Chapter 10

Vision

The rest of the road to Tazuna's family home had been relatively uneventful, but one would guess anything would seem as such after nearly losing your head to a man wielding a five foot blade that somehow passed as a sword. Even as successful as they were, it had been a close call. Now they all had to go on with the knowledge that he could return for round two at any moment, and all three genin were on edge the moment the adrenaline of the fight wore off. Sakura's fingers were twitching as she prepared to cast a genjutsu at the first sign of any trouble at all. A few bouts of panic and accidental casts left her severely drained of chakra and lethargic for the rest of the walk. Sasuke was as quiet as usual, but his eyes were wider and focused on the ground, requiring Kakashi to snap him back to attention occasionally. Naruto's silence was potentially the most unnerving. His usual jovial nature was drowned in a sea of doubt. Yoko had bounced back more easily and kept attempting to cheer her partner up with a few loving licks to his face as she poked her head out of the front of his jacket. Occasionally, she would chatter away in the Inuzaka hound language and force a smile onto his face before he returned to contemplative silence.

Kakashi couldn't blame them. Their first C rank had already gone wrong in one of the worst ways short of death or failure. It wasn't as bad for them as it had been for himself and his teammates in the war, and he was thankful for that. Some of their innocence still remained and maybe a little hope. Given time, he knew they would snap back. He just couldn't have expected how soon.

The moment they reached civilization in Nami no Kuni, his students' eyes were on the town. Citizens wander with heads hanging, shuffling through filth-ridden dirt roads. Countless shops stand abandoned, windows boarded or smashed, and not a single one left untouched. Half a block looks to have been burned down. Sasuke was familiar enough with fire damage to recognize that the building it had started at burned faster and hotter than the others. It could only have been arson. Only a single child could be seen about, all others kept locked inside for their own safety from the many armed thugs wandering the streets. The one they did see was a young boy curled up in a crate filled with blankets and newspapers near the burned homes. The Gato-employed thugs all brandished swords, spears, clubs, and few even openly carrying conventional fuse-lit black powder bombs. This was slow, open, terrorizing warfare against a helpless population.

Naruto was the first to start noticeably boiling over. He grit his teeth and began to reach for his weapon pouch until Kakashi nudged him. The silent command was followed and he shoved his hands back in his hoodie pockets, for now. Sakura on the other hand became a ball of twitching emotions. The tears in her eyes were evident enough, but depending on whatever her attention was drawn to at any moment, she would either be fighting off those tears or envisioning the horrors she would bring to peoples' minds with her genjutsu. Sasuke of course was the last to be noticeably phased, but the results were near instant. The moment he saw the homeless boy, almost half his age and hiding in a crate as three henchmen approached, his normally cold and calm demeanor burned away into the seething fury befitting his clan's element. Kakashi barely caught sight of Sasuke breaking away to help them. He almost stopped him.

Almost.

"Hey." Sasuke calls out as he approaches, hands still deep in his pockets. The four thugs turn to Sasuke with incredulous and sagging expressions, completely wasted in broad daylight.

"The ffffuck do you want, ya lillllsshhhit?" The tallest of the group, yet lower than the rest now as he drunkenly hunches, spits out as he leans in to get a better look at Sasuke as his teammates step up behind him. He cups his chin and scratches his overgrown stubble, the stench of alcohol rolling off his breath in such intensity to almost make Sakura reel back if not for the rage driving her.

"Are any of you responsible for the fire here?" Sasuke's eyes narrow. He couldn't tell if the burning in them was due to the soot in the air or the alcohol. He wouldn't know until later that evening that it was neither.

The man hunched down to him starts a sputtering laugh. "Yeah, tha' wud me! Dumb bitsh wouldn' pay up, sho I-" That man would never speak again for the rest of his life without excruciating pain. In his drunken state, he had entirely missed the headbands, the fact that hunching so close made his face an easy target, and the color of blood tinting Sasuke's formerly coal black eyes as an incomplete set of tomoe formed around his pupils.

Sasuke got him by the back of the head and leapt up to knee him in the chin, shattering several of his teeth and breaking his jaw. He then threw his unconscious first target to the ground face-first and leapt over his body just as Sakura and Naruto passed him. Sakura slammed a palm to one's forehead and channeled a more direct version of Magen: Narakumi into him. Her target began to scream and sprint away from them, desperately begging for help and stumbling over himself. Naruto's target was slapped with a seal that left him motionless and limp on the ground as Yoko began to claw and bite at him, targeting his legs and arms as to not be fatal, but surely disabling. He couldn't even scream. It's a weak seal, but someone without any training in chakra use could never escape it alone. The last of them had long enough to draw his odachi- only for Kakashi to place a kunai to their neck from behind. "You and I are going to talk. Naruto, put a seal on this one too, have some clones take him to the woods and wait for me to come and interrogate him."

Naruto nodded and created three clones with a quick handsign, one slapping a seal onto the captive's forehead and taking the sword while the two remaining clones hefted him onto their shoulders and carried him out of the street and into the woods. The real Naruto took the time to loot the remaining two and hand the entire contents of their wallets to the young man in the crate. "Here… Get yourself a nice meal, a hotel, whatever. I'll come find you whenever we're done here and see if there's anything else we can do for you, ok?"

He slowly peeks out from beneath the blanket he'd been hiding under. His eyes are still reddened by smoke and tears, his black hair hanging over them. ".. t.. t-thank you…" His voice is hoarse and weak, but there's a tiny glimmer of hope there.

This brings a gentle smile to Naruto's face as he hands over the wad of cash and stands to rejoin his team. His smile fades the moment his back is to the kid, eyes steeled and glaring blue flames across the world to someone he can't even perceive. "Let's go. We need to talk about what to do with Gato."

Kakashi narrows his visible eye on his student. "What exactly are you considering doing?"

"Same thing I do to anyone I don't like. I'll prank him."

The entire team fails to notice a toad watching from the overgrown grass beneath the town's abandoned bulletin board.

.

.

Footsteps in the grass and the occasional slap can be heard deep within the woods of Konoha, broken by the occasional thunk of metal piercing wood. A white-eyed boy skids backwards to a stop, the occasional bruise visible across his deathly pale skin. The veins around his eyes pulse and twitch not just with the pressure of his Byakugan, but the seething rage building against his sparring partner. "How the hell did you get this strong?!" He barely parries a blow to his left ribs with a right tilt and an underhanded slap to the offending arm. He breaks away from his opponent and analyzes them once more.

Lee had always been little more to him than a gangly green blob flailing at him in what he has considered one of the most uncultured and worthless taijutsu forms. The boy was fast and powerful but couldn't touch him. Now, if not for his Byakugan's ability to see through henshin, he would have suspected their sensei to have taken his student's place in this spar.

The tides had turned suddenly. Lee had bitten his thumb and swiped the blood across a seal-carved steel pad sticking out from beneath his legwarmers. His speed multiplied in that moment, and the difference was great enough to throw Neji off balance and land a few rather painful blows. The worst part is knowing just how hard Lee can hit, and that he's holding back on these punches. Lee's refraining from landing any truly harmful strikes in favor of testing his new speed and finding openings in Neji's style and patterns.

It infuriates him.

Tenten on the other hand only smirks in barely veiled amusement at the sight of her most closed-minded teammate receiving a long-awaited and much deserved beating. She knew why Lee was this tough. She forged those new shinguards for him herself. She had supplied the materials he needed to get his new tricks prepared. Neji never could have known how much Lee was improving. He considered talent to be natural, unlearnable, and unconquerable. He never took any time to admire someone else's progress, or whatever methods they used to do so. His own training was always done in solitude and with his usual high and mighty attitude. He never witnessed Lee grueling for months over books on sealing and preparing his nerves for the next step of the process. He may handle muscular and bone damage without a whimper, but his skin had to catch up in that regard to prepare himself for the ink and needle that would apply his first great work.

Although reluctant, Lee has thankfully agreed that for this to work, he can't keep their sensei's fashion sense.

.

.

The first night at Tazuna's place was enough to triple Team 7's resolve. His daughter, Tsunami, was a kind and lovely woman whose sleek and elegant black hair almost gave the impression of still ocean waters in the dead of night, complete with a history of loss and tragedy hidden beneath. That history came to the forefront thanks to her son, Inari. The young man had gone out of his way to ignore them for the majority of the night. It wasn't until Naruto had returned with Kakashi from interrogating the captured thug with nothing to show for it that things went sour.

Naruto barges through the door and groans, nearly pulling out his hair. "All that work, and the guy had literally nothing!" He flops down into his seat at the dinner table. Yoko snorts and sticks her tongue out, her head and forepaws emerging from the collar of his hoodie.

Kakashi sighs as he follows his student in. "Yes, yes, I'm as surprised as you. You always hear about the sort of people who join outfits like this just for the power and chaos, but you never expect to meet hired muscle that's actually that shallowly destructive."

Sasuke raises a brow at that, barely peeking up from his spot at the dinner table. "… Well, that's… Honestly really concerning for this town, because if there's one, he may have a few other like-minded henchmen. We'll have to be careful about that."

Sakura nods and props her head up with a closed fist under her nose. "That's an understatement. Even if we stop Gato, people like that need to be dealt with separately, cuz they're likely to do even worse things in rage once they stop getting paid and protected. It's like he has a life insurance policy that pays out in the form of violent revenge."

"So just give up." All eyes turn to the overall-clad boy in a bucket hat standing by the stairs. His eyes can barely be seen through his shaggy black hair and under the brim of his hat, but there's contempt and suffering the likes of which Sasuke recognizes instantly in them. "Gato can't be stopped. He doesn't care about anyone. He won't let you fight him for long. He'll kill you too, just like every other 'hero'-" He nearly spits that word out like it were poison. "-that's tried to stop him."

"Inari-" Tsunami quietly scolds her son. "Don't be so rude to our guests."

"It's fine." All eyes fall on Sasuke. "That's a very… realistic stance to have. One I really can't blame him for." He turns his gaze onto the now bewildered boy. "Bad people get away with terrible things all the time. But you also need to remember, Inari… that there are always equally capable people willing to fight them and put an end to the tragedies they cause. Terrible things happen..." He closes his eyes and lowers his head, propping his head up on his interlocked fingers. "But we don't have to let them keep happening. Not when there's any possibility of stopping it." He raises his head once more and stares Inari in the eyes with his incomplete Sharingan, two tomoe in the right and a single in the left. "Even if we fail and it costs our lives, the idea alone is worth fighting for. I've spent half my life training for that very purpose, so don't belittle all my effort, and the efforts of anyone else for the same purpose."

Most of the room is stunned into silence by his words. Inari can't possibly reply. Sakura's jaw slacks and nearly falls open, lips quivering as she's wracked with guilt over having never noticed just how hurt Sasuke is, what really drives him to be as great as he is. Kakashi can't help but feel his heart swell with pride. Finally, his most troubled student had found the hope necessary to focus on a purpose greater than just avenging his clan. Little did he know, Sasuke had only come to this development this very night. Witnessing the destruction Gato's very presence had caused in this town, knowing that there are many people out in the world as horrid as him, and many whom are far worse, finally pushed him to look past the single felled tree to see the forest that remains.

Naruto on the other hand lets off a half-hearted and breathy chuckle, breaking the silence as he looks his brother in all but blood dead in his eyes. Blood red meets sapphire, and the determination within them both nearly lights a spark in the air between them. "I couldn't have said it better myself, Pinkeye. So, if that's your stance on this…" His grin becomes almost sickeningly wide. "I've got a role in mind for ya in the greatest prank of my life." He shifts in his seat to raise his right side and pull scroll him his back pocket, while Sasuke is left confused as to his new nickname. "It's a work in progress yet, and I need to gather and make a lot of parts of it, but how many fireballs do you think you can give me to seal up in a week?"

Kakashi perks up as he feels the faintest flare of chakra. "Oh, about time they were ready. Tsunami-san, the backup I mentioned will be arriving in a moment. Please, don't be surprised by the method I'm bringing them here…"

As Kakashi pushes himself to his feet and channels chakra, Sakura snaps herself out of her admirating daze and focuses on her sensei. "You're bringing them here? Some sort of transport justu?"

Kakashi chuckles and pricks his thumb with a kunai. "Yeah, a little trick my sensei, the Yondaime, taught me. He'd been taught it by his own sensei, Jiraiya of the Sannin." He shifts through five handsigns and slams his hand onto the floor. "Kuchiyose!"

In a blast of smoke, two figures appear. The first is Pakkun, Kakashi's deadpan, sarcastic pug, his sagging face giving the constant impression of being tired of everyone's shit.

The other is quite the shocker, but a very welcome one. Iruka stumbles for a moment as he appears, peeking around to get his bearings. "I don't think I'll ever get used to being summo-" The wind is knocked from him as Naruto leaps into his gut and knocks him to the floor. "Uuugh… Good to see you too, son." He reaches down and ruffles Naruto's hair as he catches his breath, flat on his back. "Thanks for requesting me, Kakashi."

He shrugs and pulls a dog treat from his pocket, handing it to Pakkun. "You were the obvious choice. Your suiton is well suited for the area, and your detection skills are perfect for countering assassins. Although I'm not sure how well your jutsu will work in the middle of Kirigakure no jutsu…"

"Um…" He slowly sits up, with Naruto rolling off to sit beside him. "Last I tried it, the mist dampened my Chakra Onkyouteii a bit, but couldn't completely block it. I should be fine."

Kakashi nods and returns to reading. "Well, eat well and rest tonight. Tomorrow, we need to start training and preparing for Zabuza's counterattack. He'll need time to prepare a good strategy against us, but I'm sure he'll attack before the end of the week. Sleep in shifts, ensure the house is secure and guarded every night, set traps if you have to as long as they don't harm or inhibit our hosts." He snaps his book shut and stands over his students, looking each of them dead in the eyes. "This next week, I'm going to push you until we go home wondering how you'd ever been so weak as you were when we left Konoha. We'll make sure your first real mission, crazy as it's been so far, is a defining moment of success to kick off your true careers as shinobi."