I'll Definitely Kill Sasuke Uchiha!

A month of D-rank missions had worn Naruto down, though all that activity had made him a little sturdier, too.

"More weeding!"

Naruto slapped the scroll against the wooden post at the meeting point, nearly breaking it.

"This is the seventh time we've weeded this month! Does Konoha's grass have a personal grudge against me?"

Sakura crouched beside him, checking her tool pouch. "Could you complain a little less? Without Sasuke-kun's Escaping Rabbit, we'd be even slower at these missions."

"Didn't you pull up the shopkeeper's tulips thinking they were weeds last time? The client nearly cried."

"I-I thought they were scallions!"

"So you can't tell scallions from flowers now?" Sasuke leaned against another wooden post, holding the mission scroll he had just accepted.

Naruto abruptly turned around and jabbed a finger at the scroll in Sasuke's hand. "What is it this time?! Are we helping an old lady find her cat again?!"

"No."

"Really?!" Naruto's eyes lit up, and he hurried over to Sasuke in three quick strides.

"Then what is it?! Escorting an important person? Hunting down a rogue ninja?!"

Sasuke unrolled the scroll and read its contents aloud.

"Cleanup mission at the Old Herb Farm by the Naka River. The farm is infested with giant pests. Clear them out and protect the herbs from damage."

Naruto's enthusiasm immediately deflated.

"...Bugs?"

"Yeah."

"Another mission like this!"

Kakashi suddenly appeared upside down, hanging from a branch above the three of them.

"Stop complaining, Naruto. Anko and I specifically requested this mission for you."

Sakura looked up. "Specifically?"

"Yeah." Kakashi flipped down from the tree and landed neatly on the ground.

"The Old Herb Farm is beside the Naka River. It's been abandoned for quite a while."

"Usually, D-rank missions involve having civilians do the cleanup, but this one concerns protecting medicinal herbs, so it's a special request."

He closed his book and pointed at the scroll in Sasuke's hand.

"Those herbs are valuable. You can't just burn them with a large-scale ninjutsu, or trample them underfoot."

"Simply put, this is a test of how precisely you can control your strength."

Anko had appeared on a stone block at the edge of the meeting point at some point.

"To put it bluntly, we want to see if you can keep your hands and feet under control."

"Especially you, Naruto. That chakra vibration of yours has already messed up quite a few things this past month, hasn't it?"

Naruto choked, then spent a moment thinking before managing a reply. "I've gotten better!"

Kakashi picked up where he left off. "Uh-huh. So you broke the client's ceremonial stone?"

"The old woman forgave you, but she doesn't want you anywhere near her family grave again."

Sakura covered her mouth to stifle a laugh, her shoulders shaking.

Naruto stared open-mouthed, then finally managed to say, "That was... that stone was already about to crack!"

"Hey, can we stop talking about that? When do we get a new mission?"

Anko patted Naruto on the head. "Lord Hokage said that once you finish this mission, you'll get a C-rank one!"

Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were instantly drawn to her words.

Naruto jumped up, shouting excitedly, "Really?! Then let's hurry up and get this mission done!"

The sound of the Naka River echoed through the woods. The air was thick with the bitter fragrance of herbs, mingled with the musty scent of fallen leaves that had been decomposing for years.

Sasuke formed a hand seal resembling a flying bird.

"Nue."

A mass of darkness shot out of the mud and streaked straight up toward the canopy, the pressure of its passage whipping several leaves away.

Sasuke looked up.

A large bird stood on the branch closest to the ground.

It was bigger than an ordinary hawk, with orange-red feathers. Its face looked less like a bird's and more like some kind of stone statue.

Nue glanced down at Sasuke, then turned its head and scanned the entire farm.

Caterpillars crawled across the ground, secreting fluid. Several beetle larvae writhed in the leaf litter, and a cocoon hung from a branch in the distance.

Nue's pupils contracted.

"Such... such filth!"

Nue's voice was higher than that of the other shikigami. It drew out every syllable, its tone rising slightly at the end.

It leaped from the branch and hovered about a handspan above the ground, its wings fluttering faintly as it held perfectly still.

"Sasuke, you summoned me just to clean up maggots like these?"

Sasuke pointed to a giant aphid on a herb in the distance. "That's just an aphid."

"I don't want to know what it is!"

Nue flapped its wings sharply and drifted back half a meter, still maintaining its elegant poise.

"I refuse."

"Refusal denied."

"I! Re! Fuse!" Nue flapped its wings once with every word, its voice rising higher and higher.

"My wings were made to chase lightning above the clouds! My sharp talons exist to tear apart any filth that dares defile the sky! My—"

Its tail feathers brushed against the bark of a tree behind it. There was a small patch of moss on the bark.

Nue fell silent mid-sentence. It looked down at the blue-green flecks of moss clinging to its tail feathers, then let out a piercing shriek.

"I'm dirty! Aaaah—!"

Nue plunged headfirst into the Naka River, sending up a spray of water.

A moment later, it shot out of the river, drenched from head to toe, with water still dripping from its tail feathers.

"Clean." Nue sighed in relief.

"Sasuke." Nue's voice had regained its elegance and composure, though its eyelids still twitched faintly. "Send me back."

Naruto had been crouching nearby, watching the whole time. He pointed at Nue, who was about to wipe its wings again, and shouted, "This guy seems even more pretentious than you, Sasuke!"

Nue turned to glare at him. "Blondie, what did you just say?!"

"I said you're pretentious! Even more than Sasuke—"

A bolt of blue lightning struck the ground by Naruto's feet.

"Insult me again, and the next strike won't hit the ground."

At that moment, a swarm of palm-sized flying insects surged out from deep in the woods. Their wings buzzed louder and louder as they drew closer.

Nue whipped around. Dark purple lightning burst from deep in its throat, enveloping the entire swarm in midair.

When the lightning faded, all the insects had been reduced to ash, which drifted evenly through the air.

"A rabble." Nue folded its wings and landed gracefully where it had been.

Nue lowered its head and spotted a stem crawling with insects. The edges of several holes eaten into its leaves were ragged.

"So ugly." Nue's voice began to tremble.

"The damaged edges are uneven. Four holes on the left, only three on the right..."

Nue suddenly snapped, trying to poke the holes in the leaf back into symmetry with its claws.

"Why?! Why couldn't you have been eaten symmetrically?!" Its claw jabbed into the largest hole.

Just then, Naruto came around the corner after finishing off the bugs in his hands. He happened to walk along the edge of a mossy patch and stepped on a small area of young moss, leaving a clear footprint.

"Hmm?" Naruto kept walking, completely unaware. Nue suddenly appeared behind him, wings spread as its orange pupils fixed on the footprint in the moss.

"A human footprint." Nue's voice trembled. "An irregular shape..."

It jabbed the tip of its wing at the footprint. "Make it symmetrical again!"

Naruto took a step back, scraping his heel against the pebble-covered ground.

A few small stones scattered into an irregular pattern.

Nue stiffly turned its head, then swooped toward the stones and quickly nudged them around with its claws.

It neatly arranged the stones in a perfect line, with exactly equal spacing and a uniform gradation of color.

Sasuke watched Nue precisely place the last stone at the end of the line, then wedge each neatly arranged stone into a crack in the ground to keep it in place. Finally, it let out a long breath.

"Much better."

Naruto stared at Nue, utterly speechless.

"Hey, Sasuke, what's with your summoning this time..."

"Not cute at all. Black's way cuter."

"Blondie." Nue elegantly turned its face aside. "You look absolutely hideous."

"Good thing I don't have to help you wipe yourself clean. I'd hate to catch your bad luck."

Naruto wiped his face clean and glared at Nue, about to fire back, when White Dog ambled back from the other side of the woods with a bag of collected insect eggs in its mouth.

"Are you two done fighting? We've already filled five baskets with cocoons over there. Oh, and we brought your backpack, too."

Black Dog followed behind, carrying Naruto's backpack in its mouth.

It set the backpack down at Naruto's feet, then casually looked toward Nue. "If you're not busy, help me turn the soil in that herb garden over there."

"Turn the soil?" Nue stared down in disbelief. "Why should I take part in such crude labor?"

"Because we're companions." Black Dog offered no further explanation.

Nue stood frozen, its crest bristling even more than before.

It anxiously pressed down every scrap of leaf litter left on the ground and paced back and forth several times.

White Dog looked back at it and grinned. "You're making a fool of yourself, you elegant freak of a bird."

Nue snapped its wings shut and forced itself to stand straight. "...Companions? All right, Black. I'll help you, but I'm not touching the dirt!"

Sakura was transplanting a slightly wilted herb seedling into a freshly dug plot with Round Deer. Hearing their exchange, she couldn't help laughing.

"Sasuke's summoning creatures really do have one stubborn personality after another."

A faint scuff of footsteps suddenly came from overhead.

A glint of black flashed in Sasuke's eyes. White Dog had already flattened its ears against the ground out of instinct. A few breaths later, it raised its head and gave him a low whine.

In the tall grass on the opposite bank of the Naka River, Kakashi leaned against a tree trunk, flipping through his book as he glanced toward the farm.

"Not bad. They didn't destroy all the herbs."

Anko crouched on a branch nearby. She had finished her dumplings, and casually crumpled the empty paper bag in her hand.

She looked toward the farm, then at the tall grass in the distance, and furrowed her brows.

"Those minnows sure are persistent. They've been watching for a month and still aren't bored."

"Can't be helped. Danzo had a rabbit watching him even when he went to the bathroom. Now he's finally found a chance to spy on Sasuke instead."

Kakashi tilted his head. "Let him watch. Sasuke doesn't care anyway."

Anko burst out laughing. "Kakashi-senpai, where did you hear that Danzo had a rabbit watching him when he went to the bathroom?"

Kakashi looked up at the sky. "Well... you know, I was still in Anbu not long ago."

"And Anbu can ask Escaping Rabbit for information."

At the edge of the farm, the Escaping Rabbit clones had finished covering every area.

Each Escaping Rabbit crouched at its assigned spot, piling the collected pest carcasses into neat little conical heaps.

The original Escaping Rabbit crouched at the entrance to the woods, tilting its head as it watched Nue try to break a bug's chipped shell into a perfect hexagon.

"Nue's really focused."

Nue didn't answer. All its attention was on the shell.

Sasuke stood in the center of the farm, looking over the reports the Escaping Rabbits had handed in.

Ten baskets of insect eggs, seven piles of pest carcasses, and forty-two damaged herb plants. Of those, twenty-six had been salvageable and were replanted in the garden.

Nue landed elegantly behind Sasuke, its tail feathers spread across the gravel like a luxurious dark green skirt.

"Sasuke, there's something I need to make clear."

"Go ahead."

"I can't tolerate the slightest imperfection. If I'm really going to help you fight those filthy things in the future, the mission site must be cleaned up in advance. Otherwise, I'd rather you summon that reckless black one."

White Dog turned around and glared at it. "Who are you calling reckless?! You obsessive freak of a bird!"

"Just telling the truth." Nue elegantly preened its wind-ruffled crest. "Better than being a beast who can't even lick its own tail clean."

"You—"

Black Dog pinned White Dog down with a paw.

"You can't win," Black Dog said calmly.

"Who says I can't win?!"

"It can fly."

White Dog fell silent.

Round Deer crouched beside Sasuke. The bug-shaped shadows in all four of its eyes had gradually faded.

"I didn't need to heal many times today. We kept the herb damage rate below ten percent." Round Deer's voice was steady, and its eyes didn't dart around anymore. Among the shikigami it knew well, it had gotten over its social anxiety.

"Nue talks a lot, but it's very efficient at killing bugs." Sasuke folded the mission report the Escaping Rabbit handed him.

"It just yells at them before every attack. It's noisy."

"I'm a very ceremonial person!" Nue called down from above.

Nue stood on a large rock, carefully preening the feathers at the tips of its wings. Its posture radiated an indescribable arrogance.

"The manner of a pest's death should match the filthiness of its life."

Naruto looked up at the bird, the corners of his mouth twitching. "Then next time, could you stop blowing things up right in front of me? I got bug guts all over my face."

"Oh." Nue paused, its crest drooping slightly. For once, it didn't talk back.

Two figures were hidden in the canopy nearby. Both wore Root's standard black uniforms and animal masks.

One wore a Wolf Mask, and the other wore a Badger Mask.

"The target is using summoned beasts to carry out a cleanup mission."

Badger Face lowered his voice and reported into the miniature communication device at his collar.

"We've observed five summoned beasts so far—a pair of black-and-white dogs, a swarm of white rabbits, a brown giant deer, and an orange bird."

"The orange bird hasn't appeared in Konoha before. It may be a new type of summoned beast," Danzo's deep voice came through the device.

"Keep observing. Focus on Sasuke Uchiha's chakra expenditure and the summoned beasts' range of independent movement."

"Understood."

Danzo looked over the notebook in his room, where every little detail about Sasuke Uchiha had been recorded.

"Orochimaru, do you want to take Sasuke away?"

"If Uchiha falls into your hands... I won't let you get what you want."

"Heh. If I killed him now, maybe you wouldn't attack Konoha."

"So when you attack Konoha, I'll make absolutely sure to kill Sasuke Uchiha!"