- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I said what I said.
Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
And your Orochimaru continues to be even more awesome than the canonical one.
... and Kin here proves to have even more smarts than normal.
As too many others said, THRILLER!!!
Thank you, fixed.
Outside of those that were present, very few people have seen her match with Sasuke.
As for the previously-thrown kunai, she was embedding them into the reinforced stone walls of the arena against Sasuke. The buildings outside are a lot less sturdy...and around where she was, a lot more perforated now.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Orochimaru going "You know what? Naw." and just noping out is pretty sensible; Orochimaru shows multiple times throughout the series that he is entirely willing to go 'this situation is no longer advantageous for me' and just leave, something that you'd think would be more common of a trait amongst ninjas.
Norr
Misophist
- Location
- Any chair
- Location
- Software
Karin: "Don't mind if I do!"
Wait, he didn't rescued her in here... well at least she would be less "fangirl" annoying thanks to that...
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While I agree with you, I, unfortunately, don't think I could do it enough justice myself. I could just about pull together enough "Cave Johnson" voice and Orochimaru history for those 3 quotes, but keeping it up for an entire fic would be… troublesome. Storyline-wise, it's fairly simple (stick with Naruto canon, but told from Orochimaru-as-Cave's perspective), but piecing together Orochimaru's timeline and all of his experiments would take an annoying amount of time and effort.
That said, if I did do it, I'd probably keep it as just the Quotes, without any context story between them. Basically, the contents of Orochimaru Dōkutsu's personal dictaphone — occasionally with other characters piping in as asides when they interrupt or reply while he's recording.
(And maybe switch it to Kabuto-as-GLaDOS for the period where Sasuke nixes him, until his revival)
(Or, even, Kabuto-as-Wheatley. Depends what would be funnier or lend itself better to the fic)
So, yeah… if anyone else wants to take it over or chip in, feel free.
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JadeKaiser
Uninspired Custom Title
- Location
- Under Your Bed
I think you got turned around somewhere. In the chapter, the Hokage said that it was given to Uzu by Konoha. That's what people were saying he shouldn't have done, but he did. Which is still advantageous, in that it makes Konoha look slightly stronger than otherwise.
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
Well, it's no secret that the First married an Uzumaki, so it's only fitting that Konoha would help Uzu out.
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Kabuto is dead now, isn't he? Should the "wasn't" thus be "hadn't" or similar?
Huh. For some reason I never expected that to actually see use despite knowing Orochimaru still had it and that he'd be invading. For whatever reason I just thought it was an amusing coincidence, or that the seal actually had (also, since the prior zombie sieges were Naruto's fault) failed as he originally suspected.
It'd have been hilarious if all the guards had all just went "must be Tuesday again" and calmly cleaned it up. Eh, maybe it happened in the background?
But normally because that'd be a false positive?
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Being dead is a sufficient reason to wasn't, and Mr. Maru does tend to regard other people being dead as a temporary setback at best in making use of them, so continuing to refer to Kabuto in the present tense isn't out of character.
Well, if Naruto fixes up the elemental connections and attaches a proper controller, then they probably can use the seal for future tests. And/or as an instant army for next time Konoha gets attacked.
But Orochimaru's zombies were so much weaker than Team Yurei's, so that probably bemused enough ninja to decide that something different must be going on.
Whoever suggests that is likely to end up as Sachie's official least favourite person for a long time.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
I mean it's not like there's anything stopping Orochimaru from Impure World Reincarnating Kabuto in the future, at least nothing that Orochimaru is aware of.
- Location
- Michigan
Aside from the issue of not having enough of the body to use as a catalyst for the jutsu because of Kabuto being crushed by Gaara's sand especially if the stains were burned away as the quickest option for cleaning the mess up between matches.
If I was an amoral mad scientist with the ability to resurrect people using DNA samples, then I'd certainly be keeping blood and/or hair samples from all of my most useful minions locked safely in several secure vaults.
Especially if they were spies. If they ever found any information valuable enough to receive summary execution, I'd want the ability to bring them back and ask what that information was.
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
Or, like Kabuto was, is both skilled and valuable in the not-spy fields too.
- Location
- Michigan
A thought I had today, once Naruto knows the shadow clone jutsu there is nothing stopping him from potentially leaving Konoha to be an ENTIRE GOD DAMNED CIRCUS by himself, something that would be great to use as a cover in this fic for some future mission.
Could also be a fun premise for an entire story in itself, where he does this after gathering a set of instructions for various chakra control techniques like tree climbing and water walking and whatever basic utility jutsu the author decides to give him(easy to justify given that the author can just say he copied it all from the forbidden scroll given there is no information on what all is in it, could just be forbidden/restricted jutsu or a full library of Konoha's ninjutsu barring clan techniques because all the clans putting their secret techniques in a single shared scroll would be absurdly s.o.d. breaking) to expand on through experimentation and shadow clone training with Naruto's circus showing up dealing with cases like Gato in wave, the movie plotlines, and just taking in cases like Fu and Karen who could easily be justified as happy for the chance to leave their village and join his circus, possibly even resulting in the circus eventually building up into a traveling hidden village.
Could also be a fun premise for an entire story in itself, where he does this after gathering a set of instructions for various chakra control techniques like tree climbing and water walking and whatever basic utility jutsu the author decides to give him(easy to justify given that the author can just say he copied it all from the forbidden scroll given there is no information on what all is in it, could just be forbidden/restricted jutsu or a full library of Konoha's ninjutsu barring clan techniques because all the clans putting their secret techniques in a single shared scroll would be absurdly s.o.d. breaking) to expand on through experimentation and shadow clone training with Naruto's circus showing up dealing with cases like Gato in wave, the movie plotlines, and just taking in cases like Fu and Karen who could easily be justified as happy for the chance to leave their village and join his circus, possibly even resulting in the circus eventually building up into a traveling hidden village.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
The way I see it, the problem with Naruto running off to create a circus is that Naruto is actually loyal to the village.
Um...he already knows that jutsu.
But here they're called paperwork clones.
- Location
- Michigan
In this story sure, but for another potential story is wouldn't be hard to justify removing the little loyalty he has to the village at the begining, just removing Iruka's response to Mizuki or having Naruto learn about his parents or Kurama on his own earlier on could be used to drastically shift Naruto's perspective on how Hiruzen(any basically every ninja in the village by extetntion) treats him and him to decide that the Ichiraku family aren't enough reason to stay and with his skillset at that point while limited would let him scatter a bunch of clones to stall and distract anybody that might try tracking before transforming into a bird and flying away.
I know, that was more a case pointing out that one jutsu being a point that can justify a massive derail to canon just by having Naruto decide to do one thing differently.
Even just someone mentioning the memory transfer of shadow clones before team formations can change the story quite a lot and its a common starting point for many fics.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's not quite what you are talking about, but I am reminded of "The Escapologist" by Rorschach's Blot (What If Ch18).
Chapter 27 - New Teams, New Changes, New Missions
The next morning the village was mostly back to normal, outside of the damage that needed repairing and the zombies still dancing in the training grounds. But Team Yurei wasn't taking normal missions until post-promotion stuff settled, so Naruto had decided to work on a new side project while waiting for someone to drop him a message about when and where he was supposed to finish up paperwork.
"What are you doing?" Karin asked Naruto. She'd swung by to return one of the paperwork jutsu scrolls that her roommate was done with and found him working on his project in the compound.
"Working on making the zombie seal properly," Naruto replied.
"...excuse me?"
"The one that was used against the village didn't have the elemental feeds hooked up properly so the zombies just crumbled when destroyed. A couple of them were just built wrong but I think the others were intentionally sabotaged, perhaps to prevent the zombies from harming the actual abduction targets before the Oto shinobi could grab them? Plus the lack of a controller matrix caused them to show no tactics at all."
"I don't understand most of that, but why would you want a proper version?"
"To install in a training ground with a toggle to turn it on. It could make forty-four more interesting for the next time Konoha hosts the chunin exams if I can get the range-limiting set up properly and exclude the central tower. They also make better targets for practicing jutsu than I expected them to, so 'pop up a set of zombie targets' in a couple of other training grounds could work nicely too."
"Wait, you want to use them as an instant opposing force that nobody will care about during training?"
"Yeah."
"Can you make them do jutsu or throw weapons?"
Naruto blinked a couple of times, looking over the interlinked seal arrays. "Throwing weapons is probably doable, but jutsu would be harder. Held weapons should probably be in the mix though, and I did have a thought about seeing if I could get Gentle Fist working to distract those who encountered my fake Hyuga zombies from the truth..."
"Your what?"
"Long story."
"That you aren't going to tell me because it includes sensitive information. Right. Could you auto-apply basic seals to mimic jutsu?"
His eyes widened a little as he considered things, before starting to sketch out a new seal array off to the side. It wouldn't be able to handle anything incredibly complex, and you'd have to stick to seals that weren't exacting in their details, but if it worked...
Three days after the invasion the call for the newly promoted to handle their paperwork had come in. The remaining visiting shinobi had, in some cases reluctantly, left by then, minus those in holding cells...and Kin Tsuchi, who was going to provisionally join Konoha's ranks and was thus no longer 'visiting'.
Naruto and Hinata had each been presented with an entire table full of paperwork to go through, though most of it was spare blank forms for observed things in the village and/or general knowledge. He ended up needing to request more copies of the latter to cover all of the things he'd noticed due to monitoring the village he did with his clones, and had been handed three more boxes of blank forms afterwards so that he could more easily report new things as his clones spotted them.
This was supposedly based on a percentage of the forms he'd filled out upon being promoted, but he wasn't entirely sure if that was accurate. He'd set up a series of seals to easily access the forms and something to write with so that his clones could fill them out as they noticed things either way.
The real interesting things started a week after the invasion, when a number of teams were called to a meeting with Old Man Hokage. Teams seven, eight, and ten from the beginning of the year graduation group, teams Gai and Yurei from a year prior, and a couple of others like the third stage proctor and Kin. Who had mouse features now, apparently.
Old Man Hokage was the last to arrive, moving from another meeting to this one. "For some of you this will be short notice, but I've already spoken to the jounin here and had the genin from teams other than Team Yurei fill out a questionnaire. Several teams were...poorly balanced when created, due in part to limitations in the available pools of genin at the time, and in some cases the intended focuses of the jounin involved are poorly aligned as well. Six other teams were given the option of participating, but their sensei declined and wished to continue as they currently sit."
An apparently-expected gesture brought the jounin present forward before the old man continued. "To start with, Shito and Asuma feel that they never should've been given teams at all. While I don't necessarily agree with their reasoning, their arguments were good enough for an evaluating team of other jounin to agree with."
"I made rookie mistakes that no chunin should've made in not listening to reasonable concerns," Shito spoke up when given a nod by the old man. "I may have earned my rank, but it wasn't for leadership skills and I feel that the mistakes I made warrant demotion, but passing my genin onto a more capable leader is the best I can do."
"I honestly expected to be able to coast along with a well-known team dynamic," Asuma said a moment later. "When that didn't land in my lap I wasn't prepared for needing to work outside of it and honestly feel that I've barely held on. My time with the Twelve Guardians didn't help there, and I need some time working with more varied groups before I'm going to be in a good position to train varied teams properly."
Old Man Hokage nodded. "Thank you for your efforts over the past half year. I think you did quite well, despite a minor lapse or two."
Both men nodded and body-flickered out of the room, their teams looking concerned.
"To continue," the old man said. "Tenten, there's an offer for direct apprenticeship under Hayate in the art of the sword. He and his girlfriend seem to think that you show promise, but need a proper instructor to bring it out."
"I won't go easy on you if you accept," Gekko commented. "In part because you frankly embarrassed the village with your sloppy use of a legendary sword. And my girlfriend would definitely be helping out and is even less likely to go easy on you."
Tenten half-gulped, but also seemed to be trying to not vibrate in excitement. Forms for accepting the apprenticeship were brought out by the old man and Gekko took her off to get them filled out.
"Sakura," the old man continued, causing her to jump a little. "Your evaluations and questionnaire were more complicated to process, but as part of it you expressed a desire to heal. We've recently started up a medic-nin program that accepts genin. Entering it would take you off of normal mission rotations for six to twelve months before you'd be cycled back into a team, if you'd like to attempt it?"
"I'd be delighted to," Sakura said, bowing.
"Wonderful. Here's your paperwork, you'll need to submit it by the end of the week." Sakura collected the folder held out to her, but just moved off to the side instead of leaving. This didn't seem to phase the old man as he continued. "To continue on individual matters, Anko, the village recognizes that Hinata is your apprentice in a couple of matters, but also that the style of apprenticeship is different when a chunin is involved. A request was also made to have you help the academy build up courses on infiltration and counter-infiltration. You'll be splitting your time between that and serving as the supervising jounin when one is necessary for your apprentice's missions."
Anko-sensei bowed. "Understood, Hokage-sama."
"Kurenai, while you can't take a new team, I find myself in need of sensei for existing genin. Rio found that she isn't a good fit for the realities of closely working with an Aburame, Sachie is hoping for a less physically-focused training regimen, and Choji has expressed interest in playing more of a support role than his clan normally performs. I believe that you'll be a good fit for them. As a completely new team assembled outside of the graduation cycle, you'll be marked as being Team Kurenai immediately."
Kurenai-sensei nodded, but the newly-formed team simply gathered to the side with Sakura instead of leaving the room immediately. And perhaps Naruto needed to stop thinking of Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei as being their sensei?
"Ami," Old Man Hokage continued. "You wished to learn more traps and indirect combat, and Tekuno is an expert in such things with an opening on his team. You'll be joining Shikamaru and Shino to replace Rio. Kin, you need a minder and better physical training, and Gai is capable of providing both while also having an opening on his team. You'll be joining Lee and Neji to replace Sachie."
It looked like Gai wanted to shout about how he'd bring out Kin's youth or something like that, but was holding himself back. Possibly due to the glares from the old man and the remaining jounin in the room? Both teams gathered and also moved off to the side at that, leaving two chunin and three genin.
"That brings us to the most complicated group," Old Man Hokage said. "Ino desires to work more with infiltration as a primary focus. Sasuke showed near-identical interests in heavy assault and infiltration. Kiba's interests were most closely aligned with tracking and infiltration support, with a secondary interest in heavy assault. As it stands, we don't actually have any jounin that can properly handle all of this and other factors involved." The old man then smirked. "But it seems that we do have a pair of heavy assault infiltration specialist chunin. While sometimes a lone promotion to chunin in a genin team replaces the jounin sensei, I wish to continue the experiment of using a pair of lower-ranked sensei. Naruto and Hinata are infiltration specialists already used to such a system, so I'm keeping Team Yurei on paper with new genin members."
"And it tests us to see if we're ready to be leading," Naruto noted, doing his best not to smirk at Akamaru giving Hoshi a concerned look.
"There is that, yes, though you two have already shown that you deserve your rank." A folder of paperwork was lightly tossed to Naruto, immediately followed by a mission scroll. "There are additional considerations that you need to be aware of, but here's your basic paperwork. Jiraiya has also requested your assistance on a mission to start in a couple of days and agreed to your full team coming along. Given that you have a different view of 'properly supplied', I figure you can use the next couple of days to get your new team to a minimal supply level by your standards and then work on other things on the road."
Kin wasn't sure why she'd agreed to test the apparently-stable beast-man formula that Konoha had gotten out of one of Orochimaru's old labs, but she had. Admittedly, she'd been hoping for something fierce looking, but while the medic-nin and researchers had figured out what had stabilized the formula they hadn't figured out how to control what animal it turned you into. Only afterwards had they told her that the latter was in part because the thirty or so formulas had all mixed, and the one that was most compatible with your body and genetics tended to take over.
To her initial dismay, she'd been most compatible with a fucking mouse. They'd fixed most of her body externally, and gotten her eyesight mostly normal, and even gotten her clothing that worked with her tail. She then got to spend a day at a training ground trying to adapt to her changes...and found that in several ways they were better than expected. Her hearing was much better, the tail helped with her balance significantly, her sense of smell was...confusing, but she was learning. The biggest boons were the healing factor and boost in her stamina, though she thought that she was naturally quieter when moving around as well.
Either that or her hearing just made her more likely to notice when she wasn't being quiet.
Unfortunately, she'd been put on a team with the loudest jounin she'd ever heard of, in what she thought was Hokage-sama unofficially killing multiple proverbial birds with a single proverbial stone. Specifically, she needed to learn to handle loud noises and her sensei and his primary apprentice needed to learn to be quiet enough to not blow out her eardrums. Again.
Thankfully, she had a healing factor now and had only been deaf for an hour.
Hinata had told their new genin to eat lunch, get their traveling packs, and then meet them at the Uzumaki compound. Naruto had tested adding them to the system by mimicking their chakra, something he'd not really considered doing before, and it appeared to work as they were all able to enter. Well, Akamaru had probably worked, but was riding Kiba and thus harder to tell.
"It feels wrong having sensei that are our age," Sasuke noted. "And it must suck that you're infiltration specialists with what happened to you."
"Especially if it's as hard to correct as what happened to us," Ino added.
"But you'd be surprised," Naruto replied. "Still, there are going to need to be a few ground rules for working with us."
"Like Sasuke not being able to chase after the shrine maiden that everyone says is related to you?" Kiba joked.
"...Karin?"
"Yoko, I think," Ino corrected.
"Oh. Wait, that's what the attention is about?"
Sasuke blushed while looking slightly annoyed. "Why can't I show interest in someone just because she's your family?"
In response, Naruto shapeshifted into Yoko, shrine maiden outfit and all. "Because I do not swing that way, Uchiha-san."
That was apparently enough to shock all four of them into wide-eyed silence...until Sasuke's sharingan activated for a moment. "But...how?"
"Naruto is probably the best infiltrator the village has," Hinata answered. "And he trained by infiltrating the village itself. Repeatedly." She then shifted into Hikari, though still couldn't change her clothing. "You don't become infiltration specialists by not being able to blend in, after all."
Ino frowned as she looked between 'Yoko' and Sasuke, only for the frown to turn into a grin. "Oh man, Sakura and the others would flip if they found out about this."
Sasuke blinked a couple of times, then turned to 'Yoko'. "I don't think I want them to find out. What are the chances of you agreeing to go out to dinner with me just to cause them to panic?"
Naruto shifted back to normal, Hinata following a moment later, before he shrugged. "I'm generally up for a good prank."
"Hold up," Kiba said. "You two just made yourselves look completely normal. How the hell did you do that?"
"That's currently classified as a restricted clan technique that needs some adjustment anyway." Specifically, the Tome was working on isolating 'shapeshifting' and 'sand control'. "I've also been asked not to help you with it until you're cleared for it by the medic-nin, if I ever do."
Ino and Sasuke looked disappointed, yet with a hint of having expected that. Hinata nodded. "Now then, ground rules. To start with, ideally you're all going to work on getting as many jutsu as you can down to being able to be done without hand seals."
"Needing hand seals for regularly-used jutsu is a liability, as is calling out technique names. We'll make exceptions for needing to tell Akamaru what joint techniques you want to use until you've got silent communication down. Assuming Akamaru can manage it, anyway."
"Then there's supplies. I see three packs, and while that's acceptable for some circumstances it won't be your norm with us."
"We have to have two or more packs each?" Ino asked, sounding fearful.
"Of course not," Naruto replied, triggering one of his seals to reveal a trunk. "I'm an aspiring sealmaster. I don't expect you to be able to make your own seals unless you want to learn it, but being stuck with what you can fit into a pack is ridiculous. We'll get your physical training in with chakra weights and resistance seals."
The three genin had looked semi-awed and semi-hopeful until that last point, which is where they went wide-eyed.
"He even figured out how to make the resistance seals work for me," Hoshi added, which caused Akamaru to look worried as well. "...though I'm nowhere near at their level."
"Lastly," Naruto said, pulling a stack of summoning contracts out of a scroll. "Is how we manage returning to the village without being seen unless escorting someone. This is a collection of personal summoning contracts. By signing them between us we can summon each other, and I have ways to get into the village with my main contract. So I can get here, and then summon everyone else in, bypassing the gates entirely. It also makes it far more difficult to abduct other team members and provides ways to extract someone that are essentially impossible for an enemy to stop or follow."
"That's how you do it?" Kiba asked, eye twitching. "No secret entrances and exits to bypass the walls?"
"...I know of a couple dozen of those too, but I've never bothered to use them."
Sasuke felt betrayed and like he'd been an idiot at the same time, only balanced out by Naruto both not making a big deal of being Yoko and agreeing to pranking the fangirls. Except that the 'date' with Yoko was genuinely enjoyable, making her more attractive, even before you took into account the stories of her defending the shrine from zombies and Oto attackers with chakra chains.
Something that Naruto never seemed to use, and hadn't shown in the finals despite the massive show they'd put on. Different skills for different identities, something that most infiltrators likely never really got down well. And something that Itachi had said could be important for Anbu, to keep their identities secret.
But for Sasuke, having the one girl in the village that he'd had any interest in turn out to be a fake that was still more enjoyable to be around than any other girls was incredibly annoying. Even knowing that Yoko was Naruto wasn't helping spot the Naruto in her, as though she was an entirely different person that lived in his new sensei's head and was able to be brought out at will or something. Which just demonstrated how scarily good he was at infiltration, doubly so given that he could change his chakra and scent.
It was generating constant mental whiplash, made worse by jealousy that someone was this good at infiltration while Sasuke might never be cleared to learn what he needed to properly do anything remotely like it himself thanks to the stupid wolf ears and tail.
...though Naruto commenting that next time Sasuke should be in his kunoichi outfit to really confuse the fangirls felt like it was both a great idea and something to be avoided at all costs at the same time.
Outfitting the genin and Akamaru had taken two days, and for now they were just wearing resistance belts. Ino had found out about Naruto's showers in the process, but not gotten one of her own, yet had still been giddy over the prospect of being able to use one on the road either way. Especially with how sweaty she was expecting to get while using the resistance seals and, eventually, the chakra weights. Sasuke and Kiba were more appreciative of being able to carry more combat supplies...and shocked at the suggested list of clothing to bring along for any mission.
Jiraiya had looked at the team, eye twitching. "This is the single least stealthy team I think I've ever seen."
"They're not infiltrators yet," Naruto commented. "We've only had a couple of days and the good stuff isn't authorized yet anyway."
"You're part of the problem."
"Only because they stick out like sore thumbs already."
"...okay, right, I forgot about that particular insanity of yours. Let's get signed out and on the road."
Half an hour later they'd made it out of the village, their departure gate having been a bit busier than expected due to a large incoming group of merchants.
"So what do you two expect to have your genin doing while we're out here?" Jiraiya asked once they were moving through the trees.
"I figure we pick up missions while you're doing your thing," Naruto answered. "Low priority 'while passing through anyway' type stuff to see how these three work together while they work on the training we already gave them."
"What about the fact that they're lagging behind already?"
"Hinata and I have clones with them. When we stop for the night we'll summon them forward, otherwise they can keep working against the resistance belts."
"That's not a bad plan, especially since it lets us move at speed without needing to worry about them keeping up."
"And only really usable today. We'll be too far outside of patrolled areas afterwards."
"...point."
"So who are we looking for?" Hinata asked. "Since the mission scroll we got to see only said that we were searching for someone."
"Someone spooked Tsunade a few months back and she's been unusually hard to pin down since."
"Oh. We're already familiar with her chakra so she'll be easier to find."
Jiraiya blinked, turning to stare at them while still maintaining speed through the trees. "How are you familiar with her chakra?"
Naruto shrugged. "We were investigating casinos when she showed up and were given an extra task of getting her to win repeatedly. It was annoying."
"...Anko's idea?"
"Yeah."
"Figures. That's probably what spooked her, and a pile of others paying attention to her movements."
Anko raised an eyebrow when Yugao joined her and Kurenai at the bar. "Funny seeing you here."
"I could say the same about you too," Yugao challenged. "You two aren't joint sensei anymore."
"Why shouldn't we meet up to discuss how things have changed?" Kurenai asked. "Besides, I've got another couple of weeks before I'll be happy taking my new kids on anything outside of the village. Jiraiya was crazy to basically pull the new Team Yurei out of the village immediately."
"And my primary task right now is in the village," Anko added. "Mostly daily meetings with the academy instructors, currently. You, on the other hand, don't officially have a brat to train and plenty of duties."
"Just got off shift and I wanted to know what the hell you two did to train your genin. Tenten is outperforming most Anbu in masking her chakra and killing intent, can fool normal human senses when it comes to scent, and has a decent if incomplete ability to swap another personality into place at the drop of a kunai. She only graduated a year and a half ago!"
"Ah. Most of that was actually Hinata and Naruto teaching the rest of us, but I can take credit for the killing intent. Took the kids hunting for rabbits in the Forest of Death, though I don't think we ever told Naruto that it shouldn't be possible to lie with your intent..."
Kurenai snorted. "If you had then he'd have taken it as a challenge and figured it out anyway."
"...maybe, yeah."
Yugao looked at them like they were crazy. "What do you mean by 'lie with your intent'?"
Anko grinned, thinking back to the first time she'd realized what he'd done. "He somehow pulled off making the rabbits think that he wanted to protect them, drawing them to him, only to then kill them for dinner. My best guess is that he channeled Yoko's intent instead of 'his'."
Kurenai looked thoughtful at that. "Yeah, I can see that working. He's scarily good with his other personalities..."
"The more you talk the less sure I am that I understand anything you're saying," Yugao interjected with a scowl.
"Long story short," Anko said. "Tenten learned most of that to keep up with the other two that were scary before we got our hands on them. Or perhaps before they got their hands on us? I could barely keep up with Hinata's training routine before the exams and Kurenai was mostly able to keep up with Tenten's. None of us could keep up with Naruto's, but I bet Hinata gets close now. Especially since I noticed that Hikari started working at the shrine after the finals and a couple of the wandering animals gained partners."
"...see, I thought I was understanding things, and then you went and confused me again."
"I'm surprised you don't know," Kurenai said. "Perhaps we should tell you some stories of the best infiltrator the academy has ever seen? Provided, of course, that you're buying the round of drinks."
That got them a deadpan glare, followed by producing a wad of ryo.
Two days of traveling had brought them to a small village where Jiraiya had needed to check with contacts before they could move on. Naruto had handled picking up a couple of missions for him and Hinata and a couple of missions for the genin.
"I'd expected more trouble from you three," Naruto admitted as he handed them their two mission scrolls.
"After seeing you and Hinata-sensei pretend to be a full assault force?" Kiba asked.
"...I also expected you to be more of a problem with Ino, instead of just working with both of your teammates on improving their use of their noses."
"I knew I had nothing to worry about from Kiba," Ino replied. "It isn't common knowledge, but the Yamanaka clan works with the Inuzuka."
"They introduce what eventually becomes a complete inability to find animal features romantically attractive in all the kids," Kiba elaborated. "Around age six or so, usually. There were supposedly too many problems with bonding too much with ninken during the wandering clans period that nearly wiped the clan out a couple of times, though mom went on a bit of a rant about it finally biting the clan in the ass after Ino's change."
Huh. That made a lot of sense to Naruto and was simultaneously a bit creepy.
"We want to see how you three handle yourselves on some glorified D-Ranks," Hinata said after shaking her head. "They're officially C-Rank, but only because of us being outside of Konoha."
"While you're doing that we'll be handling a couple of other things I picked up," Naruto added.
"...you're letting us handle our first missions together without any supervision at all?" Ino asked, sounding incredulous.
"Part of your training is figuring out if and how we're monitoring you," Hinata retorted. "We don't expect you to have any luck with that at all for at least a couple of months though."
"Before we get to doing these missions," Kiba said. "Do you have any tips for increasing my stamina? I thought I was pretty good, but then Ino and Sasuke were able to go for longer between breaks than I could."
"They're cheating in a way," Naruto said. "The animal features came with a healing factor that passively boosts their stamina and makes a lot of muscle training more effective. Hinata and I have a stronger version of the same kind of effect."
"You have an insane version of it," Hinata corrected, before turning back to the three genin. "Working with the resistance seals, and when you're ready for them using the chakra weights as well, will be the best solution for all of you to build up your strength and stamina. That aside, Jiraiya looks like he's going to take all day at the rate he's going, but we don't expect to be sticking around past breakfast tomorrow at the latest. You should be able to complete both of those missions by mid-afternoon."
"Given that the pervert has gotten into a bottle of sake, I think we've definitely got plans to stick around this evening. Barring him being run out of town by an angry group of women."
"...he promised not to do that."
"He's drinking."
"Point."
The three genin took that as an invitation to scamper, Akamaru chasing after them. Hoshi snickered as they left. "They have no clue that you two seeded the entire village with clones."
Naruto grinned. "Of course they don't. But we have two missions of our own to focus on. A quick check on a couple of businesses and a little sabotage of a third."
Hoshi transformed himself into a nondescript cat and headed off in the direction that the three genin had gone in, having previously agreed to be an extra minder for them, while Naruto and Hinata shapeshifted into disguises to not be noticed. Undisguised clones of theirs were already visibly enjoying the day with each other across town, conspicuously visible while the genin did their also-visible tasks.
Just because the genin weren't ready for infiltration-style missions didn't mean that the two chunin couldn't engage in them. Coupled with liking their former sensei's views on getting as many missions done as possible if you're in the area anyway, it made stacking a bunch of smaller missions like this a no-brainer.
...though apparently they might need to designate team leader of the day on a rotational basis, based on how quickly the genin had devolved into infighting over who was 'in charge'. Or at least Kiba and Sasuke had done so, with Ino looking annoyed on the sidelines. Perhaps putting Akamaru in charge at their next stop would drive the point that they needed to cooperate home?
Or maybe they'd see if Hoshi wanted to order the genin around when they couldn't agree on things. At least he could be understood by more than one of the three, though needing to take orders from a fox in general would likely annoy Kiba and Akamaru quite a bit. Of course, it was also possible that they'd get lucky and the three would be working together properly by the end of the day.
Naruto had managed to have things with worse odds happen, but he didn't think that would be the case this time.
"What are you doing?" Karin asked Naruto. She'd swung by to return one of the paperwork jutsu scrolls that her roommate was done with and found him working on his project in the compound.
"Working on making the zombie seal properly," Naruto replied.
"...excuse me?"
"The one that was used against the village didn't have the elemental feeds hooked up properly so the zombies just crumbled when destroyed. A couple of them were just built wrong but I think the others were intentionally sabotaged, perhaps to prevent the zombies from harming the actual abduction targets before the Oto shinobi could grab them? Plus the lack of a controller matrix caused them to show no tactics at all."
"I don't understand most of that, but why would you want a proper version?"
"To install in a training ground with a toggle to turn it on. It could make forty-four more interesting for the next time Konoha hosts the chunin exams if I can get the range-limiting set up properly and exclude the central tower. They also make better targets for practicing jutsu than I expected them to, so 'pop up a set of zombie targets' in a couple of other training grounds could work nicely too."
"Wait, you want to use them as an instant opposing force that nobody will care about during training?"
"Yeah."
"Can you make them do jutsu or throw weapons?"
Naruto blinked a couple of times, looking over the interlinked seal arrays. "Throwing weapons is probably doable, but jutsu would be harder. Held weapons should probably be in the mix though, and I did have a thought about seeing if I could get Gentle Fist working to distract those who encountered my fake Hyuga zombies from the truth..."
"Your what?"
"Long story."
"That you aren't going to tell me because it includes sensitive information. Right. Could you auto-apply basic seals to mimic jutsu?"
His eyes widened a little as he considered things, before starting to sketch out a new seal array off to the side. It wouldn't be able to handle anything incredibly complex, and you'd have to stick to seals that weren't exacting in their details, but if it worked...
Three days after the invasion the call for the newly promoted to handle their paperwork had come in. The remaining visiting shinobi had, in some cases reluctantly, left by then, minus those in holding cells...and Kin Tsuchi, who was going to provisionally join Konoha's ranks and was thus no longer 'visiting'.
Naruto and Hinata had each been presented with an entire table full of paperwork to go through, though most of it was spare blank forms for observed things in the village and/or general knowledge. He ended up needing to request more copies of the latter to cover all of the things he'd noticed due to monitoring the village he did with his clones, and had been handed three more boxes of blank forms afterwards so that he could more easily report new things as his clones spotted them.
This was supposedly based on a percentage of the forms he'd filled out upon being promoted, but he wasn't entirely sure if that was accurate. He'd set up a series of seals to easily access the forms and something to write with so that his clones could fill them out as they noticed things either way.
The real interesting things started a week after the invasion, when a number of teams were called to a meeting with Old Man Hokage. Teams seven, eight, and ten from the beginning of the year graduation group, teams Gai and Yurei from a year prior, and a couple of others like the third stage proctor and Kin. Who had mouse features now, apparently.
Old Man Hokage was the last to arrive, moving from another meeting to this one. "For some of you this will be short notice, but I've already spoken to the jounin here and had the genin from teams other than Team Yurei fill out a questionnaire. Several teams were...poorly balanced when created, due in part to limitations in the available pools of genin at the time, and in some cases the intended focuses of the jounin involved are poorly aligned as well. Six other teams were given the option of participating, but their sensei declined and wished to continue as they currently sit."
An apparently-expected gesture brought the jounin present forward before the old man continued. "To start with, Shito and Asuma feel that they never should've been given teams at all. While I don't necessarily agree with their reasoning, their arguments were good enough for an evaluating team of other jounin to agree with."
"I made rookie mistakes that no chunin should've made in not listening to reasonable concerns," Shito spoke up when given a nod by the old man. "I may have earned my rank, but it wasn't for leadership skills and I feel that the mistakes I made warrant demotion, but passing my genin onto a more capable leader is the best I can do."
"I honestly expected to be able to coast along with a well-known team dynamic," Asuma said a moment later. "When that didn't land in my lap I wasn't prepared for needing to work outside of it and honestly feel that I've barely held on. My time with the Twelve Guardians didn't help there, and I need some time working with more varied groups before I'm going to be in a good position to train varied teams properly."
Old Man Hokage nodded. "Thank you for your efforts over the past half year. I think you did quite well, despite a minor lapse or two."
Both men nodded and body-flickered out of the room, their teams looking concerned.
"To continue," the old man said. "Tenten, there's an offer for direct apprenticeship under Hayate in the art of the sword. He and his girlfriend seem to think that you show promise, but need a proper instructor to bring it out."
"I won't go easy on you if you accept," Gekko commented. "In part because you frankly embarrassed the village with your sloppy use of a legendary sword. And my girlfriend would definitely be helping out and is even less likely to go easy on you."
Tenten half-gulped, but also seemed to be trying to not vibrate in excitement. Forms for accepting the apprenticeship were brought out by the old man and Gekko took her off to get them filled out.
"Sakura," the old man continued, causing her to jump a little. "Your evaluations and questionnaire were more complicated to process, but as part of it you expressed a desire to heal. We've recently started up a medic-nin program that accepts genin. Entering it would take you off of normal mission rotations for six to twelve months before you'd be cycled back into a team, if you'd like to attempt it?"
"I'd be delighted to," Sakura said, bowing.
"Wonderful. Here's your paperwork, you'll need to submit it by the end of the week." Sakura collected the folder held out to her, but just moved off to the side instead of leaving. This didn't seem to phase the old man as he continued. "To continue on individual matters, Anko, the village recognizes that Hinata is your apprentice in a couple of matters, but also that the style of apprenticeship is different when a chunin is involved. A request was also made to have you help the academy build up courses on infiltration and counter-infiltration. You'll be splitting your time between that and serving as the supervising jounin when one is necessary for your apprentice's missions."
Anko-sensei bowed. "Understood, Hokage-sama."
"Kurenai, while you can't take a new team, I find myself in need of sensei for existing genin. Rio found that she isn't a good fit for the realities of closely working with an Aburame, Sachie is hoping for a less physically-focused training regimen, and Choji has expressed interest in playing more of a support role than his clan normally performs. I believe that you'll be a good fit for them. As a completely new team assembled outside of the graduation cycle, you'll be marked as being Team Kurenai immediately."
Kurenai-sensei nodded, but the newly-formed team simply gathered to the side with Sakura instead of leaving the room immediately. And perhaps Naruto needed to stop thinking of Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei as being their sensei?
"Ami," Old Man Hokage continued. "You wished to learn more traps and indirect combat, and Tekuno is an expert in such things with an opening on his team. You'll be joining Shikamaru and Shino to replace Rio. Kin, you need a minder and better physical training, and Gai is capable of providing both while also having an opening on his team. You'll be joining Lee and Neji to replace Sachie."
It looked like Gai wanted to shout about how he'd bring out Kin's youth or something like that, but was holding himself back. Possibly due to the glares from the old man and the remaining jounin in the room? Both teams gathered and also moved off to the side at that, leaving two chunin and three genin.
"That brings us to the most complicated group," Old Man Hokage said. "Ino desires to work more with infiltration as a primary focus. Sasuke showed near-identical interests in heavy assault and infiltration. Kiba's interests were most closely aligned with tracking and infiltration support, with a secondary interest in heavy assault. As it stands, we don't actually have any jounin that can properly handle all of this and other factors involved." The old man then smirked. "But it seems that we do have a pair of heavy assault infiltration specialist chunin. While sometimes a lone promotion to chunin in a genin team replaces the jounin sensei, I wish to continue the experiment of using a pair of lower-ranked sensei. Naruto and Hinata are infiltration specialists already used to such a system, so I'm keeping Team Yurei on paper with new genin members."
"And it tests us to see if we're ready to be leading," Naruto noted, doing his best not to smirk at Akamaru giving Hoshi a concerned look.
"There is that, yes, though you two have already shown that you deserve your rank." A folder of paperwork was lightly tossed to Naruto, immediately followed by a mission scroll. "There are additional considerations that you need to be aware of, but here's your basic paperwork. Jiraiya has also requested your assistance on a mission to start in a couple of days and agreed to your full team coming along. Given that you have a different view of 'properly supplied', I figure you can use the next couple of days to get your new team to a minimal supply level by your standards and then work on other things on the road."
Kin wasn't sure why she'd agreed to test the apparently-stable beast-man formula that Konoha had gotten out of one of Orochimaru's old labs, but she had. Admittedly, she'd been hoping for something fierce looking, but while the medic-nin and researchers had figured out what had stabilized the formula they hadn't figured out how to control what animal it turned you into. Only afterwards had they told her that the latter was in part because the thirty or so formulas had all mixed, and the one that was most compatible with your body and genetics tended to take over.
To her initial dismay, she'd been most compatible with a fucking mouse. They'd fixed most of her body externally, and gotten her eyesight mostly normal, and even gotten her clothing that worked with her tail. She then got to spend a day at a training ground trying to adapt to her changes...and found that in several ways they were better than expected. Her hearing was much better, the tail helped with her balance significantly, her sense of smell was...confusing, but she was learning. The biggest boons were the healing factor and boost in her stamina, though she thought that she was naturally quieter when moving around as well.
Either that or her hearing just made her more likely to notice when she wasn't being quiet.
Unfortunately, she'd been put on a team with the loudest jounin she'd ever heard of, in what she thought was Hokage-sama unofficially killing multiple proverbial birds with a single proverbial stone. Specifically, she needed to learn to handle loud noises and her sensei and his primary apprentice needed to learn to be quiet enough to not blow out her eardrums. Again.
Thankfully, she had a healing factor now and had only been deaf for an hour.
Hinata had told their new genin to eat lunch, get their traveling packs, and then meet them at the Uzumaki compound. Naruto had tested adding them to the system by mimicking their chakra, something he'd not really considered doing before, and it appeared to work as they were all able to enter. Well, Akamaru had probably worked, but was riding Kiba and thus harder to tell.
"It feels wrong having sensei that are our age," Sasuke noted. "And it must suck that you're infiltration specialists with what happened to you."
"Especially if it's as hard to correct as what happened to us," Ino added.
"But you'd be surprised," Naruto replied. "Still, there are going to need to be a few ground rules for working with us."
"Like Sasuke not being able to chase after the shrine maiden that everyone says is related to you?" Kiba joked.
"...Karin?"
"Yoko, I think," Ino corrected.
"Oh. Wait, that's what the attention is about?"
Sasuke blushed while looking slightly annoyed. "Why can't I show interest in someone just because she's your family?"
In response, Naruto shapeshifted into Yoko, shrine maiden outfit and all. "Because I do not swing that way, Uchiha-san."
That was apparently enough to shock all four of them into wide-eyed silence...until Sasuke's sharingan activated for a moment. "But...how?"
"Naruto is probably the best infiltrator the village has," Hinata answered. "And he trained by infiltrating the village itself. Repeatedly." She then shifted into Hikari, though still couldn't change her clothing. "You don't become infiltration specialists by not being able to blend in, after all."
Ino frowned as she looked between 'Yoko' and Sasuke, only for the frown to turn into a grin. "Oh man, Sakura and the others would flip if they found out about this."
Sasuke blinked a couple of times, then turned to 'Yoko'. "I don't think I want them to find out. What are the chances of you agreeing to go out to dinner with me just to cause them to panic?"
Naruto shifted back to normal, Hinata following a moment later, before he shrugged. "I'm generally up for a good prank."
"Hold up," Kiba said. "You two just made yourselves look completely normal. How the hell did you do that?"
"That's currently classified as a restricted clan technique that needs some adjustment anyway." Specifically, the Tome was working on isolating 'shapeshifting' and 'sand control'. "I've also been asked not to help you with it until you're cleared for it by the medic-nin, if I ever do."
Ino and Sasuke looked disappointed, yet with a hint of having expected that. Hinata nodded. "Now then, ground rules. To start with, ideally you're all going to work on getting as many jutsu as you can down to being able to be done without hand seals."
"Needing hand seals for regularly-used jutsu is a liability, as is calling out technique names. We'll make exceptions for needing to tell Akamaru what joint techniques you want to use until you've got silent communication down. Assuming Akamaru can manage it, anyway."
"Then there's supplies. I see three packs, and while that's acceptable for some circumstances it won't be your norm with us."
"We have to have two or more packs each?" Ino asked, sounding fearful.
"Of course not," Naruto replied, triggering one of his seals to reveal a trunk. "I'm an aspiring sealmaster. I don't expect you to be able to make your own seals unless you want to learn it, but being stuck with what you can fit into a pack is ridiculous. We'll get your physical training in with chakra weights and resistance seals."
The three genin had looked semi-awed and semi-hopeful until that last point, which is where they went wide-eyed.
"He even figured out how to make the resistance seals work for me," Hoshi added, which caused Akamaru to look worried as well. "...though I'm nowhere near at their level."
"Lastly," Naruto said, pulling a stack of summoning contracts out of a scroll. "Is how we manage returning to the village without being seen unless escorting someone. This is a collection of personal summoning contracts. By signing them between us we can summon each other, and I have ways to get into the village with my main contract. So I can get here, and then summon everyone else in, bypassing the gates entirely. It also makes it far more difficult to abduct other team members and provides ways to extract someone that are essentially impossible for an enemy to stop or follow."
"That's how you do it?" Kiba asked, eye twitching. "No secret entrances and exits to bypass the walls?"
"...I know of a couple dozen of those too, but I've never bothered to use them."
Sasuke felt betrayed and like he'd been an idiot at the same time, only balanced out by Naruto both not making a big deal of being Yoko and agreeing to pranking the fangirls. Except that the 'date' with Yoko was genuinely enjoyable, making her more attractive, even before you took into account the stories of her defending the shrine from zombies and Oto attackers with chakra chains.
Something that Naruto never seemed to use, and hadn't shown in the finals despite the massive show they'd put on. Different skills for different identities, something that most infiltrators likely never really got down well. And something that Itachi had said could be important for Anbu, to keep their identities secret.
But for Sasuke, having the one girl in the village that he'd had any interest in turn out to be a fake that was still more enjoyable to be around than any other girls was incredibly annoying. Even knowing that Yoko was Naruto wasn't helping spot the Naruto in her, as though she was an entirely different person that lived in his new sensei's head and was able to be brought out at will or something. Which just demonstrated how scarily good he was at infiltration, doubly so given that he could change his chakra and scent.
It was generating constant mental whiplash, made worse by jealousy that someone was this good at infiltration while Sasuke might never be cleared to learn what he needed to properly do anything remotely like it himself thanks to the stupid wolf ears and tail.
...though Naruto commenting that next time Sasuke should be in his kunoichi outfit to really confuse the fangirls felt like it was both a great idea and something to be avoided at all costs at the same time.
Outfitting the genin and Akamaru had taken two days, and for now they were just wearing resistance belts. Ino had found out about Naruto's showers in the process, but not gotten one of her own, yet had still been giddy over the prospect of being able to use one on the road either way. Especially with how sweaty she was expecting to get while using the resistance seals and, eventually, the chakra weights. Sasuke and Kiba were more appreciative of being able to carry more combat supplies...and shocked at the suggested list of clothing to bring along for any mission.
Jiraiya had looked at the team, eye twitching. "This is the single least stealthy team I think I've ever seen."
"They're not infiltrators yet," Naruto commented. "We've only had a couple of days and the good stuff isn't authorized yet anyway."
"You're part of the problem."
"Only because they stick out like sore thumbs already."
"...okay, right, I forgot about that particular insanity of yours. Let's get signed out and on the road."
Half an hour later they'd made it out of the village, their departure gate having been a bit busier than expected due to a large incoming group of merchants.
"So what do you two expect to have your genin doing while we're out here?" Jiraiya asked once they were moving through the trees.
"I figure we pick up missions while you're doing your thing," Naruto answered. "Low priority 'while passing through anyway' type stuff to see how these three work together while they work on the training we already gave them."
"What about the fact that they're lagging behind already?"
"Hinata and I have clones with them. When we stop for the night we'll summon them forward, otherwise they can keep working against the resistance belts."
"That's not a bad plan, especially since it lets us move at speed without needing to worry about them keeping up."
"And only really usable today. We'll be too far outside of patrolled areas afterwards."
"...point."
"So who are we looking for?" Hinata asked. "Since the mission scroll we got to see only said that we were searching for someone."
"Someone spooked Tsunade a few months back and she's been unusually hard to pin down since."
"Oh. We're already familiar with her chakra so she'll be easier to find."
Jiraiya blinked, turning to stare at them while still maintaining speed through the trees. "How are you familiar with her chakra?"
Naruto shrugged. "We were investigating casinos when she showed up and were given an extra task of getting her to win repeatedly. It was annoying."
"...Anko's idea?"
"Yeah."
"Figures. That's probably what spooked her, and a pile of others paying attention to her movements."
Anko raised an eyebrow when Yugao joined her and Kurenai at the bar. "Funny seeing you here."
"I could say the same about you too," Yugao challenged. "You two aren't joint sensei anymore."
"Why shouldn't we meet up to discuss how things have changed?" Kurenai asked. "Besides, I've got another couple of weeks before I'll be happy taking my new kids on anything outside of the village. Jiraiya was crazy to basically pull the new Team Yurei out of the village immediately."
"And my primary task right now is in the village," Anko added. "Mostly daily meetings with the academy instructors, currently. You, on the other hand, don't officially have a brat to train and plenty of duties."
"Just got off shift and I wanted to know what the hell you two did to train your genin. Tenten is outperforming most Anbu in masking her chakra and killing intent, can fool normal human senses when it comes to scent, and has a decent if incomplete ability to swap another personality into place at the drop of a kunai. She only graduated a year and a half ago!"
"Ah. Most of that was actually Hinata and Naruto teaching the rest of us, but I can take credit for the killing intent. Took the kids hunting for rabbits in the Forest of Death, though I don't think we ever told Naruto that it shouldn't be possible to lie with your intent..."
Kurenai snorted. "If you had then he'd have taken it as a challenge and figured it out anyway."
"...maybe, yeah."
Yugao looked at them like they were crazy. "What do you mean by 'lie with your intent'?"
Anko grinned, thinking back to the first time she'd realized what he'd done. "He somehow pulled off making the rabbits think that he wanted to protect them, drawing them to him, only to then kill them for dinner. My best guess is that he channeled Yoko's intent instead of 'his'."
Kurenai looked thoughtful at that. "Yeah, I can see that working. He's scarily good with his other personalities..."
"The more you talk the less sure I am that I understand anything you're saying," Yugao interjected with a scowl.
"Long story short," Anko said. "Tenten learned most of that to keep up with the other two that were scary before we got our hands on them. Or perhaps before they got their hands on us? I could barely keep up with Hinata's training routine before the exams and Kurenai was mostly able to keep up with Tenten's. None of us could keep up with Naruto's, but I bet Hinata gets close now. Especially since I noticed that Hikari started working at the shrine after the finals and a couple of the wandering animals gained partners."
"...see, I thought I was understanding things, and then you went and confused me again."
"I'm surprised you don't know," Kurenai said. "Perhaps we should tell you some stories of the best infiltrator the academy has ever seen? Provided, of course, that you're buying the round of drinks."
That got them a deadpan glare, followed by producing a wad of ryo.
Two days of traveling had brought them to a small village where Jiraiya had needed to check with contacts before they could move on. Naruto had handled picking up a couple of missions for him and Hinata and a couple of missions for the genin.
"I'd expected more trouble from you three," Naruto admitted as he handed them their two mission scrolls.
"After seeing you and Hinata-sensei pretend to be a full assault force?" Kiba asked.
"...I also expected you to be more of a problem with Ino, instead of just working with both of your teammates on improving their use of their noses."
"I knew I had nothing to worry about from Kiba," Ino replied. "It isn't common knowledge, but the Yamanaka clan works with the Inuzuka."
"They introduce what eventually becomes a complete inability to find animal features romantically attractive in all the kids," Kiba elaborated. "Around age six or so, usually. There were supposedly too many problems with bonding too much with ninken during the wandering clans period that nearly wiped the clan out a couple of times, though mom went on a bit of a rant about it finally biting the clan in the ass after Ino's change."
Huh. That made a lot of sense to Naruto and was simultaneously a bit creepy.
"We want to see how you three handle yourselves on some glorified D-Ranks," Hinata said after shaking her head. "They're officially C-Rank, but only because of us being outside of Konoha."
"While you're doing that we'll be handling a couple of other things I picked up," Naruto added.
"...you're letting us handle our first missions together without any supervision at all?" Ino asked, sounding incredulous.
"Part of your training is figuring out if and how we're monitoring you," Hinata retorted. "We don't expect you to have any luck with that at all for at least a couple of months though."
"Before we get to doing these missions," Kiba said. "Do you have any tips for increasing my stamina? I thought I was pretty good, but then Ino and Sasuke were able to go for longer between breaks than I could."
"They're cheating in a way," Naruto said. "The animal features came with a healing factor that passively boosts their stamina and makes a lot of muscle training more effective. Hinata and I have a stronger version of the same kind of effect."
"You have an insane version of it," Hinata corrected, before turning back to the three genin. "Working with the resistance seals, and when you're ready for them using the chakra weights as well, will be the best solution for all of you to build up your strength and stamina. That aside, Jiraiya looks like he's going to take all day at the rate he's going, but we don't expect to be sticking around past breakfast tomorrow at the latest. You should be able to complete both of those missions by mid-afternoon."
"Given that the pervert has gotten into a bottle of sake, I think we've definitely got plans to stick around this evening. Barring him being run out of town by an angry group of women."
"...he promised not to do that."
"He's drinking."
"Point."
The three genin took that as an invitation to scamper, Akamaru chasing after them. Hoshi snickered as they left. "They have no clue that you two seeded the entire village with clones."
Naruto grinned. "Of course they don't. But we have two missions of our own to focus on. A quick check on a couple of businesses and a little sabotage of a third."
Hoshi transformed himself into a nondescript cat and headed off in the direction that the three genin had gone in, having previously agreed to be an extra minder for them, while Naruto and Hinata shapeshifted into disguises to not be noticed. Undisguised clones of theirs were already visibly enjoying the day with each other across town, conspicuously visible while the genin did their also-visible tasks.
Just because the genin weren't ready for infiltration-style missions didn't mean that the two chunin couldn't engage in them. Coupled with liking their former sensei's views on getting as many missions done as possible if you're in the area anyway, it made stacking a bunch of smaller missions like this a no-brainer.
...though apparently they might need to designate team leader of the day on a rotational basis, based on how quickly the genin had devolved into infighting over who was 'in charge'. Or at least Kiba and Sasuke had done so, with Ino looking annoyed on the sidelines. Perhaps putting Akamaru in charge at their next stop would drive the point that they needed to cooperate home?
Or maybe they'd see if Hoshi wanted to order the genin around when they couldn't agree on things. At least he could be understood by more than one of the three, though needing to take orders from a fox in general would likely annoy Kiba and Akamaru quite a bit. Of course, it was also possible that they'd get lucky and the three would be working together properly by the end of the day.
Naruto had managed to have things with worse odds happen, but he didn't think that would be the case this time.