But Kakashi actually allowed them to pass because the four showed coordination. Though it was very basic, but they still did and Kakashi realized that Rei, who was supposed to be the most lackluster in the group was the brightest of them all.
And this was picked up by Sasuke and Sakura too. Naruto of course, wasn't in any mood to think. He was just happy that he passed and wasn't expelled. That was all he feared. Kakashi had actually made him almost pee his pants when he said that he would fail him.
Thankfully Sasuke got so brain and gave that famous line that if he wanted Naruto to fail, then he should fail them all because it ant they failed as a team. Those words brought smile at the face of Rei.
At least, here he didn't need to intervene.
"Rei have you been hiding all this ti?" Sasuke asked after Kakashi dismissed them. He looked offended.
"Not exactly. I am just too lazy to compete. I told you. I want to survive. Not be the first in so class." Rei said, as a matter of fact. This offended a bit more to Sasuke than he showed. It ant that all his achievents might have ant nothing to Rei.
But then he rembered how he had mastered that jutsu and didn't show in the assessnt, and he felt a sense of reassurance. Or maybe that was a form of self encouragent. [A/N : That jutsu is Fire Style : Fire ball jutsu]
-----
The next several weeks afterward beca significantly more exhausting than Rei initially expected.
Not because the missions themselves were difficult. Quite the opposite honestly.
D-rank missions were glorified civilian chores disguised as ninja work. Catching animals. Cleaning things. Farming. Finding lost objects. Helping rchants.
At first Naruto absolutely hated it.
"This isn't ninja work!" Naruto shouted one morning while chasing after another runaway cat through Konoha streets. "This is torture!"
Sasuke looked equally annoyed though significantly quieter about it. Sakura anwhile simply followed along while trying to stay useful.
And then there was Rei. Who imdiately decided that if he was forced to do manual labour, he would at least optimize it properly.
The runaway cat mission itself beca the first example.
While Naruto and Sakura spent twenty minutes trying to physically chase the demon cat through half the village, Rei quietly disappeared for roughly five minutes before returning carrying a simple foldable cat trap alongside canned fish from the MCU.
"…What is that?" Sakura blinked.
"A solution." Rei replied calmly.
Sasuke narrowed his eyes slightly while watching him quietly place the trap near one of the alleyways.
Naruto anwhile looked deeply confused.
"…You can catch cats without running?"
"…Yes Naruto. Humanity evolved for a reason."
Three minutes later the cat walked directly into the trap voluntarily. Silence followed imdiately afterward.
Naruto looked emotionally betrayed by reality itself.
"…THAT'S CHEATING!"
"No." Rei calmly picked up the trapped cat afterward. "This is called intelligence."
Kakashi watching from nearby couldn't help the slight amusent in his visible eye. That pattern continued repeatedly afterward.
Rat infestation mission?
Rei quietly introduced proper bait systems and organized elimination routes instead of randomly chasing rats with sticks like Naruto initially suggested.
Farm irrigation mission?
Rei redesigned the water distribution path slightly using basic engineering concepts from his previous life, cutting their workload almost in half.
Storage transportation mission?
He introduced pulley support systems and balance distribution thods that made civilian workers stare at him like he was secretly so tiny engineer trapped inside a child body.
And slowly… Team 7 started adapting around him unconsciously.
Sakura beca increasingly curious regarding his thods. Naruto mostly called him a "weird genius raccoon." Sasuke anwhile quietly started paying attention more carefully.
Kakashi anwhile simply observed everything lazily while pretending not to care. But internally? He was increasingly glad Hiruzen assigned Rei to this team. This man was proving to be a sunshine in his dull life.
Still, while Team 7 slowly handled D-ranks in increasingly bizarre but efficient ways, Rei himself focused most of his actual energy elsewhere.
Sealing techniques. The scrolls Hiruzen gave him practically consud his free ti now.
Fuinjutsu was hard.
Not normal hard either.
The subject itself felt less like learning ninjutsu and more like trying to understand mathematical philosophy mixed with programming logic and magical equations simultaneously. One mistake in the formula structure could completely destabilize the seal itself.
And that wasn't it, one needed to do draw or project it on a paper/any surface in precision. One wrong step, and the jutsu wouldn't work. While learning Rei wondered how Minato was able to carve such a huge teleportation seal on a mountain in a second.
He was not normal at all. Still, despite the frustration, Rei remained determined.
Because sowhere deep inside, the possibility of eventually mastering Hiraishin itself now burned constantly inside his mind.
This went on for a few months while Rei used the maximum of his ti to learn funinjutsu. In order to hide that he could travel to another world, he left a shadow clone at night and then proceeded to practice funinjutsu at MCU.
He would get his sleep and extra ti there. 1:2 ratio worked perfectly for him, though it did ss his sleep schedule at tis, but that didn't matter because he was progressing bit by bit on sealing jutsus.
And just like that 3 months had gone by. It was early 2008 in MCU and the one mission Rei had been waiting for, had finally arrived.
The Land of Waves.
Hearing Tazuna enter the Hokage office while acting drunk and insulting them all almost gave Rei nostalgia.
The old bridge builder looked exactly how Rei rembered him in the ani. Cheap alcohol sll, tired eyes and absolutely zero survival instincts when speaking to shinobi. Naruto imdiately got offended and started shouting while Sakura internally questioned why this old man slled like expired sake and Sasuke stood there like he transcended emotional responses entirely.
And thus, Team 7 officially received their first "C-rank mission".
Rei internally already knew this entire arc was going to beco a disaster very soon. Still… as the five of them finally departed Konoha alongside Tazuna, Rei quietly remained more alert than usual.
He knew what ca first.
The Demon brothers.
And his preys. The two missing-nin themselves weren't especially powerful compared to later enemies, but they still possessed an inherent chakra nature that was different from his parents and Naruto. Useful things.
So the entire journey, Rei quietly kept an eye around the roads while pretending to casually listen to Naruto loudly complain about mission difficulty.
Eventually he felt it. Two pair of eyes following them from far. They had been for soti and he was sure Kakashi had noticed it too. It's just that this ti Rei didn't allow them to co so close as to make them disguise themselves as puddle.
He needed to take care of them discreetly.
"…Kakashi-sensei."
"Hm?"
"…I need to pee."
Naruto imdiately looked horrified.
"WHY ARE YOU ANNOUNCING THAT?!"
"Because unlike you, I believe in communication." Rei replied calmly.
Kakashi's visible eye curved slightly with amusent.
"…Go ahead."
And thus Rei casually stepped away from the road afterward like so tired civilian child while internally already preparing chakra. And just like last ti, he felt the two brothers following. He could feel the small bloodlust, just like how he felt when he faced his father for the first ti.
As he was alert, a chain exploded outward from the a nearby tree and targeted from two sides. These two really didn't waste ti. Good.
The mont the poisoned chain rushed toward his neck, Rei vanished sideways instantly.
Body flicker.
One thing Rei constantly trained everyday was Body flicker. The move that gave him speed. He was from Shisui but he would do his best to be as fast as him in his lifeti. Maybe Quicksilver would help him in the future.
The brothers' eyes widened slightly.
Too slow.
Rei appeared behind the first one almost imdiately afterward while his hand slamd directly against the man's shoulder.
"Temporary Paralysis Seal."
A small sealing formula instantly spread outward from the contact point. Crude compared to higher fuinjutsu, and in fact this was the basic version of the higher sealing jutsus, made to seal opponents, like they used during the Fourth Great Ninja war.
But it was effective.
The missing-nin's body imdiately locked up awkwardly.
"…Wha—?!"
The second brother reacted much faster afterward, chain whipping toward Rei aggressively while attempting decapitation.
Rei ducked beneath it calmly before slamming one hand directly against the ground.
"Earth Style: Earth Flow River."
The terrain beneath the second brother suddenly softened and destabilized violently. It ruined his footing instantly as his feet sunk in.
The assassin stumbled instantly afterward. And Rei imdiately closed distance. One strike directly to the solar plexus. Another against the neck.
Then silence.
The entire fight lasted maybe six seconds. What the hell are these people? Were they supposed to do a coup d'état on the Mizukage? What was Zabuza even thinking? No wonder he failed.
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