I never thought the early days would be this tedious and boring. Pulling weeds, chasing cats, painting sheds and so on. It's just a bit ridiculous... I couldn't wait for a C-Rank mission.
"Target has been sighted sensei, preparing for capture", I said through the radio headsets that we where using, "I'm in position".
"Good, Cherry, are you in position?", the man with the gravity defying hair asked of the only female female person we had on out team?
Sakura sighed, "Yes, sensei but why do we need these codenames?".
Kakashi had decided to ignore Sakura as she asked that question every time we partook in this mission and asked Sasuke, "Duck, are you in position?",
"Yes, target has been surrounded", the boy with a bird behind for a hairstyle said, muttering something along the lines of, "I hate this codename", taking the piss out of his hairstyle was hilarious until he finally got the hint and changed it, though that was awhile later, years later in fact.
"Good, lunge for it!", Kakashi shouted, not at the top of his lungs though, otherwise the mission would be compromised.
I was the closest to it and and as such reached the hell incarnate cat that we had to return to its mental owner, the scratches man, it was never something you could truly recover from, no matter how many battles you faced.
Sakura took it from my hands as she could actually work well with animals, Sasuke and I on the other hand... Yeah, no, every time we tried to take the accursed cat, it would severely scratch us in any place it could, were just lucky it never went for the genitals. We had all changed our outfits since the ball test where we humiliated Kakashi with cheap tricks, though he himself admitted, "Sometime the best way to be a stronger opponent is by using cheap tricks", that was about 5 weeks ago. I personally was wearing a new jumpsuit that was mostly black but had dark orange on the shoulders and the outer sides of the legs, you could never get rid of the orange in my soul, never! Sakura was wearing a pink slightly armour-plated, loosely fitting t-shirt-like piece of clothing for her top, black gloves and a battle-skirt, also in pink. Sasuke was wearing a black, high-collared short-sleeved shirt, a gauntlet over his right hand (think canon at the Chunin Exams) and blue three-quarter length trousers. Kakashi had done this for us, saying that they were better for a shinobi than our previous gear, yeah right, I could sneak past ANBU in that old jumpsuit, so you could imagine in this, I could be practically invisible to anyone without a byakugan or chakra sensing. After completely restraining the damn cat, we reported back to the Hokage's Office.
"Oh, Tora how I have missed you so much", the fat old lady said while hugging the cat half to death.
"You know, when I see that, I feel sorry for that cat", Sasuke said just loud enough so that the rest of the team could hear it, the Hokage was likely unable to be able to do so despite how good he was at basically everything.
"I don't blame you, no wonder it runs away", I agreed, again just quiet enough so the Daimyo's Wife had no ability to hear, "And cause problems for us".
Sakura just went, "Indeed".
Kakashi could hear us and decided not comment on it, after all, he actually agreed with us. He seemed in thought of something as well and we found out what that thought was, "Hokage-sama, it has come to me that my three genin here have completed enough D-Ranks for a C-Rank and are very capable of working in a team, therefore, I request that we can get a C-Rank".
"Request granted", Hiruzen didn't argue, he knew what they were capable of when Kakshi gave his report.
FLASHBACK
Kakashi, as usual, was late, so late in fact that all the other Jonin had gone to either their teams or home.
The man came in with his report 2 and a half hours late, entering through the window, like he usually did, "Kakashi, did Team 7 pass?".
"Yes they passed, better than I thought they would. Though I do have something to ask about, why were their Academy reports so badly wrong?", Hiruzen looked on in question, "For example it states in this that Naruto and Sasuke were completely incapable of working with each other but in the test they had no quarrels and worked together willingly, creating a plan with Sakura that involved sending in Naruto hidden in a horde of clones to punch me in my privates, before Sasuke threw kunai at me pinning me to a tree and completely disabling me and then Sakura came and used a genjutsu, not that I'm complaining about what was in that genjutsu of course".
"I see, clearly they were hiding their true emotions all Academy, why?, I don not know but I'll give you an S-Rank mission to find out why. Observe the three of them carefully and if they accidentally spill the beans, report to me as soon as possible, for now though, you may leave".
"Yes, Hokage-sama", Kakashi shunshin'd out of the office and towards his apartment, thinking about the mission at hand.
END FLASHBACK
"This mission is escort a bridge builder back to the Land of Waves, do you accept it?", Hiruzen was interested in this mission as it didn't seem to be all there was to this story and our team was best for the job, from what I could tell anyway.
We conferred and it came to a unanimous decision to not do it, "I see, how about this one escorting shinobi back to Talk?", we conferred again and this time we came to 3-to-1 decision to do it, only Sasuke said we shouldn't and that was because he hated overly hot climates like the one in Tonbo no Kuni, the land in which Taki was settled.
"Good, bring in the client", a young man from Taki entered, he seemed to have no confidence and looked to me like one of those annoying people that I was once thought to be.
"Hello, my name is Shibuki and I need extra protection for my travel back to Talk, I do not mind how strong you are as long as you are not completely and utterly useless", Shibuki had long dark brown hair and black eyes.
"I see, my name is Kakashi Hatake and the are my genin, Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno and Sasuke Uchiha. We assure you that we will be able to provide any needed assistance that you will need in your trip back to Talk", Kakashi almost sounded robotic when he said that, meaning he was uncomfortable to say it.
"Thank you, when shall we leave? I don't mind waiting a day", he seems to be forcing himself to be polite though he certainly didn't sound robotic, Kakashi was terrible at being that formal.
"No, it's fine, you three gather all supplies you will find necessary and meet at the entrance in fifteen minutes", amongst the team I was the one who carried the suppkies, my seals made storage incredibly easy and we could take a lot of stuff if we needed to but for this mission it wasn't necessary, as we would at most need several tents and sleeping bags, many sets of kunai and shuriken, lot's of exploding tags, tripwires, 7 days provisions and lots of various bring for traps such as itching powder and paint.
With that in mind we set off to my apartment to gather the things that we would need and once all that stuff was retrieved, we set off to meet up with Kakashi and Shibuki at the gate. We were surprised when we arrived because Kakshi was not late. He was very serious about this for whatever reason, to this day we still don't know why, probably had some kind of debt to the village that existed within the waterfalls.
"We are all here on time, good. Let's go", and so we set off on the 2 day journey to the village to the north. The first day was uneventful we just walked and talked, mostly Shibuki asking us about ourselves, he was very intrigued to know that I was interested in the art of fuinjutsu, which was an incredibly rare art according to the long haired man. Apparently, Taki has only ever had one fuinjutsu master, a man named Taikutsu. According to Shibuki, his name perfectly described his personality as he was insufferably boring, however, he did say I wasn't boring which was a relief to me, I have never wanted to be boring.
The second day was much more interesting as we got ambushed by a bunch of bandits, they were easy to beat as they weren't as fast as we were but in the act of kicking one, I snapped his neck, killing him almost instantly. After the bandits had been despatched, I puked my lunch out. It was a harrowing experience and one that I'd never hoped I would have do to again but the world seemed to hate me as I would find out later on.
After the intense throw up, we moved on to the village which Shibuki said we couldn't come in as to preserve the village's secrets but he was going to send one of his most trusted shinobi out to give them their pay, he also said he would give extra if we helped clear the leaves out the drains, we shrugged and accepted. The shinobi that came out was a mint-haired girl about our age at the time, "Hi, my name's Fū and I have been sent to give you your pay and the extra for clearing out the gutters".
The girl seemed hyper, too hyper really and quite frankly interesting, "Thank you Fū, we will be leaving now".
A couple of seconds after Kakashi said that, an explosion rocked the ground, "Oh, shit", Sasuke exclaimed, " Looks like we aren't going home just yet, sensei".
Fū's face lit up like a bulb.
I think I like to call that one a strange cliffhanger.
Translations (probably):
Tonbo no Kuni - Land of Dragonflies
Taikutsu - Boredom
Thank you for reading, please feel free to leave constructive criticism and if you don't like something, please be civil about it.
Sincerely, your friend, DaPika