A/N 1: This author needs to offer an apology! I'd actually finished this chapter a long time ago. As of 05/03/2022 I'd just finished writing chapter chapter 17 and it takes me a minimum of 2 months to write a chapter which means this one was finished around four to six months ago - possible longer since it's been nearly a year since I last updated and I feel like that I'd done more work on this then that.

A/N 2: I've done some minor editing, especially to the Sasuke thought process and such while Sasuke is recovering and acclimatising to her new life as a combination of Sasuke/Jane.

Chapter 15: Mission 110

Nine days before the start of the Chunin exams, the team were assigned their last C-ranked mission. After this, they would not be going out of the village since Kakashi wanted to focus on training them and polishing off their skills. With their mission success and completion rate, despite the upgrading in several missions, their sensei believed that they were ready to take on the additional responsibility of being chunins. Once they were chunins, the three of them could focus on their individual combat specialisations (medic-nin, kenjitsu and ninjitsu specialist respectively) as well as their leadership skills – each of them taking missions away from their team as well as together so that they didn't lose their synchronicity.

Their C-rank mission was a two-toned escort mission. They would be escorting a merchant to the border of Wind, and then escorting four ninjas (three genin and a jonin) back to Konoha. Since the three genin were the children of the Kazekage they needed a high-profile escort. The other two teams who were participating in the exams were getting a team of two Chunin's to escort them in three days. The three siblings were arriving early so as to be in Konoha before Kiri or Iwa teams began making the journey since Suna allied with Konoha during the war and there was bad-blood between the villages still – there was no reason to give them an opportunity to strike out against three valuable political targets.

As the person they were escorting was a merchant, they were having to rotate protection guards around the three wagons that the merchant's people were directing. With two horses at the front of each wagon they were moving a little faster than if they had been on foot, but the group were still slow moving due to the uneven grounds. Naruto had the front, Sakura the left and Sasuke the right, with Kakashi bringing up the rear.

Each of the genin had been given a task to complete while travelling to the border and guarding the merchant. Sakura was tasked with randomly setting benign, environment changing genjutsu. Although Sakura had managed to learn quite a range of genjutsu's, she was struggling to learn control and kept alerting her targets to the fact that she had placed them under a genjutsu. She needed to learn how to be subtle. Her victim was Naruto, whose task was to identify when he was placed under a genjutsu and dispel it. With his large chakra capacity, he would never be able to learn how to cast one, but he would be able to identity when he was subjected to a change in perception and cancel it.

Sasuke's task was two-fold, she was keeping an eye on Sakura and Naruto – calling out the time it took Naruto to cancel the genjutsu once he had been caught, and throwing a senbon at Sakura if she used to much Chakra – and she was also tasked with keeping her hearing and sense of smell enhanced at the same time to her current greatest range. Kakashi would randomly order her to list all the scents and sounds she could pick up. If she failed to identify everything, then he would send a lightning ball at her to give her a light shock for each item she missed. Of course, she would manage to dodge a couple of those lightning balls, but not all of them because Kakashi was fast and clever – a couple of times, Sasuke was sure that he had used a Shadow Clone to get her because she had been looking right at the man.

All of their tasks required them to be aware of their surroundings; Naruto to notice the changes in his environment, Sakura so she can adapt and change her genjutsu's and Sasuke because of her heightened senses. Either way, they would all be aware of any attack that might be aimed at the merchants they were protecting with enough time to act before their clients would be endangered.

They wouldn't be doing the same training on the return run since Kakashi didn't want them to reveal any of their tricks or training before the Sand Shinobi since it was possible that they would be facing them in the chunin exams and there was no point in giving them an advantage. Although, the return to the village would be a lot faster since they would be guarding other ninjas and not a civilian with a wagon.

The point of exchange was a watch tower which was stationed at the start of the Land of Wind, at the point where the ground was mostly shrubs with little to no grass and the only trees which remained standing had long since been petrified. Since there was so much unclaimed land between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind, the tower wasn't contested like a lot of border posts and rarely saw combat – the fact that the two nations were allies also reduced any hostility that the tower would have faced.

"Sakura, you're leading the group until we get back to Konoha." Kakashi announced as they got close to the border.

"Yes, sensei." Sakura confirmed, eyes wide in surprise.

She'd never led the team before, that had always fallen on Sasuke and Naruto – more often with Naruto leading and Sasuke occasionally offering plans, when Kakashi chose to step back to assess them. Since two of their team were so advanced, and Sakura was rapidly catching up now she was trying and specialising, Kakashi was testing them to make sure they were truly ready to become Chunin when they would be running missions without his protection. Once they were chunin, there was the chance Kakashi would end up leading one of their missions, but most of the time they would be on different teams and so having to fend for themselves and their team mates.

Making it to the exchange point, the Sand Shinobi quite swiftly took charge of the merchants while Team Kakashi was led to the lookout tower where their charges were waiting for them. The jonin instructor, a jonin Baki, was slightly shorter in stature than Kakashi, with bandages wrapped around his neck and chin, with cloth covering his head and the left side of his face. He also had, what appeared to be two red triangular tattoos on his cheek. According to the information on their mission debrief, and the Bingo Book, Baki was an A-class threat who specialises in wind techniques.

Then, there was the three genins: a blond with a large fan on her back, a young puppeteer with the full-face makeup making him resemble a cat, and a young pale red head. From the appearance of things, the red head was the same age as them, while the blond was the oldest. The dead look in the red head's eyes was disconcerting, especially when he seemed to radiate daemon type energy similar to what Naruto could emit when he lost control of the Nine-tails inside of him. Placing names to faces for the genins wasn't that hard: Temari, Kankuro and Gaara.

Although it wasn't included in the mission debrief, either because Konoha didn't know or they were considered to be too low of a rank to know, Gaara was the Jinchuriki of the One-Tailed Shukaku. Sasuke didn't know a lot about the other boy, but what she could recall was quite worrisome. His seal was unstable because the one who had created it didn't consider the boundary between vessel and prisoner, allowing Shukaku to freely talk with and influence Gaara, which caused his low emotional intelligence and bloodlust. Gaara also inherited his father's gift with sand, and had what was considered to be an 'impenetrable defence' formed by the sand which coated his body.

"Kakashi," the jonin Baki greeted, his posture upright and focused. "I'm surprised you were the one they sent."

"Meh, genin team to escort genin team." Kakashi shrugged from behind his little orange book.

"Is your team ready to head out immediately?" Sakura spoke up, taking the lead as she had been directed.

"We are," Baki confirmed.

"Alright. Naruto, you partner up with Kankura, Sasuke you're with Gaara and I'll partner Temari. Sensei, you're with Jonin Baki." Sakura split them up.

Sasuke nodded formally at her assignment, although she would have felt better if Naruto had been paired with the unstable Jinchuriki because if something went wrong, he had the greater chance of not only surviving but also stopping him. Sasuke was good, but she wasn't confident that she was that good. Hopefully, nothing would happen during their journey back to Konoha that would set him off.

They were halfway back to Konoha, night was falling and they were about to stop to set up camp for the night when things went to hell.

The only warning that she had that something was wrong was a flare in chakra, directly behind her and Gaara, centred on Gaara. She didn't have time to call a warning to the rest of the team, she acted instinctively. Sasuke threw herself sideways and into Garaa sending them both tumbling into the trees and out of the direct path of the blast zone.

The moment she grabbed Gaara and pulled him out of the way, his sand defence reacted and started crushing her hands.

Once they were clear of the blast, Sasuke rolled away while pulling her injured hands in close – keeping a close eye on both the angrily shifting sands around the red-eyed Gaara and their surroundings encase the one wo caused the explosion attacked. It was fortunate that she kept her senses open, since it allowed her to dodge the attack that came at her from a masked assailant who was dressed similar to the ANBU of her home village but clearly of another village. Two other masked assailants went after Gaara, who turned the full power of his sand against them. With the distraction of the hostile threats, Gaara's sand ignored her.

Sasuke noticed quite quickly that although her opponent was skilled, they weren't skilled to the point that she would consider needed to assassinate Gaara. Her knowledge of the Jinchuriki was limited, but as a Jinchuriki that could access the demon's power he was immediately a minimum of an A level threat who needed more than just a standard operative to defeat. They must have decided to focus on stealth, so they could sneak up on the group, over strength and ability to beat them. Dodging left to avoid a kick to the head, Sasuke took the time to grab her kunai and stabbed it into her opponent's femoral artery. With the man bleeding out, Sasuke took the opportunity to land a blow to the neck with the reverse grip of her kunai and knock him out.

"Gaara," Sasuke turned to find that Gaara had dismembered one of his opponents and was now slowly crushing the other one to death in what looked like a sand coffin. "Gaara, we need that one alive to find out his motives."

Gaara tightened his sand for a moment on the screaming man before he loosened his grip and allowed the sand to recede from around his head.

"Thank you," Sasuke sighed, looking down to her hands with a frown. They were going to need Sakura to help cure them, she was lucky that her adrenaline had been running high in the fight and allowed her to grab that kunai. She doubted that she would be able to do that again without treatment.

"Gaara, do you recognise these men or their uniforms? You were the target of that attack." Sasuke asked.

"How do you know they were sent to kill me?" Gaara blinked, confused.

"Th explosions was targeted to hit you directly, aimed to kill or seriously injure if your sand managed to coat and protect you. The rest of us would have been injured as collateral, but not killed." Sasuke explained.

"You jumped into the explosion and my sand to get me out of the way. You are bleeding to protect me." Gaara stared unblinking in confusion. "Why would you do that?"

"My mission is to see you to safety, and I took a calculated risk." Sasuke explained. "You are also a shinobi of my villages ally, and so I would have come to your aid anyway. Now, we have a prisoner to question. Do you recognise him?"

"He is a member of my villages ANUB corps." Gaara answered. "He was ordered by my father to kill me. I have no questions for him."

"Alright, then we put him in a prisoner scroll and my kage can have his opportunity to question him and ransom him back to your village." Sasuke decided, moving to grab the scroll from her pocket, gritting her teeth in pain. Before she could get to the scroll, sand snuck up her leg and into the pouch. She froze until the sand withdrew with the prisoner scroll. "Thank you."

Gaara didn't acknowledge her as he knocked the man out and sealed him away.

"Right, let's go find the others. Hopefully, they were far enough from the blast to have received no injuries." Sasuke jumped up to the trees and headed back to the point of the explosions. With any luck, her tracking lessons would do her some good here since she hadn't mastered the summoning technique enough to call her partners forward without seals.

"There was more than one explosion here." Gaara observed coldly as they perched in a tree which over looked the new clearing which had been created by a series of explosions.

Sasuke didn't say anything, simple jumping down from the tree and to the crater where she and Gaara had been stood before the explosion went off. Using her elbow, Sasuke cleared away some debris from the centre to reveal the remains of a set blast – a device which took the idea of a tag explosives and made them triggerable from a distance. Very expensive, very hard to make and normally used by ninja's of Iwa. The chakra blast she had felt must have been used to trigger the attack, and not the actual attack as she had thought. This was a very well thought out ambush that allowed the assailants to remain undetected by a ninja of Kakashi's calibre until the last second – which was likely why their fighting skill hadn't been as high as she thought was needed to take down Gaara. They were an assignation unit, not a combat unit. Built for stealth and traps, not direct confrontation.

"There may be other traps or explosives that have yet to be triggered," Sasuke straightened. "We will need to be careful while searching for the rest of our teams."

"I found tracks." Gaara announced from her left in response to the warning, "Kankura's puppet." A trail of sand left Gaara's goud and lifted a piece of delicate crafted wood from the trees. It was broken, clearly a smaller piece of the larger whole.

"Alright, let's follow those tracks first." Sasuke would have felt better following the tracks to Sakura first, but reasoned that sensei would likely be functional and so would soon be looking to re-join them all, or was already in the process of doing so.

Following the trail of destruction and puppet pieces – each of which Gaara added to the small pile he was carrying in his sand – it didn't take long for the two of them to start hearing the arguing voices of their male teammates.

"We need to go find the others!" Naruto was shouting. "Sasuke was at the heart of the explosion!"

"We don't know what we'll be walking into!" Kankura shouted back. "We should wait for our senseis to find us and assess the situation!"

"Silence," Gaara ordered from his perch in the trees, his eyes narrowing on his brother who immediately paled and bowed his head submissively.

"Naruto," Sasuke left her own perch and straightened in front of her team mate, doing a visual inspection. His clothes were slightly torn and burnt in places, but if he'd been injured then his natural high healing ability had already kicked in. "Are you okay?"

"Your hands." Naruto completely by-passed the question and started flapping around, not knowing what to do. "What happened? Are you okay? Can you move them?"

"I'm presently not capable of using my hands, but I was able to fight through the pain earlier to use a kunai, so it is likely not permanent." Sasuke said reassuringly. "How did you end up here?"

"There was an explosion, and sensei shouted at us to skater." Naruto rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. "Then there was more explosions and a man attacked."

"Destroyed my puppet." Kankura tagged in grumpily, eyeing the puppet pieces that were still being suspended by Gaara's sand.

"During the fight, we ended up here. But we won, and um', I used one of those body scrolls we are supposed to carry." Naruto pulled the scroll from his pocket to demonstrate before returning them to where they came from. He kept the description of the fight out of his report, as he'd learnt that there was a time and a place to provide that information. Sasuke had no doubt that he'd regal her with the details once they were safely back in the village, or even if they make camp that night.

"Alight, Naruto can you send out Clones to find Sensei and Sakura?" Sasuke decided their next cause of action. Sending Naruto's clones meant that they wouldn't be running around looking for the rest of their team potentially missing them.

Naruto let out a sheepish laugh before he created ten clones which were sent off to search for their sensei and female team mate.

"I'll clean your hands while we wait," Naruto decided, pulling his first aid kit from his bag. "And I've also got some cream which Sakura gave me which should help."

"Kankura, be quiet." Gaara spoke, causing his brother to snap his mouth shut from where it had been opening to question or protest. Gaara then proceeded to drop the puppet pieces on his brother and wonder away from the group to stare in silence.

Naruto had just finished bandaging Sasuke's hands when two Naruto clones returned escorting the females of their team and their respective senseis jumped into the clearing. Naruto immediately jumped to his feet with a glare and pointed at Kakashi in affront.

"Why did you pop my clones?! They were there to help!" Naruto pouted.

"I'd already picked up your scent trails." Kakashi swept over the clearing, checking for injuries. "Are we all good to move out swiftly? I'd prefer to be away from here before we set up camp."

"You think they have a second ambush waiting for us?" Sasuke deduced, getting to her feet.

"It's a possibility we can't dismiss."

"Gaara and I caught a prisoner, it's a Sand ANBU. Apparently sent to take out Gaara." Sasuke informed her sensei. "Baki-san, is it likely that your village would send two groups to accomplish this task?"

Baki had paled noticeable at this information, and had glanced in confused shock at learning Gaara had taken a prisoner. "The Kazakage would not have ordered two assignation squads." He sighed after a moment. "But they may have set other traps, knowing they wouldn't survive the first engagement."

"Then we travel in the trees, and we loop." Kakashi decided. "Can your genin keep up?"

"If Kankura seals his puppet away." Baki nodded his assent.

"Good. Then we move out. Sakura, you can check Sasuke over when we make camp." Kakashi stopped Sakura from approaching where Sasuke was stood. Sakura shot an uneasy look her way, but Sasuke nodded to reassure her that she was fine for now. The cream had numbed what pain she had been in, and she would be able to defend herself if a fight broke out.

Kakashi didn't give anyone the chance to protest and took to the trees and the rest were forced to follow. Sasuke took up her position next to Gaara once more, except this time she was directly behind sensei. Sakura and Naruto swopped who they were guarding so that it was Temari and Naruto at the back of the group, while Sakura and Kankura were in front of Baki but behind Sasuke and Gaara.

The were forced to move at a pace that would push the genin, especially Sakura who didn't have the natural stamina to maintain such a pace for long. Sasuke didn't know how the Sand Siblings would respond to the pace, but hoped that they were hardened enough to not complain or slow down for the hours that Kakashi was going to force them to be moving in. If she knew her sensei, and she felt that she'd gotten a pretty good handle on the man, then they would maintain this pace for two or three hours until they found somewhere that they could safely make camp. Since they were looping back to Konoha, they wouldn't arrive at the gate until after lunch the next day since they would have to revert to a slower pace the next day.

By the time that they stop for the night, Sakura was about ready to collapse, Kankura and Temari weren't much better while Naruto and Gaara were barely winded. Sasuke put that down to their tenants causing their increased endurance and stamina. Although she wasn't as bad off as the other three, her breathing was being forceable regulated and she could feel the strain in her leg muscles from moving at such a pace for so long without taking her resistant bands off.

"Sakura, see to Sasuke then set up the sleeping area. Naruto, fire pit and cooking." Kakashi ordered, returning to his habitual slump as he pulled out his orange book.

"Temari, help collect the fire wood. Gaara, hunting. Kankura, sleeping area then you can check your puppet." Baki ordered his own genin. Gaara disappeared into the woods, Sasuke eyes following him.

"Was it a good idea to send Gaara out on his own when he was the target of the last attack?" Sasuke questioned the logic of sending the red head hunting.

"If he's attacked, we'll notice." Baki muttered.

"Sasuke, what happened? This aren't burns from the explosion." Sakura frowned in confusion as she slowly revealed the damage that had been done.

Sasuke tilted her head to the side as she observed her hands and lower arms. Her skin looked like it had been flayed off, and there were points where the muscle had been burnt – likely from the friction of fast-moving sand. Naruto had done a decent job cleaning the wound, but there was dead skin which was going to have to be taken off before Sakura could think about healing her – if she'd progressed to the point that she could regenerate skin.

"Sasuke, is your mobility compromised?" Kakashi asked the more pertinent question.

"No, I was able to wield a kunai. My nerves are intact, and I don't believe any of the bones are broken. Or at least, none of the important bones are broken." Sasuke reassured her sensei, ignoring the horrified looks that Kankura was sending to her hands. Clearly the other boy had been too distracted by his puppet to have noticed the damage she took earlier.

"How do you still have hands? If Gaara's sand gets around you like that, he'd normally have crushed them completely?" Baki questioned, his more experienced eye deducing that the injury had been caused by his eccentric genin.

"Gaara did this?" Naruto's head snapped over, his eyes narrowing.

"Accidently." Sasuke defended. "When I pulled him out of the explosion zone, he naturally reacted to a threat. And my hands are intact, because Gaara pulled his sand back to confront the actual threat when he realised what had happened. Sakura, have you progressed to the point of being able to help or are you just going to remove the dead skin and clean the wound to ensure I don't get an infection before making it back to the village?"

"I…" Sakura swallowed her disgust and horror and pulled herself back together. "I don't have the chakra reserves to heal something like this in one session." She admitted. "It will require a team effort in the hospital. But I can clean it and start the process."

"Don't push yourself. Sasuke's life is not endangered." Kakashi ordered.

"Hi sensei." Sakura pulled out her medical kit and specially the tools contained within. "Sasuke, this is going to hurt."

"I'm aware." Sasuke smiled reassuringly at Sakura as she lifted her hands and held them straight so that Sakura would have better access to them. "Tell me when you would like me to rotate."