The soft echo of feet could be heard throughout the holding chambers in ANBU Headquarters as Sarutobi, Genma, and Aoba walked towards the most recently used cell. It was a large cell made to hold four people and only those four people.

Aoba groaned again as the three stepped into the second to last section before the dreaded cell 666.

"Hokage-sama, please! Can't we just send them on an outside mission? It doesn't have to be serious, just makes them go far away for at least a few days. They're driving everyone insane!"

Sarutobi knew this was coming. The team had only been together for three months and already most jounin and chunnin had at least one encounter with the squad. Everyone was questioning the hokage's sanity to make him even consider putting Anko, the sadist, and Naruto, the prankster, on the same team.

The three Shinobi finally stopped in front of cell 666, the personal holding area for Team 13, the ninja squad from hell.

"Heya, Ao-chan. Ain't'cha just thrilled to see me?" Anko asked sweetly from behind the metal bars of the cell. Sarutobi closed his eyes and slowly blew the smoke from his pipe.

"Team 13, you will be escorted by Genma and Aoba to the missions room immediately. Any disturbances before you arrive and you will be forced on 5 D-ranks everyday for a month, understood?" The team gave him a sarcastic salute.

The old kage sighed once more before shunshinning to the mission room and begin searching for a long term, far away mission.

T.T

Ibiki glided through the hallways of the interrogation chambers, two ANBU following close behind. He looked up from his papers as a strange conversation reached his ears.

"Hey, Genma, why are you always chewing on that senbon? Does it taste good?" a loud voice asked.

"It doesn't taste good! He's probably just bored," another voice said, a bark soon following.

"Aaa. Could you two stop talking? This place is echoing your voices," a third voice drawled.

Turning the corner, the head torture interrogation officer and his guards found the source of the argument. Team 13 was once again being released from their personal cell. The only blonde among the group grinned and waved at the specialist.

"Morning, Scarface!" Ibiki twitched.

"That's evening, Naruto. It's already half past two." The neko masked ANBU to Ibiki's right smirked under her mask. Naruto turned to the woman and snickered.

"Hi, Neko. How're Batman and Robin doing?" the genin asked innocently. The ANBU giggled.

"Fighting crime in the name of justice as usual," Neko replied, tilting her head upward for emphasis. Anko smirked at the display.

"Um, uh, sorry for in'erupting this conversation, but, uh, we gotta get these guys to the mission room, so, uh," Aoba stuttered eagerly.

Kiba tilted his head and squinted his eyes before leaning over to Naruto.

"Hey. Since when did Butters wear sunglasses?"

T.T

"Perfect," Sarutobi said looking down at the c-rank in his hands. It was easily handled, long, and a 2-day's run away.

"Hey, Old man!"

Naruto bounded into the mission room followed by Kiba with a growing Akamaru now laying on his shoulders, a yawning Shikamaru, and Anko who simply strolled in, her pet snake Hebi-hime wrapped around her shoulders. The chunnin (plural) in charge of missions ducked under their desks at team 13's arrival. Sarutobi gave the team a forced smile.

"Because of your recent…self assigned missions, the other jounin and chunnin have come to an agreement." Suddenly, Naruto threw himself at the hokage, sitting like a frog on the desk with his hands locked together.

"Please, please, please no D-ranks! Anything but that! Even getting tortured by Scarface! Okay, maybe not that, but anything else is fine!" The hokage sweatdropped.

"Actually, everyone seems to want a break from your exercises, so I will be sending you on a C-rank mission outside of the village. Now, you will leave in one hour and be gone for 2-3 weeks. The client you will be escorting will arrive momentarily."

THUMP.

Naruto had fallen onto the floor in a dead faint, Kiba's jaw had also hit the floor, Shikamaru twitched and Anko grinned cheekily. Shikamaru raised a brow at his teacher.

"So pulling all of those pranks wasn't just practice. You knew that this would happen didn't you?" The snake user looked in the opposite direction of her student and whistled.

"I'm not teeelliiing."

A hollow knocking at the door prevented Sarutobi from sighing again (he sighs too much.)

"Come in."

An old man with grey hair and a scruffy beard wandered into the room. He held a canteen of an unknown substance and his clothes were that of some sort of construction worker…who had been out of the job for a looong time. Naruto squinted at the man.

"Who's the old dude?" The "old dude" glared at the genin. Sarutobi interrupted the two before the man had a chance to argue.

"This is Tazuna. He is your client who you four will be escorting to wave country. Anko, this is your mission scroll. You leave in two hours." While the genin weren't exactly thrilled about guarding a drunk, Tazuna seemed to be even more distraught.

"Ah?? You mean these runts are who's going to protect me? The short kid's wearing orange, that one looks like he's gonna fall asleep any second, and the last kid's bringin' a puppy with him! And you're the sensei? Put on some clothes!"

"…What a drag."

As though the words were a signal, Tazuna was quickly pinned to the wall. He had a sharp pain in his left leg and foot and something sharp was pressed against his jugular. Shikamaru groaned at the disbelieving look on the Hokage's face. Anko stood in the middle of the room in her shuriken-throwing stance, which had caused Tazuna to be pinned like an X on the wall. Two Akamarus were biting the old man's lower calf and foot. Naruto smiled cheekily, holding Oowarai at the dumbstruck man's throat.

"Heehee. Y'know, it's very unsightly when you underestimate your opponents. And I dress like this because it's refreshing." Naruto and the two Akamarus made a face.

"We really don't need to hear that, Anko."

Sarutobi twitched.

"Enough! Get Tazuna down and start packing! You and your team are leaving immediately, Anko!"

30 minutes later found team 13 and Tazuna at Konoha's east gate. The self declared Super Bridge Builder had decided to stay as close to Shikamaru as possible since the boy had been the only one to not attack him. Naruto was hopping around excitedly having never left the village before while Kiba chatted with Akamaru. Anko clapped her hands and the group set off.

"Hey, Crazy-Sensei, have you been to Wave before?" Naruto asked. Tazuna nodded to himself, agreeing with the title.

"No, I've been to Mist, Waterfall, and Fog, but not Wave…and stop calling me that! I'm—"

"The Amazing Sex Goddess, we know." Tazuna sweat dropped. What on Earth did he get himself into?

Thank you for reading today's—Nah, I'm just f-in with you.

"GAAH! Man, couldn't you have been attacked at least once by something? I'd even take on an oddly aggressive old lady! This is so boring!"

"Aaa, Naruto, you're not supposed to hope our client gets attacked."

"Yeah, I know right. Grow up, shorty."

"You know you're not that much taller than the brat right?"

"That's only because you've had him chugging milk for the past three months, Anko! And it hasn't even done that much anyway!"

The rowboat steerer looked to Tazuna who quickly ran his thumb across his neck to prevent the man from saying anything. He may have been afraid of an enemy hearing the loud argument, but he was even more afraid of getting the group of crazies angry. The guards finally reached shore and began walking to Tazuna's home.

Naruto had had enough of the quiet and started darting from tree to tree, randomly throwing shuriken. He also starting humming something Tazuna could have sworn he had heard in a movie once. Kiba eventually got sucked in and started using the headsets to give out targets for Naruto to take out.

A bush rustled. Naruto immediately threw a kunai at it, the instincts from Anko's missions in Konoha finally showing their worth. The team noticed the change and put up their guard as the blonde searched the bush. When he stood up sweating and holding up a white rabbit, Kiba and Tazuna face vaulted.

"You chopped off the poor rabbit's arm!"

"Way to go, Blondie. Well, I guess it's good to know your aim's improved."

"Arf"

Shikamaru straightened and examined the rabbit for only a moment before glancing towards his teacher. Anko had noticed it as well. Snow rabbits were only white during winter…or in captivity.

"BRATS, DUCK!"

The genin instantly fell flat while Anko yanked Tazuna to the ground, all five barely avoiding the large blade whizzing through where their heads were just moments before. The sword lodged itself into a nearby tree, a man standing on top of it. He wore light gray overall-type pants and purple-blue camouflage guards on his arms and legs. His face was almost completely covered in bandages and a scratched mist headband rested lopsided on his head. The man chuckled darkly.

"Well, well. Looks like your shrimps can dodge, Snake Mistress. How long have you had them?" Anko smirked, pulling out her kunai.

"Now why would I tell you that, Momochi Zabuza, Demon of the Bloody Mist?"

"How nice of you to have heard of me." Zabuza jumped down to the ground, jerking his sword out of the tree as he went. Anko shifted herself so that she was blocking the path to her students.

"I'm guessing you came here for the old man. You lowering your standards?"

"Now that isn't very nice. Who's to say I didn't come to kill off the infamous Snake Mistress?"

"Then you must have some terrible aim."

Kiba and Naruto stood on either side of Tazuna, watching the staring contest between their sensei and the rogue. Shikamaru was crouching behind Anko in case he needed to perform a possession, never taking his eyes off of Zabuza. The team and Tazuna nervously watched the stalemate as the killer intent rose to unbearable levels and a mist began spreading through the clearing. The first actual jounin battle the team had ever witnessed would be one they would not want to forget.

"snort"

…What?

"Pfft"

W-wait a second.

"Heehee"

Just one minute now!

"BWAHAHAHAHA!"

Oi, oi, what the fuck is going on??

The three genin and Tazuna stared dumbstruck as Anko and Zabuza laughed together. Not the "I am so going to kill you" laughter either. It was the "I just made a really funny joke" laughter you used around close friends. Unbeknownst to them, a boy (A/N: yes, BOY) hiding in a nearby tree was also having a hard time understanding the situation. Finally the two jounin decided to let the rest of the group in on the joke.

"Ahem. First off, Haku, you can come out. We're not fighting."

"Haku? You got yourself an apprentice, Zabu-chan?"

A masked shinobi stepped out of the forest beside Zabuza, maybe 2 or 3 years older than the konoha genin. He wore a dark blue and white shiori, a dark green turtle neck shirt, and a pair of large, black pants. He seemed to be just as if not more confused than the other four.

"Yup. And the same goes for you, but I'm truly amazed that you even got to jounin level with your obedience issues."

"And you would know, Za-bu-chan."

"…"

"Ugh, I think I'm gonna be sick."

"Bad image! Bad image!"

"Ah, man, what a drag."

Tazuna coughed, gaining the attention of the two oblivious jounin. The bridge builder looked from one to the other, eyes squinted before he spoke. "So…My guard is friends with the guy who's trying to kill me?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Ain't that one hell of a ka-wink-y-dink? By the way, why are you trying to kill the old drunk?"

"NO, NO. Stop! What the hell is wrong with you guys? We were supposed to kill each other just what—two minutes ago??"

"Ah, relax, Pup. It's all smoothed over now."

Zabuza shrugged and turned to Tazuna. "Why don't we tell your guards why we're hunting you when we get to your place? I'm sure it'll be a more comfortable."

"…uh."

"Don't be like that! Zabu-chan may be a rogue, but he already told me he wouldn't attack you so no worries. He keeps his word."

"Well, isn't that comforting…"

"So, your name's Haku? I'm Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage of Konohagakure!"

"…Hello?"