Shiranu ga hotoke
"Not knowing is Buddha."
Ignorance is bliss.
After the T&I mission, we had a couple of days off. Kakashi didn't specify whether it was a break for Sasuke to quell the urge to kill me and myself to calm my nerves or what constituted as our days off this week.
Working days were strange in Konoha. Those with children followed a semi 'normal' schedule of five days work (sometimes six) and then a weekend due to that being how the Academy and civilian schools worked. Everyone else however followed strange system of working days and time off because 'missions don't take into account your plans' - a direct quote from Iruka who often used that as an excuse when giving us so much homework any plans we had outside of school would have to be cancelled. And, since Konoha's economy so depended on ninjas, everyone without children had strange working times too.
Out of all ninjas, genin and lower down medic-nins had the most constant work schedules; far removed from the insanity that was the work life of a jōnin. The unofficial rule was that genin would have around ten days off per month, not including training days. Of course, if you took on fewer missions then that number would be reduced and missions that took place over several days/weeks would mean for more, but that was the general rule of thumb.
I expected to have considerably more days off with Kakashi as my team's jōnin due to the fact he hadn't exactly been the most motivated of teachers, although it was still too early to see whether my theory was correct. Even if I was wrong, however, my working hours were insanely envious compared to jobs I'd taken before Sakura, especially when factoring in the fairly good pay.
If I remembered correctly, one ryō was around ten yen, making ten ryō around one dollar. The lowest possible pay for a D-rank mission was five thousand ryō, which meant for the easiest missions we got paid around five hundred dollars. That was almost the average weekly salary in the US and for probably nothing more than running a few errands. I wasn't even a teenager yet and I'd be able to support myself incredibly soon.
When you factored in the probability of dying before even reaching your twentieth birthday, however, the deal was slightly less appealing.
"Not meeting with your team today?" Mebuki asked when I came down for breakfast, either not noticing my slightly more frazzled than usual look or choosing not to comment on it. Ninjas were weird with emotions. It was why people didn't freak out if children didn't act like typical kids - then again, no child here would be considered normal by my previous world's standards.
When I shook my head, my father, sat at the table with a newspaper open, laughed and patted my hair affectionately. "Back in my day, we didn't get a break unless we physically couldn't continue with missions so count yourself lucky!"
Mebuki rolled her eyes, ignoring the comment about potential child-slave labour. "Just enjoy the break from your team, sweetheart. Lord knows you'll be spending so much time with them you'll appreciate the breaks." A pause. "How is it going with your teammates by the way?"
Oh, it's going great, one of them already wants me dead and I think I'm slowly going mad with fear, so no chance of any meaningful relationships there!
I shrugged and yawned. Mebuki nodded with some false sense of understanding.
"Well, if you've got some free time, you can help me organise some papers," Kizashi offered, wincing when my mother began to lecture him about doing his own job himself, not pestering his already busy daughter for help. Ignoring the contradiction that was the fact I was on a break currently, the very definition of 'not busy', I grabbed a piece of toast before escaping upstairs once more.
Over my two days of break, I spent the majority of it 'playing' about with my chakra. I had no direction in how to train my chakra manipulation ability, which meant that most of the time it was like fumbling around in the dark. What I ended up doing came about from my strange observation that, despite my chakra control only being above average, I was surprisingly good at forming chakra threads, as I had shown in my fight against Kakashi.
The exercise I performed based on this was to form the typical, thin thread of energy and then alter its shape by making it shorter and thicker. The less distance from my body, the more control I had over its shape, I realized. Once close enough and with a substantial amount of chakra, I could recreate the shape of the end of a screwdriver that had broken Kakashi's arm when I'd used it in a powerful kick. It was tangible too, although I refrained from satisfying my curiosity by kicking with it again.
When I wasn't experimenting with my chakra and chakra threads, I helped my father with his paperwork with the excuse that I might be able to glean some good information from it, not that busying myself staved off the memory of the T&I mission.
Kizashi's merchant business was booming at the moment, which was why he'd wanted my help in the first place. As I skimmed the papers, I noticed a lot of jobs were taking him to the Land of Wind and increasingly beyond the midpoint between Konoha and Suna. A memory of my mother's remark on Suna's economic difficulties sparked in my mind and the fact that the Wind Daimyō was known to be outsourcing missions to Konoha. Now I thought about it, of course, businesses other than ninjas would be suffering in Suna as a direct result of this.
As Suna's military economy lost money, people lost faith in the ninjas regardless of whether it was their fault that they weren't making money. Losing faith in a village's ninja was pretty much the same as losing faith in the village itself, and so any merchants living in that village would lose jobs too. It only made it worse that Konoha was so trusted by civilians due to their 'cleaner' image than other ninja villages, leading everyone to come to merchants here for their services despite the longer journey.
Suddenly, the 'nasty rumours' about the guy that had worked for my father being killed by Suna-nin suddenly had a lot more believability to it.
The thought preoccupied me enough to keep thoughts of my last mission at bay all throughout the day, only coming to haunt my mind in the form of nightmares when I slept.
"Sorry!"
I blinked as Naruto bowed in front of me, hands at his sides and eyes scrunched shut. He'd practically yelled the apology as soon as I'd arrived at our meeting place, the slowly more familiar training ground three. Sasuke stood behind him, arms crossed and eyes not meeting mine. "What?"
The blond lifted his head a little, revealing his panicked expression. "Um, well, the other day you were really upset and the bastard- I mean, Sasuke and I-" he barely got the name out without sounding completely hostile "-seemed to have made that worse! I, uh, I don't quite get how we did it but I'm really sorry Sakura-chan, please don't be mad at us- or, well, you can be mad at him but..." Naruto bowed again only to notice Sasuke wasn't doing the same and turning round to hiss at him. "Come on, apologize too!"
Sasuke shot daggers at him before glancing at me, mouth twisting into an uncomfortable line before returning to his normal scowl. "Why should I apologize for something so vague?" He retorted, Naruto spluttering and beginning to yell at how Sasuke was such a' jerk' and 'stubborn prick'.
I felt a wash of annoyance that they didn't understand why I had reacted so badly the other day. Then, rather unexpectedly, there came a stab of guilt, mainly directed towards Naruto who had looked terrified at the idea of me being mad at him. Suddenly, it all seemed a little childish despite the fear I'd experienced during the mission having been so devastatingly real. Of course, they wouldn't have understood why I'd been so upset - neither of them had a reason to distrust Konoha yet or think forcibly reading minds was wrong. We'd grown up in an environment where killing the enemy was a heroic thing to do for crying out loud!
Pushing down the guilt with an iron fist, I realized that even falling back to thinking logically without any emotions involved, my lashing out at them had been a mistake. It didn't matter how much they irritated me or how much I thought they were wrong, we needed to at least be a team stable enough to not kill each other every time we entered a ten metre radius. Otherwise we'd all die in our very first fight and that was not in my plan at all. And stopping that stability from happening simply because they were just ignorant kids that I didn't particularly like was stupidity at its finest.
"...It wasn't really anything to do with you two. So, sorry for lashing out." The words fell from my mouth awkwardly but Naruto looked over the moon. Sasuke, on the other hand, looked momentarily surprised by my apology, although the same intense hostility still clung to his glare when he recovered a second later.
I dug my fingers into my palms trying to force down the swell of frustration. God, I've apologized for being a bitch, what more do you want from me? To lie and say your stupid ideals are great after all?
"Isn't this just heartwarming?" Kakashi announced, suddenly appearing on the scene. His hand fell to my shoulder, a gesture I could see becoming a habit of his. "You guys made up already?"
Can you not tell by the way Sasuke is glaring at me like I just killed his firstborn child?
Naruto jabbed his finger towards Kakashi, all signs of earlier anxiety and upset replaced with irritation. "You're late again!"
Kakashi placed a hand on his heart but not until he'd acknowledged the fact that no, we hadn't made up, with the slight lowering of his eyelid. "Ah, and now so cold once more. But I'll make it up with a good mission, don't you children fret."
An hour later and Naruto was throwing the rubbish we were removing from a stream up at the tree branch Kakashi was lounging on, shrieking obscenities at the jōnin. "I thought I taught you better than to litter, Naruto," Kakashi called down, the orange monstrosity shaking his fist.
"You haven't taught me anything! Lazy-sensei!" He hollered.
"That's technically true," I muttered, Kakashi somehow hearing and shooting me an offended look.
"I'll have you know I'm so busy as a super cool jōnin that I haven't had the time."
Naruto scowled, stepping out of the stream and folding his arms "But you have time to read that pervy book?!"
"Icha Icha Paradise is a literary masterpiece I'll have you know-" Kakashi was cut off by Naruto suddenly declaring that he was going to make him teach us something, running at the tree. Sasuke and I, who had been standing a safe distance apart (myself lest the boy decided he wanted me dead right now and him presumably because he was only barely tolerating my presence), both watched.
Please tell me he's going to fall like the other day again.
He didn't. Instead, as he kicked off the ground to get a head start on the tree trunk, I noticed the explosion of chakra concentrated in his feet, all of which flew into the poor sapling.
There was a crunching sound before the whole tree began to fall backwards, Kakashi seeming momentarily alarmed before bursting into smoke and appearing in the next tree over, watching with the rest of us as the first fell to the ground with an almighty thud.
"...I think you already know, but that's not how you tree walk." I told the boy after clearing my throat, ignoring the sirens going off in my head about exactly how much chakra would have been needed to do that.
I also ignored the quick thought that remarked that technically Naruto could walk up the tree now it was horizontal rather than vertical.
"...so team seven successfully cleared the rubbish from the stream, as per the mission orders, and that concludes my report." Kakashi finished with a visible curved smile beneath his mask.
The Hokage linked his fingers together, leaning his elbow on the missions desk. "That doesn't explain the tree now blocking the stream, Hatake."
"What tree?"
"Hatake."
"Okay, so there was a freak, localised storm and the ferocious gale made it fall over." Our jōnin-sensei told the lie with a completely straight face. Naruto looked torn between rolling his eyes and continuing to fidget guiltily.
He chose the latter, Iruka, who was helping man the desk again, noticing this and narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "What did you do Naruto?"
Kakashi sighed dramatically. "Oh no, you've got us. Yes, it was all Naruto's fault. As his teacher, I was only trying to shield him from punishment but I suppose it's unavoidable now-"
"It was your fault too, Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto yelled, pointing accusingly at the man but bright red with the embarrassment of the knowledge he'd been the one to knock down the tree. "If you'd actually taught us something useful then we wouldn't complain!"
Sasuke crossed his arms in silent agreement. I continued to try not to laugh at the hilarity of the situation, helped somewhat by my continued heightened wariness of the Hokage. The fact that he might have ordered the T&I mission made me look deeply into every glance he sent my way as if each one was some sort of test of my loyalty and emotional strength.
It was suffocating.
"Explain everything." Sarutobi then ordered the jōnin. "In detail." He then added before glancing at us. "You can leave now. Any deductions for the misconduct of this mission will come out of your teacher's pay."
Kakashi made a mournful noise. Naruto stuck his tongue out at him in satisfaction. I felt humiliatingly relieved by our allowance to leave.
As we exited the room, Iruka followed, stopping us before we could leave the building. "Why don't you explain to me what happened, Naruto?" He asked, seeming somewhat flustered and worried about the whole tree felling incident. His concern was almost sweet, even more so when he extended his worried glances to Sasuke and me.
Naruto perked up even more, a smile returning to his lips. "Well, Kakashi-sensei was being annoying so I was gonna tree walk up to him and teach him a lesson! Except-"
"The idiot made the tree fall down." I couldn't tell whether Sasuke thought it was a dumb mistake on Naruto's part or that he saw how terrifying it was the blond even managed that.
"OI!"
Iruka's mouth fell open. "Tree walk?" I could practically hear his silent comment about Naruto's abysmal chakra control and how there was no way he should be learning that yet. He needed more practice at the basics first, like the paper folding he never really managed to do. Or at least that was the standard way of doing it.
"Yeah, but Kakashi-sensei won't even tell us how to do it!" Naruto complained before his eyes lit up, an idea clearly forming in his mind. "Hey, hey, Iruka-sensei, can you teach me how?"
As much as Iruka told the boy off during our Academy days, it was no lie that the orange monstrosity somehow knew exactly what to say to make him do what he wanted. If I thought seriously about it, one could argue that this was the beginnings of his 'protagonist powers' where he could make villains turn good by just chatting with them. He was surprisingly good at knowing what made people tick, usually in a positive manner. Although his ignorance of this incredible manipulative ability was staggering. People would literally kill for a skill like that. I was even incredibly jealous - if my skills at manipulation were even half as good as Naruto's, I would be long gone from Konoha.
I wondered whether he'd inherited it from Minato. As nicely as the canon had painted the man, I doubted anyone with the Hokage's hat could be without any kind of manipulative abilities.
Iruka conceded almost immediately, beginning a familiar lecture about how to tree walk with the skill of a seasoned teacher. Not that I listened for long, taking the first opportunity I saw to slip away.
As I got further from the Hokage's tower, I barely heard Iruka's question as to where I'd gone. "Oh, Sakura-chan already knows how to tree walk," Naruto replied casually.
"What?!"
God fucking damn it Naruto.
A hand moving to the forehead, the blue eyes of a Yamanaka, blood-stained floor, mind ripped apart, helpmehelpmehelpmehelpme.
I just don't want to die.
"I hope that cat gets even more ribbons attached to it." Naruto scowled as he gingerly touched his scratched face, Tora the cat having stopped tormenting him in favour of pawing at the wire I was dangling in front of her. After the 'tree walking incident', we'd had the infamous Tora mission thrust upon us as a punishment (despite the official blame going to Kakashi as our jōnin-sensei). The mission had been mostly uneventful, save for when Naruto had slipped trying to follow my route through the trees, Sasuke sneering at him whilst I tried not to laugh.
"Now, now, she's only trying to escape and live a ribbon-less free life." Kakashi chided the injured blond.
"Why don't we just let her go free then?"
"Money."
"Ah."
Tora rolled onto her back, purring loudly as I scratched her stomach. "How come she's so nice to you, Sakura-chan?" Naruto grumbled, moving to pet the cat also only to be swiped away by brandished claws.
"Animals can tell if you're a good person," I replied as Tora began to now hiss at Sasuke.
Kakashi chuckled whilst the Uchiha glowered at me, holding out his hand towards Tora. She took one look at it before digging her fangs in.
Silence.
"Looks like we're going to have to apologize for not finding Tora." The jōnin announced, drawing out a kunai.
"She's only trying to lead a ribbon-less life."
"Sakura, be quiet."
By the time we returned to the Hokage tower, Naruto was considerably more scratched than before, Sasuke had been bitten twice, Kakashi was still plotting Tora's death and I was unharmed, the cat slung across my shoulders and purring contently. "Mission to catch the demon spawn complete," Kakashi informed the Hokage.
Sarutobi sighed. "Hatake, she is the cat of the Fire Daimyō's wife."
"Doesn't mean she's any less removed from the devil."
Tora screeched and hissed when her owner came to finally pick her up, pulled into a bone crushing hug. "Serves her right," Naruto jeered, Sasuke nodding and Kakashi doing his usual condescending wiggle of the fingers in farewell.
The third Hokage watched on in exasperation before turning his attention back to the scroll of missions, trailing his gaze across them. His eyes then flicked to Naruto's impatient form, Sasuke's bored expression and finally me, looking everywhere but at our esteemed leader. "...Bodyguard mission. C-rank."
Naruto practically exploded with happiness, fist pumping and jumping on the spot. "Yes! Who is it? A princess? A lord? I'll be the best bodyguard they've ever had, believe it!"
Bodyguard mission? C-rank?
Oh fuck no.
Something in my expression or posture must have changed because Kakashi's hand was suddenly resting on my shoulder. "A C-rank this soon?"
Sarutobi leant forwards, elbows planted on the table. "Why not? Aside from that one incident, team seven has thoroughly proved themselves to be capable of such."
No we haven't, I wanted to say, dread pooling in my stomach. Our teamwork was terrible. Naruto and Sasuke were constantly arguing. Sasuke and I could barely tolerate each other's presence. Naruto continued to attempt to catch me in one sided conversations I didn't want a part of. We were not in any sense of the word 'capable'.
"It's a mission to the Land of Waves." Sarutobi continued, Kakashi's hand on my shoulder, my sense of self-preservation and my crippling fear of what would happen if I betrayed Konoha being the only things stopping me from throwing myself out of a window. "It will be a good test of their abilities."
And there it was.
Another test, I thought, trying to wrestle my thoughts away from the growing paranoia and urge to run. If I completed it then they'd trust me as a loyal Konoha-nin. But if I tried to run away then-
Kakashi's grip on my shoulder tightened, the slight pain throwing me back into reality. Which, unfortunately, wasn't much better a place to be.
Zabuza and Haku, I named the people that would be after my head if we took the mission. The former was listed in my bingo book, bought recently and stashed away in the Haruno clan's small library. In the canon, team seven had survived with considerably minor injuries considering they'd been genin taking on an A-rank mission. We were arguably in an even better situation than that considering I was apparently chūnin rank and had knowledge of what was going to happen.
If thinking through things logically made everything less terrifying, however, I wouldn't have spent a decade trying to escape this future.
Think. Think. Think.
A memory of Zabuza's underlings attacking the canon team seven sprung to mind and Kakashi offering a way out of the mission. There was a moment of opportunity. If I voiced my complete and utter terror at the prospect of an A-rank mission, it was likely Kakashi would respect my choice even if Naruto and Sasuke decided otherwise. If this was a test, the Hokage would accept my decision too, maybe even go as far as praise it as it was the sensible thing to do.
"Enter," Sarutobi then called, a door swinging open behind us. I tensed, waiting for the telltale stench of Tazuna's alcohol and his sneered remark on how we didn't really look like ninjas.
(Not that he'd know considering the Land of Waves didn't have their own ninja force.)
Instead, the sound of heels clicking on the floor carried through the air, moving towards the missions desk we were stood in front of. Turning as much as I could with Kakashi's hand restricting my movement, I barely restrained the look of complete surprise at the person standing there.
A painfully beautiful woman met my gaze, clearly a civilian by how she wore a kimono and her dark hair up in a style that reminded me of geishas. Except my knowledge of geishas shrieked that she wasn't one with the subtle inconsistencies in her style of dress and the way she carried herself.
...You're not Tazuna.
"Is this the team assigned to me?" She asked the Hokage in a respectful tone, eyes flickering over myself, Naruto and Kakashi before settling on Sasuke, a glimmer of recognition passing across her expression.
"Believe it…" Naruto sounded like he wanted to shout his catchphrase but was too busy staring in awe at the woman, a blush rising in his cheeks. The chūnin manning the desk, for once not Iruka, let his mouth drop open. Kakashi, Sasuke and Sarutobi, on the other hand, looked like the couldn't care less about how gorgeous she was.
"That is correct." Sarutobi nodded before raising his voice so that Naruto snapped back to reality. "Team seven this is your client, Ukihashi. You are to offer herself and her entourage your services as bodyguards to their destination in the Land of Waves."
"Please take care of me and my girls." Ukihashi bowed her head slightly.
"We will fulfil our duty as ninjas of Konoha so you don't have to worry about a thing," Kakashi replied with a crinkled eye and smile.
Ukihashi smiled back, closing her eyes as she did so. "I am glad. We leave tomorrow at six in the morning so please meet us at the main gate before then. The rest of the details should be in the mission scroll." With one last respectful bow, she turned on her heels, twisting back to see Naruto's starstruck expression and waving goodbye at him.
He short-circuited.
"Idiot," Sasuke muttered under his breath as Ukihashi sashayed away.
...Really, where the hell is Tazuna?
Sorry about lack of reviewer replies again! Family is over and school is soon so I'm a little stretched right now :( Hopefully I'll get my shit together in time for next chapter
Anyway,
*slams hands on desk* PLOT CHANGE PLOT CHANGE PLOT CHANGE
Honestly I am so excited for this arc it gonna be great
And Snarky Sakura makes her appearance yet again (hopefully to stay YES)
Warning though: chapters will have dark maturish themes going on? I mean, it's not like this story has been full of sunshine, but things will be discussed that might be uncomfortable for some people? Nothing explicit of course just a head up though
Review question:
Where the hell IS Tazuna? Lmao just joking
As a ninja, if you only had the ability to use one of the major skills (ninjutsu, taijutsu, genjutsu), which would you pick? (question suggested by Xalmtris)
Probably ninjutsu (because ninja powers amirite), although genjutsu appeals to my cowardly nature since then I could run away from dangerous situations/get my teammates to deal with fights for me by giving them an advantage with that