Progress
It had been two months since the mission to Wave Country and by now rumours were spreading slowly around in the neighbouring countries of Wave. Many traders had gone to the newly freed country and seen the impressive bridge. Tazuna loved praising team seven, especially Naruto. So the story about the new sealing specialist, Naruto Uzumaki, spread around the elemental nations. By now the Raikage and the newly appointed Mizukage had heard about the young Uzumaki. But there was nothing they could really do and the Mizukage honestly had others things to concern herself with. She had to rebuild her village after the years of bloodline purges of the former Mizukage. Their military was in a desolate state and she would need years to get it back to the level that they could rightfully state they were one of the five major villages. But the isolation of Kirigakure now showed advantages.
She was sad that Zabuza had been killed by Kakashi Hatake. If she could have managed to convince him to return, he would have made a strong ally. And he had had five strong minions, three of them with a bloodline limit if her information was correct. Such a waste of resources. The reports stated that Konoha had arrested four of the minions; one of the demon brothers had been killed in a fight with Kakashi's team, and had collected the bounties for a lot of ninjas. Three Iwa ninjas, one Ame ninja and Zabuza and Meizu. That was not to her liking, but there was nothing she could do. She had given out a general amnesty for those who had committed crimes against Yagura's regime. Otherwise many of her most trusted supporters would have to be persecuted. But that meant the ones in Konoha custody were out of her reach. She could only offer them to return, but with how they had interfered in a mission of Konoha, the Hokage would decide what would happen to them.
And just this morning a messenger had brought the news that the Hokage planned to retire again. This time for good. She pondered who would be his successor. There were some strong ninjas in Konoha's ranks. The most probable choice would probably be Jiraiya of the Sannin, though Kakashi Hatake had been quite active with his team the past few months as well. The man was reclassified as S-rank now.
The Raikage was frowning over the report of his spies. Konoha was planning something big. The old Sandaime Hokage was retiring again and a new Hokage would be announced for the chunin exams. Then there were the stories about a new seal master and an Uzumaki in the village. What was his first name? Ah, Naruto. He only had found out about the boy a week ago when a caravan of traders had come to Kumo. They had told stories about his great deeds in Wave Country two months ago. Obviously the boy had been a key factor in liberating the country from the business tycoon Gato. Now the former Gato Company was run by Konoha. Of course they had righted the wrongs that Gato had committed and were loved for it by the people that had been suppressed by Gato. And the worst part was that he couldn't do anything about it. The change in leadership had been legally performed with all the necessary documents and contracts. Kakashi had done good work there.
Additionally Kakashi was the jonin sensei of the team that was doing many missions that normally chunin teams would get. He knew about two other C-ranks that had been important. Who knew how many others that team had done? It had taken a bit of investigation, but he had their names. Sasuke Uchiha, last survivor of Konoha's most infamous clan, but the boy was not like most of his relatives. Kakashi seemed to have managed to get the arrogance toned down and had trained the boy to not be dependent on his eyes. He was dangerous to anybody below high chunin level from the reports.
Sakura Haruno, while of civilian background was said to be a promising medic nin with a knack for genjutsu. With only four months of being a genin the girl was able to treat most common injuries of her team. Additionally she was a high level genin kunoichi which definitely was due to Kakashi's training.
Last Naruto Uzumaki. The boy that no spy got a proper picture of. It was as if he didn't want to get known by his looks too early on. Just why would that be? All those older than thirty five knew about the former Uzumaki clan and its specialization in seals. From what his own seal experts that had investigated in Wave Country and had returned yesterday had found out, he was a high level seals expert. The seals on the bridge were really impressive. Additionally he had killed at least Ichikawa Sansetsu. It wasn't known if Mikiko Kamizuri had died by Naruto's or Kakashi's hands. The one thing he wondered about was how Konoha had managed to hide the boy for this long.
The Hokage sat in the newest meeting of the village council and looked at the members of the council amused. Four months of intensive house cleaning had definitely borne fruit. He didn't have to deal with as many useless tasks anymore, the merchants that evaded taxes or thought up taxes by their own estimation had been forced to pay heavy fines, the academy was on a good way to teach the students properly again and the civilian part of the council was reduced to deal with civilian affairs and couldn't meddle with ninja affairs any longer.
"Hokage Sama, is it true that you intend to retire after the chunin exams?" A civilian councillor asked calculating.
"Yes, it is true. I have done enough in my life and I want to finally enjoy my time in retirement. I have found a good successor and will present him shortly before the chunin exams." The Hokage stated.
"Why aren't you telling us now?" Isami Haruno asked.
"I have my reasons. My successor needs to get some things done before he can take over and all the publicity would only hinder his current job. He expects to be finished by the time the exams come along." The Hokage vaguely said.
With how he worded it, nobody who wasn't in the know, meaning, Danzo, Shikaku and Cat, the ANBU commander, would know if he meant Jiraiya or somebody else. Many would think he had chosen his student. Jiraiya was a sannin and well-known all around the elemental nations. And it was common knowledge that he ran an extensive spy-network that he probably needed to get transferred to a successor.
"As you mentioned the chunin exams, will the new teams participate in them?" Danzo asked, giving the Hokage a bridge to distract the civilian councillors from being too nosy.
"From the reports I saw from teams seven, eight and ten they should be ready by then. Kakashi, Kurenai and Asuma are reporting a massive increase of the genins' abilities in the important areas of their training. We should be able to present a lot of members of our most important clans and families to the public once the finals come along. There are a lot of talented genin this year. Gai also informed me of his intention to let team nine participate this year." The Hokage answered.
"That's good to know, Hokage Sama." Hiashi said. He only hoped his daughter wouldn't embarrass the Hyuga clan.
"I have heard rumours about Naruto Uzumaki being an expert with seals." The representative for the Kurama clan spoke up. "Is that true?"
"It is. Naruto's level was confirmed by Jiraiya a few months ago when he was in the village. It's no real surprise he is talented in the art. He is an Uzumaki after all." The Hokage answered.
"But how did he get to that level? He was the dead last of his class." A civilian councillor asked annoyed.
"Secret self-study. It isn't really hard to get the materials to get started. The academy has the basic books for fuinjutsu in its collection, but most genin aren't interested in learning such a complex art when they start their career. They keep to nin-, gen- and taijutsu, perhaps a few weapon skills as well." Shikaku informed them. "But Naruto had to clean several rooms after a prank, so for him to find the books is very probable. He only needed to borrow a few and he could have studied without anybody noticing. It's not like fuinjutsu couldn't be used in pranks, which I guess would have been a massive motivation for him. Understandable with the treatment he got over years."
Many of the ninja council nodded. They knew how good Naruto was. He had really hidden all his abilities well. Many by now knew that his promotion was only a question of time until he had the necessary experience. And all the ninjas kept a close look at the bingo books. Naruto had an entry by now after news about his involvement in the fall of Gato, the death of Zabuza and the Iwa ninjas had got out. He was a C-ranked ninja in Kiri and B-ranked in Iwa's books. Probably because nobody really knew which opponents he had taken out and which ones were accounted to Kakashi. Only the Hokage really knew and he kept quiet. The three captured ex-Kiri nins were in the final phase of interrogation and so far it looked like them joining Konoha. It would be great to gain three new bloodline limits for the village. Though the civilian councillors didn't know that yet. They would stupidly try to force the three into a breeding program, which wasn't at all what the Hokage wanted. Not that they had that power anyway, but they too often fell back into their bad habits and he didn't want that Kakashi would have to bother with that kind of nonsense when he took over.
Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura were training with their sensei again. Since the revelation of Naruto's true level the other two had trained with much more enthusiasm. Naruto even acknowledged that Sakura wasn't useless anymore. She was a solid high genin level kunoichi on a good way to become a competent medic nin. Since their return from Wave Country she had used all her free time to study medical jutsus, read up on medicine-making, antidotes and poisons. She knew the anatomy book backwards and forwards and spent two mornings each week when Naruto and Sasuke worked on ninjutsu at the hospital learning from other medic nins how to perform the jutsus for battlefield healing. Kakashi still kept his team on the rigorous physical training program, but Sasuke and Sakura now had control over their seals all the time.
Today a sparring session with teams eight and ten was planned. A team battle simulation. At the moment team seven was leading by two points on team eight with team ten following by three points. While you couldn't really call team seven a real team, they were a properly working unit, a fact that Kakashi was really happy about. When it counted they could perform flawless teamwork, something that made missions a lot easier.
The sparring session would be in one hour, so they now ended their training to eat something before the session. They weren't informed how the exercise would go, they never knew beforehand to not give any team an advantage. Naruto knew that the whole team competition was a way to give him more bonds inside the village as the Hokage feared that he would run away otherwise. He had to agree that the strategy was a sound one, even if he had wished that the others his age were closer to his level. But they would need time. Naruto had planned how to turn the opinion of Konoha about him around for years. He knew the civilians would only stop tormenting him once they found out his heritage. It didn't matter to him, they weren't important. They could rot in hell as far as he was concerned; a few exceptions were to be noted like the Ichirakus and the Takashimas. His menu had been expanded a bit as the Takashimas happily sold him products from their new farm for fair prices. So now he could regularly get eggs, fresh milk, vegetables that normally were cultivated in Water Country and sometimes cheese from them as he had no problems giving them his money contrary to other civilian shop keepers. He was always welcome at the farm.
The ninjas were now respecting him as a comrade and that was what was important. They counted as he needed to be able to trust them in case he took missions with them in the future, which would happen. He would only be a genin for at most two months now that the chunin exams were approaching. All of Konoha was gossiping about the information that the Sandaime Hokage had chosen a new successor. Most thought it would be Jiraiya, but Naruto knew that it was Kakashi. And Kakashi was the better choice for Hokage. He was young, their best jonin in the village and most importantly, he hadn't left the village for long periods of time. While Jiraiya had maintained his spy-network, which was important for the village, he wasn't that well-known from his constant presence, contrary to Kakashi who was now connected with a few new very impressive missions like the liberation of Wave Country which now was an ally of Konoha.
Then there was the mission to Takigakure where team seven had helped Shibuki, the leader of Taki, to end an attempt of a group of rogues to take over the village. It had started as an escort mission, a low B-rank to be precise, but then the team had been tasked with cleaning the river of waste and had stayed there for a little longer. Things had then developed from there and ended with the take-over attempt. It had been a really short attempt. The attackers, even if they knew their way around Taki perfectly and tried to get Shibuki to lead them to the hero-water, a powerful substance with high drawbacks, hadn't counted on how high the level of team seven was. Sakura had taken care of anybody who had been injured by the rebels, Sasuke and Naruto had taken out the minions of the leader who had been faced by Kakashi. The whole take-over attempt had been dealt with within fifteen minutes, much to the shock of Shibuki. The man had thankfully been smart enough to realize that close ties to a village that had shinobis of that level ranked as genin, fresh out of the academy genin at that, would be very smart and had signed a new treaty as soon as he could.
The next mission had been escorting a diplomat to Bird Country only to prevent the assassination of the daimyo and returning the princess who had been sent to another country as a hostage. Naruto could only shake his head at that kind of political backstabbing. A child should grow up loved and with its family in his opinion and he didn't hide said opinion at all. Maybe he was harsh, but damn if he let people think that any child deserved to suffer like that. The princess seemed to wholeheartedly agree with him.
Some other missions that hadn't been as spectacular had also happened, but they had improved the impression that team seven had all around Konoha.
Now they finished their lunch and walked over to the training ground where the team battles would happen. As they had enough time they decided to simply walk and not use the body flicker that they had learned by now.
Teams eight and ten were already at the designated training ground. They exchanged greetings and then listened to what their senseis had to tell them.
"Alright, as you know today is a team battle simulation. This means we will set up a mock mission which will include fighting for a common mission goal. Each team will get an area that they will have to defend. Inside that area is an item in a set location that contains secret information. The items can't be removed from their spots. The other two teams will try to steal the item from the other teams to get the information. Put together the three pieces of information will give you the code to open a safe in which your true mission goal is held. You have to bring the content of the safe to us once you have got it. The safe is kept in the middle of the areas. You have half an hour to come up with a strategy, find your own item and decide how to go about the overall mission. Until you get the signal to start you aren't allowed in the other two teams' areas. Good luck." Kurenai informed them.
Each team then took a map with their area and ran there. Team seven reached their area and Naruto quickly made a dozen shadow clones to search for the item.
"Okay, what's the plan?" Sakura asked.
"We first need information where the other two teams will have their item once we get ours. It's unfortunate that we can't move the item whatever it is. It's easier to defend while moving around." Sasuke replied.
"Oh, we probably can still do that. We just need to set up a good decoy to our item and just take the information out of it if possible. Next to that I will see if I can open the safe without the correct code. Nobody said that we had to have the code." Naruto said.
"That makes sense. We have to explore the mission parameters to the fullest without breaking the rules." Sakura realized. "I can set a genjutsu around the real item to keep it hidden. On top of that I suggest setting up fake hiding places with genjutsus to confuse the other two teams. If they notice only one genjutsu they would know it is the hiding place. With multiple options they can't be sure."
"Good idea. But we will better hide the real place by normal means and use all the genjutsu ones as decoys. That way even if one of the other teams manages to get too close to our hiding place they won't be able to quickly find the information which will give us a time advantage." Sasuke said.
"Good, I will send transformed shadow clones into the other teams' areas as soon as we get the starting signal. That way we can find out their strategies and their hiding places. Once we know which locations we need to target we will leave our item under the protection we discussed. Perhaps it is even possible to take the information out of the item or destroy it after we read it. On top of the genjutsus we will trap the area around each real and fake hiding place thoroughly. We don't have a time limit for this test, so we can use it. If we stop the other two teams from getting information, we can win this." Naruto added and got nods from his teammates.
Then one of Naruto's shadow clones dispelled telling him that he had found the item.
"Alright. Let's go." Naruto said and jumped into a tree, Sasuke and Sakura closely behind him.
They all heard the signal that the mission was on and for a while nobody noticed anything. But those that had a possibility to sneak into the other's territory undetected were doing so now. That meant Shino sent his bugs out, Naruto his disguised shadow clones and Ino possessed a mouse to go spying while Shikamaru and Choji kept her body safe. It turned out that Shino and Naruto had the best turnout of possible hiding places for the information as they had greater numbers of spies at their command. But, contrary to team seven, team eight hadn't come up with as many decoys for their item.
Sasuke, who after Naruto's clones had informed the real one where the possible locations for the item were, had sneaked into the territory of team eight, managed to easily look through the genjutsu placed on the two places he found with his sharingan and he easily memorized the information inside the item. Naruto and Sakura were meanwhile distracting team eight until he could go back to them. Of course using a shadow clone under transformation to look like him.
The guards for the item, Kiba with Akamaru, had been easily dispatched with some of Naruto's sleeping poison senbons that he had given to Sasuke. They would be out for ten minutes or so. Sasuke used simple stealth to get into the territory of team eight as using jutsus would have triggered Hinata's Byakugan or Shino's bugs. While normally Naruto was the better stealth user, with genin as the opponents Sasuke could easily hold his own. Especially after all the additional stealth training he had done to catch up somewhat to Naruto. And considering that Shino could spread his bugs far to take out Naruto's normal clone strategy it made sense to let them think that Naruto was trying to get their information while Sasuke did the deed.
In team ten's area things were a bit easier as none of them was a sensor type or a tracking type. Naruto's clone slipped past Shikamaru and Choji in the thick underbrush and went to their hiding place. Ino was still out from using her jutsu. The clone noticed several traps around the item. Well, nothing a mouse couldn't get through and they only needed the information. They didn't need to steal it. So the clone opened the item after several failed tries and memorized the information. Then it closed the item again and dispelled. Normally team ten shouldn't even notice anything wrong.
Sakura was fighting Hinata trying to keep her from getting too far into their territory to see the decoys. Now their decision to make it really difficult to find their real item paid off. And by now Sakura had a way to counter Hinata's gentle fist style with the medic nin style of fighting. She dodged whenever Hinata tried to land a hit and countered with her just recently learned chakra scalpels. She had seen what Naruto could do with his version of that technique and had therefore decided that it would be a good way to defend herself. A medic mustn't fall because if the medic fell, there was no one that could treat the team after a fight. So a major part of her medic training, coupled with the dodging exercises that Kakashi had them regularly do had made her a really hard to hit target. Not that that meant that Hinata was easy to beat. No, the formerly totally shy and insecure Hyuga girl had greatly improved since the academy. Sakura knew that if Hinata landed a good hit she would be in a world of trouble.
Meanwhile Naruto and Shino were fighting to get the upper hand. Naruto, knowing about the sense of smell that the bugs used to orientate themselves, had put up several traps where pheromones of female beetles were spread around. Therefore Shino had to override the instincts of his bugs, which cost him more concentration and chakra than normally. But he made up for that disadvantage with his chain-sickle. Since Naruto had told the others what he thought would be good to include in their fighting styles, they had worked on that. Shino had turned out to have a talent for the chain-sickle and used it with deadly accuracy. Hinata had learned many genjutsu from Kurenai and some ninjutsu from Kakashi when they had switched senseis for a week to profit from each jonin's specialty training. Kakashi was the specialist for ninjutsu, Kurenai for genjutsu and Asuma for weapons. Naruto was really happy that his comrades were getting stronger as he knew that there were serious threats outside, waiting to attack Konoha in the very near future. If they were stronger than they would be with only their team's sensei training them, he would fully support the way this was achieved.
Naruto had found out in the ROOT archives that a group of S-ranked missing nins, including Itachi Uchiha, was taking several high ranking missions for villages like Iwa and the smaller villages that couldn't afford to train high ranking ninjas or who simply didn't have the means to train talented ninjas up to that level. It was concerning that a group existed that was made of such strong ninjas. If they ever decided to work against the villages it could become a major problem.
Sasuke joined the fight as soon as he returned from his 'mission', which meant he took the place of the transformed shadow clone, and together they forced Shino and Hinata to retreat for now. Sasuke's short barely noticeable nod informed Naruto and Sakura that he had got the information from team eight and that they could now go on to open the safe.
It wasn't as easy as they had hoped. While it had been no problem to get team ten's information, Shikamaru had seemingly come up with a plan to foil any team that got the complete set of information before them. Naruto had a good counter for it though. Shikamaru was limited in the use of his shadow jutsu due to his chakra reserves. So Naruto let several of his clones be caught by the shadow while him, Sasuke and Sakura went to open the safe to get the prize and win the mission scenario. Sasuke supported the clones with distant attacks on team ten, forcing Choji to stay away. Ino didn't have much on the offensive part besides weapons, which Sakura made sure to deflect.
Naruto being the one with the most practice in opening safes quickly put together the code and opened the door. Inside was a set of scrolls with elemental symbols. One for each element. He took them out and then called out to his teammates to get to the jonins to finish the simulation. Now team eight was also there, trying to assist team ten in stopping team seven from winning. It was hard to fight three against six, but in the end team seven managed to save the scrolls to the meeting point.
"Very well done, team seven, you win this round." Asuma called out once team seven was in the safe zone.
The three showed different states of condition. Naruto looked as if he wasn't even breathing hard, which was easy to understand considering his stamina and skill. Sasuke was looking a bit worse for wear and was sending lightning chakra over his body to shake of the last persistent bugs that Shino had managed to put onto him. Sakura looked worst of the three, but she had the least cuts or bruises.
Finally the other two teams arrived. Kiba glared at Sasuke, a mark on his neck showed that he had been hit with a senbon before, on top of having some cuts and bruises. Hinata's jacket was a bit singed and Shino's showed cuts. Ino was breathing hard, Shikamaru looked exhausted and Choji had a bruise on his cheek.
"This test was so unfair. Naruto could make more shadow clones than any of us were able to counter." Ino complained.
"We should have put that into consideration and worked together against team seven from the start. If we had taken out Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura together we could have fought out who got the scrolls between us. It would have been the only way to get a chance to win this." Shikamaru analysed.
"You are correct. Having Naruto on team seven was an unfair advantage the team had." Kakashi confirmed calmly. "But this setup was so that you could try to work around it. You won't always have the advantage of being up against opponents that are roughly your own level. It can happen that missing nins join bandits or start bandit groups themselves. Especially after the bloodline purges that Kiri started there are some former chunin or the rare jonin that could become your opponent on a mission. The trick to work around that is finding a weakness or overwhelming said strong opponent somehow."
The genin nodded. By now they all knew that Naruto was jonin level. He didn't lord it over them though and gave helpful suggestions how they could improve their skills themselves. It was slow going, but with the subpar training that the academy had given them over the years compared to real shinobi training, they were doing really well.
"Now we have planned one last scenario before we let you enter the chunin exams in about two months." Kurenai said, causing them all to pay close attention to her. "This will be an exercise that will put all members of your teams against Naruto."
Naruto looked up surprised.
"Naruto, you will be given something to keep safe from them. You can use all your skills. The intention of this setup is simulating that a spy stole important information from the village. They will have to work together to catch you and retrieve the information. In the scenario you are forbidden to use more than five clones at the same time to make it more realistic, because no normal spy could ever match your chakra reserves." Kurenai explained.
"How long do they have to find and catch me and how long do I have to prepare for my part?" Naruto asked with his mission mode voice.
"You get one week to prepare your part, Naruto. The test will start next Saturday. They get five days to catch you. The Hokage has been informed about this, so we don't have to fear any interference from outside parties." Asuma explained.
"Alright. Which area can I use?" Naruto asked.
"The whole village, the outside training grounds and the forest around the village in a five kilometre diameter. You are limited to non-lethal means though." Kakashi answered and Naruto got a mean grin on his face that let Sasuke and Sakura gulp. They knew that grin. It promised pain and embarrassment.
TO BE CONTINUED...