Chapter 2: So I Read the Manual - Now What?

"Miss, are you sure you can carry all of those?" Concerned older male, trying hard not to look down.

"Don't worry mister! I'm plenty strong!" Hmm, a little hop, just enough to draw attention up top, and there we go. One extra wallet.

"If you say so...but let me at least carry your bags to the door." Poor sucker, might as well let him dream.

"Thanks! That's really nice of you!" Wink. Yup, works like a charm.


Poof.

"Okay, let's see what I got. This week's groceries, including assorted vegetables, dried chicken and emergency instant ramen. Oh, and a little extra money - actually, this guy's carrying more than I paid for all the food. Oh well, maybe he'll learn to be a little more cautious. Seriously, this is a village full of ninjas."

A voice is heard from a secluded alley. Why is there an alley in the middle of nowhere? Well it's a funny story, really. You see, the creators of the original city, being the First Hokage and his rival, Madara Uchiha, were undoubtedly great ninja. They were able to single handedly end large-scale battles with their sheer presence. On the other hand, since neither of them were exactly great engineers and they both wanted to build the city the way they thought best, there were some areas where the architecture was slightly, well, off. This resulted in a sewer system that was not actually aligned to the buildings above, and several roads that ended up going nowhere. Sometime during the Second Hokage's term, it was decided that city planning should be left to those who specialize in the field, and several of the more pressing problems were fixed, or at least glossed over. A new sewer system was constructed, and several of the useless roads were walled off. On the other hand, no one exactly got rid of the original sewer system, and as it wasn't in use, it was eventually forgotten. At the same time, since the original blueprints of the city were destroyed when the renovations were put into place, there was no record of the system even existing.

Luckily, a hundred year old Hokage with too much free time on his hands had discovered an unsealed entrance to these old parts of Konoha. Now that he was back in the past, this offered him a large area that no one else knew about and that he could use as he wished. Naturally, he turned the whole place into his house. Yes, that's right. Konoha's six-year-old jinchuuriki got himself a house that was just under a third of the size of the city proper.


I love my house. Well, technically, I love all fourteen of them, but since they're all connected, it works out. Currently, houses two through fourteen are being used as storage areas, but I'll make do with the others. So, let's just make sure I remember where everything is - number one has my twenty foot wide bed; number two has the kitchen and giant bathroom; number three is wall to ceiling with is used kunai, ditto for numbers four and five; six, seven, and eight have scavenged shuriken; nine has rope; ten has random tools that I might find useful; the rest are all handmade explosive tags. Thank you shadow clones.

Right, maybe I went a little overboard with those, but I had lots of extra hands and time to be filled. The paper was kind of expensive, though - it's a good thing I figured out how to make ink a few decades ago, or I'd be flat broke. Oh, right.

"Menu. Character. Stats. Okay, a few more points into speed, and some more into control. Dump the rest into luck."

Whoever set up this game did not design it with me in mind - doing actions over and over again increases my aptitude in that specific activity, and also gives me a fraction of a point that can be used to boost a specific character trait. The first time I figured that out, I had thousands of clones under Konoha refurbishing the sewers, and after realizing that I acquired a serious boost in my construction ability and also got a few hundred points to play with, I went and dumped them all in luck. Best decision I've made in years. It's a shame that the effect of a single point levels off the higher the stat gets, or I'd have taken over the world in about a week. Oh well.


The Third Hokage was a busy man. Being responsible for both the civilian and military populations of one of the largest cities in the world left precious little time for relaxation. Of course, the job did have its perks...

"You know, jonin are interesting things. They gain years of combat experience as a genin, leadership experience as a chunin, and after proving that they are the best of the best, they are rigorously tested for ascension into the jonin ranks. You agree so far?"

"..." Fidgeting. Oh, yes, they're getting nervous now.

"So when four of these highly trained, cold blooded killers are sent to follow one six year old child and retrieve a single item, one would think that it is a somewhat unnecessary waste of manpower, right?"

"..." Why, is that sweat? Yes it is! Shame on you, showing your fear so easily.

"Maybe I should just demote the lot of you and hire Naruto instead - he's clearly more capable than all of you put together."

"But Sir - "

"Oh, you have a complaint, Iruka? Let me see, you have four A-rank assassination missions completed, fourteen B-rank surveillance missions, and a number of tracking missions on top of that. To be honest, you're probably the best active tracker in the whole force."

"Thank you, si-"

"But! I ask you to find one, single, untrained child, and you - "

Crash. Tinkling glass, followed by a thud.

"Hey, old man, I heard you were looking for me!"

Dead silence. Four men's spines were ramrod stiff, and their faces were suspiciously blank. One aged man sunk his face into his palms on the surface of his wide wooden desk, mortified at what just happened. Finally, sitting on the back of one of the aforementioned jonin, one with a scar bisecting his face horizontally, was a blonde child wearing a pyramidal red hat with the symbol for fire on the front.

"Dammit Naruto! Stop taking my hat!"


A/N: Sorry about the extreme lateness, but our college apps were a pain. It's nice to see that people enjoy the story, however. Thanks for reading!