Sunny Side up,

Sunny Side up,

Chapter 3: Live Wires

It was a beautiful day in Konoha, the kind of day the village was famous for. The sun was shining and birds where singing. It was the type of day where family's went and had picnics at the park, and shinobi flocked to the training fields for a bit of light sparing. It was in short, Sarutobi thought as he stared out of his office window, the kind of day he had come to hate.

It wasn't that he hated picnics or any thing, quite the opposite in fact, he wanted nothing more then to go out on a picnic, maybe take a walk and let the sun warm his old bones. No Sarutobi Hated sunny days because he couldn't go out and enjoy them, trapped as he was by the massive amount of paper work he had to do as Hokage.

With a sigh, the elderly Kage turned back to his work, perhaps he could finish up before the next batch arrived and eat lunch outside. There wasn't much left he could do it but he would have to be quick about it. There was a petition from the blacksmith's gilled about creating standardized pricing of kunai and other ninja tools. Three different mission reports from various ranked missions that had, for some reason or another deserved his personal attention, and last but not least he had to finalize this years addition of the bingo book.

Bingo Books where an interesting conglomeration of fact and rumor, used to inform a villages resident shinobi facts about ninja, whether they be missingnin or from another village, they might encounter while on the job. But more then that, they where probably THE biggest show of inter cooperation between villages. Even more so then the chunin examns, because having an accurate and useful Bingo Book involved potently giving away village secrets.

No village willingly gave up information on its shinobi, to do so would be an act of unforgivable stupidity that would undoubtedly get said Ninja killed. That was where the rumor part of the bingo book came into play. Since villages did not simply Give up their secrets, the Bingo Book entries on most ninja had to be woven together from first hand accounts of those who had seen the ninja fight, the reputation of the nin in question, and such facts as where public knowledge such as rank and clan. There was only one acceptation to this rule.

When a ninja betrays his or her village, it is seen as the most heinous of crimes. The sworn duty of a shinobi is to defend and serve their village until they breathe their last breath. So when a Shinobi abandons the village they were born in, the village they swore to protect, the village tends to take it personally. The layer of protection granted to that ninja by the village is striped away. In the villages eyes the ninja becomes someone to be killed on sight, some one whose continued existence threatens the village from which he or she came.

So the question was what do you do with a file of classified information on someone you wanted dead? The answer came with the ending of the second shinobi war. The war had been started by a disgruntled missing-nin from Kumo who had been passed over for the position of Raikage. In order to take revenge on his rival he had assassinated the nidame Mizukage's younger brother who was the leader of the seven swordsmen of the time.

The resulting war had eventfully ended when the missing-nin that had started it all was captured buy Kiri and the truth came out, but not before it had lasted for 2 years and involved eight different shinobi villages.

In the wake of peace talks fallowing the war, it had been decided that villages would inform each other of confirmed missing-nin in order to prevent another war. Eventually this developed from a simple list of names and descriptions, into a sort of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' of classified information. The reports now contained everything from blood type to favored tactics, to a brief biography and reason for leaving the village. Most of the time a missing-nin's files arrived in the other villages within days of the ninja's desertion. However while the information was readily available it just wasn't cost effective to print new Bingo Books for all the ninja in a village every time a new report came in. so reports where stored and once a year the would be compiled and a new book would be made.

As Hokage it was Sarutobi's duty to sort and rank the new missing-nin by order of how skilled a ninja they where. In order to do this he was forced to read file after file of personal information on new Missing-nin. It was a long and generally boring task. The vast majority of missing-nin tended to be genin rank shinobi who ran after they had their first taste of killer intent.

The sandame Hokage worked dilgently through the files from Suna (3 genin and their jonin instructor had run off for unknown reasons) and Kiri (a pair of chunin and three of the seven swordsmen had fled after a failed bid at overthrowing the Mizukage) and was about to start on the records from Iwa when there was a knock at his door.

Sarutobi glared twords the entrance to his office, if this was that damned new chunin bringing his finished work in early again… the knock came again. The sandame shook his head and schooled his face into a nutural expreshion and called out for who ever it was to come in.

"enter."

Almost before the word had left his mouth the door cracked open and a head of blond hair puled up out of clear blue eyes by a green pair of goggles peeked through the gap.

The Hokage smiled softly, naruto, of course it was Friday, naruto always came to see him on Fridays.

"come on in naruto"hearing this the blond's face lighte up in a smile and he came rushing into the room with a cry of "OJIJI!" Naruto sprinted over to the desk, and pulling himself up onto it, planted himself solidly on the corner left open for just that purpose. All the while, his mouth didn't stop.

"did you miss me old man? What are you doing? Are you busy? Can we go get ramen? When are you going to let me be a ninja? Ive been training real hard! Im going to be Hokage before you know it old man."

Sarutobi settled back into his chair, and let the barrage of questions wash over him. Naruto would setle down in a minuet or two. The Hokage knew the boy was just getting everything out of his system and didn't realy expect awnsers yet, but Sarutobi listned anyway, sometimes naruto's questions gave away things. Things naruto was to stubborn to ask for help with, things like being over charged on food could be seen in questions like "did you know eggs are more money when you get them in the morning?" that particular question had led to charges against a local day clerk.

That was how most of the questions started. ' did you know' or something similar.

After the the first few questions that he always started off with all of Naruto's Questions where aimed at showing of his knowledge. Naruto had figured out early on that the easiest way to draw praise from sarutobi was to show off what he had learned. Soon after he had learned that the old man was easily annoyed by bragging. Buy putting it in the form of a question he could show off with out seeming like he was showing off, so that was what he did.

The sudden silence created when naruto ran out of things to ask the old hokage from his thoughts. He smiled warmly down at the boy as he mentally replayed what his ears had heard while his mind had been wandering. (A skill he had picked up not to improve himself as a ninja but rather to allow himself to daydream during council meetings) and came to an interesting realization.

Some how over the last week since he had seen Naruto the hyperactive blond had learned a surprising amount about two subjects, running a small business and pottery.

This definitely needed looking into.

"Naruto" The boy looked up at him from where he had been fiddling with one of Sarutobi's paperweights. Honestly the boy had the attention span of a gold fish sometimes. "Have you taken up sculpting?"

Naruto tilted his head to the side in confusion. "sculptin, old man?"

Again sarutobi smiled, "working with clay Naruto, you seem to know a lot about it." He would leave off on trying to find out exactly why naruto knew the exact number of forms that had to be filled out in order to start a new business in Konoha's market ditrict, hopefully answering one would answer the other. "I thought you might have started taking lessons."

Naruto's face scrunched up into an expression of distaste at the word Lessons, it was almost as bad as the hated 'Homework'.

"no way old man! I learned it all my self from helping Deidara-sempai. Not only that but I'm helping him run his store too!" the old Hokage lifted a eyebrow, Deidara huh? It sounded like Naruto had made a friend. Not only that but he was Deidara-SEMPAI. Who ever this person was, he had done something that had impressed Naruto enough for the Boy to use a respectful honorific.

"who is this Deidara person? I don't think I've ever met someone with that name." the light that suddenly appeared in Narutos eyes told Sarutobi to prepare for another verbal assault.

"Deidara-sempai is AMAZING! When I first met him he was a hiya! And then…." And so it began. The two talked for an hour maybe more before the aging hokage made his excuses and sent naruto off with some spending money.

In the end Sarutobi had managed to piece together what had happened. Apparently, this Deidara fellow was new to Konoha and didn't know about Naruto. The man had intervened on Naruto's behalf using basic rock taijutsu that combined with Naruto's description of the young-man meant that Deidara would most likely turn out to be a washout From Iwa's ninja academe who had learned the family trade and then moved to get out from under his parents. It was a road quite a few civilians who had once been Genin hopefuls.

Afterward naruto had take his new friend to the Ichiraku family ramen stand. No doubt in hope of free ramen, but that was beside the point. What the point was was that this meant Deidara had most assuredly met Mr. Ichiraku himself. Ichiraku had been a ninja once, though he had never made it past chunin. The man had been an exalent ninja, the type that every genin hoped to be, he had been on jiraiya's genin team along with Minato and passing the Chunin exam on his first try. He had come up against the then Tsuchikage during the 4th ninja war, and had been injured badly enough that he would never be a ninja again, it had only been Minato's timely intervention that had saved his life.

Every report Sarutobi had ever read about the man agreed on one thing. The man was a genius when it came to reading people. Sarutobi liked to believe it was this and not Ichirakus close bonds to the 4th that led to him forming a conection with Naruto.

All in all the fact that Ichiraku hadn't come to the Hokage about this meant that Deidara hadn't born Naruto or the village any ill will. Ichiraku would have been able to tell. Still the man was an immigrant from a foreign shinobi village and Sarutobi could never be too careful, maybe he would stop by later and have a chat.

He was jerked back to the here and now when a chunin came in and placed another folder on the desk. He stared bloody murder at the mans back as he left. Then with a heavy sigh he picked up the next missing-nin report this time the one From iwa.

Moments later the room was empty.

A manila folder hit the floor spilling out the single page inside.

at the top of the page above a smirking photo of a man with long blond hair was the heading: Bakuha Deidara: S-RANK

--((((AN))))--

OMG! I am so sorry. This took forever to get out but I had finals…. Senior finals and acts and the like, but its all good now expect the next one soon.

Im quite proud about my pick for Deidara's clan name, whoever can tell me what it means gets a cookie.