Naruto: The Chakra Molder

CH-25

The next morning Naruto woke up to hearing a knock on his apartment's door. So, he tried to rub the tiredness out of his eyes and get up but was stopped from moving when he noticed that there was a now familiar weight on his side. For looking down he saw a now waking up Haku right next to him in her normal sleep wear. Course he could only mumble out a quick good morning before wiggling out of her hold to see who woke him up earlier than he wanted to.

"Hello" Naruto mumbled out while opening the door only to see an ANBU standing there and quickly got more focused.

"Hokage-sama requires your presence in her office immediately." The man told Naruto before quickly disappearing from the area.

"Well I guess I have to go see what baa-chan wants." Naruto told himself before walking back into the apartment to get ready. Then after that small amount of time he began his trip towards the hokage tower; though not before giving Haku a quick hug.

~Hokage Tower~

"Hey Baa-chan what's up?" Naruto happily asks as he runs into the room without even bothering to knock. Course after he made it in, he saw Tsunade sitting at her desk with Shikamaru standing in front of her. Though the thing that drew his attention the most was two chunnin jackets laying on the table.

"Damn gaki about time you got here, and stop calling me that" Tsunade growled out at the blond before letting it go and simply getting Naruto to stand next to Shikamaru.

"Anyways after reviewing both of your exams the council and I have agreed that both you Shikamaru Nara and Naruto Uzumaki-Namikaze should be promoted to the rank chunnin. May you continue to serve this village and keep the will of fire burning." Tsunade told them clearly giving a basic speech made for this ceremony especially since she then went into a long explanation of their new rules and expectations.

"Troublesome" was all that came out of the Nara boy's mouth as he put on his new jacket though you could see that he was proud of himself just by the look in his eyes. Meanwhile Naruto had a large smile on his face as he took the jacket but didn't put it on seeing as he already was wearing a chunnin uniform. Course after they received their new rank Tsunade dismissed both of them and they happily walked out of her office.

"So, Shikamaru how does it feel to know that we are the first of the group to get a higher rank?" Naruto asked the lazy boy happily.

"It will be troublesome to have new responsibilities but at least it will keep my mother off my back for a while." Shikamaru mumbled out with a short yawn at the end. "Though how are you so happy even though that mission went so bad?" Shikamaru asked the blond remembering why he was so stressed that he couldn't get nearly as much sleep as he wanted. "How are you so happy? After all it was your teammate that left and all of us got pretty badly hurt on MY watch. Not to mention that you were the worse of us all with even poison blocking your healing factor." Shiamaru though as he watched the blond lose his smile and get serious.

"Shikamaru what happened in that mission happened; we can't do anything to fix it. So, what if the bastard left with our resident bastard. We tried our best to stop him and didn't manage to due to being overpowered. It is best just to look past failures and work harder to not have another. Though at least we all came back from this failure." Naruto told his friend who looked surprised.

"How can you be this calm when not only did we fail but everyone got hurt…but me. I mean you all were stuck in the hospital for days in critical condition. And you were the worst off."