Bonds ➳ SasuNaru

Five | A Dangerous Mission: The Land of Waves!

- "Your assignment is very simple: you just have to take these bells from me. That's all there is to it. If you can't get 'em by noon, you go without lunch. You'll be tied to those posts and you'll watch as I eat my lunch in front of you." -

After a long, tiring day, the genin ended up passing. Although none of them got those damned bells from Kakashi, and Sasuke and Sakura fed Naruto when they wasn't supposed to, they still passed and were ready for their first mission.

Their first missions were easy, and their latest was retrieving a cat - all D-ranked missions.

Reporting to the Hokage after finding the cat didn't go as planned.

"Your next mission is babysitting," the Hokage told the genin.

This did not go over well with Naruto. "Heck no! Come on, old man, give us a better mission."

A bit of arguing and the genin found themselves with a (probably dangerous) B-ranked (but A-ranked if they ran into any enemies) mission to the Land of Waves as an escort to an old bridge builder guy, Tazuna.

They ran into a couple of enemies of course, and Sasuke had to save Naruto a time or two, but it was going sort of smoothly until they ran into him.

Zabuza, a criminal assassin from the Village Hidden in The Mist.

A long, stressful fight but they'd defeated him. A young tracker ninja collected the body of the assassin and left - leading Kakashi to suspect that Zabuza was still alive somehow. But unfortunately, Kakashi had overused his Sharingan - a rare kekkei genkai (or doujutsu) of solely the Uchiha clan - and was very weak, needing rest.

But still, Kakashi insisted upon training the genin, and taught them a bit about chakra flow, and set them to work on climbing a tree with no hands. Sakura did it with ease, but the boys were having trouble. Naruto asked Sakura for advice, and the boys kept training.

They eventually made it to the top.

But the next day, they went off to the bridge without Naruto so he could rest, and ended up in another fight with Zabuza and that tracker boy, confirming the copy-cat ninja's suspicions.

The boy, Haku, took on Sasuke while Kakashi dealt with Zabuza and Sakura guarded Tazuna. Haku used a secret jutsu, crystal ice mirrors, and attacked Sasuke from all angles.

Haku didn't want to kill him though.

Naruto eventually showed though, and Sasuke wanted to use Naruto to his advantage on the outside of the mirror prison against the feminine boy.

But Naruto, being the dobe Sasuke knew him as, snuck into the ice mirror prison to help. They both got attacked, but Sasuke had awakened his Sharingan for the first time and was watching Haku's moves closely, finally able to see them.

A few shadow clones later, Sasuke had burned Haku's robe with his fireball jutsu, and finally knew where he was.

But then Naruto had gotten hurt.

And Sasuke was protecting him with everything he had.

But when the needles stopped flying for a moment, Sasuke just stood there for just a second, but then blood was splashing onto the ground.

"Why did you do that, Sasuke?" Naruto asked, shocked. "Why did you protect me?"

"I don't know," Sasuke answered truthfully. "My body just moved on its own."

He had a few flashbacks of him and Naruto.

And he was falling over.

Naruto had caught him in his arms, holding the dying Uchiha close.

"My brother... he's still out there..." Sasuke had uttered, blood falling from his pale lips.

"Naruto... don't let your dream die..."

And as Sasuke went limp in Naruto's arms, Naruto hugged him, trying not to cry.

And then Naruto got mad. So mad, in fact, that the Nine-Tails was starting to take over him. A red chakra swirled around him, and he had gently lain the bloodied Uchiha down and was ready to fight.

"You were precious to him," said Haku at one point.

And then Haku had been killed. Not by Naruto, but by Kakashi, for Haku had tried to protect Zabuza from the jutsu Kakashi was using him.

Zabuza ended up dying after Naruto threw harsh words his way and Zabuza was ready to fight for Haku with broken arms, when Gato, the one who'd hired Zabuza, had kicked the dead boy's corpse. He fought Gato's men and killed Gato with one kunai in between his teeth.

Zabuza and Haku lay side-by-side, and it began to snow.

"Are you crying, Haku?"

The two were buried beside each other sometime later.

As for Sasuke, Sakura had cried her heart out when she saw him. But the Uchiha had opened his eyes, and was still alive. Sakura was overjoyed.

Sasuke had weakly stood, and Sakura had called out to Naruto.

Naruto locked eyes with Sasuke and smiled widely, pushing away the strong urge to run up to him and just hug him so tightly.

Tazuna built his bridge eventually and the little village was so happy.

They named the bridge 'Naruto'.

And then team seven started their journey home, to rest, train and get ready for another mission.

-

More chapters await. Also, if it seems rushed, it's because this is mostly just an explanation for those who can't really remember and because I want to get to my own plot.