Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.
Pairings are up in the air at the moment, I'm torn between making this completely Gen with only background pairings, or having it a Neji/Naruto (after a fuck ton of character development).
000
Chapter Six
Their client was Nobuyuki Akira, an old man who owned a farm just outside Tanzaku Gai. He was having difficulties with his crops getting stolen clean out of the field by thugs who vandalised what was left along with a great deal of the fencing and irrigation systems he had set up to keep things running in the far fields he couldn't get too very often. He was hardly a young man these days, and those little bastards were messing with his livelihood. He wanted them caught and brought to swift and exacting justice.
It was, essentially, a bandit clearing mission.
Gai was a little dubious about it, but the Hokage assured him it was an arrest mission, not a search and destroy one, which mollified the Taijutsu specialist enough to enthusiastically accept and usher them off with a list each of what to pack. No one would be sending fresh Genin out on blood missions, not in this day and age.
And, he probably wouldn't be allowed but, just in case, Naruto packed a book about plants and another one about irrigation systems in with the rest of his kit. If there was time, he might see about repairing the damage already done – that was good business practice, wasn't it? Doing little things that made their clients happier, it would encourage the old geezer to turn to Konoha more often. Well, he would anyway, because Konoha was the best and it was near-by. But people had done weirder things before than go massively out of their way just to hire someone they had a better preference for.
They met at the gate where one of the Tanzaku militia was waiting to escort them to Nobuyuki's farm. Because of the thefts and vandalism the old man wasn't comfortable making the three day there-and-back journey to Konoha and leaving his farm untended, so he had thrown some ryo at one of the younger militia lads to run the mission request to Konoha for him.
"Yamada Takeshi," the young man greeted, grinning cheerfully under a mop of wild black spikes. He wore simple dark clothing in keeping with the old styles, a wide kasa, and had both a machete at his hip, and a spear in his hand, though he was using it as more of a walking stick than anything. "Hah, should've known Old Nobu was so tightfisted he hired a Genin team," the youth, probably around twenty three years old, chuckled with a shake of his head as he grinned at them.
"My Youthful Students are more than up to the challenge!" Gai proclaimed, pumping his fists.
Yamada laughed again, "Oh I'm sure they are! I wasn't doubting them at all! Konoha trains their kiddies well," he praised, hands lifted defensively as he smiled at them. "The farm is a day and a half's walk, shall we get started? I hope you brought food, Nobu ain't gunna feed you, crotchety old fucker."
Tenten bounded up to Yamada's side as the group waved their goodbyes to the gate chuunin and began to make a move, "You don't sound too fond of Nobuyuki-san," she observed curiously, "What's the deal? Is there something we should be worried about?"
Yamada chuckled idly, ruffling her hair, "Not you so much, little missy. But old Nobu is a crotchety foul mouthed old bastard. I used to work for him back when I was your age. He was the type of guy who would work you to the bone, make you pay for your own meal, and then refuse to pay you for the work you'd done because you weren't fast enough to finish this other completely separate task he hadn't told you to do. Or your work was sloppy. Or he just didn't like the look of you, thought you looked shifty and thievey. He'd make you turn out your bags and pockets when you left too so there wasn't a chance to smuggle so much as an apple home. He likes to hit folk too. Got a knobbly old walking stick that's made its acquaintance with my spine more times than I care to remember. You three'd better watch your ankles, he'll avoid hitting the little lady here, but he'll lash out at you lot no problem. Especially you," he added nodding to Naruto who blinked up at him. "You've got those cute whiskers there. That means clan kid, but not one that's famous as Mister Hyuuga there, so he can hit you as hard as he likes and not worry about Clan Daddy sending someone to hover over his bed like a gargoyle."
Neji's face twisted into what had to have been the ugliest expression Naruto had ever seen him wear thus far, even as he ducked his head forward, letting long brown hair swing forward to hide his face.
He was still frustratingly pretty even when he looked like he wanted to disembowel someone with his teeth. Must be that 'Noble Clan Breeding' he heard Ino bragging about in class as she leered at a bristling Sakura-chan, the two of them bickering and snipping at each other between bouts of mooning over Sasuke. He glanced at Tenten who pursed her lips and shook her head at him when she caught him looking at her in askance, both she and Gai-sensei seemed to have decided that Neji's family wasn't a good subject for him. Naruto didn't get it, his family were alive, and yeah they were stuffy assholes, but so was Neji so he fit right in. But either way, Tenten had given him strict instructions not to talk to Neji about the Hyuuga clan, bring them up, or ask him about them. He wanted to, but didn't know how to, and he didn't want to take one of those nasty Poke-fu's to the head or chest again. The hospital was boring as fuck.
Instead of addressing that particular comment, Gai-sensei interrupted to ask about the bandit issue, Tenten falling back as the Jounin moved forward. This close to the village they didn't yet need to be in formation so they were fairly relaxed as they walked, it was actually a painful snail's pace as they were forced to travel at Yamada's speed, and by the end of the first hour, Naruto had pulled out one of his books and was reading as he walked.
Neji rolled his eyes, "It doesn't matter how much you read, you're still Fated to be – "
"I don't believe in Fate," the blond interrupted shortly, "Now shush, I want to concentrate."
Tenten snorted and burst out laughing at the look on the Hyuuga's face, clearly he had never encountered Naruto when he found a new book with new information in. "Don't worry about it Neji-kun," she giggled, twisting around her blond teammate to his otherside, "When he raided the library yesterday he found another trap making book. He gets like this when he finds books with information he hasn't read yet."
"He's a Deadlast," the brunet sneered with a scowl, "I doesn't matter how much he studies, he's Fated to always be a Deadlast."
Tenten's smile dropped, "Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. Even when you're wrong," she sniffed before she returned to her former position on Naruto's other side. "Have you read a dictionary yet, Whiskers?" she asked curiously.
Naruto blushed a little, "Week after you lent me Nodoka. Not finished it yet, it's so dry. I'm kind of only using it to look up words I don't recognise now. Reading the whole thing isn't..."
"Interesting," the girl finished for him and laughed as he nodded.
Neji scoffed, "Why bother?" he demanded almost plaintively.
Naruto shrugged, returning to his book, shoulders hunching up defensively, "Because everyone has always called me stupid, and deadlast, and made fun of me for not knowing things. They didn't stop to realise that I had to teach myself how to read because I didn't have parents to help, that I didn't have anyone teach me how to write, or count. I had to figure it out on my own after I started the Academy by watching everyone else. I really really tried in my first year. I wanted to be a Ninja so bad, I promised Jiji I would be good-as-gold. But they just ignored me, nothing was ever good enough. Even the Senseis would shout at me for not knowing things, call me stupid, deadlast. But, books don't shout at you for not knowing things. They just tell you what you want to know if you think to go looking for it. I never realised how awesome they were until I could actually see what I was reading."
The Hyuuga sighed in aggravation, "It's still your Fate," he said as if Naruto was the one who was being unreasonable.
"Then Fate better come down here and say it to my face, so I can punch theirs in. I'm gunna be Hokage, damnit. Neither you, nor Fate are gunna stop me!" the blond snapped, closing his book and jogging on ahead to walk with Gai-sensei and Yamada-san.
Tenten sighed, "Well done, Rookie of the Year," she mocked, "Piss off the trap specialist, because that's a great idea in the middle of a mission."
Neji scoffed and ignored her, making the girl throw her hands up in frustration and stomp forward to join the others, complaining about how she couldn't be the only emotionally well-adjusted member of the team, that would just be unfair!
000
Naruto was seething, and he didn't know how to handle that. If he were back in Konoha it would be simple, go to a training ground and blow off some steam, go to Ichiraku and balm his temper with Teuchi-jiji and Ayame-chan's kindness, prank the living shit out of Neji's house or find a way to stick frog-spawn in his bento or down his back. But out here, on a mission, he was wound up with no out. He couldn't even focus enough to read his book. And he wasn't entirely a hundred percent sure why he was so upset – he'd heard that kind of talk so much and so often it was like water off a duck's back when he was in the Academy. He could shout and rage and refuse to bow his head to the decisions others had made for them, and fight tooth and nail against their expectations, howl from the top of the monument about how he was going to be Hokage and none of them were going to stop him. But hearing Neji say that he was Fated to always remain a nothing, a deadlast, bottom of the barrel, pathetic and dumb... He couldn't just brush it off like he did them. It stung, it always did, but this was...
It wasn't like a papercut. It was deeper.
It felt like there was salt in the wound, and that just pissed him off even more.
"It is because he should know better by now," Gai-sensei told him quietly as he sat down in front of the camp fire with him. Naruto twisted to look up at him. They had stopped to make camp just before it started getting dark, moving off the road a ways so the fire wouldn't draw any eyes. Everyone else was sleeping, Naruto was on first watch after he had trapped their little campsite to hell and back (probably taking a little bit of his frustration out in the process by rigging some truly unpleasant surprises), and Gai-sensei was going to take first and last watch with him and Neji while Tenten took middle of the night with Yamada-san.
"Gai-sensei?" he asked.
The jounin dropped a broad, rough hand onto Naruto's head and gently rubbed his hair, "You're upset because Neji-kun should know you better by now. He's seen how hard you work, and is aware of how badly you've been held back, and now how dedicated you've been in correcting that. He should know better because he knows you in a way everyone else has not. That's why it hurts more," he explained kindly.
Naruto turned to stare into the fire, Gai-sensei's hand a warm weight upon his head as he turned that over in his mind. It... made sense, he guessed. Team Three was the closest he'd ever had to friends and family outside Jiji and Ichiraku...
"Yeah... I guess you're right," he agreed slowly, "But how do I prove him wrong?" he asked turning to look up at Gai. "Neji gives up too easy, even when he's so stupidly stubborn about it. How do I prove there's no such thing as Fate, when all he's going to do when I beat him is say it must have been my Fate to win?"
"I don't have the answers to that, my youthful Konoha sapling. We can only do our best, and hope the Fires of our Youth will open his eyes," the Jounin said.
The blond grimaced, "Somehow, I think it's going to take a little more than that, Sensei."
000
Nobuyuki's farm was fairly big, and the old man was just as gnarled, foul tempered, and crotchety as Yamada warned them. The militia officer leaving them at the gate to the property with a sour look on his face, "Even if the old geezer paid me cash in hand, I wouldn't set foot back in this courtyard. Good luck, kiddies, you're going to need it."
The first thing out of Nobuyuki's mouth when he saw them was to bitch them out for being late, then for being Genin, then for having such obviously filthy and shifty looks about them. True to warning, he tried to whack Naruto in the shin with his walking stick as he stomped past them, but a civilian was only ever going to hit a Ninja if it was a surprise or the ninja let them. Naruto took enough abuse in Konoha, he wasn't about to take it outside as well, and took a careful step back that took him out of the old man's range.
The geezer glared at him, but said nothing as he marched them through the farm towards the big trouble area.
Apparently the bandits only ever tried accessing the southern fields, trashing property and crops as they went. One memorable time they trashed an entire field and got into the one next to it just to steal the crops there, ignoring the ones in the first field and actively befouling it as they went. It was clearly bandits or hoodlums actively looking to do him wrong, put him out of business, and out on the streets! He wanted them dead and their bodies piked in his field as scarecrows!
Gai pointed out that such a mission would be a B-ranked Chuunin mission, and beamed cheerfully at him as he explained that Konoha didn't advocate child murderers when the old man looked to protest.
Well, regardless of how foul their client was, at least the mission would be pretty. The final three fields were all filled with fully blooming hydrangea bushes, some of which looked semi-shredded and ripped up, but the others were bursting with blues, pinks, yellows, and purples. It was going to be a total pain in the ass watching their backs but...
"Do you mind if the bushes get a little damaged?" Naruto asked, gently fingering one of the blooms, "I can set some traps amongst them that the bandits'll never see, and we can snap them all up the next time they come by," he explained and howled when the old man's walking stick crashed down on top of his head.
"AN' RUIN MY FARM?! IDIOT BOY! THESE PLANTS ARE WORTH MORE TO ME THAN ALL FOUR O'YAH! Not a single leaf had better be damaged, or I'm not paying Konoha SHIT! I need them to replenish the nitrogen in the earth for the next round of planting this year! They're absolutely essential!" the old man roared, stamping both his feet and waving his stick around in quite the impressive tantrum for a man in his seventies.
Naruto grit his teeth, rubbing the top of his head and glaring at the old man as Gai-sensei ushered him away.
"You deserved that," Neji observed blandly as he turned away to examine the fencing, "Suggesting we damage a client's property..."
The blond stuck his tongue out at him angrily, "They're literally just flowers, asshole. I don't know where he got the bullshit about them replenishing the soil, but it's wrong. Clover works best for that, or hell, just spread some bull-manure mixed with water and woodchippings and that'll work better than hydrangea," he grumbled glaring at the brunet in frustration.
"Really?" Tenten asked as she knelt down at the base of one of the damaged bushes. "What DOES hydrangea do then?"
Naruto shrugged a shoulder, "It looks pretty. I mean, the roots are sometimes used in hookey herbalist drinks to treat urine infections and the like, and last I heard some noble in Cha no Kuni took to making tea out of it." He scratched his thick mane of hair as he thought, "In Fire Country though, it gets used as either ornamentation, or recreational drugs."
"Drugs?" Tenten prompted while Neji scoffed dismissively and turned away, folding his arms.
Naruto nodded, "Smoking primarily. Causes hallucinations if taken enough. But it's suuper toxic because of the cyanide," he explained seriously, holding a finger up. "It fell out of popularity with nobility because of that, and they started focusing primarily on opiates instead."
"They're made out of poppies, right?" Tenten asked as she made her way through the bushes.
"Yeah, made from mature seeds," he called over to her.
"Well, there's poppies growing under these bushes," she announced, "Though, not so much anymore. A lot of them got ripped up."
Naruto dove onto his hands and knees, scurrying under the fragrant branches of the hydrangea bushes to examine their bases and – she was most definitely correct. Those were the remnants of poppy straw. There wasn't much remaining, it was clear that the thieves had snatched just about every seed-pod they could find, as well as half the stalk with them. But there were a few they'd missed, and some that still flowered tangled up within the bushes. They had not been removed with anything resembling a gardener or even a farmer's care, rather more like a thief's smash and grab, leaving bruised and torn plant-matter behind that had a high probability of producing less in the future. If it didn't just die outright.
Crawling out, he took in the hydrangea bushes with new eyes. At first they'd assumed the damage was mere vandalism, but now that he was paying attention, thinking of it as stealing, it became all together very clear that it wasn't vandalism that damaged the bushes, but careless harvesting by rough hands, and little consideration for damage.
"That old geezer," Naruto complained, his eyebrows knitting in anger, "He's no farmer, he's a drug baron!"
Neji threw him a look of disgust, he opened his mouth to say something only to pause, his eyes sliding to the bushes before he frowned thoughtfully, "That's a heavy accusation to throw around," he said instead.
The blond rolled his shoulders as he reached up and picked one of the leafs, turning it over to examine it, "Yeah well. Spend as much time on the fringe of the Red Light district as me, and you pick up some stuff about drugs. Hydrangea isn't illegal, but opiates? That is. And the amount of it that gets smuggled into Konoha has skyrocketed since the Military Police were disbanded. Lotta people in the Red Lights are addicted, including kids. You hear a lot of things if you think to pay attention, who is smuggling what, who has a base of operations where," he admitted bitterly as he dropped the leaf and rummaged his map out. "Including gossip about trade routes. Tanzaku is primarily landlocked, but here? It's less than fifty miles from River Country. Otafuku Gai has a guy, supposedly an Iwa missing-nin but no one's quite sure, but apparently he's taken over a lot of the yakuza groups, and brought them to heel. He's got a route that supposedly cuts through to Tanzaku, and into River, before shipping out from River either north or south to where-ever he pleases."
"How'd you find out about that?" Tenten asked, popping up from under the bushes on Neji's otherside, flowers and twigs in her buns.
"Madam Koiyo's clients like to brag, and sometimes she'll let me use their bathrooms in exchange for a little repair work as long as I stay out of sight," the blond explained with a shrug.
There was a pause and then Gai-sensei's voice came from two bushes over, "Naruto-kun, Madam Koiyo is a Lady of Negotiable Virtues, yes?" he asked delicately as he surfaced from amongst violently pink and blue flowers.
Naruto nodded, "Yeah. She owns one of the brothels," he admitted blithely making Tenten's face screw up and Neji to boggle in their weirdly dignified way that clan kids from overly stuffy families did.
"And no one has – " Gai attempted to ask only for Naruto to shake his head rapidly.
"I live next door. And a lot of the girls share the building with me. We kinda get treated the same by Konoha as a whole, so, there's a kinda solidarity. They taught me how to cook and clean up after myself, I taught them how to fix the stuff in their apartments when our landlord was being an asshole. They needed some repair work at the House, and brought it up to Madam Koiyo. She didn't want to pay any money, so we worked out a compromise. My shower is busted beyond repair, so she lets me use their personal bathhouse and maybe grab some food outta the left-overs, and I fix stuff. I'm super good at sewing lace stuff now! I can even make it too, though it takes forever, and I sometimes stab myself cause I used my old blunt kunai as rods instead'a the – what? What're those faces for?" he asked catching the weird expressions on his teammate's faces.
"You sew up lacy stuff belonging to prostitutes?" Tenten asked sounding horrified.
The blond nodded, "Yeah. What about it? It's just clothes."
"I think when we return to Konoha I may need to give you a talk about the Blossoms and the Bees," Gai-sensei chuckled.
"Oh I've had that already," Naruto dismissed, "Yuri-chan and Kyoko-chan talked me through it all."
Neji made a weird noise and shook his head while Tenten burst out laughing at the look on Gai-sensei's face.
Naruto rolled his eyes, "Who do you think helped me make my Sexy Ninjutsu?" he demanded in exasperation, "Anyway, according to the girls, this Gantetsu guy has an opium smuggling route that cuts through the area and on to River Country. Since this old geezer is growing poppies under his hydrangea chances are he's a supplier. So what do, Sensei? Opium is illegal."
It took less than a moment for the Jounin to get his brain back on the mission, almost immediately shifting gear back into Shinobi mode instead of Sensei mode. He struck a heroic pose, "Leave Nobuyuki-san to me, my Youthful Saplings! First and foremost, we are to protect the farm, and thus the evidence of his wrong doing! Once our Youthful Mission is complete, we shall report our findings to Hokage-sama and to the Daimyou's Youthful Enforcers!"
"Will they even believe the words of a Deadlast Genin?" Neji asked doubtfully, making Naruto flinch and shoot him a sour look. Tenten straight up elbowed him in the side for the scornful tone.
Gai-sensei beamed at him, "They will believe the words of his Jounin instructor, and I have full faith in Naruto-kun's capabilities, Neji-kun, just as I have faith in yours. Much of young Naruto-kun's home is filled with plants, he is an accomplished botanist!"
000
Chapter six finished.
C-rank curse strikes! Their client is a fucking drug supplier! But who are the thieves, did the old man really think he could slide this by Ninja, or is something else afoot?