Chapter 33: First C-rank

After his little meet-up with the Hokage Naruto went to meet up with his team, they will be doing their first C-rank mission.

The usual requirement to take C-rank missions was to be a team for at least one year or to have successfully finished 50 D-rank missions and have your Jonin-sensei recommend you for a C-rank mission which didn't happen that often.

The fact that they had been a team for less than half a year and were already doing a C-rank mission was a testament to their skill as a team and as individuals.

"GOOD MORNING MY YOUTHFUL STUDENTS!" Guy shouted at his three genin students.

He was extremely proud of the progress the three had been making, he had to focus a bit more on Sasuke and Shino as they were far behind Naruto in terms of overall skill but he was happy to see that the two weren't affected badly and were instead motivated to catch up with their friend, true youthfulness in his eyes was never giving up and always being determined to achieve nothing but the best, no matter how slim the chances of succeeding were, and all three of his students showed that youthfulness.

Before either of his three students could reply Guy continued speaking "Today we will be doing our first C-rank mission, it will most likely be something like bandit extermination or an escort mission that shouldn't include any fighting so be prepared to either kill or be extremely bored for the next couple of days." he said seriously.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Shino nodded in equal seriousness, they knew that being a shinobi would involve killing, Sasuke and Shino had never killed before and Naruto wouldn't have any problems with killing since he had the Gamers Mind and had already taken care of a few "enemies".

Of course, Sasuke and Shino could probably never properly prepare themselves to kill humans as the life they lived was too sheltered for that.

Nonetheless, they were determined to succeed in their first C-rank.

They walked into the mission center and walked up to the Chunin that handed out missions.

The Chunin greeted them and was about to hand them their usual D-rank but was stopped by Guy.

"We're taking a C-rank today." Guy stated.

The Chunin had a surprised expression before he looked at the profiles of Naruto, Sasuke, and Shino, there he saw that they were indeed qualified to take C-ranks and handed them one of the newer C-ranks.

[You have received a quest.]

[C-rank Mission

Description: You are to find and exterminate a small camp of bandits that have been plaguing a town towards the border of the land of fire, you have a total of two weeks to complete this mission.

Rewards: 5000 EXP, 2500 Ryo

Failure condition: The bandits manage to escape, your death, one of your teammate's death]

[A/N: since some ppl are confused abt what failure condition means it's basically if any of those things happen you'd fail the quest, which is why death is always one of them, it doesn't necessarily mean that he dies if he fails the quest it's just a failure condition.]

The four of them read the mission parameters and they prepared themselves to head out to take care of the bandits.

Within ten minutes of receiving the mission Team 9 was already outside of the village heading towards the border of the fire country that sided the Land of Waters.

Since the situation in the Land of Water had worsened in recent years the civil war that was happening had started to affect surrounding countries and had weakened the Land of Water extremely, at first it seemed that the rebels were going to win within a couple of years but recent developments among the 7 swordsmen of the mist and changes in the Mizukage had increased the strength of Kirigakure while the rebels only had 1 Kage level shinobi, far from enough to deal with Kirigakure.

So while their mission wasn't of high difficulty there was a high chance to meet with rogue shinobi so it was actually surprising for this mission to be a C-rank, but Team 9 would accomplish its mission no matter what.

They took up a pace that would put some Chunin teams to shame and would arrive in approximately a day's time in Maru village, the place that had been raided by bandits, since all three of them had learned how to use Shushin they didn't have any problems travelling long distances quickly.

Not much had happened while they were traveling, they met some friendly merchants and that was pretty much it, Naruto was a bit let down, he was half expecting to be attacked by two shinobi that would jump out of a puddle of water but that never happened.

Guy gave the trio some tips about camping in the wild and with the air becoming moister and moister they knew that they would soon arrive at their destination.

"So Guy-sensei, how should we deal with the bandits when we find them?" Sasuke asked.

Guy smirked, "Well the first thing we have to do is gather information, we will try to find out about their numbers from the villagers and then try to find their hideout, with Shino's bugs and Naruto's chakra sensing we shouldn't have many problems on that part, from then on I will leave everything up to you three." Guy explained to them

The four arrived in the village and headed to the village head's house.

The village looked a little damaged with two buildings completely destroyed, the village chief was an old man of around 70, this spoke volumes in the shinobi world as most people wouldn't live past the age of 50 and only strong people would be able to survive that long.

They questioned the chief about what happened and were told that a group of 20 bandits had ransacked the village, killed a few villagers, and took some women with them.

This caused a dark expression to appear on all of their faces, the world of Shinobi was an ugly one, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows like Konoha, small villages had to live in fear of Shinobi and bandits as they were mostly powerless against them.

A fire lit up in team 9's heart as they were determined to exterminate the bandits that attacked their homeland.

They headed out immediately, with the help of Shino's Kikaichu they managed to follow the trace that the bandits left behind easily, and after an hour of following their trail Naruto felt their chakra signatures.

"I feel their signatures, there's a total of 29 signatures in the camp, 10 of them are all in 1 place, most likely where the women were taken and the rest vary in position, 4 are walking around the camp and most are in groups of three or four.

Then Naruto felt it, a humongous amount of chakra that approached the camp, it was comparable to his own, which surpassed even that of the Hokage.

While it wasn't as powerful and large as the fox's chakra it was definitely comparable to it in corruptedness.

It was one of the darkest chakra signatures that he had ever seen, and it looked like that showed on his face as Sasuke, Shino and Guy looked at Naruto with concern.

"What did you sense, Naruto?" Guy asked.

With a serious expression, Naruto replied, "There's no way that this is a simple bandit camp, there's a chakra signature that surpasses my own, and you know that I am a Jinchuriki."

Guy's expression darkened, it seemed that this mission wasn't that simple after all.

Before they could do anything else Naruto shouted, "The signature is approaching us!"

"Shit! this isn't youthful at all! I will need the three of you to run away!" Guy shouted at them.

Naruto, Shino, and Sasuke took off running without hesitation, they knew that their lives were currently on the line so they didn't argue.

Before they even set their first foot to run a dark and raspy voice rang throughout the clearing they were in.

"Leaving already? I haven't even had my fun yet, those bandits were barely able to satisfy me, perhaps I should cut off your legs so you little rats can't run away?"