Chapter 4
Naruto walked out of the administration building with his head held high. He knew that this course of action would either make or break him. Most people fought tooth and nail to get out of the genin reserve corp and he expected he would have to do the same when it was time for him to leave.
For now however, his days were his own. There were no academy teachers to force him to study useless things, he would have access to the genin library and training grounds, and he would be able to choose which missions he went on (to an extent).
The first course of action was to make a plan of what he wanted to achieve for his time in the corp. For this, he decided to check out the genin library to see what was available to him for study.
-4-
As Naruto wandered the shelves of the genin library, he was a bit saddened at what he saw. While he knew the chunin library was much more expansive, he still expected the genin library to hold a bit more than this. Indeed, the 'genin' library turned out to be little more than a room with shelves lining the walls.
One area that he had been excited to learn about was fuinjutsu. Ever since head monk Mutaito had identified the Uzumaki's as legendary fuinjutsu masters, Naruto had been hoping to learn the subject. Unfortunately, it seems that there is a grand total of one book about fuinjutsu in the genin library. He examined the thin book and found that it was little more than a how-to book on creating and using storage seals and explosive seals. Naruto thought to himself 'I guess those are the only things most people do with fuinjutsu.' Regardless, he added it to his ever growing list of things to do.
Naruto continued to look through the shelves, adding to his list of topic he wanted to study. Among his list so far were greater chakra control, trap making, field tactics, strategy, weapons study, tracking, field medicine, and etiquette. He debated whether to include etiquette on his list, but knew that usually it was the wealthy who hired ninja and expected them to behave themselves in civilized society, so it went on the list.
For now though, Naruto paged through the chakra control books, looking for new exercises that he could perform both actively and passively. He was far more interested in the passive chakra control exercises, as those he could do while studying here in the library. Multi-tasking was a key trait that he was looking forward to achieving and if it helped him save some time, he was all for it.
-4-
Naruto was checking out the D-rank mission office for the first time. He had mentally prepared himself to drastically lower any expectations on what sort of missions he would get. Naruto knew that most of the D-ranks were little more than chores. Some jonin liked to take some of the D-ranks and turn them into mini-missions and encourage teamwork, but at the end of the day, they were chores designed to give the genin extra money while they focused on training.
Naruto looked through the available assignments that were left over from the teams. He was looking for a solo mission that wouldn't take long. Eventually he found one of picking up trash down by a river. He figured that wouldn't be too different from his landscaping job that he had taken during the summer. He walked over to the teenager sitting behind the counter to check out the D-rank for himself. The teenager looked suspiciously at him before asking to see his credentials. Naruto handed them over silently and waited for the office worker to be done with his suspicions. He eventually received both of them back before he headed out to perform his first D-rank.
The D-rank was a simple one, he was confused at first as to where to get garbage bags and where to take the trash when they were full, but a quick stop back at the mission office resolved his questions. He spent a few hours quietly picking up trash alongside the river. There wasn't too much as he suspected this mission repeated itself fairly often, but after a couple of hours he was done. Naruto returned to the mission office to report his success and collect his pay, meager as it was. Regardless, he now had a successful D-rank on his official record.
-4-
His days continued on like this for three months. Each weekday, he would collect and do a D-rank mission for a few hours. Naruto mostly liked the short D-ranks he could do by himself, but occasionally he was assigned to work with a few others. If he did work with others, he noted that most of them were short-tempered teenagers who were disgusted with the fact that they were still doing D-ranks at their age and not something better. Naruto resolved himself not to end up like them and to make sure that when it was time to start taking C-ranks, he would show the chunin leaders that he would be hard working and pleasant to work with.
Naruto made a habit of going to the office at different time and poking his head into the C-rank office to see how busy they were at times. As he expected, during the late morning and early afternoon, the office was flooded with genin like himself trying to get onto a C-rank mission. On the other hand, in the early morning when the office first opened, he noticed that there were chunin actively looking for genin to accompany them on missions. He resolved himself to start altering his schedule now so that he would be wide awake early in the morning and able to get C-ranks when it was time.
Aside from the missions, he spent most of his days training. Each night he would read the books he had flagged from his first time in the library and make a plan for the following day. Each day would usually start out with the same sort of exercises he did back in the academy, except he pushed himself harder each time. He would then usually scour the training grounds looking for discarded weapons and equipment that he could use for himself. Most of what he found were broken or worn pieces that were probably right to be discarded, but Naruto took them anyway. He learned how to fix most of them himself and use them for his trap making practice.
When Naruto had added trap making to his list, he had forgotten one thing. Trap making was an extensive field with numerous types and ways to be done. The central fact was that they all needed equipment to perform. Equipment he didn't have and equipment he didn't want to spend all his money buying. Some of the cruder traps could be done with what was found in nature, but those probably wouldn't fool even a lesser ninja. Instead, he collected the scraps leftover from the higher ranking ninja, repaired them the best he could, and used them for practice. He didn't get to produce all the traps from the book, but over time, he got a much better understanding of how traps worked overall.
When he began learning about field medicine he discovered that the ninja hospital offered a week long class to introduce genin to basic field medicine. Naruto immediately signed up for the next available course. Over the week, he had received an extensive review of what he had learned in the academy (and what he had missed from skipping so much of the academy). They showed the students what to do in emergency situations and how to perform crude surgery if nothing else was available. None of the students were particularly eager to perform a real life cauterization in the field, especially on themselves. At the end they were all give a small booklet of the best plants typically found in Fire country and how they could be used to make healing salves and medicines. After this week Naruto found field medicine to be a very crude field, but in a real life situation, he supposed it was better than nothing.
At night, he studied strategy, tactics, weapons, and etiquette. He knew he was approaching the point where what he needed now was experience. After a few C-ranks, he could re-design his training schedule and adjust what he needed to learn. So, after three months of training and D-ranks, he resolved to take his first C-rank tomorrow.
-4-
Naruto showed up bright and early, right as the mission office was opening, so that he could receive his first C-rank mission. He knew that he would have to be selective, so as not to take anything he couldn't handle, but at the same time, knew he couldn't be too picky.
After waiting for a few minutes, an older chunin poked his head in through the door to see if anyone was in the room. Surprised to see a child there, he walked in and said, "Hey, are you a ninja?"
Naruto replied, "Yes, I graduated a few months ago and am looking for a low risk C-rank to get started with."
The chunin nodded and thought to himself before continuing. "Well, I have a C-rank and could use an extra hand. It's probably just going to be a lot of running around without much danger, I suppose you could come along."
"What would we be doing, if you don't mind me asking?" Naruto questioned politely.
"Delivering payment to a series of mines. We collect the money from the head office in the capital, then go to the mines spread across Fire country and deliver the monthly pay. There may be a risk of bandits trying to get the money for themselves, but they usually don't bother when it's ninja doing the delivery."
"That sounds fine, if you're willing to have me, I'd love to go." Naruto replied.
The chunin chuckled and said, "This has to be one of your first missions kid, I haven't seen anyone this excited for a mission like this for a while. Alright, go pack for a two week mission kid, there will be a lot of running around and we can probably hunt for most of our food, so pack light and meet me at the main gate in an hour. By the way, the name is Bekko."
"Sakumo Hayashi," Naruto introduced before heading home to pack.
-4-
Naruto rushed home to pack for his first mission. It sounded like it would mostly be a lot of running around without much danger, so it was exactly the sort of low risk C-rank he had been hoping for.
As he arrived home, he made a mental checklist of the things that he would need. He had prepared for situations like this by learning how to make a basic storage seal and packing his optional or heavy items in a seal while keeping the items he absolutely needed on his person. In the seal was a sleeping bag, rain-proof tent, spare clothing, extra kunai, rations, and water. On his person would be kunai, a compass, a map, a few ration bars, a water bottle, his sealing scroll, and an empty sealing scroll.
He decided that this should be sufficient for a mission like this. Perhaps he could ask Bekko for some advice in packing for future missions, he seemed like an easy going bloke.
-4-
As he approached the main gate, he saw that Bekko had not arrived yet. He checked around the gate to make sure before plopping himself down on the ground where he could see everyone coming. Ten minutes later, Bekko approached the gate himself. He looked a little surprised seeing Naruto there already, but remembered it was his first mission with a smirk. "Alright, let's check out with the guards and get moving."
They approached one of the gate guards to register that they were departing on a mission. Since it was still early, their weren't many people trying to enter or exit Konoha yet. The guard took down their names, ninja id numbers, and mission id number before wishing them luck.
"Alright kid, have you ever been to the capital before?" Bekko asked.
Naruto replied, "Once, about a year ago. Just take that road straight north for about a week at walking distance." Naruto pointed to one of the roads leading away from Konoha.
"Well, we're going to go faster than walking, but yeah. Why don't you set a pace that you are comfortable with. We will travel parallel to the road about a hundred feet away."
Naruto nodded, understanding that Bekko was unfamiliar with how fast or well he could travel. He set off, tree walking up the nearest sturdy tree in the forest surrounding the road to demonstrate that he knew that skill before tree hopping at a pace roughly equal to what he practiced with.
Bekko trailed behind him for a while before coming to his side. "Not bad, kid. How long can you keep up at this pace?"
Naruto thought before answering, "Well, I try to practice tree hopping around this pace, so I can go like this for a couple hours before taking a break."
Bekko's eyes widened at hearing that. This kid was moving at a high genin speed of travel, which was the speed most chunin and jonin traveled at. Fast enough to make good time, but cautious enough to be wary of any dangers. He doubted that he was paying attention to his surroundings the way that an experienced ninja would, but then the was still pretty green. If this kid was capable of moving this fast despite his age, it was no wonder he was a genin already.
"If you can go this speed for that long, it's no wonder how you graduated early." he eventually said.
Naruto nodded almost mournfully. "Yeah, at first when the instructor wanted to move me ahead, I was excited, but after a while I started to miss it. I knew I would be a little younger than the others when I graduated, but I didn't expect to graduate this early. Apparently instead of inspiring the others to work harder to catch up to me, I was depressing them into thinking they would never catch up with me, so he endorsed me to graduate early."
Bekko nodded. "Don't get too down, I fought in the last war and had to fight with a lot of kids that were graduated early, but still not ready for a war-zone. Then again, I don't think anyone is really ever ready for a war-zone. Still it's been a while since anyone has graduated early, probably not since just after the kyuubi attack."
Naruto grinned. "Actually, I'm not even the youngest to graduate this year. There was another kid graduating at age seven as well."
"Seven!" Bekko said surprised. "That's not the youngest I've ever heard of, but it's close. Why would anyone let a kid that young graduate during peacetime?"
"I think he was the clan heir of the Uchiha clan..." Naruto started.
"Ohh, the Uchiha. That explains it." Bekko suddenly said understandingly. "They're some of the biggest headed people around. I have no doubt they graduated their heir as early as possible just to try and rub it in everyone's faces how great they are."
"Anyway," Naruto said breaking the current conversation. "What is this mission going to be like in more detail?"
"The mission is going to be pretty simple. At this rate, we will have to camp out about a few hours away from the capital. Tomorrow, we will pick up the money from the head office along with a map of where to deliver it and instructions on which mine gets how much money. Since this is your first time, we will go to the first mine together to show you how it works. After that, we will probably split apart and each deliver to one or two mines before meeting up again and repeating. The whole process should take a couple of weeks, maybe a bit shorter seeing your traveling speed."
"Why don't they just deliver the money themselves?" Naruto asked.
"A combination or reasons. First, handing a substantial amount of money is a risk because the employees might decide to take it and run. Next, there is the threat of bandits, so they would need a larger force of security to protect it, which costs more. Third, ninjas can travel much quicker than most others, so there is the speed factor. Lastly, there are multiple ninja villages that they could hypothetically hire, if Konoha doesn't do a good job at a reasonable rate, they could hire another village to do it. In the end, it's just cheaper and more secure to do it this way."
-4-
They reached the capital late the next morning. Bekko expertly led them to the home office of the 'Mighty Mountain Mining' company. They navigated the building to the payroll department and announced themselves as the ninja hired for the job. The people at the payroll department, who had gone through this many times, gave them the map of the distribution, paperwork for the mines, and the money for each mine.
Bekko expertly sealed the money away into a scroll that he carried on his person. They then headed out to deliver the money to the first mine.
-4-
The two headed to the first mine, located to the east near a group of mountains that had a good supply of silver being removed. The single eastern mine was only a half days travel away from the capital, but was included in their mission delivery, so it was a bit of a detour away from the other mines.
Once they were away from the capital, Bekko showed Naruto how he was going to separate the money into separate piles for each mine. He explained that he did this here, out in the middle of nowhere, so that none of the employees could see how the money was divided up and would know in what order they were delivering the money. If any of them were being bribed or blackmailed for the schedule, they wouldn't be able to give accurate information. Bekko explained to Naruto that after he showed him how to make a delivery, they would travel west together before splitting up to distribute the rest of the money faster.
As they approached what could only be a mining effort, Bekko quickly showed him where to find the people in charge. Typically, the people in charge found themselves living in the nicer areas and supervising the lesser supervisors in operating the mine. In this case, it was an older man sitting behind a desk in a house near the mine. He looked like he had never mined a day in his life, but that was probably true considering the fairness of the world. They unsealed the money intended for this mine, distributed the paperwork, and received a signature confirming the payment.
The entire process took only a few minutes and they were soon out the door, headed back west, to where the primary ore extracted was iron, on it's way to be turned into steel.
-4-
Naruto and Bekko separated a day later, each going to hit two mines before meeting at another mine the next day. Naruto had been given a slightly shorter route than Bekko. In this region, there were a lot of mines, due to the heavy concentration of iron ore just beneath the surface. Naruto was a bit scared to be on his own, but knew he should be fine, it was after all, a low risk mission.
Naruto traveled for two hours before hitting the first mine. Probably the most trouble he had was finding the proper authority at the mine, but in the end he resorted to his old standby of using the henge to appear older. Once he had located the man in charge, he changed back to his original self, not knowing whether or not he should try to approach him as anyone other than himself. The man was highly dubious about a kid delivering the payroll money, but in the end Naruto just asked him if "he wanted the money or not". In the end, he had received his signature, and they had gotten their money.
The next mine was about four hours away and Naruto took a slight detour to have lunch near a river. He was able to catch a couple fish with a net Bekko had lent him. Something that he resolved to include on his next mission. Naruto roasted the fish while taking a break before continuing on to the next mine. As he arrived, the exchange happened almost exactly the same as the previous one.
Naruto continued on to the last mine where he would meet Bekko that night. A few hours later, as evening was approaching, he arrived at the mine and looked for his commander. He spotted Bekko lounging on a tree branch overlooking the mining camp and headed over. Bekko spotted him as he approached, "Any problems?"
"Only in trying to convince the guys in charge that I really was delivering their money." Naruto responded.
Bekko chuckled before leading Naruto over to a camp ground he had already scouted.
-4-
Naruto and Bekko walked slowly to the gates of Konoha. They had completed the mission in just over twelve days, which was pretty good according to Bekko. They were walking the last distance so that Naruto could ask Bekko any other questions he had about C-rank missions or anything else. Bekko, having accepted his rank and place in Konoha, answered his questions in a helpful manner.
They had talked about what sort of missions Naruto should be taking now, what else to bring on missions, when he should try to join a permanent team, and what sort of lifestyle most ninjas ended up leading. Bekko, for instance was a civilian ninja who had worked hard to achieve his rank. He had neither the chakra reserves nor the intellect to go for the jonin rank, but he was satisfied with chunin. He explained that most civilian ninja had great difficulty going beyond being a career genin and many ended up taking administrative roles rather than ninja roles.
They checked back into Konoha with the gate guard before walking back to the mission office. They continued their conversation all the way to the mission office where they reported a successful mission. Naruto thanked Bekko for allowing him to accompany him and for teaching him so much on his first mission. Bekko just laughed and told the kid to "take it easy" before departing home for some rest.
-4-
From that point on Naruto went on a few more C-rank missions with some time in between for training. He always showed up early for missions and was usually offered spots on mission teams if he wanted them. This allowed him to be a bit more selective about missions and to avoid situations he knew he wasn't ready for. He had already gone on a protection mission, another delivery mission, and most recently, a bandit mission.
Naruto had been cautious about whether or not to take missions that might involve killing. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he would have to take his first human life, but wasn't sure if he could. When a chunin had come looking for genin to help him with a small group of bandits that had raped the granddaughter of an important port city's mayor, Naruto decided to try and get it over with. He had turned down other bandit eradication missions previously, but he decided to accept this one due to a number of factors. One, the group was small, so if he froze before or after his first kill, his team would not be affected. Two, the mission involved some tracking, which he was trying to learn. Finally, the chunin in charge would be Bekko, who understood that it would be his first time killing, so Naruto felt more comfortable taking a mission that involved killing with him than he likely would anyone else.
The mission had been relatively simple. They had gone to the port city, seen what the bandits had done to the poor, barely teenage girl. They spoke with some of the people who had interacted with the bandits to learn the general direction of where they were headed. Naruto and his team caught up with them a day later when the bandits had set up camp for the night.
The bandits were circled around a fire enjoying a deer that they were roasting. The bandits were only five in number, so it was a very small group, but if they hadn't raped such an important person, a group that small would have likely avoided the attention of ninja. Bekko made the simple plan of simply killing them with shuriken and kunai from afar. Bekko and an older genin would take out two of them each, having already marked which ones, after Naruto had taken out his first. All Naruto had to do was aim true and the other two would finish their marks off.
Naruto had taken some time, but eventually just threw a kunai at his target. His aim was true and hit the bandit just below the neck, hitting him in his spinal cord. The other two had immediately dispatched their targets, while Naruto had thrown up whatever was in his stomach.
Bekko took photo's of the targets to confirm death while the other genin looked through their belongings for anything of value. Apparently, that was one of the extra perks of bandit eradication, anything not claimed in the mission information was fair game for the ninja. Naruto received his share of the loot while Bekko tried his best to council him on the way home.
-4-
AN: I'm revising chapter 5 right now and I'm pretty proud, so expect it within the next week. I'm writing chapter 6 and not real happy, but it is going to be mostly a filler chapter anyway, so don't get your hopes up.
It will probably end up being NarutoxHana at the way I'm going and I am still undecided on whether or when he should tell the hokage who he is.
Thanks for the reviews on who I should pick.