Time Travel? What The Fuck?

Chapter 20: Puberty and Child Development

For once in their genin career, Sakura was late to their morning meeting.

Naruto and Sasuke had already convened at the usual meeting spot on the bridge, ready to wait a while for their teacher, but were surprised when there was no pink hair to greet them. About an hour later she showed up, hair in disarray, clutching at her stomach, bags under her eyes, and a storm cloud hanging over her head.

She looked like shit.

"You okay, Sakura?" Naruto asked warily, eyeing her grouchy face with growing unease. An angry Sakura was never a pleasant Sakura.

"I'm fine," she bit out, not sounded fine in the least. Naruto wisely decided not to mention the observation, as he wanted to keep all his teeth in his mouth, thank you very much.

It was another few minutes before their sensei decided to show up, trusty book in hand as usual.

Immediately, Naruto perked up and bounced over to him.

"Hey sensei, what are we gonna learn today?" Naruto asked, excited to try the trick Kurama had told him. Well, it wasn't really a trick, but he wanted to try it nonetheless. But he needed downtime to do it, and weather or not they had downtime depended on what their sensei was going to teach them. Well, re-teach them.

"Maa, Naruto, don't get so excited. We won't be doing any of that today." Not if he wanted a kunai up his ass, anyway. Courtesy of Kurenai.

"What! No training?"

"No training," he echoed, voice chipper. Then, clapping his hands together and rubbing them as if excited, added, "Instead, we'll be doing missions."

"Oh, so like another escort mission?" Sakura asked. "Maybe taking out some bandits?"

"Oh no, nothing like that," Kakashi-sensei waved off. "There's a festival about to start a few towns over, and we've been hired to help set up one for one of the merchants attending. Apparently he has a few cartfulls of wares and needed a few extra hands."

Immediately the atmosphere changed from hopeful and excited to disparaged into the blink of an eye.

"A D-rank," Naruto deadpanned, eye twitching. "Really?"

Next to him, Sasuke looked about ready to summon his mangekyo, and Sakura her fists. Kakashi-sensei seemed to notice this and raised a wary eyebrow.

"You three are still genin, after all," he pointed out. "Besides, I thought you might appreciate a slow paced mission after the last one we did."

"Yeah but Wave was exciting!" Naruto groaned, falling into his old childish habit of whining. Well, whining more than usual. "We saved a town, learned some new jutsu, did some cool shit-"

An elbow in his ribs for swearing.

"And came out completely fine. I don't see why we can't do another C-rank. An actual C-rank, anyways."

"I wouldn't say you were 'completely fine'," Kakashi-sensei noted, a weary look in his eye. "Two of you were unconscious by the end of that fight, and one nearly dead." A sharp look towards Naruto as he said the last bit. "Think of this as an easy, get-back-on-our-feet type mission."

The three "genin" understood that they weren't going to get anywhere arguing with the man, and just accepted their fate, however grudgingly. They couldn't say they had expected to get more C-ranks after Wave, as it hadn't happened last time. But they'd done a far better job this time around, so it wasn't too far fetched to hope for something better.

They should have known better to hope with the sensei they had.

So, grudgingly, the three all went back to their homes to pack for their journey, cursing their sensei all the way.