Reborn!

30: Shadow of Inner

Sōjirō absentmindedly stared at the three genins of Team Kakashi, turning a yellowing leaf in his hand.

It was nearly six months since the end of the Genin Exam that promoted the students of Naruto's class; five months since the other unqualified Teams 1 through 6 returned to civilian life; four and a half months since Team 7 returned from Nami no Kuni and subsequently went to Suna for an exchange programme; and two and a half months since they returned from Sunagakure. He has also been on paid leave for the past four and a half months and was expected to remain so for the next month and a half. The attack by Otogakure was enough of a threat that it did not make sense that he was to be benched for the entire duration. His team was helpless without him and he did not think his deputy could suitably dispatch the members on a large-scale secret mission as was planned.

It was almost time for the Chūnin Exams.

He closed his eyes as he remembered Hiruzen's words.

"Communication. That's the most essential thing in any relationship."

Sōjirō sighed heavily, covering his eyes with one hand as he averted his eyes from them.

He is, and will always be a clone.

He did not deserve to have these emotions.

It was almost sacrilegious of him to think the way he did. He had taken such pains to ensure that he would never be found out. He vaguely knew how Hiruzen might have misunderstood his situation, but it was not as simple as the aged Hokage presumed.

To begin with, the nature of his feelings...

It truly was not the sort of "love" that one human would feel towards another. He did not desire a relationship with the person he had in mind. It was just his greed that made his impulsive actions unforgivable. He may have yet to do anything to break the trust between them, yet he betrayed their bond with his sentiments.

They were in the midst of a C-rank mission to capture wild animals, using specialised scrolls to transport them live. As always, it was with the aid of seals drawn up by their resident fūinjutsu master Sōjirō. If one was to examine their task more closely, it could be observed that the degree of difficulty of this mission was higher than that of normal C-ranks. This was just the first phase of the mission. The second phase was of a related task -- the release of genetically modified beasts to Training Ground #44.

Essentially, they would be bringing animals back from the wild for experiments by the Research and Development Division. These animals were to be used to repopulate the Forest of Death, where wildlife was reduced by the addition of Naruto to the inhabitants of the place. Monsters with edible parts are too scarce there, what with Naruto hunting them down for their meat in recent years.

In the previous timeline, Anko was Training Ground #44's only inhabitant and the only lunatic who willingly chose to reside in any training ground in Konoha. She was still as crazy as ever here, even with Naruto as her housemate and legal ward. Since she rarely cooked, the mutated creatures were spared from the fate of becoming her meals. As the Chūnin Exams drew near, the need to renew the food reserves available within the Forest of Death grew apparent as the local food supply for examinees was finally called into question.

Of course, the task of finding food during the Exam could not be made too simple. Ordinary boars and the like have no place in the forest's ecosystem anyway. The poor things were more likely to be eaten by the ferocious poisonous mutants that live there than live to be slaughtered by those genin scheduled to come in. Already there were foreign genins from hidden villages far and wide arriving outside the village, and the jōnin have finished nominating their prospective chūnin for the exam.