May 12, 2012
4:17 PM
Helicarrier

"Wait," Steve interrupted, ignoring Tony's affronted pout. "You became a member of the military at twelve?"

Sasuke glanced at Tony. "He didn't make that clear earlier?"

"I thought you meant you were… running numbers or doing courier missions, or in some kind of boot camp, not…" Steve trailed off, and the look on his face was one of horror.

"See, that was basically my reaction for years." Tony said, leaning forward and gesturing vaguely. "Their system is a literal shitshow."

"Thank you so much for disparaging my entire culture and way of life. Truly, you are a supportive family member." Sasuke drawled, though he didn't seem to be all that insulted.

"What part of 'I don't approve of turning children into soldiers' has changed in the last ten years?" Tony asked. "And don't pretend you don't agree, kid. You've complained about some of this bullshit to me enough."

Sasuke shrugged.

"I am rather curious as to the nature of the test you mentioned." Thor said, when nobody said anything, the conversation stalling out. "You did not include much detail as to what happened there."

"Kakashi wanted to see if we were capable of teamwork. We were." Sasuke answered with the careful abruptness of someone who wanted you to know how very carefully you would need to tread in the conversation.

"Oh, I can answer this one." Tony said, trampling all over the conversation in turn. "Because he used a bunch of prototypes that he'd made for a project I set him, like flashbangs and some distraction-based tech."

"That doesn't explain the embarra—" Steve started to say, but Tony cut him off.

"His teammate, on the other hand, used a clone technique and a temporary transformation technique to turn into a harem of naked women as a distraction."

There was a small patch of red high on Sasuke's cheeks, and he stared woodenly at the wall.

"They were twelve." Steve may not have been the innocent prude that everyone thought he was, but… twelve.

Tony shrugged. "I'm not going to excuse it."

"He taught the same technique to an eight-year-old," Sasuke said, as though this would somehow make the situation better. His eyes only indicated boredom. "Granted, the kid is twelve now, and I wouldn't be surprised of he'd somehow moved on to teaching the kid actual offensive techniques, but if you want to be offended at a child using a perverted technique, I'd be more concerned about the eight-year-old."

Steve stared.

"Anyway, moving on. The mission to Wave was important because—"

o.o.o.o.o

April 27th, 2008
4:27 PM
Wave Country (Nami no Kuni)

Zabuza was terrifying.

Okay, so Sasuke had seen people die around him before. Hell, he'd seen people die just three days ago, when the demon brothers had attacked them on the road. He'd felt killing intent, and he'd seen death.

Yet somehow, Zabuza made him freeze up.

He considered, for just a moment, electrocuting the water with the tech he had in his bag. But it would take too long to set up, and Kakashi was on the water too. Not to mention all the fish.

"Hey Sasuke." Naruto whispered, and Sasuke kind of wanted to smack him upside the head, because Zabuza was a master of silent killing. He could almost definitely hear them. "I have an idea."

o.o.o.o.o

April 28th, 2008
10:42 AM
Wave Country (Nami no Kuni)

"I hate this mission so much." Sasuke groaned, carefully drying out the plastic bags that contained most of his tech. It wasn't a lot, and at least most of it had stayed dry on the inside, but getting the tech OUT without getting it wet was going to be a hassle.

His phone had only somewhat survived the ocean, and he was fairly certain that he was going to have to replace parts of it to make sure it stopped glitching.

And he was in the middle of nowhere, which meant jury rigging, which meant he was going to have to tell Tony about it.

That would inevitably lead to a lengthy discussion of what he did wrong and what he could have done better, and while Sasuke knew it was only done to help him develop his skills, it was still annoying and occasionally disheartening.

"How's Kakashi?" He asked instead of continuing to dwell on how to fix his phone so that JARVIS stopped glitching out.

"Unconscious, still. I'm not expecting him to wake up for a day or two, but I'm not an expert." Sakura said, plopping down next to him and taking a look at the plastic bags filled with tech. "So, um… what is all this?"

She'd been a little more subdued than usual since Sasuke's accidental criticism of her maturity, which he wasn't sure how to feel about. Relieved? Guilty?

"Tech. Most of it's weapons, but some of it is other random stuff." Sasuke gestured to the groups he'd sorted them into, by function. "Grenades, most of them flash-bangs, because my uncle doesn't want to trust me with explosives until I can prove I know how to take them apart and put them back together again without blowing myself up. I don't know what to call that group other than 'noisemakers', because they're built to roll away and make noise to distract an enemy. Those little grey spheres are actually EMPs, which… honestly, I doubt I'll ever need them in the Elemental Nations, but my uncle says it's always a good idea, so I've got three."

"What's an EMP?"

"Electro-Magnetic Pulse." Sasuke said in English, and then translated. "They're mostly only good for knocking out electronic equipment. Anything that's more than a little sensitive gets fried. On a low setting, it's just knocked out for half an hour. On a high one, it can short-circuit it well enough to actually emit sparks and cause an electrical fire, if there's anything to serve as kindling nearby."

"Oh." Sakura looked back down at the little groups of electronics. "And the rest?"

"Just things that I'd expect I need to fix the other things. Transistors, soldering gun, that sort of thing." Sasuke frowned. "Which I'm actually going to have to do, since my phone's glitching out from the water it got hit with."

"It wasn't in a bag?"

"The bags are there to keep the tech dry, because I knew we'd be going to Wave, but… it seemed more efficient to keep the phone within easy reach, since I can't use it very well through the bag like the grenades, and it isn't something that I'll only rarely use, and with warning, like the EMPs or the noisemakers. Obviously, that backfired." Sasuke finally reached over to one of the bags and opened it to grab a tiny screwdriver, pliers, and what looked like a set of tweezers. "I'm going to start taking it apart to get a look at the damage. I can tlel you want I'm doing while I do it, if you want."

The blush on Sakura's cheeks, just barely visible before, deepened, and Sasuke cursed himself. "Okay, Sasuke-kun!"

Well. It was a work in progress.

o.o.o.o.o

May 1st, 2008
4:27 PM
Wave Country (Nami no Kuni)

"Bingo," Sasuke muttered as he watched his phone flare to life. He'd only gotten back from the tree-climbing exercises half an hour ago, but despite his exhaustion, couldn't get to sleep. Naruto was somehow still out there, and Sasuke absolutely did not want to imagine how or why.

"JARVIS?"

"Hello, Master Sasuke. How may I help you today?"

"What information can you get me on Gato and on Wave's legal policies regarding corporations and such?"

o.o.o.o.o

May 4th, 2008
11:03 AM
Wave Country (Nami no Kuni)

Sasuke never found out what it was, exactly, that Naruto said to Inari to get him to stop moping. He was just glad he didn't have to get involved.

He did have to get involved on the bridge, but this time, he had a plan. Sort of. He did until he got trapped in the ice mirror cage, anyway, and then he was just getting pelted from every angle by lots and lots of senbon. After a certain point, he sort of just hoped to high heaven that ice was as good a conductor as water, that the chakra would enhance a current instead of negating it, that the mirror were as connected as they looked, that whatever he hit the mirrors with would transfer to the fake hunter nin if he just made his attack affect them all, and tazed one of the mirrors. (1)

The fake hunter nin spasmed and stumbled out of one of the mirrors. They recovered the ability to stand fairly quickly, but by that point, Sasuke had come around behind them and put them into the kind of hold that put exactly the right kind of pressure on the arteries to induce fainting. They were stronger than Sasuke, but the electric shock had done enough to slow them down that it didn't matter in the end. As the fake hunter nin lost consciousness, the ice mirrors melted, and Sasuke held on just a few extra seconds to make sure his opponent was properly insensate, rather than faking it or only partway there.

"Kyaaah, Sasuke-kun! So cool!"

"Dammit bastard, you couldn't have waited a few more seconds? I wanted to be all cool and show up at the last moment like a real hero!"

Sasuke made a weird noise in the back of his throat that even he couldn't entirely define, but it definitely indicated his utter lack of amusement. "Well, maybe if you'd shown up on time, you wouldn't have had this problem."

"Hey, I had to save Inari's mom from the guys that showed up to kidnap her!" Naruto protested, and while sleeping in to save Tsunami wasn't really something Sasuke thought he'd done on purpose, he could acknowledge that Naruto had definitely helped by keeping the woman safe. "Uh… dude. Sasuke. Your eyes."

Sasuke blinked for a moment, staring at Naruto and completely not understanding, and then scrambled for a kunai that would be reflective enough to show his—

Sharingan.

Holy smokes.

"Uh, earth to bastard, we got shit to do?"

With a small start, Sasuke stopped staring at his eyes and shoved the kunai away. "Fine. What do we do about Kakashi?"

"Uh… I could storm them with clones?" Naruto suggested, like it wasn't his plan for literally everything. "Or we could, I don't know, use one of your bombs?"

Sasuke pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. "If I could just get him to stay still long enough to listen, I could talk him out of it, I think."

Naruto gave him a slightly incredulous look. Sakura was less doubting, but there were still shades of it.

"Not because I'm persuasive, I just have access to information that he doesn't." Sasuke waved them off, and then hesitated for a moment. In the end, he just cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. "He's not planning on paying you!"

"I guessed!" Zabuza shouts back, currently in the middle of trying to overwhelm Kakashi's lone kunai with his massive sword. Sasuke has no idea how the kunai wasn't breaking, but whatever. "That's what intimidation tactics are for!"

"He hired an army to kill you so he could get out of paying you!" Sasuke continued, and with that, something in Zabuza's face, as hidden as it is, shifts.

"And how the hell would you know?"

"He has a camera in his office for long-distance video conferences. He doesn't bother to check to see if it's on, and it's possible to access it remotely if you know how. I just… hacked it." Well, JARVIS had hacked it. But the point remained that Sasuke had video evidence. "He's hoping you and Kakashi will kill each other off, or at least weaken each other to the point where the army has easy pickings."

"Seriously?" Naruto asked, apparently not understanding the meaning of being discreet.

"Yes, and I have video evidence." Sasuke said after a moment, if only to drive the fact home. "If you're planning on intimidating your way into getting paid anyway, why not just give it a moment now, and make sure you can take down his army with minimum effort, instead of fighting what seems to be a losing battle against one of Konoha's best?"

"I've got a reputation to uphold, kid. Nobody wants to hire a missing nin that doesn't get the job done."

"And a reputation for taking out those who try to cheat you?" Literally all Sasuke was doing by this point was stalling, but it seemed to be working, mostly.

A mocking laugh came from the end of the bridge, and Sasuke gave a tiny sigh of relief as he was proved right.

(Tony had always been a great advocator of talking your way into a better position.)

o.o.o.o.o

May 4th, 2008
3:02 PM
Wave Country (Nami no Kuni)

"Well, they're no long hostile, but we can't just let them go." Kakashi said, once Sasuke got around to asking what the hell was going to happen now that Gato was dead. "We don't even know what's going to happen to Gato's company."

"It was privately owned and he didn't name an heir or otherwise organize what would happen to it, so by Wave's laws, all the assets revert to government ownership." Sasuke quoted JARVIS almost word for word.

Kakashi raised his lone visible eyebrow. "Still doesn't give us a solution for the Kiri nukenin."

"Haku isn't a nukenin," Naruto chimes in, sitting right next to the incredibly pretty boy in question.

("I'm a boy." Haku said, and Sasuke blinked.)

("Okay, then. He/him pronouns it is.")

(Haku had giggled when Naruto squawked in offense that Sasuke hadn't freaked out over Haku looking like a girl.)

(Later on, when Haku found him alone and asked, Sasuke just explained about Kurt and all the queer theory he'd subsequently learned about.)

("I'm not going to ask about what's in your pants, or how you were born. But whatever the circumstances are, I'm not going to be offended or shocked just because I made a faulty assumption about someone's gender based on how they present. I should probably just stop making assumptions in general, really, but most of the world still goes by presentation equals gender identity, and some people get offended if I ask their pronouns, because they're too conservative and think I should just be able to tell, so… anyway. Yeah. That's why I didn't freak out, since you asked. No matter how pretty you are or how much pink you wear, if you say you're a boy, then that's what I'll go with.")

("You think I'm pretty?")

"Technically speaking, as I was never a Kiri shinobi in the first place, I cannot be a nukenin. I've also kept under the radar well enough for them to have very little idea that I exist." Haku clarified, and Kakashi sighed.

"You still tried to kill us."

"Konoha and Kiri don't have extradition treaties, or even any kind of agreement to go after one another's criminals in the first place." Sakura mused. "I don't even think it would be illegal for us to aid in the Kiri revolution."

"It would be an act of war, Sakura-chan." Kakashi stressed, and kneaded the heel of one palm against his temple. "Amongst many other things."

Sasuke let it all wash over him, considering, and then asked, "But what if we just… got them jobs outside of the Hidden Continent?"

There was a pregnant pause, followed by Kakashi's very strong "No, Sasuke."

"Why not? We don't have to kill them or hand them over to the authorities, which is good because then Naruto isn't going to mope around and—"

"Hey!"

"—get his feelings all over the place. We don't have leave them taking missions that ultimately damage Konoha's economy by taking lower payments and working against our interests. And we can discreetly help enable a change in leadership in Kiri, which would only help us in the long run, for obvious reasons." Sasuke shrugged. "I mean, we'd probably have to fake their deaths or something, but it's a solution, right?"

Kakashi looked like he wanted very much to groan and bury his head in his hands. "The Hokage is going to disapprove."

"Not if we get Naruto to endorse the idea at the top of his lungs." Sasuke retorts, because the Hokage's soft spot for Naruto is kind of a massive open secret. "Or get him to use the Sexy technique. Or just give the Hokage a sad look. You know this to be true."

"Before you lot keep arguing," Zabuza interrupts before Kakashi can reply again, "I'd like to ask if we get any input on this, and also where the hell you think we'd be able to get jobs in the first place, considering we don't exactly have legal means to exit the country."

Sasuke glanced at Kakashi, who just sighed and made a 'go ahead' motion.

"Ever heard of Stark Industries?"

o.o.o.o.o

(1) Ice is actually a worse conductor than water. Assume that Sasuke's tazer worked because of the chakra in the ice or something.

A/N: It took me this long to write because I couldn't convince myself that rewriting the Wave Arc would be anything other than boring. It still was, in places, but I ultimately got the whole thing done in less than two days once I actually sat down and did it. Yay?

I really hate rehashing canon, guys. That's why almost all the scenes you see are where/how things went different.

I headcanon Haku as genderqueer. Not sure if he's genderfluid or binary trans or bigender or what, but he sure as hell ain't cis. Even I'm not sure what he was declared at birth, so just go with whichever headcanon makes the most sense to you, so long as it follows the "he isn't cis" part.