Puppeteer

Teamwork is a must

A couple of days after the fight, Sakura finally woke up. Her two teammates had been worried sick for the girl, not even the threat of extra training could remove them from her side. This had made it much harder for Tsunami to help her, but she couldn't feel too much irritation towards the two boys. Inari had begun to warm up to team 7 as well. After coming to a realisation that they weren't as bad as he once thought as well as that they were stronger than he first thought, he found their presence... a bit more bearable. Of course, he too felt quite guilty about the situation with Sakura. If himself and the villagers had only arrived seconds earlier, this entire situation may never have happened. That, of course, was the only reason he visited her when she was unconscious.

The moment Sakura woke up, she'd been tackled by her two very tearful teammates, unimpressed by the large volumes of snot and tears on her top. Scowling, she'd shoved the two boys off of her. It didn't take her long to engulf them in a hug again, not that she'd ever admit to that.

They'd left the Land of Waves the following day, unwilling to spend much longer away from Konoha. It had been a very tearful departure as well, the trio had to say goodbye to Inari, something that made both Naruto and Kiba (as well as Inari) all burst into tears. Sakura was honestly quite surprised that they had that much in them, after all, they'd cried a lot yesterday. But she couldn't resist giving the little boy an affectionate pat on the head, gently ruffling his hair. The boy had almost instantly slapped her hand off causing the group to laugh as the boy pouted. 

The journey back to Konoha had been rather uneventful as well, they hadn't done much more than walk. It was quite slow as well, they were in no particular rush to get home, but they didn't take any detours either. After setting up camp each night, they would do some more training before they were dismissed to go to bed, shifts for the following night organised as they walked the next day. The pattern was unbelievably dull and repetitive.

When they did get back to their home village, Kakashi disappeared to fill in a mission report and the three genins went for a celebratory meal at the BBQ place, much to Naruto's displeasure. However, it didn't come as much of a shock to them that team 10 where there as well, the team were almost always there! Either way, the three had greeted the team, Kiba and Naruto bragging about the mission before they wandered over to the empty table at the far side of the restaurant.

Today, however, found the team back on D-ranked missions. After their rather thrilling C-rank-turned-A-rank, this was quite a painful downgrade. But the children took it in their stride, or at least, they did so for the first 20 seconds out of the Hokage tower. They hadn't even reached the older lady's house and they were already complaining. Not that they could be blamed, it was always hard to change from life-threatening, adreneline-pumping missions to bland chores. Either way, D-ranks had to be done by somebody and the genin-ranked team 7 were perfect for that task. Kakashi, in order to shut them up, had 'accidentally' brought up the chunin exams and how if they ranked up, D-ranks would be in the past. This had instantly shut his team up as they went from mischevious to well-behaved. What Kakashi told them was that he would only recommend them if he thought they were good enough. What he didn't tell them was that he'd actually been planning on recommending them since their fight with Zabuza and Haku. But they didn't need to know that...

The first person they worked for was an older lady who wanted her herb-garden de-weeded. Rolling their eyes at their teacher's lack of contribution to the task, the group got to work. Kiba and Naruto racing to empty their beds (both weeds and herbs being ripped up) as Sakura re-planted all their pulled-up herbs. She'd already finished her bed, surprisingly enough, it was quicker to only remove the ones needed.

The following job had been clearing up a river, the state it was in was very disturbing to the group, despite the fact, none of them took much of an interest in the environment. Whether the reasoning for their negative views was upon the realisation that this was not going to be a quick task was another question entirely... Either way, this time, Sakura worked at the most dangerous placing, she wasn't risking her teammates' lives. Lives which were very much at threat at the rate the pair were going. Honestly, she wouldn't be all too surprised if one of them managed to fall into the water anyway.

The following day, they received the 'mission' of walking a group of dogs. It had made Kiba a very happy boy. They'd currently come to the conclusion they were at a draw in 'ninja-awesomeness' their words, not Sakura's, and the Inuzuka was very confident in his abilities. Naruto had instantly called dibs on the largest dog there was, Kiba taking multiple to make up for their lack of size. This entire situation had left Sakura dogless, a fact she was quite content with. It didn't take long, however, for Naruto to lose control over his canine companion, consequently, he found himself being dragged off through a minefield. His teammates could potentially have saved him from receiving as much damage as he did if they weren't laughing so hard that tears blurred their vision. Or at least, that had been the situtation Kiba had found himself in. Sakura began laughing when Kiba's control over his dogs had wavered due to his laughter, his mini pack racing after Naruto, Akamaru, being the ever-loyal nin-ken he was, racing after Kiba. 

All-in-all, as much as team 7 would deny it, they'd definitely been bested by the few D-ranks they'd received upon return to Konoha.