Thanks everybody, for making it back for the fourth chapter of my story. This chapter takes place 3 months after the last one, approximately, give or take a few days. So, I hope you guys enjoy reading my story, and if you have any things you want to ask, comments you want to place, or suggestions that you think might help make the story better, feel free to go right to that review button, and leave me a sweet review. Anyway, on to the story, I hope you guys enjoy the next installation of Some Call it Divine Intervention.

I woke up, like usual, about an hour before daybreak, and got dressed. I threw on a black mesh armor shirt under a dark navy long sleeve shirt. I pulled on my deep green, almost black, pants. I quickly donned the Anbu mask I had won from my sensei to hide the very pronounced scar I had acquired on my left cheek, and I have slowly become more and more comfortable with hiding my face, as stares had become leveled at me in rapidly increasing frequency, now due to both my strange hair, and also my strangely located scar, as a facial scar is very rare to see, either on ninja or on civilian. I had modified the mask slightly, namely severing it in half, so that the half that I wore covered from just under my eyes all the way down the rest of my face. I found that wearing the top half of the mask was useless, as all jutsus used to enhance it did not work anymore after I chipped it, and now simply limited my vision, giving me a rather severe handicap in a fight. I pulled on my ninja sandals, grabbed my weapons pouch, and slung the katana I had across my back before I started my morning run, three times around the village. Most days, I would see Might Gai and Rock Lee as they just finish their run, their last and my first laps often overlapping. It was an interesting thing to see, their morning workout, even if I only saw a small part of it.

I finished my laps, slowing down slightly as I stopped in training ground 23, just before the sun rose over the trees on the horizon. I sat down on the ground, doing the stretches that I had become accustomed to doing every day, for the past three months. At this point, I wasn't even doing the stretches consciously, merely using muscle memory to guide myself through my daily routine. This allowed my mind to drift off, and focus on other things, like what jutsu I might be starting to learn today, and whether I would be spending more time today on kenjutsu, taijutsu, or ninjutsu. I decided that, given the choice, I would focus more on kenjutsu today, but quickly put that off my mind, since I wouldn't have a choice, since my Anbu sensei would dictate what I will learn today, just like she did every day.

Over the last three months, I have spent every day, from dawn to dusk, training. First I learned the shunshin jutsu, which I had successfully added my lightning chakra to a little over two weeks ago, which actually allowed me to seemingly blink around the battlefield, as if I were disappearing and reappearing in a flash of lightning. After that, Cat-sensei spent roughly a month with me, until I had finally perfected switching between taijutsu forms, from any of my five styles to any other, mid battle, and as quick as thought. I no longer had to settle into the starting stance for any of my styles before using them, allowing for seamless transition between them. The unpredictability allowed me to fight on even footing with people more skilled than I in taijutsu, as I had proved by fighting Rock Lee on even footing for roughly ten minutes, before he was able to land a good hit on me, which sent me flying across the training ground we were on at the time, and slammed into a tree, knocking me out.

After the month of taijutsu training, I still practice my taijutsu every day, but to a much lesser extent than that first month. For the next two months, I only spent two to three hours a day on taijutsu, instead focusing on other fighting disciplines. The second month of training was spent getting seemingly small cuts all over my body every day, going home to bandage them, and then having even more cuts inflicted upon me the next day. I spent that month learning kenjutsu from, I have been told, the best kenjutsu fighter currently in the Anbu ranks. That, of course, meant that I spent most of that month getting absolutely dominated in every kenjutsu spar, as Cat spent the whole time pointing out to me every fault and mistake I made. It was not a fun month.

I did, albeit slower than I would have liked, eventually started to do much better in our spars, that to this day, I was able to recognize the mistakes that I was making when I was making them, so although our fights are still very one-sided, I have been taking much greater care to learn more and more from each fight. With money that I have been setting aside since I settled in Konoha from my government orphan stipend, I bought a katana. It's longer than the traditional Anbu ninjato, or chokuto, but it seems to better suit my fighting style. I have it slung across my back in a baldric, with the hand and a half hilt with poking up over my right shoulder. The blade itself was just over two feet long, approximately twenty five inches. The blade was made of a steel forged using chakra iron, making it stronger, lighter, and also slightly harder to forge than either chakra iron swords, or steel swords. The purchase absolutely cleaned me out of all the money I had, and the sword was even on sale, as the blacksmith I had bought it from had not been able to sell it for over eight years, despite almost monthly markdowns. The sword itself was rather plain, except for a serpent motif in the hilt that ran six inches down the blade. I found it fit my fighting style much better than the ninjato I used for the first month of my kenjutsu training, and improved much quicker with kenjutsu with my katana than I had with the ninjato.

The third month was spent perfecting my lightning affinity, for although it came to me much easier than the other four, was still something I had to sink over two weeks into to perfect, and I was able to learn to channel my lightning chakra through my katana, while also learning some low level lightning style jutsus, namely Raiton no Jutsu (Lightning Technique), which allowed me to focus my lightning chakra into a singular bolt that I directed out of my finger to either explode on and momentarily paralyze a target, or pierce a small hole straight through them, depending on how much chakra I use, and also Raiton: Jibashi (Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder), which projected a short pulse of electricity from my hands which could stun or paralyze an opponent, or punch roughly a fist sized hole straight through them, if I pumped a lot of chakra into it. I preferred not to use that much chakra with either technique, preferring to use them to stun them so that I could subdue them with taijutsu, instead of creating a very bloody situation with them. My favorite jutsu to use, however, is still the lightning shunshin that I have quickly mastered to a high enough degree where it takes an almost unnoticeable amount of chakra, even over extended periods of time, and could be used without hand signs most of the time, even mid fight.

However, when Cat arrived, it was not to train, but to escort me to the Hokage's office instead. We arrived seconds before Naruto burst in through the doors of the Hokage's office, desperately fighting a cat off of his face, seemingly only moments away from resorting to just murdering the cat, just to rid himself of the trouble it was creating for him. Frankly, from the look of the cat and it's demeanor, I think there would be a very short list of people who would fault him if he did. Sasuke, Sakura, and their jonin sensei walked in moments later, Sasuke looking extremely bored as usual, Sakura focusing only on Sasuke, and their sensei reading a book with an orange cover that I had never seen or read before. They turned in their mission, their sensei being the only one to notice Cat-sensei and I in the corner to the side of the Hokage's desk, inclining his head inconspicuously to my sensei, receiving a quick nod in return.

"Team seven, reporting a successful mission, Hokage-sama." Their sensei sounded somewhat reluctant, almost bored. "Well, good job, Kakashi, that must be the third time you four have caught Tora this week. That is quite impressive." The Hokage pulled a cat cage out from under his desk, and Naruto put the cat inside of it, happy to be rid of the menace. "Well, the Daimyo's wife will be by later today to pick you up," the Hokage said, directed at Tora, who simply hissed, while Sarutobi turned back to team seven, "Now, I have several more D rank missions for you today, Kakashi, I have weeding, dog walking…" He didn't get to finish, as Naruto was groaning loud enough that nothing else could be heard over it. "Yes, Naruto, do you object to something?" Sarutobi leaned forward calmly, his chin resting in his palms, in feigned interest.

"We've been doing D ranks for two months already, we must be ready for something else, something more challenging, I mean, seriously, these missions suck, they're so boring!" Naruto punctuated his last statement by kicking at the air, as Sasuke, who used to almost always oppose Naruto, simply on principle, actually agreed with him. "Naruto is right, we are more than ready to move on to harder missions, Hokage-sama, and we should have moved on over a month ago."

"Well, it's not really up to me, is it?" Sarutobi said, looking pointedly at Kakashi, "It's up to your Jonin sensei. Kakashi, do you think that they are ready for a C rank mission?" Kakashi looked up from his book, that I realized he was only fake reading, putting it into his weapons pouch. "Hokage-sama, I was really waiting for my Genin to ask me before we took any C ranks, and since they think that they are ready, and since I know that they have been training rather heavily for the past three months, on top of completing at least one D rank per day after the first month. At this point, even I am becoming bored with D ranks, and Jonins don't even have to do any work for them. So, Hokage-sama, what C ranks do you have?"

"I only have one C rank today, it's an escort mission to the Land of Waves. I'll probably have more tomorrow, should you want to wait that…" The Hokage was very loudly interrupted by shouts from all three genin, who, apparently, absolutely needed that mission. I didn't understand the draw of it, but, I also hadn't been forced to do D ranks every day for the past two months on top of what I'm sure was vigorous training from one of the highest ranked ninja in the village not in the Anbu. "Very well, Cat, if you would step forward now, please." Sarutobi looked in our direction very pointedly, bringing attention to us for the first time the whole meeting.

My sensei stepped forward, gesturing me to step forward, too. Sarutobi looked me up and down. "Cat, go get the client. Team seven, this is going to be the fourth Genin on your team for the mission. Naruto, you in particular might be happy about it. Jeremiah, remove your mask, if you would." I pulled my mask off of my face, watching as Kakashi's eyes quickly flickered from Naruto to me, and down to my scar. "For the first C rank of every Genin team in your year, each team will bring along with them an extra Genin. Jeremiah has been spending the last three months training every day from dawn until dusk. He will be on your mission to both give him mission experience, and also to lessen the potential stress that a C rank can create, especially on a new Genin team. It is a new program that I've started this year, as your class has some of the most promising genin in a long time, and I want to lower the risk of losing any of you as much as possible. C ranks have very low mortality rates, but there is always the potential for them to get, well, fucked up beyond all recognition. Ah, Cat, and Tazuna, what wonderful timing!" Sarutobi said, as my sensei came in, followed by a man who was swaying slightly as he walked, and was enshrouded by the very pungent stench of alcohol.

"You've got a bunch of fucking pre-teens protecting me? That's all?" Tazuna exclaimed angrily. "Well, Tazuna-san, I will also be with you, if that helps." Kakashi said, again with his nose in his book, feigning disinterest. "I AM one of the highest ranking ninjas in the village, so I think we will be able to handle anything that will arise on any normal C rank mission. This IS going to just be a normal C rank, correct, Tazuna-san?" Kakashi looked up, scrutinizing Tazuna closely, until he gave Kakashi a seemingly tentative nod. "Then we should have no issues protecting you, Genin team or not."

Tazuna, looking successfully cowed, simply nodded reluctantly, and turned on his heels towards the door, pausing with his hand on the door handle, he turned back around slightly, "Hokage, per our agreement, I will depart tomorrow morning with your ninja as escort, at approximately eleven o'clock." With those parting words, Tazuna opened the door and left as quickly as possible.

"Team Seven, Jeremiah, you will all meet Kakashi and Tazuna at the front gate. You will always arrive at least an hour before any escort missions that will take you outside of the village. Now, you are all dismissed. Good day." Sarutobi dismissed us all with a wave of his hand.

I left quickly, walking at a brisk pace until I left the mansion. Once I was outside, I quickly ran off, using my shunshin to reach my apartment in just over a minute, so that none of Team Seven had time to even think about asking me questions. Once inside, I started gathering all the supplies that I had into storage scrolls that Cat had given me, before I started writing down all of the necessary supplies that I would need to purchase, since I didn't have them in my apartment. From my experiences travelling through Wave when I was younger, I knew that, on top of the restock of kunai, and shuriken, the purchase of various rations like energy bars, I would also need a waterproof cloak, and some extra clothing to be safe.

-Line Break-

The Next Day:

I stood, leaning against the archway that encompassed the giant wooden doors that were the only official entrance or exit to and from Konoha. I was excited to go on my first mission, but I also really did not want to be here right now. Mostly because Sasuke kept staring really creepily at me. We were about thirty minutes early, and Naruto, surprisingly, had arrived even earlier than Sasuke and I had. Naruto had stayed quiet, seemingly not wanting to ask me any questions at all, which was a bit odd, because he didn't seem like the type to stay quiet. Sakura arrived about fifteen minutes later, and immediately jumped into asking me questions about where I had been, what I had done, and who had trained me. I don't like Sakura, so ignoring her and her incessant prying was very easy.

After about ten more minutes of ignoring Sakura, I spotted Kakashi walking down the road toward us, with Tazuna accompanying him, wearing a hat that I saw rice paddy farmers wearing when they were working, to protect them from the sun. Much to my disapproval, he was also carrying a bottle with liquid sloshing around inside of it, that was very clearly not water, and was most likely some sort of hard liquor, judging by his smell in the Hokage's office yesterday. "Oh, goody, you're all already here, and ready to go. Tazuna-san, while we are traveling, you will remain in the middle of all of us. Naruto, you will cover the right, Sasuke, the left, Sakura, the rear, and Jeremiah, you'll be up front with me." Kakashi looked at all of us, with a seemingly forced eye smile. I put my mask on, covering up most of my face, before nodding and moving to stand next to Kakashi, as we all started the long walk from Konoha to the Land of Waves. As we walked, I heard Naruto asking Tazuna questions about his job, how he became a bridge builder, and why a bridge builder was so important to Wave. About three hours into the journey, I spotted a puddle by the side of the road. I pointed it out wordlessly to Kakashi, wondering if it could possibly be anything important, as it hadn't rained in a little over a week.

Kakashi just shook his head slightly, staring at me until I nodded back, regardless of how uneasy the situation made me feel. We continued walking, not losing stride, right up until we reached the puddle. Just as Kakashi and I drew level with the puddle, two ninja burst out, both cloaked, and each wearing a large clawed gauntlet on opposite hands, with a chain running between the gauntlet. They ran forward, wrapping Kakashi up in the spiked chain, before pulling hard enough to slice him in half. I drew my katana, bursting forward with a quick shunshin, before channeling lightning chakra through my blade, and cutting straight through the chain, neutralizing one threat, before stabbing at the one with the gauntlet on his left hand, cutting through his bicep, before jumping away, towards Tazuna, to avoid the swipe from the ninja with the gauntlet on his right arm.

"That little fucker! Gozu, he got me real good" The one I had cut stood, hunched over, clutching his bicep that was spasming painfully from the lightning chakra, rapidly aggravating the wound to the severed muscle. He looked up, hatred burning behind his pupils, pointing at me with his right hand. "Kill that little bastard! I want his head!"

"I was planning on it, Meizu!" The other one screamed, rushing forward towards me and Tazuna as Team Seven stood by, frozen, but for Naruto, who jumped in front of Tazuna, summoning a dozen clones to attack the brother named Meizu, who was struggling just to dodge the wild and unorganized attacks from the clones. Kakashi dropped from a tree branch above Meizu, stabbing a kunai through his head, then straightening up to watch as I dashed forward towards Gozu, ducking under his swinging gauntlet, kicking it up to knock him off balance, before stabbing through his right thigh with my electrified katana, pinning him to the ground as he writhed in pain, his muscles spasming violently.

Kakashi walked over, standing next to me, staring down at Gozu critically. "The Demon Brothers from the Mist, huh?" He crouched down in front of his face, getting very close to him. "What were you after? Are you after the bridge builder? Hmmmm?" Kakashi stayed in that position, until Gozu nodded weakly, barely able to concentrate on Kakashi. He groaned very loud, before spitting out, "We were sent to kill the bridge builder, by Gato."

Kakashi looked at him, intrigued by his response, before looking at Tazuna quizzically, and also slightly angrily. "You deceived us. You withheld very valuable information from both us and the Hokage. This should be a B rank, at least, and one that the Hokage would not even consider giving to a genin team. I'm sorry, Tazuna, but I believe that we must return to Konoha. It would not be a wise decision for us to continue on with this mission. Team Seven, Jeremiah, we shall take our leave." Kakashi turned back the way we came, only to be stopped less than a moment later, by a shout from a blond who, up until now, had been startlingly quiet for the last several minutes.

"NO! KAKASHI-SENSEI! We can't just abandon the mission. We've already started, and Wave needs Tazuna. We have a duty as ninja and as people to help the people of Wave." Naruto stepped forward angrily, rapidly closing the gap between him and his sensei, sticking his face right up into Kakashi's. I had never seen Naruto quite this angry. He was unfathomably irate about the idea of abandoning a mission that was likely to end in failure, or at least some form of tragedy. Frankly, I don't care much. Whether we continue, or leave Tazuna, doesn't matter much to me, and yet, I still find myself mentally siding with Naruto, rather than Kakashi, despite Kakashi's more logical approach to the problem. But I didn't have time to say anything, before Sasuke spoke for the first time all day.

"I agree with the teme. We have committed to this mission, and as such, we will finish it as we would any other mission that went sour." Sasuke sounded surprisingly mature for someone our age, though that was not unexpected, as mature often comes quickly to those who stumble upon the aftermath of the genocide of their own family by their own brother. At least, that is what all the children had heard was what happened. "Jeremiah? Sakura? Anything to say?" Kakashi said, looking very pointedly at me, knowing who Sakura would side with. Instead of speaking, I simply shook my head side to side to tell him no.

"Well then, since it is pretty unanimous, team seven will continue on with you towards Wave, Tazuna. Team, same formation as before, but stay more alert this time. I want to avoid as many ambushes as possible. Jeremiah, Naruto, well done with reacting to the Demon Brothers's attack in time to prevent anything from happening. Move out." Kakashi turned and continued down the path in the direction we had been walking before the attack. I jogged slightly for a second to catch up with him before I could slow down to a brisk walk to match his much longer strides.

-Line Break-

A Week Later

Civilians move so slowly. How they manage to move at such a slow pace all the time just baffles me. Even as a child, I jogged anywhere I could, to get there faster. It didn't make any sense to me to waste any time that I could possibly use for other things. The only time I spent walking was when I was inside of a store. However, Tazuna had not had even a single percent of the training team Seven or I had received, and thus had to travel at a walk to be able to make the journey.

Earlier today, we had reached the coast line of Hi no Kuni, and we were able to hitch a ride with a man in a boat who seemingly knew Tazuna, and was doing him a favor. He seemed gruff, but also very scared that his actions would have very dire consequences. He spoke very little, but to tell us to be quiet when we all let out a collective gasp at our first glimpse of the startlingly expansive bridge that Tazuna had designed, and was the foreman of.

We were perpetually shrouded in mist during our journey across the strait between Fire and Wave countries, which, oddly, seemed only to get thicker as we got closer to Wave. This seemed to make Kakashi oddly apprehensive and nervous, which worried me as well. Anything that could worry a ninja who is at least an A rank threat to his enemies was something well worth the time for me to worry about. Kakashi grew even more nervous after we disembarked from the boat, constantly glancing around suspiciously, which team Seven started to notice as well.

By the time that we were starting to near Tazuna's house, we were so on edge that when a leaf rustled, four kunai all collided against each other at that spot, shredding through several branches of the bush, revealing that what we had really heard was just a rabbit. I ran over to it quickly, dreading the idea that we possibly might have hurt an innocent animal. I scooped it up in my arms, checking it over for injuries, before I heard Sasuke's question behind me. "It's summer, why does that rabbit still have it's white winter fur?" Kakashi realized our error very quickly, yelling at his team to take up a formation around Tazuna, before I heard a slight whistling approaching me from behind, making me turn to the sound.

I spun around just in time to stare down the biggest fucking sword I had seen in my life as it hurtled towards my face at impossible speeds for a sword that size. Unfortunately, it was going just fast enough, and I was just slow enough to react to not be able to dodge in time, before I heard a very loud clang, then a much louder thunking noise off to my left, as, thankfully, Kakashi was able to jump in front of me, deflecting the impossibly fast sword away from me, and into a sword just over ten feet away from me.

I turned to my left to watch as a man, dressed as a Kiri jonin minus the flak jacket, landed next to the sword, and, instead of pulling the sword out of the tree, pulled it through the tree with an impressive show of brute strength, severing the tree in half. "So, looks like I got myself a good haul today, four Genin, and the Copycat Ninja Kakashi Hatake. I might just about enjoy this."

Hey guys, I know this chapter has been long awaited, but life has a way of fucking you over sometimes, and by life, I mean that, between school starting back up, work, and a myriad of other factors, I have had very little time to write. Anyway, we're finally starting along the Naruto storyline with the Wave arc. Thanks for reading my story, and if you read my little notes, you get a digital cookie from the digital darkside. I hear they have cake now, too, so, have fun with that. Any questions, comments, and suggestions can be directed towards that fun little button that says review. I hope you guys enjoyed the extra long chapter in apology for taking so long to upload. Remember, it's never goodbye, just see you soon. PEACE!