Chapter 4

D-rank missions are an utter delight. They're easy and simple, requiring no use of their ninja skills at all. Sasuke spends most of the time halfheartedly pulling a weed or two every half hour and the rest reading his various manga and scrolls. He can tell that both Maki and his sensei's patience is starting to run out, Maki's yells are becoming increasingly louder and sensei keeps staring at him when he thinks Sasuke doesn't notice it. Admittedly, it does take him time to notice it, but once he does, he can't stop.

It's not exactly a bother, because he spent years being stared at intently by Genos, but it's still kind of disconcerting. Together with the perverted books the man reads all the time, he's starting to wonder if he has some pedophilic leanings.

If that's the case, Sasuke is going to just kind of casually murder him when they actually go on a proper mission and blame it on enemies.

It'll be such a shame.

The pink one has started following him around a lot. She gives him looks each time she sees him and keeps on making a face like she's fighting with herself, not that he cares. It's mostly amusing. Still, to be fair, he has noticed that she seems to be eating more, which is just as well, because Saitama has never understood the female urge to diet and starve themselves. It seems like an awfully counterproductive thing to do.

While Maki loudly proclaims that they don't need to do D-ranks, Sasuke hides his face accidently behind a book and misses what's being said. It's not an unusual thing, because nobody ever seems to tell him anything actually important, but he has a feeling he missed something major when they finally leave the mission office.

Maki keeps beaming and jumping up and down, the pink one looks like she's swallowed a bug and their sensei is staring at him again. Those murder plans are becoming more and more realistic.

He follows along as they wander onto the main street of Konoha, the one that leads to the gate. Once they reach it, sensei puts a hand on Sasuke's shoulder and says, "Meet up at the gate in half an hour with provisions to last weeks."

Then they leave, the pink one giving him a lost look as she's pulled away.

Sasuke just kind of stares at the spot they disappeared from. What exactly did he miss?

But as it seems like they're finally going on a mission outside the village, Sasuke decides it doesn't really matter and makes his way to the Uchiha Compound. It's exactly as he left it, looking like the perfect place for ghosts to haunt. Because he doesn't really care, the grass and plants have started dying in some places and moss have started to take over others. He's looking forwards to decorating it to his heart's content come Halloween again. The last time he made a lot of people cry and scream and the Hokage personally visited to give him a stern talking to, but frankly, if they can't even handle his small pranks, how are they going to stay alive as shinobi. Honestly.

He packs his things into sealing scrolls quickly and gathers a whole armful of books. He needs to be prepared with the essentials. Who knows how long they're going to be gone?

By the time he reaches the gate in and out of Konoha, which is manned by a pair chunin's at all times, Sasuke has already stopped wondering about the new mission. If it's important, they'll tell him and if it's not then they'll don't. It's not hard to figure out that the reason Maki looks so excited is probably just because it takes place outside the village. He's not exactly a subtle person.

Sasuke is the first one at the gate, which doesn't point a good picture for his team, because he also has no idea what the mission is actually about. The others should have beaten him there. It's possible that Sasuke is once again reading manga, but really, by this point it should be expected.

The thing is, while Sasuke is rarely, if ever, actually effected by what happens around him, when it comes to manga and books, it's about as close as he can get to actual feelings. To emotions. He's not excited or nervous about a mission outside of Konoha, but when he reads of Mirai's tragic fate, he finds himself almost crying.

It's about as close as he can get to anything at all.

A couple of minutes after he sat himself down on the ground to concentrate on his reading, an old drunk man comes bumbling along out of Konoha. Even as he walks, he keeps drinking and the smell of alcohol is annoying enough for Sasuke to disappear into the trees of the forest just outside the gate to get away from it. Soon after, the rest of his team follows suit. Sasuke glances up once in a while to watch them stare around suspiciously and give the drunk man the cold shoulder. It's abundantly clear that Maki dislikes him.

After a few more minutes where he finishes the last chapter of the manga and seals it back into the scroll, he jumps down from the tree he was situated in and emerged from the tree line. His sensei gives him a hard look that doesn't affect him at all and says, "Well now that we're all here, it's about time to get going, wouldn't you say?"

They start walking.

Sasuke finds that the drunk is even more annoying when he's speaking, constantly going on about how great he is and how they need to sacrifice themselves in order to protect him. Which each word out of his useless mouth, Saitama is one step closer to just punching him and being done with it. They're off to a horrible start.

When the gates to Konoha can no longer be seen and they're still going at a snail pace to accommodate the civilian in their midst, the pink one breaks the silence that had fallen after Maki had loudly and repeatedly insulted the presumed client.

"So, what's Wave like?"

It's a giant mistake.

It sets the client off on talking about his country like it's the best damn thing since people discovered that horses could actually be ridden. The man babbles off about the bridge he's building and how awesome his family is and how pretty and beautiful and wonderful and amazing his daughter is. He goes on about the fishing and the crops and the trade and then he goes on about his surly but still adorable grandchild and Sasuke is ready to just kill him already. The guy is utterly useless.

He's making him feel homicidal.

Ever since his family and clan was killed in a single night, Sasuke has no patience for baseless bragging. Showing off all your secrets and laying all the cards on the table is stupid, but people still insist on doing it because they want everyone around to know how powerful and smart they are. Which just shows that they're absolute morons.

Saitama has never had any patience for idiocy.

There's a puddle in the middle of an otherwise entirely dry road.

Sasuke kind of wants to face palm, but that would mean letting go of the manga he's reading, so he doesn't. What he does do is say, in an entirely monotone voice, "There's a puddle in the road, sensei. Let's blow it up."

Immediately, Maki's attention is caught at the thought of explosions. His face brightens. "Yeah, sensei! Let's blow shit up!"

He then goes and jumps in the puddle.

Grunts of pain emerge from the puddle at once. Sasuke can't quite manage to keep his amusement under wraps and lets out a small laugh disguised as a cough. Maki flails and gets a kunai in his leg for his trouble while the pink one dramatically gasps, and their sensei moves to protect the client.

Maki kicks the puddle and there's the sound of a pain filled scream. Suddenly, the image of the puddle is gone and in its place is two men, one of them holding onto his privates desperately while making a low-pitched sound.

The other one swings his arms and chains follows.

Sasuke seals away his manga, he learned his lesson on reading while fighting when he tried to run away from sensei, thank you very much. He's not the stupid kind of idiot that repeats mistakes. He jumps out of the way and a minor crater is formed in the road from the force of it.

He hopes nobody is going to make a big deal of it, like Genos and everyone else constantly did. It's kind of irritating, to be watched that closely all the time.

And they kept asking how, like they somehow expected him to know.

The man that Maki attacked in his weak point manages to recover surprisingly fast and joins the battle as well. While the pink one is frozen and doesn't move and their sensei is killed by chains, Maki hits them dead and manages to take them out. Meanwhile, Sasuke doesn't do a thing. They didn't attack him while he wasn't in their way, so he isn't the target, as such, there's no reason to get involved. He's not a hero and in this world, he doesn't thing there can ever be such a thing.

Just monsters wearing the skin of men.

The men are defeated by Maki.

Once they've been tied up, Sasuke gets close to them out of curiosity and stares at their faces. They don't seem that dangerous, but he supposes that credits due where it's due, so he says, "Good work, Maki." and leaves it at that.

For some reason, this makes Maki stare at him, utterly stunned and with stars in his eyes. It reminds him of Genos and makes him give him a second look, which makes him notice that the wounds he received from fighting are already healed. It's never occurred to him before, that the people of this world might have advanced healing capabilities. Of course, is as he's in the middle of having a revelation that their sensei pops out of the woodwork, whole and well.

For some reason, the pink one practically cries at seeing him and Maki starts yelling again, an action he seems absurdly fond of.

Their sensei smiles at them and asks, "So, what did you learn?"

Maki starts babbling about his fight and flails his arms to show his movements while the pink one seems to just sink to the ground. Once Maki's story is finished, their sensei turns to Sasuke and stars at him again.

"You didn't fight at all Sasuke, I'm disappointed in you. Even when you thought I was dead, you didn't help your team. Explain yourself."

Sasuke blinks and answers, "Maki didn't need my help."

Sensei glares at him while Maki has stars in his eyes again. "And my death?"

"Why would your death make me want to fight? I don't care about you." Sasuke deadpans.

Their sensei's eye twitches violently. "People that abandons their comrades are worse than scum. Remember that. The next time a fight happens, you'll make an effort, do you understand?"

Sasuke nods. "Sure, Kai-sensei. I won't let you down."

"And learn our freaking names."

With that, their sensei leaves and drags their prisoners away.

The pink one walks over to a fallen log and sits down on it heavily while their client moves off to the side and proceeds to get even more drunk. Maki follows Sasuke's lead and flops down on the ground and somehow, they're sitting in a circle. For a while, they just stare at each other. Sasuke's mind is preoccupied with the thought of instant healing and regeneration and what it means to his punch. Maybe he won't ever be able to find someone able to survive it, but maybe they'll get back from the dead and heal from it. It's a thought worth investigating, and he has the perfect experiment subject right next to him.

He gives Maki a side-glance.

Yes, he's the perfect test subject.

Somehow, he feels like laughing manically in that way he sometimes saw villains do in his old world.

Mwhuhahah…

Or something like that.

On the other hand, it seems like it would be a pain on the throat and maybe even lead to losing his voice.

Eventually, the pink one breaks the silence that has fallen over the clearing.

"You… you were really brave, Naruto. How could you just fight like that? Weren't you scared?"

Maki swivels his head around from where he had been staring at thin air and answers, "Of course I was scared, Sakura-chan! But it was a mission and it had to be done."

Before Sasuke can stop himself, he's already opened his mouth and said, "Bravery isn't the absence of fear, but rather the strength to go on despite it."

Maki's mouth drops, and he says, "Yeah, like that, Sakura-chan! You just need to power through it!"

Shion bites her lip and says, "But what if I'm not cut out for this? For being a shinobi? Maybe I'm meant to be a seamstress or a model."

"You could totally be a model if you wanted to be, Sakura-chan!" Maki cheers. "But a shinobi is what you chose, right? You just need to remember why."

"Maybe…" Satsuki says, and the conversation dies off.

Sasuke still doesn't know what the actual mission is, but considering they were attacked and the target was clearly the client, he thinks it's something like protecting him. It seems the most obvious. It's kind of an oversight, that no-one has realized that he wasn't listening and hasn't bothered to tell him anything. But it's also not like it matters, so he won't say anything. It's a little bit like a treasure hunt that way.

It could be more amusing this way, he supposes.

As the day give way to night and their sensei return with blood on his sleeve, Sasuke takes out another manga to distract himself form the thoughts running through his mind.

They left behind Konoha. For the first time in his memory, Sasuke is out of the village he grew up in and on the way to getting some actual answers. He's found books about reincarnation, but they all say some truly ridiculous things. And it's not like Sasuke (Saitama) was born this way, no this is entirely the fault of his brother. Therefore, it only makes sense for his brother to have some answers. It's not like Sasuke has forgiven him for the death of his entire family, that isn't something you can just forget, no matter how unemotional you are, but he also isn't one to hold grudges. What's done is done and whining about it accomplishes exactly nothing.

It probably doesn't say anything good about him, the fact that, when it comes down to it, he thinks he would probably still choose his brother over Konoha, but that's not his fault. He doesn't have any emotional ties to anyone in the village, isn't even really sentimental of the house he grew up in, and nobody has ever really tried to get to know him. They might know who he is, but they have no idea what he is.