Chapter 38. D ranks are no match for us.

After the madness of our teams forming, I found out that Naruto and Sasuke's Teammates failed. Having abandoned their teammate to an unknown faith, they were deemed unfit to become Genin and sent back to the academy. They weren't alone, as all but nine of us got sent back to the academy. The rookie nine were born.

Unsurprisingly we were immediately placed on D rank missions. D ranks served two purposes; encourage cooperation between teammates and build trust among the villagers. The civilians might be the outsiders in this village governed by shinobi, but we made an effort to co-exist. We placed them in places of power like the council and even gave them discounts on mission fees. In return, they give us missions that are meant to discipline us.

I glared at the field of tall grass. The mission stated they wanted the all 5 acre cut. With a lawnmower, this would be no problem, but of course, we didn't have that. Shurikens were no help since we would have to be pretty low to get a short, even cut. As I thought of this, Kakashi gave us machetes and told us to get to work.

As Naruto swung his around like a sword, I had a dangerously brilliant idea.

"How is it we've never had a kenjutsu spar?" I asked them. Kakashi, who had sat against a tree with his Icha Icha book, looked up in alarm.

"Really, we haven't?" Naruto asked, tilting his head to the side.

"You always train at the Hyuga compound, and they don't use swords," Sasuke clarified. I didn't train there that often, did I? They had a space for training, so I took advantage of it. There was also the thing with Naruto and Hinata…

"Why did you bring this up?" Sasuke asked, jolting me from my thoughts.

I gestured to the grass field. "We can train here and cut grass at the same time," I said. "With each swing were bound to cut some grass."

"I'm in!" Naruto exclaimed.

Sasuke huffed. "Unlike you two, I've actually learned kenjutsu," he said proudly. Of course, Itachi taught him the art of the sword, I wasn't even surprised.

"I won't lose to you, Sasuke!" Naruto declared. Sasuke gave a confident smirk.

"The moment you challenged me, you already lost."

"We'll see."

The two stood face to face, determination blazing in their eyes.

Kakashi stood up once he saw we were serious.

"Wait, that's not what this mission is about," he started.

A blade stabbed the ground between them, forcing them apart. With a tug of the wire, I reclaimed my machete. "You're not ignoring me now, are you?" I made a downward arc with the blade before making eye contact with them and smirked. "I won't be out done."

"Wait!" Kakashi tried again.

"Start!" I yelled, cutting him off as I leap into the grassy plains. I held the machete like a fencing sword and frown. Fencing was the only swordplay I knew from my previous life. I had mastered the Sojutsu, the art of the spear, but I stayed away from kenjutsu because of him. He had a talent for sword fighting but couldn't handle the spear, so I had taken it upon myself to. The hatred in his eyes was vivid to me.

And just as quickly as it came, it faded. Like a thought, it vanished as though forgotten. Before I could think more on, this my machete deflected Sasuke's more on reflex than intention. I shook my head, releasing my desperate hold on the misty memory, and focused on the fight in front of me. And behind.

I pushed Sasuke back to block Naruto's wild swing from behind. The blond gasped, not expecting the movement.

"Since when was this a 2v1?" I asked as I did a full moon slash, cutting a circling in the grass.

Naruto and Sasuke looked at each other before nodding and charging at me. I leaped into the air when they tried to attack me from opposite sides. In mid air I aimed my machete and let gravity take hold. I fell down like an arrow forcing them to retreat.

A machete was for cutting, not stabbing. Naruto had the right idea when he waved the blade around like a mad bushman. Sasuke was moving like an Asian martial artist with a curved sword. His movement was graceful, and I couldn't help but compare him to blade dancers.

This field was going to be a field with crop circles once we left. And I was right. Uneven grasses and odd shapes, an alien race won't take credit for this madness. It looked like the battlefield it was.

Kakashi's brows twitched as he looked at our handy work. "The client won't like this," he said. I looked up at him from my spot on the ground. I was exhausted, machetes were heavy, and I may have a sprained wrist. The powerhouses weren't much better as they cloud watched.

"No worries," I sat up. "I came up with a solution a while ago." He looked down at me, puzzled, before I bit my thumb. "Summoning Jutsu." There was a poof of smoke and then a scattering of pink. Kakashi instinctively leaped away, eyeing me with suspicion like a cat did water. I gave a mental command, and they obeyed by flying towards the field and cutting through the grass.

"Couldn't you have down that before?" Naruto yelled, upset that he was working when he didn't need to.

"Wasn't it fun though, Naruto?" I said sweetly. "Besides, that was training, and I didn't have time to think." Naruto excepted it with a cross of his hands and a turning of his cheek. I couldn't help but giggle, he was adorable. The springflys came back to me after shredding the field like a lawnmower. I smiled smugly at the plains. We couldn't pull off something so perfect.

"I'll give it to you this time," Kakashi sighed and cheered.

Our next challenge was cleaning the river. We were expected to stab the moving trash in the water and pick it out before it went over the waterfall. It was as stupid as it sounded. Instead of doing something like that, I decided on training.

Kakashi made the mistake of leaving us alone, and I waved a fishing net and set it in the water. It immediately began to catch the trash like fish. Instead of doing something stupid, we did water combat. Though we already knew how to walk on water fighting on it's moving surface was a bit difficult.

Splash!

For Naruto. The blond emerged from the water and crawled onto its surface before shaking the water from his hair. "It so hard, ya know!" he declared. I walked over to him, spinning the kunai to show him just how difficult it was. I had near perfect chakra control, so walking atop water was nothing to me.

I was a water nature user, so mom trained me in the art of water combat. Jutsus that require a lot of chakra was naturally beyond me right now, but it wouldn't be for too much longer.

"Come on, Naruto," I said with my hands on my hips. "Are you even trying?" I knew he could do it because he did it before with a handicap of unstable chakra.

Hmph, Sasuke turned his nose up at Naruto's actions. "You can't ask a moron to use so much brain capacity," he snorted.

"What'd you say!" outraged Naruto charged towards Sasuke, who showed his skill atop the water by kicking the blond back. Naruto went under in a cannonball; I frowned.

"Was that necessary?" I asked; he was doing something unnecessary again.

Sasuke shrugged, looking smug. "How else is he supposed to learn?"

Just then, Naruto grabbed Sasuke's ankles and dragged him under. Splash! I sighed as the two struggled underwater. I wasn't sure why, but Naruto was deadly underwater. He was strong, giving him an unfair advantage. Like an octopus, he would hold unto his prey and drag them to the depts. To make matters worse, he would drown his clone along with his prey while the real one escaped.

I held my throat at the memory getting pulled under after his puffed clone was replaced with a fresh one. He could do it endlessly, with the only side effect being the memory of drowning. At least with him doing it, he learned that his clones retained memory, and he no longer feared drowning.

The river heated, and I leaped out of the way of a fireball. Sasuke burst through the surface and began to cough. Like me, he had his fair share of downing. Using fireball was a great way of killing the clones, but.

"You bastard, were you trying to kill me!?" Naruto surfaced and immediately attacked Sasuke. Sasuke rolled over and kicked Naruto in the stomach, launching him back.

"That's what I want to know, you idiot," Sasuke retort. "Were you trying to drown me?"

"You could have substitute away," Naruto groaned as he held his stomach. There was a moment of silence where we realized something obvious. Sasuke's ear burned red as he lost his composure; he hadn't thought of it. Angry and embarrassed, Sasuke straddled Naruto and pushed the blond's head underwater.

That was what Kakashi returned to, Sasuke trying to kill Naruto to hide his own incompetence.

"I left for a few minutes, and you're already trying to kill each other," Kakashi said, walking out onto the water.

"It's fun, wanna try."

"No thanks," he rejected my offer. He looked down at the net and sighed. "This was supposed to be a challenge, you know."

"Why would I make things easy for you?" I said as I ran over to Sasuke; Naruto's struggled were becoming sluggish.

His brow twitched, and I took that was a victory, Sakura 2, Kakashi 0.

The next day, Kakashi was out for blood. As soon as I heard it was from the daimyo's wife, I knew. Sasuke and Naruto seemed skeptical when they heard it, but it was the highest class of the D ranks. The Hokage and Kakashi smirked at us. This mission was the right of passage for genin; unfortunately for him, I had already taken precautions.

As soon as we got the mission scroll, I bit my thumb and performed a summoning. In a poof of smoke, a brown cat with a red bow was sitting before me in the middle of bathing herself. She looked up and around, confused. I picked her up and handed her to the Hokage. Dumbly, he took the cat, and the room was silent for a whole ten seconds before the cat realized what was happening and freak out. The Hokage's face was the first victim, and then the hands of the poor chunin that tried to pull the cat away. The bodies piled up as the cat ran wild before falling into the hand of a chubby lady. The cat's soul died as the woman hugged her.

"My baby!" the woman cried and began to squeeze the cat. She had on expensive clothing and a ring on every finger. With heavy makeup and her brown hair in a traditional bun, it was hard to tell that she was the Daimyo's wife.

The Hokage looked in pain, and Kakashi's hand was zipping faint electricity. I suppose this was why they only give D ranks to genin; it wouldn't be a challenge for experienced shinobi.

Kakashi looked defeated as we left the Hokage tower with our paycheck and the rest of the day off.

"Hahaha!" Naruto hadn't stopped laughing since they left. "Did you see Jiji's face? That cat was vicious. Serves him right; I bet we would look like that I'd we went on that mission. High class, my ass!"

"How did you even know to do that, Sakura?" Sasuke asked, and Kakashi turned to me, curious.

"I knew it from my past life." I would never say that, of course. "Cats have a loose tongue when they get drunk on catnip," I said instead. Kakashi fell to his knees dramatically.

"My cute genin is a monster," Kakashi muttered with a face of a mad man. Sakura 3- Kakashi 0.

K.O.

"What's the matter, Kakashi? You look like the world is crumbling around you." Asuma Sarutobi said as he walked towards us with his squad. I made eye contact with Shikamaru and stealthily hid behind Naruto.

"My genin's aren't playing fair," Kakashi complained. "Switch with me!"

"After all the trouble you went through to get them?" Asuma backed away. "No thanks. Give them to partner jonin if you don't want them." Partner jonin? Did he mean Yamato and Itachi?

"That's actually a great idea," Kakashi considered it. Sasuke, Naruto, and my boot connected with his head kicking him into the ground.

"Tsk, don't talk about me as if I'm an object you can give away," Sasuke said with venom. Naruto and I nodded in agreement.

"Sorry about that one, Kakashi," Asuma apologized to the silver-haired traitor.

"Heh, even your sensei doesn't want you," her snarky voice reached my ear. "I expect nothing less from you, billboard forehead." Ino stood confidently next to Shikamaru with a smug smile. I couldn't feel her standing so close to that void.

I brushed my pink hair over my shoulder, where it reached past my waist. "This old man is just having a hard time handling my share brilliance," I stated.

"Brilliance, you say," she smirked, "Sure, is that why he looks to be in despair."

"Naturally, team seven is above average, and he's having a hard time excepting that."

"Sasuke is the only thing great about your team."

"Whacha say!?" Naruto yelled, outraged.

"Green was never a good color on you, Ino," I said, stepping forward. "But envy is your only characteristic."

"My, Sakura," she said, meeting me halfway. "Is that forehead of yours perhaps for your horns? Anger seems to be your default reaction. Is it the red you keep wearing?"

"Oh my, you're brave today; could it be you're in a good mood?"

"I guess you're not so stupid that you wouldn't notice; we're on our way to a C rank mission. I guess you wouldn't know anything about that."

"You must be happy not having to chase a cat around," my smirk grew when she flinched. "I just finished that mission, you see. All I had to do is draw a little blood, wave a few hand seals, and poof, the cat appeared."

Choji dropped his chips bag, his voice trembling. "Y-you formed a contract with it."

"That's right~."

"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered.

Ino lost it. She grabbed for my hair, but I clasped her hands. "How dare you have it easy!"

"Oh my, could it be my red dress trigged you?" I taunted. "I wasn't aware pigs went mad at the sight of red."

"I went through that mission thinking you would be feeling the same pain as me, damn it!"

I laughed in her face as she tried to wrestle with me.

"Scary," I heard Naruto mutter as Ino roared in rage.

"You're already taking them on a C rank mission?" Kakashi asked Asuma.

"Yeah, they might not be monsters like your team, but I can't waste them on D rank missions," Asuma replied, lighting a cigarette. "It's nothing major, just an escort mission. they should be able to handle it."

"Where to?"

"The land of waves."

Here we go. The wave arc is about to begin. I am the most excited for this arc, so the chapters will get longer, and update wait time may get shorter if you'd like. Though it won't matter to bench readers that are reading this in 2022. How is the weather there?

See you again.

Aug 17, night song~