(A/N) Wave! But first, the requested token mention/Tora mission of D-ranks. For those curious, I did not escape my mother's attention, and was forced to bed. Oh well. Maybe I'll try for New Years. Wait, does New Years count as a Holiday? Do I need a oneshot for that too? Also, I got a cool Gaara shirt, and an Akatsuki shirt with red clouds on it. I don't have the heart to tell my grandmother (she got it for me) that the red cloud pattern she likes so much belongs to the bad guys...
"That's the fastest Catch Tora mission yet," Sarutobi said approvingly.
"Of course!" Naruto chirped. "We couldn't let Kakashi-nii's team beat us at this mission!"
Sarutobi sweatdropped, but didn't reply. Tora was walking calmly in between Kurama and Shukaku, and based on the slightest hint of teeth from the two chibi biju, the cat had probably been heavily threatened. Kakashi's team had brought the cat in via the Chomei express, and Tora had been too busy clinging onto Chomei's feet to claw anyone.
"C-rank yet?" Gaara asked. "We've done your fence painting-" that went surprisingly well most of the time, shadow clones were helpful- "your old lady grocery shopping-" Gaara had problems with that mission, just because he was short and skinny, did not mean he was underfed- "and your dog walking-" that one usually involved Shukaku and Kurama corralling the dogs alongside Gaara's sand when the dogs got too rowdy- "Why can't we have a C-rank."
Sarutobi hid a grin. Perhaps they were due for a C-rank. They could certainly more than handle it.
"Why not!" Shisui decided. "Sure! Give us a C-rank!"
They were just out of viewing distance from the gate when Itachi and Kisame walked up and joined them.
"Hey, Itachi!" Shisui chirped.
"Hello," he replied calmly.
Shino was clearly having an internal freakout, despite how well he hid it. Shisui knew the signs of internal freakout. From Itachi.
"Kisame-nii!" Naruto shouted at quarter volume so no one heard them, and latched on happily, his arms barely going around the much larger man's waist.
"Hey pup," Kisame said, patting his head. "Itachi dragged me along. Or rather, Nagato insisted Itachi bring me."
Naruto pouted at him. "You didn't just wanna see us?"
"That too," Kisame acquiesced. "Is your teammate okay? I'm not that scary, am I? Although, to have terrified an Aburame is quite an achievement."
"You two are S-class missing-nin, that is most likely the cause," Gaara replied.
Kisame hummed. "Perhaps. Now, are we going to continue on, or what? And pup, get off me, as much as I did it when you were small, I cannot walk with you hanging on like a leech anymore."
"I'm not even as heavy as Samehada!" Naruto protested.
"But she's on my back, you're latched on around my waist like a giant remora fish."
Naruto pouted, but let go.
They had been walking for a while, when Kisame took Samehada off his back, released some of the wrappings, and tapped a conspicuous water puddle. Two men spilled out of it, unconscious with chakra exhaustion.
"Well, those certainly don't look like bandits, now do they?" Shisui asked, nudging Tazuna.
"They're barely chuunin level, I don't care about them," Gaara decided, nudging one of the missing-nin. "Kiri's Demon Brothers."
"You kits go ahead and get the story out of Tazuna," Itachi said. "Shisui, Kisame, go with them. I will take care of the Demon brothers."
Shisui and Kisame nodded, herding the kids and Tazuna ahead, and around a bend in the road.
Itachi stared down at the unconscious Demon Brothers, and then swiftly removed their heads. He sealed up their heads, then set his ravens on them, and walked away. The Demon Brother's bodies would be gone swiftly. Itachi would turn in their heads for the bounties later. Kakuzu would kill him if he came back without a profit.
The zantabo whirled over their heads, and it would've decapitated them, if they hadn't dropped to the floor, pulling Tazuna with them.
A man landed on the zantabo's handle and stared incredulously at them. "Shisui Uchiha? Your head band's unslashed."
"It is?" Shisui reached up to touch it and gasped in mock surprise. "It is! Amazing!"
"Zabuza Momochi, what are you doing?" Kisame asked.
"Kisame, why are you traveling with a bunch of Konoha nin?"
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are. Those are Konoha nin, you're right there, and you've been walking with them. Therefore, you're traveling with them."
"No, I'm not, I'm traveling with my partner Itachi. He's traveling with them. Nagato wanted to keep an eye on him."
"I do not need to have an eye kept on me," Itachi protested.
"I'm watching him too!" Shisui added, grinning like the Cheshire cat.
Itachi groaned.
"Why do you want to kill Tazuna?" Gaara asked Zabuza, clearly sensing that this was not going to go anywhere.
"Money, kid. You wouldn't get it."
Gaara tilted his head. "I get a lot of things. I also think you would make a fine addition to my collection."
"Gaara," Kyu sighed. "Now is not the time to be thinking about your puppet collection!"
"Every time is the time to be thinking about my puppet collection," Gaara argued, unrolling a scroll, and unsealing his favorite puppet, the first one he'd ever made, actually, Yamanaka Fubuki.
"What are you, a copier of Sasori of the Red Sand?" Zabuza scoffed.
Gaara snorted. "You wish, I am his student, and you, Zabuza Momochi, will become my puppet."
"Oh, and that hyoton user can get out of the trees," Kurama commented. "You may want him for your collection as well, Gaara."
Shino, looking mildly nauseous, at least, as nauseous as an Aburame will ever look, said, "your mentioned sensei in the art of puppetry is Sasori of the Red Sand?"
Gaara, a small smirk on his face as Fubuki settled into her taijutsu stance. "That he is."
Naruto settled into his own stance, and Shino reluctantly allowed his bugs to fly out of his body. The S-ranked ninja were still arguing behind them.
"Hey, Shino, defend Tazuna, would you? We'll tackle Zabuza until one of our idiot senseis get their heads in gear," Naruto said, creating a field of shadow clones.
The Narutos swarmed Zabuza, and he began dispelling them. They were only diversions, as Gaara's puppet came through a break in the swarm and began attacking Zabuza with the same grace the chuunin had used when she had been alive. He fought back, of course, trying to destroy everything around him. Kurama suddenly jumped into the fray, four tails swinging behind him. He was about the size of a human now, and he tackled Zabuza, using his weight to hold him down. Naruto clones jumped on him, holding down his arms and legs, but when Kurama bit through his throat, he dissolved into water.
"Water clone," Kurama growled, shaking his paws to rid them of water.
The Naruto clones disappeared, and Gaara pulled out a second scroll, unsealing the puppet inside. The puppet had been a clanless Iwa nin and was named Ibutsu. He had a very nice explosion bloodline through and was Gaara's second favorite puppet. The puppet knelt down, beginning to knead some of the damp earth between its palms, infusing it with its chakra, and making it explosive.
Zabuza reappeared, his supposed assistant by his side. "Haku, handle the clone spammer. I'll take the puppeteer."
Gaara smiled, unsealing one more puppet. He could handle ten, but three was all he needed to kill most people. This one was not anywhere near his top ten favorites, but it made a good distraction puppet, as it was a snake, easily fifteen feet long, and large enough around to swallow a human. A snake's skin was stretched across the wood, and that made it darn near invulnerable to small weapons like kunai and shuriken.
Zabuza began trying to attack him but was kept away from Gaara by his skillful manipulation of the three puppets, plus a sand clone's intervention when needed. The one time he did get close enough to slash at Gaara with his zantabo, Gaara's sand intervened, and his sword got nowhere near Gaara.
Finally, the S-ranked ninja got involved, only to watch as Haku collapsed from chakra exhaustion, and Zabuza collapsed from poison from a scratch earlier in the fight.
"You did really good!" Shisui said, giving them a thumbs up. "Ow!" He yelped as Gaara's sand whacked him upside the head. "We were going to jump in if you were gonna die."
"Good thing we didn't do that then!" Naruto chirped. "Alright Gaara, you do whatever you need to prepare them, and we'll go ahead while you do that. Seal them away and catch up when you're done. Do the actual puppetfying later, would you? Like, when we get back to Konoha later." He gestured to Kurama, who desized, and jumped up onto Shisui's head.
Gaara nodded, sealing up his puppets. "Thank you for leaving him in good condition."
"Welcome!" Naruto started herding Shino and Tazuna away from Gaara and the two unconscious missing-nin. "Have fun!"
Gaara nodded, turning to the missing-nin. Naruto turned a corner and lost sight of him.
"Who is this Sasori of the Red Sand you kept mentioning?" Tazuna asked, confused.
Naruto pulled a bingo book out of nowhere, opening it to a page, and showing it to Tazuna. "Sasori of the Red Sand, formerly of Sunagakure, now a part of the Akatsuki. S-ranked missing-nin. He was banished from his village because he killed the Third Kazekage and turned the corpse into a puppet. He uses mostly corpse puppets now and is passing the art down to Gaara, who took to it like a fish to water. Yamanaka Fubuki was his first human puppet, and she was a chuunin, but was certainly powerful enough to be a jounin."
Shino frowned slightly. "It's wrong, and descartes the corpses."
Naruto shrugged. "You get used to it when you grow up with it."
"You grew up with it?" Tazuna asked incredulously.
"Yeah!" Naruto chirped. "Sasori was really cool about letting us see his puppets!"
"You're all crazy desensitized," Shisui offered, dropping an arm around Naruto. "Weren't you the one to walk in on Sasori mid-way through a human puppet?"
Naruto nodded. "It was pretty cool! He showed me all the organs, and how he took out the bones, and even let me help a bit!"
If Tazuna had been incredulous before, he was downright horrified now. "You what?"
"I helped Sasori make a human puppet!" Naruto said again. "It was pretty cool."
Shino looked a bit queasy.
"If it helps any, I can't stomach that thought either, but they basically grew up with it, so they don't even care anymore," Itachi offered. "I stay far away from Sasori and Gaara's rooms."
"Me too, it's downright creepy in there," Kisame said, shuddering. "All those puppets on the walls."
"It's not so bad," Kurama said. "I've been in there a few times. Shukaku thinks it's great in there."
"Shukaku's insane," Gaara said, walking up to join them, perfectly clean. "You've said so yourself, many times."
Kurama waved a paw. "So?"
Gaara rolled his eyes.
Shisui hummed a happy tune. "So, we now pretty much don't have anything to worry about!"
"No, but it is possible that he will attempt to hire someone else," Itachi replied.
"Then we'll take care of them too!" Naruto chirped.
(A/N) Poor Shino, he has to put up with Gaara, the second coming of Sasori. Also, wish me luck, I'm trying to make a crochet dragon that's supposed to end up being about 4 feet long. Also, the update roster poll ends later today, probably late tonight. For me. Either way, get your votes in before it closes, sooner is better then later. Have a happy New Year!