Tag: anonymous

About four hours into their first C-rank mission, Team Seven gets attacked and separated.

This is not entirely unexpected: Team Sevens are traditionally cursed with missions that go awry in the most bizarre manner possible.

What is unexpected is that it’s, somehow, all Konohamaru-sensei’s fault.

—

Teamwork is slow going–they’re not so much a team as they are a group of random peers shoved together and told to do their best.

Konohamaru-sensei doesn’t understand; after all, his genin team was made of his childhood friends and tutor.

Sakako is unused to cooperating with people who aren’t already dead, Boruto is unused to cooperating with people in general, and Mitsuki is just unused to people, period.

—

Sakako wakes up, sans weapons and shoes, on a cold cement ground three feet from an impatiently fuming Boruto, also sans shoes–sans jacket, too, which is odd.

“Tch,” he clicks his tongue, turns away, “Took you long enough,” he adds.

Annoyance or worry or both, she doesn’t know him well enough to guess, but when she sits up, cloth shifts and falls, black and red pooling into her lap–and that gives her some hint.

—

For all that Sakako has grown up on stories about her parents and Naruto-oji and their version of Team Seven–more like family than coworkers, that’s for sure–she doesn’t know Boruto outside the context of the Academy.

Just because their parents were friends, doesn’t mean they will be, and for years she was content to let their paths be separate.

Clearly, that is not what fate has in mind.

—

As Boruto hastily shrugs on his jacket, he gives her a rundown of the situation, which isn’t much: a solid cement room, no window, and a metal door that opens from the outside only.

Seal-enforced.

This is no storage room.

—

Mitsuki is easier to deal with, even if she doesn’t particularly like him. He’s a bit of a fanboy of her parents, and while she loves them, she doesn’t want to talk about them all the time like Mitsuki seems to.

Between her and Boruto is the weight of legends and an awkward lack of relationship to support it.

—

“Can’t you break it?” Boruto asks, tone grating and sneering–it’s taken her a while to realize that he isn’t actually trying to start a fight, that’s just what his voice sounds like.

Sakako examines the door, the complex scrawl of only half a seal–it only opens when the corresponding key half is nearby–shakes her head, they won’t be leaving through the door.

The walls, though, are a different story.

—

Sakako has geniuses on all sides of her family, can recognize it even when its hidden behind sleepy, lazy eyes and slouching shoulders. She can see it in Boruto, underneath his anger and bluster, that gleam of a genius trying not to give it away.

She knows if he’d just stop focusing on his dad and start believing in himself, he’d be an even better shinobi… and probably much happier.

—

“I know some Earth jutsu,” she tells him, hands pressed to the cement walls, “But not enough to completely tunnel through… If I had my pouch–ink or a kunai or even a senbon–”

“What do you need?” Boruto asks, stepping up beside her, yet again sounding more antagonizing than he actually means.

She bites back her irritation–he’s actually trying to help, after all–and traces a finger over the wall, “If I had something to write or carve, I think I can make an array essentially seal up a portion of the stone and make a tunnel that way.”

—

Some things they inherit from their parents; genetics and habits, nature and nurture combined.

Other things they get despite their parentage.

Maybe that’s how her friendship with Boruto needs to begin.

—

“Hey,” Boruto says, pulling off his weird necklace, and holding the pendant between his fingers, “Would this work?” With a flare in chakra, the metal begins to glow, a sharpened tip coming into existence.

“Thought of it myself,” he smirks, which she normally finds annoying but which she’s grateful for now, “Just tell me what we need to do to get out of here.”

—

It only takes a couple of minutes to carve out a modified storage seal–more vanishing than storing at this point–and another few minutes to follow the sounds of shouting and find their sensei and remaining teammate, fighting the guards of the casino they were assigned to investigate.

It takes even less time for them to join in the fray–even without their shoes or weapons, though Boruto finds those stashed away and tosses her her things.

Maybe when they get back to Konoha, she’ll teach him some fuinjutsu.

~

A/N: Some three sentence fic to fill this anon’s prompt–I originally started this as a next gen Team Seven fic, but it kept focussing more on Sakako and Boruto so…

It was harder to wrangle than I thought it would be, and I’m unsure if I got the feels across… and some of those sections are only “three sentences” if you’re being very generous. 😛

Hopefully next time will be better.