

"Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone, Naruto. We pinky promised, remember?" Sakura reassures him.

"Unless someone’s trespassing, no can eavesdrop on us here either, so relax, idiot," Sasuke lightly kicks Naruto's foot.

Naruto smiles at both of them, before getting to his feet. "Alright! Are we gonna train now?"

A look of surprise crosses Sasuke's face for a second before it's gone. "Obviously, that’s what we came here to do."

Sakura and Sasuke stand beneath a tree, hands shielding their eyes from the sun as they watch Naruto climb up to retrieve their kunai.

They had just finished target practice, and Naruto, who had performed the worst, had to retrieve all the kunai and shuriken from the targets in the trees.

Practice had started off friendly enough, but then Naruto had wanted to make a competition out of it, and Sasuke, seeing an opportunity, had decided that the loser would have to retrieve all their kunai and shuriken from the targets in the trees at the end of training.

Predictably, Sasuke had performed the best. Sakura had (to Sasuke's surprise) nearly evenly matched him except on a few targets.

Naruto's kunai and shuriken were on target, but not as good as Sakura's and Sasuke's. Now he was begrudgingly throwing all their kunai down from the trees.

"Oh shoot! I forgot, I have to go soon. Mama asked me to go shopping for her when I got the chance, and I told her I’d try to do it today," Sakura picks up her kunai as Naruto jumps down next to her.

"You have to leave already, Sakura?" Naruto asks, looking a bit put out.

"Yeah, I don’t want my parents to get mad at me for staying out past a mission again," Sakura leans forward to remove a few leaves from Naruto's hair.

Sasuke doesn’t know what possesses him to say something again, but he finds himself opening his mouth to say, "Sakura, you and Naruto can use this training ground whenever you want, so you don’t have to get permission slips for the other ones anymore."

Sakura's eyes widen in surprise. "I—oh–thanks, Sasuke! I mean, if you’re okay with it, we'll definitely use it!"

"Okay," Sasuke replies, turning around and walking back toward the posts. He should train with his shuriken. If he practices more, maybe he'll stop saying weird things.

Before Sakura goes to the marketplace, she makes a stop at the library. If they do end up getting a C-rank tomorrow, she should return the books she has now while she has the chance. Who knows how long a C-rank might take? She could be out of the village for days, weeks even. Plus, she wants to get new books since she’s finished the others.

Kabuto's recommendations had been great, especially the book on the Senju brother's struggles when founding Konoha. She wanted to find more books on that time period.

She browsed through the small shelves, looking for something that might pique her interest.

"Oh, it’s you again," a familiar voice says, coming from her left. She turns slightly to see Kabuto standing at the end of the row, a few books of his own in hand.

"Have you already finished reading everything I gave you last time?" Kabuto asks quietly, sounding slightly surprised as he walks toward her.

"Yeah, I was hoping to find more books on the time period in which Konoha was founded," Sakura replies, "It’s good that you’re here again, do you have anymore recommendations for me?"

"Hmm, well, if you want something from that time period, there’s a book I just returned that you might be interested in."

Kabuto retrieves the book from the librarian's table, and brings it over to Sakura.

"This was written by one of Lord Hashirama's clansmen. He recounts tales of Hashirama defeating the Bijuu, and some of the political problems that arose during that time," Kabuto explains.

Sakura's eyes are practically shining as she takes the thick book and looks it over.

"It reads more like a diary, but I almost prefer it that way," Kabuto continues, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"This is perfect, thank you!" Sakura says, and then pauses for a moment. "Actually, I have a question," Sakura looks up at him uncertainly.

"Sure, you can ask me anything," Kabuto replies easily.

"Can I take this book out of the village? Like on a mission? Is that allowed?"

"Oh, I see. Yes, you can leave the village with books, but any damage they take, you’re responsible for. It might be easier to just buy a copy from the bookstore."

"Okay, that’s good then," Sakura looks relieved.

"Are you planning on leaving the village anytime soon?" Kabuto asks, looking back toward the shelves, scanning for another book.

"Maybe. My team might get a C-rank mission tomorrow, so I was just wondering."

Kabuto turns back to look at her, "Oh? Do you know where you’re going yet?"

Sakura shakes her head, "No, we don’t even know if we’ll get the mission yet, let alone any details."

"Well, if you do end up getting it, I’m sure you’ll be fine," Kabuto turns back to the shelves, "You were trying to study up on genjutsu last time you were here right?"

From there, the conversation changes, and they end up talking even after they leave the library. Kabuto is headed toward the market as well, so they go together. He knows a lot about history, not just of Konoha, but also of Iwa and Kumo. Sakura finds that she can ask him almost anything, and he seems to know the answer.

When Sakura finally gets home, she’s feels as though she’s learned a hundred new things from him.

"Hey, Sasuke, do you think we'll get more recognition when we complete this C-rank?" Naruto asks, throwing a kunai.

"What do you mean?" Sasuke responds after a moment, frowning slightly.

"You know, like, people will take us more seriously after this."

"If we do well, we might get more C-ranks after this one I guess."

Naruto presses his lips together in a thin line. That wasn’t exactly what he was asking about.

"Also, we don’t even know if we’re going to get one tomorrow or not. Iruka-sensei still had to ask the Hokage," Sasuke continues, spinning a shuriken on his finger.

"We're going to get it, I can feel it, ya know!" Naruto affirms confidently.

Sasuke just rolls his eyes and throws several shuriken simultaneously at different targets.

Naruto shakes his head, "You’re too much of a—uh…a pesse–pessimist! You’re too much of a pessimist, Sasuke."

"I’m not being pessimistic, I’m being realistic and not getting my hopes up. You’re too optimistic."

Naruto huffs out a sigh. Sasuke would just have to see tomorrow. They'll get a really exciting C-rank mission, take down some bad guys, and everyone would have to acknowledge them as strong. Naruto just knew it.

Chapter Text

Team seven stand together at the mission desk, waiting their turn. The Hokage is here today, and people are taking way too long to finish their reports, trying to impress him or something.

Iruka-sensei had seen them earlier and smiled in their direction, but he was busy too, so they were stuck waiting behind a genin team that kept stuttering nervously over their report. Their jonin-sensei hadn’t chimed in, but Sasuke wishes he would so they could get this over with and everyone could move on with their lives.

After what felt like forever, but must have only been another minute or two, the team steps away. Sasuke quickly walks forward before another team could come and get there before them somehow.

"So?!" Naruto prompts tactlessly, eyes gleaming as he looks at Iruka-sensei expectantly.

The Hokage chuckles, reaching to grab a scroll from a small wooden box on the desk.

Was this really it then? They were going to finally get a C-rank after all this time?

"Iruka has told me about how well you’ve been doing on your missions," the Hokage begins, "He also told me he thinks you’re ready for the responsibility of a C-rank."

Sakura and Naruto look at each other, smiles growing wider. Iruka-sensei clears his throat, and the Hokage continues once Sakura and Naruto are focused again.

"I've decided to trust Iruka's assessment. Therefore, I’m entrusting you with this C-rank mission," the Hokage passes the scroll over the desk, and before Sasuke can move, Naruto snatches it up greedily.

"Thanks, Iruka-sensei! I promise I'll complete this mission successfully! Then we can get even more C-ranks!" Naruto pumps his fist excitedly.

"Your mission," Iruka-sensei begins seriously, "is to retrieve an important package from Tanzaku, and take it back to Konohagakure safely."

"An important package? What’s inside?" Naruto asks.

"That isn’t something you need to know," Iruka-sensei answers firmly.

Sasuke is more than a little curious about it now, but unlike Naruto, he keeps his mouth shut.

"You’ll go to the address listed in the mission scroll to retrieve it. The package should be sealed in a storage scroll. You have four weeks to complete this mission," Iruka-sensei finishes explaining.

"We should leave soon, Tanzaku is pretty far away on foot," Sasuke says, looking at Sakura for confirmation.

Sakura nods, "It's more than 350km from Konoha. Naruto, make sure you pack a change of clothes."

They start moving away from the mission desk to make room for the next team.

"Stay safe," Iruka says, "Try to not get into any trouble."

"We won’t! Bye, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto waves as they head out of the room.

Somehow, Naruto contains his excitement until they’re out the tower. He’s practically vibrating as they walk a few paces away. Surprisingly, Sakura breaks first.

"Ahhhhh! We did it, Naruto!"

Sasuke watches on in embarrassment as Sakura and Naruto cheer way too loudly together in front of the tower. He needs to stop them before they start the chanting.

"What time do you want to meet in front of the gate by?" He asks, hoping to divert their attention.

Sakura turns to look at him, and pauses to think. "How about in forty-five minutes? My parents are at work, so I need time to tell them I’m going to be gone for a while, and to pack."

"Hn. Don’t be late, Naruto," Sasuke throws over his shoulder as he leaves.

Naruto gasps in offense, "I’m never late to a mission!"

Once Sasuke leaves, Sakura turns to Naruto and asks, "Do you know what you need to pack?"

Naruto scratches the back of his head, "Yup! I already have it all on me. My kunai and shuriken, my coms, exploding tags, blank tags, ninja wire, my water bottle, and a blank scroll. I’ll go pack some food though. And my bedroll and stuff."

"You need a change of clothes and your med-kit. Don't pack too much food, we can always get more food in towns we pass through," Sakura puts a hand to her chin, thinking. "You should also pack spare shuriken and kunai. Hmm, where do you live? I’ll help you pack what you need."

"You don’t have to, Sakura, I can do it by myself. I’m not a little kid ya know."

"I just don’t want you to forget something important. Plus, I need to make sure you pack more than just ramen for your food."

"Ugh, we’ve already been over this. There’s nothing wrong with ramen!"

Naruto ends up taking Sakura to his apartment. Sakura is a bit surprised at how…dilapidated the place looks. Naruto goes to get his backpack, and Sakura takes a look around while she waits for him. Naruto talks about his plants sometimes, but Sakura is still surprised by how healthy they look. He probably takes better care of his plants than he does himself.

Naruto returns with a gray backpack, and plops it down on the table. "Alright," Naruto sighs, and goes to open a cabinet full of ramen cups.

Sakura wishes she could be surprised by the sheer amount of ramen in his cabinet, but she really isn’t.

"You can only take a few," she reminds him, moving to look at his med-kit. Someone else must have arranged this for Naruto, because there’s no way Naruto has the organizational ability to have done this. He has a few bandaids with little frog faces, which is cute.

She puts the med-kit away at the bottom of the backpack. "Alright, Naruto, if you’re done with your ramen, go get some spare clothes. Get something to sleep in, and bring another full set of spare clothes as well."

Naruto moves to comply, and Sakura goes to look inside his fridge. She’ll get rid of the milk and the things that might expire while they’re away. It’s a good thing she came, Naruto never would have thought of this on his own.

There’s not much in his fridge to begin with. She drains the half empty milk carton in the sink, and throws away some cheese that looks like it was already going bad. She ties up the trash bag to take out later. It’ll end up stinking if she leaves it in here. The trashcan is mostly filled with empty ramen cups. Naruto might actually have an unhealthy addiction to the stuff. No, scratch that, Naruto does have an unhealthy addiction.

While Sakura drags the trash bag toward the door, Naruto returns with a neatly folded stack of clothes, and deposits it into the backpack. Without her saying anything, he brings his extra kunai and shuriken and packs them away too.

"Okay, we just need to get your bedroll into a storage scroll," Sakura says, unfurling her own storage scroll to give to him. Naruto takes it with a, "Thanks, Sakura!" and seals his bedroll himself.

"Oh wait! There’s one more thing!" Naruto runs back to his bedroom and returns with a walrus nightcap.

Sakura smiles and rolls her eyes, grabbing the trash bag. "I’m taking your trash out, hurry up and meet me outside."

"Okay! I’ll just water my plants really quick!"

Naruto and Sakura run half-way across the village to get to Sakura's apartment. There isn’t enough time to go tell her parents in person that she’s leaving, so Sakura leaves a note on the table. She packs everything she needs as quickly as possible, double-checking once before setting off.

Naruto and Sakura reach the gate a few minutes before the agreed time, both out of breath from running so much. Sasuke is already waiting. He raises an eyebrow at them, but doesn’t comment as they catch their breath.

Sakura recognizes the chunin guards on gate duty, Izumo and Kotetsu. "You’re leaving the village?" Kotetsu asks as they approach. Sakura nods, feeling nervous all of a sudden.

"Do you have your mission scroll?" Izumo asks, holding out his hand.

"Oh! I have it!" Naruto digs around in his ninja pouch for a few seconds before producing the scroll.

"This is your first C-rank, right? Good luck," Izumo hands them back the scroll after quickly scanning it.

"Thanks," Sakura and Naruto say together. Sasuke gives the man a small nod.

They walk toward the large village gates. Sasuke steps out first, and Sakura follows right behind. Naruto hesitates for a second, before stepping out last. For all his seeming hesitation, Naruto ends up running ahead almost immediately. He looks at the trees, the grass, the sky, and everything else as though he’s never seen anything like it before.

"Why are you so excited about a tree, loser? We have the same ones back in the village," Sasuke says when they catch up to Naruto.

"I can’t help it! I’ve never been outside the village before!" Naruto exclaims, running over to look at something else further up. Sasuke sighs and trudges after him.

Sakura knows how Naruto feels. She might not be running around looking at everything like he is, but it feels exciting and different even if they’ve only traveled a hundred meters from the gate.

"I don’t know how you’re not excited about this!" Naruto says, rejoining them.

Sasuke shrugs. "I’ve been out of the village before. This isn’t anything new."

"Really?!" Sakura immediately turns to him, her interest piqued, "Where did you go?"

Sasuke looks toward the north, his expression turning distant for a moment. "I’ve been to Sora-ku a few times. When I was younger."

At Sakura's confused expression, he elaborates, "Sora-ku isn’t in the Land of Fire. It’s in a territory to the north."

"You’ve been that far from the village? What’s it like there?"

Sasuke looks away, before shrugging again. "It’s been a few years. I don’t remember that much about the trips there."

Sakura has a feeling that it's more likely Sasuke doesn’t want to talk about it than he doesn’t remember anything, but she lets the subject drop.

Naruto has finally settled down by the time they get to the first fork in the road.

"Which way do we go?" Sakura asks, trying to find a signpost. Sasuke pulls out a map, and Sakura and Naruto lean closer to take a look for themselves.

Sasuke points at Tanzaku, "We need to take a right here, Tanzaku is this way. If we go left we'll end up toward the ocean instead."

Sakura nods in affirmation, but stops Sasuke from folding the map back up. "I want to check something," she mutters, tugging the map out of Sasuke's hands.

"Tanzaku looks really far away. How long will it take us to get there?" Naruto asks.

"That’s what I’m checking," Sakura answers. She hands the map back to Sasuke after a moment.

"Okay, so Tanzaku is 387km* from Konoha, so it should take us about…twelve to thirteen days to get there? Something like that."

"That's a really long time!" Naruto exclaims, "You’re telling me I won’t get to eat Ichiraku for two whole weeks?!"

"Nearly four weeks actually. If it takes us thirteen days to get there, it’ll also take us thirteen days to get back," Sasuke comments mildly.

"Being a ninja means you have to make sacrifices sometimes," Sakura says, patting Naruto on the back as he practically wilts. "Plus, if we’re quick, we can cut down on that time," Sakura adds.

Naruto perks up at that. "Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go!"

Sasuke and Sakura share an exasperated look as Naruto runs off down the road on the right.

They stop for lunch on the outskirts of a small town not far from Konoha. The further they get from Konoha, the more civilians they see on the main roads. Most of them don’t spare them a second glance.

"Hey, Sasuke, do you think we should stay the night at the next town we reach?" Sakura asks.

"Hm. We can if we reach it late. If it’s still early though, we should keep moving," Sasuke responds, flicking a pebble at Naruto.

They had looked at the map again earlier, and tried to figure out some shortcuts. The shortest route took them through several small towns, which was pretty convenient. Sakura still felt underprepared however, and felt like they should make more of a plan. She decided she would try to make a better plan when they stopped to rest in the evening.

"This is disgusting. Why can’t they make these taste good?" Naruto complains, taking another small bite out of his snack bar.

"It’s really not that bad. You’re just picky," Sasuke replies, balling up his wrapper and stuffing it into his pocket.

"It is bad. It tastes like wet cardboard," Naruto says, scrunching up his nose.

"How would you even know what wet cardboard tastes like?"

"Because it’s tastes like the smell of wet cardboard! And the smell of wet cardboard is probably what it tastes like too!"

"Naruto, don’t talk with food in your mouth," Sakura says, interrupting their argument.

Naruto clamps his mouth shut and starts aggressively chewing, glaring at Sasuke, who just smirks back at him.

They reach the next town just as the sun begins to set. It’s even smaller than the first town, which makes it easier to look for a place to stay the night. They look for the small symbol of two kunai on the signs for the hotels and inns. 

"Why do we have to find a hotel with that symbol?" Naruto asks after the second hotel they come to doesn’t have it.

Sakura sighs (did Naruto really not pay any attention in class?) before explaining it to him.

"If there’s two kunai on the sign, it means that hotel will let us have a room for free because we’re shinobi. During the Third Great Ninja war, an act was passed in the land of fire that stated all hotels and inns had to let shinobi stay there for free. Now, in times of peace, they have the option of whether or not they let shinobi stay without charge. We can know which inns or hotels do it, because they put the symbol with the two kunai on their signs."

"Ohhh, I get it now," Naruto says, and runs ahead to look at another sign. "Hey, guys! This sign has two kunai on it!" Naruto shouts, waving them over.

Sakura and Sasuke quickly wind through the crowd to get to him. Sakura manages to grab him by the jacket before he runs inside, while Sasuke double checks the sign. It does indeed have two kunai on it, so they head inside to ask for a room.

"Hello," Sakura greets the receptionist, "We’d like a room please."

The lady eyes them up and down skeptically, before heaving a world weary sigh, and digging around in a drawer. "How long do you plan on staying," she asks in a monotone voice.

"Just for tonight," Sakura replies. The woman hums, and hands over a room key. "Thank you," Sakura takes the keys and leads Naruto and Sasuke up the stairs.

"I call dibs on the bed!" Naruto shouts, running inside the room as soon as the door is open.

"Shhh! We’re in a hotel, you can’t yell," Sakura reprimands him. "And you can’t call dibs on the bed. It doesn’t work that way," Sasuke says, taking off his sandals.

Looking slightly sheepish, Naruto returns to the doorway and removes his sandals as well.

"Since I got us the room, I should get the bed," Sakura says, moving to sit down on it.

"No way! I found us the hotel!" Naruto argues, trying to shove her away.

Sasuke quietly moves to get his bedroll ready as Sakura and Naruto continue bickering.

"I’m older than you, so I get to decide," Sakura grabs Naruto's arm and pulls him back.

"That’s not fair!" Naruto grabs her ankle, tripping her up, and lunges forward. Sakura tackles him to the ground, and they end up rolling across the floor toward Sasuke's bedroll.

"I’m going to take a bath," Sasuke announces, walking toward the door, "don’t touch my stuff."

The door closes with a click, and Sakura uses the distraction to topple Naruto away, and jump on the bed, claiming it as hers.

"Hey!" Naruto tries to catch her, but he’s too slow. "This is all Sasuke's fault, damn bastard," Naruto complains, lying down on the floor in defeat.

By the time Sasuke is finished bathing, it’s gotten dark out. He leaves the bathhouse adjacent to the hotel, and starts looking through the town for food.

The sky is cloudless tonight, and he can see the moon clearly. It’ll be full soon, and that fact makes him uneasy. He doesn’t want to think about the reasons why though, so he distracts himself.

He's hungry, and Sakura probably is too. Naruto definitely is, so he might as well get them all something to eat.

As loathe as he is to agree with Naruto, those snack bars are pretty disgusting, and he wants to eat something more filling as well.

He should get all of them onigiri. And Sakura likes dango. Naruto will definitely have room for a serving of ramen too…

Okay. Three servings of onigiri, dango for Sakura, and ramen for Naruto. This shouldn’t take him too long. Hopefully Sakura and Naruto aren’t still bickering when he gets back.

When Sasuke gets back to the hotel, the sun has completely set. A new woman is at the front desk, and she smiles and waves at him as he walks past. He carries the three take-out bags up the stairs, and then realizes he doesn’t have the keys to get into the room.

He kicks the door, hoping they both aren’t out, and at least one of them can let him in.

Naruto cracks the door open, squinting at him. His eyes widen when he looks at the bags in Sasuke's hands.

"Sakura! Sasuke brought food!"

"We’re in a hotel! Stop yelling," Sakura replies from somewhere inside.

Sasuke shoves his way through the door, and sets the bags down on a table inside.

"What did you bring?" Naruto asks, already grabbing a bag to look through.

"Food," Sasuke replies. Naruto pauses to roll his eyes, before rummaging through the bag again.

A course the bag he chose is the one with the ramen. It might be Naruto's sixth sense to know where ramen is.

"You brought me ramen?" Naruto actually smiles at him, and Sasuke thinks it might have been worth it to go out of his way to find a ramen shop for him.

Sakura finds the onigiri first. "Is this for all of us?" She asks, holding the three takeout containers.

"Hm," Sasuke responds, and then gestures at the third bag. "There’s dango in there too. If you want it."

Sakura gasps, and reaches into the third bag, pulling out the dango. "I-thank you so much, Sasuke," she says, still staring at the dango like it’s something foreign.

Feeling slightly embarrassed, Sasuke grabs his onigiri and goes to sit on the floor with his back turned to his teammates.

Naruto's atrocious table manners don’t end up annoying him as much as they usually do.

After they eat, Sasuke and Sakura look over the map while Naruto goes to bathe. (Sakura apparently already took a bath while he was out, so Naruto is only one who had to go.)

"If we can cross this river somewhere around here, we can cut nearly five kilometers out," Sasuke says, pointing to the river with his pinky finger.

"Yeah, but the Dai River is pretty wide, and the current is probably pretty quick this time of year. We need to find a shallow place to cross at."

"That’s fine. If the Naka has shallow areas, then the Dai river will too."

Sakura isn't sure if that logic is sound, but she isn't going to question it right now.

"Okay. After we pass through here," Sakura gestures to a general area on the map, "we won’t come across any cities or towns for a few days."

Sasuke nods. "It’ll be good if we can—" he’s interrupted by the door to their room opening, and Naruto walking in. He’s changed into pajamas, his orange jacket and pants folded in his arms.

"The people here are so nice," Naruto says, opening his backpack and taking out a storage scroll, "the lady downstairs gave me candy."

"She gave me candy too," Sakura says, pulling out a few candies to show Naruto.

Sasuke wonders briefly, why he wasn’t offered any candy.

Naruto brings his bedroll out, and puts it right next to Sasuke's. He takes a silly looking nightcap out of his backpack, and puts it on before declaring, "I’m going to bed now! Goodnight!"

"We already figured the next few days out, so I guess I’ll go to bed now too," Sakura stretches and moves away, "Goodnight, Sasuke, Naruto."

Sasuke sits there stupidly for a moment, before folding up the map, and turning off the lamp. It is late. They’re probably tired.

He steps over Naruto to get to his bedroll, and sits down. It’s too early for him to go to sleep, so Sasuke waits. Naruto's breathing evens out first, and a few minutes later, Sakura's does too.

Sasuke lays his head on his pillow, mentally going over the plan he and Sakura came up with. It’s pretty straightforward all things considered. They might be overcomplicating things a bit with all the shortcuts, but if they make good time on this mission, it’ll look good on their report. Speaking of their report, it’ll have to be a written one this time, which is only slightly annoying. 

He wonders if he can add into his report that Naruto snores, drools, moves, and talks in his sleep. 

Chapter Text

The Dai river is (as the name implies) very wide, and quite deep. As Sakura had predicted, the current is fast as well. They’d left the main road an hour ago, and had made it to the river bank a few minutes ago.

Sakura refills her and Naruto's water bottles while Naruto rolls up his pants and wades into the water. He only makes it a few feet before he’s knee deep, and has to return to the riverbank.

"I guess we'll just have to swim across," Naruto says, grabbing his water bottle and taking three big gulps.

"Or we can just not be stupid and cross somewhere else," Sasuke answers irritably, screwing the lid back on his bottle.

Sasuke's been moodier than usual lately, and Sakura is trying to figure out why. They’d slept outside last night, and Sakura wonders if that contributed to his bad mood. When she’d woken up, he was already awake, but it looked like he hadn’t slept at all. Maybe he was like Ino and had a hard time sleeping outside? If he was just tired, it’d explain why he was so grumpy.

Sakura remembers that Ino used lavender to help her sleep. Maybe it could help Sasuke too? When they arrive at the next town, she’ll try to find some for him. The town they stay at tonight will be the last town they’ll see for a few days, so hopefully it has some.

They follow the river north for another twenty minutes, and eventually come to a narrower section. Large rocks jut out of the water, making a slippery stepping stone path for them.

Carefully, Sakura steps out first. All her focus is on the where to place her feet so she doesn’t slip into the water. She wonders briefly if she can use chakra to stick to the rocks in the same way she sticks leaves to her herself.

There’s a larger flat rock near the middle of the river, and Sakura pauses on it to look back and see how Sasuke and Naruto are doing.

Naruto is holding on to the back of Sasuke's shirt, and Sasuke is holding Naruto's sleeve as they use each other to stay balanced. Sakura watches as Naruto tips precariously, but uses Sasuke to stay upright. Sasuke flails his arms and drops down on all fours to stay on the rock.

"You look like a frog," Naruto laughs, and Sasuke glares back at him.

"Stop pulling on me! You’re going to make both of us fall in!"

"You grabbed me first!"

"Whatever! Just let go now!"

Once her teammates have almost caught up to her, Sakura keeps moving.

She’s almost at the end, when she jumps to a particularly slippery rock. It’s too smooth to get a good grip on, and Sakura balances her weight precariously so as not to slip off. The slightest movement of her feet causes her to slip more, which is making it hard to plan the leap to the next rock. At this rate, she’ll fall into the river and get dragged away by the current.

Her earlier thought of sticking the rocks to her feet (or her feet to the rocks) with chakra returns to the forefront of her mind.

'Screw it, I might as well test it out.'

Carefully, Sakura forms a hand sign to focus her chakra, and pushes it to her feet. This should be just like the leaf exercise. She just needs to make herself stick—

Huh. It actually works.

"Are you okay, Sakura?!" Naruto shouts from somewhere behind her.

Slowly, Sakura stands up. She straightens her knees, and then her spine. Her feet stay stuck to the rock.

"Yeah, I’m fine! Be careful on this rock! It’s really slippery!" Sakura calls back. She feels slightly elated right now. She’s actually sticking to the rock! Okay. Now the problem was getting off of it. If she released the chakra flow to unstick, she’d fall into the water, so how was she supposed to jump to the next rock?

Maybe…more chakra to push herself off? It could work in theory.

Sakura closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she opens her eyes, she sends a small surge of chakra to her legs and pushes off quickly. When she lands on the next rock, she immediately sticks to it with the same technique.

A large grin makes its way across her face. This is—this is really cool actually. Making it to the riverbank is almost too easy with this technique. Sakura tosses her backpack to the ground once she reaches it, fully intending on taking a break until Sasuke and Naruto catch up.

Splash!

Sakura turns her head just in time to catch sight of Naruto disappearing into the water.

"Naruto, you idiot!" Sasuke yells, before jumping after him.

"Shit!" Sakura takes off in a sprint, trying to catch up to where the current has already dragged them. There’s too many rocks in the water here, they could get seriously injured, or knocked unconscious by them and drown!

How can she help? What can she do to get them out?

She spots blonde hair for a few seconds, before it disappears again. Her eyes scan the river looking for any sign of either of them.

"Sasuke! Naruto!"

Her eyes lock on to a blonde head near one of the rocks. She gets as close as she can on the bank, before yelling, "Naruto! Are you alright?! Where’s Sasuke?!"

"Sakura!"

That wasn’t Naruto’s voice, that sounded like Sasuke. Looking closer, Sakura could see Sasuke now too, right next to Naruto. One of his arms was around the rock, the other around Naruto.

"Yeah, I’m here!" Sakura yells back, trying to look for a way to get to them. They’re pretty far out, and there aren’t enough rocks in this section of the river for her to get close enough to them.

'Come on, Sakura, think! They can’t hold on forever!'

She really wishes she could walk on water right now, like Hashirama did when he defeated the Three-Tails.

Naruto's head disappears underwater for a few seconds, and Sasuke shouts something unintelligible before Naruto resurfaces, coughing and sputtering.

Shit!

Okay. Okay. She just needs to calm down, and think rationally. She can do this.

Sakura grabs a kunai from her pouch, as well as wire. Quickly, she attaches the wire to kunai. Holding the kunai in one hand, and the end of the wire in the other, Sakura prepares to make her throw.

Sasuke can’t release his hold on Naruto or on the rock, so Naruto needs to be the one to catch it. Hopefully he grabs the hilt and not the blade.

"Naruto, catch!"

Naruto looks in her direction, and Sakura throws the kunai in a straight line toward his right side. Naruto is quick, and grabs the kunai in his hand as soon as it gets close enough.

Sakura pulls the wire taut, leaving no slack, and starts inching backward. She’ll pull them in a direction clear of rocks, and get them to the bank.

The wire is digging into her palms and fingers, and Sakura is almost unprepared for the way the water tries to drag her team away as soon as Sasuke lets go of the rock.

She gets lurched forward, but digs her heels in and pulls back. Her arms are already aching, and sweat is beading across her forehead.

As quickly as she can, Sakura reels the wire in, dragging her team closer and closer. Her calves are burning from the strain of keeping herself from being dragged toward the river.

Naruto is pulled to the bank first. He crawls up, dragging Sasuke behind him. As soon as they’re clear of the water, Sakura lets go of the wire and runs a few steps to her teammates.

Sasuke is collapsed face down on the bank, his feet still in the water, and his hand still holding Naruto's wrist. Naruto is on his hands and knees, choking up water.

Sakura lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She may have forgotten how to breathe in the last minute or so. Her chest hurts, and she has to take several deep breaths before she can move to grab Sasuke and pull him completely up the bank. Naruto is still breathing hard, but he’s able to stand on his own.

"Thanks for the save, Sakura," Naruto chokes out while Sakura lays Sasuke down in a comfortable position on the grass.

"Are you hurt?" Sakura asks, examining Sasuke for any injuries as well. His eyes are still closed, and his breathing is ragged.

"I’m fine. My nose just burns from the water, that’s all," Naruto replies, before going into a coughing fit.

Both her teammates are soaked to the bone. Hopefully they don’t get sick from this.

Rolling Sasuke onto his side, Sakura undoes his backpack straps, and pulls it off him. She remembers she left her own backpack further upstream, but she’ll have to go back for it later.

Sasuke opens his eyes and looks at her, and then at Naruto. He abruptly pushes himself into a sitting position, propping himself up with his hands.

"Are you okay, Sasuke?" Sakura asks, reaching to help him up.

"I’m fine," Sasuke rasps out, accepting her hand and letting her pull him up. He glares in Naruto's direction, and Naruto glares back.

"Idiot," Sasuke says, beginning to take off his arm warmers.

"I was just trying to keep you from falling in! I didn’t ask you to jump in after me! You’re welcome by the way!" Naruto yells, crossing his arms and looking away.

"I didn’t ask for your help!" Sasuke retorts, "I was fine on my own."

"Whatever! Next time I’ll just let you fall in then!"

Sakura is extremely confused. "Is someone going to explain what happened back there? Was it the slippery rock I warned you about?" She asks.

Sasuke looks away toward the river as Naruto launches into an explanation.

"Sasuke looked like he was going to slip and fall off the rock—"

"I was not."

"—so I grabbed him to pull him back—"

"Which was completely unnecessary."

"—but then I slipped too, and well…I fell into the water instead."

"Ah," Sakura could understand now.

"There’s no reason for us to stay here," Sasuke interjects, "if we don’t keep moving, then it’ll end up taking us longer on this route than if we’d stayed on the main road."

Sakura sighs. She can see the logic, but seriously? Couldn’t they take a little break after all that?

"Let me get my stuff. I left it further upstream," she answers tiredly, walking ahead of them. Sasuke grabs his backpack and discarded arm warmers, before walking after her.

Naruto and Sasuke's sandals make squelching sounds as they walk, and both of them are still dripping water from their hair and clothes. They must be cold. Hopefully they dry off in the sun soon.

They end up running a few miles to make up for lost time. Naruto and Sasuke aren’t talking to each other much unless it’s to make some snide remark at the other.

Sakura knows they’re just having one of their usual fights, where they’ll be mad each other for the rest of today, but pretend nothing happened by tomorrow. Still, she wishes she could talk to them right now without the air of awkwardness that surrounds them.

They’re still in the middle of the woods when the sun begins to set. By the time they reach the main road, it’s nearly completely dark out. Sasuke goes completely silent, not even responding to Naruto's taunts and jabs anymore. His shoulders are tense, and his eyebrows are drawn together in a stern expression. He starts pushing the pace faster, walking stiffly ahead of them.

"What do you think's going on with him?" Naruto whispers to her once Sasuke is several strides ahead of them.

"I…I think he’s just tired," Sakura whispers back.

When the lights of the town come into sight, Sasuke finally relaxes a little. Sakura and Naruto catch up to him, and they walk into the town together.

Finding an inn with free rooming is more difficult this time around, but the one they do find ends up offering them two rooms.

"One for you," the man at the front desk hands Sakura a key, "and one for your teammates." Sakura is handed a second key, which she hands off to Naruto.

"Why do you get your own room?" Naruto pouts as they make their way down the hall. Thankfully the rooms are across from each other, so if Sasuke and Naruto try to kill each other she'll probably hear it and be able to stop them in time.

"Because I’m a girl obviously," Sakura replies, rolling her eyes.

"If I transform into a girl, will I get my own room too then?" Naruto's eyes light up, and Sakura reaches to swat at his head.

"Don’t even think about it," she warns, stopping in front of her room.

"Fiiiine." Naruto juts out his bottom lip petulantly.

Sakura leaves her stuff in her room before grabbing her pajamas and going to the bathhouse.

The warm water does wonders for her aching muscles. She doesn’t spend long in the bath however, wanting to get back to her room and fall asleep as soon as possible. Today has been way too stressful.

"Close the curtains," Sasuke mumbles around his third snack bar this evening. Naruto looks over at him and frowns. He had just opened the curtains and the window to let in some cool night air, but trust Sasuke to complain about every little thing he does.

"Why?" Naruto asks, sitting cross-legged on one of the beds. Thankfully, the room had two beds, and they’d both agreed for once when choosing them. Sasuke chose the one in the corner, and Naruto wanted the one near the window.

Sasuke swallows the food in his mouth before answering, "Because I don’t want them open."

"Well I do want them open, so I’m not closing them."

Sasuke puts his unfinished bar down on the table and sighs before walking over to the window and closing both curtains himself.

"Hey!" Naruto immediately goes to drag the curtains open again, but Sasuke holds them closed.

"What’s your problem?!" Naruto yells, trying to shove Sasuke away.

"Why do they need to be open?" Sasuke shoves back, pushing Naruto onto the bed.

"Why do they need to be closed?!" Naruto grabs for his pillow, and throws it at Sasuke's head. Sasuke ducks, and manages to grab the second pillow Naruto throws at him.

Naruto barely manages to roll onto the floor and duck down in time to avoid the pillow Sasuke throws back at him. While Sasuke moves to grab the first pillow off the floor, Naruto scrambles over to Sasuke's bed and grabs his pillows.

Sasuke charges at him, lifting the pillow above his head and bringing it down toward Naruto. Deflecting it with one pillow, Naruto grabs the other one, and takes the opening Sasuke leaves to swing it right at Sasuke's head.

He’s almost surprised when it connects, but there isn’t time to celebrate before Sasuke grabs a pillow off the floor and whacks Naruto's legs with it. In his attempt to escape and gain some ground to retaliate, Naruto bumps into the bedside table.

The lamp on the table wobbles dangerously, before tipping over the edge. Naruto freezes as he watches the lamp descend toward the hardwood floor in what seems like slow motion. Sasuke moves so fast he’s only a blur in Naruto's peripheral. He grabs the lamp just before it hits the floor.

For a moment, the only thing Naruto can hear is their heavy breathing, and his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.

"Sakura would have killed us," Naruto whispers in realization. That’s twice he’s almost died today.

Sasuke looks up at him in horror. Carefully, Naruto takes the lamp from Sasuke’s hands, and sets it back on the table, giving it a few light pats to make sure it’s stable now. The lampshade is slightly deformed where Sasuke grabbed it, but they both decide to ignore that detail.

Sasuke collects the pillows and sets them back on the beds. "She'll never need to know," he says, and Naruto nods several times in affirmation.

Sasuke stares up at the white, popcorn ceiling. Naruto's breathing evened out hours ago, but Sasuke refuses to let his eyes close any longer than it takes to blink. When he stayed awake the other night, it had been easier with the distractions from outside, and the moon shining down through the trees so ominously. It was harder to stay awake now that he was in a comfortable hotel room with a roof over his head.

On nights like this in Konoha, when the moon is full, he'd train indoors, or wander to the busy, brightly lit streets of Konoha where people were loud enough to remind him he wasn’t all alone back in that blood stained compound.

He considers leaving to do the same in this town, but his body is tired. He should at least rest his body if not his mind tonight. The lack of sleep had already caught up with him earlier, when he’d gotten dizzy crossing that river. He couldn’t make a mistake like that again.

It had been a small mistake, but it could have gone quite badly if Sakura hadn’t acted so quickly. Naruto could have drowned because of him, that idiot.

Sasuke drags his eyes away from the ceiling to watch the rise and fall of Naruto's chest as he snores away comfortably on the other side of the room.

To pass the time, and to keep himself awake, Sasuke counts Naruto's breaths. Somewhere around a hundred-forty, his eyes slowly start shutting. He lets them close for a few seconds to relieve the ache behind his eyes, planning on opening them again once the stinging stops. He falls asleep instead.

Naruto wakes up with the sound of a scream fading in his ears. He blinks awake, trying to make sense of where he’s at.

Someone is breathing heavily to his left and Naruto turns his head to look. He immediately jolts upright when he realizes who it is.

Sasuke is sitting on the edge of his bed, his hands covering his face. He’s breathing too quickly, and he’s shaking all over. Naruto's eyes widen. He throws off the covers and crosses the room to go to Sasuke. Something is obviously wrong.

"Sasuke? Are you alright?"

Sasuke stiffens at the sound of his voice, but doesn’t reply.

"What’s wrong?" Naruto tries again, his voice climbing in worry.

"Go back to bed," Sasuke says, his voice barely above a whisper.

"But—"

"Nothing's wrong. Go back to bed."

Sasuke stands up quickly, and walks over to the bathroom. Naruto hears the lock turn as soon as Sasuke closes the door.

The clock reads 5:48am, and usually Naruto would go back to sleep if he woke up at a time like this, but he’s too worried about Sasuke.

The scream he thought he'd heard earlier, had that been Sasuke? Had he been having a nightmare?

Naruto rubs his eyes and looks around the room for where he left his backpack. Spotting it near the window, Naruto reaches in and digs around for his storage scroll, where he'd sealed the few instant ramen cups Sakura had allowed him to bring.

Ramen always cheers him up after a nightmare, so he’ll make some for Sasuke, to make him feel better too.

Ten minutes later, Sasuke emerges from the bathroom and immediately frowns at the sight in front of him.

Naruto grins and presents an instant ramen cup to Sasuke. "Are you hungry? I made some ramen!"

Sasuke can’t stop himself. "Why?"

"Don’t worry, it’s still warm, I kept the cover over it."

Naruto all but shoves the ramen cup into Sasuke's hands, along with a pair of chopsticks.

Naruto turns to grab a second cup from the bedside table, and sits down cross-legged on his bed, facing Sasuke.

They stare at each other for a few seconds. Naruto tilts his head, "Aren’t you gonna eat it? It’ll get cold if you wait too long."

Frowning, Sasuke shuffles to his bed and mirrors Naruto, sitting cross-legged facing him. The ramen is warm in his hands. He isn’t very hungry, but when Naruto starts slurping up noodles, Sasuke does the same.

When they finish eating and Naruto continues talking about his plants back at home, Sasuke doesn’t interrupt him. Listening to Naruto ramble on is better than falling asleep again. He’ll take any distraction he can get. 

Sakura is surprised when she enters the lobby and finds both Sasuke and Naruto waiting for her. Sasuke is fiddling with his arm warmers, head slightly inclined toward Naruto who’s talking a mile a minute about something or other.

Sakura thought she’d be here first since it’s still thirty minutes before they needed to meet. She’d been planning on trying to find a shop that sold lavender oil, since she wasn’t able to last night.

After handing over her room key, Sakura joins her team at the door.

"Good morning, Sakura! We already ate," is how Naruto greets her when she reaches them. Sasuke doesn’t say anything, he just hums in agreement with Naruto's statement.

"Oh, I haven’t eaten anything yet. Actually, I need to do something first, I’ll just eat a snack bar for breakfast. We can leave as soon as I’m done, I won’t take long."

"Okay!" Naruto immediately agrees, falling into step behind her, "What do you need to do?"

"I was going to buy something," Sakura replies.

This early in the morning, there isn’t much foot traffic. It’s quieter here than in Konoha, and Naruto's voice seems louder than normal. He's talking more than usual, something Sakura has realized he does when he’s nervous about something.

Sasuke on the other hand is even more subdued than yesterday evening. He quietly trails behind her and Naruto, eyes glued to the ground. His bangs cast a shadow on his face, and Sakura can’t read his expression clearly without openly staring, but he still looks abnormally tired whenever she sneaks a glance at him.

Hopefully the lavender will help him, especially since they’re sleeping outside these next few nights.

After Sakura buys something 'really important,' they leave the small town and head northeast.

They stick to the main road until they reach a landmark—a large graffitied rock—that is situated at a split in the road. One road leads north, and the other goes toward the east, in the direction of the capital. They head north. The road gets narrower the further they travel, and there is less foot traffic (which is perfectly fine by Sasuke.)

Despite the pounding in his head, and his accelerated heart rate, Sasuke keeps up with Sakura and Naruto, and they end up covering a decent distance by noon.

Sasuke couldn’t be more relieved when Sakura suggests they pause for lunch in the shade near a small creek. It’s a small reprieve, but it’s enough to soothe the aching in his head for a little while.

They get back on the road, and as evening draws near, the mountains come into view. On a clear day like this one, the mountains look stunning. The hills around Konoha have nothing on this.

Tanzaku is situated in a valley somewhere behind those high peaks. They’ll have to pass through the mountains to reach it, and Sasuke can’t wait to see the view from up there. Shisui used to tell him he could see the ocean from the top of the mountains, and looking at them now, Sasuke can almost believe it.

After a few more hours of traveling, Sakura pauses to check the map again.

"I think we'll have to leave the main road now and travel through the forest," she says, looking at Sasuke for affirmation.

They’d planned this out together beforehand. They’ll be traveling through the forest for the next few days until they make it to Diore, the only big city besides Tanzaku on their route.

Traveling off-road and through the forest will not only cut down immensely on travel time, but it’ll also help avoid drawing attention to themselves as Sakura had pointed out. Shinobi around Konoha is a common sight, but the further they get from Konoha the more attention they draw to themselves from curious civilians.

"We can keep traveling until it gets dark. We should camp next to the river when it does," Sasuke says.

The Juah River, one of the Dai River's tributaries, flows from the north, and straight through the middle of Diore. If they simply follow the river upstream, it’ll bring them to their next destination.

Two hours of traveling through the forest later, they find the river. They stop for a water break, and Naruto disappears behind some trees, telling them he needs to take a leak.

While they wait for him to return, Sasuke leans against a tree and closes his eyes for a moment.

"Um…Sasuke?"

Holding back a sigh, Sasuke opens his eyes and looks at Sakura. She’s holding her hands behind her back, and her eyes avoid his, going to the ground instead.

"I have something for you," she says, and brings her hands out from behind her back. She holds a small bottle out to him, and unthinkingly, Sasuke takes it from her.

He reads the label, 'Lavender Oil,' and looks back at Sakura, a confused frown on his face.

"It’s to help you sleep," Sakura explains, "I just thought, if you have trouble sleeping outside, then this could help? You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to! But you can keep it anyway, so if you do want it, you can have it."

Realization dawns over Sasuke, but before he even has a chance to reply, Naruto returns and loudly warns them of some poison ivy he’d found.

Sakura turns to scold Naruto for not going to wash his hands, and Sasuke looks back at the small bottle in his hand.

This is what Sakura went to get this morning. She’d used her own money to buy this. For him. Because he hadn’t been sleeping well.

For some reason, his throat feels tight, and he can’t speak. He can’t tell Sakura to take this back, that he doesn’t need it. He can't tell her she shouldn’t have wasted her money on this, that she shouldn’t have bothered, that it was none of her business. That some lavender oil isn’t going to fix anything.

Instead, he slips the bottle into his pouch, and tries to swallow down the stupid lump in his throat.

If Sasuke is able to fall asleep that night, it’s because the waning moon is covered by clouds, and definitely not because of that stupid lavender oil he’d put on his pillow.

And if over the next several nights he continues to use the lavender oil as the moon wanes more and more, then it’s because he doesn’t want to waste Sakura's money, not because the stuff actually works.

Chapter Text

Diore is a large city a short way up the mountain. Its population is comparable to Konoha's, yet the city seems much busier, and louder, and the streets are made of cobblestone. As soon as they pass the gate check, they draw curious stares wherever they go.

"Look momma! There’s ninja!" A child squeals, jumping around and pointing in their direction while drawing more stares their way.

Sakura flushes in embarrassment at all the attention, while Sasuke hides behind his shirt collar. Naruto on the other hand is basking in the attention, grinning and waving at everyone who greets them.

The original plan had been to restock up on some essential supplies while passing through Diore before continuing up the mountain roads. The cumulonimbus clouds forming in the sky however have forced them to change their plans.

Now Sasuke is no meteorologist, but he knows enough about weather to know a bad storm when he sees one. If the clouds and wind weren't obvious enough, he could smell the rain and ozone, and feel the static in the air causing the hair on his arms to stand on end, a sure sign of an approaching thunderstorm.

He keeps the latter indicators to himself, not wanting Sakura and Naruto to think he’s crazy. He’d learned quite young that not everyone could smell rain and lightning before a storm hits.

Regardless, they’d now have to take shelter in Diore until the storm is over. Hopefully it passes over them quickly and they can get back on the road. The way some people are staring at them here makes Sasuke's skin crawl. He wants to leave this place as soon as possible.

The storm does not pass quickly. It has been several hours now, and Team Seven is still holed up in the city library where they’d chosen to stay for now. The librarian keeps passing nearby to check on them, but they are otherwise left alone.

To pass the time, Sakura reads from her book, and Naruto carefully draws seals on his blank tags, creating explosive tags, and leaving them to dry on the edge of the table. Sasuke cleans his weapons, half-listening to Naruto's whispered ramblings.

A flash of lightning followed by a loud boom startles Sakura, who was starting to drift off. She catches her book before it hits the ground, smiling sheepishly at the librarian who suddenly appeared in front of a nearby bookshelf.

"What time is it?" Sakura asks drowsily.

From where he’s sitting, Sasuke has a clear view of the large clock on the wall. "Almost two o'clock."

Another half hour passes before Sakura huffs out a sigh, and closes her book, stuffing it back into her backpack.

"How many tags have you done?" She asks Naruto, leaning forward to look at his work.

"Almost four, I have to finish the other side of this last one once it dries."

Sasuke envies the fact that Naruto still has something to do. He’s run out of weapons to clean, and he can’t exactly start sharpening them in a library, so he gets up to browse the shelves for something to read, but it’s really just to stretch his legs for a bit.

The librarian's eyes watch his every move, and Sasuke finds it unnerving. At first, he thought they might have some prejudice against shinobi using their library as shelter from the rain and taking out weapons here, but now it feels like something else. Their eyes are full of animosity.

Finding nothing that interests him, Sasuke returns to Sakura and Naruto. The urge to leave this place is stronger now.

"Let’s go," he says when he reaches them. They both look up at him in surprise. Sakura looks pointedly at the large windows showing a clear view of the rain still pouring down outside.

"We can eat an early dinner. The lightning is moving farther away, and the rain is letting up a little. By the time we finish eating, we might be able to start traveling again," Sasuke explains.

"Maybe," Sakura says, but she sounds doubtful.

"My last tag hasn’t finished drying yet," Naruto protests, waving it in front of Sasuke's face for emphasis.

"It’s dry enough. We need to leave this place," Sasuke insists, lowering his voice, and glancing back at the librarian to make sure they’re out of hearing range.

"Is something wrong?" Sakura whispers, frowning at him slightly.

Sasuke considers telling them his suspicions for a moment. Maybe he’s being paranoid and the librarian is harmless, but still…

"I think we’re being watched," he whispers quietly, and Sakura's eyes widen just a bit.

"Do you mean the librarian?" She asks, already grabbing her backpack, and helping Naruto put his ink and brush away.

Sasuke nods, slipping out a freshly cleaned kunai, and holding it at a slight angle in front of him. He can see the librarian's bright red shirt in its reflection. They’re still watching them.

Naruto carefully stacks his tags and tucks them away safely in his pouch. "I thought they were being a bit creepy. What do you think they want?" He asks, pulling his backpack straps securely over his shoulders.

"I don’t know," Sasuke answers honestly. He’s acting off a gut instinct and feeling, but he just knows something’s off, even if he can’t explain it.

Thankfully, Naruto and Sakura aren’t questioning it much, and they try to walk as inconspicuously as possible toward the doors. The librarian's eyes don’t leave them for a second. Even once they’re outside in the rain and running down the empty street toward a restaurant, he can still feel their eyes watching them through the library's huge windows.

'A bit creepy,' is one way to put it.

By the time they leave Diore, the rain has slowed to a drizzle. Donning their raincoats, they leave through the north gate and head up the winding mountain roads. As they’d eaten their early dinner, they’d looked at the map and decided to try and make it to a small town a little ways away. They’d be traveling for several hours, but none of them wanted to sleep outside tonight.

Unfortunately, the incline and weather conditions, as well as it being completely dark out, cause their estimated time of arrival to be way off. The rain picks up again some time after the sun sets, making their travel conditions even more miserable.

Sasuke leads the way in front since he has the lantern. Sakura and Naruto follow closely at his right and left respectively.

"Maybe we should have just stayed in Diore," Sakura laments, hugging her coat tighter around herself in an attempt to stay warm.

Sasuke glances back at her to say something, but immediately trips and nearly face plants in the mud. He flails his arms out wildly while stumbling forward and manages to regain his balance just in time.

Naruto bursts out laughing, doubling over and clutching at his stomach.

"Shut up!" Sasuke swings the lantern at Naruto, forcing him to jump back in order to dodge.

"Careful, Sasuke. You might slip again," Naruto teases, leaning away to avoid the lantern again as Sasuke chases after him.

Sakura covers a yawn with her hand as she watches them fool around. She really misses her own bed and her own room, where’s it nice and warm, and most importantly dry.

Another gust of wind blows, and Sakura cringes when she hears the trees creaking under the strain. The pine trees especially look like they'll snap in half any second now.

Naruto turns to look up at the trees swaying in the wind, and Sasuke pauses in his chase to watch as well.

"What happens if a tree falls on us?" Naruto asks, shielding his eyes from the rain with his arm.

Sasuke rolls his eyes, "You get out of the way obviously."

"Let’s get out of here before that happens," Sakura says, moving to walk ahead.

The trees do get more sparse the further they move up the mountain. Occasionally they’ll see a small house or two a little ways off the road, so they must be getting closer to the town.

An old man, coming from the opposite direction, greets them just before they pass each other. Sakura finds she doesn’t have enough energy to return his greeting. At least Naruto has enough energy for all of them as he enthusiastically waves back to the old man.

"Do you know how far away the town is?" Naruto stops to ask.

"The town? We don’t have much of a town here, it’s just a few houses really," the man replies, "if you’re looking for a place to stay I’m afraid you won’t find it here."

"Oh," Naruto deflates, "thanks for letting us know, I guess."

Sakura waits until the old man is out of earshot before devolving into despair. "What are we gonna do now? Are we really going to have to sleep outside tonight in the rain?"

Sasuke looks just as lost as her for once.

"We can sleep under one of those big trees," Naruto suggests.

"Absolutely not," Sakura says, "imagine it falls on us in our sleep."

"It’s not ideal, but we can keep traveling tonight and just rest tomorrow when we find an inn," Sasuke says.

Sakura immediately wants to disagree to that too, because she’s tired and she wants to rest, but she realizes it’s a losing argument since there is no where to rest. This is why they should have stayed in Diore.

"Fine," she ends up saying.

By the time they reach a city marked on the map that’s large enough to have an inn, it’s nearly midday. Even Naruto feels tired at this point. His feet and the bottom of his legs are muddy, and he wants to shower and get cleaned so he can go to bed, but Sasuke is showering first. They’d played a game of rock, paper, scissors to see who’d get to go first, and Sasuke had won. Sakura had beaten him next, so Naruto would be the last one to use the shower.

Naruto was sure Sasuke cheated at this game somehow, because he won way too often. He’d prove it someday.

For now, he lays his coat across a chair so it can dry, before pulling out one of his precious ramen cups. This is exactly the kind of scenario that calls for some ramen to warm him up and make him feel better. Sakura and Sasuke seemed content to eat those vile snack bars, but Naruto wants something that actually tastes good right now.

By the time he’s done eating, Sakura has finished her shower and crawled into her bedroll to fall asleep. (Since Naruto was being forced to shower last, he’d get the only bed. He’d managed to convince both his teammates of this probably because they were too tired to argue with him.)

After showering, Naruto goes to bed too. It’s weird, falling asleep in the middle of the day and waking up to the sun setting. Sakura is still asleep, but Sasuke is missing. Maybe he’s in the bathroom or something. Naruto lets himself drift back to sleep, only to startle awake a few minutes later when a hand touches his shoulder and lightly shakes him.

"Wh-what?!" Naruto sits up, looking around only to see Sasuke standing next to the bed with his hand reaching out still.

"Time to get up," Sasuke says, and turns to shake Sakura awake too.

"What? But we only slept for a few hours!" Naruto protests, already lying back down and bringing the blanket back up to cover himself.

Sasuke isn’t having an easy time getting Sakura up either. She swats his hand away and covers her head with a pillow, rolling onto her side.

Sasuke sighs and Naruto listens to his footsteps retreat to the other side of the room. He can hear a bag crinkling next, and that gets him to open an eye to see what Sasuke's doing.

"I'll just eat all this food myself then," Sasuke mutters, digging his hand into a brown paper bag and pulling out a chicken sandwich.

When Sasuke unwraps it, Naruto can smell the chicken, and promptly sits up, kicking the blanket off.

"I’ll eat! What else did you get?" He asks, walking over and pulling out another sandwich from the bag.

"It’s all chicken," Sasuke mumbles, wiping his mouth with a napkin all proper like.

Naruto quickly unwraps a sandwich. "Ew, I hate pickles," Naruto says disdainfully, taking the disgusting little green things off his sandwich and throwing them in the trash after checking under his bread.

"Do you like cucumbers?"

"Yeah, cucumbers are alright."

"But pickles are just cucumbers."

"No, they’re completely different!"

"Pickles are literally just a cucumber. It’s a pickled cucumber."

"Well it tastes different anyway. It doesn’t matter if a pickle was originally a cucumber, it’s a totally different thing now."

"Ugh, why are you so loud," Sakura complains, rolling onto her back and pulling the pillow away from her head.

"Are you awake now, Sakura?" Naruto asks, digging into the bag for the third sandwich.

"No, I’m still sleeping," Sakura deadpans back.

"That’s too bad. I guess I’ll have to eat this sandwich for you then," Naruto replies soulfully.

"Don’t you dare!" Sakura grabs it out his hands and quickly unwraps it. "Ew. Pickles."

"That’s what I said! See, Sasuke? Sakura agrees with me too. Pickles are disgusting."

"What ever," Sasuke rolls his eyes.

To try and balance things back out, Team Seven leaves around 4AM. They manage to sink back into their regular schedule by the next day, and soon, they’re nearing the other side of the mountain. It’s late in the afternoon when they reach an area with an overhanging rock, and are able to look out over the valley beneath them.

This mountain is far from the highest one in this range, but they’re still at a higher elevation than any of them have ever been at, and they take a few minutes to admire the view. They can see Tanzaku from here. The walled city looks to be a decent size, and the huge castle is easily visible.

"We can get there by tomorrow," Sasuke says.

Naruto moves closer to the ledge and looks down. "It’d be so much faster if we could just run down the cliff."

"A faster way to die maybe," Sakura says, pulling him away by his jacket collar.

They continue their journey down the mountain. Traveling is easier now that they’re going down in elevation, so they break into a run for an hour or two, putting away several miles.

They break for camp once the sun has nearly set, and take one last look at the map in the light from the campfire.

"It’s been ten days since we left the village. We'll reach Tanzaku tomorrow, which means that we’re a whole two days ahead of schedule," Sakura says while she tries to guesstimate their time of arrival.

"Hn," Sasuke agrees.

"We'll get there around…noon?" Sakura guesses.

"Hm, that’s a good time. We don’t need to hang around there for long, but we can get lunch in the city," Sasuke says.

So it’s decided. They’ll enter Tanzaku, head to the address on their mission scroll, collect the package in a storage scroll, and eat lunch before leaving again.

Tanzaku is only the second big city they’ve entered since leaving Konoha, but unlike with Diore, they can take their time to look around a bit. The walls aren’t as high as Konoha's, but the city still looks impressively fortified from the distance as they approach the gates.

Once inside the city, Sakura can’t help but notice how many pubs there are. It’s midday, but a few drunks are stumbling down the street already.

There are even more casinos than pubs, and several…brothels. A woman dressed in revealing clothing has the audacity to blow a kiss in their direction, in Sasuke's direction, and Sakura immediately steers them away down a different street. Nope, nope, nope. She is not letting Sasuke or Naruto wander anywhere near that.

They find a post office and head inside to ask for directions to the address. A middle-aged man shows them where to go on a large map of the city pinned up on the wall, and with extremely specific directions, they set off back down the streets.

"I think we take a right here," Sakura says, rounding a corner while looking back at her team. "Oof!" the next thing she knows, she’s run into a wall and has fallen backward onto the ground.

Rubbing her nose, Sakura looks up and realizes what she ran into was not a wall, but a woman with blonde hair and a stern expression.

"I’m so sorry," Sakura starts to apologize as Naruto helps her back to her feet.

Another woman with short black hair steps around the blonde lady. "No, it’s fine don’t worry about it. Are you alright?" She asks sincerely.

"Yeah, I’m fine, thank you. I’m so sorry again, ma'am." Sakura gives a quick bow in the blonde lady's direction. Her apology isn’t enough to wipe the scowl off the woman's face, and Sakura shifts backward slightly. She doesn’t know why she feels so intimidated by this woman. Maybe it’s because she’s built like a brick wall.

"Konoha genin? What do you want?" The woman asks, her tone low in warning, and Sakura shrinks even further back.

"Look, she already apologized! We're on a mission anyway so we don’t have time to stand around here talking to you," Naruto says, stepping up beside Sakura.

The woman's eyes flicker to the roofs behind them for a moment, before settling back on Naruto.

"I see," she says, and moves forward, walking briskly past them. Her companion picks a pig up off the ground and hurries after her. "Lady Tsunade, wait!"

The name itches something in Sakura's brain, but she’s too momentarily relieved about the woman leaving without making a whole ordeal out of it, that she doesn't think about it too much.

"There’s so many weird people here," Naruto comments as they keep heading toward their destination.

"You should move here. You’d fit right in," Sasuke says nonchalantly.

"What’s that supposed to mean?!"

Sasuke and Naruto continue bickering up until they’re standing on someone’s front porch as Sakura rings the doorbell. They finally go silent when they hear footsteps approaching.

"Hello! Are you the shinobi here for the package?" A man with long, braided brown hair greets them at the door.

"Yes. I have the mission scroll right here," Sakura says handing over the proof of their mission. The man scans it quickly before nodding and handing it back.

"You’re here earlier than I expected," the man says, turning around and heading back inside. Since they weren’t explicitly invited in, Team Seven waits awkwardly on the porch until the man returns.

"I’m sorry. Here," the man holds out a thin scroll when he returns to the door. "Would you like to come inside and rest? Do you need water or anything?" The man asks nervously, wringing his hands.

"No, thank you," Sasuke replies, taking the scroll and examining it before putting it away in his pouch.

They take their leave and head back toward the busier streets.

"We’re half-way there now!" Sakura cheers.

"Yes! Let’s get ramen to celebrate!" Naruto says enthusiastically.

""No,"" Sakura and Sasuke say simultaneously.

"Please?" Naruto tries again. Sakura and Sasuke exchange a glance.

"If we go to a restaurant that serves ramen and other things, I guess that’d be fine," Sakura says.

Her and Naruto had figured out quite a while ago, that if they don’t directly ask, Sasuke will pay for their food, so they don't even try to avoid expensive places anymore. They'd taken advantage of this fact several times already, and they don’t plan on stopping until Sasuke notices. Hopefully, he never does.

"I’ll order for us," Sasuke says predictably, and Sakura and Naruto share a grin behind his back.

It only occurs to Sakura as they’re setting up camp later, where she'd heard the name 'Tsunade' before.

Tsunade, the Slug Princess, one of the three legendary Sannin, granddaughter of Hashirama Senju, and student of the Third Hokage.

Her work was revolutionary in the medical field, and she is the strongest kunoichi of Konohagakure. Possibly even the strongest kunoichi in all the nations. She’s talked about in the academy when they discuss the Third Great Ninja War.

Sakura can’t believe she forgot momentarily, but still, that woman couldn’t have been the Tsunade, right? She looked too young. Tsunade is in her fifties, but that woman looked to be in her mid-twenties.

It might have just been someone with the same name, perhaps even someone named after the legendary Sannin. But Sakura remembers how powerful that woman felt, and a small part of her mind tells her that maybe, just maybe, that woman was the legendary Tsunade.

How incredible would that be, if she just happened to run into a Sannin on her first C-rank mission. Ino will be so jealous. She needs to gloat about this when she’s gets back to the village. There’s no way any of Ino's missions have had something more exciting than that happen.

Team Seven does learn from their mistake coming up the mountain, and plan better for the blank areas without inns that they can bypass during the day now.

One such area forces them to travel into the night for a short while until they can reach their final stop before Diore. They’ll arrive in Diore some time tomorrow, which is a relief because they need to restock on toilet paper. Again.

It’s windy tonight, not as much as it was during the storm, but still enough to make Sasuke and Sakura shiver slightly every time it blows against them. Naruto remains unaffected and comfortable in his jacket and pants.

It’s also cloudy tonight, and with no light from the moon to guide them, Sasuke has taken out his lantern again. It’s creepy almost, how the shadows shift and move. Naruto freezes in his tracks as he spots a man dressed in all black, watching them from behind some bushes in the woods.

He can’t breathe for a moment, but he then realizes it’s only a shadow cast from a weird looking tree.

"I thought that was a person in the woods watching us for a second," Sakura exhales behind him, her voice slightly shaky.

"Me too," Naruto admits. Sasuke doesn’t say anything, but the way he had tensed and came to a stop shows he'd been tricked by the shadow as well. Naruto considers teasing him about it, but then something gray moves in the corner of his eye, and Naruto startles, barely keeping himself from screaming.

"What was that?!" He whisper yells, moving closer to Sasuke and Sakura.

"What was what? Naruto, this better not be another one of your dumb pranks," Sakura says, grabbing his arm.

"It was probably just an animal," Sasuke says, and he sounds so sure of himself that Naruto finds himself relaxing slightly. But then Sasuke turns around slightly to face them, and Naruto sees the way his eyes are widened slightly, and his eyebrows are drawn together tensely. Any assurance Sasuke's words gave him vanishes in an instant.

"Let’s just keep moving," Sasuke says stiffly, and when he starts walking again, Sakura and Naruto have no choice but to follow.

Every shadow seems to be jumping out at them now, and Naruto finds himself holding onto Sakura's arm as tightly as she’s holding onto his. They pass a tree with a hole in it that makes it look like someone’s face, and Naruto feels his blood run cold. This place wasn’t this creepy before was it? There’s also a prickly feeling at the back of his neck now, like he’s being watched, and Naruto absolutely hates it. They need to get to that town as soon as possible and out of the dark forest where his mind keeps playing tricks on him.

"Why don’t we run for awhile so we get there quicker?" Naruto suggests, reaching with his freehand to tug on the back of Sasuke's shirt, trying to get his attention.

Snap!

All three of them whirl around simultaneously, facing the direction the sound came from.

"What was that?!" Naruto asks, panicked now, and grabbing a handful of Sasuke's shirt while squinting into the darkness. Sasuke raises the lantern higher, trying to illuminate their surroundings better while also reaching one hand into his kunai pouch.

"Maybe it was just an animal again," Sakura says shakily, biting her lip.

None of them notice the smoke bombs rolling close to their feet until it’s too late. Team seven is quickly engulfed in smoke, and their bodies move before their minds even catch up.

Iruka-sensei had made them do this drill so many times over in the academy it's ingrained in their minds and bodies.

Sasuke and Sakura draw a kunai in each hand and move so they’re back to back in the middle of the smoke. Naruto does the same, but he’s half a second slower.

Sakura reaches to tug on Naruto's sleeve, pulling him closer as they wait in tense silence for something to happen.

Chapter Text

Kakashi will admit, he'd been a little peeved when Lord Third had given him this mission that amounted to little more than babysitting three bratty genin from a distance. A course he’d accepted the mission anyway. It’s not like he really had a choice here.

After he’d failed Team Seven, Lord Third had reassigned him to train new anbu recruits. Kakashi knew he was too valuable an asset to be wasted doing standard jonin missions. He’d expected to be thrown straight back into anbu though, so he’s grateful Lord Third hadn’t elected to do that.

He isn’t technically a member of Anbu anymore, he is still an active jonin, but he now has this new, added responsibility. He doesn’t mind it really. Hound had been retired a few years ago, but he still wears the mask when he takes the trainees on missions outside the village, and the newbies refer to him by his old code name when he does.

It feels familiar, and Kakashi has easily readjusted to this new position. He currently has five trainees under him, having sent one, Fox, to Yugao's squad already. He’d like to get Bear on a squad soon too, but their swordsmanship still needs some work.

Kakashi had wanted to spend time that week doing some hardcore drills, but the new mission has thrown a wrench in his plans. Now he’d have to take three of the newbies with him out on this mission that someone else could have easily done, and continue their training as much he can out there.

(He knows what Lord Third's intent had been in giving this mission to him of all people. The thing is, Kakashi already knows Team Seven has been working hard on their D-ranks, and are getting along better than before. He’d even checked up on them a few times, and it seemed they were taking his lesson to heart, and were working together as a team. Most of the time anyway.

However, if Lord Third wanted him to reconsider taking them on as a team after seeing 'how well they work together,' or something or other, then he didn’t know Kakashi as well as he claimed he did.

Now don’t get him wrong, Kakashi was happy they were improving and all, but if he could avoid becoming a jonin-sensei, he would. He much preferred training chunin level or higher thank you very much. Pre-teens are too much to deal with. How Gai does it, and enjoys it, he’ll never know.)

So Kakashi had gone and picked the trainees he wanted to accompany him on this mission. Bear was an obvious first pick. Kakashi would continue training him throughout this mission, and maybe by the time they got back, Bear would be ready to transfer into a squad. Tenzo would need a new member soon with Rabbit transferring to the jonin ranks next week. With Bear's disposition, he should fit right in with Tenzo's squad too. It’s a good fit, and Kakashi knows Tenzo will take care of him.

His next two picks, Hawk and Badger, were purely by chance in a game of eeny meeny miny moe.

Mission Objective: Protect the Jinchuriki, and by extension, Team Seven on their mission outside the village.

"We won’t interfere with their mission. We will only step in if their lives are in danger," Kakashi explains. The trainees in front of him nod in affirmation.

A few days later, he watches Sasuke and Naruto nearly drown in the Dai River. He makes a hand sign to his team telling them to stay put as he watches Sakura figure out a plan to get them out. Their interference never becomes necessary. Sakura is a smart girl.

Kakashi feels almost…proud? As he watches them work together to get through the tough parts on their mission. He's surprised to find Sakura taking the lead on major decisions almost as much as Sasuke. She has a good head on her shoulders, and the boys listen to her when it matters. She still looks for approval on her plans, (mostly from Sasuke,) but she is definitely gaining more confidence.

Whether he's realized it or not, Naruto is good at keeping team morale up whenever the other two get tired. He also no longer tries to do everything himself, he’s learned to lean on his teammates and let them help him out in even trivial things.

Sasuke is…still lacking in the communication department, (not that Kakashi can really say anything in that regard,) but he's actively making an effort. He never speaks to Sakura and Naruto in a condescending tone anymore. Mostly anyway. He only did it a few times when trying to get a reaction out of Naruto. But progress is progress, and Kakashi can see that Sasuke has grown to respect and treat his teammates as his teammates, and not as an obstacle in his way.

They’re a good team, and if it took the wake-up call of failing the test to get them here, then Kakashi has no regrets about failing them.

There’s something off about Diore. Kakashi doesn't like the way some of the vendors look at Team Seven when they pass through the streets. It’s a predatory look, and Kakashi is immediately on guard. Nothing ends up happening however, and they leave Diore without any incidents.

They’re nearly at Tanzaku when Badger slips and falls out of a tree. Bear and Hawk will never let her live it down.

Kakashi has been training with Bear nearly every night, working on his swordsmanship. They seem to have hit a plateau, and Kakashi tries not to get too frustrated. He works on a different training plan.

Hawk and Badger get their training in during the day. Hawk is a sensor type, and Badger is a poisons expert. They work well together, and Kakashi finds himself stuck with senbon (ones without poison on them, thank you very much) more often than not these days. Whenever he clears them to officially join the anbu ranks, he wants to keep them on the same team. When they’re together, they’re at their full potential.

Bear offers to heal his injuries after, but Kakashi always shrugs him away. He knows enough medical ninjutsu to heal small scrapes like these himself. He’s starting to suspect Bear asks to heal him every time because Bear has figured out that if he doesn’t ask, Kakashi won’t bother with healing himself. It’s only a suspicion, but it’s a strong one.

Seeing Tsunade in Tanzaku is unexpected, but the Hokage will be pleased to know of her whereabouts when they report back to the village. She’s a hard lady to track, and Lord Third has long since given up trying to.

Lady Tsunade is not happy to see them. She joins them on the roof with her niece, Shizune, and warns them that if they try to follow her, she’ll break their legs. Kakashi explains that meeting her here was pure coincidence, and that they are on a different mission.

Tsunade snorts and jerks her chin in Team Seven's direction. "Babysitting the nine-tails brat?"

Kakashi doesn’t answer, but Tsunade's already figured it out. It’s not too hard, after all, for her to put two and two together. She did know Lord Fourth personally too.

Tsunade leaves after that to, 'Get drunk and win big,' and Kakashi sends a pitying look to Shizune, who just sighs and heads after her master.

Turns out, Bear is a big fan of Tsunade. Who’d of thought. He should really pick a better role model though. 

A few days later, as they’re heading down the mountain at a leisurely pace, Hawk senses shinobi only half a mile away, coming toward them quickly.

Kakashi takes Bear with him to investigate, leaving Hawk and Badger to stay with Team Seven.

"There’s six of them, they’re splitting up into groups of two," Hawk informs him through the earpiece. Bear goes after one group, and Kakashi goes after the other two.

"Hound, sir, they’re from Otogakure," Bear says, identifying the enemy first.

"Otogakure? Don’t let them get past us. We put them down now."

Kakashi spots the first group on his side. He kills them as quickly as possible, slitting one's throat, and breaking the other's neck, pausing only long enough to make sure they’re actually dead before continuing to the third group.

"Group B is clear," he says, leaping through the trees quickly in the direction Hawk informs him Group C is at.

"Group A is clear," Bear says as Kakashi engages in combat with Group C. The first man is easy to kill. A sharingan paralysis genjutsu paired with an electrically charged kunai through the skull will do it for you.

The second man is a little cockroach. He manages to get away with a substitution, and goes underground before Kakashi can catch him.

The Oto nin somehow set up a trap before he left, and Kakashi is forced to waste precious seconds getting out of it.

"Hawk, one member of Group C got away, can you track him?"

"…No, he’s hiding his chakra somehow."

Dammit. They’d lost the element of surprise on their enemy, and now they were being careful.

Otogakure are suspects of many genin kidnappings in the smaller nations, but no one has openly accused them yet.

Kakashi has limited information on the new village at the moment, but he knows nothing good can come from Orochimaru targeting Team Seven. There’s two reasons he might, and Kakashi doesn’t like either of those options.

Kakashi scans the ground below with the sharingan, looking for traces of chakra as he heads back toward where he’d left Team Seven.

"The enemy is here!" Comes Hawk's frenzied voice, and Kakashi immediately moves into action, rushing back toward Team Seven. This Oto nin sure can move fast.

Kakashi reaches the road just in time to watch the smoke bombs go off. The sharingan can still track Team Seven’s chakra through the smoke, and he allows himself a moment to feel relived that they got into the correct formation so quickly. Iruka really did teach them well. Some object had been kicked away by Sasuke when the bombs went off, but Kakashi doesn’t have time to wonder what it was.

Badger and Hawk are already in action, fending off the Oto nin. Bear joins Kakashi on a branch as they observe the fight, ready in case the enemy tries to get away again.

The Oto nin throws out several shuriken, and Badger deflects them with her senbon. One redirected shuriken disappears into the smoke, and Kakashi watches Sasuke deflect it away with his kunai in one smooth motion.

The Oto nin keeps going back into the ground every time he’s overwhelmed, and Kakashi gets his chidori ready for the next time he does it. One of Badger's poisoned senbon had hit earlier, and the poison is working quickly, slowing down the Oto nin.

When Kakashi makes his move, the Oto nin hears the chidori and tries to get away, but he only manages to run backward right onto Bear's sword.

"Don’t kill him," Kakashi commands, and lets the chidori in his hand fade away, moving to knock out the Oto nin before he can try anything stupid, like killing himself. Bear pulls his sword out of the nin's shoulder, and immediately works on stopping the blood flow with medical ninjutsu. He only stops the bleeding, he doesn’t close the wound. Kakashi never trained him to do that. It must have been something Bear picked up on while he was a chunin.

Kakashi closes his left eye and turns around. The wind has blown away the smoke, and Team Seven are all looking at him with wide eyes.

Sasuke quickly moves from his position at Sakura's back to stand in front of his teammates, raising his kunai defensively.

"Your orders?" Badger asks in a low voice. Bear is already wrapping the Oto nin's wrists and ankles in chakra cuffs.

"Hawk, take care of the bodies. Badger, go with him. Get rid of any evidence there was a fight in the area. I’ll join you in a few minutes."

Hawk and Badger body flicker away, wasting no time getting to work. Kakashi turns his attention back to Team Seven. They look scared, but they don’t have any visible injuries, so they’ll be fine.

Kakashi clears his throat. "You should leave. The threat has been neutralized. If you stay here you’ll only get in the way."

Sasuke glares at him fiercely. Naruto still seems frozen. His knuckles are turning white from how hard he’s gripping his kunai.

"Anbu black ops," Sakura whispers under her breath, and if it weren’t for Kakashi's acute hearing, he would have missed it. She lowers her guard a bit, dropping her arms. One hand is still holding Naruto's sleeve.

"It’s alright now, Naruto," Sakura says, tugging lightly on his sleeve to get his attention. Naruto lets out a shaky breath, and tries to smile back at her.

Sasuke turns his head to look back at his teammates. When he catches sight of Naruto's expression, he pauses for a moment before saying, "What’s wrong? Are you scared?"

"No!" Naruto yells, some color returning to his face, "I’m not scared!"

"Sir," Hawk's voice comes through the earpiece, "There’s someone coming up the mountain toward you. Low chakra level. Probably a civilian."

"Roger."

Kakashi exchanges a glance with Bear. They need to clean this area up quickly.

"Leave," Kakashi commands sharply, causing all three genin to flinch and look at him. "You are to repeat what you saw here to no one. Continue your mission as if nothing happened."

Sakura gulps and steps back, pulling Naruto with her. Sasuke squints at him, before putting away his kunai and walking over to the ditch. He pulls a lantern out and walks back to his teammates.

'Ah, so that’s what he kicked away when the smoke bombs went off.'

"Let’s go," Sasuke mutters, brushing dirt off the lantern.

"R-right," Sakura agrees. She seems to realize she’s still holding her kunai, and bashfully puts them away before whispering to Naruto telling him to do the same. Sasuke glances back, his gaze resting on the body at Kakashi's feet briefly. He turns back around after a moment, saying something to Sakura that Kakashi can’t quite hear anymore.

What a mess. They need to report this back to Lord Third as soon as possible. Hopefully Team Seven keeps their mouths shut. The last thing they need is a rumor to start spreading before Lord Third can get a handle on the situation. At least they don’t seem to know they were the targets in that attack. Hopefully they assume they got caught up in anbu business, and don’t question it much.

"Follow them," Kakashi orders as soon as Team Seven is out of sight. "Yes, sir," Bear nods before jumping away to the trees.

Kakashi makes quick work of returning the surrounding area to normal. A few earth jutsus fix the road damage and smooth out a few pockets in the grass. Any blood on the ground is buried under a fresh layer of dirt.

Once he’s done, Kakashi takes the prisoner and leaves to check on Badger and Hawk. The five corpses have already been sealed in body-sealing scrolls. Badger is using an earth jutsu to cover the dents a few explosives from the trap earlier caused. She's done a good job. Kakashi can’t even see any traces of blood.

Hawk removes the wires, and Kakashi takes care of any mangled and damaged branches, making sure the cuts look more natural. He allows himself a moment to wish that Tenzo was here. This was always so much easier with him.

Once all three locations have been cleaned, they meet back up with Bear in town. He’s standing guard on the roof of an inn, cloaked in genjutsu to hide himself. Kakashi can see him with the sharingan, and Hawk can sense his chakra.

They drop down next to him, and Bear reports that all is well. He sounds a bit tired, and Kakashi almost feels bad about the order he’s about to give him.

Bear has blood smeared across the front of his flak jacket that’s had enough time to dry into a rusty brown color. There's blood matted into his hair as well, and Kakashi can see the flaky bits of dried blood on Bear's gloves from trying to get it out.

There’s a blood stain on his pants too, and from the cut in the cloth near the center of the stain, Kakashi can deduce it’s Bear's own blood. He must have healed whatever injury he’d gotten already himself, as the skin looks fine now.

"I’m sending you and Badger back to the village to report to Lord Hokage. Take the Oto nin with you, and hand him over to T&I, as well as the body-sealing scrolls," Kakashi says, addressing Bear.

"Yes, sir," Bear says, standing up. All trace of tiredness in his voice is gone.

"Hawk, I want you to stay on high alert. Let me know about any suspicious chakra you sense. Even if you think it’s insignificant, tell me."

"Yes, sir."

Hawk sits cross legged and makes a sign, extending his sensory range. Badger throws the Oto nin over her shoulder, and disappears with Bear in the direction of Konoha.

Kakashi is left to eavesdrop on Team Seven. The light in their room is still on, so they’re clearly still awake.

"…the symbol on his headband?" comes Sasuke's muffled voice as Kakashi tunes in.

"No, I wasn’t really looking at that," Sakura replies.

"It was an eighth note. I’m not sure what village has that symbol though. I don’t remember us talking about one like that at the academy, and I’m certain I haven’t seen it on a map before either," Sasuke says.

"I haven’t heard of a village with that insignia either. I have a friend who might know though. I can ask him when we get back to the village. He knows a lot more about foreign villages than I do," Sakura muses.

Kakashi slips quietly down near the window, using chakra to stick to the wall. He looks through the glass. All three of them are sat cross legged in a circle on the floor.

"I still don’t get why we can’t just ask old man Hokage," Naruto interjects. He looks better now. The color has fully returned back to his face, and he isn’t shaking anymore.

"Because he won’t tell us anything about the anbu. Anbu missions are top secret," Sakura sighs.

"I know that, but if we were the ones being targeted, don’t we have a right to know?" Naruto asks, brow furrowing as he looks between Sakura and Sasuke for affirmation.

'How have they already figured that out?'

Maybe these kids are smarter than Kakashi had given them credit for.

"Even if we really were the targets of that guy back there, the Hokage still doesn’t have to tell us anything, technically," Sasuke says, folding his hands together, "He'll probably just lecture us instead. Do you really want to sit through another one of his lectures?"

"Well, no…" Naruto scratches the back of his head.

"Like you said, Sasuke, it's too much of a coincidence," Sakura says, "why else would that man have thrown down smoke bombs at us, and suddenly the anbu are intervening? That couldn’t have just been random. It’s just so frustrating only having a little bit of information."

"What do you think is in the package that makes it so important a foreign nin would attack us for it?" Naruto asks.

Oh. That’s what they’d assumed. It’s a logical conclusion with the information they had, Kakashi supposes.

"Another thing we can’t know," Sakura sighs.

"Can’t we just open the scroll and see?" Naruto asks, a gleam appearing in his eyes.

Uh oh.

"No." Sasuke answers immediately.

"Come on, Sasuke, don’t you want to know?"

"We can’t open the scroll. What if we can’t reseal whatever is in here? Do you know how much trouble we’d get into?"

Naruto pouts and crosses his arms.

"…But," Sakura says tentatively, "it looks like it’s just a normal storage scroll. We know how to seal things in those, so we can just look at it quickly and then put it right back in. We don’t even have to touch whatever's inside."

"Yeah!" Naruto immediately agrees, "Come on, Sasuke, let’s look at what’s inside the scroll and maybe we can figure everything out."

"No," Sasuke answers more firmly, "Shinobi are not allowed to look inside a scroll without permission, and we don’t have any permission."

"You’re no fun, Sasuke," Naruto says, poking Sasuke's knee, "I thought you wanted to know what’s going on the most."

Sasuke swats his hand away, and stands up, "We can’t risk doing something like that. This is our first C-rank, remember? If we mess this up, it’ll set us back again, and we'll be stuck doing D-ranks until we make chunin or something. Do you want that?"

Naruto and Sakura look properly chastised.

"…No," Naruto finally mutters.

"Good. It’s late now. We get to Diore tomorrow, but we should be more careful from now on. If people are after this package, then we might run into more enemies. We should stay off the main roads after Diore," Sasuke says, walking toward the window.

Kakashi moves up the wall a bit. The light emanating from the window disappears as Sasuke drags the curtains closed.

"Do you think the anbu are still around if there might be more enemies?" He hears Sakura ask.

"Maybe. They were probably just eliminating a foreign nin in our territory, so they might only be around if there’s other foreign threats," Sasuke replies.

It’s good, Kakashi thinks, that they haven’t suspected another reason. It’ll make any explanation the Hokage gives them easier.

It’s also good to know that when Sakura loses her head, Sasuke's sense of responsibility kicks in. If they'd opened the scroll, he’d have to report that back to Lord Third, and they would have definitely gotten in trouble.

Hawk and Kakashi stay up all night, but there are no other threats that appear.

Diore has some unsavory people again just like the first time around, and Kakashi is a lot more cautious this time. When a suspicious vendor just happens to wander by the hotel Team Seven is staying at however, Kakashi lets it be. This could be a good opportunity to see who exactly is the target. Sasuke or Naruto.

When Sasuke leaves the hotel on his own, and the vendor starts following him, Kakashi feels like he has his answer. When the vendor pulls a kunai from his sleeve as Sasuke turns down a dark street, Kakashi knows he has his answer.

The vendor dies quickly and quietly without getting to make a single move against Sasuke. Kakashi sends Hawk to keep following Sasuke while he rifles through the vendors belongings. He takes note of his ID, and anything else important on him. He takes the man’s wallet and burns it. When the body is discovered tomorrow, they’ll assume it was a robbery.

Sasuke makes it back to the hotel with three styrofoam containers, safe and unharmed.

They’re nearly back at Konoha, only two days more traveling to go, when Badger finds them. She gives him a full report of everything that’s happened since her and Bear returned to the village.

T&I haven’t been able to find out much from the man. It seems he wasn’t important enough in the Sound village to have much information.

They were able to confirm however, that the target was Sasuke, which Kakashi already knew. It also appears as though the man and his team had acted to kidnap Sasuke without orders. Something about currying favor with Orochimaru if they managed to bring Sasuke back for him.

Where they’d even learned about Team Seven's route is a mystery, but Kakashi theorizes it has something to do with those suspicious people in Diore. It is concerning that there are Oto spies already crawling around in the Land of Fire however.

The bad news Badger brings him is that the Oto prisoner had been killed before they could get any more information out of him. The perpetrator had gotten away, but they’d been wearing anbu gear, and as of now, they have next to no physical description of them.

So there’s a spy in Konoha too, and a fairly skilled one at that. This situation just keeps getting worse.

As soon as Team Seven pass through Konoha's gates, Kakashi trades off with Yugao's anbu team, and leaves with Badger and Hawk to report to the Hokage. Bear is already waiting in the room when they get there. Unfortunately, so are the two elders, Koharu and Homura.

Despite how tired Hawk is from the last several days of arduous strain on his chakra, he still stands straight and alert in front of the Hokage. His rookies have improved on this mission, all three of them.

The meeting goes like this:

- Lord Third goes over information they already know, clearing up some of the more minor details.

- Of the five corpses, two have been identified as former genin from Kusa. None of them had any money on them, and barely any food. Even their weapons were of a poorer grade.

- They now know the location of one of Otogakure's hideouts from the intelligence Inoichi had gathered from their former prisoner.

- Since they are now aware of Sasuke being 'potentially' (definitely) targeted by Orochimaru, Lord Third decides Team Seven should stay in the village for the foreseeable future, to avoid more kidnapping attempts. There’ll be an anbu guard with Sasuke at all times. Eagle's team will be on rotation to guard him. It’s only temporary until they find the spies that have infiltrated the village.

Sasuke is too important of an asset to lose, being the last Uchiha. (Kakashi hates that word, 'asset,' as if a shinobi's only worth is what he can give to the village, say nothing about the shinobi in question being a child still.)

- Kakashi is given the assignment to work with Inoichi in finding the spies (plural, because there’s likely more than one spy.)

Other things are discussed too, like Tsunade, but it’s less important given the current circumstances. 

Eventually they are dismissed, and Kakashi sends his rookie anbu to their homes to clean themselves up and get some rest. Hawk and Badger can get the day off tomorrow, but he expects Bear to still show up to early morning training with the others.

Kakashi sighs as he goes over his new schedule in his mind. There’ll be an early meeting with the jonin tomorrow he'll be expected to attend. He has to train his recruits, and start the investigation with Inoichi too.

Gai is also expecting him to drop by, since Kakashi promised he would when he got back. Maybe he’ll do that this evening.

It's the very next day, after the jonin meeting, that Lord Third asks Kakashi to stay behind so he can speak with him in private.

In private includes both elders it seems.

"We’ve decided you’ll be reassigned to Team Seven when the Uchiha awakens his sharingan," is how Koharu starts the conversation.

Kakashi had seen this coming already. He keeps his face blank, refusing to give them any kind of reaction to that statement.

"The Uchiha boy is a valuable asset, as is the jinchuriki," Homaru starts, "It’s a shame they’ve been set back in their progress this much already. When the Uchiha awakens his sharingan, you are the only one who can train him how to use it. If he reaches the sharingan's full potential, he’ll be able to subdue the nine-tails, if only to an extent. We'll have a jinchuriki as strong, if not stronger than Kumogakure's when that happens. I'm sure you already know how important this is."

The Hokage had already had this conversation with Kakashi before he’d failed Team Seven. At least he’d used their names when referring to them.

"Even if Sasuke doesn’t achieve the sharingan's full potential, he'll still make a fine shinobi for Konoha, as will Naruto, even if he can’t become a perfect jinchuriki. You’re the one I'm trusting them with," Lord Third says, putting his pipe down for a moment to stare right at Kakashi. You’re the one who can do the best job at turning these children into weapons for Konoha.

"I understand, Hokage-sama."

'Sasuke, please don’t awaken your sharingan for awhile yet.'

Chapter Text

Naruto is happy to see Konoha's gates to come into view in the distance. As much as he’d enjoyed getting to travel out of the village and see new things while having fun with Sakura and Sasuke, he’d started missing home. He misses Iruka-sensei, and Ichiraku, and old man Hokage. He misses his plants too. Hopefully Iruka-sensei has taken care of them like he’d promised he would if Naruto ever had to go on a long mission.

They’d made it back to Konoha is just about ten days, so they’d been gone a total of three weeks. Surely Iruka-sensei hadn’t managed to kill his plants in that short a time.

As far as the mission had gone, ever since that one night, they hadn’t run into any other assailants—which was good a course!—but it certainly made things more dull than Naruto had been anticipating.

Sasuke has held onto the scroll since that night too, and Naruto has given up on bugging him about it. He is still curious about the contents of the package, but without Sakura backing him up anymore, he knows he wouldn’t be able to convince Sasuke. Even with her backing him up, they hadn’t been able to convince him. Besides, Naruto doesn’t really want to get into trouble over it either, so it's fine.

There’s a line of merchants trying to enter the village when they reach the gates, and Naruto is relieved to find that as Konoha shinobi, they can bypass the line and enter the village first. It's another thing to add to the list of perks he’d recently discovered he now has as a genin. It’s a good thing Sakura knows all this stuff already, otherwise he'd have no idea about any of it.

The gate guards are the same ones as last time, which is nice, (although Naruto can’t for the life of him remember their names. Kota-something, and Izumi?) The two chunin  take a minute to verify their identities, and Naruto waits impatiently next to Sasuke as they check over their IDs before letting them continue into the village.

"We should report back to the tower and deliver the scroll before we do anything else," Sasuke says, and Sakura agrees. It’s just past noon, so Naruto is fine waiting a little longer to get to Ichiraku's, (which is where Naruto had gotten Sakura and Sasuke to agree to go when they returned to the village!)

They finally get past the gate, and Naruto takes a deep breath, soaking in the familiar sights and a few familiar faces.

Familiar glares and scared looks too.

Being out of the village, and coming across people who don't know what he is had been refreshing. People had been nice to him, given him candy, waved and smiled at him. He’d almost forgotten how harsh people who do know what he is still are.

It’s okay though, really! It’s gotten better since he got his headband. People don’t hit him or shove him anymore at least!

"Why is that guy looking at us like that?" Sakura whispers, subtly nodding in the direction of a rather large man with very little hair on his head, who’s glaring in their direction.

"Is that another one of your prank victims?" Sasuke mutters, glancing at Naruto from the corner of his eye.

"Maybe. I don’t really remember everyone I pranked, I mean, it might have been a long time ago," Naruto says, lifting his hand to scratch at his cheek.

"What kind of pranks did you even pull on people? Sheesh, the way he’s looking at you, you’d think you murdered his whole family or something," Sakura says, crossing her arms.

Naruto might not have killed the man's family, but it’s highly possible the nine-tails did. It’s almost funny how close to the truth Sakura is.

"I know you painted the stone faces, but that doesn’t warrant that kind of reaction," Sasuke says as they round a corner and the angry man disappears from their view.

"Come on, Naruto," Sakura says gleefully, "I know you’re holding out on us, what kind of pranks did you—"

"Oh, look!" Naruto says, pointing at a lady in the street, "Isn’t that Ms. Aiko?"

"Oh, yeah! I guess her arm is all better now," Sakura says, noting that the woman's arm is no longer in a cast. Ms. Aiko spots them and waves, and Naruto and Sakura wave back. Sasuke opts for just nodding in her direction.

Thankfully it’s enough of a distraction that Sakura and Sasuke don’t bring up the angry man again, or Naruto's past history with pranking the citizens of Konoha.

Much to Naruto's delight, Iruka is at the mission desk when they enter the tower. He doesn’t notice them at first, too busy writing something on a sheet of paper.

"Iruka-sensei! We’re back!" Naruto yells, waving to get his attention. Iruka immediately looks up and spots them. A smile spreads across his face, as Naruto runs over to him.

"We finished our mission!" Naruto announces as Iruka stands up and reaches over the desk to ruffle his hair.

"So you did! You’re a few days early too, so I’m sure the client will be very happy. How did it go?"

"Really good! Mostly, anyway," Sakura says, throwing a quick side glance at Sasuke.

Sasuke fishes the scroll containing the package out of his pouch, and hands it over to Iruka, who hands it to a chunin next to him.

"That’s good to hear," Iruka says, turning his attention back to them.

"Um, Iruka-sensei, I just wanted to double check, when do we have to turn in the written report?" Sakura asks, wringing her hands behind her back.

"As soon as possible preferably, but you have forty-eight hours to do it. I know usually a jonin instructor would take care of the written report or the team leader, but in your case, you should try to write one together, or choose who among you will write it," Iruka explains.

"Oh, okay. Thanks, Iruka-sensei," Sakura sighs in relief.

"Oh, one more thing," Iruka says, "you should go see the Hokage after you turn in your report. He'll want to hear about how you did in person."

Sakura and Sasuke both nod. "Will do, Iruka-sensei," Sakura says.

"I’m sure you want to go relax for a bit and get a bite to eat, so I’ll let you go now. Make sure you get plenty of rest afterwards," Iruka says, sitting back down, and shooing them away with his hand, "Go on, I know you must be dying to get out of here."

"Yeah! Let’s go to Ichiraku's now!" Naruto says excitedly. He’s been waiting all day for this. Weeks even. "Bye, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto waves at him as he dashes for the door.

Sakura and Sasuke only catch up after Naruto's already finished two bowls of miso ramen. With extra pork.

"So how are we going to do the written report?" Sakura asks after she’s finished her bowl of ramen. Naruto, who’s on his fifth bowl, pauses to look up at her.

"You got the best grades in writing," Sasuke points out, setting his chopsticks on top of his finished bowl.

"Yeah, but this is more important, shouldn’t we write it together?" Sakura tries, hoping he'll agree. She does not feel like writing this report all by herself.

"Sure," Sasuke agrees after a moment, and Sakura grins.

"I’ll help too!" Naruto says excitedly, half turning in his seat to face her.

"Um, sure I guess," Sakura says. She doesn’t know how much help, if any, Naruto can give, but there’s no point in saying no.

"You’re going to help? Do you even know how to write your own name?" Sasuke says snidely, and Naruto immediately takes the bait.

"A courfe I oo!" Naruto retorts, his mouth full of food.

"Your handwriting is so bad it doesn’t even look like you’re writing words," Sasuke says, and Sakura wonders when he ever even saw Naruto's handwriting. She can’t recall Naruto ever writing anything except the seals he creates on blank tags, which are always so neat.

"I don’t think his handwriting is that bad…" Sakura says, trailing off when Sasuke raises an eyebrow.

"See? Sakura knows. My handwriting is perfectly fine," Naruto says. He brings his bowl to his mouth and gulps down the broth.

Sasuke sighs and pulls out a blank tag and a pen. "Here," he says, sliding the items across the counter to Naruto, "write your name on this then."

Naruto squints at the paper and pen for a few seconds, before picking up the pen and writing his name out, Uzumaki Naruto.

Sakura takes back everything she said. Naruto's handwriting is beyond atrocious. Calling it chicken scrawl would be too kind. How did Iruka-sensei even grade Naruto's tests?!

"What did you even write? That’s not even a letter!" Sakura says, pointing to what must be the 'Uzu' in Naruto's name.

"I told you," Sasuke says smugly.

"Well yours probably isn’t any better eith—" Naruto is cut off as Sasuke leans across the counter in front of Sakura to snatch the paper and pen.

He writes Uchiha Sasuke very neatly in the space under Naruto's name. The difference in their handwriting is like night and day.

Sasuke smirks at Naruto once he’s finished, and slides the paper toward the middle, in front of Sakura.

"Ugh! Well it’s not better than Sakura's! Sakura's handwriting is really pretty!" Naruto exclaims, picking up the pen and shoving it into Sakura's hands. "Show him, Sakura! Your handwriting is better than his."

Sasuke blinks and looks at her and Sakura's palms start sweating. Carefully, and neatly, she writes out her name Haruno Sakura right under Sasuke's.

"See?! Sakura has better handwriting than you, so you don’t win either," Naruto declares, crossing his arms and smiling triumphantly at Sasuke. If he's going to lose, he's taking Sasuke down with him.

"Yours is still the ugliest," Sasuke retorts, picking up the rectangular piece of paper and stuffing it into his pocket.

Sakura doesn’t really get how any of this has helped them decide what to do with the report, but she’ll take having the best handwriting on Team Seven.

"Big brother Naruto!" A high-pitched voice shrieks from across the street. All three of them turn to look as a small boy with a long blue scarf (that’s definitely a tripping hazard) runs up to them, or rather, to Naruto. Two other kids, a girl and a boy, follow more shyly.

"Konohamaru?" Naruto sounds surprised, "What are you doing here?"

"Did you hear big brother? I got into the academy! We’ve already had a test and I got an A!" The boy gestures widely in excitement.

"That’s really great!" Naruto cheers, and then looks at the other two kids. "Who are your friends?"

"I’m Moegi," the girl introduces herself. The boy is more shy and just glances nervously around.

"That’s Udon," Konohamaru declares, pointing at the poor boy, who looks like he wants to escape.

"It’s nice to meet you! My name is Naruto Uzumaki," Naruto says, grinning brightly, and it’s like an invisible wall is broken down immediately. Udon perks up and comes closer while Moegi starts rapidly firing off questions.

"Is it true that you defeated a jonin all by yourself?! And a chunin before that?! Oh! Oh! Can you teach us the jutsu you used to beat them?!"

Slightly taken aback, Naruto doesn’t immediately reply.

"Big brother, come play with us! We’re playing ninja right now, come on, come on!" Konohamaru jumps up and down, tugging on Naruto's hand.

"Yeah, come play with us! A fourth person will make it more fun!" Moegi grabs Naruto's other hand and helps Konohamaru drag Naruto out of his seat.

"Wait, guys! I have to help my team write a report right now, I can’t—"

"Please?" Udon says, "It’ll be a lot more fun if you do!"

"It’s okay, Naruto," Sakura says, "don’t worry about the report, we can do it tomorrow. You can go play with your friends."

"Really? Is that okay?" Naruto doublechecks.

Sakura nods, and Naruto finally lets himself get dragged away. "Okay, guys! I’m coming with you! Where are we going?"

"To the park!" Sakura hears Konohamaru reply, and then they’re out of sight, disappearing into the crowded street.

"I didn't realize he was so popular," Sasuke says, and Sakura turns to see that he’s half smiling. His smile drops as soon as his eyes meet hers, and he abruptly stands up, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"If we’re doing the report tomorrow, where do you want to meet so we can do it?" Sasuke asks, stepping out into the street.

"I guess we could use the genin commons, but there’s always… weird people there, so no actually," Sakura falls into step next to him and they head in the opposite direction Naruto was dragged to.

"Hm," Sasuke agrees, and turns down a side street.

"I…" Sakura hesitates for a moment, not sure how well this suggestion will go over, "I guess we could use someone’s house, right? But I can’t offer mine because my parents can get kind of…well they’d just overreact and be super embarrassing about it, so I’d rather not."

"Hn," Sasuke falls silent for a minute, a complicated look on his face. Sakura knows what her suggestion implies, and she hopes Sasuke, who’s a notoriously private person, won’t take it the wrong way. "We…can use my house. I have a big living room," he finally says, looking as though it physically pains him to suggest it.

"We don’t have to if you don't want to!" Sakura hurries to reply, "We can always use Naruto's apartment too, I’m sure he won’t mind."

"He told me he has pink mold growing in his shower."

"Oh. Maybe not then."

Sasuke actually smiles at that, and Sakura almost misses it with how quickly his face returns to its normal neutral expression.

"But still, if you don't want—"

"No, it’s fine," Sasuke cuts her off, "just bring Naruto to my house tomorrow morning so we can get this done."

"Okay, I’ll get him. What time?"

"Anytime in the morning is fine."

"Okay."

They reach Sakura's street, and Sasuke pauses for a moment.

"I’ll see you tomorrow," he says stiffly, before spinning around and continuing up the road.

"Oh, right. I’ll see you tomorrow, Sasuke!" Sakura waves before turning down her street. Now comes the most challenging part of today that’s she’s been mentally preparing for these last few days.

Facing her parents.

The way back home passes by Ino's apartment, and below Ino's apartment is the Yamanaka flower shop. Sakura used to go there all the time to talk with Ino when she wasn’t busy with customers. They’d talk about anything and everything and nothing, and laugh and fight and gossip over little things and sometimes big things.

She misses going there, but she hasn’t dared since her and Ino had that big fight. Things are less tense now, but it still feels weird, like they’re always tiptoeing around each other and at the same time completely disregarding each other, both too proud to apologize first.

Sakura stops for a minute in front of the shop, peering through the window to see if Ino is at the front counter. Mrs. Yamanka is inside, but she sees no sign of Ino. Tentatively, Sakura pushes open the glass door and enters the small shop.

The bells tinkling cause Mrs. Yamanka to look over, and when she spots Sakura, a warm smile crosses her face.

"Sakura, dear, it’s been awhile. How have you been?"

"Hello, Mrs. Yamanka, I’ve been well, thank you."

"Are you here to see Ino? I’m afraid she’s out right now."

"Oh, no, I was just getting some flowers for Mama. Do you have any recommendations? Pink is her favorite color."

Sakura had figured that giving Mama some flowers as a peace offering might spare her some of the over-dramatics. Hopefully, at least. There is unfortunately no saving her from Papa's.

Mrs. Yamanka makes a small bouquet for her, and tells Sakura she doesn’t have to pay, but Sakura insists until she relents and takes the money.

On the way back home, Sakura mentally preps herself with different dialogue options.

'You see, Mama and Papa, I did leave a note, so it’s not like it didn’t tell you at all. And I know you’d rather me tell you in person, but there really wasn’t any time. Besides, I was perfectly safe the whole time. This is what I’ve been trained to do, and this mission will be good for my career, which I know you’re worried about, so no harm no foul?'

Sighing, Sakura reaches her door and pulls out her key. They shouldn’t be back for a few hours anyway, so she still has more time to work on it.

Sasuke stands in the living room of his apartment in absolute horror. What on earth had possessed him to invite his teammates to his house?! This place needs to be cleaned from top to bottom before they can step foot inside. He needs to hide anything that shouldn’t be out.

Everything needs to be dusted. He was gone for three weeks though, it’s not like he could have magically kept all this clean, and hiring someone to clean for him is absolutely not an option. Surely they’ll understand if there’s a little dust?…Fuck, there’s even dust on his fake plant.

…Yeah, no. He’s just going to have to spend his time this evening cleaning his apartment.

Walking to the bedroom, Sasuke leaves his backpack on the floor to unpack later. He takes off his headband and lays it on the bedside table. His eyes are drawn to the green stuffed dinosaur sitting between his pillows.

That can definitely not be left out in plain sight. Quickly, as if Sakura and Naruto are about to walk through his door at this very moment, Sasuke grabs Meno, and stuffs him onto the highest shelf in his closet.

"Sorry, Meno, you’ll have to stay there until they leave," Sasuke whispers, closing the door behind him.

He opens his curtains and pulls the sliding glass door open to let in some fresh air. He gets to work on cleaning the bathroom first. The sink, the counters, the toilet, and a quick cleaning of the already clean shower.

Next is the living room. He dusts the half filled book shelves and the ceiling fan and…the fake plant. He sweeps the floor, moving the couches to make sure he gets everything. It wouldn't be a good look if Sakura or Naruto accidentally looked under the couch and saw all the dirt and dust that had accumulated.

The last place to clean is the kitchen and dining area which are basically one and the same. With the exception of the thin layer of dust that’s settled on the countertops, there isn’t much to clean. He wipes everything down anyway, scrubbing permanent sauce stains on the stove just in case they decide to come out today.

Everything’s going fine, and Sasuke thinks he’s almost done until he opens the fridge, and a horrible smell greets him.

Covering his nose, Sasuke searches for the source of the offensive smell, trying not to gag as he digs through his fridge. The first thing he finds is an expired milk carton. The thick barely liquid sloshes around when Sasuke shakes the carton.

Throwing the entire carton in the empty trash bag, Sasuke goes digging for anything else that might have gone bad in his fridge. The milk cannot be the source of that smell. It smells like an animal died in here.

Pinching his nose closed, Sasuke discovers two bags of moldy carrots next. He discards them and returns to looking. The source of the smell is uncovered at the back of his fridge.

Disgusted, Sasuke pulls the small package of once fresh chicken thighs out of the refrigerator. He remembers now. He’d bought this a day or two before they’d left. He’d completely forgotten about it.

The smell is making his eyes water, and after dumping the chicken pack into the trash, Sasuke takes a breather out on his balcony. Returning with a clothespin over his nose, Sasuke ties up the trash bag and takes it outside, down the stairs, and to the large bins over to the side.

With that taken care of, he returns inside to wash his hands and worry about the smell spreading through the apartment. He opens every window, and takes the cinnamon stick things out of his bedroom, placing them on the kitchen counter instead to counteract the rotten smell.

He takes everything out of the fridge next, and scrubs the inside thoroughly, but the smell still lingers. Closing the fridge helps a little, but that’ll just trap the smell inside.

Frustrated, Sasuke uses up another trash bag to throw away all the other things in the fridge. All of it smells like the chicken, and he doesn’t want to eat any of it, even if it is still good.

Still, the smell remains.

Now he’s hungry, and frustrated. He’s kept his bedroom door closed, so the smell hasn’t invaded it yet, but this is still a problem. If the smell is still here by tomorrow morning, Sakura and Naruto cannot be here. He needs to think of a backup plan quickly.

Suddenly Naruto's moldy bathroom isn’t so unappealing.

After showering and making himself feel clean at least, Sasuke unpacks his backpack. The time away from the problem-that-is-his-fridge has helped clear his mind a bit.

When he returns to the kitchen, he thinks to unplug the fridge and leave it open all evening and tonight. He'll order in food tonight, but first he needs more scented sticks to help with the smell.

There’s several packs of them inside a kitchen drawer because when he first brought them he hadn’t realized they’d last so long, and had ended up with too many. He sets them up in cups all around the kitchen and dining area, and one in the living room, which has a fainter—but still very much there—smell of rotten chicken.

He’s already made a plan to deal with Naruto and Sakura. He just needs to get to Sakura early enough tomorrow to let her know there’s been a change of plans, and they actually have to go to Naruto's.

He’s still working on his excuse as to why though. 'A water pipe burst,' sounds too dramatic, and 'my downstairs neighbor wouldn’t like all the noise,' isn’t convincing enough. He'll think of it by tomorrow. Now, he’s going to sleep and when he wakes up hopefully this headache will be gone.

"—and then you left a note! A note! And all it says is you’ll be gone for a few weeks on a mission! You didn’t even tell us where you were going!"

Papa pauses for a moment to take several deep breaths, and Sakura takes the opportunity to respond.

"You know I can’t tell you any details about the mission, it’s not allowed."

"That’s not the point, Sakura! For all we knew, you were hurt and dying out there and we would have no idea, and no way to get to you! We were so worried!" Mama bursts into tears again, and Sakura winces. This has not gone well at all. The flowers hadn’t pacified Mama, and now both her parents have been lecturing her for half an hour straight. 

"I’m a ninja! This is my job! I have to obey the rules and take the missions I’m given!"

"As a genin you can refuse such low level missions!" Papa snaps, and Mama puts a hand on his arm.

"It was a C-rank! I couldn’t forfeit it! My team has been waiting for one for ages! You're always telling me that I have to worry about the future and my career and that I can’t stay a genin for the rest of my life! So why is it wrong of me to take this opportunity to prove my capabilities! We did well on this mission, which means we can get more of them, and C-ranks pay way higher than D-ranks! Shouldn’t you be happy about this?!"

"You don’t have a jonin instructor! Don’t you see how dangerous this is for you Sakura? I would feel good about this if I knew there was someone capable watching over you out there, but there isn’t! I can’t be happy that you’re leaving the village to go on dangerous missions when all I can think about is you getting hurt or worse, killed out there!" Papa's crying now too, and Sakura feels like shit.

She opens her mouth to speak again, but Mama cuts her off.

"If you want to make more money, there’s safer options for you to choose. You're so smart Sakura and you have so many options, why choose something so dangerous that’s only going to end up getting you killed? We only sent you to the academy in the first place because we wanted you to learn how to defend yourself, and because the academy here offers good courses on other subjects as well. When you told us you were going to become a kunoichi we didn’t stop you because we thought it’d be fine as long as you had a jonin to look after you and teach you.

We are so proud of you Sakura, but without an instructor you won’t get far as a genin. Im not saying that to be mean, I'm only speaking the truth. We don’t want you to have to stay a genin for the rest of your life, what kind of parents would want that? The life of a genin is hard, and doesn’t pay enough for the kind of work you do. If you’re still a genin by the time you’re an adult, you’ll even lose respect because everyone will have expected you to have moved on to chunin at that point.

We want you to succeed, and there’s other options for you to do so without risking your life. We have enough money, we can send you to the capital, and you can study whatever you want there. The school year has already started, but you're a smart girl and I know you can catch up quickly—"

"No, I don’t want—"

"You can stay with your aunt and uncle, they’ll be happy to have you. I can arrange for Emi to come get you next week—"

"Mama!"

Finally Mama stops speaking, and Sakura stands up, eyes burning, and throat tightening with the effort of keeping in her own tears.

"Mama, I’m not going to quit being a ninja. I’ve been doing well I promise," a sob tries to force its way out her, and Sakura shuts it down. She can’t cry here. Shinobi don’t cry, and if she cries, she won’t be able to convince her parents.

"I promise I've been doing good. I won’t get in trouble, I’ll be fine. I don’t want to go to the capital, I want to stay here, I want to keep being a ninja. I’ll get stronger, I’ve been trying to learn genjutsu, I—"

"Sakura," Papa interrupts, "we know you’re doing your best, but it’s okay. There’s no shame in quitting—"

"Yes, there is! I don’t want to quit! I want—"

Sakura takes a deep breath, trying to steady her voice.

"—I want to protect people and help people. I want to be strong enough to do that. This is what I want to do, I’m not quitting, and I’m not leaving my team—my friends, to go the capital!"

Despite her best effort, Sakura can feel the tears pooling in her eyes, and blurring her vision. This isn’t what she expected at all. She thought they’d be worried, sure, and maybe a little upset, but not this. She hadn’t realized they’d wanted her to quit when she failed that stupid bell test. She hadn’t realized they were planning on sending her away.

She thought she’d get to enjoy dinner together with them tonight after being apart for so long, but now she doesn’t even want to look at them.

"Sakura, you don’t have to make a decision now, just take some time to think about it—"

"No! I’ve already made up my mind! I’m not going!"

She can’t stay here any longer. She turns and runs to her room, slamming the door shut, locking it behind her.

Sakura can hear her parents' footsteps coming down the hall. She enters her bathroom and locks that door too, covering her ears so she doesn’t have to hear them demanding she come out and talk to them.

She curls up on the bathroom floor, and finally allows herself to cry.

Sakura doesn’t know how long she’s in the bathroom for, but when she finally comes out, it’s gotten dark outside. As hungry as she is, Sakura doesn’t dare try to sneak into the kitchen. She just flops into bed and tries to sort her thoughts out.

Her own parents think she’ll fail as a shinobi. They want to send her away. All those times they mentioned her 'furthering her career,' and 'doing something that could actually make her money,' they hadn't been talking about her making chunin, or getting C-ranks; they’d been talking about her quitting and doing a different job.

Ever since she was little, this is what Sakura has wanted to do. Shinobi were the coolest people in the world to her. Fighting for others and making selfless sacrifices for the good of everyone they protect. 

As she’d gotten older, she realized it was going to be a lot more difficult than that. War wasn’t cool at all, and neither is killing people. But helping people, and doing something to contribute to her nation and to her village was still something Sakura wanted to do. She wanted to keep her friends and family safe, to make sure they can always feel happy and protected. That was something worth giving her life for, like the Third Hokage said.

She’d imagined becoming a shinobi alongside Ino and Fumiko. They’d save people, and go on fun missions together. That had been her dream.

It still is her dream, just with different people. Even doing D-ranks, every time someone thanks them, and everytime Sakura feels as though they’ve genuinely helped someone out, it makes her feel warm inside.

She knows it’s still dangerous and thinking nothing can ever go wrong is a stupid thought. In just this last mission, there had been that foreign nin, and they could have been hurt if the anbu hadn’t intervened.

It doesn’t matter though. She’ll get stronger, and help even more people. Papa and Mama just don’t understand, but it’s okay. She’ll show them when she makes chunin. She isn’t a failure, and it doesn’t matter if their team doesn’t have a jonin to teach her.

She doesn’t need one.

Chapter Text

Tap, Tap

Sakura wakes up with a groan, and rolls onto her side. There's a tapping sound on glass, and it takes Sakura a moment to realize something is tapping on her balcony door. She tries to ignore it.

Tap, Tap

………

Tap, Tap, Tap

Thinking it must be a bird or some other animal, Sakura stumbles out of bed and pulls one of the curtains open a little ways, peering out. Maybe she can just scare it away and go back to sleep.

She is not prepared to see Sasuke Uchiha of all people, standing on her balcony and looking around nervously.

For a few seconds she can only stare, her sluggish mind struggling to comprehend what is happening right now. Then Sasuke turns back around, raising his hand to knock on the door again, and they make eye contact through the glass.

Sakura freezes. Sasuke just stares and blinks. And then blinks again.

Realizing she should probably open the door at least, Sakura fumbles with the lock and slides it open. She says the first thought that comes to mind.

"How did you get up here?"

"…From there," Sasuke replies, pointing at the window overhang just below them, as if that makes  any sense either. Sakura is too tired to make any sense about any of this.

"Why?" Sakura asks next.

Sasuke gives her a strange look, and opens his mouth as if to say something, but nothing comes out.

With a jolt, Sakura realizes something must be wrong! Why else would Sasuke show up out of the blue like this?

"What’s wrong?! Has something happened?" She asks, feeling more alert now that her brain has decided to kickstart at the thought of danger.

"My…the power—isn’t working," Sasuke finally says, and now it’s Sakura's turn to blink dumbly at him.

"We can’t do the report at my place anymore, so I came to get you so we could go to Naruto's."

"Oh." Right. The report. She’d forgotten about with everything that had happened yesterday.

Sakura turns to look at the digital clock on her bedside table. It reads 7:06am.

"Okay, sure, let me just get ready first," Sakura says, suppressing a yawn.

"I’ll wait here," Sasuke says, and turns around to look down at the street below.

After sliding the door shut and pulling the curtain closed, Sakura runs to the bathroom first to make sure her appearance isn’t too disheveled.

After the weeks she’s spent together with her team, she’s already woken up several times with her hair a mess and her clothes wrinkled, but so had they, and she’d stopped caring about it once she realized both of them were more keen on making fun of each other than her. (Naruto would tease Sasuke about his bedhead occasionally, which in turn caused Sasuke to make fun of Naruto drooling in his sleep. Neither of them said anything about her hair or anything she did in her sleep, so it couldn’t have been that bad anyway.)

Still, she needs to look at least presentable to other people once she goes outside. She brushes her hair, getting out any tangles before washing her face. Her eyes are slightly red, but there’s not much she can do about that besides hope the redness goes away soon. She ties her headband on and brushes her teeth next before changing into clean clothes.

Sakura attaches the kunai holder to her leg, but forgoes on the pouch, thinking she won’t need it today since they won’t be taking any missions, only writing a report.

The hard part now is getting her sandals without her parents noticing. Mama goes to work at eight o’clock, and Papa leaves at nine. They’re probably eating breakfast right now, and Sakura is thankful they haven’t tried to talk to her this morning yet.

Taking a deep breath, Sakura unlocks her door and creeps down the hallway. She can hear the clinking of spoons, but no one is talking. It’s weirdly quiet, which makes it even harder to sneak around. Silently stepping past the dining room, and avoiding the creaky floorboard, Sakura tiptoes to the front door and grabs her sandals before sneaking back undetected.

She slides her balcony door open and steps outside.

"Are you ready now?" Sasuke asks, turning around to look at her.

"Almost, I just need to put these on," Sakura replies, sitting down to pull her sandals on. Sasuke hums and turns back around.

"So what happened to your power?" Sakura asks, putting on the second sandal.

Sasuke stiffens for a second before answering, "A line is down."

"Oh, hopefully it gets fixed soon then."

Sakura stands and is immediately struck by the thought that she has no idea how to get down from here. She’s never tried sneaking out from her balcony before.

Sasuke however has no qualms about jumping off her balcony and down to the window overhang below them. He crouches down and grabs the ledge before dangling his feet over, holding on for a second before letting himself drop to the sidewalk below. He looks up expectantly at her, waiting for her to follow.

It’s fine, Sakura thinks. She’ll use the chakra sticking thing to keep herself from falling off the ledge, and then drop down like Sasuke had. Easy.

It does end up being easier than she thought it would be, even if a few neighbors give her weird looks.

Naruto has just finished gulping down a glass of water, (he’d forgotten he didn’t have milk in the fridge, and forgot to get some yesterday evening,) when he hears someone knocking on his door.

Suspicious.

Who would be knocking on his door? It can’t be old man Hokage. He hasn’t come by since Naruto made genin. Iruka-sensei must be teaching a class right now, so it can’t be him either.

Tucking a kunai into his sleeve, Naruto walks to the door and opens it only enough so he can peer outside and see who it is.

It’s Sakura and Sasuke.

"Oh, what are you guys doing here?" Naruto asks. Sasuke raises an eyebrow at him while Sakura shoves the door further open and barges inside.

"Do you have anything to eat?" she asks, heading for his kitchen immediately after kicking off her sandals.

"Um…" Naruto follows Sakura to the kitchen and watches her rifle through his cabinets while Sasuke closes the front door.

"I thought we weren’t doing a mission today?" Naruto asks, turning to Sasuke since Sakura looks a little preoccupied at the moment.

"We’re doing the report here," Sasuke says, inspecting the couch before sitting down. Sakura has pulled a ramen cup out of his cabinet and starts rummaging around for something else.

"Oh. I didn’t realize you were coming over," Naruto scratches the back of his head, still confused at the sudden intrusion.

"It’s fine," Sakura says, "I was originally going to come get you so we could go to Sasuke's, but his power is out."

Once Sakura finishes preparing a cup of ramen for herself, she joins Sasuke and Naruto in the living room. Sasuke brings out three sheets of paper, a manila envelop, and a black pen, and sets them on the small table.

"We should make a rough draft first, and then we can fix it up on another sheet of paper," Sasuke explains, "and the third one is just in case we need an extra," he finishes with a shrug.

Sakura slurps up some noodles while Naruto nods along with what Sasuke is saying. It makes sense so far.

"The first part is easy at least, write the mission number at the top, and then our names," Sakura says.

Sasuke starts writing. They had practice writing reports in the academy in this format before, so he knows what to write for the first and last lines, and what to label the manila envelope.

Report for Mission C-1999-0421-0113:

—

012601—Haruno Sakura / Genin / Team 7

012606—Uchiha Sasuke / Genin / Team 7

012607—Uzumaki Naruto / Genin / Team 7

Here, Sasuke stops writing.

"Why is my name last?" Naruto asks, frowning as he leans over to look.

"Because it’s in alphabetical order," Sasuke huffs, twirling the pen around with his fingers.

"Oh," Naruto sits back again.

"We need to get straight to the point and be concise," Sasuke says, tapping his chin with the pen, "There’s nothing of note that happened between us leaving Konoha and arriving in Tanzaku. Should I put the date we arrived in Tanzaku and received the package next?"

"Yeah, that makes sense," Sakura agrees.

Sasuke starts writing again, until Sakura interrupts loudly, "Wait! The context! We need to explain the mission objective first, before all this."

Sasuke winces slightly and writes underneath:

Mission Objective: Retrieve a package contained in a scroll in Tanzaku and bring it back to Konoha

He circles the mission objective and draws an arrow from the circle pointing above the first line to indicate where it should be in the report.

From there, they continue working on the report, but most of it ends up getting crossed out once it’s deemed, 'Unnecessary Information.'

It doesn’t take Naruto long to get bored and start daydreaming. A memory from last evening, when he’d been at Ichiraku's again, slips back into his mind.

"Hey, Sakura, do you remember that team that was fighting that one day when we went to train?"

Sakura glances at him, her eyes lighting up when she realizes he must have some gossip to share. "Yeah, I remember them. Why?"

"When I was having dinner yesterday, I overheard some other genin talking about it," Naruto leans forward to whisper conspiratorially, "Apparently, Asahi and Haru got suspended for fighting again. They won’t get their headbands back for three months!"

"They got suspended?! It had to have been a really bad fight," Sakura says, propping her elbows on the table, and waiting for Naruto to tell the full story.

"I heard they were fighting on a mission—" Naruto pointedly ignores Sasuke sighing and rolling his eyes to fill in Sakura on all the details.

Even as Sasuke pretends to continue working on the report, Naruto knows he’s listening too because he’s stopped writing.

Once Naruto's done retelling the story, Sakura sighs. "It’s so unlucky that Kakashi tested us instead of their jonin-sensei. They definitely would have failed Kakashi's test, and we could have gotten their jonin instead."

Sasuke frowns at this, seemingly giving up on pretending to not listen. "Jonin aren't assigned to teams randomly. There was probably some reason he was the one who tested us, like a specific skill set that matched ours or something."

"What skill set would we have in common?" Sakura asks, frowning as she tries to think of a commonality all three of them have.

"Maybe he has a diverse skill set to match our diverse team. He did seem skilled on all kinds of jutsu," Sasuke observes, and then looks disgusted for a moment, although Naruto has no idea why.

Noticing the report still sitting unfinished on the table, Sasuke sits up straight, and clears his throat. "We need to finish the report."

"Right," Sakura picks up her empty ramen cup that’s been sitting on the table for awhile now, and leaves the room to throw it away in the kitchen trash can. "What should we say about the foreign nin who attacked us?"

"I thought we weren’t supposed to say anything about that," Naruto says, remembering the dog anbu's warning.

"Yeah but that was before," Sakura replies, coming back with a cup of water and sitting back in her spot.

"We could vaguely reference it?" Sasuke suggests, eyebrows drawing together in concentration.

Together they come up with a few ways to reference the event without mentioning the anbu. Naruto's suggestions aren’t subtle at all, Sasuke's are too vague, and Sakura thinks they should be giving more details anyway. Sasuke ends up scribbling out all the suggestions.

"We can’t just say, 'There was a foreign nin who we didn’t recognize with plain features that attacked us,' and move on with the report," Sakura argues, "There’ll be questions as to what happened after we were attacked. We can’t allude to us defeating him since that’d be lying on an official report which we definitely cannot do, especially since it can very easily be proven that we didn’t, so that’s not an option. I think we can mention the anbu being there, why can’t we?"

"The dog anbu told us not to tell anyone though," Naruto mumbles, looking thoroughly bored with the conversation, but still trying to participate.

"I have no idea what the protocol for this situation is," Sasuke admits, "but if we mention the anbu and we weren’t supposed to, then we could get in trouble that way too."

Sakura sighs, and kicks lightly at Naruto, who had at some point sprawled out on the floor. They sit for a few minutes in silence, trying to think up another solution. Sasuke lightly taps his pen against the page filled with mostly blacked out lines and scribbled out sentences. To Sakura and Sasuke's surprise, Naruto is the one who comes up with a solution first.

"Why don’t we just ask someone who knows what the protocol or whatever is?"

"I…guess we could ask someone," Sakura says hesitantly, "but who could we ask? We can’t exactly ask the mission desk chunin to help us write a report for them to read later. Plus, if we really aren’t supposed to mention the anbu, we could get into trouble for asking them too."

"We could ask Iruka-sensei! He wouldn’t get us in trouble for asking for help, and I know he’ll help us! He always helped me write the practice reports before when I had trouble," Naruto sits upright and looks between Sasuke and Sakura, waiting for them to agree with him.

"Iruka-sensei would help…" Sakura says slowly, looking more and more convinced.

"Hn," Sasuke nods once, although his face says he doesn’t like the idea much.

In the end, they all end up leaving the apartment with their half written report, and start walking toward the academy.

They wait until lunch break to ambush Iruka in his classroom. He’s setting up the next lesson on the chalkboard when they enter.

"Iruka-sensei?" Sakura says nervously, walking up to his desk. Iruka turns around, looking slightly surprised.

"What are you three doing here?" He asks, still, pressing the chalk against the board where he’d stopped writing mid-letter.

"We need your help with something!" Naruto blurts out. Iruka looks alarmed as he sets down the chalk and approaches them.

"It’s our report," Sakura quickly clarifies, before he gets too worried.

"Your report?" Iruka prompts, and looks at Sasuke who lays out the mess of a report on Iruka's desk for him to see.

"…Ah…huh…Which part of this did you need my help with exactly?" Iruka says in a tone that implies he thinks they need help with all of it.

"It’s…well, the thing is Iruka-sensei, we weren’t sure if we were allowed to put something in our report, but we didn’t want to leave it out in case it’s important," Sakura tries to explain.

"I have a high enough clearance level," Iruka says, understanding filling his features, "You can tell me what you need to."

Sakura and Naruto take turns explaining the event to Iruka in hushed whispers, and Sasuke occasionally adds in a detail or two when he thinks Sakura or Naruto have missed something important. Iruka listens and nods along, his face growing serious.

"You shouldn’t mention the anbu directly," Iruka starts explaining once they’ve finished, "Instead, use the phrase 'Konoha forces,' when referring to them. The anbu will have their own report with the important details stored away somewhere else, so it isn’t necessary that you directly refer to them."

Team Seven's eyes all widen in understanding, as if Iruka has just revealed the secret of the universe to them.

Sakura takes the sheet of paper with their rough draft, and writes a few lines. "Will this work, Iruka-sensei?" she asks, sliding the sheet over to him once she’s finished.

Iruka reads it over carefully. "It’s good. You can add that into your report, but I would put the location right after the date."

Sakura nods and makes a side note next to her sentences. "Thanks for the help, Iruka-sensei!"

"Don’t be afraid to ask if you ever need my help with anything. I’ll always try to help out my students when they need me," Iruka says, smiling softly.

Iruka's class will be starting soon, so after they all thank him again, Team Seven head out down the hallway, intent on finishing the report and turning it in.

They’re almost at the exit when Sasuke stops abruptly and turns around. "I forgot…my pen. Go ahead without me, I’ll catch up," he says, already walking away back toward Iruka's classroom.

"Okay," Sakura says, slightly confused since she definitely remembers Sasuke picking up the pen and putting it in his pocket. Maybe he dropped it or something.

"Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka looks up from a textbook he’s flipping through to see Sasuke standing in the doorway, his eyes glued to the floor, and his hands shoved in his pockets.

"Sasuke? Is there anything else you need?" Iruka asks kindly.

This situation reminds Sasuke all too much of the times when he was still a student, and came to Iruka-sensei for help regarding schoolwork or…anything really. He would always come to Iruka when no else was around back then too, and although he’s no longer hiding half his face behind his shirt collar, he still has his hands shoved into his pockets.

Sasuke waits a few moments, building up the courage to ask what he needs to. Eventually he comes closer, but his eyes remain glued to the floor boards.

"I forgot to clean my fridge out before we left for the mission," he whispers, eyes darting up to look at Iruka's face for a moment, before shooting back down. "There was chicken," he continues after another moment, but goes quiet after that, refusing to elaborate any further.

Iruka can figure what the problem must be on his own though.

"Baking soda can help get rid of the smell in the fridge," Iruka says, and proceeds to explain how to clean the fridge and leave a sheet of baking soda inside to absorb the smell. "After tonight, you can throw out that baking soda, but you can keep a small bowl of baking soda in your fridge normally too, to help keep it smelling fresh all the time. As for your house, you’ll want to leave the windows open and try lighting a few scented candles."

Sasuke nods along, his eyes sometimes flickering up to Iruka's face as he talks, still embarrassed he ever had to ask about this.

"Okay," Sasuke says, and then turns to leave. He opens the door to leave, but remembering his manners, pauses in the doorway and looks back. "Thanks," he says, before shutting the door behind him.

They finish the report fairly easily after getting advice from Iruka-sensei. Sakura writes the actual report that they’re going to turn in, and they head toward the tower next to hand it over to a desk chunin, and see the Hokage.

"You can go up to see Lord Third now. He’s been expecting you," a tired looking chunin tells them as she adds their report to a small stack beside her. Most of the chunin at the desk usually look tired or stern, like the soul has been sucked out of them, but this particular lady looks ready to drop dead any moment. Sakura almost feels bad for burdening her with more work.

They head upstairs immediately, and knock on the door to the Hokage's office.

"You can come in," Lord Third's familiar voice says. Naruto doesn’t hesitate to throw the door open and practically skip inside.

"We finished our report, so we came to see you!" Naruto announces. Sakura will never get use to Naruto's informal way of speaking and acting when in front of the Hokage. She tries to subtly kick at his ankle as she comes to stand beside him, lowering her head in greeting to Lord Third. She can see Sasuke doing the same next to her from the corner of her eye.

"Yes. I heard you did well on your mission, but I wanted to hear from you in person," Lord Third smiles, and Sakura stands up just a little straighter. Did they do so well that the Hokage had taken special notice of them?

"Since we did really well, does this mean we can get more C-ranks?!" Naruto asks.

"Yes, but not right away, of course. There are many D-ranks that still must be done before you can gain enough experience to be regularly given C-ranks. Everything has its due time, so be patient and continue to work hard for the sake of the village," Lord Third says.

To Sakura that just sounds as though they’re going to be stuck back on D-ranks again, and judging from Naruto's expression, he thinks the same thing.

Lord Third reaches into a drawer and pulls out three envelopes. "This is your pay for the mission," he explains, placing the envelopes on the desk in front of him. Naruto doesn’t hesitate to grab the envelope with his name on it, and after a moment Sakura and Sasuke take their's too.

"Wow! This is so much!" Naruto exclaims, and Sakura turns to find that Naruto has already opened his envelope, and is counting the cash inside. Lord Third chuckles, and Sakura can only feel relieved he didn’t feel the need to lecture them because of Naruto's brashness today.

There’s a knock on the door, and a man in a green flak jacket enters.

"You’ll have to excuse me now," Lord Third says, smiling again, "I have more meetings to attend to."

That’s definitely a dismissal.

"Thank you for your time, Lord Third," Sakura says, lowering her head, and shoving Naruto's down as well. She’s not sure if he’s oblivious at this point, or if he’s just that stupid.

She can only breath properly again once they’re out the room and heading back down the stairs.

"Naruto, you have to bow your head when you greet the Hokage," Sakura admonishes quietly.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but it’s so stuffy to do things like that," Naruto says, crossing his arms behind his head.

Ah. So stupid it is then.

"It’s called being respectful," Sakura frowns.

Naruto grumbles something Sakura can’t hear, and she frowns even more. Before she can berate him again, a voice calls her name. She looks across the room over Naruto's head to see who it is.

"Kabuto!" She exclaims, recognizing her friend, who is standing with what must be his teammates at the mission desk. When she waves, he waves back.

"Kabuto?" Naruto asks, squinting at the man, "He looks really nerdy."

"Don’t be rude!" Sakura hisses, slapping him lightly on the arm. Kabuto says something to his team, (she can tell it’s his team because they’re wearing matching clothes,) before leaving them and walking over to her.

"Have you just gotten back?" He asks her once he’s close enough, eyes briefly flickering over to Sasuke and Naruto.

"We got back yesterday actually," Sakura replies.

"Oh? The mission was successful I hope?"

"Yeah! We even finished it early."

"Are you free then this evening? I’d like to catch up some. Have you finished reading that book yet?"

Naruto makes a disgruntled noise, but Sakura ignores him. "Yeah, I even had time to re-read it actually."

"I’m leaving now," Sasuke says abruptly, "We'll meet up here tomorrow for another mission, usual time?"

"Oh, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow then," Sakura replies.

"I’ve got something to do too! Bye, Sakura!" Naruto runs after Sasuke who’s already made it to the door, leaving Sakura with Kabuto.

"Those are your teammates, Sasuke and Naruto, right?" Kabuto asks, looking amused.

"Yeah. Sorry I didn’t introduce you properly," Sakura says, but Kabuto just waves it off.

"It’s quite alright. Maybe next time I’ll get to meet them properly."

It had been a few minutes since he'd left the tower now, and Sasuke's irritation grows more and more with every step he takes. Naruto is still walking behind him.

"Why are you following me?" Sasuke asks, trying to walk faster to lose Naruto. Somehow he's still keeping up just fine despite his shorter legs.

"I’m not following you! I’m going to the market," Naruto crosses his arms and walks even faster than Sasuke, trying to get ahead.

Feeling petty, Sasuke walks even faster, "You don’t have to follow me; pick a different street to get to the market!"

"You pick a different street!" Naruto retorts, trying to trip up Sasuke as he runs ahead. "Now you’re the one who’s following me, Sasuke!" He sticks his tongue out as he pulls further away.

That little—!

Sasuke takes off in a dead sprint, but Naruto is actually pretty fast, and he struggles to catch up to him. They’re almost there when Naruto goes slightly wide around the last turn, and Sasuke, seeing his opportunity, cuts through on the inside, finally catching him. What he doesn’t anticipate is Naruto flailing out his arms as he loses balance trying to avoid someone in his path, toppling into Sasuke and sending them both landing on the ground heavily.

Thankfully, Naruto cushions most of his fall.

"Ow," Naruto whines, shoving Sasuke off and moving into a sitting position, rubbing at his elbow and forearm which had gotten mildly scraped up. Sitting up too, Sasuke realizes that his knees had suffered the same fate.

"Dumbass!" Sasuke snaps, standing up and brushing some of the dirt off himself.

"That’s your fault! You ran into me!" Naruto yells, still sitting in the street, and now drawing attention from people who give him dirty looks.

Sasuke grabs Naruto's uninjured arm and drags him up. "I still won by the way, even though you had a head start."

"No, you didn’t! Besides, I wasn't even trying," Naruto replies childishly. They both know that’s a lie, so Sasuke doesn’t deign it necessary to reply. This time.

He's starting to grow uncomfortable with the amount of people looking at them, so he starts walking in the direction of the fresh produce stalls, hoping to find some tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables he needs.

Naruto trails after him, seemingly oblivious to the attention they’ve drawn. Or maybe he’s just ignoring it. Probably the latter.

"You’re still following me," Sasuke feels obligated to point out.

"I am not!" Naruto replies hotly, and moves ahead to look at a different stall.

Sasuke takes his time choosing four of the best tomatoes he can find before moving on. He's about to pass by Naruto when he sees what he’s about to pay for and has to stop and say something.

"Those apples are too soft. Get these ones instead," Sasuke says, handing Naruto some healthy looking apples that look shiny and juicy, and feel firm.

"Oh," Naruto blinks at him in a weird way (as weirdly as one can blink anyway,) and lets Sasuke take away the apples that are starting to brown and look a bit wrinkled in some small areas. When Sasuke is finished returning the apples to the crate they were taken from, he notices the vendor's miffed expression. The man is probably upset he wasn’t able to get rid of his bad produce.

Naruto takes some coins out of his ridiculous frog wallet, and pays the vendor who grudgingly accepts the money and hands Naruto a paper bag for the apples.

"I'm surprised you’re buying something healthy," Sasuke notes as they continue to another stall.

"Fruit is okay, it’s vegetables that I don’t really like," Naruto says, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the mere thought, "but Iruka-sensei said I have to have at least one type of fruit and one type of vegetable in my house at all times." He sighs heavily after saying this, as if having to eat a vegetable pains him to his very core.

"Don’t you like cucumbers?" Sasuke asks, remembering Naruto mentioning it before.

"Yeah, but they’re like a fruit too, so they’ren't like the other vegetables. That’s why they actually taste okay."

Sasuke has no idea what Naruto means by that, but Naruto knows more about plants than Sasuke, so he isn’t going to ask at peril of sounding stupid.

They both go from stall to stall with each other, looking at the produce and buying what they need to. Turns out, Naruto's a real penny-pincher on anything that isn’t ramen, and is constantly looking for a discount or deal.

"I have to go to the store too. I need milk, and butter. And cheese," Naruto says as they leave the market.

"Hn. I need things too," Sasuke replies, adjusting his grip on one of the bags. It’s really too bad he can’t seal this stuff in a storage scroll, but last time he’d done it, he accidentally crushed the food inside and it came out of the scroll a mess. So yeah. He’s not doing that again until he can figure out how to prevent the food from being ruined.

They go their separate ways inside the store, Naruto to the dairy aisle, and Sasuke to where he hopes he can find baking soda.

After he acquires the baking soda and a few other items, he heads to checkout, and finds that Naruto has already finished and is waiting for him near the door. Sasuke decides to ignore the way he almost feels glad that he did.

They both step out of the store, bags in hand and ready to head home, when they hear a commotion further up the street. A few people are looking and pointing, and Sasuke quickly spots what they’re seeing.

"Is he that bushy brow-sensei?" Naruto whispers loudly as they both stare at the spectacle before them.

"I think so," Sasuke mutters as a man with a bowl-cut draws closer, walking down the street on his hands, and looking absolutely ridiculous while doing so. His small clone is right behind him, doing the exact same thing.

The jonin is wearing some absolutely horrible looking makeup that must have been some prank on him or something, for no sane person would willingly go out in public looking like that. His already large eyebrows have been drawn even bigger, and he has bright red spots on his cheeks and nose that contrast horribly with the pale blue eye shadow and purple lipstick.

"Come on, Lee!" The man shouts exuberantly, pausing for a second to look back.

"Yes, Gai-sensei!" The boy in the green jumpsuit yells, speeding up until he’s next to his sensei.

A Hyuga boy and a girl with space buns walk a short distance behind them, both carrying a stack of boxes in their arms. They both wear matching expressions of equal parts disgust, horror, and embarrassment.

Sasuke struggles to keep his lips from twitching upward, but Naruto, who had actually tried to suppress his laughter, can’t hold it in anymore and doubles over, clutching at his stomach as he howls in laughter, rewarding them with a vicious glare from the Hyuga boy.

It’s so amusing to Naruto, that it’s the first thing he tells Sakura about when they meet up at their usual time the next morning.

Sasuke gets their mission while Naruto giggles though telling Sakura what they’d seen. It’s back to the usual D-ranks it seems. Today, they’ve been sent to walk someone’s dogs.

Naruto insists on walking the biggest, most rambunctious looking dog, and Sakura and Sasuke end up with the three smaller, and surprisingly well behaved dogs.

While Naruto is dragged ahead, Sakura takes the moment to tell Sasuke what she’d found out yesterday while talking to her friend with the glasses.

"I asked Kabuto if he knew any villages with an eighth note insignia, and he told me it sounds like some new hidden village in the Land of Rice Fields," Sakura says, "He didn’t know much about the village though, since it’s so new, but he did tell me that the village is called Otogakure."

"Otogakure…" Sasuke repeats, frowning slightly, "Why would a new village risk crossing into a major nation's territory just for that package? It couldn’t have been that important if the mission was marked as a C-rank."

"It’s just a theory of mine," Sakura says, "but maybe the client lied about the importance of the package? Or, Otogakure got false information about it and thought it was something important. Or we weren’t the targets at all and only accidentally got caught up in something."

"That's more than one theory," Sasuke can’t help but point out.

It’s rather useless to speculate on what truly happened that day however, so the conversation soon shifts into something else.

Miraculously, Naruto manages to not get dragged away, and they complete the mission without losing the dog or Naruto. 

Chapter Text

It only takes a day or two to get back into the old routine. D-ranks become even more annoying as the weather gets warmer and warmer by the day. It rains more often too, causing some days to be unbearably humid.

Sakura's parents sit down to talk with her again, but this time they say they understand that she needs more time to decide, and maybe they can discuss further education again next year when she can have made up her mind about what she wants to do. Wanting the matter to drop, Sakura agrees, hoping that by next year, her parents will see how serious she is about this, and won’t keep trying to convince her to choose a different career.

Many of their missions now consist of going to the farms just outside Konoha's walls and working as hired help doing various odd jobs. While the pay for these kinds of D-ranks is a bit higher than the past ones they’ve had, Sakura doesn’t think it’s worth it. Her back is killing her, and worst of all, the skin on her hands is dry from being covered in dirt all the time. The hand lotion she’s gotten can only do so much.

She’s started having to come up with lame excuses to skip out on training with Naruto and Sasuke after a long mission, too tired to keep up with them, but too embarrassed to admit that she is. Honestly, she doesn’t know how Naruto is still so full of energy by the end of the day. While he grumbles and complains about the work sometimes and drags his feet for show, a few seconds later he’ll be darting around, eyes bright, and loud as ever like he hasn’t just spent the whole day doing difficult manual labor.

Sasuke just stops talking completely, and maybe walks a little slower when he’s tired. But at least she can tell he is tired. Naruto must be a freak of nature to keep going the way he does.

Sasuke seems to especially not do well in the heat. On a particularly hot and sunny day in which there isn’t a single cloud in sight, they end up working outside from morning until late afternoon. When Sasuke meets up with them the next morning, his cheeks, nose, forehead, and ears are all pink from sunburn.

"Like a tomato," Naruto snickers. Sasuke somehow turns even redder at that comment, directing a glare that looks less intimidating than usual at Naruto.

"I will set you on fire," Sasuke darkly promises. And he does.

Naruto calls him 'Tomato face,' during lunch and Sasuke directs a mini fireball right at the tips of Naruto's hair. At least the river is right next to them and Naruto can quickly dunk his head underwater to put out the small flame.

The next day Sasuke's face is still pink, and Sakura slips him a small bottle of aloe vera when Naruto is distracted.

"It’ll clear up the sunburn faster," she whispers in explanation. Sasuke nods, his ears turning bright red again. He mumbles something that sounds like, 'Thanks,' but Sakura can’t be a hundred percent sure it’s not just her imagination. 

There’s more D-rank mission requests these days, and they don’t get the opportunity to ask for a C-rank since they keep being assigned one of the many D-ranks stacked in the box at the end of the mission desk.

After many days of sweltering heat, Sasuke is relieved when they finally get a day with overcast skies. The air is cool and there’s a nice breeze that he can appreciate on his way to the tower.

The mission they end up being assigned today is cleaning trash and debris out of the creek that runs through the park and into the Naka River. Most of the trash has washed up on the bank or against rock clusters, caught up in branches and other debris from the storms. Armed with a pair of gloves and a black plastic trash bag each, Team Seven gets to work.

It’s quiet for once, Sakura and Naruto not even striking up a conversation to fill the silence. The sound of flowing water is relaxing, and Sasuke finds his thoughts drifting to other things as he wades through the water searching for plastic bottle caps or whatever else might have ended up in the creek.

His mind strays to his training plan which has reached a plateau. He still hasn’t figured out what to do next with it. He’s long since perfected every jutsu taught at the academy, and he’s perfected the two Uchiha fire-style jutsus he knows as much as he could also.

He hasn’t learned any new taijutsu, or genjutsu either. Genjutsu has never been his specialty though, it was always more his thing. Sasuke would rather try to learn ninjutsu or taijutsu.

He’s tried looking through the clan scrolls again, but he’s already read everything he could that doesn’t require a sharingan to decipher. The only thing in there that interested him is the mention of summonings. Sasuke unfortunately has no way of obtaining a summoning contract however, so that was only a dead end.

The only other Uchiha trademark he could try, is getting his own ninja cat. Going through the process of training one would take too long however, and Sasuke wouldn’t even know where to begin with training one either. It doesn’t really matter anyway. It’s not like a ninja cat would help him defeat Itachi. Best case scenario, it might cause Itachi to laugh himself to death.

Sighing, Sasuke looks up and realizes his teammates are no longer near him. Both Sakura and Naruto are several meters ahead, their bags noticeably fuller than Sasuke's. He’s gotten too distracted.

"—go fishing here all the time! Watch, I’ll catch that minnow over there," Naruto is saying when Sasuke catches up.

Sasuke gets ahead of them while they’re distracted, and finds a bottle and a can lid to put in his bag. He needs to catch up to them before they notice how little he’s collected, so he keeps moving, ignoring Naruto’s triumphant shout as he presumably catches one of the small fish.

They are only meant to clean up the creek within the three mile section of the park it flows through. Closer to the paths however, there’s more garbage to collect, and they make slow progress, especially when they keep getting distracted.

Naruto keeps trying to catch fish, attempting to get a bigger one each time. He even catches a few crayfish and shows them off to Sakura and Sasuke. Eventually, Sakura also joins in, trying to find fish to one up Naruto's. She ends up finding the biggest crayfish yet, but drops it back in the water with a yelp when it pinches her finger. Sasuke will either get lost in his thoughts again, or get distracted watching Naruto and Sakura.

Naruto finds a few toads as well, and even names one that sits quietly in his palm for a bit.

"If you scare them, they’ll pee on you," Naruto solemnly informs Sakura as he tries to hand her a toad he just caught.

"Ew, never mind," Sakura quickly withdraws her outstretched hands.

"It’s okay. She didn’t mean that," Naruto comforts the toad, lightly petting it with his finger before letting it go.

Despite all the delays, they do end up finishing the mission in a reasonable enough time. Technically speaking, their deadline was end of today, which means any time before that is reasonable. So they’re fine. They definitely did not take twice as long to finish this as they should have.

Sasuke's bangs keep falling in front of his eyes, and annoyed, he tries to push them away. His hair is getting too long. He’ll have to cut it soon.

His hand freezes as he has a sudden horrible realization. His forehead is bare. Where the fuck is his headband?!

He glances around, but the headband is no where to be seen. Had he somehow lost it in the creek?

Shit

This is not good. While a headband can be replaced, losing it in such a way is just embarrassing. If he has to fill out the request for a new headband, he'll have to answer why he lost it in the first place. 'I lost my headband because I didn’t notice it falling off my head,' is likely to get him scolded by the chunin in charge of the genin corp. Negligence of this caliber isn’t something that will be ignored.

Desperately, Sasuke tries thinking back to when he might have lost it.

"Sasuke, what’s wrong?" Sakura asks, lightly touching his arm to get his attention. Naruto is looking at him too, a frown on his face.

"Why are you just standing there? Hurry up, I’m starving!" Naruto's stomach growls for emphasis.

"…My headband," Sasuke mutters, reaching up to touch his forehead again, "I think I lost it." This is mortifying. Sasuke still doesn’t understand how he didn’t notice it was missing before now.

"That’s not good," Sakura says, immediately scanning their surroundings. Naruto looks disgruntled, muttering something under his breath that Sasuke can’t quite hear.

"Do you remember if it got caught in anything?" Sakura asks.

Sasuke thinks back. There was a branch that kept snagging at his hair earlier. Had it happened then? He hadn’t payed it much mind, but if that was the case, it was better than the headband being in the water.

When he tells Sakura this, she nods, seemingly remembering the same place with the low thin branches.

"I think that was a little ways back," she says, starting to head back upstream. Naruto heaves a sigh before jogging after her. After several minutes of backtracking, Sasuke starts remembering more clearly. It was definitely somewhere around here. They spread out a bit. Naruto searches on the left side of the creek, and Sakura and Sasuke check the right side.

"Found it!" Naruto shouts a few minutes later. He crosses the creek in one jump, holding Sasuke's headband in his hand.

Relief floods through Sasuke's mind as Naruto hands him the headband. He ties it back on, making sure the knot is extra tight.

"You’re welcome, asshole." Naruto crosses his arms, clearly annoyed.

"Let’s get back now. I’m hungry too," Sakura says.

If Sasuke offers to go to Ichiraku's with Naruto, (which means Sakura also comes along,) and then happens to pay for all of them, then it’s because it’s more convenient for one person to pay, and definitely not because he feels guilty about not thanking them for helping him look for his headband.

Finding and capturing Tora has to be one of Naruto's least favorite missions. Unfortunately, the damn cat gets out at least once a week, and Team Seven ends up being assigned to the mission occasionally.

Today is one of those days. Naruto knows he isn’t supposed to use shadow clones during D-rank missions like this one unless it’s absolutely necessary, (yes, he does listen to some of the things Grandpa Hokage tells him) but it’s extremely tempting to break that rule right now so Tora doesn’t get away from them for the third time today.

"She’s heading in your direction now, Naruto." Sakura's voice comes through the comms, and Naruto gets ready with the net. There’s a rustling sound in the bushes ahead of him, and Naruto jumps forward, bringing the net down around that feral cat, which starts screaming and yowling like the little beast it is.

"I’ve got her!" Naruto shouts, holding the net against the ground, making sure Tora can’t escape this time. Sasuke and Sakura come running up a few seconds later. Sakura has managed to come out of this ordeal unscathed this time, but Sasuke wasn’t as lucky. Three bright red scratch marks are visible on his upper arm, and two more scratch marks are on his leg.

Tora hisses viciously as Sakura approaches the net with the cat carrier they’ve been provided with this time. Naruto lifts one side of the net, and Tora has no where else to run but inside the carrier. Sakura snaps the door shut, zipping it closed as soon as she’s inside.

"Finally!" Sakura sighs, shoving the carrier into Naruto's hands.

Once back at the tower, they endure the now familiar ordeal of watching the Daimyo's wife cry over her cat, before walking away and leaving the room smelling of her very expensive perfume.

"Hey, look." Sakura nudges Naruto in the side and points at the D-rank mission box which is currently empty. "You think we could ask for a C-rank right now?"

"Yes!" Naruto instantly agrees. They’ve been waiting so long again for this moment! Every time they’ve come in before, there was always a D-rank mission for them to be assigned to, but now there must only be C-ranks available!

"Excuse me, is there a C-rank we can be assigned to?" Sakura asks politely.

A chunin Naruto doesn't recognize adjusts her glasses and looks at something. "No, m'fraid not. It’s not a busy day today."

"Oh…"

"We did just receive a new request for a babysitter however if you’d like to take—"

"Oh! No, thanks! We'll be off now!" Sakura quickly backs away from the desk. The babysitting mission is one they’ve successfully avoided every single time, and unless they get forcibly assigned it, they will continue avoiding it.

On the way out the door, they run into Team Ten who are on their way inside.

"Oh no," Sakura mutters at the same time Ino yells, "Hey, Sasuke!"

Sasuke doesn’t respond. He simply stares at the wall instead.

"Did you guys just finish the Tora mission?" Choji asks, sounding surprisingly coherent for someone whose mouth is full of chips.

"Yeah! How'd ya know?" Naruto asks.

Shikamaru gestures lazily at Sasuke, which…yeah, okay. Understandable.

"Alright guys, stop dilly-dallying, we still have training to do after this," Team Ten's sensei says, herding his team through the door.

Naruto can’t help but feel a little jealous. He wonders what kind of cool new jutsu his classmates have learned from their sensei. All he’s learned recently are some new tricks with his kunai.

Sasuke took him and Sakura to a new training area a week ago. The only tricky target Naruto can’t seem to ever hit is the one in the blind spot behind the rock. At least Sakura can’t hit it either, so he’s not the only one struggling. Sasuke however, can hit the target, but he can’t seem to hit the center yet.

Naruto isn’t sure anyone can hit the center unless through sheer luck, but Sasuke seems so intent on getting it perfect. He’s getting better though, each time he gets more and more precise, so maybe he will hit the center eventually. If anyone could do it, it would be Sasuke. Not that Naruto will ever tell him that.

With nothing else to do for the day, Sasuke and Naruto go to train. Sakura excuses herself, stating that she’s meeting a friend later and doesn’t want to be late. Naruto wonders if it’s that nerdy friend of hers with the glasses, but he doesn’t ask.

"Throw your shuriken at me. I want to practice something more difficult," Sasuke announces when they reach the training ground.

"Okay!" Naruto doesn’t think much about it before agreeing. Throwing shuriken at Sasuke sounds fun. And it is. Even if Sasuke deflects every single one with either a kunai or his own shuriken. The show-off even catches a few of the shuriken and throws them back. His smug expression is infuriating, so Naruto steps up his game, and Sasuke is forced to dodge a few barrages of shuriken.

The evening passes by too quickly. It’s the closest they’ve gotten to sparring since their academy days, but this time Naruto's actually having fun. Eventually, Sasuke starts throwing more and more shuriken back at Naruto until it’s a full on fight using only shurikenjutsu.

That changes when Naruto creates a few shadow clones to attack from more angles. Sasuke starts dispelling them using his fireball jutsu. The fight abruptly comes to an end when Sasuke gets a bit too carried away and accidentally sets a training post on fire.

"Oh no! How are we going to put it out?!" Naruto panics. Sasuke throws the water from his water bottle onto the fire, but it doesn’t do much.

"It’s fine," Sasuke says much too calmly, "It’ll put itself out soon."

"What if it spreads?" Naruto can already picture it in his mind. The whole woods being lit on fire, and them getting in trouble for reckless usage of ninjutsu. Well, Sasuke should be the only one in trouble, really.

"It won’t. There’s barely any wind," Sasuke states confidently. Too confidently. He’s definitely done this before. 

Sasuke does end up being right. The fire burns the post into a charred pile, but it thankfully doesn’t spread anywhere else.

Late one afternoon, Sakura shows Naruto a new trick she learned. She was going to show Sasuke too, but he was in one of his moods again, and had left without saying anything earlier.

Sakura holds several leaves in her palm, and instructs Naruto to watch them closely. When she throws them into the air, Naruto watches the leaves turn into pink flower petals. He reaches out to catch one, but it immediately turns back into a leaf when he does.

"When I perfect it, the flower petals will become the visual activation I need to weave a stronger genjutsu," Sakura explains. "Kabuto's been showing me how to do it. He said genjutsu isn’t really his thing, but he knows a lot about genjutsu theory, and I’m just figuring out the practical part from that."

"That’ll be really cool when you figure it out. It seems difficult," Naruto says. Sakura looks so excited, he can’t help but feel happy for her too.

Sakura nods. "I don’t know exactly what the genjutsu effects will be yet, but I’m thinking I’ll go down something along the lines of a dream like genjutsu meant to put my targets in a daze. Maybe? I don’t know, I’m still working on it. Genjutsu's effects on the chakra network are something I still need to understand better."

Naruto has always thought genjutsu was kinda cool. It’s just a shame he was never any good at it. It would have been so useful for some of his pranks. Sakura being able to do stuff like that however just makes her even cooler in Naruto's eyes.

"Is it okay if I practice on you once I get it down better?" Sakura asks. "I promise I’ll break you out of it if you can’t do it yourself."

"Sure!" Naruto agrees.

Sakura grins. "Thanks, Naruto! I’ll treat you to ramen later if you want."

Sakura will end up regretting making that offer once she remembers how much Naruto will eat when someone else is paying. She decides when they get there to only treat him to one serving.

.

.

Chapter Text

"Maybe we should take a day off," Sakura suggests one day after a particularly rough mission.  "I think realistically, we aren’t getting another C-rank anytime soon, so what’s the point of wasting time on these horrible D-ranks every day?"

Sasuke frowns and opens his mouth to say something, but Naruto beats him to it. "I totally agree with you, Sakura! Let’s take tomorrow off and maybe we could train together instead!"

Sakura sighs. She wants a day completely off to just relax. No missions. No training. Only relaxing. Maybe she’ll paint her nails, or sleep all day, or read a book. Who knows? She just wants a day for herself. Is that too much to ask?  If she has to dig one more drainage ditch for a mission she might just quit and let her parents send her to the capital after all. Her back is killing her.

It is at this moment that a desk-nin steps in front of them, blocking their way out the door.

"Team Seven, Lord Third wants to speak with you. You can go see him in his office now."

Sakura wants to go home. For one brief moment, she considers walking out the door and leaving Sasuke and Naruto to deal with whatever Lord Third wants by themselves. But she can’t do that. So instead she drags her feet up the stairs behind Sasuke and Naruto, and straightens her spine before walking through the Hokage's door.

Lord Third is sat at his desk and is already looking up at them when they enter and greet him. "It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to speak with you. How have your missions been going?"

"They’re really boring!" Naruto replies, crossing his arms and huffing. "We need something more challenging! Like say…another C-rank?"

"Well then, I think you’ll be happy with the new assignment I’m about to give you." Lord Third smiles and reaches for a rolled up map. "You may have already heard that Konoha will be hosting the joint chunin exam this year."

Sakura had not heard anything about this, but that’s not important right now.

"Many villages will be sending their genin to participate, and jonin instructors will be accompanying some of the teams. Because we will have many foreign nin in our village, it is important that we stay on high alert, and increase security."

Lord Third pauses for a moment. Sakura thinks she can already see where this is going. They must be getting a security assignment!

"The security teams will need extra man-power during this time, and I’ve made the decision to send you three to help with patrols while the exams are ongoing next month." Lord Third unfurls the map and spreads it out on his desk. It’s a detailed map of Konohagakure.

"Come take a look," Lord Third says. All three of them approach and look at the map. Naruto is squinting, like he’s still trying to figure out if he likes this assignment or not.

"Here is where you’ll be assigned to patrol." Lord Third outlines a section with a slightly crooked finger. "I’m sending someone with you to help you learn the checkpoints and familiarize yourselves with the route for the first two days. Do you think you can handle this assignment?"

"Of course we can handle it!" Naruto eagerly responds. Sakura nods. This is the kind of mission she doesn’t mind doing at all. She'll take walking around the streets for a couple of hours every day over nearly every D-rank mission on the list most days.

"I have a question," Sasuke interjects.

Lord Third hums. "What do you want to ask?"

"The chunin exams. I would like to participate instead."

"I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Sasuke. Rookie teams are not allowed in the exams without a recommendation from a jonin instructor."

Sasuke's mouth turns down at the corner. "I see." His jaw clenches and his expression turns quite sour.

"Do any of you have any other questions?" Lord Third asks.

"When do we start?" Sakura asks. 'Please don’t say today, please don’t say today, please don’t say—'

"Tomorrow. You’ll meet your team leader then and he'll go over things in more detail with you."

Sakura inwardly sighs in relief.

"Do we have to do any D-ranks still?" Naruto asks next.

"No, you won’t have to. This assignment is only temporary until the exams are finished, so for the next month or so, you aren’t required to take any other missions."

This is extremely good news for Sakura. It looks like their hard work was finally noticed and is now paying off. It took long enough, but she won’t complain now.

They leave the Hokage's office with some last instructions on meeting their temporary team leader at the western gate tomorrow evening.

"I’m so glad we won’t have to do any D-ranks for awhile," Sakura sighs, rolling her stiff shoulders.

"If we could have taken the chunin exams we’d never have to do D-ranks again," Sasuke remarks, still peeved about losing the chance at a promotion.

Sakura understands his frustration, but she doesn’t really know what to say to that.

Kenzo Arata is a friendly looking man with short dirty-blonde hair and a face that can’t seem to stop smiling. He looks like he’s probably around Iruka-sensei's age.

"You’re the new security team, correct? Let’s see…Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, is that right?" Kenzo waits for them to confirm.

"My name is Kenzo, it’s nice to meet you! I’m the one who’s meant to show you the ropes," Kenzo says, pressing his palm to his chest. "Feel free to ask me anything about this job, I’ll answer any questions I can."

Kenzo is true to his word and answers literally anything he’s asked. He shows them the two checkpoints along the wall they can go to if there’s trouble (the third checkpoint is at the gate,) and supplies them each with an emergency signal flare.

"I doubt they’ll be necessary, but it’s always best to be prepared," Kenzo says. "You know how to use them, right?"

Of course they know how to use them. It was taught to them very early at the academy. Even Naruto can easily explain it.

Most of the patrol route is through residential neighborhoods. Kenzo tells them not to expect much excitement, if any, during their patrols. "This area is considered low-priority for us, that’s why we’re having genin teams take care of it for now instead. You should go through this whole route a few times before you exchange with the other team at midnight. Remember, even if it’s boring, this is still important, so try to stay alert."

By the third time they go through the route, Naruto feels like he has it memorized. Even if he forgets by tomorrow though, he knows Sakura and Sasuke will remember it still. They both probably memorized it on the first loop.

His eyes feel heavy by the time they exchange with a new team at the west gate. Kenzo still looks bright and cheery somehow as he reports back that nothing happened to the gate nin.

"If anything happens during patrol that you think is noteworthy, let the chunin at the gate now when you report back, and they’ll record it," Kenzo explains when they step away.

The team replacing them walks by, and Naruto isn’t sure if he just tired and seeing things or not, but he’s almost sure the three genin look identical to each other. When he rubs his eyes and checks again, it’s the same. Huh.

"I know you’re tired now, so try to adjust your sleep schedules quickly and get used to working this shift. Trust me, it’ll get easier." Kenzo finally sends them home, and they waste no time heading back to their beds to sleep.

Naruto and Sakura end up running into each other the next day on their way to the west gate for their second patrol. They walk together until they see a commotion up ahead.

"Hey, isn’t that the kid that’s always asking you to play ninja with him?" Sakura asks, shielding her eyes from the sun's glare, and squinting to get a better look.

"Konohamaru? I mean, yeah, that is his scarf," Naruto says, also squinting. Konohamaru is on the ground in front of two older kids. Moegi and Udon are there too. As they get closer, Sakura and Naruto can hear some of what the older boy in dark clothes is saying.

"—kinda hurt. I think you should apologize."

The older boy reaches down and roughly grabs Konohamaru by the scarf, lifting him off the ground and consequently choking him.

"Hey!" Naruto shouts, and starts sprinting toward them. "Let him go!"

Sakura rushes to join Naruto and stop him from doing something too reckless. The older boy throws them a disdainful look as they approach. Suddenly Naruto trips over air in front of her and falls down face first. Sakura has to stop abruptly and flail out her arms so as to not trip over him on the ground.

"Wha—? What the hell was that?!" Naruto yells, clambering back to his feet. His nose is red from slamming into the ground so hard.

"Kankuro, look what you’ve done. Put the kid down." The blonde-haired girl standing behind the boy levels a warning look at him. "You know this isn’t going to end well for you later."

Kankuro, rolls his eyes in response. He has weird face paint on, and a large bulky object is strapped to his back, but the thing that catches Sakura's attention the most is the Sunagakure emblem on his head. The blonde girl also has one around her neck.

"I’m not getting involved in this." The blonde girl sighs, sounding irritated.

'I need to de-escalate this before something bad happens,' Sakura thinks, analyzing the situation. Suna genin here for the exams. They're both older than her and Naruto and she’d rather not have to fight them. Moegi and Udon have gotten behind her and Naruto, which is good. At least they’re safe right now. Konohamaru is still struggling against Kankuro's grip, kicking his legs out to no avail.

"Take your hands off him you jerk!" Naruto shouts, and is about rush forward again. This time Sakura is quick enough to grab him and pull him back.

"Don’t be stupid, Naruto," Sakura hisses, "You'll only make things worse doing that."

"What a fucking joke. You guys are Konoha genin? This village must be full of pathetic wimps," Kankuro taunts, tightening his grip on Konohamaru.

"Stop it! It hurts!" Konohamaru chokes out.

"That’s it! I’ve had enough!" Naruto breaks out of Sakura's grip and pulls a kunai out, charging at Kankuro.

Sakura sees Kankuro's finger twitch right before the same thing happens again, where Naruto trips over something invisible. This time he stays on his feet, only stumbling forward a few steps. Kankuro snorts in amusement. "This is really pathe—"

Out of seemingly nowhere, a rock comes flying through the air and hits Kankuro's hand.

"Agh!" Kankuro drops Konohamaru to the ground, clutching at his hurt hand. Everyone turns to look in the direction the rock came from.

Sasuke is stood in the street to their left, one foot propped against the wooden fence behind him. He’s tossing another rock up and down with his left hand. They’d all been so caught up, none of them had noticed him approaching.

Sakura can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Naruto pulls Konohamaru away from Kankuro, and Konohamaru throws his arms around Naruto in response, hugging him tightly as he catches his breath.

Sasuke tilts his head, that familiar arrogant look on his face. "Making trouble in another village? You’re not very smart, are you?"

Sakura couldn’t be more happy to see him right now.

"Great. Just what I needed. Another brat," Kankuro grits out between clenched teeth.

"Get lost." Sasuke pushes himself off the fence and starts confidently approaching the Suna genin.

"You’re the kind of little brat I hate the most. All attitude with nothing to back it up." Kankuro pulls the bulky object off his back and sets it on the ground.

Sasuke stops in his approach, eyes narrowing at the object.

"Kankuro, don’t use that here!" the blonde girl warns, grabbing his shoulder. Kankuro ignores her and starts pulling some of the wrapping loose.

"Kankuro. Back off."

Kankuro freezes for a second, before looking up toward where the voice had come from above them. Everyone follows his gaze. A red-haired boy with a large gourd on his back is standing upside down on the bottom of a tree branch. His voice is raspy and quiet, but his words hold weight with the two Suna genin below.

'How is he standing on the tree like that?' Sakura can’t help but wonder.

"G-Gaara! You’re here!" Kankuro greets the newcomer nervously.

"You’re an embarrassment to our village." Gaara pins Kankuro with his icy stare for a moment, before shifting his gaze to Sasuke. They make eye contact for a few seconds before Gaara's gaze slides back to Kankuro.

"Have you forgotten why we’re here?" Gaara asks, eyes narrowing. Kankuro takes a small step back.

"N-no! Of course not! They started the whole thing you see, what happened was—"

"Shut up. Or I’ll kill you."

Kankuro's mouth snaps shut.

This Gaara guy is so intimidating. Sakura doesn’t like this one bit. All he had to do was show up and suddenly both Suna genin are cowering in front of him. His threat to kill Kankuro sends chills down Sakura's spine. 

Gaara's gaze returns to Sasuke. "I’m sorry. For any trouble he caused."

Sasuke wears a tense expression, but he doesn’t respond.

Gaara dissolves into sand and reappears on the ground. "Let’s go."

"…Yeah, sure. Right behind you, Gaara," Kankuro says weakly.

All three Suna genin turn to leave. Sasuke and Gaara make eye contact one more time as they pass by. Once they’ve disappeared, Sasuke nonchalantly approaches them.

"Who were those guys?" Moegi asks, wiping her eyes.

"Genin from Sunagakure. They must be a team here for the chunin exam," Sakura replies.

"A bunch of jerks, that's who they were," Naruto mutters. He then looks at Sasuke. "I would've taken care of that if you hadn’t shown up, ya know."

"Whatever." Sasuke rolls his eyes. "We need to hurry to the west gate now or we'll be late."

"Oh shoot! I completely forgot about that!" Sakura exclaims. "Can you guys get back home on your own?" She asks, turning to look at the three kids still wiping their tear stained faces.

Konohamaru nods. "Yeah, we'll be fine. I don’t want you to get in trouble because of us."

"Alright, just be careful, okay?"

They have to run all the way to the west gate to make it in time. Kenzo is already waiting for them. They check in and start patrol immediately, leaving them no time to catch their breaths.

"This is the last day I’ll be with your team, so if you have anymore questions, make sure to ask them," Kenzo says.

The evening passes by uneventfully again. Sasuke would be lying if he said he wasn’t bored, (and having to listen to Kenzo and Naruto talk back and forth nearly non-stop isn't exactly enjoyable) but at the same time, working from late evening to midnight means they can avoid the worst of the heat during the day, and he can't complain about that.

Seriously, it is much too hot these days. It was like this every summer, but previous years he hadn’t been doing D-ranks nearly every day, and burning alive in the sun for hours on end.

With this new assignment he’ll switch from training during sundown hours and now train early in the morning. It means he'll no longer be training with Sakura and Naruto, but if they want to train during the worst heat of day, they are welcome to it. Naruto probably will. He seems unbothered by the heat most days. Sasuke doesn’t understand why or how that idiot chooses to wear a jacket in summer.

The genin team from Suna are only the first foreign nin Sasuke notices in the village. The next day he sees a team from Kusagakure. He only notices them because the girl has the brightest red hair Sasuke has ever seen. Besides them, there’s also another team from Suna he spots sitting at a tea house.

The security has to be incredibly tight in the village right now. He sees why they’re having to use genin teams to make up the extra manpower they need.

That evening, they’re on their own for patrol, and the responsibility of this assignment weighs just a bit heavier.

But it’s also more peaceful without Kenzo ahead of him talking a mile a minute.

"Are you going to be participating in the chunin exam?" Sakura quietly asks Kabuto at their meet-up in the library.

"Yes. Maybe this will be the time I pass. Although, I did hear some rookie teams are participating this year, which is unusual. Is your team one of them?"

"No, we can’t get a jonin recommendation, so we weren’t allowed to apply for the exam. It must be some of my old classmates participating."

"Ah, that’s too bad. But maybe it’s also a good thing. The exams can be quite dangerous. Lots of genin end up dying even."

"Really? I had no idea it was that dangerous."

"It can be, especially for teams from villages outside the great nations. They usually end up getting targeted."

"Oh."

Kabuto swiftly changes the subject. "If you aren’t in the exams, are you going to keep doing D-ranks? Maybe with so many teams being busy, you could even snag a C-rank now."

Sakura shakes her head. "No, we got a new assignment actually."

"Oh?"

"We’re helping the security teams out. I’m actually really enjoying it. Nothing has happened yet, and we don’t have to take any D-ranks now, which is good because I really needed the break."

"I’ve worked with the security teams before too actually. I was put in the south area. Is that where you are?"

Sakura shakes her head. "No, we’re near the west gate, so you know…nothing really happens over there."

"Did you at least get a good shift? Third shift is the worst."

"We’re on the second shift," Sakura says, leaning back in her seat and stretching.

"That’s the best one in my opinion, at least for this time of year. During any other season though, first shift is best."

"Yeah, I think Sasuke's happy we’re out of the heat now. Mostly, anyway."

The conversation changes again, but eventually Sakura has to leave.

"Bye! I guess I’ll see you again once the exams are over. Good luck on that by the way!"

Kabuto waves. "Thanks, I’ll need it!"

Most of the patrol is through middle-class civilian neighborhoods, but there’s a few miles of woods they have to go through as well. This hasn't been a problem for them until the night after the chunin exam officially begins.

It’s their last loop through the route. When they reach the woods, Naruto gets tense and hyper-alert. In turn, he makes Sakura and Sasuke nervous as well.

Sakura finally gets fed up with it. "Will you stop that already?" She tugs him away from a bush that Naruto claimed had, 'rustled too much.'

"It’s just the wind," Sasuke sighs, shaking his head, but still humoring Naruto and shining the flashlight at the bush. As expected, nothing is there.

"Why are you so paranoid today?" Sakura asks.

"I’m not!" Naruto protests. Sakura raises an eyebrow at him.

"What a creative argument, I almost believed you," Sasuke intones. The thing is, all of them are a bit jumpy tonight. Naruto is the most nervous of the three however, and he’s stressing Sakura and Sasuke out even more.

"It’s just…I have a bad feeling, okay? Like…like we’re being watched or something," Naruto whispers. "Don't you guys feel it too?"

Sasuke doesn’t respond, but Sakura shuffles a bit closer to them. "It does feel more…creepy out here tonight," she admits, rubbing at the goosebumps forming on her arms.

They have to keep moving forward. Sakura and Naruto are practically tripping over Sasuke's feet they’re walking so closely behind him. A drop of sweat trickles down Naruto's neck and slides down his spine. Sasuke's fingers keep twitching toward his kunai pouch. Sakura swallows thickly and starts combing her fingers through her hair in a self-soothing gesture.

For a minute there’s nothing but the soft sound of their steps on the path and the loud noise of hundreds of cicadas and crickets all around them.

They come around a bend and Sasuke's flashlight illuminates a figure up ahead of them. They’re wearing a straw hat that conceals their features, but the style of clothing is not from the Land of Fire.

"Identify yourself!" Sasuke calls out as the person draws closer. The stranger stops and reaches for their hat, slowly taking it off. It’s a woman with long dark hair and dark eyes.

She’s wearing a Kusagakure headband.

"You’re not from Konoha. You shouldn’t be in this part of the village," Sasuke states.

The woman speaks for the first time. "Is that so~?" Her voice is gravelly, but still carries loud enough over the cicadas to reach them clearly.

"Yeah, that is so!" Naruto chimes in loudly, stepping forward to stand beside Sasuke. The woman smirks and starts walking toward them, tossing her hat to the side of the path.

"Perhaps you can show me the way out of this woods then?"

A foreboding sense of danger overcomes Team Seven as the woman approaches, like an icy fist squeezing their hearts. Her movements are fluid, and she practically glides over the ground toward them. She smiles, and a disgustingly long tongue falls out of her mouth, hanging well past her chin.

Naruto startles. "What the—?!"

Sasuke flings a kunai from his hand that lands in front of the woman's feet, but her steps don’t falter even one bit. She keeps advancing, slipping two kunai from her sleeve into her right hand.

"Stay back!" Sasuke yells, already reaching for more kunai. Sakura pulls out shuriken, but just before she throws, she makes the mistake of looking into the woman's manic eyes. They all do.

The woman throws her kunai, but they’re all frozen, paralyzed in fear. They can’t move out of the way. The kunai are moving in slow motion, but also too quickly at the same time. They hit their mark, tearing through flesh and severing even bone. Pain sears through their bodies. Blood is spilling out too quickly. Sakura’s dress is getting stained a darker shade of red than it should be. Naruto's jacket is completely torn apart to reveal the large gashes spurting blood. Sasuke's neck is cut deeply. One of his arms has been nearly cut clean off and is now dangling at an odd angle. Someone is screaming.

The woman smiles coldly down at them as everything goes dark.

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Chapter Text

It’s completely dark for a moment, but something clatters to the ground, and the pitch-black darkness is lifted away in an instant. The moonlight streaming through the leaves illuminates patches on the ground. Everything is deathly silent; not even the insects are audible anymore.

Sasuke takes a gasping breath and then another. He’s alive. He’s still alive. What was that? A genjutsu?

A wave of nausea hits him, and Sasuke falls to his knees, throwing up his dinner. The woman is still standing roughly thirty meters in front of him. He can see her feet, but he doesn’t dare look into her eyes again. A cold sweat breaks out all over. He tries to push back to his feet to get further away from her, but his trembling legs won’t let him and he falls back down instead.

Sakura has also collapsed next to him on the ground, but she looks worse off than him. She’s shaking all over, and tears are running down her face. Better it be tears than blood.

Naruto is still standing, but he’s frozen up. Sasuke can’t see his face from where he is. He hopes Naruto isn’t looking into the Kusa nin's eyes again.

"Ooh~ Look at you," the woman murmurs, "You’re so afraid you’re trembling. It'll be too easy to kill you. Such a shame. I thought you’d put up more of a fight. I was looking forward to it."

They need to get out of here, away from that woman, or monster, or—whatever the hell she is! He needs to move his arms, he needs to move! Staying here is a guaranteed death.

"S-Sakura…?" Sasuke tries to reach for her, but his hands refuse to cooperate. Sakura doesn’t react to him at all.

"Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick." The strange woman speaks again, her voice dispassionate now. She lifts her hand slowly, and aims with two kunai. One for Naruto, one for Sakura.

No! No! They’ll die! They’ll die for real this time! Why can’t he move?!

'Move, Sasuke! Move! Move!!!'

"Like…like hell you will! I’m not going to die so easily!" Naruto suddenly yells, his shaky (but bright and brilliant) voice cutting straight through the terror in Sasuke's mind. "Shadow clone jutsu!"

Puffs of smoke fill the area around them and several blurs of orange emerge from them to rush the Kusa nin, who starts weaving signs. Sasuke pushes to his feet, relief pouring through him so viscerally he feels dizzy. He’s still shaking all over, almost as much as Sakura, but he can move again. "Naruto, we need to get out of here—!"

A blast of wind interrupts him. The clones are thrown back violently, popping away as they hit the ground or the trees too hard. The woman starts to laugh. It’s an eerie sound that chills Sasuke to the bone.

"That’s better, but not enough," the woman says as she starts walking toward them, kunai still in her hand.

"You want more? I’ll give you more!" Naruto makes the sign again, and even more clones appear this time, but it’s no use. They’re all instantly destroyed by that wind jutsu again. The woman smirks and puts a hand on her hip. Naruto grits his teeth and takes a step back.

"A powerful justu is useless in the hands of the weak," she mocks, her eyes widening as she looks right at Sasuke. Then she’s throwing her kunai, and there’s no time to think anymore.

He hears the kunai whistle past his ear as he grabs Sakura and runs. He doesn’t have time to check on where Naruto is, he can only trust that he also moved out of the way in time.

He sprints as fast as he can through the woods until he finds a large enough tree to hide both himself and Sakura behind. It’s not far enough away! They need to move somewhere else, but where?! They’re only heading further into the woods, but he can’t head back toward the path where that woman might still be—! No, no, she must have moved by now. She could be closing in on them right at this moment, but where should he go? Where should he go?!

Sakura shakily wipes the tears and snot off her face with her arm. "Where’s Naruto?" She whispers quietly, but even her whisper sounds too loud in the dead silence around them. Sasuke shakes his head to indicate he doesn’t know, and slaps a hand over her mouth to keep her from saying anything else. A horrible thought crosses his mind, that maybe the reason the woman hasn’t caught up to them yet is because she’s after Naruto right now and he’s fighting her alone.

He needs to get back immediately! Naruto won’t be able to fight her on his own! But…but he can’t leave Sakura here by herself either. What should he do?

"Sakura? Sasuke? Where are you?" A familiar voice calls from a short distance away.

Sakura pulls his hand off her face. "Naruto?" she calls back, peering around from their hiding spot. Sasuke does the same, and spots the idiot walking causally through the woods toward them like there isn’t someone trying to kill them still out there!

Naruto's eyes light up when he sees them, and he comes running toward the tree to join them. Then, right as he’s a few steps away, Naruto's expression completely changes into something so un-Naruto like, pupils turning into slits, and his mouth twisted in a sadistic smile.

"No—!" Sasuke can barely take one step back in time before the imposter is lunging at him. He raises his arms defensively, preparing to take the blow, but several kunai and shuriken come flying in from the left and stick into the ground in front of him. The imposter is forced to pause for a second, and Sasuke leaps back as far as he can with the extra time brought.

"Came just in time, didn’t I?" Naruto calls out as he comes running through the trees to join them. The imposter looks at him and grins, expression full of malice. They let the transformation fall.

"Naruto! You’re alright!" Sakura exclaims, running over to him. Sasuke would join them too, but the Kusa nin is between him and his teammates, and he doesn’t dare get close to her again.

"You’re still here? That’s even better, I’ll have more chances now," the woman says, her eyes shifting hungrily between Naruto and Sakura.

"Naruto! Take Sakura and leave! Go get help!" Sasuke yells, pulling out his own kunai and throwing them at the woman who looks very unimpressed as she catches them all and throws them back.

"Are you crazy?! I’m not leaving you behind!" Naruto calls back as Sasuke ducks down to avoid his own kunai. He can’t be arguing with Naruto right now! He wishes he’d just listen to him for once and leave! Instead, Naruto makes a dozen more shadow clones and sends them after the Kusa nin with explosive tags attached to kunai.

"This again? It’s starting to get old," the woman says. The clones throw the kunai, but the nin simply uses the same wind style jutsu from before to blow the kunai back. One of the kunai lands near Sasuke and he barely escapes in time before it detonates.

This is a mess. He needs to do something. Come up with a plan. What can he do?

'Think, Sasuke!'

He reaches into his pouch to fish out more shuriken—which he knows will be useless but he needs to stall for time!—when his hand brushes against something else. The emergency flare!

How did he not remember that earlier? It doesn’t matter, he just needs to use it now!

Sasuke pulls the flare out and looks for an opening in the trees above to fire it off into. But he’s taken his eyes off the Kusa nin, and she’s spotted the flare in his hands.

"Sasuke, lookout!" Sakura yells, but it’s too late. A shuriken imbeds itself in Sasuke's hand. He winces and drops the flare. The woman starts slithering toward him! Her neck and arms elongating as she closes the gap between them quickly.

Sasuke can’t choke back the scream that crawls up his throat. "Stay away!" He scrambles back again, even further from Sakura and Naruto, as the woman snatches his flare off the ground. Her body returns to normal as she stands back up on her feet. She holds the flare up to her face and smiles. "This could have been troublesome."

Then she opens her mouth wide, and swallows the flare whole.

Sasuke feels ill again as the woman gulps it down before licking her lips with her unnaturally long, snake-like tongue.

Naruto makes a disgusted face. "Ew."

The woman smiles at that, and Sasuke uses the moment her attention is off him to pull the shuriken out of his hand.

He’s completely losing it! He should’ve noticed that attack and moved out of the way himself. Now he’s lost his flare. Sakura and Naruto should still have theirs at least, they just need an opening to use them.

The Kusa nin's eyes swivel back to Sasuke. Then she disappears right in front of his eyes. Where—?!

A kick to his back sends Sasuke into the ground hard. He pushes back to his feet and looks behind him, but the Kusa nin is already gone again. Shit! How can he dodge her attacks if he can’t see her?

He’s struck with another kick, this time in the ribs, and it hurts badly enough for Sasuke to see spots in his vision.

The woman stands tall over him, not vanishing this time. She clicks her tongue and shakes her head disappointedly. "I was expecting more from you, Uchiha Sasuke. It seems you’re nothing like your brother after all. All you’re good at, is running away."

Sasuke clenches his jaw. Every breath he takes hurts.

The woman's expression turns thoughtful. "Or maybe, you were trying to buy time for your friends."

Before Sasuke can say or do anything, the woman has already crossed the distance to his teammates, and grabs Sakura by the wrist, twisting it until Sakura yelps and drops her flare. Naruto reacts quickly, and jumps forward to attack, but the Kusa nin tightens her hold on Sakura's wrist, and throws her into Naruto, sending them both to the ground.

The Kusa nin sighs. "I’m getting bored now, it’s time to end this."

Naruto, once again, makes more shadow clones. It’s more than Sasuke has ever seen him make before, but they can’t even touch the woman before she’s already destroying them left and right. Within a few seconds, half of them are left.

'I need to do something!'

Sasuke starts weaving signs as quickly as possible, inhaling as much as he can without passing out from the pain in his ribs. There’s only a few clones left as Sasuke breathes out his fireball. He can’t hold the jutsu for as long as he normally can, but it’s a direct hit on the woman, and she should at least be wounded by it.

He runs out of air to exhale, and as his flames dissipate, Sasuke looks for damage on the woman while trying to catch his breath.

But there’s none. Not a single burn. Her clothes aren’t even singed.

"Are you starting to fight back now?" The woman smiles. "That’s good."

She takes a step forward and Sasuke runs through the signs again, but he isn’t quick enough. The woman is suddenly right in front of him, and he has to break off his hand signs to block a punch. He takes a knee to the abdomen, and a kick to the chest for his efforts. With the wind completely knocked out of him, Sasuke lays on his side on the ground, clutching at his ribs. He can hear Sakura and Naruto yelling his name.

"Your ancestors must be so disappointed. What a failure you turned out to be. They’ll thank me for killing you."

"What the hell is wrong with you, lady?!" Naruto yells, rushing forward with his mini army of shadow clones. The Kusa nin laughs as she tears each shadow clone apart, before finally grabbing the last Naruto left and shoving him onto the ground. "You show more promise, but you already have an occupant, don’t you, Naruto?"

Sasuke sees the corner of an explosive tag sticking onto the back of Naruto's jacket. He shields his head with his arm as the paper bomb explodes, sending debris flying everywhere.

Sasuke takes several ragged breaths before opening his eyes and looking at the damage. "Did we get her?" He hears Naruto asking. "I don’t know yet, be careful," Sakura replies. The smoke clears away revealing the charred earth underneath.

But there’s no sign of a body.

Sasuke hurries to his feet as he hears that woman's laugh again. It reverberates all around him, coming from every direction all at once. Sakura and Naruto both flinch and look around in all directions. They’re standing back to back, but formation doesn’t matter, not against this opponent.

A wind jutsu shoots through the woods, smashing through trees and throwing Sakura and Naruto toward Sasuke. Sakura hits the ground hard, but manages to break her fall well enough to roll to her feet. Naruto lands to Sasuke's left, but he lands awkwardly and can’t break his fall.

The woman appears again in front of them, and Sakura braces herself with a kunai in her uninjured hand. Naruto stumbles trying to get up. His head is bleeding.

Sasuke reaches into his weapon pouch and pulls out his wire and shuriken. She must have dodged his attack earlier by moving out of the way faster than he could see. If he makes sure she can’t move, he can hit her with the dragon flame jutsu and incinerate her to ashes.

The Kusa nin makes her move, and Sasuke has a split second to time it right and pin her to a tree with his wires.

He misses.

The Kusa nin rushes for him, her hand outstretched, reaching for his throat. Sakura slams into Sasuke's shoulder, shoving him out of the way just in time.

"Naruto! Do it now! Hurry!" Sakura yells. The woman smiles, and uses an earth jutsu to try and impale them them with spikes out of the ground. Sakura gets out of the way in time, but one of the spikes catches Sasuke's leg and leaves a deep cut on the outside of his thigh. Before he can recover from the attack, the woman comes into close range again and kicks him across the ground. Sasuke braces for a follow-up attack, but instead, the sound of many Narutos yelling fills his ears.

'Stop trying,' Sasuke wants to say. 'Stop trying and run away while you have the chance. Nothing's going to work against her!'

Sakura runs up to him and grabs his arm, trying to drag him to his feet. "I have Naruto's flare," she whispers, looking back at the woman for a second. "Come on, we need to get out of her eyesight so she can’t stop us from sending the signal."

Right! Naruto's flare! They still have chance if they can use it!

Sasuke wobbles on his feet and Sakura struggles to hold him up with one hand. They won’t make it far if she has to drag him along like this. He'll hold her back, there’s no point in trying to leave with her.

"Go. Send the signal. I’ll be fine here."

"But—"

"It’s fine, just go!"

Sakura still looks unsure. Her eyes are wide, and her face is pale. She’s scared, just as much as he is. She hesitates for another second, before nodding and lowering him to the ground. As she leaves, Sasuke turns back to check on Naruto.

They only need to hold out for a little while longer. Reinforcements will be here soon. He needs to help Naruto until then. It’s pathetic that he’s been so useless this whole time. He can’t sit here and watch Naruto do all the fighting for him.

Naruto is pulling every trick he knows in an attempt to keep the Kusa nin from noticing Sakura getting away. Explosive tags, smoke bombs, shuriken, and kunai. He must be running out of weapons at this point. Sasuke starts running through hand signs for the fireball jutsu again, and he’s half way through when the woman spots Sakura leaving.

"Where do you think you’re going, girl?"

Sasuke finishes the last sign and breathes out the largest fireball he can as the nin leaves Naruto and starts slithering (alarmingly quick) toward Sakura. This time, he aims perfectly.

The Kusa nin screams and stops moving forward as the flames catch her and start burning her. Sakura looks back, but doesn’t stop running. Sasuke forces every last bit of air he can from his lungs to keep the fire burning as long as he can, The screams don’t stop until the flames fade away, leaving a hideous sight in their place.

Naruto looks horrified.

Sasuke gasps for air, and waits for the woman’s next trick. There's no way it was that easy to kill her.

Sure enough, the body crumbles into dirt, and the Kusa nin appears again completely unharmed. She looks more serious now. Gone is her mocking smile and scornful eyes.

"I was starting to have fun again, but this messes things up," the woman murmurs, almost to herself, but also loud enough for Sasuke and Naruto to hear. She fixes her gaze on Naruto. Sasuke tries to move his hands to form signs again, but he suddenly can’t move anymore. His body is locked in place, like there’s weight on all his limbs keeping him from moving.

'Paralysis genjutsu!'

Naruto is also under it. They are only a few feet apart, so the nin had been able to trap them together. There’s nothing either of them can do. The Kusa nin bends down and picks up a kunai from the ground. "Don’t look away, Sasuke," she says, eyes hardening as she approaches Naruto.

No. No!

She isn’t toying with them anymore, she’s done playing her sick game! She's going to kill Naruto and he can’t stop her!

Sakura runs as fast as she can away from the flames and screaming. There’s no way that crazy woman is dead from that, she survived an explosion after all.

This is the best plan Sakura could think of with so little time. As she checks over her shoulder to make sure the woman isn’t chasing her, Sakura's foot catches on something solid on the ground in front of her and she can’t regain her balance in time to keep from crashing down onto her hurt wrist.

Pain flares through her wrist and arm. Sakura squeezes her eyes shut, biting her lip to keep from making any noise. She tries her best to breathe through it.

When she opens her eyes again, she almost screams. The thing she had tripped over is a person. A person in ANBU gear. A person lying in a puddle of blood.

'Are they alive?! No! The signal first! I'll check after!'

Using her good hand and her teeth, Sakura fires the flare into the sky, and watches it explode in a bright red color above her head. Then she crawls over to the ANBU on the ground.

There’s so much blood! Sakura can see wounds on their back and two small, bloody dots on their neck. She grabs their wrist and tries to look for a pulse, but she can’t find it. There’s another wound on their chest that Sakura didn’t see before. Should she try to stop the bleeding? Is it still possible to save this person?

'Did that Kusa nin do this?'

Sakura puts her hand over the chest wound, trying to apply pressure and stop the bleeding. Help should come soon. Please let it come soon!

Naruto can’t move. No matter how hard he tries to, he can’t even twitch his fingers. Sasuke also isn’t moving, so whatever the woman did is effecting him too.

"Don’t look away, Sasuke," the woman says, narrowing her eyes at Naruto, and her voice is so cold it makes Naruto shiver.

It feels like one of those horrible nightmares in which he can’t run away, except this is real, and he can feel the same killing intent coming off this woman that he felt from Mizuki; only this killing intent is a hundred times more terrifying, and Iruka isn’t here to save him.

The woman walks over to him in a few long strides. Naruto can feel warm tears spilling down his cheeks. He doesn’t want to die here! He doesn’t want to die! 'Help me! Someone please help!'

The woman’s feet stop in front of him. His eyes travel up from her feet to her face which is cast in shadows, but Naruto can see her horrid creepy smile as she raises the kunai. He flinches and closes his eyes as she swings down, aiming for his chest. 'No! Please! I don’t want to die!'

He can hear the kunai puncturing through flesh and muscle, and stumbles back as something solid falls against his chest.

A second passes. Naruto hears a sharp gasp, then a whistling sound followed by a small explosion some distance away. But there’s no pain in his chest, or anywhere for that matter. He cracks his eyes open. The woods is illuminated in a soft red glow from the flare. The woman is looking down at him with something akin to shock on her face. No. Not at him. At the person in front of him.

Sasuke.

The woman lets go of the hilt of the kunai, and Sasuke falls back further onto Naruto, who tries to catch him and hold him up.

No. What just happened? Sasuke—Why is Sasuke—? Why isn’t he—?

"You foolish child!" the woman snarls, and Naruto watches her face contort in anger as she takes a step back. "What have you done?"

Sasuke chokes as he tries to inhale. He sags forward and Naruto barely reacts in time to catch him in his arms and keep his head from hitting the ground too hard.

"…Sasuke?"

There’s a kunai shoved nearly hilt deep in Sasuke's chest where it should be in Naruto's. Blood is dribbling out of his mouth, and his eyes are closed. His breaths are uneven and strained.

"Sasuke?…No…Why? Why did you save me?…Sasuke? Sasuke, wake up!"

No, no, this can’t be happening! 

Sasuke wheezes and cracks his eyes open to look at Naruto. His eyes are red and glowing, shining with unshed tears. Naruto pulls him closer. He doesn’t know what to do! Why hasn’t anyone come to help yet? 

The woman clicks her tongue and shakes her head. "Foolish boy." She smiles but her expression is still twisted in anger. "I gave you this gift and now look what you’ve done."

"Shut up."

Naruto barely registers the voice as his own. The woman looks at him like she’d somehow forgotten he was there. All Naruto wants to do is rip that damn smile off her face. He wants to make her pay for what she’s done. He wants to kill her.

The woman makes some kind of movement and Naruto reacts, reaching out to grab her wrist. She’s faster and grabs his forearm.

"Fascinating. Your wounds are healing so quickly."

Naruto can’t react to that statement before she’s throwing him across the ground. He rolls to his feet and charges back toward her. He can’t feel the pain anymore.

'Kill her! I need to kill her!'

A snake shoots out of the woman's sleeve and wraps around him squeezing him so hard he can’t breathe. More. He needs more power!

The woman reaches out toward Sasuke's face, prying his closed eyes open with her fingers. "I won’t leave with nothing."

"Don’t you dare touch him!"

Something answers his call, and Naruto can feel more burning power flooding through his system. Red miasma surrounds him, and Naruto realizes he can move again. The snake is gone. His eyes fix on the woman and he doesn’t wait a millisecond longer. This time, he’s quicker than her. He hits her as hard as he can, sending her tumbling several feet away. She recovers well, but Naruto isn’t waiting for her to attack next.

He keeps attacking, pushing her further and further back. She stays just out of reach, before leaping into the trees where he can’t follow.

Naruto screams in frustration. Everything is red. All he can see, all he can think about, is killing the person in front of him. She smiles down at him, but her eyes are more intent, wary. If he could, he’d rip her eyes out, but she’s out of reach and he doesn’t know how to get to her.

It’s like an instinct then, to get a running start and jump after her knowing he can make the leap. She moves to a different branch, but Naruto now knows he has the strength to make the vault after her. The woman must know this situation isn’t to her advantage anymore. She stops running and turns to face him, sending six snakes from her sleeves. He grabs the first one and tears its head off with his hands. The other five snakes wrap around his body keeping him in place.

The woman body flickers in front of him. Naruto struggles against the snakes, but they only constrict tighter around his arms, legs, and throat.

The woman pulls up Naruto's jacket and hums to herself, "The seal is actually visible on your skin."

She sounds amused. Naruto hates it. He wants to rip out her throat. The tips of her fingers start glowing a purplish color. She presses those fingers directly on top of Naruto's seal.

White hot pain shoots from Naruto's seal through his entire body, like hot water boiling his insides. He’s never felt pain like this before in his life. He doesn’t know how long the pain lasts, but everything starts spinning, and his ears are ringing. He feels weightless, and then he’s falling through the air. The last thing he sees is the blurry dirt getting closer.

He passes out before he hits the ground.

.

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