AN: This is another story written by max3833. I thought this story had potential too, so I brought it back so it wouldn't end up being forgotten. Hope you enjoy.
Tsunade had a problem.
No, the slug princess had a huge gaping crisis on her hands. She had just accepted the job of Hokage, after her old beloved sensei had died fighting her old and slightly less beloved teammate to a standstill, and was now in an occupation with a 100 percent mortality rate. But worse still, she did not know of the horrible condition that the Village Hidden in the Leaves itself was in. Half the ninja population was either killed, injured, or too young to be considered useful in time of war.
Okay, maybe she had signed up to quickly for this Hokage thing. She not only had to worry about Orochimaru, but any other of the big villages as well. Sure, Naruto had been an inspiration to her, but she was not expecting such a big rebuilding project.
"Tsunade-sama," the Fifth Hokage turned to see her assistant standing in the doorway, holding a plate with tea cups on it. "I think you might need a non-alcoholic drink to calm your nerves."
"Why can't it be sake?" the older woman moaned as she began to sip, "this is tougher than I thought Shizune."
"Sir?"
"I have a village to rebuild," she said sadly, "And only half a ninja army to do it with. If the Sound were to attack now, we could hardly fight them off. Not to mention if Iwa, or Kumo, or even Kiri decided they wanted to wipe us off the map for good. Most of our chuunin were killed in the battle, our jounin are off on big missions, so we have to use our genin to defend our village. And I don't even want to think about the Akatsuki, they would be able to rip our defenses apart."
"And there not the only enemies too," Shizune said, "We also have to worry about other missing-nin who may want revenge for being forced out of Konoha. Let's face it, we're so undermanned that we may have to start to raise graduation rate at the Academy."
"That, unfortunately, won't work," Tsunade sighed, "Most who go to the academy aren't worth being assigned to squads; and even then, it would take years to rebuild those groups from scratch."
"We could try to promote the genin we already have," Shizune suggested.
"No way," Tsunade said, "even after the fighting during the invasion, most of them are still to raw, they need more missions before they can gain any rank."
"Well Tsunade-sama" the younger woman said incredulously, "It's not like we can pick up talented and experienced fighters just out of thin air. Every village system works by having an academy, where the youth are trained, building a new crop of ninja for each year, which is meant to resupply the villages with talent each year. No one has a faster way of making ninja unless you want to listen to Danzou, and turn young children into pure weapons, which even then will not be fast enough to suit our need."
"I just wish there was a faster…wait a minute," Tsunade said, before turning back to her assistant, "name the enemies you listed again!"
"Sound, Iwa, Kumo, Kiri," the young woman began to sound off, "Akatsuki, missing-nin-"
"That's it!" Tsunade shouted out happily, "our source of new talent!" She then grabbed her young assistant, and began to run out to the public library for ninja use.
"I can't believe that Kakashi-sensei is making us read this crap!"
Konoha's number one knuckle-headed ninja was groaning as he read the scroll he had been assigned. Ever since Kakashi had been forced to take long missions away from the village, after his long healing process of course, the three younger members of team seven had been forced to simply read for training. While this bothered Naruto, he was not the one in the worst mental state.
No, that title belonged to one Uchiha Sasuke, the number one rookie of his graduating class, and Kakashi's favorite student. He had also designated himself as the man who would kill his brother, the legendary Uchiha Itachi, the most famous missing-nin in Konoha history, and murderer of all his family save Sasuke. He was adored by Sakura, the third member of team seven, and a rival of Naruto. This unfortunately meant that whenever Naruto began to advance as a ninja, Sasuke's fragile self-esteem crumbled. He also had been humiliated by his brother in their first fight, only a few months before when Naruto was searching for Tsunade.
'I need Kakashi to get back soon,' he thought to himself, 'I need to get stronger.'
And the obligatory "I think Sasuke is nuts" comment has been made, so let's get back to the real hero of the story.
Naruto was quietly reading over a history of Konoha and Kiri relations. They had actually been the main opponents in the first two Great Ninja Wars, but due to Kiri's collapse around thirty years before, they had been at peace during the third. He began reading about the bandit ridden islands that existed along the border between the Land's of Fire and Water. Apparently, many bandits from here were among those Gato had hired for his attempt to take over the land of waves. Suddenly, he raised his head to see the blur of both Tsunade and Shizune rush into the library, and begin ripping books out of the shelves.
"What are you doing grandma?" Naruto asked Tsunade. Her answer was a book that slapped him upside the head.
"Quiet kid," she said angrily, "I'm looking for something really important."
"Is there anything we can do to help, Tsunade-sama," Sakura asked, not knowing that she was actually annoying the hard at work Hokage. She too met in battle with a large book, and she too lost horrifically. Finally, after about three minutes of sorting through books, Tsunade smiled as she picked up one particular book. As she tore through the book, her smile began to widen, until finally, after finishing reading it, she burst out in cheer.
"Yes, there is no rule against it!" she shouted, jumping up and down like a school girl, "There is no rule against it!"
"I think the Hokage has gone crazy," Sasuke said rather ironically.
"No fooling," Naruto said, as he finally rose up with a large lump on his head.
"Okay," Tsunade said as she calmed down, "Naruto, you go get your class together, along with the other team that made it to the third round in the Chuunin exams, and meet me in my office in three hours, I just have a few more things to arrange before I put my plans into motion."
As Shizune rushed after her master, still unsure of what the Hokage was thinking, the members of Team Seven were all thinking, 'what has gotten into her?"
They were about to find out.
'I can't believe that the counselors agreed to this,' Shizune thought with a sweat drop, as the assembled eleven genin and one chuunin stared at their leader and her assistant with confused stares.
"Hey old hag," Naruto shouted at his grandmother, "Why did you call all of us here?"
His answer was another book in the face. As Hinata Hyuga and Rock Lee, the members of the group who liked Naruto the best, attempted to revive their beloved, if not incredibly stupid friend, Tsunade bean to spell out her mission for them all.
"As you all know," she began, as Hinata tried her best to heal the boy of her affections without touching him, which incredibly hard to do, "Our Ninja force is beyond depleted. We have been forced thin and widen our soldiers all over the nation, dangerously leaving the village open to attack. So, I was left to the question, how do we rebuild our ninja army quickly with a great amount of talent and technique."
"Well," Tenten, Lee and Hinata's cousin, Neji, teammate said, "We were taught at the academy, so are you accelerating the graduation rate."
"Nice guess, but that is exactly what Shizune fist said," the Hokage replied, "unfortunately, the talent would be suspect, and they would be little more than cannon fodder for the far better trained opponents from Sound and anywhere else that may try to attack."
"Are you going to ask the Sand to send more of their ninja," Sakura reasoned.
"No," Tsunade said with a sigh, "that was actually never discussed, most likely because they too are so depleted from the fighting that they would not be able to help us and themselves at the same time." Sakura blushed at the reprimand from one of her idols.
"Our plan actually had to go through a lot of legal work," Tsunade said, "and I was only able to get it through by promising that only you twelve would be off doing this. We are going to be the first ninja village to …RECRUIT MISSING-NIN!"
The young shinobi just stared at her, all with sweat drops at her apparently incredibly revolutionary statement. It was finally Ino, Sakura's rival, who broke the silence.
"Mam," she said, "Aren't missing-nin known for their incredible disloyalty? Why would we recruit them when they just might turn their backs on us when they get the chance?"
"The first thing you have to learn about missing-nin is that they are not all traitors to their village," Tsunade explained, "Let us first take the Kiri for an example. They are known for having many bloody coups, and when an old Mizukage gets kicked out, usually most of his followers are kicked out as well. So in many cases ninja are kicked out of their village for simply having differing views from their kage. This means that many missing-nin are actually those who were betrayed, making them the ones who were betrayed. You are also to recruit any other warrior who has the talent to be a ninja, but does not have the training."
"I must ask, Tsunade-sama," Shino, Hinata's teammate spoke up, "To only assign the twelve of us to this task, it would seem to me that it would be incredibly difficult to bring in more than perhaps a few truly strong prospects. Why only send us on this?"
"The truth is, you are the only ones I could get, all the other Ninja had to be dedicated to the rebuilding process or otherwise taking care of some, intelligence mission," she said sadly, "So I know that it might be hard to get ninja to join you when you all are so young, so I did authorize a reward for you all for each time you all brought in a new prospect. I will first determine the strength of the new candidate, and then, after assigning him a rank, will give you a reward I deem fit. This could be anything from extra money, to a new technique, to a promotion in rank."
"But I thought we could only become chuunin after passing the Chuunin exams," Sakura said questioningly.
"Think Sakura, there are dozens of chuunin in the village, not all of them could have passed the exams, now could they?" Tsunade said sarcastically.
"So in other words," Shikamaru grumbled, "You are expecting us to go risk our lives in the slight chance that we might be able to bring in some questionable help?"
"Yes."
"…Troublesome."
Naruto ran into his small apartment, rifling through all the materials he had. He needed to pack as quickly as possible, if he wanted to get out before the rest of the recruiters. He was going to bring in the strongest one and get that promotion to chuunin if it killed him.
"Alright!" Our hero shouted excitedly, "Look out missing-nin! Prepare to get recruited!"
It had been two days, and he had found nothing. Maybe just rushing straight out the village had been a bad idea. I mean, it's not like he had any plan of where to find this new talent to recruit.
"Hum," Naruto said, opening up a box of instant Ramen, "Where do really tough people live?" he then quickly pulled out a map that he had been forced to take by Tsunade. Apparently, she did not trust him with directions. Now why would she think that?
Anyway, he began to look at it, and pointed to Konoha. "Okay, I left the North Gate," he made a little line with his finger, "and ran for two days straight. So that means, I should be, right about," he pointed to a line between the land of fire and a small buffer state south of the land of lightning, "here!" He then looked at the surrounding areas. "Hum," he began, "I could go towards Lighting Country, but that would probably upset Kumo. They are known for keeping a very tight lock on behavior in their borders," he then traced his finger a few miles to the East, to see the Land of Waves, "Yeah, all go see Inari and Tazuna and see if they can help me find some kind of idea about where I should go looking."
As Naruto sped off, he did not notice the two beings hiding in the trees, who quickly jumped to the top of the branches and began to speak with one another.
"I can't believe they would let the Nine-Tail out of the Village alone like this," a blue faced man, Kisame the Shark, cackled, "This almost makes this too easy!"
"Quiet Kisame," his partner, Uchiha Itachi reprimanded, "We should be grateful. Akatsuki suffered a major loss when the Five-Tailed and Six-Tailed escaped. We now have moved only farther behind schedule, with only the Seven-Tailed beast in custody, we must take little Naruto if our organization is to return to its normal strength. But still, let us hand back, and see what the boy is doing."
The two disappeared in a flash, diving back to trail the boy for as long as needed.
AN: Well, the first chapter is done.
So this story shows how Konoha was able to rebuild despite having such a shortage of ninja after the Sound Invasion. With the use of free agency, the process of going out and finding talent elsewhere and recruiting and bringing it in for you yourself to use. So I think this will be a cool way to bring in crossover characters. These will include both heroes and villains, and of course some guys in between. Also, if you have any suggestions of characters, send them in. I already have several, but more would be appreciated. Especially in review form.
See you soon.
