Chapter Text
"Sensei, can you remind me why we have to do this again?" Sakura asks.
Her limbs are aching and her hair is falling messily around her face. She knows she should have cut it shorter before leaving the village, there's nothing to do about it now. She will not resort to using a kunai. She isn't a barbarian no matter what Naruto says.
"It builds character," her teacher replies, kicking the trunk of his own tree with enough force to send a grown man flying.
As soon as his foot leaves the bark, a perfectly cut log of wood slides out of the trunk, as if it had been summoned. Unfortunately for her sanity, Sakura knows very well it has not been and this is simply yet another effect of the jounin’s odd influence on reality.
"I don’t think it builds much of anything," Sasuke whispers from a few feet behind her.
He sounds bitter, he usually does whenever they ended up pursuing something that doesn't allow him to grow stronger. Although she often feels like rolling her eyes at his bad moods, she does agree with him on that specific day. What they are doing is completely pointless and the fact Kakashi-sensei insisted on having Tazuna tag along only makes the situation more annoying. Apparently the civilian has a few specific lines related to wood cutting. None are any less annoying than his usual drivel and he has repeated each of them an average of twenty times every hour.
"What are we even getting this wood for?" She complains. A log finally falls from her own tree trunk after she kicked it a dozen or so times. "I didn’t see any D-ranks asking for wood."
"That is, my dear duckling, because we are not on a mission for the village." Kakashi beams at her, stuffing an entire pile of cut wood into his jacket’s pockets. It disappears into the mysterious dimension he keeps his equipment in. He does not use sealing scrolls, they checked. "We are on a mission to find ourselves."
"I am not finding anything other than murderous rage right now," Sakura deadpans, kicking at the logs laying around her feet. Unlike their teacher, none of them have access to their own pocket dimension. Perhaps one day he will teach them his trick.
"The wood used in my bridge is the finest across the Lands!" Tazuna informs them in the distance, not bothering to struggle against his bonds. The best way they have found to deal with his presence is to keep him tied up to nearby trees and hope Kakashi will forget him when they leave. "It will stand against typhoons and earthquake. A monument to the resilience of-" He abruptly falls silent, his mouth closes slowly and his gaze falls to the ground.
Sakura never quite got used to how unnatural he looks when he’s [Muted]. She can’t blame her teacher for doing it though, Sasuke has been patting his kunai pouch for an hour now, murdering their own client would not be a good look for Konoha. She turns away from the [NPC], as Kakashi calls him, as quickly as she can. His empty eyes and slack face are disturbing. Even now that she has seen enough horror and action to last her a lifetime, his blank stare haunts her dreams.
Maybe kicking that tree isn’t so bad, it keeps her from looking at the soulless husk of a bridge builder standing ominously behind her. When did he get untied? Oh Sage, he’s right behind her shoulder, she can feel his breath on-
"Next time, let’s leave him at the inn." She whispers.
Her voice is not shaky. Sakura is not scared of a stupid civilian. She could kill him in ten different ways with only her pinky. She’s a ninja, trained since she was a child to fight and win and-
"Agreed." Sasuke sounds a bit unsettled himself. His eyes are looking straight ahead and he is breathing faster than usual.
She understands his pain.
"Why do I hear talking, my sweet little students?" The monster pretending to be a reasonable jounin teacher sing songs. As usual, he’s completely unaffected by the horrific, soulless creature standing beside him.
Sakura shudders. Sometimes she wonders if the man is even human.
"Can you [Unmute] Tazuna-san, please?"
Kakashi-sensei frowns, rubs his chin thoughtfully and then delivers a powerful kick to the ancient oak he has been beating up. A blow like that should have destroyed the tree but, miraculously, it stays perfectly whole and drops a single log of wood. Again. Her grandfather is an arborist, a very respectable civilian position in Konoha. Between that and her on and off again friendship with Ino, she knows this should not be happening. Even without that background, anyone with half a brain cell would think they were hallucinating if they came across such a scene.
Tazuna has less than half a brain cell most days, what with his constant, repetitive commentary. In this state, he has less brain cells than an empty bag of chips.
She could go for a bag of chips right now, she thinks, watching as Kakashi-sensei tries to insist that Sasuke is the one who wanted the civilian [Muted] in the first place. She killed someone with a bag of chips before. She could do it again. Maybe she should.
"It’s alright, sir. You can do as you want, sir."
Sasuke makes a decent try at a serious military posture. It’s slightly ruined by the fact none of them have interacted with any Konoha agent outside of their teacher in months. She thinks it’s a solid effort, and his insistence to act as the perfect chunin, going as far as to wear his vest wherever they go, is sort of cute in a weird duckling kind of way.
Sometimes she misses the crush she had on him a few months back. Her life had been easier when she still thought only two of her teammates were idiots. Now she has come to the sad realization that, out of all four, she is the only sane one.
"He said it’s alright." Kakashi-sensei nods with a smile. "Really Sakura-chan, you complain too much about poor Tazuna, I think you might hurt his feelings."
Tazuna does not look like he has any feelings to be hurt. His eyes are empty, blank slates free of any thought or emotions. Not for the first time this week, she wonders if she can get away with trapping him in a well or a cupboard somewhere. He wouldn’t struggle much and technically it wouldn’t be murder.
"Now stop plotting murder and get gathering! We need to hit the mines before it gets dark or we won't have enough materials to [Craft] a shed to sleep in!"
She has long given up the hope of ever understanding her sensei. All she can do is turn back to her tree and punch.
A log falls down. She picks it up and adds it to her pile.
Fifty done, three-hundred more to go.