One Change: Chapter 8 – Mission

So I give you Chapter 8! This is a little bit longer that usual so it took me a little longer to write.

Some facts about this story:

I usually begin writing the next chapter when the previous chapter reaches 10 reviews, however if this takes longer than 4 days then I write the chapter regardless.

I have written summaries of all the chapter up until chapter 16 so far and I've already typed chapter 11.

I begin writing a chapter it rarely sticks to the plot I had planned.

Thank you to: leosbabygirl84, annashina, angel897, Analelle, Guest, kyoko minion, NightshadePrincess and silverwolfighter00 for reviewing!

Standard Disclaimers Apply

08: Mission

5 Months Later

It had been a while since they'd last had a mission but it seemed as though his team were as efficient as ever, all waiting for him at the gates, prepped and ready to leave by the time he arrived.

Sakura was leaning against a tree with her arms crossed over her chest looking bored and overly tired, idly Itachi wondered if she'd been getting enough sleep lately but brushed the thought aside when he spotted Shin gesturing impatiently towards the sign-out sheet. He strode over to the small kiosk that housed Izumo and Kotetsu at most hours of the day and night and signed his name fluidly beneath the cursive signature of Haruki.

Clearing his throat in order to catch the attention of the three genin, he waited until he had their attention and then began to speak. "Our mission is simple. We will travel to the capital of HI No Kuni and collect the Daimyo's son. following that we will escort him to Tsukiyo-Mari, a small village on the border of HI No Kuni. I do not anticipate any trouble but you should be on your guard as per usual protocol." The genin nodded sagely and followed him as he left the confines of the village gates.

For the first half an hour they traveled in silence, the only sound being the occasional thud as foot met tree branch. It wasn't unusual for the three of them to be quiet but the air felt heavy and Itachi wondered if something was wrong. Not breaking pace but keeping a closer on the traveling genin, Itachi noticed that they avoided eye contact with one another and didn't attempt to communicate in way.

Deciding it was best not to comment Itachi went back to keeping watch with his sharingan, the silence was a little stifling but not something that he wasn't used to. It was often silent in the Uchiha compound. Due to the prolonged silence it was easy for Itachi to catch the sound of one of his students faltering footsteps and he was quick to jump back a branch and catch Sakura before she tumbled to ground below.

Calling the others to stop for a quick break he found a sheltered cave and secured the perimeter. Once he was sure that the area was secure he set Sakura back on her feet and asked her what was wrong. Being Sakura, she couldn't just give him a straight-forward answer instead glancing away from him and remaining silent. When he asked again she muttered something that he didn't quite catch but still refused to look at him. When he pried further she whipped her head up and glared at him with fierce, glazed over eyes.

"Why does it matter!?" she shouted, shocking the stoic Uchiha and causing her two teammates to turn towards her in alarm, she was trembling slightly and had cast her eyes back towards the ground. "It shouldn't concern you, you shouldn't care", she muttered almost as an afterthought. Concerned now, Itachi wondered why he hadn't noticed that something was wrong with the girl before now but wrote it off as her easily hidden emotions. It was obvious that something had happened and that she wasn't willing to talk about it but leaving her in an emotionally vulnerable state would put not only her but her teammates at risk.

Placing his hand on the girls head Itachi spoke softly and hoped that she would listen. "Sakura-san, You may not feel much like talking right now but you will feel better if you tell me what's wrong. It may compromise the success of the mission if you are unable to concentrate on our objective."

Sakura frowned but her eyes shone with determination and Itachi knew that his talk of the mission had gotten through to her. At first she didn't speak, seemingly thinking about what it was she was going to say but then her lips set into a firm line and she opened her mouth to speak.

"There is really nothing wrong. Iruka-sensei informed me last night that he was to be leaving for a prolonged mission outside of the village in a weeks time and I didn't get much sleep because I spent so long thinking about it, I feel a little drained. I'm sure the Nara's will provide more than adequate care in his absence." She tried to sound nonchalant but Itachi could see the pain in her eyes. Last time somebody special to her gone on a long mission, they had returned in a body bag.

Sighing, moved his hand from her head to her shoulder and looked her right in the eyes with an unwavering gaze. "There is no need to be concerned Sakura, Iruka is a skilled shinobi and will return to the village when his mission is completed. In the meantime, the Nara's are a very skilled clan and you could learn a lot from them." She didn't smile but she did nod, letting him know that she was ready to continue on with the mission.

The rest of the journey to the Daimyo's mansion was relatively quiet but the genin talked quietly amongst themselves and he gave quiet orders when they were to change course or stop to rest.

The capital of Hi No Kuni was a large city that housed millions of civilians and was the center of all trade both into and out of Hi No Kuni. The 4 ninja cast a simple henge to make themselves seem nondescript and fit in with the rest of the civilians better.

Itachi tried to change as little about himself as possible as it always unnerved him, looking into a reflective surface and seeing somebody that wasn't himself looking back. His hair was lightened a few shades to a dark grey but remained in a loose ponytail, tied at the back of his neck and his eyes where a stormy dark blue. The deep tear troughs on his face were also not present in the jutsu. He was dressed in baggy black pants and a plain dark blue shirt that had a few buttons left undone at the collar.

Haruki's disguise was a little more drastic and Itachi stifled a snort when he glanced over at the over-zealous boy. His usually dark blue hair was now a startling shade of blond hanging almost to his shoulders in messy spikes and his eyes a clear sky blue. Anybody who lived in Konoha would have thought he was a relative of the Yondaime Hokage. It didn't help that his black pants and green t-short were covered by a white jacket with blue accents around the collar that looked suspiciously like a picture he'd seen of Namikaze Minato in his time as a young ninja.

Shin didn't seem to appreciate his teammates choice in clothing either and was giving him a narrow-eyed look that spoke volumes of his displeasure. The boys own disguise was simple, his ice blue hair would stand out too much in a crown of ninja so he'd changed it to a nondescript black. The length was much the same as usual but the majority of his bangs were held back by a few cleverly placed slides. His usually bright eyes had also been changed to a muted grey, almost black, somebody in Konoha might actually mistake the boy as a member of the Uchiha clan. He'd chosen to wear something simple in neutral colours and so was wearing a brown belted shirt and long black shorts, his feet encased in simple black sandals.

Sakura seemed to have gone with the idea that her and Shin were related because her usually bright pink hair was now longer and pulled into loose pigtails at the sides of her head in the same shade of black as her teammate and her green eyes were a lighter shade of grey than Shin's. She wore a white long-sleeve blouse covered by a black dress with a pleated hemline that fell just below her knees. She coupled that with long white socks and black sandals. Itachi saw Shin smirk at her and throw his arm over her shoulder.

"For the sake of the mission we should not use our real names, If you need to speak to me from now on you will address me as Ren-san. You will all have to come up with alias' as well." Itachi stated, scrutinizing each of the henge's carefully to make sure there was no obvious flaw in them. He watched Sakura and Shin confer between themselves before they decided on names.

Shin spoke for the two of them, "I will be know as Tsukimari Tetsu and Sakura will be Tsukimari Sora. We will be siblings, Sakura will be my imouto." Sakura nodded in confirmation but said nothing.

Haruki piped up when nobody else spoke for a moment. "Just call me Misato!" Now didn't that sound similar to a certain hokage's name?

~One Change: MISSION~

The Daimyo's son Kousuke was a quiet boy who did seem to feel the need to fill the silence with meaningless chatter. They had collected him a few hours ago now and had currently made camp in order to let him rest. Due the civilian boy's lack of chakra they had to travel by foot instead of the treetops, it would take significantly longer but was safer in the long run.

Though he wasn't paying the boy a tremendous amount of attention, Itachi had heard him mutter that he would have liked to have been born in Konoha so he could become a ninja. At this, his team had begun enthusiastically telling him all about their training and the many hardships that lined the road to becoming a true ninja.

Itachi continued to listen to the quiet conversation until he felt an unknown presence breach the genjutsu he had set up around the perimeter of their camp. immediately on guard Itachi activated his sharingan and scanned the area for the intruder, it turned out to be many more than he had originally anticipated.

Surrounding the the make-shift camp were 24 ninja of currently unknown affiliation. As soon as Itachi made the hand sign for tiger the rest of the occupants of the camp were tense and on edge, they knew that the sign meant that there were potentially threatening adversaries in the immediate vicinity.

Getting to their feet slowly Sakura and Haruki stood back to back staring out into the dense forest of Hi No Kuni that bordered them on either side. Haruki's byakugan was activated and Sakura had subconsciously slipped into a fighting stance. Shin nudged Kousuke into the tent they'd set up and Itachi could here the muffled conversation that was going on between the two.

"What's happening Tetsu-kun? Why is everybody so on edge?" Kousuke asked and Shin just shook his head before making a shushing motion with his pointer finger and closing the flap on the front of tent.

Seconds later the nin converged on them the majority heading for Itachi seeing as it was obvious he was the leader of and therefore the strongest in the team. He knew that Sakura was preparing to cast a genjutsu and pulled the two nin that met his eyes into his own genjutsu.

Seconds later when he glanced at the girl he saw her unleash her Magen: Shinkiro. It was a basic genjutsu that allowed the user to make their opponent believe that they'd simply disappeared from their position. Sakura was still standing in the exact same spot but none of her enemies could see her. As soon as she saw that her technique was a success she followed it up with a Suiton: Senshokuko. From the lake to the west of their location Itachi saw small shark shaped needles of water shoot up and pierce six of her enemies through the chest. They weren't dead but they were unconscious.

Haruki, not one to be outdone formed the hand seals for a familiar fire release technique and slammed his hands into the ground yelling "Katon: Ensakkai!" A large wall of fire rose up from the ground and swept over the whole battlefield, Shin was fast to make his own hand seals in order to stop the jutsu from effecting himself and Kousuke. "Doton: Shuheki", he muttered, causing a protective wall of earth to rise up in front of the tent.

Many of the opposing nin had either been taken out quickly or fled from the scene but a few brave ones remained. Itachi scanned the faces and spotted a Sunagakure Hitai-ate, sand nin then. Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of them draw a senbon from a pouch at their waste and before he could warn the genin, the man had thrown it and it'd struck Haruki's shoulder. With that done, the last three nin fled the area and Itachi shunshin'd over to Haruki to check the boy's condition.

The Hyuuga was sweating profusely and his eyes had rolled back into his head. The boy was likely under the influence of poison so it would unwise to try and move him. Thinking fast, Itachi drew a transportation scroll from his pack and wrote a quick message to the hokage requesting backup with at least one medical ninja. He then moved the genin deeper into the cave and stood guard, awaiting the arrival of help.

~One Change: MISSION~

It took 3 hours for the requested help to arrive and when Itachi sensed 3 presences enter the genjutsu he relaxed at the familiar chakra signatures. Within seconds Nohara Rin, Shiranui Genma and his cousin, Uchiha Shisui were standing right in front of him.

"Report", Shisui stated, requesting a run-down of the situation as per usual protocol for this kind of situation.

"The mission was going fine, we had collected the Daimyo's son and were on course to Tsukiyo-Mari. We had stopped and made camp when we were ambushed by approximately 24 Suna Shinobi, most of these were dispatched easily enough but one managed to hit Hyuuga Haruki with a senbon which I believe to have been poisoned. He has shown several side effects including sweating and seizing. That is all." Itachi replied, making sure not to leave out any of the details.

Rin had already entered the cave and was getting ready to administer an antidote to counteract the poison. Sakura was watching her with rapt attention and interest, Itachi also saw some concern for her fallen comrade in her eyes.

Rin spoke up after administering the antidote. "He should be alright now but he'll likely not wake up for several more hours. I suggest that one of you carry him so we can begin the journey back to Konoha as soon as possible."

Genma hefted the unconscious boy onto his back and they promptly packed up the camp and began their journey back to Konoha. It was mostly silent until Sakura turned to Rin and inquired in a quiet voice. "Do you think I'd ever be able to be a medic-nin?" Rin smiled at the girl and seemed to think about it for a minute. "With the correct training, yes. I've heard you have quite extraordinary chakra control which could give you quite the head start. Once we're back in the village, maybe I could train you?"

Sakura's smile widened as she nodded her head vigorously, "I'd like that, thank you!" she stated. Rin just smiled gently and turned back to facing the direction they were heading in.

The rest of the journey home was quiet and uneventful and they arrived back in Konoha having encountered no more trouble. Haruki was told he wouldn't be allowed to train for a few days but he would recover fully after that.

Well that was a longer chapter than usual! So we've met Shisui, Rin and Genma and these guys will be popping up quite a lot in this story.

Sakura will e beginning her medic training in the next chapter!

Hope you enjoyed reading this! Don't forget to leave a review to let me know what you though, things that could be improved, things you liked or questions pertaining to this fic!

Sei x