36 First time

It is time for Team Butterlfy's first mission.

Man, what a lame team name.

It's only been a few days since our team was made, and I haven't really had the time to practice much Fuinjutsu.

Sike!

I lied.

Gotcha.

ha ha.

Anyway, thanks to the shadow clone jutsu, I've been able to keep practicing Fuinjutsu even when I'm busy doing other stuff.

Not that it matters yet, since it's only been a few days and it's not like that's enough time to improve in Fuinjutsu.

I still haven't gone to the Uzumaki yet, I want to finish incorporating what I learned.. recently before I seek them out, which is to say sealing scrolls.

Anyway, since we are a stealth squad, rather than a general one, we don't have to go to support the front lines anymore, instead, our current job is to infiltrate Iwa and disrupt some supply lines, well, only the one, but if the opportunity arises then we will obviously do more.

Though we were also given a bunch of storage scrolls, because why destroy when you can steal? The main point is to make sure the Iwa front is lacking in supplies, but if we can get more stuff for Konoha while we're at it, then why not?

It's a good thing that the one thing I 𝘤𝘢𝘯 make is explosion seals, so we all have an amount of boom boom that would make anyone in the explosion corps jealous.

We met up at one of the secret ANBU exits in the north of the city, er, village, and start tree hopping north at a fairly sedate pace, though a Genin would fall behind easily.

My stamina still isn't amazing, but I can at least run half the country like this without too much difficulty, so long as we're not sprinting it's not a problem and we stop to make camp anyway, it's a three day trip before we reach the border after all.

On the third day, early in the morning, Fox signals us as we're travelling, using a quick sign for when there isn't time to give a full explanation, this one means '𝘈𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵', though as I am captain here it's more of a question, since I can decide it's not worth it and keep to our mission.

Obviously, I don't do that, we haven't even left our borders yet, even if we are close, there's no reason not to help a fellow Konoha-nin out.

Signalling such to my squad, we move to assist while Fox hands out the details, pun very much intended.

𝘌𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯, 𝘗𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘛𝘸𝘰, 𝘊𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘯, 𝘑𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘯, 𝘔𝘪𝘹.

Alright, so eleven Iwa-nin and two from Konoha, so long as they aren't ANBU it should be fine to deal with half a dozen normal Jonin and half a dozen Chunin.

When we arrive, Hound and Fox jump in first, cutting off the Iwa-nin from our Konoha-nin by standing between them, they don't do anything, just stand there, menacingly.

While they work as a distraction, because everyone is stupid and the apparent kids from Konoha decide not to run away, while the Iwa-nin start shouting and posturing, I'm glad I made sure my squad understand that most ninja don't deserve the title and are idiots that can easily be goaded into talking instead of fighting.

Me and Mantis move around to their back, planning to slowly take them out one by one from the back until they notice, unfortunately that plan goes to shit after we both take our first victims, because one of the kids we just save, cries out and point right at us!

Fucking hell, I am going to complain to Lion until he complains to Takeshi so he can complain to the Hokage for me, we need to teach our shinobi at least 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 subtlety, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦.

With that plan down the drain, Fox and Hound rush forward, catching a nin each by surprise, before engaging in close combat, meanwhile Mantis starts shadowing circles around the fight while I drop back and pull out a handful of my thick senbons and make two shadow clones, who also have their senbons drawn.

Me and my clones take some high ground as Hound and Fox fend off the seven, 𝘴𝘪𝘹 enemy nin, Mantis already hard at work.

Once I'm high above the fight, me and my two clones start raining down a hail of pointy sticks, two fall immediately, not having expected it, while the other four manage to stay alive a while longer, but with matching numbers they just didn't stand a chance.

The difference between these cannon fodder shinobi and us ANBU is simply too large.

After a moment of silence, I remember that I'm the squad leader and need to go talk to those kids we just saved.

So, I jump down and silently land in-between them, making the both of them fall back in shock with a yelp, not giving them a chance to speak I just say what I need and immediately leave.

"return to konoha and report in, do 𝘯𝘰𝘵 describe us, just say you were saved by passing konoha-nin."

Our mission is a secret after all, belatedly I hear one of the kids shouting a thank you to our departing backs as we continue heading north.

Overall, though, I am rather pleased with how well we fought together, especially Fox and Hound, their teamwork was seamless.

It's a good thing too, because we will likely have to split up.

The reason stealth squads are set up the way they are, is so when approaching a target, the sensor can give information to the two who will be doing the actual stealth, and then the combat specialist can stay back with the sensor in case their detected.

That's why it's important that Fox is a long-distance sensor, because he lacks our stealth capabilities him and Hound can't get too close to the target, lest they be discovered.

The rest of the travel is relatively event free up until we cross the border.

By the way, Fox is actually a really good sensor, probably about as good as Hawk, even if he's nowhere as good in a fight as she is, but with his help we managed to dodge around a few patrols, keeping them almost as far as Fox can sense them, all until we reached a small village.

According to our intel, a supply line will be coming through here on its way to the front, so we find an unused building and make ourselves comfortable to wait for nightfall.

The rest of the day was pretty boring, we can't exactly be loud, so we only talked with sign, and I passed the time by introducing the boys to a game called Liar's Dice, which we play until sunset.

They really enjoy it too, probably because we're shinobi and it's a game of bluff, maybe I should bring it up to Gecko? He'd probably be willing to help me introduce the game to others in ANBU.

Anyway, the sun does eventually set, and with night time upon us, me and Mantis sneak out with a bunch of explosive tags and bury them under the main road in the village before returning to our little attic that we're squatting in.

Now, we wait.

Two days later and I'm bored as hell, we can't even do anything for risk of exposure, so we've just been sitting in this musty attic playing Liar's Dice over and over again, eating rations or stealing from the locales if we want something tastier.

However, that boredom comes to an end today, as Fox has noticed a large group approaching today, which means he and Hound have now left the village, keeping their distance so as to not be noticed, while me and Mantis are ready and waiting to activate the explosive seals.

The caravan looks fairly normal, except instead of being led by civilians, everyone there is a shinobi.

The sound of their march is annoyingly loud, since they're ninja, they should be quieter, this will never stop bothering me, will it?

Eventually, the procession comes to a stop on the middle of the village to quickly gather pre prepared supplies, only to find said supplies mostly missing, it would be completely gone, but we left some just in case someone did a quick check, they would see a wall of supplies, blind to the fact that everything behind it is missing.

Whilst they're shouting about betraying their lands and the villagers are crying about how they don't know what happened I hear the Shinobi in charge shout 'Well they can't have just grown legs and ran away!?!' which almost makes me laugh out loud, so I decide it's best to stop procrastinating and set the trap off.

Giving a signal to Mantis, we both wait a count of two, one, go.

On the mark, we both bolt towards where we know Fox and Hound are, we only have a few seconds until the seals go off, it's surprisingly hard to rig a long timer to these things.

Only a moment after we've left the village boundary do we hear the 𝘉𝘖𝘖𝘔 behind us, which only prompts us to run faster, even burning chakra using shunshin.

We meet up with the others but don't stop running, they fall in line too, and despite expecting Fox to tell us that we're surrounded by a massive army or something, we are left unmolested until we make it to our rendezvous point in a random small cave.

only once Fox assures us that no one's around do we relax, now we have to wait even longer in this cave for the heat to die down a little before we have to journey back, killing any Iwa-nin we come across on the way, rather than avoiding them.

After we've settled down for the wait and put up a Genjutsu that should make it a little harder for a sensor to notice anything inside of our cave, Mantis turns to me as I start getting out the stuff for yet another game of Liar's Dice, there really isn't much else to do.

"hey, butterfly-taichou, i've been wondering something."

"and that something is?"

"why do you use kawarimi so much? i mean you're clearly capable of shunshin, and that's much easier to use in combat for basically the same effect, except you don't have to swap with something. it's just better?"

That's actually a good question, and the answer is pretty simple.

"shunshin is better than kawarimi, yes, however, kawarimi uses less chakra than a shunshin does, not to mention if your opponent disappears then you will look for him, but if your opponent is replaced by something then you 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 spend even a small moment before you look for him, distracted by whatever has appeared, as well as that, if my opponent is used to me using kawarimi, then i could simply henge into a rock and he will look away, thinking i've swapped again, leaving him open to an attack. shunshin is surely a better jutsu than kawarimi, but it doesn't allow for the same amount of trickery that i like to use."

My squad seems thoughtful at my words, and I'm happy that maybe I've taught them a little something about misdirection.

Of course, the moment is almost immediately ruined by Hound opening his mouth.

"huh, i always just assumed you got motion sickness or something from shunshin or that you felt only using academy jutsu brought you closer to your true self.. a child."

I fucking hate this guy so goddamn much.

And like so, we spent the next week bantering and playing Liar's Dice over and over again.

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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Please give a review! only need a few more!

My house is so cold and the heating doesn't work, I'm wearing layers and shivering, DAMN HOLES IN THE WALLS. anyway im moving house soon (yay) so idk if my upload shedule will be effected or nah.

Also did you know if you press 'comment' when hovering on a paragraph, and then press the 'comment' box, then the next pop up that comes up, not only has a box for you to type in, but on top of that it also shows a bit of the paragraph you're responding to, you can then highlight and copy and paste from that excerpt, try it out using the line below! >.<

https://ko-fi.com/bored_works