The next morning, dawn broke early.
Team 7 gathered at the Konoha gate, arriving ten minutes before the scheduled time, waiting for their sensei, Kakashi.
Thankfully, their jounin leader, though often unreliable, only arrived five minutes late for their first mission outside the village.
Naruto saw Kakashi approach and immediately wanted to throttle him, just to make the silver-haired ninja take a good look at the clock!
However, Kakashi, completely ignoring their complaints, confidently claimed that his home clock was five minutes slow. A few minutes late, he insisted, wasn't really being late.
Naruto, hearing this absurd excuse, rolled his eyes so hard he thought they might stay that way.
"Kakashi-sensei, you've got it all wrong!" Naruto protested.
"You being five minutes late wasted five minutes of each of our time! That's a total of twenty minutes!"
Kakashi: ?
Sasuke: ?
Sakura: ?
Tazuna: ??
Naruto remembered back in school, when his teachers used the same logic to scold him. He had hated that reasoning. Yet here he was, using that very argument on his chronically late sensei.
Sigh...
It seemed that Uzumaki Naruto had, after all, grown into someone he used to despise.
Naruto's words left Kakashi momentarily speechless. On the surface, what Naruto said sounded logical, but something about it just felt off. However, Kakashi couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong.
Sakura and Sasuke didn't fully understand, but they were equally stunned by Naruto's argument.
"Heh, don't sweat the small stuff..." Kakashi scratched the back of his head, smiling awkwardly to brush off the tension.
After all this time spent with Naruto, Kakashi had developed a strategy for dealing with him: whenever Naruto started nitpicking, just distract him—hard.
After adjusting his gear, Kakashi led the team, along with Tazuna, out of the Konoha gates.
As soon as Team 7 left, every ninja in Konoha began rushing toward the Hokage's office.
The battle for D-rank missions had begun!
If Naruto could have seen the chaos, he might've thought he had crossed into some kind of apocalypse.
With the gates closed, Team 7 officially embarked on their journey to the Land of Waves, where Tazuna lived.
To protect their client—and Sakura, who was more or less just baggage—Kakashi instructed Sasuke to follow directly behind him, while Naruto covered the rear.
If anything went wrong, they'd be able to protect the two weakest members of the group instantly.
At the front, Kakashi, bored out of his mind, pulled out the latest issue of Icha Icha Paradise and started reading. Every so often, his body shook with silent laughter.
Naruto, watching from behind, was bewildered.
'How can Kakashi get that much amusement from a pervy book??'
He had seen a few risqué things in his past life, but never with the level of enjoyment Kakashi seemed to derive from his book.
Now Naruto couldn't help but wonder what Icha Icha Paradise had to offer.
Meanwhile, Sakura, with her backpack on, kept sneaking glances at Sasuke every few seconds. Each time, her face grew redder.
What on earth was this girl thinking?
Tazuna, glancing between the white-haired jounin engrossed in his novel, the lovestruck girl, and the hyperactive blond in the back...
At that moment, Naruto was twirling a stick, whacking bushes and flowers as if they were his enemies. He even prodded a shrub for good measure.
Ugh...
Tazuna's old face scrunched up in regret. He was already starting to second-guess his decision to hire this team. And in his heart, he sighed, thinking:
'Damn it! I guess you really do get what you pay for! If I hadn't lied about the mission, this wouldn't have happened!'
Naruto noticed Tazuna giving him strange looks but didn't bother explaining his actions.
The old man didn't understand a thing!
What Naruto was doing had a purpose. He was using the stick to probe the surroundings for any hidden ninja. Definitely not just fooling around because the stick was too straight not to wave around.
But speaking of hidden ninjas…
Naruto couldn't quite remember exactly how the nameless ninjas hiding nearby had set up their ambush.
Splash!
Lost in thought, Naruto stepped into a puddle, splashing water onto his pants. The damp fabric clung to his skin, leaving him uncomfortable.
'Damn! These are my freshly changed pants!'
Not to mention, that puddle was probably filled with bacteria...
Just thinking about it made Naruto feel itchy all over. Disgusted, he started shaking his leg, hoping the water would fly off.
And so, in the back of the group, Naruto stood still, continuously kicking the air, his pants rustling with each move.
Splash!
Suddenly, from the puddle Naruto had just stepped in, two oddly dressed ninjas sprang out.
One of them had jumped right from under Naruto's foot.
Hiding in the puddle had been their last resort. Originally, they were going to ambush the group, but then this weird blonde kid started poking every bush with his stick, coming dangerously close to exposing them.
In the end, the two ninjas turned themselves into puddles on the road. Sure, it looked suspicious, but it was better than being jabbed by the kid's stick.
"Hey, brat!" one of the ninjas shouted, clearly having had enough. "I've been putting up with you this whole time!"
"Go die—!"
Bam!
Naruto, completely distracted, was split between his inner world, where he was wrestling with the giant fox, and the real world, where he was still kicking his pants dry. Before he even realized what was happening, his foot connected with something solid.
'What the heck just flew past me?'
While Naruto stood dazed, Sasuke had already dealt with the second ambusher using a well-placed kunai.
Sasuke pointed ahead, and Naruto finally noticed the first ninja—his neck twisted a full 360 degrees—lying lifeless on the ground.
'Uh... so I just kicked that guy?'
Naruto was stunned. He had expected an intense battle... but this? This was it?
Kakashi glanced up from his book, casting a calm look at the defeated attackers before casually turning a page, as though they had never even been there.
But Naruto…
Truly, he lived up to his title as the most unpredictable ninja.
Sakura, meanwhile, felt a wave of regret wash over her. The killing intent from the ambusher had rendered her limbs heavy and her mind blank. All she could manage was to raise her kunai in a weak defensive stance.
If it hadn't been for Sasuke's timely intervention...
She and the client might have been killed.
Once again, Sakura felt a sense of powerlessness swell inside her.
Kakashi, noticing her expression, slowed his pace and spoke softly.
"Sakura, don't worry too much."
"People's abilities vary."
Sakura looked up at her teacher, then over at her two teammates.
"But why is the gap between people so big?"
"Hmm?"
Her question caught Kakashi off guard. He blinked before giving her a rather odd look and said, "Sakura, you may have misunderstood..."
"They aren't even human."
Uchiha Sasuke: ?
Uzumaki Naruto: ?
Both boys turned to stare at their sensei, utterly baffled.
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