Filler is the Spice of Life

"Yo, old man! Whaddya have for us? Our first mission has got to be something exciting, right!?"

Ordinarily, Sakura would have acted as the straight man in the standup comedy group that was their three-man team, but she was just too tired. She stifled a yawn; she hadn't managed to get too much sleep after celebrating all night long. Women could just keep going and going and going and going… Sakura was fairly sure the system had dinged at some point during the festivities and told her something, but that night was a total haze. And then, completely out of nowhere, the sun had come up, so she had been forced to get up for work.

At any rate, after passing their Jōnin-sensei's personal test, Team Seven had officially become Team Kakashi, so they obviously had to go on missions now. Except, Naruto was bound to be disappointed by the kind of mission that was assigned to rookies…

"Naruto!" Iruka-sensei shouted furiously. "Show some respect to the Lord Third!"

A temporary Mission Assignment Desk had been put up inside the academy to offer the newly graduated Genin the opportunity to get used to the mission system. During this transitional period for young Genin, the Hokage, assisted by a handful of the Chūnin teachers, would assign them missions in person, to make them feel important and valued.

For the Will of Fire, and all of that nonsense.

Sakura studied Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, attentively; according to the message boards from her past life, he and Danzō were supposed to be the source of the village's rot. However, just by looking at him, there wasn't much to see except a kindly old man. The man hid his true nature well… or maybe the netizens from Earth were just imagining things.

"It's fine, it's fine," the Third Hokage laughed it off. "Young ones are still full of spunk; you can't blame them for it…" He coughed. "Anyway, the first assignment for Team Kakashi will be… cleaning up the rubbish in Senju Park."

"A filler arc already?" Sakura couldn't help but blurt out.

"A what arc?" the Third Hokage repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!" Naruto cried out, aghast. "Is cleaning a secret code word for taking out bandits, or somethin'? Please tell me we're not actually…"

"…picking up trash?" Kakashi smiled under his mask. "That's right, Naruto, we are! And by we, I mean you!"

Sasuke merely grunted.

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Ten minutes later, Team Kakashi had reached Senju Park. The area used to be Konoha's Senju clan's land, but since they had mysteriously run out of people to occupy it, it had defaulted back to the village, which was why the large forested area was now a public park for everyone to enjoy. Yay for nationalization!

Sakura grumbled to herself as she picked up a piece of discarded rubbish; non-combustible trash; she threw it into the corresponding pile. She sighed; this was obviously just filler, so why couldn't she just skip to the next episode, shannaro! There were no breasts to steal here, only trees… and trash.

Ooh, a porn magazine! What a lucky find!

Sakura began discreetly leafing through its contents with a long stick to avoid having to touch it directly. Meanwhile, Sasuke had lost his patience; he was voicing his displeasure to Kakashi, who was lying on the grass and reading erotic literature instead of helping out.

"I don't see how worthless missions such as this one are going to help improve our skills," Sasuke was telling him coldly.

"Worthless, huh?" said Kakashi lazily. He turned to the next page in his book. "You misunderstand the point of this mission, Sasuke. The purpose of this mission isn't to train you, it's literally just to clean the park. Training is training, and work is work. But if you want to train, just look at Naruto; he's got the right idea."

Kakashi pointed at the dozen Naruto clones who were running around and picking up rubbish off the ground; he was training the Shadow Clone Jutsu at the same time he was working. Except, he was doing a really bad job of it.

"Naruto, how many times do I have to tell you!" Sakura growled, stamping her foot. "Burnable rubbish goes in this pile, and non-burnable rubbish goes in that pile! Now I'm going to have to root through all of this and separate it all over again!"

And that's when Sakura got an idea. Kakashi was supposed to be their sensei, but Sasuke was obviously his favourite. So, with the pretext of training while working, she might as well try to actually make him teach her something… Sakura approached Kakashi, who was still locked in debate with Sasuke.

"Kakashi-sensei, I want to learn the Fireball Jutsu," Sakura said, trying to make her voice sound as cutesy as possible. "To incinerate the combustible rubbish. Pretty please?"

Ugh… acting cute was humiliating…

"But I don't want to," Kakashi answered lackadaisically.

"Why not!?" Sakura sputtered. She had asked nicely, and everything!

And then the reason became obvious; to do the Great Fireball Jutsu, you had to breathe flames from your mouth. And since Kakashi didn't want to take off his mask in public, he couldn't use the technique unless he wanted to turn his mask to ashes and give himself fourth-degree burns in the process…

Well, missing out on the Great Fireball Jutsu was no great loss; everyone knew fire style was basically useless; even the system said so. Even so, as someone who had lived their first life on Earth, where nobody had supernatural powers, Sakura couldn't help but want to use it; impressive-looking elemental Jutsu were very appealing to her.

"Sasuke, you teach her," said Kakashi lazily. "But don't waste too much time if she can't do it; I haven't tested your elemental affinities yet, and I'm fairly sure she wouldn't have enough chakra to do it anyway."

Sasuke had already surprised him by being to perform such a chakra-hungry technique at such an early age, but he was from the Uchiha; a clan bred for war, that had survived (debatably) since the war-torn era of the Warring States Period that predated the ninja villages. The Haruno family, on the other hand, were civilians. It wasn't impossible for civilians to be born with high amounts of latent chakra, but it was rare.

'Sensei…' Kakashi thought to himself.

Luckily for Sakura, Sasuke didn't mind sharing his Jutsu; the Great Fireball was an Uchiha original, but it was now common knowledge across the ninja continent. Besides, things such as Jutsu did not concern him one whit, not when he had much more important problems to consider…