Menma woke up to an insistent, loud, and downright insolent knocking at the door. The sound was less like a neighbor asking for salt and more like an enraged debt collector come to break down the door.
He cracked one eye open, stared at the ceiling, then shifted his gaze to the clock without lifting his head from the pillow. Five in the morning.
[Who in their right mind visits at five a.m.? Even cats are asleep at this hour.]
With a sigh that held more philosophical resignation than irritation, Menma reluctantly got up. Every movement echoed with lazy protest in his muscles. He yawned and shuffled toward the door like a condemned prisoner on his way to execution.
In the hallway he ran into the equally drowsy girls. Karin looked as if she'd just been dragged out of a brawl with a typhoon: hair sticking out in every direction, eyes squinting, steps scattered and unsure. She rubbed her eyes with a fist, which only made her look disarmingly helpless.
Next to her stumbled Naruko. She didn't look any better, but she carried the crowning jewel of the picture — the yawning rabbit, Kaguya. The rabbit's ears drooped pitifully, and its face mirrored the same misery as its owners.
"Why'd you bring her?" Menma asked hoarsely, still half-asleep, jerking his chin toward the fluffy "weapon of mass adorableness."
"Used her instead of a plush toy," Naruko mumbled sleepily, yawning so wide it was like half her soul escaped. "Much cozier that way."
"I want that too," Karin admitted honestly, throwing a jealous glance at the bunny.
Meanwhile, the knocking on the door had escalated from "insistent" to "threateningly military." Another moment and the hinges might have given out.
"I'm coming already!" Menma barked, mustering his strength. He flung the temple door open, ready to unleash a portion of sarcasm.
On the threshold stood Yamato-sensei — fully geared, with a look on his face as if he'd just caught them at the scene of a crime.
"You certainly took your time," he said sternly, his voice carrying that jonin edge that made you want to shrink into the wall. "What if a war had broken out? What if the village were under attack? And here you stand yawning like fishermen after a drunken binge. Such behavior is unacceptable for shinobi!"
[Exactly what I needed — a lecture at five a.m.] Menma grimaced inwardly, but out loud he asked more politely:
"Yamato-sensei, what's going on?"
"A C-rank mission," the teacher declared solemnly, as though announcing something extraordinary. "Urgent."
Karin blinked, not immediately processing the words.
"A mission?" she echoed, looking as if Yamato had just announced the end of the world. "But we only got back yesterday!"
"That doesn't matter," Yamato cut her off, his voice sharp as a blade. "Sometimes special cases arise. Not every team is suitable. Ours is."
"No chance to refuse?" Menma asked, though he already knew the answer. Hope, after all, dies last.
"No," Yamato confirmed grimly, as if stamping a verdict. "You have exactly one hour to get ready. Meet me at the village gates."
And without waiting for more questions or exasperated sighs, the jonin vanished into thin air, leaving behind the sensation of having been clubbed over the head.
The Uzumaki trio stared at the empty doorway for several seconds, each digesting the news in their own way.
"At this rate we'll lose all our shop clients," Menma muttered darkly and trudged off to the shower, deciding hot water might help reconcile him with cruel reality.
"Now we need to figure out where to leave you, Kaguya-chan," Naruko hugged the bunny to her chest and headed back to her room, whispering to the animal something like: "Don't worry, little one, it's just mean Yamato."
"I'm already starting to hate this job," Karin concluded and slammed the temple door shut loudly, making her protest against the system clear.
///
An hour later the Uzumaki Trio stood fully equipped at Konoha's gates. Their expressions radiated such a lethal mix of fury and sleep deprivation that even local cats wisely kept their distance.
One of the gate guards, unlucky enough to be on shift nearby, hid behind a newspaper, hoping that if he didn't see them, they wouldn't see him.
At last Yamato appeared from the direction of the Hokage Tower. Walking beside him was a young man with chestnut hair, dressed in the standard blue shinobi uniform. His forehead protector bore the symbol of the Hidden Waterfall Village. To put it mildly, the boy didn't look impressive: slouched, eyes darting, movements jittery. He stuck close behind Yamato's back as if this bunch of teenagers might eat him alive.
"Here's our mission," Yamato said, pointing to the companion. "Meet Shibuki. Leader of the Hidden Waterfall Village. Our task is to escort him home."
The trio stared at the boy as if he were a peculiar museum exhibit.
"Leader?" Menma asked with doubt, narrowing his eyes. "Isn't a village leader supposed to be its strongest shinobi? Then why does he need protection from a couple of bandits?"
"That's not important!" Shibuki squeaked so sharply that even Kaguya, poking her head out of Naruko's backpack, twitched her ears. He categorically avoided looking at Menma. "I paid for the mission, and you're obligated to protect me!"
"He's right, Menma," Yamato intervened calmly, placing a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. The light but firm squeeze clearly said: Don't argue. "We don't question our clients' motives."
Menma stayed silent. But his expression made it perfectly clear he wasn't liking any of this one bit.
"I still don't get it," Naruko drawled, yawning so wide her jaw cracked. "It's just a regular escort mission. Why us? Yamato-sensei, there are tons of other teams."
"The leader of a village is a person of the highest importance," Yamato explained politely, as if reading from a handbook.
Shibuki immediately straightened his back and puffed himself up like a peacock that had just been crowned.
"Only the best graduates of this year can protect him," the teacher went on, carefully avoiding the looks on his students' faces.
Karin, with the air of a model student, raised her hand like someone eager to ask a question "that might be on the exam."
"Shibuki-san, forgive me for being nosy," she began in her politest voice. "But how old are you?"
"Twenty," Shibuki answered calmly, once again puffing out his chest.
"Wow!" Karin said with genuine amazement. "To already be the leader of a whole village at that age? You must be incredibly talented, almost like our Minato-san."
Shibuki nearly choked on his own smugness. For a moment his eyes sparkled with a vision of golden statues erected in his honor.
Menma lazily scratched his cheek and added evenly:
"My father became Hokage because he could kill a thousand shinobi in a second."
The smile on Shibuki's face froze like a crack in porcelain.
"You're Minato's son?!" he gasped, eyes bulging, looking ready to faint at the very thought.
Ignoring him, Menma narrowed his eyes and went on:
"And I still don't get why a 'monster' like you needs an escort made up of kids."
Yamato coughed into his fist and gently nudged the client forward, shielding him from further interrogation.
"That's enough questions. The trip to the Waterfall Village isn't short. But if we don't get distracted, and the client keeps up the pace, then at top speed we'll make it in a day."
///
Of course, making it in a day was out of the question.
Turned out Shibuki was a world-class coward. He flinched at every rustle, and every branch stirred by the wind was, in his mind, a deadly ambush. The journey turned into an endless string of stops and bush inspections.
"We have to ensure the client's safety," Yamato repeated like a broken record, his even tone somehow more grating than Shibuki's screams.
At first Naruko tried to amuse herself: she'd suddenly yell "Enemies!" or "They're following you!" into the darkness. Each time Shibuki fainted so fast that any anesthesiologist would've been jealous.
But after the third revival, Naruko sighed with despair and gave up. There was no fun left — the client spent more time unconscious than awake.
Their next stop happened for no reason at all.
"I saw movement there!" Shibuki shrieked hysterically, pointing a trembling finger at a bush. "There's definitely an enemy! It could be a rogue ninja!"
"Where would a rogue ninja even come from here?!" Menma's voice came out low and growling. "My sister and I are sensors. Do you get that? We'd sense enemies a mile away."
"Check anyway!" the client wheezed, clutching Karin like a lifeline.
"Do it," Yamato said wearily, sounding like a man resigned to the eternity of this circus.
Menma snorted, picked up a pebble from the road, and lazily flicked it into the bushes.
"CAW!" An offended crow burst out of the leaves, flapping furiously.
"Kyaa!" Shibuki shrieked in a high-pitched, girlish voice and instantly hid behind Karin's back.
For a full minute the whole team stared at him with the same expression: a blend of confusion, disdain, and a faint desire to drown him in the nearest puddle.
"Yamato-sensei!" Naruko shot her hand up like a schoolgirl. "We need to return to Konoha immediately!"
"And why would that be?" he asked calmly.
"Looks like we forgot our client's balls!" she declared in a perfectly serious tone.
For a moment silence hung in the air. Then Karin snorted into her hand, and Menma outright laughed. Under Yamato's strict glare both quickly quieted down, but the smug grins stayed.
Shibuki flushed scarlet to the roots of his hair but said nothing.
"Let's keep moving," Yamato said dryly, forcing everyone onward.
The road dragged endlessly. Sometimes they had to stop just to let the client "cry quietly in the corner" — it had already become a routine part of the route.
Menma, hands shoved in his pockets, muttered lazily:
"Doesn't anyone else find this suspiciously familiar? A basic escort mission. Client acts weird, hides details, trembles nonstop. Perfect setup for one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist to jump out of the bushes in an hour."
"A swordsman?!" Shibuki squealed, jerking like he'd been stung. "Where?!"
"There's no swordsman," Yamato cut in firmly, shooting Menma a sharp look while soothing the client. "My students just haven't recovered from the last mission yet."
Menma snorted but kept pressing:
"Still, Shibuki-san, admit it: your behavior is suspicious. You're clearly expecting something. And the simple fact that the leader of a village hires kids from another village as bodyguards… doesn't sound like a plan. More like a recipe for disaster."
"I don't owe you any explanations!" Shibuki huffed, lifting his chin and striding ahead. But the moment a branch snapped somewhere, he immediately scurried back, pressing against Menma like a kitten clinging to a couch.
[If this is the Waterfall's best defender, even Akamaru could take them over.]
The road dragged on, and at first it was only Menma pressing the client with questions. But soon Naruko and Karin joined in. Both of them looked as if every new shriek from Shibuki about "suspicious bushes" caused them physical pain.
"Shibuki-san," Karin began in a sweet tone that carried a hint of steel, "of course we understand that safety comes first, but maybe we could stop halting every five steps?"
"Yeah," his sister chimed in. "We've already seen every crow, squirrel, and even one hedgehog in this forest."
Shibuki swallowed nervously and averted his eyes.
Menma, on the other hand, pressed without embellishment:
"To be honest, your behavior looks less like caution and more like you're hiding something. Isn't that right?"
And, surprisingly, Yamato didn't interrupt their interrogation. Apparently, he too was sick of hearing "Something's rustling!" every three minutes. He kept his polite, stone-like mask, but the twitching vein on his temple betrayed how badly the jonin wanted to shout louder than the client.
Under the barrage of questions, Shibuki finally broke. His voice trembled, but the words still came out:
"I… I… When I was a child, I lost my father. He was the village leader before me… and ever since then I've had… a pathological fear of dying."
He fell silent, waiting for a reaction.
"And?" Menma raised a brow.
"And… in our village, the title of leader is inherited. So after his death I… automatically took his place…"
A heavy pause followed. Even Naruko couldn't think of anything to say.
Menma frowned, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
[So that's it. Cowardly, useless Shibuki — a direct example of how flawed the inheritance system is. But… there's also a benefit. In Konoha it's different: anyone can become Hokage. The result? Intrigue, conspiracies, assassinations. Now imagine if it were hereditary. After Tobirama's death, Tsunade would've automatically become the Third Hokage. Maybe there would've been less rot in the village.]
///
After two grueling days of "traveling with a coward," Team Eleven finally reached their destination. Before them loomed a massive waterfall — a white wall of roaring water, as if nature itself had set up a barrier against anyone daring to enter. Behind that curtain lay the Hidden Waterfall Village.
"Shinigami…" Naruko groaned, barely standing on her feet. "Sign your stupid papers and let us go! These were the most boring two days of my life! Even Iruka's lectures are more fun!"
Yamato unrolled the mission scroll, carefully shielding it from the spray so the ink wouldn't smear. Shibuki pulled out a pen but didn't rush. His gaze flicked over the twins' faces — the same ones who had been mocking him the whole way. Then it drifted to the trash swirling lazily in the whirlpools near the shore. A vengeful smile crept across his face.
[Oh. I don't like that look.]
"Yamato-san," Shibuki drawled, narrowing his eyes, "do you accept additional missions?"
"As squad leader, I have the right to take add-ons for a reasonable fee," Yamato replied with flawless politeness. "What do you have in mind, Shibuki-san?"
"I want"—his smile turned downright indecent—"your genin to clean the trash out of the waterfall. I'll pay as a standard D-rank mission."
[That bastard!]
And of course, Yamato didn't disappoint.
"Shinobi never refuse extra money," he said, making adjustments to the scroll. "Genin, get to work."
"I hate you," Karin hissed, glaring at Shibuki as if ready to drown him in that very waterfall. "You think I'm going into that muck? Ha! Mass Shadow Cl—"
Her words were cut off. Menma calmly placed a hand over her fingers, stopping her from forming the seals.
"Save your chakra," he said quietly, not looking at Karin but staring off toward the trees. "We'll need it. Because four enemies are closing in fast."