Chapter 47: That Insufferable Tazuna
Uchiha Compound
The black-haired boy lay tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. His whole body felt feverish and uncomfortable, and there was a strange, restless impulse buzzing under his skin.
But twelve-year-old Sasuke didn't really understand what this impulse was.
Eventually, with tomorrow's training in mind, he gave up, hauled himself out of bed, fumbled his way to the bathroom in the dark, and turned on the shower.
Cold water blasted down from the showerhead, and the prickly heat under his skin finally eased a little.
Except — once he'd toweled off and started heading back to bed, his body inexplicably started running hot all over again.
Sasuke's mouth twitched. By this point, he'd more or less worked out that there had been something in those soldier pills Sakura had handed out earlier today...
The boy sighed, pulled his clothes back on, and walked out to the training ground from earlier in the day.
He was going to burn this excess energy off the old-fashioned way.
So he started running laps around the training grounds — circle after circle.
Then, by the moonlight, he spotted what looked like a vaguely furtive silhouette skulking around.
He padded toward the figure, and as he got closer, realized it was Naruto.
"Naruto?"
Sasuke blinked at the blond gremlin, mildly thrown off.
"EH?!"
"What're you doing here?!"
Naruto yelped at the sight of him.
"Tch. Do I have to clear it with you before I show up somewhere?"
Sasuke folded his arms and arched an eyebrow.
"You little —!"
The two of them locked into a deadlock stare-down, neither willing to look away first.
Eventually, Sasuke broke first. His body felt like it had a fever burning under his skin.
"Not in the mood for you."
He pivoted and went back to running.
Naruto, naturally, was not about to let that slide. He'd eaten just as many of those pills as Sasuke had earlier, and was every bit as miserably restless. He immediately took off after him and caught up in seconds.
Sasuke saw Naruto draw level — then pull ahead by a body length — and his face soured. He blew past with a single explosive stride.
Naruto, refuse-to-lose machine that he was, immediately retook the lead.
Sasuke pressed his lips together, said nothing, and overtook again. Naruto, gritting his teeth, overtook back.
"Dead-Last, stay behind me where you belong!"
Sasuke ripped past him again.
"Stupid Sasuke, you're the one who should be staying behind me!"
Naruto blasted past him without missing a beat.
"Naruto!"
"Sasuke!"
"NARUTO!!"
"SASUKE!!"
"NARUTOOO!!!"
"SASUKEEE!!!"
The Konoha night gained a pair of kindred-spirit best buddies venting the energy known as youth~~~
The Next Morning
When Sakura and Kakashi arrived at the training ground, they found two boys sound asleep — slumped against each other.
"My, my. Such a close bond~~~"
Kakashi looked at the two little disasters, his visible eye crinkling into that delighted little arc.
Three days passed in the blink of an eye.
Naruto had Rasengan down. Sasuke had successfully nailed Lightning Cutter — though with his current chakra reserves, he could only manage two uses per outing.
And Kakashi led his three little ducklings to officially accept the Land of Waves mission.
Mission Office
"Hah. Looking at this lot, the whole thing seems unreliable as hell."
The reek of cheap liquor wafted off the old man clutching his bottle as he sized up Team Seven.
"HAH? What did you just say?!"
Naruto, the most volatile personality in the room, heard someone questioning his abilities and was instantly ready to take this client outside for a friendly little heart-to-heart.
"Naruto. We do not assault clients."
Kakashi clamped a hand on Naruto's shoulder with a smile, then turned that smile on the old man — Tazuna.
"Please don't worry. They may be on the young side, but they're all qualified shinobi."
Tazuna had submitted the job as a C-rank, but Konoha's intelligence network had already established that this mission was solidly in A-rank territory.
Why submit it as a C-rank? Because the bulk of the payment the Land of Waves villagers had managed to scrape together for this job had gone straight down this fool's throat in the form of liquor.
Sakura had less than zero affection for the old man. If not for the fact that this mission happened to be a perfectly calibrated sharpening exercise for Sasuke and Naruto, she'd have arrested him on the spot.
In fact — if not for Sakura locking in this mission ahead of time — within seven days the village would have hauled this old man in itself. Falsifying the rank of a mission was something no shinobi village could tolerate. Shinobi lives were worth a lot more than these civilians' chump change.
What Tazuna had pulled was the equivalent of dining-and-dashing at a restaurant, or strolling into a brothel and... ahem...
Anyway, if not for the mission's perfect convenience as training fodder for Sasuke and Naruto, Tazuna wouldn't have made it through Konoha's front gate.
Blissfully unaware that he'd just done a brisk lap around the gates of hell, Tazuna was still bickering with Naruto.
"Yeah, I'm talking about you. The shortest one."
Naruto blinked, then quickly compared his height to Sasuke's and Sakura's.
Even though Sakura had taught him how to cook by now, Naruto was still genuinely obsessed with slurping noodles — instant ramen specifically held a special place in his heart. He still ate the stuff way too often.
And so...
The bitter harvest had arrived...
"You little —!"
"I'll kill you!"
Naruto lunged for the gross old bastard. Kakashi caught him in midair.
Sakura, meanwhile, was knitting her brows at the ungrateful old wretch.
She walked up beside him and, in a voice pitched for two ears only, said:
"If you don't want the entire Land of Waves finding out you drank the mission payment, I suggest you behave."
"And we are well within our rights to refuse a mission whose payment doesn't match its difficulty."
"What waits for you on the other side of that, is Konoha's full disciplinary attention."
Hiring two jōnin, the last Uchiha, and the Nine-Tails jinchūriki — for a C-rank fee. And this drunk had the audacity to stand here running his mouth.
Tazuna's face cycled through several shades of green and white at her words. He fell silent and stared down at the pretty little girl in front of him.
The green of her eyes contained not a flicker of feeling. His hands and feet went cold.
A small shinobi was still a shinobi.
"...Understood."
Tazuna sobered up, fast.
"Come on, Naruto. Don't waste your breath on the gross old man."
Sakura turned back to Naruto — who was still being held in place by Kakashi — with a smile like winter ice melting.
"Hmph. He's the worst."
Naruto pulled a face at the now-silent Tazuna over Sakura's shoulder.
And so Sakura's Team Seven was officially off on its first out-of-village mission.
Zabuza, much obliged. I'll burn some incense at your grave for you~~~
Sakura watched Naruto, hyped to be leaving the village for the first time in his life, swiveling his head left and right to gawk at everything in sight, and silently thought to herself.