Sasuke was the first to arrive at the rendezvous point, a small room they had rented out. A few minutes later, the others arrived as well. Even Kakashi had arrived on time, maybe it was because they were on a mission that he was taking things slightly more seriously and wasn't messing around? His lone lazy eye scanned them silently.
"So... what did you find out?"
Naruto scratched his head a bit. "Well, I went to a smith to trade some goods with them, heheh, I managed to sell my stuff for twice the market value, can't wait to tell the old man..."
His eyes then narrowed.
"But that was also strange. I was only selling common goods, nothing special. After digging around for a bit, I found out they hadn't been receiving any materials at all. Apparently, their trade routes had been blocked by bandits."
Kakashi nodded and looked at Sakura and Sasuke.
"And? Did you guys find out anything else?"
Sakura nodded.
"Well, there is not much to add to what Naruto said. Most people were complaining about the roadblocks, claiming bandits are the problem, as well as a few shops that had claimed to have been robbed and vandalized." Sasuke nodded as well, showing he had nothing much to add.
Kakashi smiled.
"Well done, I guess. So, what do you guys suggest we do? Do we take care of the bandits, or do we report back?"
They were quiet for a moment before Naruto smiled.
"Well, we can clear out the bandits, no harm in doing so."
Sasuke nodded as he opened a scroll, summoning his chokutō. He was slightly disappointed that not much had happened during the mission, but he didn't mind. Maybe, with this task completed, the Hokage would be more willing to assign them something more challenging.
"Actually... guys, I don't think it's that simple."
They all turned to look at Sakura.
"I mean, I don't think we are dealing with bandits here, but something else."
Kakashi's eye narrowed.
"Oh? Mind explaining why?"
"Well... I just find this whole situation to be weird. Normally, bandits tend to leave the scene of the crime after blocking the path a few times to avoid attracting the attention of ninja villages, yet from what the people in the village had been saying, their roads had been blocked for weeks."
Kakashi nodded.
"While that's strange, bandits tend to be blinded by greed and remain there longer than necessary, so it might just apply here as well."
She frowned a bit.
"While that could be the case... there was something else I found strange. Some people had claimed that their shops were robbed, yet no one had seen the bandits. In fact, I had asked around a bit, and no one had actually caught sight of these bandits, they just knew they were dealing with them. Just like when we were coming here, I found it strange that no one blocked our path."
Kakashi and the others narrowed their eyes at the information.
"So, what do you think we are dealing with?"
Sakura had a complicated expression on her face.
"Uh... that, I am not entirely sure. But I am certain that it's beyond just common bandits. With how strange everything is, there might be ninjas involved."
Suddenly, they were all quiet.
"Well? Does that change anything? We are still gonna deal with them," Naruto said, crossing his arms.
Sakura frowned at him.
"Naruto. These are enemy ninjas we are talking about! This is beyond the scope of a C-rank mission."
Naruto raised an eyebrow at that.
"And? In case you forgot, we are ninjas as well. Not only that, we have a jonin ninja with us, easily raising our chances of survival. If you really want to go back and report so we can go back and keep doing D-rank missions, i will respect your choice."
Sakura opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it.
Sasuke agreed with Naruto as well, he wasn't wrong. They were ninjas as well, and had a jonin with them who were said to be a small army by themselves, so their chances were already pretty high.
'How would I fare against an actual ninja in a fight to the death?' he thought, staring at his sword. He understood that ninjas could be powerful and might give them trouble, but there was no progress in stagnation.
Kakashi looked at them.
"Well? Have you decided? Do you want to take on bandits that could be ninja?"
They nodded, although Sakura looked reluctant.
"Well, okay," he said as he brought out a scroll and opened it, laying it on a small desk.
"Well, the village only has one road that connects with the others. If these bandit ninjas are real and are intercepting these goods, they would most likely be at the crossroads."
He paused for a second as he pointed at parts of the map.
"We will investigate these areas and search for anything suspicious. Once we know what we are dealing with... we attack."
He said as he closed the scroll.
Sasuke glanced at him. It seemed he didn't just stay in some corner reading his book after all and did his own research. He had probably come to the same conclusion Sakura had.
He looked outside the window and smiled.
"We move a few hours before dawn, get some rest."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A few hours passed, and the time to move out was approaching.
Sasuke had been mentally talking to Nano. A few days before, Nano had injected his mind with advanced information on its functions, and he had been asking questions to figure out how best to utilize his abilities, with each revelation shaking him to the core.
Sakura had been sitting in her own corner reading a book, although once in a while, she would sneak glances at him.
After two weeks as teammates, she had quickly learned that Sasuke wasn't the type to start side conversations. She had also grown tired of talking to him without getting much of a response, so she'd stopped trying and Sasuke greatly appreciated that.
Sasuke glanced at her for a moment.
Honestly, he didn't know what to think of Sakura.
Before the whole ordeal with Nano, Sasuke believed Sakura was just the typical girl who would never make it far and only annoyed him. But in the vision, while Sakura was still mostly the same aside from a few clear differences, she wasn't as weak as he thought she was. As the vision went on, she changed from a naive, fragile girl into a respectable kunoichi.
But one thing he never understood about her was her obsession with him.
He never understood just what made her so obsessed that even when, in the vision, he had almost killed her, it hadn't diminished it even a little bit.
He then looked at his own hands, inspecting the lines of his palms.
'What could she even like about me?' He simply didn't understand. Who could love him?
He had always had a wall around him, keeping people away. He had no friends and he wasn't close to anyone. In his opinion, bonds were a weakness. That much he had learned the very night his family was killed.
But with the revelation the vision had given him, he wasn't so sure about it anymore.
He was certain she wasn't like the shallow girls that claimed to love him because of his physical appearance. That much he was sure.
'I wonder what she sees in me that I don't see...'
He shook his head and turned to Naruto, who was also sitting in his own corner with a brush and ink he had summoned out of one of his scrolls, writing something on his kunai, his eyes filled with focus he normally didn't show unless he was in combat.
Unlike his vision counterpart, this Naruto was slightly harder to get a read on.
He could not tell what was going through his head.
Although during the past few weeks they had been teammates, he had come to learn much about him.
This Naruto wasn't starved for attention. In fact, he seemed relatively happy when no one talked to him, with the exception of Sakura, of course.
Although they tended to get into arguments often, he never looked truly angry during it. If he were to put it into words, it seemed he enjoyed arguing with her. Although whenever he talked to him, he seemed to be actively trying to get on his nerves.
But one thing he had noticed about him was his strange detachment.
Even with Sakura, he always seemed to keep some wall around himself.
" 'I dislike... people.' "
Suddenly, he remembered what he had said on the day he introduced himself.
He had to have had his reason to say so...
'I wonder what happened to him...'
He shook his head and sighed, while he looked out the window.
'I too feel like I have changed a bit.' He was never one to care much about how other people felt before, or how he felt. Yet here he was, thinking about these strange things.
'Although... I don't hate it.'
There was something freeing about it.
Kakashi, who was reading a book in his corner, suddenly looked outside before he closed the book shut.
"Alright... it's time."