AN: Welcome to the wave arc :D I'm away this week so no update on Wednesday, but I'll try to be back on Friday for you. Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to review / favourite so far!

Wave Arc: I

"Sensei! You're late. Are we doing more sparring today? Or! Or, are we learning another jutsu, but this time a super cool one? Like the bastard's fireball! But bigger. And better. I still can't believe you won't share the fireball, bastard."

By half past ten in the morning I'd probably lost the chance to tell Naruto it was too early for him to be this bouncy, but I shared a commiserating glance with Sakura anyway. Both of us were - not stiff, because ninja, but definitely aware of the muscles and aches we'd picked up yesterday. Naruto, of course, was his usual hyperactive self with not even a bruise to show for it, skipping down the path towards the Hokage tower like a chipmunk on helium. It was horrifically unfair.

"It's an Uchiha thing," I grumbled, for the third time. "You have to have fire chakra. Because it's fire. Which you are not."

"But how do you know? I could be fire. If you'd teach me the jutsu then we could find out."

"Maa, Naruto, it's not polite to ask people to share jutsu if they don't want to," Kakashi chided. "Particularly clan jutsu. And Sasuke's right about a fire affinity making it easier, though it is possible to use another elemental type if you need to." He paused at that, then made a quiet huh sound and shook his head. "But! Seeing as we didn't do any missions yesterday, I thought we could have a full day of them today. There's some dogs to be walked, the pig pens need cleaning, Shio-san's septic tank has sprung a leak again…."

Sakura made a face like she'd just thrown up in her mouth. I sympathised. Dogs, really?

Naruto, on the other hand, took an aggressive step forward, struck inspirational pose number five with the asymmetric feet and the bent knees, and shouted, "No more d-ranks, sensei!"

My breath caught in my throat. Was this it? Was this… how many words in were we? Thirty thousand? Had we finally, finally hit the Wave mission? I didn't even want to know what the chapter count was. We'd spent literally half the fic on d-ranks.

"No more d-ranks? But we did training yesterday! Maa, missions are still important, you know."

Oh my god. Oh my god. I needed to sit down.

"Then give us a c-rank, Kakashi-dick-sensei! We're going to be heroes, we need to do hero things, believe it!"

Sakura, hold me. It's happening.

The open door to the mission office was right in front of us. I was so keyed up that survival training had kicked in and lowered my heart rate and breathing to be barely detectable, kawarimi-sense vibrating out into the room and tracking everything from the chairs to the other ninjas to the c-rank scroll on Iruka's desk.

I pushed it further, straining at the only other door in the room and practically growling a curse when I couldn't get through. I'd never been more frustrated in my life that you couldn't kawarimi through solid objects. I needed to know on a primal level if there was a drunk bridge builder on the other side of that door, because if we'd missed our window, if we'd spent too fucking long pissing about with d-ranks and Tallulah or whatever his name was had gone off with someone else, I had no idea what I would realistically do but it'd probably involve a lot of ice cream and a lot of swearing and basically, I deserved this, c'mon universe please let this be the wave mission, please.

The door opened. I'd completely missed everything else that had happened, I was so focussed on it. An old man swayed in, but he wasn't drunk, and for a split section I felt the gaping chasm of the void opening beneath my feet before I realised that he smelt of sake, he was clutching an open bottle, and to the person I was before I'd spent five years in a ninja village he would look exactly like a drunk old bridge builder.

I couldn't help the victorious smirk I aimed at Sakura and Naruto, but both of them echoed it, so I accepted no blame. We were going to Wave, shit was going to go down, and right on cue the bridge builder - whose name I probably needed to learn - started insulting us for being preteen sproglets instead of the hardened killers he was hoping for.

Yes.

.

Kakashi gave us an hour to get ready. I honestly wasn't sure if this meant an actual hour because a client was waiting for us or a Kakashi hour because why break a habit of a lifetime, but I erred on the side of caution all the same. We'd covered mission kits and survival basics back at the academy so I had a standard checklist to go through and in theory it shouldn't take me long to tick off what I needed for a short escort mission.

In reality…

"Plushie-tan, I don't know what to do." Spread out on the kitchen counter I had the basics: weapons, emergency food rations (including, and do you know how expensive this was, fruit leather because I highly doubted there'd be dango waiting to be foraged in the wild and I could probably kiss ice cream goodbye for the next forever), needle and thread, first aid kit, toothbrush, water bottle.

It was less than I wanted to take, but ninja were expected to travel light - with some careful packing, I could get the whole lot in my pockets and weapons pouch. Wave was… what, two days for an experienced ninja? So three for a genin team? In theory we were expected to make do without a sleeping roll or a change of clothes so we could maximise speed and efficiency, but we were travelling with a civilian. How fast did civilians travel? I honestly couldn't remember. Not that I'd done much long distance walking when I was a civilian myself, but somehow I couldn't see Tazuna hauling ass on a bike, so.

"See, Kakashi was ANBU. He's hardcore. When Itachi was ANBU he'd go for weeks with nothing but a toothpick and a dead leaf. Kakashi probably expects us to do the same thing, because he just doesn't seem the sort to make allowances for people being puny and genin. But if we've got a civilian then we're taking longer and making proper camp each night, right? So…" I pivoted on my heel, holding my arms out to gesture at the next kitchen counter. It had a sleeping roll, backpack, and a small heatproof bowl that I couldn't call anything other than a mess tin despite the fact that mess tins didn't exist in Konoha. It also had a change of clothes, a fire starter, rope, and a waterproof cloak that doubled as a rain-guard to tie over the fire or my sleeping roll. Also more shuriken. Poisoned shuriken, thank you mum for your beautiful garden of deadly death. And wire - I couldn't keep relying on Naruto to provide clone-wire, so I'd found some of my own. It was fun to play with.

I was this close to mastering a poison shuriken yoyo that didn't slice my fingers off. This close.

"But," I continued, turning to my third and final kitchen counter - actually a chopping board balanced over the sink, but I'd run out of other space and it was only Plushie-tan there to judge - "If the mission goes tits up and lasts for, say, a month, then we'd need more, right?"

The last counter had more clothes, more fruit leather, the sort of first aid kit that could conceivably deal with a chakra-exhausted jounin who'd faced down a big dude with a sword, soap, more more clothes, a scroll containing the epic retelling of the life and times of Uchiha Tajima (I was hoping that Madara's dad would drop some key secrets about Madara himself; no luck so far, but damn did he throw shade at the Senju, it was great), and a few more clothes for good measure.

I might look like I wore the same clothes all the time, but behind the scenes I went through a minimum of two outfits a day. Three if it was a rough day and I'd earnt an evening of yukata and blanket snuggles. Four if you counted pyjamas. And before you laugh at me, consider please that I started each day with a workout, followed that up with a spar, and then moseyed on into a day of physical labour and/or more training. Consider also that I lived in fear of a dictatorship that had killed my clan and wanted my eyeballs, and that being a sweaty bedraggled mess was one of the very few problems in my life I could control enough to fix.

I would like to clarify that I wasn't actually dirty. I just had very high standards and led an active life. In fact, given my practically obsessive showering tendencies, I was probably one of the cleanest twelve year olds you've ever met. When I wasn't covered in river mud.

Moving on.

"What do you reckon?" I asked Plushie-tan. "I'm probably missing things. I'm definitely missing things. I need a bigger bag. I need storage scrolls. Why don't I have storage scrolls." I'd found… eight, I think, in various places around the compound. One was so old the ink had smudged and made it unusable, four were locked and I couldn't get through, and two held food supplies from the bakery and I didn't dare open them in case that disrupted the stasis seals and everything went off. Or in case things weren't under stasis seals in the first place and had already gone off, in which case I really didn't want to open them.

The last one seemed to be a normal storage scroll, and I'd spent a whole summer a couple of years back trying to reverse engineer it and find out how it worked. I'd reasoned at the time that seals were perfect for me, with my logical, computer oriented background and unique (to Konoha, at least) way of looking at things. I had all the makings of a sealing savant, and once I'd got my sharingan open and could copy seals on the fly, I'd be set.

As it turned out, I was not a sealing savant. Javascript didn't work on chakra ink. I would not be single handedly reviving the hiraishin or dropping explosive seals across the four corners of the continent.

Using ready-made storage scrolls though, that I could do, except they were expensive and I didn't have any. I worried at a healing cut on my lip and debated whether I had time to run out and buy one. "Probably not," I decided. "Damnit."

Backpack or pockets. Lightly packed backpack or stuffed as full as it gets. Could I bring some extra scrolls for reading material. Decisions.

.

I arrived at the gate with four minutes to spare and a backpack that was reasonably full, but still light enough and squishable enough that I could fight in it if I had to. It was also carefully sorted to look as sensible as possible at first glance so that I wouldn't have to answer any difficult questions if Kakashi decided to check our packs - by which I mean I'd hidden the fruit leather, the extra soap, and the potentially extravagant number of socks in carefully chosen pockets and hidey holes to keep them out of harm's way.

Given that he didn't seem to care whether we had them or not, this was an entirely wasted effort.

"Great," Tazuna humphed when Kakashi arrived. "A girl, two snot nosed brats, and a guy who can't even arrive on time. I'm an important man, I need a better quality of service!"

I bristled. A girl? Sakura hit harder than any of the boys in our year. Besides, what was wrong with being a girl? Nothing, that's what. Even if she didn't punch like a freight train she'd gone through the same training as everyone else. Also, snot nosed? What were we, four? "Kunoichi have disproportionately high kill rates," I said, voice as perfectly level and polite as I could make it. "People underestimate them and die for it. Because shinobi are terrifying like that. You should be terrified."

A hand on my head stopped me, and I scowled as it ruffled my hair in warning. "Ah, what Sasuke meant to say was that I'm an elite jounin of Konohagakure and my team are stronger than they look," Kakashi corrected mildly. He smiled and dipped his head in a lazy bow. "You'll be safe under our care, Tazuna-san."

"I should hope so," Tazuna said, but his bravado seemed a bit shaken. "I've got lives depending on me, you know!"

"Then what are we waiting for, huh?" Naruto bounced on his heels in anticipation. "Let's go and rescue your village, believe it!"

The fact that Kakashi hadn't checked our packs still nagged at me, and I wondered briefly if I should get Naruto and Sakura to go through theirs. Sakura's was small but looked very neat, Naruto's was old and beaten up and haphazardly stuffed. We'd had the same lessons - I was pretty sure Iruka even made Naruto sit through those ones - so we should have the same things, except that neither of them knew how long this mission was actually going to be.

I decided against. They'd survived on their own packing in canon, and I remembered how badly it had gone down at the academy when I'd started showing people up in class. After almost a month of d-ranks Team Seven was beginning to settle into something vaguely tolerable, I didn't want to risk disrupting it. It'd be fine.

Besides, Naruto's excitement was infectious. In a world of military rule, bandits, and a war every generation or so, people just didn't travel unless they needed to. I doubted he'd ever left the village before - I hadn't really left the village, and the Uchiha were a powerful clan with trading and business connections to the surrounding areas. Or at least, they had been; I'd not kept them up, so I highly doubted any of the contracts were still valid.

How cool would that be if they were, though. I could be in charge of my own economic empire. Uchiha Sasuke, silk-importer extraordinaire. Purveyor of mochi. I'd have breakfast meetings among the camellias and rewrite Konoha's employer guidelines to make paid maternity leave a thing. I could have bespoke stationary.

"You seem to be in a good mood, Sasuke-kun," Sakura said, keeping pace beside me while Naruto scouted ahead with unnecessary zeal. "Are you looking forward to the mission?"

I resettled myself back into reality. "Just nice to be outside," I deflected, and continued walking.

.

And continued walking.

Peeled off from the group to take a leak and admitted that, maybe, there were occasions when the penis was useful.

Continued walking.

Amused myself by using the tree walking technique to stick bits of dust and pebble to the bottom of my shoes as we went, and tried to overpower it at various points to send small dust clouds poofing off my feet.

Continued walking.

Attempted to murder the back of Tazuna's head with just the force of my thoughts while not letting anything more than a slightly dead-eyed expression cross my face.

Continued walking.

For three days.

"This is why people invented trains," I muttered somewhere around noon on the third day. "And planes. Cars. My kingdom for a renault clio, lord give me strength."

"What's that, Sasuke-kun?"

"Carts," I said, raising my voice just enough for Sakura to hear. "Aren't they fascinating. Did you ever wonder what it would be like to ride a horse. Think how much faster it would be than this."

"But Tazuna-san's a bridge builder," she pointed out, bemused. "Why would he have a cart? Or a horse?"

"Because the only benefit of feet is that you can go in a straight line instead of following the path, except we're using our feet and we're still following the path. It's slow. And inefficient." I might have been whining just a fraction by the end of it, but my original estimate of a few days for the trip was apparently way out. We'd gone - what, half the distance so far? Half. In three days! I could crawl faster than this. I was lithe and speedy and built to run, not to slowly amble with breaks every few hours. Escort missions sucked.

"Are you tired, bastard?" Naruto grinned, dropping back to join the conversation. "Are your feet hurting? Is Hime-chan cold again? Ooh, are you hungry?"

"You think you're funny but you're actually not and your attempts at humour are pitiful and embarrassing."

"Are you hungry though, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked with much more sincerity. "You didn't eat much last night, and sensei said you skipped the rabbit before that as well."

Sensei's a snitch, I thought viciously. "I'm fine," I said. "I'm just bored. I thought something would have happened by now." Had we missed the demon brothers? I couldn't see any reason why we would have. If we hadn't, they were slow and it was rude of them to make us wait this long.

"I know," Naruto complained, taking the bait. "No bandits, no battles - this is the least heroic c-rank to ever exist!"

"Stop tempting fate, brat!" Tazuna said. "Do you want me to be attacked, huh?"

"Maa, don't be so impatient, Naruto. This is how most c-ranks are, it's not bad to have good luck sometimes." I didn't jump when Kakashi appeared, but only because I was so used to Naruto's clones randomly popping up that Kakashi's barely phased me. I did subtly poke the Kakashi now walking beside us with my chakra, trying to see if I could tell which Kakashi - this one, or the one walking a few metres ahead - was the clone. I couldn't, of course. Stupid non-chakra sensing chakra sense. Kawarimi sense. Stupid sense.

Tazuna's sudden strangled silence though was admittedly quite funny.

"Still though," Kakashi continued. "If you've got energy for talking you've probably got energy for training. How's your tree walking going?"

"I can walk up anything sensei, believe it!" Naruto said, already looking round for a suitable forest to demonstrate in. I just stuck my foot to one of the larger stones by the side of the road and lifted the whole thing in answer. Sakura, of course, had mastered it the first time it was introduced.

"I believe you, Naruto, no need to go running off. But I guess your beloved sensei had best teach you something else then, just to keep the boredom away!" He eye smiled at us with his head tilted to the side and waited for both Sakura and Naruto to cheer.

Even I perked up at the thought of a new technique. I could've sworn he hadn't taught them much in canon, but maybe it all happened off screen? We were out the village, there were no stupid test questions to trick us with, I couldn't see the catch. He might, genuinely, be doing his teaching job and teaching us.

"Fireball," Naruto demanded, holding his hand out and side-eyeing me. I stuck my tongue out.

"You still need a fire affinity. And you're still not Uchiha. Get your own technique." Not that the grand fireball was that much use, anyway. Impressive, but slow to cast, and unless I scored a direct hit it caused more damage to me than to anyone I was fighting. But it was the principle of the thing.

"Funny that you should mention affinities," Kakashi said, and deposited a leaf in Naruto's open hand. He tucked Sakura's behind her ear, and was aiming for the back of my collar before I ducked and stole it from him.

Sakura retrieved hers with a frown and smoothed her hair back out. "But sensei, don't we need chakra paper to find our affinities?"

He looked up from the book I swear he wasn't holding a second ago. "Hm, what? Did you say something?"

"Clearly not then," I said dryly, and turned back to my leaf. Naruto made confused sounds in the background and Sakura started explaining chakra types and how conductive paper would react to different elements, but I tuned them out. I had an advantage over both of them in that I already knew I was a fire and lightning type, so I could focus on making the leaf burn rather than pushing it for an unknown reaction. It would be more delicate than with chakra paper, but easy enough, and I let myself think firey thoughts as I pooled my chakra in my palm.

"Bad Sasuke," Kakashi said, bopping me on the head with his book. "Stop making it be fire. It might not want to be fire."

I wrinkled my nose in annoyance. "I'm Uchiha," I said, because I couldn't say that I'd seen a variant of my Sasuke-life play out in anime format before I'd died.

He hummed, and for all intents and purposes, ignored me to focus on Icha Icha again. I turned back to my leaf with a frown. If he wanted to be difficult about it then he could be difficult; the leaf would still burn. Unless the lightning would be stronger? But I was pretty sure that came later on. All Uchiha were fire types, or at least the main house were - I think some of the branch members had different elements. They still had to use enough fire jutsu to satisfy the clan though, so it didn't make much of a difference.

I called my chakra again, letting it flicker to life around the edges of the -

Bop. "Sasuke, no."

"Sensei."

"I did it!" Naruto yelled, holding up his leaf. It was split cleanly in two. "Sensei, sensei, look -"

"Wind," Kakashi said, ambling over with a pleased smile. "And Sakura, that's earth. Well done, you two."

Sakura grinned, eyes sparkling, and even Tazuna gave them a gruff congratulations. I doubt he knew what he was congratulating them for, but it was clearly a big deal so it was nice of him to acknowledge it.

"What did you get, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked, and I gave Kakashi a wary look and refocussed on my leaf. And, just to prove a point, I carefully cleared all thoughts of anything elemental out of my head and just called my raw chakra, like I did when I gathered it for kawarimi and pushed it out to find something to swap with. Except instead of out, I pushed it in to the leaf, carefully not expecting it to burn so I could act shocked and surprised when it actually did burn.

The leaf crumpled into a soggy mess under the weight of my chakra and I shook my hand out in disgust. "Hang on, I need another leaf. This one broke."

Kakashi leaned over and stole it from me before I could drop it on the floor. "Hmm, no," he said. "That's water chakra, Sasuke. Looks like you're a water-type!"

And then he smiled at me.

Like he hadn't just blatantly lied. Or made a mistake. Or - "I have fire chakra," I corrected him. There was a rushing sound in my ears and I felt faintly light headed. "I use fire jutsu."

He kept smiling. One of his hands twitched, like he wanted to ruffle my hair but was holding himself back. My chest felt tight, and cold, and dark. My vision narrowed until all I could see was the leaf in his hands, wet and wet and wet and he was speaking again. "Maa, don't underestimate water, Sasuke. There's plenty of powerful water-users in the world, and it's a rare affinity in Fire Country. Not many people would think to defend against drowning when fighting an Uchiha."

Because you can't. There's no defence, because you lose control, because you can't breathe and then you can't not breathe and it hurts, you don't think it would hurt like that but it hurts, it hurts, you can't breathe you can't -

"I was planning to be a genjutsu specialist, actually," I said, my voice flat but otherwise remarkably calm. I blinked, and looked away from the leaf. "Like Sakura said, it's useful for support." My shoulders rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. There was nothing blocking my nose. I was mildly disappointed to not be following in my family's tradition as a fire user, but otherwise unbothered.

"Oh, you don't have to, Sasuke-kun," Sakura said, sending me an uneasy look. "It was just a thought. You'll be amazing at whatever you want to be, so you can be a water ninjutsu specialist if you want?"

"No," I said, and shook myself into my usual grumpy scowl. "Genjutsu makes sense for my skills as well as the team. I'm going to be a genjutsu specialist."

.

I was relieved when the demon chunin attacked later that afternoon. Demon chunin? Chunin brothers? I didn't actually care, I just wanted to stab something and they presented an easy target. Puddle on the ground, fab. Kakashi walking on like nothing's amiss, why not. Sakura frowning at it, Naruto oblivious, perfect set up.

"Sensei," I said, more as a warning for what I was about to do than anything else. He inclined his head just a fraction and that was good enough for me; I subtly withdrew four shuriken, made sure one of them was attached to a length of chakra wire, and threw them with vicious accuracy.

One thunked into the puddle. The two chunin burst from it in a sudden flurry of chakra, their chains already flying out to wrap around Kakashi. I heard someone's - Naruto's? - audible distress and assumed he'd pretended to be ripped to pieces, but I was already moving, running forwards low to the ground to dodge under their blows.

Shurikens two and three curved back, but I'd misjudged the position slightly and only one of them got in a solid hit. Then the chain was swinging my way and I had to twist sharply to avoid it. It would've made more sense to back up and get a clear view of what was happening, but like I said, I wanted to stab. I tugged on the wire still in my fist and the last shuriken came whipping back to me.

"Brother!" One of the chunin shouted, and knocked it out of the air with a sharp jab - but that was fine, the wire kept going and scored a deep, bloody groove along his arm, and I took advantage of his moment of pained distraction to aim three lightning fast blows at his throat. He choked, but they did less damage than I'd hoped - he was wearing a head piece, some kind of breathing apparatus - and I had to abandon my attack to roll with a sudden kick from the other chunin, trying desperately to use my momentum to lessen the impact.

"Sasuke, swap!" Sakura demanded, brittle and loud. I growled, but I was badly positioned; one of the chunin was breathing heavily and cradling his wounded arm, and Naruto was distracting the other with a minor avalanche of clones, and I still really wanted to just hit something, but I didn't have the strength or the run up I needed to deal a finishing blow.

"Punch!" I yelled, and threw myself at the guy I'd winded with my arm raised in a deliberately sloppy haymaker. He scoffed, barely bothering to raise a decent block, and I smirked at him before grabbing Sakura in a kawarimi and trading places. Good luck surviving that without an iron-clad shield in place, dickhead.

I landed closer in than I'd thought, the momentum of my movement sending me sprawling in an untidy shambles on the side of the road. I glanced back at Tazuna - if Sakura was this close to the battle, I needed to check he was guarded because we were still technically on an escort mission rather than a vent-our-feelings-via-stab-therapy mission, but given the sheer quantity of orange surrounding him I guessed he was fine.

Frustratingly, so were Naruto and Sakura, and by the time I'd flipped myself back on my feet they'd both sorted out their respective enemies. Sakura's was down unconscious with a trickle of blood leaking from under his hairline, and the one Naruto'd been facing was barely more than a head sticking out a truly impressive amount of rope.

Orange rope. With swirly patterns.

"Don't use clones as rope, dumbass," I huffed, retrieving my chakra wire and fashioning a more stable solution. "If he stabs it, the whole thing'll disappear."

"Don't run ahead like that," he snapped back. "What if they'd got you as well as Kakashi-sensei?" He actually sounded upset, face pinched tight and knuckles white around the kunai he was holding.

"They didn't get Kakashi," I said.

"They did, Sasuke-kun," Sakura said, coming up to join us. "We saw -"

"Then where's his body?" I gestured at the empty path, then the trees off to the left of us. "He's not dead. He's over there."

"But we saw -"

"Sasuke's right," Kakashi said, appearing in a whirl of shunshin leaves. "But Sasuke, so's Naruto. Jumping in like that was reckless." He nudged one of chunin with his foot, ignoring the man's angry hiss. "These two are known for using poison. If they'd released it into the air you could easily have breathed it in."

Yeah, well, they didn't. And if they did, Kakashi would've stopped them, so. We were fine.

"So you've heard of us!" the brother currently tied up by Naruto's clone-rope and my wire said. "Gozu and Meizu, the famous Demon Brothers of the bloody Mist!"

I stepped back and let Kakashi take over the interrogation of both the demon brothers and Tazuna, though I suspected he already knew more than he was letting on. The warning look he shot me though said that he wasn't happy about how I'd acted, even if he was letting it go for now, and I resisted the urge to hunch my shoulders defensively. From the outside, I could see how it'd looked like I just charged in, particularly given how shaken both Sakura and Naruto had been by Kakashi's apparent dismemberment.

From the inside, I knew it wasn't an issue. Kakashi had never been in any danger. The 'demon brothers' were small fry, ones that barely registered a mention in canon except as the first proper enemy action Team Seven had seen. Even then, I was pretty sure Naruto was in a worse fight with Mizuki when he was tricked into stealing the scroll. I could've acted more like I didn't know what was happening, but there was a stage, surely, where being paranoid and downplaying my knowledge started working against me? What was the point in having the whole of canon neatly mapped out if I couldn't use the advantage I'd been given?

"Sasuke-kun?" Sakura prompted, and I flicked my gaze up to her and stopped chewing the inside of my cheek. I replayed the last minute of what everyone had been saying in my head - situational awareness, it's important for a ninja - and resisted the urge to wrinkle my nose at Tazuna's hammed up sob story about his grandson.

"It's outside the mission parameters," I said neutrally.

"No way, bastard! We're Team Seven, we don't abandon people who need us, believe it!"

I pulled a face at Naruto, but I'd already known we were going to continue. "I didn't say no. If you and Sakura are going, then I am too."

"Then we'll go," Sakura said, turning first to Kakashi for approval then to Tazuna to drop into a formal bow. "We will continue the mission, Tazuna-san, and deliver you safely to Wave."