A/N: Now I know you're all gonna hate me for posting another new story and not finishing the others instead, but well...
I apologize for letting you down and the long waits. That said, this is unpaid work I'm doing when I have something I find fun to write, much as I appreciate the following and nice comments the Nominal Hokage has gotten, and is surprisingly still getting.
Here goes another one :)
Remnant of ANBU team 17
Few people knew of ANBU team seventeen. Mostly because it got disbanded in times of peace and dispersed among the other teams, not to be seen again until war came around.
The team specialized in two things; assassinations that left no trace and wide-scale ninjutsu so big that all but a specialist would name them natural disasters.
The deployment of this team had changed the tide of wars, always to the favor of Konoha.
The team had originally been made at the height of the first great Shinobi war.
A Kayuga had joined Konoha after being cast out of his clan for unknown reasons and soon shot through the ranks before finally being promoted to ANBU captain by the first Hokage. His condition had been to get to choose his team-members and two months to train them.
Their first deployment had massively shifted the balance of power by taking out two hostile jinchuriki while an earthquake left an opening in their enemies' ranks that let the Hokage lead Konoha's main force into the heart of enemy territory gained a tactical advantage that would be held until the end of the war.
By the end of the first war most civilians came to think that Konoha had the gods on their side as similar events piled up, always to the advantage of Konoha.
The team consisted of five members all wearing masks made from the bone of the original captain.
Naruto had never heard of these people when he somehow managed to make it into ANBU's headquarters and took a look around the storage rooms.
Only the fact that he was expecting secret rooms had let him find the room that contained the masks by tapping on the walls and listening to the echo before turning the swing door.
The first mask he picked up had words etched on the inside.
"Stealth or destruction - no witnesses."
Taking this as his cue to leave Naruto attached the mask to his belt and left the way he had come. He had after all gotten his trophy.
In another life he would have been caught snooping around five minutes earlier, having not been hidden behind the fake wall and would have started a habit of being chased around by ANBU in revenge.
This time he got away.
Later that evening Naruto tried on the mask in front of the mirror and felt it shrink to perfectly fit his face.
Somehow he felt aware like he never had before. The scents going through the mask were sharper and somehow Naruto became aware of the distinct smells of the nearest neighbors and the direction they came from. His sight was clearer too, even in the poor light of Naruto's old lamp.
Looking out Naruto realized night had fallen and it seemed like the village was open for a whole new mode of discovery.
Even as he slipped out of the door his vision somehow got used to the dark impossibly fast. The shadows of the most out of sight places suddenly stood out to him and before he knew it he was travelling through these perfectly measuring the distance to the rooftop on the other side of the building and leaping through the air unseen, even by the ninja patrolling the city.
Other things changed too. Naruto felt focused like never before. His hyperactivity seemed to fade away replaced by concentration as the mask unknown to him sealed away and regulated his flow of chakra to make him invisible to even the best sensor types. The mask had been worn and modified with advanced fuuinjutsu by seven of the greatest ninjas Konoha had ever produced and was made by essentially living material. Its functions made it essentially alive in symbiosis with its wearer.
Naruto felt like he had a sudden sixth sense for the movements of patrols and for the perfect places to hide even as he slipped through the council chambers onto the corridors of the Hokage tower.
As time went by Naruto felt his senses improve more and more especially his hearing.
His own steps seemed impossibly loud and it was annoying him.
Even as he tried walking in different ways to walk he became so annoyed that he took off his sandals and went barefoot.
It was still another hour of experimenting before he could even do slow steps quietly but it had become a game to him to see if he could truly move without a sound.
The sight of the sun rising surprised him. Had it really been so long?
Before long he was settled back into his bed, mask hidden beneath a loose board in the floor.
Naruto woke up again in the afternoon and took a bit of money from the bag the Third Hokage had given him and went to the ramen stand the old man had introduced him to.
It felt weird barely hearing the tapping of his footsteps; though for some reason he was sure he was more aware of them than he'd been before. The same thing held true for his sense of smell. He couldn't tell where people were within ten meters like he could with the mask on but as he was about to pass onto a side street he veered to the left and avoided a man he'd met before who didn't like him.
Naruto didn't think much of it but he seemed to stick to the paths he'd gone by last night.
One thing he did notice was that he seemed more tired from walking the stretch than he had when he did it with the mask on. Shrugging Naruto set off to eat more ramen than what should be strictly legal.
Not having much to do for the rest of the day Naruto set about reading the scrolls the Hokage had given him to practice with. Mostly it was simple fairy tales written for children and illustrated to help understand specific words.
After an hour Naruto noticed the lights start to fade and hurried to put his mask on.
Once again the world seemed to come into focus around him. Before he knew it he was scampering along the streets barely flickering between the shadows.
One thing he realized was that his practice had born some fruits, even with his sandals on he was fairly quiet.
Even as this thought occurred to him Naruto noticed a strange sign come into focus.
An array of writing of some kind, much more complex than the ones he'd been reading earlier, spread itself out over a wall of the Hokage tower.
Even as Naruto focused on it, more of them seemed to appear around him.
One thing the Hokage had told him in their sporadic lessons was to write down words on a sheet of paper he'd given him so he could explain it to him later, and get the boy used to drawing the complex signs as well.
Naruto started to draw each of the seals as best he could in small size hoping that the old man would have time to see him soon.
As he finished drawing Naruto felt exhaustion creep up on him. Having been out two nights in a row, and having to concentrate on drawing the signs, was taking its toll.
Two days later the venerable third Hokage nearly had a heart attack as Naruto set a near perfect of Konoha's protection seals, used to secure the most important buildings in the village against the various ninja arts, before him.
Still as he looked closer he found that the boy had a closer attention to detail than he'd have given him credit for. Sure there were mistakes but overall the patterns were there, even in the small scale drawn on the pages of the book.
"This is well drawn, where'd you see it?"
"Out on the walls?" Naruto replied innocently.
Sarutobi wondered if this was some instinct gained from the boy's father, the man had after all been a sealing expert entirely in his own caliber. Deciding not to discourage the boy from coming again, if he came upon something even more disastrous, the Hokage resolved to give an introduction to the sealing arts.
Three meetings were postponed as the Hokage unfolded the various intricacies of the seals to the youngster.
Naruto's head was spinning with ideas as he pondered at the possibilities of combining various elements of the five seals the Hokage had explained in detail.
Particularly Naruto pondered at two seals: An intent seeking parameter scanner that basically sent a warning to a connected seal, alerting guards to hostile or malicious intruders, and a seal that dispersed lightning chakra into natural chakra dispersing it into the surroundings.
If he could combine the two the right way and reverse the flow of the second seal he might have any evil people who approached his apartment struck down with lightning.
Frankly it took half the night before Naruto had a model ready to test out. It all came down to building the receiver into the reversed lightning disperser and hoping the message of location would translate into a direction to fire lightning towards.
Naruto carefully cut his thumb and mixed his blood with a bottle of ink before putting on his mask and using the improved night sight to see as he draw the result on his door.
As he finished the last stroke Naruto sent a wave of his chakra, something he'd never had trouble accessing since he had so much of it, and saw the pattern fade away, only visible in the special light the mask highlighted it in.
Even as Naruto lay safely in his sleep for the following day a mob gathered in the event of October 10ths annual celebration of the defeat of the nine-tailed fox. Their plans to rough up the demon brat were put on halt as a torrent of lightning met their approach to building complex.
The ANBU on watch could hardly ignore this event, even as he would have happily ignored anything short of someone killing the boy, and so set about investigating the source of the lightning.
Finding the sketch book open on the kitchen table the masked man recognized elements of various seals he was familiar with as part of his duties and brought and so sketched out a copy for his report of the event.
The Hokage looked over the copy a day later and wondered what other headaches the boy would bring him. Barely a lesson into sealing and he was making unheard of inventions.
Thinking in this line made him schedule an hour each day to properly instruct the boy in the esoteric art. It was in a sense the boy's birthright as an Uzumaki and anyone who could learn to think in the strange lines required to understand the inner workings of Fuuinjutsu was extremely valuable in the Shinobi world. Certainly a good investment of time that had nothing to do with shirking paper work…
The lessons gave a new structure to the days of the now six-year-old boy. In truth he had a near instinctual understanding of seals as soon as he understood the various parts they consisted off. He did however have to practice the actual drawing which came convenient as he tried to combine the various concepts the Hokage was introducing him to.
Most of his daytime passed by with this practice and his nights still passed in the deep shadows of Konoha, stalking the various patrols or tracing down seals used to protect the clan compounds.
Frankly Naruto was making a mental map of Konoha, marking areas of importance simply by how many seals were involved with their protection. The archive of the village, held in the floor below the Shinobi library, was at the top of his current list. It seemed a little odd to Naruto that so much would be done to protect a bunch of old papers, but then he hadn't quite understood the significance of the paper that somehow made him the owner of his apartment and there seemed to be a lot of these ownership papers in the place, from what little he bothered looking through after breaking in.
For the Hokage it was a strange experience to teach the child. On one hand he had a lifetime of experience and understanding of the art to pass on, but on the other hand the child was making such leaps of intuition between various elements of different seals, and seemed to have an instinctual understanding of the results it would have. Not even Jiraya who had long since surpassed him in the art had had the same knack for it.