A/N: I'M SO SORRY THIS IS TWO DAYS LATE! I have an excuse (sorta) in that I was sick last week. Feeling much better now, though!

My roommate is cruel though, and has named me an Unreliable Author ™. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? SO EVIL.

Anyway, sorry this is a little shorter than normal – I'll likely double-update this coming weekend to make it up to you guys. Kick off the Wave Arc, maybe throw in another interlude or Wandering Fairies, whichever of the two strikes me.

EITHER WAY IM STILL SO SORRY I'M TWO DAYS LATE AND TWO PAGES SHORT PLS FORGIVE ME.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully next week will be better all around!

…and on time.

Sasuke glowers at the dumpster, arms crossed. Beneath it, the demon hisses in fury. The Uchiha would call it a cat, but that would be an insult to ninneko his family have cared for, and the thing behaves more like a demon than any cat he's ever met regardless.

Natsu gives a 'clear' signal from his peripheral vision, and Sasuke smirks.

Finally.

He darts to the ground, scooping his arm under the dumpster with enough force to push the cat out - Tora responds quickly, immediately trying to leap over his arm and go back under, but the Uchiha snaps out with his left, grabbing the creature's tail in a firm grip.

The demon yowls, and he throws it perhaps more forcefully than he should in Natsu's direction. He honestly can't even care about the pay, though, the dobe's the only one who needs it, but he's managed before - the trap the dobe and Natsu threw together crashes down, Tora screeching in fury from within, and he smirks in satisfaction.

Barely twenty minutes. Plenty of time to go train.

Only paranoia, honed from a month of too many Tora hunts, lets Sasuke catch the faint blue gleam that appears for less than a second. He might have passed it off as a trick of light if, at that exact moment, one of the bars of Tora's cage didn't snap.

Natsu scrambles, tries to cover the fresh-made hole with his hand, but the cat slips out like it's more water than physical form and bolts.

The dobe makes a cry of 'kage bunshin no jutsu!', a dozen copies of himself leaping after the cat, as he comes to stand next to them.

"Natsu! I thought you checked it over!"

The interloper scowls, glaring down at the cage. "I did! Three times! You know I don't take chances with that hellcat! There's no way that should have been weak enough for it to get free! There's not even enough space in that hole for her to fit through it quickly!"

"One of the other bars bent aside, see?" Sasuke walks forward and presses, the bar bending with his weight then returning to its place. He scowls, studying the broken bar.

It's a clean, angled cut, just right to allow the demon to leap out without any issue whatsoever.

The only thing that doesn't make sense is why.

"How did that bar, out of all of them, break? That's ridiculous! I told you that cat could read minds! I told you!" The dobe yells loudly, and Sasuke glares at him.

"Tch. Obviously it was sabotaged."

"Wha- who would sabotage us?"

Over the cage, Natsu's eyes narrow. "Kakashi-sensei?" He queries, head tilted to the side. Pink hair falls like a curtain over his shoulder, and Sasuke curls a lip in disgust.

Wearing hair long and loose is a challenge, is saying you're good enough that no one can use it against you; and Sasuke hasn't seen anything to prove Natsu capable of that.

"Wha? Why would Kakashi-sensei let Tora go? We actually did good that time!"

Natsu drops the cage, sighing, "I can't think of anyone else who would sabotage us. And Sasuke seems rather certain."

"Just cause he says it, doesn't make it true! I say Tora's a mindreader and knew that other bar was loose so it could get out!"

"Dobe." Sasuke scoffs, considers grabbing the cage and proving why the blond idiot is wrong, but they have more important things to deal with - namely, capturing the demon before it gets too far away. "It can't read your mind. And it didn't break the cage. Now tell me where your clones are so we can finish this."

"Wh- teme! Don't think I'm buying that sort of explanation! There's no way Kakashi-sensei would do that to us!"

Natsu grimaces, glancing between Sasuke and the dobe. Then he sighs and grabs the latter. "Naruto-kun… Sasuke isn't exactly the sort of person to make something like that up for fun. Let's just focus on catching the hellcat and worry about the sabotage later, alright?"

Sasuke narrows his eyes. "He'll just do it again."

Natsu shrugs, turning in the direction the demon fled. "We'll keep our eyes peeled. Maybe he just thought it was too easy for us. Twenty minutes would be setting a new record for a genin-team catch. And considering-"

"Ah! They're over near training ground 8!"

Natsu looks a bit annoyed, but doesn't hesitate to change direction. He drags Naruto behind him, the blond having frozen in surprise. Sasuke scoffs. Of course the dobe would do that. They fall into formation as they race to the training ground, and he snarls silently at the pace.

Uchiha train for speed, because being able to see the future is useless if you aren't fast enough to take advantage of it. It's so annoying having teammates who are always slower than he is, but if he runs ahead, he'll just be stuck alone with the demon until they catch up anyway - and as much as it infuriates him, he's never managed to catch the thing by himself. The dobe's clones don't listen to him unless the dobe himself or Natsu are there to make them, after all.

Sasuke sees Tora before the others do, Natsu almost right on top of the bush the creature is hiding in. He hisses the pinkette's name, and Natsu quickly glances over, tracks his gaze, then dives under the bush. Half the branches of the bush just move, some tangling Natsu, others moving out of the way, and Tora takes off yet again.

"O-okay. I admit, bushes don't move like that. But why would Kakashi-sensei do this to us?" Naruto cries, pointing at the bush despite the fact that it stopped moving as soon as Tora got free. Natsu comes up, dirt smeared over a scowling face, but he doesn't try to wipe it away, just glares in the direction Tora took off.

"I don't know, but when I find out I'm gonna light him on fire."

"Hn." It sounds like a good idea to Sasuke. His training time is being wasted.

That thought sparks an idea, but he shakes it off.

"I guess we start again…" The dobe's shoulders droop, and Sasuke scoffs at his dismay.

"Let's just go." He turns and starts walking off, deeper into the forest the demon ran to.

The idea doesn't go away.

At one point, the dobe fills the forest with so many clones that one of them literally pops into existence on top of the demon and manages to scoop it up before it can run. But the clone pops from something sharp stabbing into its back - though perhaps it was just stupid enough to fall onto a treebranch or something.

Two hours into the mission, Sasuke kicks one of the clones when it tries to hug him -why?- and the thing falls on top of the cat and lets them catch it - only for something to trip Sasuke and he knows the ground was clear of obstacles.

And so the idea keeps growing.

When Natsu, three and a half hours in, falls behind because his stamina is pathetic, manages to catch it and then lose it all before catching up with them, Sasuke is certain.

Standing in a clearing, he glares at the other two genin. He tries not to think of previous Tora missions, and coincidences that let the cat escape, and the times they succeeded in keeping hold of it for good.

He doesn't want to be the one to say it out loud.

But the dobe is an idiot and Natsu isn't much better, apparently.

"I don't get it! Why! We've caught her so many times! Why does Kakashi keep doing this!?" Naruto cries, throwing himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged and putting his chin in his hand.

Natsu looks closer to genuinely angry than Sasuke's ever seen him, and the Uchiha wants to throttle them both.

He takes a deep breath. Wishes they would stop being idiots and just realize so he didn't have to say it out loud.

Scowling, Sasuke crosses his arms and glares at them. "This isn't the first time Kakashi has sabotaged us," he starts, because maybe they'll figure it out themselves.

"Wha?!" Naruto jumps to his feet, pointing at Sasuke, "Seriously?!"

"Hn." Idiot.

Natsu, at least, has the decency to look considering. "Sometimes, even though we were all downwind, Tora would spook like she smelled something. And twigs would crack, and our cages have failed even when we were certain they were good, before. But why?"

Sasuke stays silent. It's obvious, after all, even if it's distasteful and annoying.

But Natsu just looks up at him. "You know why, don't you? You already figured out what he's doing."

"Hn." It's so obvious, and Sasuke glares. The dobe is a lost cause, but Natsu should be more than capable of realizing why Kakashi only sometimes sabotages them.

The damn flower-crowned moron just crosses his arms and looks at Sasuke. The Uchiha scowls.

"You already know, so just explain it and we can get back to catching that hellcat. I'd like to make it home for dinner, if that's even possible anymore." Natsu casts a look toward the sun, squinting, and Sasuke chokes on fury.

He doesn't even belong here and he still just settles in, has a home, eats dinner with a family-!

Natsu's attention snaps back to him immediately. "Are you okay?"

Sasuke snarls, ignoring the question. If the conversation keeps going that way they're never finishing the job and he wants it done. "It's teamwork," he spits out, but both the fools he's been paired with look confused. If it weren't counterproductive, he'd storm off and catch the damn cat himself. But Kakashi has more than made clear that's not acceptable.

"We only successfully keep Tora if the plan we used to catch her relied heavily on teamwork. Any time it only required two of us, or we did it by accident, or whatever, she escapes."

There. That should be enough.

Mercifully, comprehension dawns in Natsu's eyes.

"Oh… that does sound exactly like something Kakashi-sensei would do… just use this stupid mission as another teamwork exercise… and we didn't even realize, all this time!"

The dobe makes a stupid face. "But… when we caught Tora earlier, we did have a good plan that used all three of us! And Tora still was let go!"

…

Sasuke threw Tora by her tail, because he didn't care about the money and just wanted done. But he's not about to say that he's pretty sure that's why Kakashi interfered.

"Let's just worry about catching her now." He says, glaring, and the other two agree without saying anything else.

Good.

Maybe he'll still get some training in, tonight.