Dark Phoenix of Konoha by White Angel of Auralon

Part 34 - First Mission

First Mission

Naruto, Sasuke, Shino and Shikamaru stood in front of the Hokage. They all wore their new vests that symbolised their new rank. Naruto, similarly to his father, wore his trench coat over his attire. He had kept his former clothes and not taken to wearing the standard Konoha uniform for chunin and jonin that his sensei wore. Sasuke and Shikamaru wore the uniform now while Shino kept his high collared shirt under his vest, which he kept open.

"Good to see you four. The mission you'll be taking today is, as I already told you yesterday, a B-rank. We have got information that a pair of missing nins has been attacking villages along the border to River Country. We don't know which village they are from, but the description of the jutsus they used indicates one of the smaller ninja villages. There were victims of poisoning in the second village that was attacked and one victim in the fourth village was found with burns from fire jutsus. Otherwise they seem to prefer weapons," Kakashi informed the team. "Your job is eliminating the threat. Either capture them if you can, or kill them if they pose too much of a danger. Here is a permission slip for the armoury that will enable you to stock up on certain seals. You'll be given chakra storage seals, normal storage scrolls, seals to verify your teammates and paralysis seals. Naruto is in command with Shikamaru being second in command."

The four boys nodded.

"Be careful and look out if there are more missing nins in the area. It could be that it's a group that pretends to be smaller than it is. If you come across other missing nins that don't have anything to do with your mission, I'll leave it to your judgement to see if you can capture them or kill them for their bounties. Now that you're chunin or, in Naruto's case, special jonin, you'll be given a bigger cut from the bounties you bring in for the village. In case something goes wrong, try pinning the blame on another village, preferably Iwa," Kakashi told them.

Shikamaru and Shino looked surprised at this order, Naruto and Sasuke only nodded. They were already used to that kind of order from their training under the new Hokage. Kakashi had a policy that while things could go wrong, you should never admit fault if there wasn't enough proof of you being the culprit. And if you could blame somebody else, all the better. Successes were to be promoted as being done by Konoha shinobi, failures were to be hushed up as well as possible.

The group was dismissed and Naruto led them to the armoury. After handing over the permission slip to the guard, he quickly collected the necessary seals without any of the others looking at him strangely. They knew that he was the expert on fuinjutsu among them and would know which seal was which. He handed the sealing tags over to each of them and they put them away in their pouches. Naruto told them to meet in half an hour at the gate to get the mission started.

The trip to the border of River Country took them half a day. They investigated the attacks by questioning eye-witnesses in the villages that had been attacked. They got a few more details than what had been in their briefing from the Hokage. Not only were the attacks done with weapons, poison and fire jutsus, there was also nearly always a dizzy feeling left after the attack was over. It seemed that genjutsu was used as well. From the route of the attacks it seemed as if the attackers always struck in a limited area so far. A stretch of fifty kilometres along the border and never more than ten kilometres into Fire Country, meaning that they could retreat back into River Country before any help from Konoha could reach the villages.

Naruto had Shino send out his bugs to scout if they could find a hideout within the area that they suspected to be the action radius. While the bugs were gone, the four boys started securing important buildings in the villages with the seals that Naruto created. Fire protection seals were among the most important ones to prevent that the attackers could burn down whole villages to cover their escape when they could finally confront them. Shikamaru and Shino worked as one team, Naruto and Sasuke as another. They went through all villages and prepared for an eventual attack. Normally there was an attack around every three to four weeks and the last attack had been two weeks ago.