Chapter 10, y'all! WHOO!!!

(FFN'S BEING A BITCH RN)

The room looked fairly nondescript with its piles, cabinets, and shelves of papers. Rows upon rows of shelves leading deeper into the room, only lit by rows of naked bulbs hanging down from the rafters. Of course there was a system of organization in place, but it was hard to tell at first glance with papers stacked haphazardly atop every flat surface.

Shikamaru groaned internallybut started searching for the blank papers used for proof of citizenship.

Logically, they had to be somewhere obvious and of easy access, right? There were so many prospective citizens when it came to a hidden village that you'd think the paper-ninjaswould want to conserve as much effort as possible. And that would limit his possibilities to somewhere near the entrance he was still standing at.

The main problem concerned the towering stacks that seemed to tremble at the very hint of a breeze. Tall, uneven, and highly structurally unsound. It would take a massive amount of effort to sort through all the piles that just surrounded the door

But instead of waiting around to get caught, he had to start somewhere.

Taking out a spool of some of his thicker ninja wire, he started unraveling it, getting as much length as possible. He threw the spool itself up and over the overhead rafter holding the lights, using a small bit of shadow manipulation to pull the loose wire underneath the stack. Once pulled out, he had to carefully bring it up to the rafter to join the other end, then wrapped the spool around the wood once before tying it off.

Now that he had the approximate length of wire calculated, he pulled more wire from the spool, doubling it once and leaving an extra half-meter to tie off with and to span the lengthier side of the papers before using a kunai to cut it.

He repeated the process once more, then brought the two sides to meet the tie he made earlier, so that all four sides were equally supported by the wires and would be cradled into position instead of falling. Though the process itself was intensely nerve-racking, only about a minute and a half had passed.

With his failsafe implemented, Shikamaru was now free to gently rifle through the papers with gloved hands; (the thickness made it slightly more difficult, but he was accustomed to it after using thin wire so much.) Thankfully they were oriented in the same general direction, though there was the occasional upside-down paper to decipher.

With this simple though time-consuming method, he found no citizenship papers, but an immigrant test he hadn't been aware existed with several trick questions designed to root out spies.

Eventually, one pile turned to two, two to three, and he finally gave up. The Nara was unwilling to continue on through the stacks, seeing as he'd only seen newly approved citizen papers, those damned tests, post-it notes to coworkers regarding anything from suspicions to details for a dinner date or random unlabeled passwords.

In conclusion, these stacks were useless to him, and it would be best for him to remove his wires before he succumbs to the urge to shred through the stack like a body. It wouldn't be nearly as satisfying, but it was necessary for him to remain undetected.

So now it was time to rifle through the cabinets. Fun.

As expected, these too were filled to the brim and unable to close fully. Though to his immense relief, there were fewer cabinets than there were stacks, and they seemed slightly more organized.

He flipped through file after file, enough to thoroughly inform him that a future as a paper-pusher was even more troublesome than being a field-shinobi.

Even after the bold titles started to blur together, he still searched. And then-- he found it.

The stack of the identification papers was held together with a large clip, bulging from its resident manilla folder. He refrained from crying, but it was a very near thing. God, the satisfaction he got from seeing just a stack of papers was ridiculous but completely warranted in his opinion.

He looked up at the clock ticking above the doorway, gauging how much time he had left, and promptly hissed.

Shit! Seven minutes left. Just seven minutes before the guards changed and did a customary sweep of the building.

He whipped out the pencil he'd left in his pouch just for this purpose, and started speeding through the questions, mind racing with both tension and the huge flow of sensory input he forced himself to absorb at once. In the time it would take another to simply read the stimulus, he'd already had three questions answered. First, the multiple choice, taking account the total number of questions, calculating the ratio necessary for acceptance, then skillfully creating patterns to both look randomized and avoid the "trick" questions.

Moving on to the simple short answer questions, he sped through them with the messiest handwriting he could create without consciously focusing on it.

He made spelling errors, he made slight mistakes with dates, and he made sure to use incorrect grammar whenever he could think to. By the end of the grueling six minutes and 14 seconds, he was proud to say that the mediocrity of this test (that was still in the range of passing) was the best he'd done, even in his school career.

Quickly attaching the photo he'd brought with a paperclip, he put the test near the top of one of the nearby stacks and soundlessly closed the door before speeding away from the area as fast as he could while still being discreet.

Taking the same twists and turns he'd mentally mapped out to the most direct exit, he slowed and started the painstaking process of getting out of the building using henge and subterfuge. Though the mission was not yet over, it was a massive relief to no longer have the stress of that worry.

-LINE BREAK-

"So... in all the 15 years since the Kyuubi attack, you've heard nothing of its whereabouts?" It was stated as a rhetorical question in a dangerous tone, making the shinobi before him kneel in silence, bodies tense and unnerved.

"It seems the roots of Konoha are weakening. Tell me, what good are you if you can't support Konoha?" His tone remained deceptively light, contrasting the threatening edge of his words. The small group of masked shinobi nearly shivered, but knew the repercussions would be far worse if they showed any emotion--especially fear.

They were still in a tense moment of silence, before the man dismissed them with a single look, one that said he was likely to lose his temper if they stayed any longer.

They fled in a synchronized shunshin, leaving the man to his own company in the dimly lit office. With no one left to bear witness to his humiliating frustrations, he was almost tempted to vent. He went back behind his large wooden desk and sat in the plush desk chair that kept him mostly comfortable in his official duties.

Danzo had never stopped thinking of that night: of the Kyuubi appearing on the outskirts of the village. No doubt something had gone wrong with the Uzumaki's birthing.Those damned Uchihas had done something, he was sure of it. Despite his intense resentment towards Minato, it grated him that he knew he was too skilled in fuuinjutsu for that to happen with no meddling. His bias was only slightly undermined by the grudging respect he had for Minato's skills in the arts of sealing, but even he knew there should have been little chance of failure. (He knew the Yondaime was unfit for such responsibility, knew he'd have been better than that blasted Namikaze.)

Danzo had also participated in that particularly bloody battle. He'd fought, had been crippled and then the creature'd been whisked away by the Yellow Flash. No one bore witness to the Yondaime's final encounter with the beast. All he knew was that the fox was gone and the Yondaime was dead. Dead, and Danzo was still not Hokage.

Unlike the sheep that were Konoha's citizens, he knew that it was impossible to kill a tailed beast. The tales had said the beasts were purely constructs of chakra, and chakra could never be destroyed; only used, dispersed, or sealed.

Logically, it should have reformed by now and be terrorizing the countryside, but it wasn't. That meant one thing and one thing only: it'd been sealed.

While Kusagakure had recently risen from the woodwork, it's been confirmed to serve as the snake's base.; and seeing as there were no hidden villages bragging about possessing the Kyuubi, the strongest of the bijuu, it couldn't be anywhere but in Konoha.

It was then that something clicked: there was a jinchuuriki in Konoha. Untrained, unaware, and unknowingly doing a huge disservice to the village. Had Sarutobi known? Had that damn monkey pulled one over on him?!

There was no way of knowing at this point; the man was dead. And since he'd met his untimely demise at the hands of his rogue student, that meant that Tsunade was also unaware.

A rare grin overtook his face, looking like that of a cat who'd caught the canary, and its whole nest of eggs, too.

Though it was unfortunate he'd wasted so many resources over the years, at least he now knew what he was looking for, and the search for that would be localized. He called for another squad of Root members through a seal similar to the one connecting the Hokage to the ANBU black ops, and waited. Not for long, mind you, for all his successfully trained and integrated members knew he was not a man to keep waiting.

Just as he'd predicted, they shunshinned and took to kneeling, awaiting his command. He stood from his chair, hand clenching around the cane he carried around to convince others of his frailty.

Surveying the best shinobi he had in espionage, he gave his orders.

"The search for the Nine-Tailed Fox will continue, but focus only within the village. The target's physical attributes are unknown, save for the existence of abnormally large chakra reserves. The target's age will be anywhere from 15 to 25 years old," he said. "Search the archives, comb the red light district, and absolutely do not alert either the Hokage or her forces. Dismissed."

Just like the squad before them, they were quick to shunshin away, leaving the old man to his office and various plots. But Danzo was proud of the day's work, proud to be one step ahead of the enemy, (be that the Akatsuki organization or Konoha's hokage.)

There was war on the horizon, and the Kyuubi was an essential variable in Konoha's triumph.

--ANOTHER LINE BREAK BECAUSE I NEED A HIGHER WORD COUNT--

"What's the point of assigning us Konoha if there's no jinchuuriki to hunt? After that invasion of Kusa and Suna, they're all easy pickings. I won't even have to use my blade against these tree-huggers!"

"Hn. Konoha may be less of a threat, but you know the consequence of defying Lord Pein." The blue-skinned man beside him shivered at the memory of a grunt trying to defect. It hadn't been pretty.

"Okay, fine. But what are we supposed to tell him when he asks for a report? I bet this was just a staged mission to punish us in the end."

"Focus, Kisame." The large blue-skinned man beside him grumbled under his breath, and Itachi pretended not to hear the rude words pointed at both him and their Lord.

They two missing-nin were disguised in their Akatsuki uniform and a wide straw hat, approaching Konoha at a civilian's pace so as to not alert the sentries of their abilities. Lord Pein had begun mobilizing members of the upper echelon of Akatsuki, pairing them to ensure maximum efficiency and increased chances of survival. Itachi and Kisame were just one of those pairs.

Though they were unsure of the endgame, they each had their mission: bring in the jinchuurikis, alive.

And so, they were preparing to infiltrate his old home village to at least gather some intel, regardless of its relevance to the actual sacrifice. (He privately agreed with Kisame. They'd not heard of hide nor hair of the jinchuuriki or the tailed-beast's whereabouts, and thus expected nothing to turn up from their investigation.)

The long dusty road they'd traversed for far too long suddenly gave way to a great treeline, something comforting in its sheltered familiarity, but also incredibly off-putting. There were too many places to hide, too many opportunities for an ambush. The forest was far from his home after what he'd done all those years ago, and the forest as a whole seemed to exude a slight killing intent to reinforce that notion.

It was no longer his home, but that was alright. He had a mission to complete, and nothing would stand in his way--

"Shit, where am I supposed to put Samehada if I'm posing as a civvie?!"

For once, his partner brought up a relatively good point.

(I HATE MY LIFE)

There; is that enough action for ya? But FINALLY, PLOT PROGRESSION. Though there will be more fluff eventually, don't you worry.

And no, some of Danzo's POV doesn't make a huge amount of sense, does it? That's because 1) he's crazy, and 2) Naruto was assumed to be dead, even if they never found the body. That's why the primary suspect doesn't have red hair.

And can I just clarify: I didn't take any inspiration from Tarzan, nor is it intended to be similar. In truth, I've seen the movie maybe 4 times, and I was less than impressed with it. Same goes for The Jungle Book, (though that one was marginally better.) Sorry, but it's kind of irritating to see people make connections or references instead of enjoying the book itself, and it feels like they're discrediting the effort I put into publishing.

(Also: why is FFN giving me so much trouble rn?!)

Started 4/15

Completed 4/26