"I totally didn't finish watching the final season of Naruto in anime format this week. Have you all been keeping busy in these Corona times?"

- An Author Note

C10: Genin Days (Pt.2)

Sasuke was beginning to regret his rash decision to agree to his teammate's crazy demands.

"Two hundred and eighty-eight D-ranks," muttered Sasuke as he shovelled manure out of the cart and onto the field, "This is our third one today and I'm already fed up with doing these menial chores."

The Uchiha was not happy with D-rank missions. In fact, he positively abhorred them. He hated that ninjas were forced to do them to start off with.

"Can't our stupid client just do this himself?"

Sakura who was placing hay in front of the cows heard him, "The old man has a bad hip, it isn't his fault he can't do this."

Naruto who was feeding some koi fish quickly added, "We need this mission. If we want to complete Kakashi sensei's challenge, we will have to do missions at a rate of 9.6 per day."

"Like I need a reminder Naruto… I know we decided to do nine missions a day and ramp it up as we get towards the end and that we'd basically have no time to ourselves." Sasuke paused as the wind changed direction, blowing the stench of faeces onto his face, he wrinkled his nose, "I didn't even want a response. It was a rhetorical question."

Sakura yelped causing her teammates to look in her direction, only to see a cow licking her hair.

"Looks like you've made a friend!" Sasuke barely managed to say before he started laughing at Sakura struggling to escape the cow.

He stopped when she started throwing manure at him.

"Guys, my mum wants both of you over today. She wants to meet you two."

Sasuke looked at his fellow teammates. Sakura had her head down, sagging under the weight of their daily exertions. Naruto was walking just as usual. Each precise step one after the other in picture perfection.

"Should we call it a day then? Kakashi-sensei stopped meeting us after our first day and we managed to get eleven in yesterday. If we stop right now, at seven, we could rest up and come over to your place at what… eight? Is that alright Sasuke?" The blond observed his teammates, "Sakura?"

They looked a lot like the tanuki in his fairy tales. Those racoons had such a bland shadow over their eye that he was next to certain that whoever shaded them in used a mix of red, blue and yellow paints instead of a brilliant blue mixed in with orange like he would have done.

Sakura just nodded, too tired to speak. Naruto was pretty sure she'd never been subjected to such frequent and intense physical activity. Speaking of which, he had never been either.

Sasuke continued the conversation, looking a bit more alive, "Perfect, mum's been really excited to meet you Sakura. She's met Naruto before, but you not so much. There hasn't been any time really with how busy we've all been, but after you decided to befriended Tora, our missions have gone a lot quicker."

Sakura half-smiled. They bonded over their mutual dislike of the world in general. She wasn't sure how she convinced the cat that if it would just come to them, she'd feed and relax with it for a few hours. Hours normally spent chasing her. She still returned it to its owner, but the cat found exploring Konoha on her shoulders a lot more interesting than running around. It had even started following them into other missions which was pretty funny, especially that one time it fought with a rabid dog and won. Doing Tora missions was the closest she got to relaxation in the last two weeks. Perhaps the dead look in her eyes won the feline over. She wasn't really sure to be honest.

Naruto felt like Sasuke was downplaying himself and was worried about him developing confidence issues, "Hey Sasuke, you've also made life so much easier for us when you discovered that your fire jutsu could dry clothes almost instantly."

The Uchiha smirked. They'd been banned from doing any sort of drying missions now because he would just dry them using that chakra-less fire he'd mastered, instead of being forced to watch them dry naturally. His teammates then quickly ironed and prepped them for whatever fancy thing rich civilians liked to do. They went through a lot of clothes and because there were so many of them, especially in the merchant districts, there were a lot of drying missions.

They could use servants, but many of the merchants found it more convenient to hire ninja because they didn't spend long in Konoha. The rich nobles and what not liked rubbing their wealth in genin faces and so, hired them too. They liked the feeling of power they had by hiring genin and making them watch clotheslines for ages, but just like that, he'd ended it. At least, for their team.

Even though only three days passed before some dryer merchant or another, he wasn't sure who exactly because it was anonymous, filed a complaint against them for stealing away their jobs, they'd managed to do sixty-eight dryer missions. To celebrate, his team took the day off. Sasuke was pretty sure it was the first time they'd rested properly since becoming Genin.

"Frankly Naruto, the way you manage to take care of those little brats amazes me," barely whispered Sakura, speaking for the first time today, "I hate kids."

Naruto grinned. Memories of helping Jiji with Konohamaru flooded in. The kid, even though he was barely a few years older than him, was such a noisy infant. He had to learn how to make him stop crying by necessity.

Just shake him.

Just kidding, that's probably one of the worst things you can do because it can cause a haemorrhage… babies don't cope well with bursting blood vessels. No surprise there.

He'd read enough parenting textbooks and through these D-rank missions, had learnt enough that he could figure out what babies wanted almost immediately. Each cry had a distinct desire behind it. It also helped that he could tell the baby's emotions from their cute mugshot. These missions may have taken the longest, but they were worth it because his teammates got a chance to take a break.

Naruto broke out of his musings when he noticed the mission desk.

"Team Seven..." The severe-looking woman looked at the three of them, "Another mission, I'm assuming?" she looked through some folders, the wreath of flowers on her head threatening to fall off as she did so.

Sasuke decided to take the lead, "No actually. We're done for the day."

Naruto's eyes strayed towards the wreath and the woman noticed, "It's a gift from my kid." The Chunin looked at him, "She goes on about you a lot."

The blond looked at her last name

Taka?

"Your daughter must be Aoi, right?" Naruto smiled, remembering the blue haired girl, "She's such an adorable little kid."

The woman narrowed her eyes, "You taught her how to hold a kunai."

"She asked me to."

"I have no intention of letting her become a ninja."

There was an awkward silence. Naruto considered telling her that holding a kunai isn't enough to become a ninja, but the look on his teammates' faces made him decide against it.

The Chunin continued, "Anyway, someone left you a message." She handed over a letter, "Now scram."

The trio left the building confused, wondering who would contact them in such a manner. Once they were out, they opened the letter.

To my cute LITTLE Genin,

Hi,

Hello,

I may not have been with you three over the last two weeks in body, but I have been there in spirit. I trust you to do the chores (I'd say missions, but that's fooling nobody now) with such dedication that I'll have to concede victory! To prepare your gift, I'll be gone for a little while. Meet me at the same time and place at the end of your task.

Thanks,

Sensei

P.S. Try using your escape jutsu to de-weed gardens. Although, it was pretty funny watching you three squirm in Hanako's weed forest.

The three genin just looked at the message.

And looked.

Maybe stared and glared at it a bit too.

"SENSEI HAS BEEN WATCHING US THIS WHOLE TIME?" yelled Sakura to no one in particular, "That idiot should be training us to be ninjas. Not off gallivanting somewhere else and hiding from us."

Naruto was surprised by Sakura's sudden burst of energy.

Is she also excited that sensei appears to be putting a lot of effort into preparing our presents?

Sasuke, on the other hand, was worried that she'd snapped. It was pretty obvious, to him at least, that for the last few days she'd not been sleeping at all. He called it the Itachi eyes. Sasuke knew he was bad, but at least he got a few hours' sleep unlike nii-san who went days without sleep at a time. And clearly so did Sakura.

"And you." She turned towards the Uchiha, "Why did you call me a guy? I'm a girl, even if I don't have long hair or wear typically girly clothes."

Sasuke looked confused.

"Right at the start of our conversation, you called me a guy."

Looking at Sakura, the Uchiha realised that she was right. Girls normally had long hair; he wasn't really sure why. Probably just personal preference, like his mum. But he didn't see the point. On the battlefield, couldn't someone grab their hair or something? Her clothes looked normal… he wasn't particularly sure why she felt like he was talking about her appearances at all. He didn't really care to be honest.

"I didn't mean it like, you're a boy, I meant it like…" Sasuke looked a bit lost for words, "Just generally 'guys' you know?" He gestured in the air, wondering why he had to explain this. It felt self-explanatory, "You're like an honorary guy for the purposes of the sentence."

Naruto meanwhile, was just staring at the message.

He is definitely nii-san, no doubt about it. This is his hand-writing. But when should I broach the subject? Not in front of them of course, if they thought I knew him beforehand, they might be worried about favouritism. Not that he has interacted with us much since we became genin. And I think I did let it slip when we met that I did know him.

The blond looked up at them and said [Time]. It was almost fifteen minutes since they'd finished off the mission. They wouldn't be able to reach Sasuke's house in time if they didn't leave now. Speaking of which, he just realised that Sakura wouldn't know where to go.

"Hey, how about I meet up with you at your place Sakura and then we can go to his?" said Naruto, interrupting the two's intense conversation on grammar, phonetics and linguistics. Or at least, that's what the blond thought he'd heard in the two seconds he paid attention to them.

The both of them looked flustered, but Sakura spoke first.

"Sure, we should probably make a move, ne?"

She bid them goodbye and her two teammates followed suit.

"Evening, Genki-san! Can you please let us through?"

Naruto was waiting with Sakura at the gates of the Uchiha Clan compound. He'd been here often enough that they recognised him on sight.

"Heya, Naruto." The aged bandana wearing Uchiha took out the cigarette from his mouth as his lone eye flitted to Sakura and gave her a once over, "I think it'd be best if I got Sasuke-sama to walk you through the compound."

"But I know this place like-"

"I insist. It should only take a few minutes if he's expecting you."

The blond looked at his teammate sheepishly, "Sorry about that."

"It's fine… don't worry about it."

Naruto's eyes lingered over the little HUD above her head. She was quite nervous, her mugshot seemed to say. That or the shaking was because she was in a snow blizzard and he was pretty sure there was no snow. Or cold. It was actually pleasantly warm.

The two looked up as they saw Sasuke approach the gates.

"Sup, sorry about this hassle. Genki-san seemed to think that this was safer. Not sure why, but whatever." The raven-haired boy shrugged in a way of apology.

Naruto followed his two teammates as they walked down the main path which ended with the current clan head's home. The blond relaxed taking in the sounds of instruments which typically chimed throughout the compound irrespective of what time of the day it was. Someone, somewhere was always playing an instrument.

Just as he started drifting off, he was snapped out of his musings when Sakura spoke.

"I didn't know that the Uchiha clan were into musical instruments."

The blond quickly caught up with them, intent on hearing this conversation. He'd always wondered if they were real or not and even if they were, whether he was supposed to be able to hear them.

Sasuke continued walking, trying to decide whether he was allowed to answer her or not before nodding to himself, "We play musical instruments to help calm ourselves, the ninjas especially cause it's a stressful job… and a nice distraction."

Naruto decided to chime into the conversation, "So what instruments do your family play?"

"Us?" Sasuke considered his response, "Dad and Nii-san play the flute. Nii-san even said that if dad hadn't given it to him when he'd got the Sharingan instead of when he reached twelve like tradition dictates, he'd have probably snapped or become a pocky addict. I'm pretty sure he's still a pocky addict though."

"Do you play anything?"

Sasuke looked at Sakura a bit embarrassed, "I've been trying to learn how to play a flute, but I really really suck at it. I'm thinking of giving up and learning how to play a sitar like my mum does, but I prefer flutes."

Naruto looked slightly confused, "A sitar?"

Sakura answered his question, "It's a string instrument from the Land of Cats. Extremely rare and hard to find, mother has only seen one once and it was during an auction." She looked at Sasuke, "How did your mother get one?"

"She got it as a gift on a mission over there and plays it like nobody's business. Wakes us up with it."

The Uzumaki found it quite sweet.

Sasuke woke up every morning to his mum's music.

How adorable.

"Stop smiling Naruto. I don't mean by playing with it… She whacks us with it." The Uchiha shivered, "I'm pretty sure she's the only reason why Nii-san's reflexes are as good as they are."

Sakura tried to suppress a laugh, imagining Sasuke getting whacked by what she imagined was a massive mallet with strings.

"Oi, not funny. It really hurts, I have welts all over my leg."

A melodic voice came from just ahead of the trio, "Then stop being a wuss. On a mission, no one is going to politely wake you up. They'll just slit your throat… You need to be aware of that."

Naruto looked up from the floor, internally dancing at finally figuring out why Sasuke sometimes came on missions having already lost 5-10% of his health, to see that not only had they already arrived at Sasuke's house, but Mikoto-obasan had already opened the door.

"Anyway, I'm Sasuke's mother" The black-haired woman turned towards Sakura, "Nice to meet you! I've heard so much about you from Sasuke. I hope the two boys aren't giving you too much trouble. They can be quite a handful. What with Naruto being denser than a log and Sasuke being well, himself."

"Mum, can we please just go inside" said Sasuke a bit jaded, already used to his mother's antiques. As long as she didn't bring out the baby pictures like she did with Naruto the second time he brought him over, he'd be fine.

"Food's just finished, so please take a seat. Itachi might be joining us too, but Fugaku is currently working overtime. Something about giant vegetables and a famine scare"

Sasuke brightened up when he heard his brother's name.

"Let's go guys."

They all sat down as Mikoto deftly set up the table within minutes and joined them.

"How are you two finding being a ninja? I've barely seen Sasuke at all the past few weeks and he still hasn't explained why."

Sakura's stomach grumbled. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had home cooked food. Her father was the cook and when he died…

"How about we all eat first?" Sasuke's mother smiled at Sakura, "Questions later."

Naruto dug in. He quite liked Mikoto-obasan's food. It had a life to it that his cooking didn't although his was pretty amazing too he admitted to himself. Remembering all the compliments he got when he brought a sack of cookies and distributed it to essentially the entire Uchiha Clan, made him quite happy. It totally wasn't because he was apologising for making Sasuke laugh so much that he'd burnt someone's house down by accident and killed a chicken.

Fire jutsu was dangerous business. Killing chickens even more so.

Sakura just loved the food. Takeout and store-bought food couldn't compare to this at all. She hadn't had nice food like this in so long and anyone looking at her face could probably see the contentment shining through.

Sasuke was disappointed that the only thing that had tomatoes was the fruit salad. He bit into a sliced tomato, "Mum, we basically decided as a group to beat the current record for D-ranks which is why we've been slaving away the last couple of weeks."

The blond added, "And Kakashi-sensei challenged us to do it within a month to get a special reward from him."

Sakura just nodded while helping herself to some more deer and rabbit ravioli.

"Having motivation is good. The current record is two hundred and eighty-eight." Mikoto leaned in, "What I want to know is how you three have managed to complete a hundred and fifty-six missions already"

Sasuke looked at his mother and then his teammates in shock, "We've done that many missions?"

Both his teammates just nodded. Sakura just remembered it and kept a mental counter. Naruto had a literal counter keeping track. Going over his memories to count how many he'd done would have been too much effort.

"Good news is, because of how quickly we've been going through these missions, we can drop the average down to 8.25, so eight missions a day and some days with nine."

Sasuke looked at his blond friend, "You say that, but we should probably keep the same pace so we can quickly get this over and done with."

Sakura nodded, "Sounds good to me, I need to buy a few extra things anyway."

Mikoto silently watched them all talk, until she noticed her other son walk into the room, yawning.

"Itachi!" She gestured towards the table, "The food's still warm."

Everyone's head turned towards the haggard looking teen. He looked a bit like an older Sasuke, with the exception of his quite pronounced tear troughs, a low pony tail and a Jounin vest.

"Oh."

His onyx eyes glanced at the table. Then it flitted through the three kids, settling on his brother.

"Good work Sasuke. You've already surpassed my D-rank record and by a large margin might I add."

The brother in question spluttered, "Um, yes, but you're still way better than me. You just… didn't have enough time to do it."

Itachi sat down smiling.

"Hi, my name is Uchiha Itachi and I'm Sasuke's elder brother. Nice to meet you, Haruno-san and… Naruto" he said looking at them.

Sasuke just looked at him surprised and then back at Naruto, "Nii-san, when did you stop calling him Naruto-sama?"

"We met in the Hokage's office a few weeks back and he convinced me that it was impolite to call him that."

Sakura's eyes just flitted back and forth between Naruto and the clan heir with confusion and a hint of shock.

"He's always had a good counter-argument until I finally figured out a fool proof logical construction that he couldn't beat for why he should call me Naruto instead." said the blond beaming and looking at Sakura as if he was trying to answer her questioning look.

"Yeah, no. That doesn't help much." The pinkette shook her head, "Why did the Uchiha Clan heir call you Naruto-sama?" queried Sakura with a look that said that she wasn't going to take no for an answer.

Itachi looked blankly at the three, while Mikoto looked like she was on the verge of interrupting until the blond spoke.

"Remember I told you that I had Anbu taking care of me?"

She nodded, "So he was a part of it?"

Itachi spoke clearly, "Yes, I was." He turned towards the blond, "This is not an appropriate subject to be discussing at all and you should know better than that Naruto."

The blond looked bemused, "Well technically, since the actual legislation regarding Anbu identity was created before we started using grammatical constructions in law, we could-"

He stopped midway through his sentence when he saw that Mikoto obasan's mugshot was steaming. In reality, calling it a simple mugshot would be an understatement, it was more like a mini-Mikoto because her image was bouncing around the little circle it stayed in, steam coming out of her ears. He'd seen it enough times to know where his godmother's mood was headed.

"This is time for food, not for another one of you two' six-hour discussions on how to exploit Konoha's legislation."

Mikoto looked at Sakura apologetically, "I'm really sorry about all this. I knew almost nothing about how Konoha's legislation worked until these two started up and now, I know too much."

Her eyes darted between Naruto and Itachi with disapproval, both of whom just started munching on some glazed cabbage deliberately avoiding her gaze although no one who wasn't familiar with them could see through their superficially dispassionate visages.

"I hope the food was good?"

Sakura nodded, "It was amazing, thank you so much for having me Uchiha-sama."

Sasuke's mother nodded, "Any friend of Sasuke's is a friend of ours, please keep him safe, alright?"

The pinkette nodded again, "Of course, he may be a bit silly at times, but I actually do care about him."

Sasuke looked at her with shock in his face and she blushed.

"Not like that!" she exclaimed before picking up some pickled plums.

"These are my favourite actually." she mumbled still embarrassed as she slowly dug into a plum.

Mikoto smiled as her gaze shifted from Sakura to everyone else.

If only you were here right now Kushina…

Omake

"We need a new name. I'm getting too old for us to call ourselves 'Iwa Sucks"

The extremely old Uchiha Genki looked at his motley crew.

"Smoker's Lounge" said Hayate almost immediately. He gave the distinct impression of looking like a really tired mouse, with his brown hair and the shadows living underneath his eyes almost like the symptom of a disease.

"Nah, too civilian. We're a group of amazing shinobi who use smoke jutsu courtesy of Old man Genki" proclaimed someone from the shadows.

Another person hidden in the shadows quickly responded, "Oi, Asuma, who died and made you leader?"

After a series of hacking coughs kindly donated by Hayate, someone else joined the conversation, "Yeah Asuma, off getting a job with the Daimyo ain't gonna do any favours with us." The speaker, a woman, inhaled some of the smoke that basically lived in this den deep under Konoha, "You look like you've lost the touch, how many packs do you even smoke now?"

"Enough." declared Genki, looking a bit tired as he lit another cigarette, "Genma, you like cracking jokes, give us something good."

Genma looked across at his fellow compatriots. They were all sitting in a circle on comfy armchairs that were definitely not fire retardant enough for the idiot two chairs to the left of him to use katon jutsu to light his cigarette. Another person, a woman he wasn't really all that familiar with, rapidly finished pack after pack almost as if her hands were just chains…

"Chainsmokers." Genma looked around at the room, "Lets call ourselves the Chainsmokers."

Genki clacked his cane on the floor, "In the name of all that is smoky, say aye."

Everyone complied.

"In thanks to the fool who forgot to do his clan's jutsu's without using handseals, say aye."

"Aye" replied everyone.

"And finally, for all those who support the name Chainsmokers, cause I like it meself, say aye"

"Aye"

The Uchiha clacked his cane on the floor three times.

"And so I declare that this meeting is adjourned, please feel free to smoke at your discretion."

"Aye" someone croaked before they slumped to the floor.

"Who forgot to tell this newbie how to coat his lungs with chakra so that he can actually breathe in here?"

R&R (Suggestions and advice are always welcome!)