"Unbefreakinglievable." Tetsuo said as he settled down near the fire in the cave that served as the hideout for Momochi Zabuza's little gang, setting the pack he'd carried back from Saida down at his side.
He'd been running all day, and while he could keep it up for another day or so without too much hardship under normal circumstances, it wasn't fun, and these weren't quite normal circumstances. He'd been forced to recover from being drugged on his feet, and then forced to deal with the situation back in Saida. As a result, he felt almost completely drained, which wasn't good considering the coming mission.
As he sat down, Meizu, who was a bit bloodthirsty but, otherwise not that bad of a person, settled down next to his twin brother Gozu who made up the other half of the moderately famous Demon Brothers. It was clear that he was rather drained from their ordeal as well. The man had gone through a battle, and then ran half the night, before being forced to turn around run all day and before being stuck dealing with the Saida townsfolk. Unlike him, the poor bastard was just a Chunin, and it showed.
"So?" Zabuza asked expectantly.
"That damn merchant stiffed us and riled the town against us." Meizu said angrily. "I'd've killed him, but the bleeding heart Leaf nin stopped me."
He caught the expression on Zabuza's face, and knew it would mean trouble if he didn't deal with it quickly. Konoha's methods of dealing with such situations were generally seen as far too lenient but, they were usually effective, especially when the "big bad ninja" didn't go after the dissidents right away, and let the situation blow over as the average slobs stopped seeing the point in trying to fight against someone who didn't even bother to give them the time of day, and realized that the bastards who'd been stirring them up were just rabble-rousing, and that there was no real threat from Konoha. Usually, long before the unrest reached dangerous levels, the leaders of the crowds tended to be discredited in the eyes of their followers, who then abandoned their cause as there apparently wasn't one. Then, when people started forgetting about their former and now disgraced leaders, Konoha dealt with the bastards who had tried to turn their customer base against them.
It wouldn't do to overly frighten, alienate, or kill off the customer base, otherwise there would be nobody to pay for missions, and Konoha would go broke. If Konoha went broke, they'd all starve.
"As if we'd be so merciful as to kill him now while he's still got everything, especially so soon after he riled up our customers who'll become unsettled if the fat bastard dies or disappears too soon." he replied with a slight scoff. "I'm sure the nice townsfolk of Saida are having fun burying the corpses you guys left behind right now, and in a few days, when that fat slob pisses one too many of them off, they'll remember us, and start eagerly waiting for us to deal with him considering the fact that they'd watched him stiff us after we'd returned his kids safe and sound. Then, when they've all turned against that lardass, we'll start taking it out of his hide nice and slow."
"That sounds like fun but, I'm still out my share of the rescue money." Zabuza replied.
"We'll find a way to compensate you." he replied. "Konoha has some sort of discretionary fund for these sorts of things, and I could send a message back to indicate that we need some money from it."
"Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to hand my comrades some of our supplies that I got from the inn." he said as he handed the pack he'd retrieved from the Saida inn to Naruto.
"What about my bag?" Sasuke asked.
"Had to leave it behind to prove to the guys at the inn that we intended to return in a few days as promised." he said as Naruto dug through his bag and pulled out a storage scroll and frowned when he didn't recognize it. "I made sure to pull out anything you might miss beforehand though in case the idiots get any bright ideas."
Naruto chucked the strange scroll at Kakashi who opened it, and tossed it to Sasuke, as Naruto tossed another scroll he didn't recognize at him and the scroll that contained the medical supplies at Sakura who, fortunately, hadn't had them on her when she was captured. The reason he had gotten Naruto's pack rather than Kakashi's or his own was because it made the best sense to do so. Currently, there were only two seals that Naruto was an expert at making, and that was because the boy practiced with them so often and in such unorthodox ways. The boy was capable of making high quality explosive tags, and could do things with Storage seals that other people swore were impossible. As a result of Naruto's skill with storage seals, his bag was practically a work of art. Aside from the supplies he kept stashed inside the bag, there was a set of spare supplies in the bag itself.
"Looks like everything's here except my apartment." Naruto said after he'd finished examining the supplies that had been packed.
"Yeah, I kinda had to leave your furniture behind because I couldn't see how it would be useful for the job." he replied.
Replacing the lost furniture should the innkeepers back in Saida do something stupid would be a rather expensive undertaking for the boy but, he would find a way to make it up to him somehow if the bastards at the inn destroyed his stuff because that fat merchant who could afford to buy Naruto enough furniture to fill a hundred apartments had rather stupidly decided to save a few hundred thousand ryo by stiffing a team of ninja. If Naruto's belongings became damaged, they'd be yet another thing that Konoha would be taking out of that lardass' hide.
"You'd better get ready, because we're going to leave in an hour." Kakashi said as he leaned back to rest again.
"Crap." he said as he pulled his sandals off in order to rub his sore feet.
"Well, the sooner we get going, the sooner we get this done." Kakashi said as he pulled a dark bandanna over his unruly and easily recognizable silver locks. "I'll fill you in on what you're supposed to be doing."
Sakura swallowed nervously as she took in the small compound that her team was going to be raiding alongside a group of missing-nin. Since this was an unofficial mission, and Konoha couldn't be implicated if something went wrong, all of them had been forced to leave their headbands and dogtags back in the cave. If she died here, there was a chance that nobody would ever know what had happened to her.
This was going to be her first bit of combat experience, and she'd been ordered to hang back alongside the missing-nin's Medic with the medical supplies so they didn't get caught up in the thick of things and potentially get themselves killed in the crossfire. She didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed that she was being kept out of the action. On the one hand it showed that Tetsuo-sensei didn't think her capable of handling this mission, and still saw her as a liability. But, on the other hand, it meant that she wouldn't have to kill anybody just yet.
She wondered how she would react if she actually killed someone. Sasuke had looked so...so wrong when he had come back from interrogating their prisoner whose screams had echoed throughout the cave for so long before Kakashi put up some sort of Genjutsu that had made her unable to hear them. There was also something that had gone missing from Naruto since he had graduated from the Academy, and she was reasonably sure she knew why.
What would killing someone take from her if she did it like the other two and just about every other Ninja from Konoha for that matter had done?
After what seemed like an eternity, the signal that the medics were needed came. She and Haku raced into the compound which may or may not have been cleared yet. Based on the urgency of the signal given, someone was badly injured. She hoped and prayed that it wasn't a member of her team as she ran, feeling sick as she took in the sight of the dead bodies that had been strewn in her path as she trailed after Haku who was much faster than she was.
When she reached the group, it was to find Renji cradling his wife Mai who was so badly injured that she didn't even know where to begin while Naruto did everything he could to stop the bleeding. Haku apparently knew what to do however, because he started calling for supplies. Soon, things settled into a pattern where Haku asked for some medical supply whose name she only knew from the inventory book that had come with the med-kit, and she handed it to him.
As Haku worked furiously to save his patient, everyone in the group, which included a boy she didn't recognize, nervously waited to see whether or not Mai would survive. Renji, who hadn't stopped pacing, was the most anxious of the lot. When Haku had started treating Mai, the man had sworn that if she died, he would follow. She had little doubt that the man would carry through on his promise.
Despite the fact that the two seemed to be polar opposites personalitywise, it had been obvious from the first moment she had seen them that they were both very much in love with each-other. The two of them were passionate about each-other in a way that reminded her of the stories in the books she had a habit of sneaking out of her mother's closet, and if the two of them had been characters in such a novel, it would quite likely have been a love story for the ages.
Eventually, after hours of work, Haku had set Mai's broken leg with Naruto's assistance, and either closed or bandaged all of her open wounds. Though it wasn't advisable considering Mai's injuries, the team very carefully got her ready to move because they couldn't hang around here any longer, because someone was eventually going to drop by and investigate. It was uncertain whether or not Mai would survive, but her chances of survival were far better than they would have been had Haku not had the assistance and supplies her team had provided.
The trip back to the cave that had served as the missing-nin's base was far slower and more careful than the trip out had been, and as a result she hadn't had to be carried. Instead, she followed along with the litter, doing her best to keep an eye on Mai's condition, all the while praying that she survived.
This hadn't been the sort of introduction to the practical aspects of being team Medic that she had wanted, but it was the one she got, and she would have to deal with it.
Zabuza watched anxiously as Mai was gently lowered to the cave floor near the fire. He'd lost enough members of his group already, and if Mai went, so too would Renji. Renji and Mai had been in love since they were children, and neither knew how to live without the other.
Either way, as things stood, he was going to lose Renji and Mai. Whether or not it would be temporarily or permanently depended on Mai's survival. Should Mai live, the group would be separating until Mai recovered enough to be able to join them without slowing them down too much. Renji would naturally be staying by her side until that day came.
All things considered, the mission had gone better than it would have done had the Leaf ninjas not been there. While they could have handled it on their own, there would almost certainly have been at least one fatality amongst the group. One of the fatalities would have almost certainly been Mai who had only survived to this point because Sharingan Kakashi himself had gotten between Mai and the opponent who was killing her.
It had been Mai's bad luck and eagerness for battle that had caused her to be stuck facing the only Jounin level ninja in the compound alone. The leader of the criminal organization may have been retired from active duty as a ninja, but that hadn't stopped him from being a ninja. The man, who'd had a back way out of the base, had kept his skills sharp over the years, and had still been in excellent shape.
It should have been him who had gone up against him, but it hadn't been, and because it hadn't been, Mai and Renji could still die.
Edited 10-6-12