Friendship Contract

by Demeristraz


Catching A Wave


"Team seven, reporting in for a C rank mission." Kakashi stated with boredom, his three students behind him countering it with enthusiasm.

"Are you certain Kakashi? It's only been a few months since they graduated." The Hokage cautioned, Iruka was at a nearby desk and appeared worried.

"Nonetheless, all that stands between them and becoming chuunin is combat experience, and we can't get that painting fences, can we?" Kakashi casually replied, waving off their concerns.

"Alright then, team seven, meet your client." A rather scruffy man walked in, reeking of booze and wobbling slightly. "This is Tazuna, he needs protection from bandits on his way home to the land of Waves, and protection while he finishes a construction project."

"Will we be expected to help on the project?" Naruto asked, already picturing having to build another boat.

"Hah, as if a shrimp like you knows anything about hard work. I can't believe I'm paying this much money for a bunch of kids." The old man grumbled.

"Just make sure he completes his project in one piece, you can leave whenever you're ready." The Hokage said dismissively, not wanting a brawl to start in his office. The team, having everything already packed, decided to leave right away, preventing Tazuna from hitting yet another bar. Soon enough they had reached the village gates and finished the sign-out procedure. Naruto took the quick opportunity to create a cloud and begin floating down the road.

"Naruto, perhaps you should come down here and protect your client?" Kakashi called up to him.

"Ah c'mon Kakashi, I'm keeping a look out from up here, I can see way farther than you guys at the moment." Naruto called down to them. Tazuna grumbled about the insanity that was ninjas, and took another swig from his flask.

"You know, if you call up some of your friends, and a cart, we can get there much quicker. Walking at civilian speed kind of sucks." Sakura called next, sending a sheepish look at her irritated client.

"I don't like using them as work horses, Big Mac's the only one who'd go for it, and he'd be busy with the fields right now anyways." Came the voice from the cloud.

"You know, for such an energetic kid, he certainly has the 'I'm lazy' thing down to an art form." Sasuke commented as they continued moving along the road at a moderate pace.

"For what it's worth it takes a slight amount of concentration to stay up here, so if I fall asleep you'll know it! Don't act like I'm napping!" Naruto called down.

"If you're going to talk to us, come down and do it, your shouting is just going to attract attention!" Sakura replied, causing Sasuke to facepalm at the hypocrisy.

The group continued on their journey for about three hours without interruption, their trip would skirt around Konoha's border posts, meaning an increased chance of bandits, but the group felt confident in their abilities. There road took a gentle turn up ahead, angling itself towards the border of the country of Wave. In the distance Naruto was one of the first to spot an oddity. Grabbing a spare piece of paper he wrote a quick note and tied it to a kunai, then dropped it to the ground below. Sakura gave a quick glance up, then bent to grab it reading the hastily scrawled message, and passing it to Sasuke.

"Puddle, 500 meters, no obvious reasons for it being there. Trap?"

The two genin glanced at their jounin who nodded once and resumed walking at a casual pace. Sasuke waited until they were close to the puddles before nonchalantly dropping a kunai to the ground. Tazuna grumbled about clumsy children, and stupid clouds, before taking another swig of booze. The procession passed the puddles in silence, tensing as they left their sight, and whirling around into action as two splashes signaled the attack.

Two men in matching outfits rushed from the water and dashed for Kakashi, between them a deadly bladed chain stretched out to embrace the jounin. A moment before they were in reach a kunai shot from above, the wind enhanced blade cleaving the chain in two. "Hah, how's my aim? I can't hear you, I'm too busy being awesome!" came a shout from above. The two assailants leapt back and were immediately beset upon by the other genin, leaving Kakashi to watch the client, much to his chagrin.

Sasuke lunged into melee drawing his chokuto and easily parrying the bladed claws on his target's hands, they exchanged a few blows before Sasuke leapt back and jumped forwards into an overhead strike. His opponent parried with both arms, but caught a numbing electrical current as a result. Rather than stay in close range against the swordsman with unusable arms he leapt back several times to recover. Sasuke smirked at his opponent. "Just." he said, raising his arm. "As." he cried as it crackled with electricity. "Planned!" He called over crack and boom of a thunder strike tore forward through his opponent and on to the prepared ground kunai. The target wobbled a moment, singed and sparking, before toppling over in a heap.

Sakura was having more trouble with her opponent, the claws he was using were usually used to deal shallow cuts, which just screamed 'poisoned'. Wary about even a glancing blow, Sakura was limited in her ability to deal with such a challenge, while she had gone a long way from where she was when she graduated, she had yet to progress to the level the boys were at.

Luckily she had air support, and every time the man closed in for a shot he was forced away by a peppering of air bullets. She was forced back once more, and Naruto chose that opportunity to drop to the ground. Running forward quickly he called his chakra to his feet, bringing up a full 6 meter wide bubble of chakra around him that started rolling with his movements. A bright flash and boom alerted them to Sasuke's victory, but Sakura's opponent took that moment to lunge forward. The claw was less than a foot from her when Naruto's chakra passed through her, allowing her presence and rejecting the poisoned metal, with the force of a rolling boulder the assailant was pressed flat against the dirt road. Sakura was swept up in the movement and quickly tripped Naruto, causing the two of them to roll off the road and crash into a tree in a heap.

Kakashi could only shake his head at the blonde's antics, as much as Sasuke was cold and calculating in his fighting, and Sakura had the foundation of a solid ninja, Naruto was... unpredictable at best. His abilities were powerful, but in the sense that most ninjas were not used to. It made him a force to be reckoned with on the battle field, but as Sakura was quickly learning, working alongside him was a tricky thing to do. Shrugging off an approaching headache, Kakashi set about rounding up the unconscious assailants, 'chuunin' he noticed, and after making sure Sasuke wasn't to overzealous with his lightning, tied them to a tree for interrogation later. Until they woke up, Tazuna could start off story time.

It was a good twenty minutes of guilt tripping later that Tazuna finished his sob story about his village and family, about Gato the evil mastermind and his evil henchmen sent to stop the bridge from being built. By the end of it, predictably, Naruto was in tears, vowing to put a stop to the suffering of Wave, singlehandedly if need be.

A short discussion later and the team agreed to continue the mission, and Kakashi did something surprising. Kakashi summoned a dog.

Naruto freaked out upon seeing it, complaining that he had never been told about the summons before, and asking the summoned dog a ton of questions. Kakashi cut him off rather quickly, "He's the fastest way to get a message to the Hokage requesting pickup for these two, so quit pestering him and let him get to work."

"What!? No way is he the 'fastest' way to do anything. I'll take care of this." Naruto objected, performing a summon of his own, the smoke cleared to reveal Rainbow Dash in all her polychromatic napping glory. The entire group facevaulted, aside from Tazuna who immediately began mocking Naruto for having girly summons.

The client's laughter quickly woke up the pony, who grumbled a moment before turning her attention to the blonde. "Oh, Hey squirt what's happenin'?"

"I need you to run a message to the Hokage, he's back that way, in the village, highest room of the tallest tower." He said, pointing in the general direction of Konoha.

"No sweat, I'll have it done in 10 seconds flat!" She said, giving him a hoof bump and rocketing away at speeds that quickly silenced the client's laughter. He was still dumbstruck 10 seconds later when she skidded to a halt in front of the group. "Ah... you forgot to tell me the message." she admitted, causing those who had only recently picked themselves off the ground to drop once more.

A few minutes later the group was back on the road, Tazuna noticeably quieter towards Naruto. "So, those horses of yours..." He began.

"Ponies." Naruto corrected, still relaxing on a cloud, but quite a bit lower to the ground this time.

"Right, ponies." The man cringed a little at saying it, "Are they all that fast?"

"Nah, Rainbow Dash is pretty special, there are ponies with all sorts of special talents though. I can get Applebloom to look over your bridge designs when we get there, if you like." Naruto said jokingly, his whole team snickered picturing the little pony lecturing the old drunk on proper weight distribution on load-bearing beams.

"She a bridge building pony?" Tazuna asked, confused at the very idea of such a thing.

"Nah, but she could probably build a halfway decent one with her four hooves and a bucket of nails." Naruto replied.

Shortly after the conversation stopped, they had reached the water's edge, and would have to wait for a boat to come by from here. Naruto drifted up on his cloud to look around, but couldn't make out much from the fog. Shrugging, Naruto floated down again, in time to take a seat in the boat. No sense wasting chakra when he could hitch a free ride.

The other side of the water was much the same, only a lot more wet. The road wound through swampland, thick with fog and scattered with puddles. Naruto had opted to stretch his legs for a bit, and took up position near Tazuna as they rounded another bend. This time it was Kakashi who noticed the attack before anyone else. "Down!" He called grabbing Tazuna and pushing him to the ground.

The entire team dropped to the floor, just as a massive cleaver sailed passed, imbedding itself in a tree up ahead. "Sharingan Kakashi, no wonder the demon brothers were defeated so easily." Came the voice of a man up ahead, a tall figure landed to stand on the handle of his sword.

"Actually, I didn't have to lift a finger. Looks like that's going to change though. You three protect the bridge builder, this one's mine." Kakashi said, lifting his forehead protector and leaping forward to engage the target. The man in question made a few hand seals, and a thick fog rolled in to block out their vision.

"You wound me Kakashi, acting like you don't know who I am." Came the voice of their target from every angle.

"I'll do more than wound you Zabuza. I know who you are, I just don't really care." Came Kakashi's voice in reply.

It was only years of experience training with Rainbow Dash under the same circumstances that let Naruto sense what was happening. In almost slow motion he could feel the mist part, a large disturbance coming in a downward arc to his left. On instinct he raised a shield around the group, pulling up all the chakra he could in a moment's notice, with a wave of relief he heard the great sword clang against the barrier, and with sickening dread he heard it pierce right through. It was like the shattering of glass, the barrier was cleaved through and dispersed, only serving to lower the momentum of the blade as it travelled towards Tazuna. The noise was enough to draw Sasuke's attention, as he leapt forward with blade in hand. His swing was enough to make the ex-mist ninja lean back to dodge, but he quickly moved to counter.

Naruto leapt forward to follow through, quickly blowing a kunai into a blade and parrying the cleaver. He was horrendously out matched in strength, and slid a few feet on the muddy ground, but Sasuke managed to get out of the path of the missing nin's sword. Naruto noticed where the blades touched they overlapped by an inch or so, and dared to think maybe his wind element was cutting the massive sword. When he heard again the crack of glass he immediately forced his Shining Armor into a blaze of glory as his sword winked out and a fist collided with his face. Even with everything he had going into his personal defensive technique, he felt his cheek bone crack under the pressure, and Naruto went airborne.

Luckily in the two seconds this took to occur, Kakashi had closed in on Zabuza and managed to stab him in the back, sadly the mist ninja managed to replace himself with a water clone, and the group was left back at square one. The genin moved their defensive formation to cover for their teammate as he pulled himself to his feet.

"Good news, I now know how your Armor technique works." Sasuke snarked, pulling the orange boy to his feet and glancing around warily.

"That's wonderful, I'll throw a party for you later. I'm getting sick of this fog." Naruto replied, already seeping chakra into the moisture. It was already saturated, he noticed, so rather than try and overpower it, he simply shaped it, funneling it up into the sky, Sasuke grinned and began leaking out chakra of his own. Soon enough the fog had lifted enough for them to watch their teacher fight, if it wasn't clear from earlier how horribly out classed the genin were, this would squash all doubts.

The jounin's battle had taken them out onto the lake, but within moments it became clear Zabuza had the advantage, in a series of moves he caught Kakashi in a water prison and created several water clones to finish off the genin. Kakashi urged the three to retreat, but Naruto spared his teammates a quick glance and noticed neither of them were scared, after a brief huddle they broke forward, Sakura rushing out to engage the water clones. Sasuke handed Naruto a kunai and dodged passed the clones that made to grab him, throwing a windmill shuriken at his true target, the real zabuza that held Kakashi imprisoned. Zabuza batted away the first one with his sword, but was caught off guard by the second one hidden in the first's shadow. With no way to bring his sword back to block he jumped over it, leaving him exposed as Naruto flung his kunai.

Zabuza smirked as he tossed his sword, bringing his arm around to reach through the hole in the blade and catch the kunai. It had been a cleaver plan, but he had beaten their gambit. If he had eyebrows they would have risen when his hand closed around the kunai handle, every hair on his arm stood on end. Sensing chakra skyward he glanced up, at a very low hanging, very angry looking storm cloud.

"Cra-" KABOOM! A massive bolt of lightning shot down towards the highest, and most positively charged point on the water. Zabuza was sent reeling from the shock, his pulse racing and nerves tingling, he was certain he was burnt in several places, singed in several more. Worst of all he had lost his concentration on the water prison, and now had to face a vengeful Kakashi. He struggled valiantly but was eventually overwhelmed by the Konoha jounin, and was put down by several needles to the neck, courtesy of a friendly neighborhood hunter ninja.

Naruto was already outlining plans for the celebratory party after their first 'boss fight', when Kakashi passed out from chakra exhaustion, his response was to change the theme of the party to 'get well soon Kakashi'.