Do not own Naruto in any way shape or form
Double update today because I'm going to try and update every week for now. Back when I wrote the prologue I really had no plan for this story and recently as I've actually been writing the double update for today is because I'm not going to be updating next week.
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Waking up was fun for Naruto this morning because as he shifted to get up he found out that he had shifted in his sleep and as a result he fell head first to the floor. After a quick trip to the bathroom, he was in the kitchen pulling out six more of the individually wrapped bars and stuffing them in his pocket. Pulling out another he muttered, "Almost out going to have to have clones make more." before biting into the one in his hands. Leaving the wrapped part hanging from his mouth, he swiftly moved to the training ground hidden below the compound that he lived in now, and made about half of the clones that he normally did because he knew that there was going to be a test this morning and that he may need his chakra for the test.
Continuing to munch on his breakfast, Naruto worked on breaking down an adept level seal. It took him almost an hour to break down the seal. However it was still a significant improvement over his normal time in breaking down seals of that level. With only about half an hour until the meeting with the hokage, he decided that it might be best if he didn't start breaking down another seal so regretfully he exited the training area and started making his way toward the kage tower.
He arrived in the waiting room with almost twenty minutes to spare and dug out another bar from his pocket and stuffed an end into his mouth and hungrily began chewing. Guessing that the hokage would be busy for now he pulled out another adept level seal and started to break it down.
When Sarutobi opened his door to let Naruto in for the meeting with the jonin who would be the first to test his skills, he saw that Naruto was in the middle of breaking down a very complex seal with the jonin who was supposed to test him standing behind him trying to make sense of how the blond was breaking the seal.
Waiting the half an hour more that it took him to break down the seal with the Jonin learning more about seals in that half an hour than he had learned in the last five years. Finishing with his sealing work, Naruto looked up and was surprised that he had yet again made himself late for his meeting with the hokage by becoming distracted and losing track of time. As he tried to stutter out an apology he was cut off by the hokage who said, "Now isn't the time for apologies because I was treating that as a test to make sure that the information about your sealing skills was correct. Besides, I'm fairly sure that Shikaku was most interested in seeing how a higher level sealing can be broken down. In fact, if I remember correctly Shikaku never advanced past the bottom of apprentice level in sealing."
"Troublesome," the older man said as he scratched the back of his head. "But, you are right I never did advance in sealing past when I learned to make exploding notes on the fly. Knowing the basics was fine for me but anything past that and I would be called in for consultations about seals and that would have been more troublesome than the punishments that my mother used to give me."
"To start his tests this morning Shikaku, I've employed Gai to have his student Lee race him around through the obstacle coarse that you directed be built for today." the Sandaime said in a somewhat cheerful tone. "Now, unless one of you has a bright idea on how to decrease my paperwork would you please leave my office."
"I might have an idea," Naruto said somewhat hesitantly as he scratched the back of his head. Seeing the look on Sarutobi's face he quickly continued, "I know that there is a law about using clones to sign paperwork for you as the chance of forgeries being slipped into the stacks is higher that way but my thoughts are to have shadow clones look over each paperwork and write and attach a note to all of the paperwork that they feel should be signed. I Know that you throw out about a quarter of each stack as something you refuse to sign and there is no law that states that you can't have shadow clones sort your paperwork while you physically sign it."
A thoughtful look appeared on Sarutobi's face as he thought it over. Then with a grin he made a cross shaped seal and with three puffs of smoke there were four of him in the room with the three shadow clones started working diligently on sorting and reading the paperwork. A relived expression crossed over his face as if a slight burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He said, "Thank you for the idea of using clones that way Naruto and I will see to it that you are rewarded at some point in the future but for now it would be best if you were to start you test. Gai and Lee have agreed to meet you in about ten minutes on training ground fifteen."
"I'll see you in a couple of hours Naruto," Shikaku said as he smiled and disappeared in a puff of smoke showing that he was never there in the first place but rather a shadow clone taking his place.
"See you later, old man." Naruto said with a grin as he pulled out another wrapped bar from his pocket and unwrapping one end he bit into it, letting the uneaten part hang from his out as he grinned and formed some hand seals. In a swirl of wind and empty ramen bowls he was gone in an unusual movement technique.
"Looking about his office at the empty ramen containers Sarutobi couldn't help but mutter to himself, "I wonder how he did that and if other things could be used?"
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After an exhaustive couple hours of racing Lee through an obstacle course while Lee had his weights on and Naruto didn't remove his seals, Naruto was helped over to the Nara compound where Shikaku was waiting for him with a restful brain busting game of shoji which he lost. He was later told by Shikaku that he lost in just seven moves less than Shikamaru's average for losing. After letting his body rest while playing shoji he was ready to go again and asked to demonstrate several of the techniques that he liked best in his arsenal. Showing off the techniques that he had used on Mizuke and a C rank technique from each element, Naruto was told that even if that had been the extent of his ninjutsu that it would qualify him for a rookie chūnin level in the branch of ninja arts.
After than he was let go for the day and told to report back to the Nara home the next morning he was told that the Sandaime would have an anbu stationed outside his home who would rate his sneaking abilities in the morning.
The next morning Naruto completely stumped the watcher as he didn't see anyone leave the house that morning. In truth Naruto had used an old escape tunnel that led to training ground seventeen and just been semi stealthy. When told that he had used an escape tunnel, Shikaku blinked and then almost fell out of his lawn chair where he had been cloud watching. With a stern warning not to use it again the following day Shikaku started the days tests and almost ran Naruto into the ground until around midday when Yoshino Nara rudely interrupted the session with a pan upside the head to Shikaku and practically ordered them to join a freshly returned from team training Shikamaru at the table. Naruto tried to raise a protest that he had brought a lunch with him however all this got him was a lump on the head and being dragged to the table by Yoshino.
After lunch Naruto faced Shikamaru in a Shoji match that lasted well over two hours until Shikamaru narrowly pulled out a victory. At that point Shikaku told him politely that for the next several days that he would spend his mornings at the Nara compound until they had nailed down where all of his skills lay and what sorts of higher level missions that he would be best suited for. As he was released for the day Shikaku told him that there are standards that the leaf ninja must complete to advance in rank and one of the lower level ones are at least one hundred D rank missions and that while some people did make chūnin without completing it, they wind up finishing the missions solo before they are allowed to move into chūnin missions.
The next two weeks were much the same but after the first day Naruto would do about five missions a day in the afternoons with the help of shadow clones. All throughout this he still had clones training in the underground training room. It wasn't until the end of the two weeks that Shikaku told him as he was leaving the Nara compound that the testing was done to the Hokage's satisfaction and that he would no longer report there in the mornings but rather get his orders from the Sandaime directly.
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That night after he got home from his daily missions was when he found the scroll that contained the findings on the seals that had been placed on Hinata. All of them were below journeyman level sealing so it only took him a couple minutes to figure out all fifteen of the seals. What he found had him leaking killing intent so thick and strong that the Kyuubi while resting on its haunches in the seal began laughing and wondering just what had made its container so furious. Even though he was in a reinforced underground training ground a great deal of his killing intent managed to reach the surface in spurts and almost overwhelmed whoever was in the areas that it happened to be released in. It took several moments but eventually his rage cooled and he started going over the seals and some of his more weird and rare sealing notes to find out how to counter the seals that had been placed on Hinata. It took him well until after midnight to finish putting together the information that he had gotten off of the scroll as well as make a report to the hokage about what he had found.
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The next morning, he arrived early enough to the tower that Sarutobi wasn't in his office and wasn't expected for another hour. He just paced around the office waiting for Sarutobi to get there for forty-five minutes before he got there.
"Hokage-sama if you would look this over please and do so privately," Naruto started with his voice showing signs of barley suppressed rage. As the anbu left the room they wondered what could have gotten Naruto so mad and why the Sandaime was starting to get mad as well. As the last anbu left Naruto began laying down a sealing privacy barrier which he finished around the same time that Sarutobi did with the scroll.
"Is all of this accurate?" Sarutobi demanded as he popped open a secret compartment in his desk and pulled out a bottle of sake and started to drink straight from the bottle.
"Yes." Naruto said as his voice still betrayed his anger. "I used a technique that will make copies of all of the seals on an object or person and place them on a blank scroll and as soon as I deciphered them I looked up the counters and brought all of this to you."
"Nothing in the clan rules of the Hyūga state anything about any other seals other than the caged bird for the branch house and on her graduation day she should have been informed of any and all seals on her person that were placed there by her parents." Sarutobi said while thinking hard. "The only reasons that I can think of seals being set up this way would be ether if Hiashi wanted to sell his daughter off in a political marriage of if another member of the main house wants to take over as the leaders of the clan."
"Honestly, that's not what has me so angry, what has me angry is out of the entire clan there are only two elders who can legally make and use apprentice level seals because they never passed the tests or got the licenses from the sealing guild." Naruto ranted. "Even if they have the skill to place the seal it is worthy of a death sentence because all of these seals are on the forbidden list. The list that holds seals which should not be placed on people without there knowledge or consent. I hold a forbidden license meaning that if I know the seal then with the knowledge of who it's going on I am allowed to place seals similar to these, however these were placed by amateurs and although they turned out correctly they could have come out very wrong."
"How wrong could removing them go?" Sarutobi asked with a frown on his face. "And how long would they take to remove?"
"The seals never set well into her body because of their placement being off as it could mess up her development even more than the seal already is. However most chūnin or jonin medical specialists would be able at negate most of that." Naruto replied after thinking a moment. "As for how long, it could take anywhere from twenty to thirty hours to remove them because of how wrong they are setting on her body. If they were placed correctly than it would only take about four hours."
Sarutobi began muttering about incompetent elders while making clones to sort through his paperwork. A little while later after he had watched Naruto pace his office for awhile he said, "Naruto, leave this alone for now beyond gathering more information on the subject and so long as the seals are doing no immediate harm we will leave them for now. In the near future you will get a joint mission with team eight during which you will remove the seals."
Thinking a moment Naruto answered, "Yes Hokage-sama."
As he turned to leave Sarutobi said, "And keep working on those D rank missions because they have been helping with your image around town. Besides you still need to finish the minimum hundred so that you can join the chūnin exams."
Flashing a bright grin back into the room that hid part of his anger at what someone had done to his new friend Naruto started toward the mission office for another batch of D rank missions. At the mission office he got another five missions and started off on one to dig a new well for a farmer whose well had dried up and now wanted one on the other side of his property nearer his house. A chūnin who specialized in water techniques had already confirmed that there was an underground river under that section of the property. In fact the only reason that it was a D rank was that it had to be done with physical labor because earth manipulation would have blocked the river that they were trying to tap. That didn't mean however that he couldn't solidify the walls a bit more with what earth manipulation that he did know, just that most of the work had to be done by hand.
Arriving at the farm he looked at it and was surprised about how big a farm was inside of the leaf village walls. Walking up to the small house on the property he knocked and was rewarded with a medium height man who had very visible muscles. The amount of dirt under his fingernails gave a hint to how much he worked in the dirt.
"So, they sent you to complete this mission did they?" he started as he looked at Naruto with disdain. "But, then you are the fox kid from what I've heard so you should know something about digging, maybe not wells but something is better than nothing. Come over this way and I'll show you where you can start digging and where the chūnin that I hired previously said the best spots were."
As they started off Naruto said, "Not everything that the people in the village said about me is true. Most of it are things that they came up with on their own that when you look at it with more information become ridiculous ideas."
As he continued walking, the farmer said, "Oh and what information would make what the villagers said so wrong because they said that you are just the demon fox sealed into a human form."
Naruto sighed and said, "Most of the villagers have no idea of how the seal was created or how it works. The seal that contains the demon fox was created between the fourth hokage and the Shinigami. It was a contract that required his life in payment for powering the seal so that the fox could never escape. Do you honestly think that the nine tailed fox could escape a prison designed by the god of death?"
"Well now that does sound a bit more believable than what the villagers told me ten years ago," the farmer said with less disdain and annoyance in his voice. "So a prison powered by the god of death, it must be hell on you in the village with all of their incorrect theories."
"Ya, the villagers do tend to come to the wrong conclusions but in the end they believe some things that they were told." Naruto said a bit sadly. "Apparently in the beginning, the villagers weren't supposed to know about the fox because it was a high class secret that only the council was supposed to know. However one of the council members wanted to turn me into a weapon for his own personal use and convince several of the other councilors to leak partially accurate information so that he had the chance."
"Never really understood politics but then I'm just a farmer, what would I need with politics." the farmer said as they reached the site of the new well. "Well here is the list of what you're supposed to do to get the well dug correctly and don't worry I won't tell anyone about what we talked about because some of the biggest gossips in the village have never worked a day in their life. In general I don't respect anyone who hasn't at least worked hard a few times and just by looking at you I can tell that you've worked many long and hard days."
For the next several hours Naruto watched as his clones dug away at the new well and brought him cartloads of dirt that he used his limited earth manipulation to harden into stone blocks. More clones then took the stone blocks and added them to the stone wall that the farmer had started around his property with the rocks that he had dug out of his fields. Toward the end of the third hour of digging and about forty feet down a loud thunk echoed out of the partially dug well and Naruto got a very jumbled set of memories from the shadow clone that had been digging. The memories had been of falling and being hit in the head by loose rock.
Going over to the edge of the hole being very careful to stay on portions of ground that his clones had hardened before the hole had been dug he looked down in the whole to see several clones sticking to the wall with their hands full of flames so that they could see.
One of the clones at the bottom slowly made its way lower while hardening the walls as it went so that it didn't have to worry about falling. Reaching the area that the clone had been digging at the clone was shocked at what it had found. An underground cavern that was big enough that it all couldn't be seen from where he was. He could see a shoreline for the underground water and he could see that there were that at least half of the underground cavern wasn't submerged in water. Dispelling itself so that it could pass the information on the original the clones last thought was that it would be fun exploring the underground cavern.
Up top with the original Naruto the thought was echoed as he made a dozen more clones with orders to collect all of the dry wood in the nearby forest and for some of them to make an easier way up and down the wells walls.
It took almost thirty minutes before Naruto was ready to have his clones begin exploring the cavern but it was well spent in Naruto's opinion because it wiped out some of his earlier aggression at whoever had placed those seals on Hinata. Sending all of his clones down with torches so that they could conserve chakra was one of his better ideas for the clones. After about ten minutes one of the clones dispelled after it had found something that caused Naruto to almost gasp. Around the cavern there were seals that reinforced the cavern walls and stopped the river from expanding more than it already had.
Sending a clone of to the hokage Naruto made another few dozen clones to send down to the cavern. Wincing occasionally as a clone would find a trap by being dispelled by it. After awhile several of the clones dispelled when they had finished exploring the underground complex. Standing next to the well opening Naruto was shocked when the hokage came into view along with several anbu.
"Naruto, move away from the opening," Sarutobi yelled after he got close enough to be heard clearly by the blond. "There is no telling what's down there."
"I've already sent a huge number of clones down there," Naruto said as he shook his head. "There is an old root base under there and it was vary seriously trapped. Most of the traps however were the paralyzing kind because of what else wend on at the base. Apparently this base was something similar to the T and I department because of how it was set up in part."
"Naruto, if you had to guess how long has it been since this base has been used and what were its main purposes?" Sarutobi asked as he tried to think of what a hidden base in this area of the village could do.
"Considering how it was set up I'd say that it is an emergency base as well as an interrogation area." Naruto said after he thought a moment. "If I had to guess on how long it has been since it has been used, I would say that this base hasn't been used in the last five years. As for how long I don't know but the information in one of the desks is about five years old."
"Five years ago." Sarutobi said as he started stroking his beard trying to think of any events that happened five years ago that would have caused this base to be abandoned. "There was a small ring of supposedly foreign shinobi routed out of our village and destroyed around five years ago. If in truth that group was really root agents than it would make sense that some of their less used bases would be abandoned. Cat, Rabbit, I would like you two to map the complex and bring me a report on its contents. Have Naruto here provide you with some clones so that you can get done quicker."
Providing clones to help the anbu with the job they had been given provided another boring two hours as he waited for them to finish with their work while occasionally sending more clones down as the old ones dispelled for whatever reason. After the anbu were done there was a huge pile of things that were removed from the base that would need to be carried back to the tower. Seeing the problem just before they encountered it, Naruto reached behind his back to the center bottom of his jacket and channeled some chakra to the storage seal that he had hidden there. With a large poof of smoke a large sealing scroll appeared behind Naruto leaning against his back. Swiftly turning an grabbing the edge of the scroll he unfurled it in one move as when it fell it unrolled to reveal its full ten feet length. Numerous seals covered its surface but Naruto only went to one of them and poured chakra into it until another poof of smoke revealed several scrolls of the same size as the scroll that they were released from as well as a few smaller scrolls, ink, and brushes. Taking one of the larger scrolls and one of the ink bottles and a brush he started to draw a complex storage seal on the scroll. Taking the last five minutes that the anbu were rapidly double checking the hidden base Naruto carefully constructed a greater storage seal in the overlarge scroll.
Slapping his hands onto the finished seal and pouring a fair amount of chakra he activated the seal and then dumped a smaller amount of chakra into the seal causing the large pile of items to disappear in a cloud of smoke. Rolling up the scroll he se it aside and then turned back the sealing supplies that he had unsealed earlier and gathering them together again he resealed them with another puff of smoke. With a smaller puff of smoke the scroll disappeared back into the seal on the jacket. Picking up the scroll with all of the things from the base he shouldered it as the anbu came back out of the well opening carrying the last of the items from the base.
"Naruto if you would please accompany us back to the tower." Rabbit said in a neutral voice that made it hard to distinguish weather it was a man or women behind the mask.
"I'll meet you at the tower." Naruto said with a slight grin. "I'll race you there and the loser has to report all of this to the hokage."
"Do you really think that you can beat us Uzumaki.," Cat said in a distinctly male voice.
"Ok, the voice changing aspect of those masks is very misleading because if I didn't know that you both were women I never would have guessed." Naruto said as he attached wire to each end of the scroll and swung it onto his back. "But, yes I do think that I can beat the both of you in a race like this."
"Very well then, we shall begin on the count of three," Rabbit said as the mask changed her voice to a very feminine this time, "One, two, three."
Two dust clouds appeared from where Cat and Rabbit had been standing as they took off while Naruto just almost idly made several hand seals and the world blurred around him. He always did enjoy this technique when he used it. It was to bad that it only worked in an area where the user knew all of the area between the starting point and destination. Also, because of the way that it worked it couldn't work in combat because of the larger chance of the very terrain changing randomly and the user of the technique running straight into an attack. The blurring ended with Naruto standing on the roof of the building across from the tower. He jumped down and made his way to the Hokage's office walking straight in the open door to find team ten being assigned a D-rank mission. Waiting politely for them to finish he was laughing to himself when several minutes after he entered Cat and Rabbit entered the room panting and even with their masks on Naruto could tell that they were just gaping at him because they had to have been traveling at near their top speed to get here this fast.
"And that is why I thought that I could beat you." Naruto quietly said so only the two anbu could hear. "I really do love the vacuum step jutsu."
After team ten exited the room Naruto took the scroll from his back and leaned it up against the desk and said, "Mission complete and I'll turn you over to your loyal anbu for the report but if you need me I'll have a clone outside the compound so just give it the message and I'll come when you need me."
As Naruto was leaving the room he saw Sarutobi raise an eyebrow to the two anbu who were still a little short of breath an ask, "What did he mean by that?"
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After the emotional morning Naruto had his afternoon was almost bleak by comparison until his last training exercise of the day. Pulling out a weapon from the storage room that he had never let Tenten enter he strapped the long katana to his side and moved to the training area.
Slowly drawing the long blade he started kneeling with his right knee on the ground and his other leg bent in front of it. Holding the blade out in front of him with both hands on the hilt he started channeling chakra to the sword. Several seconds of him just standing there pouring chakra into the sword and nothing seemed to be happening until with a hiss of releasing energy the blade of the katana split along the line where the front and back of the blade met. The interior of the blade wasn't solid or hollow as could so easily be assumed in cases like this rather it had several pieces connection the two parts of the blade that were allowing it to open flawlessly. Several springs were connected to the parts that connected the two parts of the blade that would snap the blade back together as soon as he stopped channeling Chaka. As soon as the last spring was suppressed the tip of the blade disconnected from the rest and stood a full half an inch away from the rest of the blade and every gap in the blade started leaking bluish energy. Mere seconds after the chakra started leaking out of the blade seals sprang into visibility all along the blade and then Naruto started to move through precise flowing motions through a group of training posts looking almost as if he were dancing leaving glowing arcs along the path that the blade took that faded almost reluctantly after a moment.
All of the training posts fell to the ground sliced to pieces with every singly edge blackened from where the blade had come into contact with the posts. Normally cutting training posts apart wouldn't be anything special however these posts had been extras from an order that Maito Gai that he had wanted for his student to let him have something to train against that are much harder to break than the normal ones that were all over the place. The order might also have had something to do with the time that he was beginning to train his student Lee in the hidden lotus which would require much tougher training equipment. Back then Naruto had even thoughtfully included a regeneration tablet. Considering that the tablets were designed to be taken with a soldier pill and redirected all of the chakra in the body into healing energy temporarily they were very much in demand with the higher level ninja for when they hurt themselves to much in their own training. The major downside to the tablets is that after using one the users chakra regenerates very slowly for up to a week afterwards. The reason it was so popular with higher level ninja was that when the pill activated it completely healed the injury to the point of regeneration.
Slowly stopping the flow of chakra to the sword, Naruto watched as the springs inside the blade snapped it shut until it looked like it did before he channeled chakra. As Naruto looked over the blade he was thinking about how while it worked, it wasn't quite what he wanted when he had made it. Almost absently Naruto said to the empty training field, "The razor flame edge worked but at this point it takes more chakra than most chūnin have to activate the blade but once it's activated an academy student could keep it active for several hours if they had enough chakra. I'm still not sure whether to file this experiment under the success or failure classification. Oh well I guess that I could always sell it to one of those anbu that are always asking after any new sword designs that I'm selling."
Deciding to just put it off for now because the weapon did work correctly and didn't blow up in his face. Naruto spent the rest of the night just idly working on several projects as well as starting to work on another design for the razor flame that would hopefully yield the results that he wanted.
Most of the next two weeks was just doing several D rank missions each day as well as having groups of clones training and working on his projects in the hidden training grounds, and testing out prototypes of the weapons that he designed. During this time his next delivery date came up and Tenten talked her way into seeing the new prototypes that he had created that worked. As with all the other times that she had seen the new working prototypes she tried to get him to let her use them or to get him to work with her at least to create a workable style for each of the weapons. As always he turned her down and packed the weapons away. In truth he wouldn't have minded helping to make styles for the weapons but as these weapons were just going to be sold off along with any duplicates that he eventually made, he just didn't see the point. He had developed styles for all of the weapons that he constantly carried on him as well as several others but all of those were designs that he had no intention of ever selling to anybody or at least until he had replaced them in his arsenal with something stronger.