Naruto: Mission

Escorting Tazuna the self-proclaimed 'super bridge builder' back to wave was boring. Very boring, since they had to travel at civilian speeds. By noon on the first day Naruto was hoping for bandits, wolves, anything to alleviate the monotony. He'd resorted to teaching his team-mates sign language so they could insult their drunk client without getting into trouble.

The puddle in the middle of the road was the first suspicious circumstance in three whole days.

'Chakra in water;' Naruto signed to his fellow genin. 'Strategy?'

'Flower protect client' Sasuke signed back. 'Spiral and Fan confront.'

'Confirmed.'

'Confirmed.'

Sakura sped up slightly, engaging Tazuna in a conversation on various fish dishes. Naruto drifted until he was directly behind the bridge builder as Sasuke wandered a little to one side. None of the three bothered to alert Kakashi-sensei to what they were doing; he was a competent journin for all his apathy and could see what they were up to. Naruto was just grateful his sensei had stopped reading Icha Icha, for all he insisted on his newer books all having orange covers.

They stepped over the puddle without incident. Naruto felt the back of his neck prickle about fifteen seconds later.

'Incoming.'

He turned just in time to see Kakashi-sensei being shredded by a spiked chain being wielded by a pair of ninjas wearing rebreathers and water camouflage.

"One down," the duo intoned, advancing on Naruto.

The blond was pissed off already. His sensei -who wasn't dead dammit despite appearances- had left his team and the client at the mercy of a pair of probably-chunnin who smelt of water, blood and poisons. He drew the Wakizashi Ame-kaa-san had given him for the mission and took the nearest attacker's arm off at the shoulder in one smooth movement, following through with a slash that took off the dying man's head.

The surviving ninja's eyes widened behind his clear mask. "Brother!" he roared, charging at Naruto with the clawed gauntlet on his dominant arm . Naruto settled into his stance and fended off the enraged man, wishing as he did that he had leaned more proper offensive moves. Or failing that, a jutsu I could use the one-handed seals for. Naruto could do henge seallessly and kawarimi one-handed. Kage bunshin was two-handed by design, so that was out. I need more jutsu. I'll have to ask sensei. The other two know all those genjutsu so I'm behind in that respect.

Naruto was starting to worry there had been another ninja hiding in the bushes that had taken out his team-mates when a stream of fire whizzed over his head and char-grilled his opponent.

"Teme!" Naruto shouted, frantically patting his singed hair. "What's wrong with kunai? You nearly set my head on fire!"

Sasuke shrugged unrepentantly as Kakashi-sensei materialised from the tree-line and took charge of the badly burned ninja. Naruto stomped back over to the mutilated body of the chunnin he'd killed and started stripping it. Waste not. Especially not when it's ninja supplies.

"What are you doing, dobe?"

"Restocking. Mind the claw; it's poisoned," Naruto said absently, going through the corpse's pockets and finding vials of the same poison that was on the claws and something that was probably antidote, a load of shuriken and kunai and a very nice lock picking kit. "Oi, Sakura-chan! Do you want the gauntlet?"

The girl blinked palely, staring in horror at the dismembered body he was robbing. "Nani?"

Naruto held out the clawed glove to his female team-mate. "It's got poison on the blades but it would fit nicely into your taijutsu style. Especially if we liberated the other one from moron number two; you could have a matched set."

"That's... thoughtful of you, Naruto," Sakura managed, "I.. they look interesting. I'd like to try them out."

"Good. No need to waste good quality equipment. What do you think of the chain, Sasuke?"

"Flashy."

"True, but that doesn't mean we should dump it." Naruto pulled out a pair of compact sealing scrolls. "The stripped corpse went into one, the liberated ninja gear and clothing into the other. "Hey, sensei! Does your one have anything worth salvaging?"

Kakashi looked up from the blackened body he was examining. "The gauntlet, a dozen kunai and a few shuriken plus his trousers and boots. Everything else has been burnt away."

"See, teme! I told you fireballs were wasteful!"

"Shut up dobe."

Kakashi got to his feet again. "He's dead; the second and third degree burns sent him into shock and his lungs where too badly burnt to take the strain. Tazuna-san, would you like to explain why you have the Demon Brothers after you? As this is supposed to be a C-class mission we should only be defending you from wild animals and bandits, not chunnin level ninja."

Naruto carefully stripped the charred corpse of anything remotely usable while Kakashi-sensei pressured the drunk into spilling the beans, listening to the conversation with half an ear. Apparently some big shot businessman didn't want Tazuna's bridge to be finished and had hired some nukenin to make it so. The blond didn't really care; this was his first real mission and he wasn't going to fail. Anyway if it really was more than we could handle kaa-san would have warned us.

His self-appointed task complete Naruto ambled over to the rest of the party, handing Sakura the two carefully cleaned gauntlets. Shadow clones are so useful. "How much are these two worth, sensei?"

"Well, they were chunnin but I'm not sure of the exact figure."

"Since Sasuke and I killed them can we take the bodies back to Konoha and get the money?"

The journin shrugged. "If you've got enough scrolls, why not?"

"Yatta! You'll be able to buy that ninja-to you liked after all, teme!"

"Hn." Sasuke did not look well. Skin should not be clammy greenish grey.

"Sasuke?" Naruto asked more quietly. The black haired genin was staring at the blackened corpse cooling slowly on the grass. "First kill?"

The Uchiha's eyes drifted back to his feet. "Hn."

"First time sucks," Naruto said gently as Tazuna pleaded with Kakashi-sensei. "The horror, the internal conflict, the feeling of dirtiness under the skin where you can't wash it off... It's okay to throw up. It's normal. Don't bottle up the feeling. Let it out and get rid of it properly."

"Hn." Sasuke bolted into the trees.

"I'm on it Sensei!" Naruto called out as he jogged after his team-mate.

"I didn't know fire could do that to people," Sasuke muttered hoarsely when Naruto found him on his hands and knees over a puddle of vomit. "The smell..."

"I don't feel like I could ever eat barbeque again right now either Sasuke," Naruto commiserated, offering the younger boy a water bottle. "It's okay to cry if you want; I certainly did."

"Last month?" Well, isn't he perceptive.

"That was my second kill. It was almost worse than the first one, though," Naruto whispered sadly, the image of the broken brothel girls floating through his mind.

"How old were you for your first?"

Naruto sighed. "Ten. Some civilian asshole tried to rape a girl I knew. I slashed his carotid open with her tessen. Blood everywhere. Clothes, hair, eyes, mouth... I had nightmares for weeks afterwards about all that red."

Sasuke nodded, a few tears slipping down his cheeks as he shivered silently.

"I'll tell you what sensei told me: being a ninja involves killing. It cannot be avoided. The pain and horror will fade in time but the day you stop hating the necessity is the day you stop being human and they day you enjoy it is the day you become a monster. There are ninja like that out there." Naruto paused, tactfully looking away from his team-mate and ignoring the shuddering gasps and sniffling sounds. "I promised myself that I would do my best to kill quickly and cleanly. Killing is wrong but as ninja it is required of us. I refuse to force my opponents to suffer unnecessarily. That's part of why I like kenjutsu so much."

"I don't think I'll be able to stomach using katon jutsu for a while," Sasuke admitted roughly, unusually subdued. The other boy seemed to have found Naruto's talk comforting. Go figure; I am a competent counsellor after all. The hokage needs more ninja therapists. Something for those injured in the line of duty to retrain in perhaps?

"We can ask Sensei to teach us some new techniques; I'm still stuck on the academy two plus shadow clones since I can't do genjutsu. Sure I know the signs but I can't use them any more than I can do normal bunshin. What's the point in learning half a dozen jutsu I can't even do? "

"Dobe."

"Ah, so you are better. Good. Shall we go back?"

Sasuke stood, wobbled a bit and carefully braced his fingertips against Naruto's shoulder to steady himself. "Hn."

Back at the road Naruto gave the bridge builder the evil eye, Sasuke still loitering behind him. Who died and made me den mother? I just had to get the sensei without a maternal bone in his body and the team-mate most in need of hugs. I'd hug him if I didn't know it would disturb him more than killing already has. Bloody gender stereotyping. Men need hugs too!

Just not like Maito-san does it. That isn't emotional support, it's a psychological attack!

"Naruto?" Kakashi-sensei asked.

"First kill," Naruto replied succinctly, still glaring at Tazuna. "I am not happy that this moron's lies have messed up my team-mate," he added, baring elongating fangs at the cowering client and letting the bijuu chakra swirling in his throat flare in his eyes. With the addition of the Yin chakra anything kyuubi-related was now sunflower orange rather than blood red, so his irises changed to amber as his pupils constricted to vertical slits.

It certainly had the desired effect on the bridge builder. Naruto could smell the fear spike.

"Maa, calm down Naruto-kun," Kakashi-sensei said lazily, though Naruto could sense the journin was ready to jump into action should he lose control. "The question is, do you want to continue the mission or shall we return to the village?"

Naruto turned to look at the Uchiha, clamping down on his tenant's chakra. This was not an emergency. "Teme? Your call. He screwed you over the worst."

Sasuke pinned the bridge builder with the infamous Uchiha Stare, face still pale and slightly green. "We go on. I don't want my first kill to be on a mission we couldn't be bothered to finish. I want it to mean something."

That was more words in one sentence than the Uchiha usually spoke in an entire day.

"Onwards then," Naruto agreed. "Sakura?"

The pink haired girl looked nervous but determined. "Hai. I won't try to use the gauntlets until after I've had a chance to practice with them, though."

"Onwards it is then," Kakashi-sensei agreed amiably. "Lead on, Tazuna-san."

They were on the road for another three days, three days of zealous training and mounting paranoia. Kakashi helped Sakura with a new genjutsu, taught Naruto a doton technique that destabilised the ground under his opponent's feet and Sasuke a raiton jutsu copied off a Kumo chunnin that could be used to electrically charge kunai and shuriken. It could also be used to electrocute on contact depending on the amount of chakra added to the jutsu. Sasuke trained obsessively both with the jutsu and the basic Mantis taijutsu Naruto had started teaching him. The two combined extremely well.

On the fourth day after the fight with the Demon Brothers they reached the coast, where Tazuna led them to an unkempt guy with a boat who agreed to ferry them over to Nami no kuni. The air was still and misty as the ferryman quietly paddled them across the water and under a huge, looming structure.

"Hey, it's huge," Naruto muttered.

"It's my bridge," Tazuna replied quietly. "I really hope I can finish it. The people of Wave are counting on me."

"We won't fail this mission," Sasuke said flatly, ending the conversation. Naruto eyed the other boy worriedly.

He doesn't look too good. Then again, first kill; I'd be more concerned if he acted like nothing had happened.

The ferryman left them on the far shore, saying he couldn't risk being discovered by Gatou. Tazuna thanked the man for his help and led the four ninja away through the trees towards his home.

Not long into the last leg of their journey Naruto got a twitchy feeling. He had trained himself in chakra sensing for long enough that he could tell when he was being watched by someone hiding their chakra. He flung a kunai into the bush the feeling was coming from.

"Dammit! I missed!" he grumbled as Sakura revealed the bleeding rabbit his kunai had grazed. Kawarimi is such a pain when the other guy is using it.

"Everybody down!" Kakashi-sensei shouted. The three genin hit the dirt: Sasuke dragging the bridge builder down with him, Sakura still clutching the bleeding rabbit and Naruto squashed underneath their sensei. A whiz of metal overhead told Naruto exactly how close he'd come to being decapitated.

A large, bare chested ninja with bandages covering the lower half of his face, no eyebrows and a Mist hitai-ite landed on the handle of the huge sword now embedded in a nearby tree.

"Well, well, well. Sharingan no Kakashi, what an honour to meet such a famous ninja in the bingo book. I don't suppose I can convince you to hand over the bridge builder?"

"Momochi Zabuza, the Demon in the Mist. No can do, I'm afraid," Kakashi replied coolly, pushing Naruto behind him. The short blond did not resist, narrowing his eyes at the huge sword the eyebrowless ninja was balanced on. There was something about the hilt end of the blade...

"Hey, he's got kaa-san's mon on his sword!"

The nukenin's eyes moved to stare at Naruto. "Kaa-san?"

"Yep!" Naruto turned around so the swordsman could see his back and pointed a thumb at the design spread across the shoulders of his kimono. "See?"

Momochi Zabuza, infamous missing-nin, paled visibly. "Yogensha-sama is your mother?"

"She sort-of adopted me," Naruto explained, sensing weakness, "and she's engaged to marry Sensei."

The Demon in the Mist looked at Kakashi-sensei again. "Oh, so you're that guy! Forget the bridge builder; I'm going to pound you bloody for disrespecting Yogensha-sama and getting her pregnant!"

Naruto escaped the immediate area of the imminent fight and ran over to where his other team-mates had hustled Tazuna as Zabuza charged Kakashi-sensei, who dodged madly, pushing up his headband to reveal a triple-tomoed red eye.

"Sharingan?" Sasuke murmered, then asked "Amemai-san knows this person?" as the nukenin used the Kirigakure no jutsu, shrouding the battlefield and surrounding area with a thick blanket of fog.

"Hai. I think she knows a lot of nukenin, which is most of why I have to wear her mon."

"So he knows not to kill you," Sasuke deduced.

"Hai. I doubt it will carry over to you and Sakura though."

"Eight points to strike for a kill. Larynx, spine, lungs, liver jugular, collarbone and heart," Zabuza's voice reverberated through the mist, heavy with killing intent. "Choices, choices; Where do I strike first?"

Naruto noticed his team-mates faltering under the weight of the nukenin's Killing Intent and chanelled a burst of Kyuubi-enhanced KI back towards where his -admittedly muffled- chakra sense told him the ninja was currently standing.

"Don't worry; I won't let my comrades die," Kakashi-sensei said from a little to their right.

"Promises, promises, copy-nin," growled Zabuza's voice directly above Naruto's left ear. "Nice sword, kid," he added softly, "fancy a lesson in silent killing later?"

Naruto grinned. "Please?" he begged hopefully as Kakashi-sensei knocked the former mist-nin away from Tazuna.

Three mizu bunshin later Zabuza had the other journin trapped in a water prison while yet another mizu bunshin blocked the genin from interfering.

"Hey, Blondie!" the mizu bunshin said. "How's Yogensha-sama doing?"

"My name isn't Blondie, it's Uzumaki Naruto! Kaa-san's doing very well. She told me Sensei was her soul mate, so please don't kill him. I think she'd be angry if that happened."

The nukenin and his clone both shivered. "I'm just waiting for him to pass out," The original promised. "No lasting harm."

"That's okay then!" Naruto said brightly, ignoring the fact that Kakashi-sensei was mouthing 'traitor' at him. "She's seven months pregnant now and I think she's starting to find it a bit uncomfortable. Mood swings, I think." He paused. "I think she misses her family, too. None of the people she talks about have come to visit since she moved to Konoha. I kinda understand the nukenin not dropping by, but it's not fair on her that the others aren't making the effort."

"I'll see what I can do, kid," Zabuza mused. "Wait a moment... Uzumaki? A real Uzumaki?"

"Believe it!" Naruto said proudly.

"We are so going to spar later, kid."

"Sure thing, No Brows."

The Demon in the Mist twitched. "What did you just call me?"

Naruto shrugged as if he hadn't noticed how much the nukenin despised his impromptu nickname. "You have no eyebrows, so I called you No Brows. You got a problem with that?" Kakashi-sensei's chakrs was starting to fluctuate a little erratically and it bothered him. A journin shouldn't be tiring this quickly. Is it something to do with that sharingan eye?

The bunshin brandished its sword menacingly. "We're sparring now, brat!" it cried as it lunged at him. Naruto ducked and weaved, not bothering to draw his own blade as Ame-kaa-san's advice ran through his head:

'Do not draw your blade against a master swordsman unless you too have attained mastery.'

Dodging the man-sized blade nimbly, the blonde fell into a Mantis stance with a kunai grasped in each hand. The mizu bunshin swung at him again and he ducked, dashing forward to stab the clone in the stomach. The clone promptly dissolved into water, splashing all over him.

"I sparred; now give Sensei back," Naruto growled, his blood singing in his ears from the short fast fight. Kakashi-sensei's chakra was faded and worryingly wobbly, which the bijuu in his gut did not like at all. He will not harm kaa-san's mate.

Zabuza chuckled. "Sure thing kid. See you around." The nukenin shunshined away in a swirl of mist, allowing the water prison to collapse, freeing the copy-nin. Kakashi-sensei fell to his hands and knees on the water's surface and coughed up more water, pulling his hitai-ite down over his swirling red-and-black eye.

"Well, that was interesting," The silver haired journin muttered, swaying on his feet as he made it back to solid ground. "At least he didn't try to kill Tazuna on his way out."

"I think he didn't want to risk me getting in the way, Sensei," Naruto suggested.

"More likely he wants an excuse to come back and have another go at me later," Kakashi-sensei grumbled, then keeled over. "Damn."

"What's wrong, Sensei?" Sakura asked, worried.

"Chakra exhaustion; you'll have to carry me. Sorry," Kakashi-sensei muttered. "Using the sharingan took a lot out of me."

""Then you should either train harder with it or get used to fighting other journin without it," Naruto murmured softly as he wrapped his arms under the journin's armpits and Sasuke gripped the man's knees. "Having a genin team is no excuse for getting out of shape."

The look his sensei gave him was somewhere between exasperation and rueful agreement.

"Since he is bound to come back sooner or later," the copy-nin said evenly, "I think it's time I started working on your chakra control.

Naruto grinned. Finally!

A/N: Working out an alternative for the bridge arc that was in line with the changes I'd already set up was a little difficult, and will involve a significant deviation from canon in the details if not the overall plot. I inserted Sasuke's first kill because I felt that it was important to his personal development. In canon he clearly has no clue what a fire-ball does to flesh up close or he wouldn't use it so haphazardly.

On a brighter note, I'm thinking of adding a new story containing bits and pieces of not-really-outtakes that may or may not be in line with future plot. Team seven plus Yamato's first encounter with Sai, for instance. I have that pretty much planned out already. Poor Sai. Poor, poor Yamato, getting such a disfunctional team.

Finally, many thanks to marc() for the encoraging reviews!