Title: Mistakes And Their Undoing
Rating: T
Summary: On their way home from a mission, the newly reunited team-seven-minus-one encounters two people they do not expect, who are in way over their heads. Gift-fic for bakabokken's birthday!
Notes: Happy birthday, Rinja! I know that you like whumpage, so hopefully this fic will deliver.
I should note a few things here: most important, there may or may not be slash. I haven't decided if I want to include it or not, so that will depend mostly on how the characters progress and whether it will contribute anything to the story. If the rating goes up (which it may, but I doubt), it will not be because of that. This also does not fit neatly into the canon timeline, but I don't think that it is a severe enough change to classify it as AU. Finally, this is a work in progress, but updates should be fairly regular. Guh, I ramble too much. I promise, in future updates, I won't have this many notes. On the bright side, you get two chapters at once, since, this being a gift fic, I wanted to wait for permission to post.
After all the events of Kakashi's long life, he would never have denied that good ideas could spring accidentally from really, really bad ones. Of course, he would also never have denied that "good" was an entirely relative term. What would in one case be considered catastrophically awful, depending on the events directly preceding it, the same event might instead be a stroke of pure, heaven-sent good luck. In this case, it was a little bit of both.
When he accepted the mission, he did so under noted protest: it was long, it was boring, and it had considerably low risk for direct combat. On the other hand, despite the unbearable monotony of courier missions, no matter how crucial they were, the fact that the reunited fragments of team seven-minus-one got to get their feet wet without risking decapitation for something so elementary as rusty teamwork was due only to Godaime's benevolence, and for that, Kakashi was eternally grateful. As for the tedium that went with it, running a scroll to the Raikage himself was at least crucial enough to keep Naruto's ambitions quiet. After all, no matter how rocky the history between Konohagakure and Kumogakure, it was nothing compared to the future that loomed between Konoha and Oto, and this was a fact that all three of them were, unfortunately, rather personally acquainted with.
Unfortunately, this still amounted to little more than an extended camping trip, and Kakashi spent most of it bored on a level he hadn't experienced in years. He had finished the Icha Icha installment Naruto had given him four times on this trip alone (three of which while waiting around in Kumo for a reply), and he had started looking for reasons to put the book away. He first realized how ridiculous it had gotten when, shortly after crossing the border to Fire Country, a rabbit had broken a stick and he immediately spun around, shuriken in hand and hitai-ate up, full battle stance. It wasn't so much his oversensitivity or good reflexes that were the problem, though; it was Sakura, saying to him in a voice that just oozed with eye-rolling, "Kakashi-sensei, do you actually want us to get attacked by Sound nin?" Then Naruto had said something to the effect of 'hell yes, bring 'em all on, I'll beat the whole village myself, dattebayo,' and then Kakashi really wished he had never quit Anbu, because then he wouldn't have to put up with this shit.
The one time they did get attacked, it was by a shoddily composed, week-old "gang" of civilian fourteen-year-olds, while walking down the main street of a town they had only stopped in due to mission parameters. The attack itself mainly consisted of a rock tossed at Naruto's head (which he caught in his bare hand without turning around, displaying a level of situational awareness that shouldn't have shocked Kakashi, but nevertheless did), a few menacing glares accompanied by cracking knuckles, and one vaguely threatening pick-up line intended for Sakura. In the children's defense, Kakashi, Naruto and Sakura were out of uniform, with no headbands or visible weapons, but even Naruto hadn't seen their challenge worth acknowledging. And then their contact, the whole reason they were even there, hadn't even shown up.
The whole thing was summed up rather succinctly by Naruto one evening, about half a day's walk over the Fire border. They were all sitting around a large campfire--stupidly large, Kakashi had mused at the time, given their position within miles of more than one unfriendly border--the scents of fish, small game and scavenged nuts and berries wafting tantalizingly--dangerously--through the air. Kakashi, for the record, had considered these risks and summarily dismissed them. Honestly, if their dinner really drew out enemy sound or cloud nin, which was unlikely, at least it would break up the monotony.
Naruto eventually broke the silence that blanketed the trio like the blackness outside their ring of firelight: "Man, this mission seriously sucks."
And then, as if the fates had just been waiting for that cue, things got interesting.
"Give me that!"
Suddenly, the shot glass vanished from his hand. A reasonable portion of Kakashi's mind was suitably impressed, but the rest of him was annoyed. "Maa, but Sakura, I think that's a little--" The glass rejoined the thick wooden bar table with a loud clunk. Her expression didn't wince. "Uh, wow."
Naruto's face was ashen. "Sakura-chan, you..." He waved his hands vaguely. "You really are a mini old lady!" The glass broke, and Naruto's eyes widened. She raised a fist, looking murderous. "The woman you spend all your time with! Come on, you know I didn't mean you were old!"
Kakashi caught her wrist in a firm grip. "Maa, Sakura, I hate to get in the way of your retribution, but you're causing a scene." Both teens stopped moving. All around the bar, eyes flicked in their direction. "Although, on the bright side, it will be easier for them to find us now."
Sakura settled back into her seat. "At least you didn't get... skeeved on by children." An exaggerated shudder ran through her, and she made a face.
Kakashi snickered behind his mask, but otherwise remained impassive. "Technically, they are your age." As he spoke, he raised his hand and hailed a waitress, giving his best plastic smile. She winked and began making her way over. "But if you like older men, I can talk to Gai for you."
Sakura put visible effort into quashing her reaction, and ground out, "You know that's not what I meant." She fingered the glass, eyeing the bar pensively.
"One is enough, I think," Kakashi said with one eyebrow raised.
She sagged slightly. "Yeah, I know." Sakura let go of the glass.
After a beat, Naruto perked up. "Hey, hey, if it's okay for Sakura to..." He grinned conspiratorially.
"No." The response came twofold. Naruto didn't seem overly surprised, but was annoyed nevertheless, and his expression soured.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, whatever." He waved a wrist dismissively. "I need to be on my game anyway, even if this mission totally blows. Hey, by the way, what are we--" Naruto stopped abruptly as the waitress arrived.
"Ah," Kakashi affected a blasé tone. "Some edamame, please. And jasmine tea." The girl bowed deferentially, but couldn't hide her grin or her eyes. Beside him, his companions rolled their eyes.
"Anyway..." Conversation resumed after she walked away. "Hey, so who are we supposed to be meeting here, anyway? Is it important?"
Sakura huffed. "Obviously it's important; it's for the village, isn't it?"
Kakashi shifted his weight, drawing his book out of a pocket. "Actually," he admitted, "I have no idea who we're meeting." He flipped through the book, stopping at the glossy pictures in the middle, and studied them absently.
"What do you mean they didn't tell you?" He glanced at her from the corner of his eye; Sakura had turned to face him with her eyebrows scrunched.
"Well," he drew the syllable out as he considered her question. "I have an idea, but it's not like we really need to know anyway. I'm pretty recognizable, so as long as our contact knows to meet us here, he'll just give us what we need and we'll go. And it'll probably be someone we know, or know by sight." He looked around the bar impatiently. "But we have been here quite a while."
Naruto scowled. "Well, whoever it is, he'd better hurry up. I wanna go home and get a real mission." Their tea and edamame arrived. He bit aggressively into a soybean.
Sakura stood and leaned over, serving the tea delicately. "I seem to remember someone was happy about this mission, excited to meet the Raikage..."
"Yeah, until i realized how boring Lightning Village was. And how annoying civilians can be."
"My parents are civilians!"
"But they live in Konoha." He said this as if it were a very obvious qualitative difference. "The point is that our contact is lazier than Shikamaru."
Sakura ignored him. "Kakashi-sensei, what if something happened? Should we go after them?"
"Mm..." Kakashi scrunched his nose. "I had considered the option, but we don't exactly have anything to go on, and we could just make things worse."
Here, Naruto chimed in. "Worse? What do you mean?"
"Well, if, for example, it's some sort of covert op, we could blow their cover. There are plenty of things that could prevent someone from meeting a contact, and not all of them are life and death."
Naruto tapped his chin with a forefinger. "Hmm, I think I get it now. So how long do we wait, then?"
Kakashi turned and glanced out the window. The sun, which had been high in the sky when they first arrived, was beginning to grow large and pink, and the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings had blackened. "We've been here too long. If we hang around too much longer, we'll draw attention. Finish that, and then we leave."
Despite what he said, however, simply leaving without a word left a bad taste in his mouth. If the leaf shinobi they were supposed to meet was involved in what he suspected, and didn't make their rendezvous, they probably really did need help. But Kakashi's misgivings did not change the fact that their team was ill suited for that kind of task, especially having come prepared for such a low key mission as the one they were currently running. With a sigh, Kakashi resigned himself to the fact that there was nothing he could do. If their comrade didn't arrive before their edamame ran out, they would leave for Konoha.
