Whoop, getting into missions and building team spirit (hah)
-;-
Even in the academy, everyone heard about the miscellaneous and mundane trials of what's known as, the D-rank missions.
The theory behind it, Sasuke can't fathom. Doing chores for lazy or unwilling civilians was just about as preposterous as getting slogged into Traffic Division and writing up parking tickets for the next month. All because he happened to clock some man in the face for touching his ass.
Parking tickets…Not exactly what he'd call 'proactive' police work. Similarly with D-ranks.
The concept bemused everyone.
Any half-competent individual can weed their grannie's lawn, hunt down a runaway dog and trim a hedge
"What's this supposed to teach us in the field exactly, uh…Sensei?" Sakura asks the million-dollar question that, as a general rule of thumb, nobody dared question back at the academy in fear of committing to an hour-long patriotic speech from Iruka.
But they're assigned the worst of the worst missions.
Babysitting.
Even if He's an asshole, God help them. He's been on hospital duty more times than he'd like to count babysitting some brat while the family of the victim ID their loved one.
It's the absolute worst.
Toddlers were a whole other ballpark compared to monthly traumatic Shootings. Don't ever be fooled by their cherubic features. Once they start crying it'll take Hell and Earth to calm them down.
"Why, you're performing a valuable role in your community Sakura-chan," Kakashi says. Laying on a tone that was neither compelling nor convincing. "Surely you're not questioning our Hokage's methods, hmm?"
As one, they look up at Kakashi with immediate suspicion.
Commanding Superior be damned, Naruto wasn't having any of Kakashi's bullshit. Not after being subjected to three hundred penalty laps.
"Gramps is a lilly old goat -" Sakura inhales some spit, "- so you bet I'm questioning it."
"Naruto!" Sakura stares at Naruto as if he'd just dropped in from another solar system. "What the heck!"
"The whole truth and nothing but," Sasuke snorts under his breath, catching up to Kakashi who pretended like he hadn't just heard what he had heard and started walking again. Leaving a squabbling Naruto and Sakura to rush up behind.
"Hey, Sasuke-chan," Kakashi calls. Calm, commanding voice shushing the youngsters instantly.
No matter how ass-backwards Kakashi is, Sasuke can't shake the product of years in the Force.
Loyalty to Command.
If your Superior calls your name, never duck it unless you want to end up on a black-list and transferred over to Cold Cases.
Which nobody wants. Not even Cold Case.
"Yes, si – Sensei?" Sasuke catches himself, grimacing from the echoes of Godfrey.
"Hmm, what do you make of this job?"
Sakura and Naruto glance as they round a corner. Their Client's house was just another block down.
Sasuke rubs his red eyes, hangover still pounding away his skull like some wannabe Kiss band. "When I asked if you wanted me to off a baby I didn't think you'd take it so literally."
"Ha," Kakashi says.
Naruto makes a horrified face at Sasuke.
"Inside joke."
"That's sick, that's what it is."
He grunts.
They break off into another street lined with antique, wealthy looking Japanese styled houses.
"Naruto-chan," Kakashi lolls his head to glance at the kid. "Enlighten us on what we can learn from this job."
"Think," Sakura warns Naruto when he opens his mouth.
"I am thinking, and I'm thinking…" he tsks. "Dunno. What can we learn from a baby? It doesn't even know how to speak."
"Sakura-chan?" Kakashi tries the girl.
"Patience?" she guesses. "Teamwork? Responsibility?"
"Responsibility of a life!" Kakashi snaps his fingers, spinning to face them with an eye smile.
Classic. Truly classic.
Sasuke's look offers the kind of seasoned contempt one can only develop after dying and being forced to listen to such irony.
Continuing to walk backwards, Kakashi flaps a hand, "And all that other stuff you said – ah, we're here."
They come to a stop outside a large, two storey house that made them walking up a short stone path. Passing marble fountains of a naked women holding sea shells that spew out water from above. Naruto goes cherry, keeping his eyes studiously trained on Kakashi's back. Sasuke snorts in something like familial pity.
"Shut up," the kid hisses, shooting him a look he ignores.
When Kakashi knocks on the stained oak door, they are met with a woman who could have been a model back in her twenties. It explained the wealth. Naruto's instantly enamoured, Sakura lets out an exasperated sigh.
They're escorted in through a marble-floored hallway filled with paintings and into the main room.
There were about five weird-looking statues that make Sasuke wonder just what in the Hell art is.
She sits them down on a pristine, uncomfortable white couch and takes the single armchair opposite.
Kakashi does the talking. Going over house rules, what she expects from them and any allergies they should be aware of.
It's here Sasuke realises they've been contracted for a week.
-;-
The toddler, Aki, does not like him one bit. Whenever he gets near the girl, she started wailing like he had just butchered her new favourite toy right in front of her.
"Maybe you smell too much of alcohol?" Sakura wonders from bobbing the girl on her hip. She had managed to quieten her down after Naruto had elbowed him all the way back to the nursery doorway.
Sasuke presses his flushed cheek against the cold wooden doorframe.
Children below the age of five held a natural sense of the spiritual world. Some sought after it like a magnet on cocaine. Others like this brat, get hives.
And Sasuke was literal death reincarnated, "Uh huh," no wonder he gave the kid the heebie-jeebies.
"Does that make sense?" Naruto scowls, playing referee between baby-wielding Sakura and death-rolled-over Sasuke. "Oi, Teme," he narrows suspicious blue eyes at him. Giving his best shot at Kakashi's 'scary face'. "Why're you making her cry?"
Sasuke blinks.
"Hmm," Kakashi startles everyone from his spot in a plush pink chair next to Aki's hundred-dollar crib. When did he get here? "She already knows how to distinguish good from evil, what a useful child."
Unfair.
Naruto's the one with an actual Demon in his belly. All Sasuke did was get shot.
"Sensei," Sakura sighs, pauses, and sniffs. This has everyone doing the same and cringing. Aki gurgles.
"Right," Kakashi points, "Naruto-chan, you're on diaper duty. Sakura-chan, monitor him, and Sasuke-chan," they all held their breath, "make us some refreshments. For the rest of the week."
He doesn't argue. The farther he is from Aki the better. He remembers those two months after moving into the Jashin apartment building.
All day, every day he could hear infants and small children crying.
Fun times.
-;-
Playing tea-lady was easy given that for a short period when he was starting out in the force, he was the Chief's food boy.
Mai said they were free to eat her food while she was working. Turns out the woman is actually a model.
For Icha Icha Paradise monthly magazine.
Sasuke allows a shrewd moment to examine the cover of the book Kakashi had his nose poked into while handing out drinks. Sure enough, the woman running away from the man was Mai.
Kakashi you sly bastard.
Sakura takes two mugs from him, giving one to Naruto who had Aki in his lap. Drawing what she was probably convinced to be the next Mona Lisa.
"What's this?" Naruto asks, taking the cup and sniffing it.
"Matcha with milk," Sasuke shrugs, a little torture of science on his part.
For the last eight years his diet emphasised a strong commitment towards death, so he wasn't well versed in healthy drinks like matcha. Or how to brew it.
Somewhere in the alcoves of distorted, bending memories he recalls static-filled scenes of his mother stirring matcha with a wooden whisk. He used a fork. Same thing.
"Uuh, Sasuke-kun…"
"Hn?"
Sakura is the type of person who is not slow to anger. She's the Usain Bolt of fury.
She's also the type of person whose eyelid twitches when pissed.
"What did you just give me?"
"Matcha with milk."
"You sorry bastard," Naruto gags, having taken a sip of his drink. "That ain't matcha. That's clumps of powder, what did you use to mix it? A fork?"
Sasuke's expression is stone
-;-
"She's so fragile," Sakura grins, face softening at the tiny body she helped stumble across the open back garden.
"Don't walk her towards, Teme," Naruto quickly redirects them like a road officer when Aki started speeding towards where Sasuke was perched on the edge of another naked lady fountain. "He's dangerous."
Sasuke flips Naruto the finger.
"Watch it," Kakashi warns above him somewhere in a tree. "Not in front of young impressionable minds."
What a funny guy.
"Whose Mai-san again, sensei?"
The man flips a page, feigning sudden deafness.
There's a flutter of wings and the sound of gardening shears snapping shut.
Naruto shrieks.
Sasuke squints up, tension building behind the eyes as he does so.
"Oh my God," he hears Sakura whisper.
Vision clearing, Sasuke looks.
The garden had metal, pitchfork type railings to border across neighbouring lawns. For safety measures, the black metal tips were blunted down to make sure no animal or shinobi got hurt if they happened to land on top.
Clearly, Sasuke thinks, staring at the skewered crow, Safety Inspectors didn't account for Omens.
"Hn. I'm assuming impressionable Aki shouldn't be seeing this, Sensei?"
-;-
For the next five hours, Sasuke nurses a hangover by doing nothing in particular other than staying very still in dark corners trying not to think too much while Naruto and Sakura played house with Aki.
When Mai comes back home, she's pleasantly surprised to see her house in the same condition she'd left it in.
The closest they come to regaling her about the gruesome scene with the crow, is when Kakashi advises her about getting new fences put up for 'updated safety measures'.
Kakashi gets them to another D-rank mission.
Dusting the local library.
-;-
"That crow thing was weird," Naruto hisses under his breath as they clean through the history section. Pink feather dusters in hand and faces partly hidden behind white medical masks. Kakashi was happily seated somewhere in the romance section, so they were free to gossip.
Tasked with dusting the tops of aisles, Sasuke shrugs from his position above Naruto.
"Not really," Sakura dismisses easily. Working the same shelf as Naruto. "I mean, yeah okay it was creepy in the moment but freak bird accidents happen all the time."
"The poor thing looked like dango," Naruto emphasises. "And the rod wasn't even sharp. No way it had the right amount of momentum and angling to hit that dead-on," he spares a paranoid glance over the shoulder and reels Sasuke and Sakura in a bit. Hand and duster splayed theatrically he opts, "I'm thinking it's an omen of sorts."
Sasuke tries not to inhale so quick.
Sakura chuckles. "Yeah right."
"I'm being serious."
"I know you are, and I'm sorry Naruto-kun but that's just not possible. Omens don't exist."
Ruffled, Naruto shoots his desperate gaze up at Sasuke who immediately avoids it. "What do you think, huh?"
"Not my thing, honestly," Sasuke half-shrugs, absently thwacking away a dead spider.
"See?" Sakura gestures in a 'there you go' way. "The bird probably got chased by some other species and got startled by one. Falling meters above and, well…" she makes a chagrined knifing motion, earning a squeak.
"Nah," Naruto furiously shakes the duster in her face. "I don't believe that. If D-Demons can exist then so can ghosts and omens."
Sakura sneezes.
"Alright, that's a good point but still. Omens are just coincidences people want to make out to mean certain things. Like zodiac signs and religion. People naturally want to believe the impossible is possible to have a sense of belonging and feel special. It's just some wacky thing an insecure person made up one day to feel better about themselves, no impressive supernatural scheme about it." She grunts, "Our world is horrifying enough as it is, no need to add invisible monsters to it. Ghosts? Omens? Try humanity being the Big Bad."
"Wow, Sakura-chan," Naruto frowns. "I didn't know you were such a pessimist."
Sakura furtively glances up to Sasuke and starts dusting again. "Yeah, well, life's a bitch. Lower your expectations."
"I agree to disagree," Naruto harrumphs. Peeking thoughtfully to Sasuke as well before going back to work and pouncing onto another random topic.
"Huh." Sasuke has never felt more confused than the time a shaman screamed bloody murder after bumping into him in a bookstore.
-;-
Thoughts? Feelings? :D