Chapter 50: Team Mikoto’s First C-Rank Mission!

[Ding!]

[Weekly Sign-in available!]

[Signing in…]

[Obtained: Complete Dragon Blade!]

Name: Mikoto Uchiha

Age: 14

Rank: Jonin

Affinity: Lightning Affinity, Fire Affinity, Yin Affinity, Water Affinity, Earth Affinity

Unique: Immense Chakra Reserves, Sharingan (Three Tomoe), Advanced Growth Rate

Skills: Fire Style Mastery, Water Style Mastery, Lightning Style Mastery, Yin Style Mastery, Earth Style Mastery, Shurikenjutsu, Elite Taijutsu (Ninja Art: Bare-Handed Blade Block), Superb Genjutsu, Ninjutsu (Body Flicker, Advanced Body Flicker, Clone Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu, Transformation Jutsu, Ninja Art: Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu, Amplified Summoning Jutsu, Shadow Clone Jutsu), Perfect Chakra Control (Chakra Enhanced Strength), Kenjutsu (Uchiha Style: Kenjutsu, Drunken Blade), Stealth, Survival Knowledge, Cooking, Medical Ninjutsu (Mystical Palm, Chakra Scalpel, Poison Extraction Jutsu, Body Pathway Derangement Jutsu, Regenerative Healing Jutsu, Mystical Healing Field Jutsu), Fūinjutsu Mastery (Sealing Jutsu: Release), Pedagogy Mastery, Space-Time Ninjutsu Mastery, Seven Heavens Breathing Method, Musical Talent, Craftsmanship Aptitude, Needle Mastery

Equipment: Kunai, Shuriken, Senbon, Smoke Bomb, Explosive Tags, Poison Gas Bomb, Flash Bomb, Gas/Sleep Bomb, Food Pills x84, Wire Strings, Shark Skin, Gunbai, Bingo Book, Fūma Shuriken x74, Hero Water x4, Superior Frying Pan, Complete Dragon Blade

She’d left the Uchiha compound well before dawn, slipping out through the quiet streets at the heart of the village, past the shuttered market and the dark windows of the clan houses where everyone she’d grown up with was still asleep. Her route to the training grounds took her out toward the village’s edge, past the Military Police headquarters, squat and grey against the outer wall, its lanterns burning through the night shift the way they always had. A pair of Uchiha officers on the steps lifted their hands to her with a smile as she passed. She waved back and kept going.

Mikoto stood alone in the pre-dawn dark of the training ground and looked at the sword that she had pulled out of her mindscape.

Last week’s sign-in had been a sack of dried persimmons, long since given away. This was nothing like that.

It wasn't a sword at all. It was a big kunai: a broad dagger the length of her forearm, a jagged bolt of gold zigzagging up the flat with the steel cut clean through along its angles, so light passed through the blade in little windows. A wide ring sat between blade and grip, engraved all the way around with script she didn't recognize, and the handle was wrapped in scaled green cord that ended in a long braided orange tassel.

And with it came five orbs, each the size of a plum, rolling in her palm with a faint scaled shimmer inside: red, green, yellow, orange, blue. Fire. Wind. Lightning. Earth. Water. She already knew how they were used: the orbs seated into the blade's center, and once seated, the wielder could use any of the five natures straight through the steel, shape any technique through it, and its edge would cut chakra and absorb it, just like Shark Skin.

And a will of its own, because of course it had one, a stubborn, loyal pull, the blade already trying to fasten itself to her, to belong to her, the grip settling into her palm like a dog leaning into its person.

On her back, Shark Skin shivered violently.

It was the shiver of a spoiled, jealous fish-sword that had just watched its owner hold hands with another sword.

"Oh, stop it. Nobody's replacing you." Mikoto murmured.

Shark Skin sulked anyway. She could feel it sulking through their connection.

The truth was she didn't need the thing. She had Shark Skin, she had almost every nature the blade offered already at her control. A sword that let its wielder use all five elements was a miracle for almost anyone in the world, and nearly redundant for her, which had to mean something. But there was a catch to it, and the catch made her smile, because she already knew the perfect owner.

The blade demanded chakra. Enormous chakra. In the hands of an ordinary shinobi it would be dead weight or worse, a sword that ate its wielder trying to feed itself. To use it fully, you needed reserves that most jonin would never touch in their lives.

Mikoto knew exactly one other person like that.

She could already see it: red hair, both hands, screaming. AN AWESOME SWORD?! FOR ME?! The whole street turning to look. Kushina swinging it at nothing for an hour. Kushina sleeping with it.

"Stole it from an enemy," Mikoto rehearsed to the empty training ground. That would do. Kushina wouldn't question it. Kushina would be too busy naming it.

She sealed the Dragon Blade into a scroll, tucked the scroll away for the next free afternoon, and rolled her shoulders as the sky went from black to grey. Shark Skin gave one last grumpy shudder.

"You're still my favorite, you little bully." She told it, and felt the sword settle, mollified, like the enormous chakra-sucking toddler it was.

It seemed like no one ever told her sword that sharing was caring. She’d try, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t care.

…

Her genin arrived at Training Ground Eleven at sunrise, and by a quarter past sunrise all three of them were on the ground.

"Up." Mikoto said pleasantly.

"You're a monster." Tsume said into the dirt. Beside her, Kuromaru lay flat with his paws over his nose in solidarity.

"Up."

They got up. They came at her again, and this time it was better, Nawaki circling left with Kusanagi low instead of charging straight in, Yoshino feeding him openings with kunai and shuriken, Tsume and Kuromaru cutting off the escape angle before Mikoto used it instead of after. Real teamwork, drilled deep enough that their bodies did it while they were tired and upset.

She still put them all back on the ground. But it took her eleven seconds instead of four, and she made sure they heard that.

"Eleven seconds," she said, hauling Yoshino up by the forearm. "Two weeks ago it was four. At this rate you'll last a full minute by winter and then I'll have to start trying."

"You're not TRYING?" Tsume spat out a piece of grass.

"Kuromaru knows I'm not trying. Don't you, Kuromaru."

Kuromaru, traitorously, wagged.

Nawaki laughed, sheathing Kusanagi, and the morning light caught the pale scarring that climbed his jaw and neck. He didn't try to hide it anymore from them. He'd stopped hiding it around the time Yoshino informed him that if he kept angling his face away from people she would personally get on his shoulders and hold his head straight.

They sparred four more times. On the last one, Yoshino landed a punch on Mikoto's guard that actually made perfect contact, and that was probably the biggest smile Mikoto had seen on her face.

That was when the hawk came down.

It dropped out of the sky in a hard spiral and landed on the training post with a messenger's tube on its leg, and three genin groaned in unison before Mikoto had taken a single step toward it.

"Noooo. No, no, no." Tsume said.

"You don't even know what it says." Mikoto had a bright smile on her face.

"I know exactly what it says. It says 'Team Mikoto, please report for another incredibly important mission painting some old lady's fence.'" Tsume flopped backwards into the grass. "We've done nine D-ranks. NINE! I've caught the same dog thrice. Thrice, Mikoto-sensei. Kuma knows me by smell now. He gets excited when I show up to drag him home."

"The Hokage's estate fence wasn't painting," Yoshino said, arms crossed. "It was staining. Which is worse. And I would still rather do that again than weed another sweet potato field, so if this is the sweet potato people again, I am filing a complaint with the Hokage himself."

"You can't file a complaint with the Hokage." Nawaki told her.

"Watch me."

Mikoto took the tube from the hawk's leg and read the summons. Report to the Mission Assignment Desk. Nothing more. She tucked it away and looked at her squad, two girls glaring like she'd personally invented D-rank missions, and Nawaki standing there with a content smile, his hand on his waist.

"For what it's worth," Nawaki said to the girls, "I like D-ranks."

"You’re insane just like Mikoto-sensei."

"Nobody explodes on D-ranks." He chuckled. "Fences don't throw kunai. Sweet potatoes have never once tried to kill me. I'm at peace with the D-rank missions."

"You talk like an old fart." Tsume told him.

"And I'm gonna make eighty," Nawaki said serenely. "That's the plan. Hokage in my twenties, retired whenever the next worthy Hokage pops up."

"Come on," Mikoto said, smiling despite herself. "Let's go actually find out what it is before we start complaining."

…

The Mission Assignment Desk was mid-morning busy, chunin filing through, a genin team ahead of them arguing about who caused their mission to fail, the big banner overhead telling everybody to do their best.

The clerk found their file, pulled a scroll, and said the words that changed the entire mood of the squad.

"Team Mikoto. C-rank."

The silence lasted one full second.

Then Tsume howled and grabbed Yoshino by both shoulders, and Yoshino, dignified, composed, complaint-drafting Yoshino, grabbed her right back, and the two of them shook each other while making undignified noises. Kuromaru spun in a circle around the two excitedly. Even Nawaki's eyebrows went up.

"A C-rank," Tsume breathed. "A real mission. An actual real mission. OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE!"

"Finally!" Yoshino agreed with her.

Mikoto looked at her celebrating students. Then she looked at the clerk. Then she leaned over the desk, lowered her voice, and asked, with complete sincerity:

"Are you absolutely sure there aren't any D-ranks that need doing first? Fences? Lost pets? A farm must need some work done. Babysitting?"

"MIKOTO-SENSEI!" both girls screamed in unison, loud enough that the arguing genin team ahead turned around to stare.

"They're perfectly safe missions with a one hundred percent survival rate, I don't understand why nobody appreciates-"

"SENSEI!"

"Fine..." Mikoto sighed and straightened up. "Fine. We accept. What's the mission?"

The clerk, who had watched this entire performance with a smile on his face, unrolled the scroll.

"Disaster relief. A hamlet called Hanawa, in the hills a day northeast. The rains this past week soaked the slopes and two nights ago a hillside came down on the northern edge of the village. Houses buried. The cart road in is cut. They've got people unaccounted for and more rain possibly coming, and every hand they have is digging." He looked up. "It's graded C for the conditions, unstable ground, more slides possible, and they need shinobi speed and shinobi strength, because civilian help won't reach them for days and the missing don't have days. No combat expected. Just hard, urgent work."

"We accept," Mikoto said, and signed, and this time nobody argued with her tone. "Pack for three days, heavy on rope, tools if you have them, and every ration you can carry, we feed ourselves, we don't take a grain of theirs. Main gate as soon as possible."

"Yes, sensei!" Three genin saluted.

…

Because it was still their first C-rank, and they were still twelve and ten and nine, and the world outside the walls was still wide and green and theirs for the first time. Tsume ran the whole first hour on all fours with a grin she couldn't put away, Kuromaru streaming beside her, drunk on new smells. Yoshino had an actual smile on her face as they ran instead of her usual resting non-smiling face. Nawaki ran rear guard without being asked, because he had the second most experience on the team.

"So what do you think it's like?" Tsume called at some point, vaulting a fallen log. "The village. You think it's bad?"

"A hillside fell on it. It's probably pretty bad." Yoshino said.

"I know it's bad, I mean, but do you think we can actually help? Like actually? We're genin." Tsume chewed on it.

"We can dig faster than forty farmers," Nawaki said. "Kuromaru can smell people under mud. A genin is vastly stronger than a regular civilian thanks to our mastery of chakra. And sensei's sensei." He hopped a stream without breaking stride. "Yeah. We can help quite a bit."

“It’s not like protecting a princess or saving a kingdom but I guess this is fine for our first C-rank mission.” Tsume said.

“Do you think you even have the etiquette knowledge to protect a princess?” Yoshino scoffed.

“Just because I protect her doesn’t mean I need to serve her, stupid!”

“Who are you calling stupid, dog breath?!”

“I brush my teeth every morning and before bed! My breath is fine!”

“I’m about to pass out if you keep talking.” 

Nawaki let a chuckle escape his lips and the two girls glared at him instantly.

“What’s funny?!”

“My bad, geez.” Nawaki rubbed the back of his head.

They pushed on as the day changed colors, and the hills climbed, and the smell reached them before the sight did, Kuromaru caught it first and whined, low, and then Tsume's nose wrinkled, and then even the humans without clan noses could taste it on the air: wet earth, torn roots, splintered wood.

They came around the shoulder of the last ridge at dusk and stopped.

Hanawa sat in a fold of the hills, a few dozen roofs along a stream, terraced fields stepping up the slopes, and it would have been pretty, it had clearly been pretty two days ago. Now the whole northern edge of it simply wasn't there. A brown scar of mud and rock ran from high on the hillside down through where the last row of houses had stood, a frozen brown river a hundred meters wide, studded with shattered timbers and one entire roof sitting on the surface, intact and absurd, like a hat dropped on the flood.

Tiny figures crawled across the mud in the failing light. Dozens of them. Digging. Some with shovels. Some with boards. Some with their hands.

Nobody on Team Mikoto said anything for a moment.

Then Mikoto rolled up her sleeves.

"There's still light," she said. "Let's introduce ourselves by working. Move out."

They went down the ridge at a run.