Naruto: Great Clan Days

by Kenchi618

Senju Hashirama's dream to unify all of the warring clans of his country under one village remained just that; a dream. Generations later, the ninja world still consists of pure clan affiliation. Enacting peace through understanding has fallen to the side. A catalyst is needed for any kind of change to occur, and it is all found in a little boy... for better or for worse. AU.

10. Road to the Show

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Maybe I should go about remedying this the way that Trevor Phillips from GTA V would, because that's a man that gets shit done. Fucking psychopath.

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Having someone with you that you can count on was more important than you could imagine. In a world where most people that could get away with it hid their surnames, if they even had them, just to avoid a situation where they could get killed, having someone to believe in and someone that believes in you is really special. Family in this instance does not count. It can't for this.

You see, I was never the flat-out strongest ninja in the world. I don't think I ever got close really. Compared to how powerful some people, like Naruto for instance, eventually became, I was never even close to matching up to him when it came to raw power. Even so, I'd still like to think I became one of the very best. The track record of sheer things I've survived that would have eviscerated most other people should prove that.

My strength wasn't in my physical abilities or my chakra, or because I was unbelievably tough and had an indomitable will. Never anything like that. At first glance I was just some nameless kunoichi that used a lot of weapons, ninja tools, in order to try and keep up. So what? There was nothing wrong with that. When you're outclassed at something you're outclassed at it, and there's not much you can do about it, so why even go there at all?

Eventually it was assumed that if you took all of my gear away from me I would be worthless, and while that was a gross generalization of my abilities… people weren't entirely wrong about it. Without something in my hand or on my person to level the playing field against some of the creepier freaks and nightmare urban legends we went up against, things were awfully tough. When my self-esteem waned every now and again, there were times when I would wonder why Naruto kept me with him.

Eventually there were tons of people stronger than me that he could have chosen to team with. These were absolute powerhouses I'm talking about here, and many of them would have jumped at the chance to directly assist him, but when given the choice he always picked me.

It took years for me to finally call him on it and ask him why. His answer was far simpler than I would have expected, given the kind of person he had become by then. I had expected something profound and thoughtful, but he just blew it off like it was something I shouldn't have had to ask at all.

"Why wouldn't I pick you? You're the only person that actually knows me."

Hearing that kind of made my heart clench a bit. But then, I don't know why hearing that surprised me. Through thick or thin, we stayed around each other. We'd been best friends, we'd been at each other's throats as if we hated each other, we'd fought each other, watched each other fight other people. We'd seen each other laugh, cry, bleed, cheat death, anything you could think of.

Knowing everything about someone, anyone, on a personal level, not because they're your family or in your clan or anything, but because you know them, and you see them every single day, and you learn everything about them whether you intended to or not… that kind of thing was rare back then because of the climate of things.

Oh wait, when I started writing, this was supposed to be about something else wasn't it? Whatever. I like what I wrote, so I'm making Naruto keep this in. Maybe as an interlude between transition chapters or something.

Tenten – 'End of Clan War Era Memoirs'

Chapter 10: Road to the Show

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Eyes slowly opening, Naruto found himself sitting on the water inside of the prison in his own mind, facing Kurama who seemed to be sleeping on his haunches right in front of him. For once he was patient though, and waited until the gargantuan fox snorted to convey that he was awake.

"I hate that you realize how time passes significantly slower on the outside when you're actually in here now," Kurama declared, slowly opening his eyes to glare at Naruto, "What do you want? What do you need? What?"

This had been the ebb and flow of their relationship for a while. Naruto would show up bright and early in front of the cage every morning and would sit there for thirty minutes to an hour in real time, which was more like two and a half to five hours inside of his head. It was as if he were trying to establish something or look around for something that he could or couldn't do. It was very experimental.

Kurama lazily batted his tails around, trying to convince Naruto to leave, "You must enjoy looking like you're spaced out and dead to the world. You know, mosquitos like flying into open eye sockets and other general facial orifices right? Get ready to enjoy that when you finally blink."

"It's just that I've been trying to get a handle on this whole jinchuuriki thing for a week now," Naruto started to say with a welcome smile, "And I figured, what am I doing? I mean, I can't let you out, so you aren't going anywhere and you might be a gigantic, nasty, sociopathic fox-."

"Ooh, big word. Did the scarecrow man teach you that one?"

"-But I don't know that much about you," Naruto continued, his smile becoming a bit more strained after the insult to his intellect. He had been educated by his mother damn it, and well. It was just that there were certain ways he liked to speak and using big words when there were simpler ways to say things never appealed to him, "Anyway, I thought, since we're stuck together for a while, we might as well learn about each other. Neither of us are going anywhere, right?"

Kurama just gave Naruto the dullest stare that he could muster as a monstrous figure of destruction, which was actually quite impressive from him, "Me wanting to learn about you on a personal level would be like a human being trying to learn about a shrimp or some other bottom-feeding seafood that they're known to devour on a personal level."

"Well I guessed that already," Naruto said with a shrug, "That's why I really just want to hear about you."

"You want to hear about me?" Kurama asked incredulously, "I just have to ask, did you have a major nightmare last night? Because if you did I should have been able to feel it. Negative emotions are kind of my thing."

"There! Just like that! You saying that feeling negative emotions or whatever is your thing, more of that! Like, what does that mean?" Naruto asked, animatedly waving his arms around for emphasis, "Is it just me, or can you feel killing intent better than I can?"

Kurama stared at him long and hard, feeling absolutely no deceit or falsehood of interest from Naruto as he spoke. The boy had always been that way when it came to him. When they'd first met he'd cared nothing about Kurama's size and power other than the fact that he thought he was cool. This child was truly a wondrous thing.

For the first time in a long time, Kurama had come across a human that didn't desire power for solely personal reasons, or something as short-sighted as the glory of their clan. While Naruto wanted to actively find out what made him tick, Kurama wanted to discover for himself just what this kid was all about. He was having trouble with it.

What would help though, was giving him something to mull around, so that he could gauge his reaction to the actual things he said.

"Well… when I say negative emotions are my thing, I mean that I'm extremely sensitive to concentrations of harmful intent. On active battlefields and other areas of general suffering, places where the nastier aspects of human character come out, I find myself drawn to them, whether I want to be there or not."

"So you don't want to be in places like that?"

"Yes, because I just love being drawn to the absolute stink-holes and cesspools of the continent," Kurama said sarcastically, "I can't help it! That's how sensitive to those feelings I am! I can't avoid them!"

Naruto flinched at the booming shout from Kurama and held a hand up defensively while cleaning his ears out with a pinky, "Ah, I was just asking. So that's why people say you're some sort of natural disaster," Seeing Kurama's confusion, Naruto clarified with a blush, "Well, I've been asking Kakashi about you and he said that the Kyuubi was always supposed to be some sort of harbinger of the end to places afflicted with misery. His words."

"I've had humans do terrible things in mass numbers, cause outright atrocities, just to attract me to areas so that they could try to entrap me. I am woefully predictable in my movements because of my reaction to dark intent," Kurama explained with a heavy sigh, "It was as if they believed that they could yoke me as though I were some garden-variety animal. It was a reason why I shut myself up inside of your island. I couldn't feel anything that far away from the mainland and under the ground."

It was nice actually, on Uzu no Kuni. No real battles ever occurred there. The only clan that inhabited that place was the Uzumaki Clan, and they basically kept everything rather peaceful for the most part. It was significantly more so than anywhere else in the Elemental Nations.

While it only took the biggest and most horrible incidents to attract him nowadays, when he'd been younger it was quite easy to attract the wandering fox to places to the point where armed forces would do so and then flee while he finished the job that they started to get him there in the first place.

By the time he grew old and wise enough to avoid this to some extent his reputation was already set.

Naruto summed up the general sentiment on these matters in so many words, "Well that sucks."

"Yes. Yes it does," Kurama muttered before looking around his surroundings, "If it's any consolation, from within you I can't feel anything that's not directly around you, which means that bigger things don't affect me, like the Shukaku battle, or the Uchiha/Hyuuga incident," Those things weren't big enough to attract him from afar, but when he was already in the center of them there would have been ill effects, "I haven't gone blood crazy since I've been in here, so at least there's that."

There. That was something on the bright side at least. It was a start, if nothing else.

XxX

*THUNK!*

"Wow, he is out of it."

"Indeed."

"All of that and he didn't even flinch. Do you want me to keep going Kakashi-sensei? I can't really fit anything else in around him."

"No, no. I'll go wake him up, just… let me enjoy this for a second. This is art."

Standing fifty yards away from Naruto, Kakashi and Tenten simply marveled at the sight that was their resident blond sitting against the trunk of a tree, his entire body defined closely with kunai, shuriken, and other assorted projectile weaponry around his person.

At first it was just something that she did while warming up when she noticed Naruto's glazed look in his eyes. Trying to rouse him from it so that he could warm up she decided to try and scare him. When he didn't flinch it was quite annoying, thus she kept going. Before too long Kakashi had born witness to this from behind her without her notice, and when she realized that he'd been there she was told to continue, much to her surprise.

Eventually, Naruto blinked rapidly, signifying his return to the realm of regular consciousness. He didn't even register the fact that the tree he'd been sitting against moments before now had a Naruto-shaped outline of weapons stuck to it, "What's up you guys?"

Tenten and Kakashi both thought that all he had to do was turn back around and he would have more than likely been horrified, angry, or some combination of the two.

Instead, Kakashi decided to ignore Tenten's impromptu target practice game altogether, "First, kunai-spinning exercise please," He almost twitched when he saw Naruto pluck a kunai right out of the tree behind him without turning around to demonstrate that he'd mastered the training. Apparently he'd been more aware than they'd thought, "Alright, that's great."

"Better be," Naruto groused, a kunai twirling in a blur by its point in the palm of his hand, "You know how many clones this killed trying to get this good back in the beginning? A lot. I had to keep replacing the twenty."

Tenten counted off on her fingers trying to add something up, "Ten days, times twenty clones…" She trailed off before she got her math dead-on and threw a kunai at Naruto in a fit that he dodged, "You did a half a year of training on a stupid exercise in under two weeks! What the hell? Teach me how to do that!"

"You could only make one without splitting your chakra too much."

"That's still twice the training on a technique I could learn in half the time!"

Kakashi let out a sigh as he knew that this was going to come up eventually. Comparing Naruto's chakra to Tenten's just wasn't a fair fight. If Tenten's chakra supply was like a filled tank, Naruto's was more akin to a lake. If you split Tenten's chakra in half for a Shadow Clone that would halve the tank, which was significant. If you split Naruto's in half for the same thing you would just have two fucking lakes instead of one.

Even if Naruto's chakra was split twenty ways for the full breadth of his Shadow Clone Jutsu, he and his clones still had so much more chakra than Tenten that it wasn't even close and it wasn't even fair. Hell, he still had more chakra than Kakashi did, even with his chakra split twenty ways.

With a frown, Naruto considered Tenten's grievance and figured that she had a point. He wanted to get himself up to snuff faster, and he could definitely understand why she would as well. If they could learn the techniques they were taught at a faster rate from clone repetition that would give them time to focus on other things that you couldn't do with clones.

"Alright, come here. I'll teach it to you," Naruto said, getting a grin out of Tenten as he gestured for her to come closer.

"Naruto…" Kakashi said in warning. He didn't want her getting hurt with a jutsu that her body wasn't up for. While it wasn't the forbidden version that definitely would have killed her, it was still very dangerous for the wrong person.

"She's got a point Kakashi," Naruto urged, "You can do it, I can do it. Why not her too? Even if she can only make one, that's still better than none."

He wanted to get strong enough to be worth something to his mother and to a lesser extent his father. He didn't want to be left behind. In that sense he could understand why Tenten was put out by the idea of Naruto finding a way to get better when he absolutely needed the results and her having to play catch up just like him, only without the benefit of such a method to improve.

Besides, she was his best friend, and he wanted her to be with him every step of the way, and that didn't mean falling behind.

Kakashi simply let out a sigh in the end. As if he could chastise them for having a dangerous technique. He had his fair share of his own by the time he was their age. He couldn't treat them with a double standard over something like this when the rest of the world would kill them if they were enemies. It was probably a way of showing that he cared to ensure that he pushed them to be as good as they could be, and they could be very, very good.

He could oversee things and make sure it was safe though.

"Okay," Naruto said, showing Tenten the cross-fingered hand-seal she'd need to commit to memory to execute the jutsu, "This is the only hand-seal that you need to know, and… well…" He stalled, trying to think of a good way to explain the actual feeling of using the jutsu, "…You're doing it right when it feels like your whole body is pushing out chakra."

Really? That sounded simple enough.

Tenten shrugged and began the jutsu process before Naruto quickly stopped her, "What?"

"That's too much," He said, sighing in relief that she didn't go through with the jutsu, "If you're making one, just use enough to feel like it's running through your body. Don't flare it like you did. If you do that your body'll take that as you trying to make as many as you can or as many as the jutsu'll let you do."

"Like I said," Kakashi pointed out, "Be careful if you're going to learn this jutsu at all. Now let's get some work done. We've got somewhere to be, and I want to start Naruto on something that Minato-sama is going to teach him anyway."

XxX

(Central Hi no Kuni – Senju Clan Headquarters)

The last few days had been annoying as far as the female head of the Senju Clan was concerned. Sending one of her best out only ended with him being rebuked. Tenzo had reported to her from a Senju outpost closer to the outskirts of the country and informed her on their failure to exterminate their target due to the appearance of Namikaze Minato.

…Her granduncle's biggest mistake in the last years of his last years of his long life was dangling the carrot of Hiraishin no Jutsu over the head of the freelancer ninjas for an expendable squad to go in and die for their cause against the Uchiha.

It worked, but then again how were they supposed to know that the then no-name ninja Minato was good enough to overcome the extermination squad in the aftermath?

She should have taken it upon herself to split his skull before he became too cagy to pin down in one area, but no one ever thought there would be another that could utilize Hiraishin no Jutsu solo. It took three different users just to endure the space-time strain that teleportation was supposed to put on the body, and they'd never even taught him how to make the markers for the technique.

Damn it.

With another punch to a towering rock monolith she turned it to rubble and dusted off her fist accordingly. Physical exertion was always a good way to calm one's self down, and what had once been a very scenic rock garden of beautifully raked sand and ornate rock structures was now a miniature wasteland.

"Nagato had better get his ducks in a row before it's too late," Tsunade grumbled aloud as she was attended to by her attendant after a rather destructive training session to blow off some steam, "If something happens because of this and we end up going into a larger war, we won't be the ones handling the lion's share of the fighting this time. This is the Uzumaki Clan's mess."

The Uzumaki Clan had an important place in the ninja world. Because of that, and because of the ties established by Hashirama Senju and Uzumaki Mito they were bonded, but it wasn't a free card for the Senju Clan to clean up the messes of their 'little sibling' clan. They had enough of their own issues at the moment, such as a funding problem.

If they had to fight another big-time conflict like the one they had taken part in less than five years ago it would eat away at a great chunk of what was left of their deeper assets, win or lose, unless they won in a quick less-than-costly manner.

"Tsunade you should really tone it down," She heard as she reentered the main building of the main Senju stronghold. Most anyone else saying that would have ended with them being put through a wall or five. Not this man however, "Think about the poor people that have to readjust that rock garden every time after you finish your little physical training sessions."

"Sword of Damocles dear brother," Tsunade responded, turning around to face the person that had spoken up to her. A man in his mid-thirties with short light brown hair, he possessed sharp brown eyes and a jagged scar on his cheek. He wore a green loose top with a lavender shroud over his shoulders, as well as dark green pants. At his hip he carried a sword hilt, "It's easy to say something like that when you don't have to be held accountable to the responsibilities of leadership."

The man rolled his eyes and grabbed Tsunade in a shoulder hug, "You keep bringing that up, like anyone is supposed to know an obscure reference like that."

"Not 'anyone', just you," Tsunade amended, carefully picking the hand around her shoulders off, "What do you want Nawaki?"

After concluding his greeting to his elder sister, Nawaki turned rather serious in his approach, "I know you're all bent out of shape over the Uzumaki jinchuuriki situation, but there are more important matters at hand. If things turn into a biju arms race we've got the advantage, you know that."

"I know, it's still not something that I want to have to turn to just to keep an edge, now what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong per se, it's just that there's work to be done, and one boy that'll probably get himself killed before he ever becomes a problem isn't worth the trouble that diverting ninjas as good as Tenzo after him would bring."

Tsunade growled at Nawaki and the point that he had. Naruto was just one little boy. Even if he was a jinchuuriki, thus far no one knew exactly what that meant for him, especially him himself from Tenzo's report on how he tried to fight him. The biju within him never came into play once.

"What work needs to be done?" Tsunade asked, letting her temper settle down. There wasn't anything to get fired up about at the moment.

"Well we need to refill our coffers first of all," Nawaki pointed out, rubbing an index finger and a thumb together, "We're still reeling from the last open war with the Uchiha that ended in the stalemate, and from taking down the Hagoromo Clan a few years after that. Even if that win netted us all of their business, it hasn't been enough to bring our funds back up to what it had been before."

"Ideas?"

"Well you could always try your hand at high-stakes gambling again. Oh wait, I know. Sell grandfather's necklace?" Nawaki offered jokingly, getting a growl from his older sister, "I'm kidding! Besides, there are all sorts of ways to make money to supplement our mission income. We don't have to hike up our prices and risk turning customers away."

"Oh, Kami, you can't be serious," Tsunade droned, already knowing where this was going, "Not another one of these idiotic treasure hunts of yours."

"Idiotic, right, because I didn't find one of the treasured tools of the Rikudou Sennin on my very first try." Thus earning him the title of Nawaki the Hunter. Over the years in addition to developing into a skilled shinobi, he'd developed the reputation of a man that could go anywhere and find anyone or anything, no matter what

"Finding legendary items isn't going to help us now, because why would we sell them to people that would turn around and use them on us?" Tsunade pointed out, "You're good at finding what no one else can find, but unless it'll turn us a profit Nawaki, I need you back in the field working missions again. You're a big figure in the clan."

Tsunade began to walk away and back to her daily work until Nawaki's voice stopped her again. Stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Kakuzu's Money Pit."

Hearing someone that could find the impossible speak of that much of a concentration of money sent a shiver down her spine. With that much money she could theoretically gamble high-stakes for life and never run out. More productively, they could fund any amount of anything that they wanted.

"You're kidding," Tsunade said in disbelief, "That's a legend that's been around ever since grandfather was alive. No one has that much money. It's impossible."

"Kakuzu's been an in-demand, top-of-the-line ninja since back in grandfather's time," Nawaki argued in return, defending his expedition's validity, "He's still alive, still as active as he was seventy years ago, and he's notoriously frugal. Of all the things we've seen in the world, are you really going to tell me that you don't believe in one person hoarding enough assets to wage a lifetime of full-scale wars?"

It wasn't. But just like how every grey cloud had a silver lining, every silver cloud had a grey lining, "You're telling me this because you have something concrete, but you're leaving something big out so you can go on the search."

Damn it. His sister knew him too well.

"Well, apparently Kakuzu doesn't like having his money out in one place, even if it is well hidden, but he doesn't like having it split up either so he won't separate it into different places. It's all in one mother lode. He looked into a banker, and when that didn't work out for various reasons, he kind of covered his tracks."

"By killing him in a blood rage."

"Yeah, basically. But the banker had a few assistants that died as well. One managed to avoid it, and that's the link to get started."

"You're still not telling me the problem yet."

"I'm not the only one that's putting all of this together."

Which meant that he wasn't the only one that would end up looking for Kakuzu's Money Pit.

XxX

(East Coast of Hi no Kuni)

"Are you sure you're alright with this plan sensei?" Minato asked out of courtesy. Sure, it was his operation to go into the Uzumaki Clan's home base, but Jiraiya would be the one handling the most dangerous portion of it all; the distraction part. Minato didn't want to put his teacher in a position where he'd be in peril that he couldn't handle, "We can change things up if you like, maybe take a little more time to try and set up a better out for you."

"Meh, don't worry about it. If I can't buy you a window of opportunity I really don't deserve to be thought of as being so awesome. Just remember, you'd better be moving at the speed of sound when you bolt in, because those Mind's Eye of the Kagura users are no joke when it comes to sensing. They'll lock onto you in a heartbeat if you're not moving fast enough."

"I know," Minato said, "I lived in Uzu no Kuni for four years before Naruto was born. I know what makes these people tick."

"I'd rather hear about what makes your wife tick if you know what I mean," Jiraiya said, elbowing Minato in his side, "Huh? Huh? You know what I mean? You get what I'm talking about? Because in case you did I mean that I want to know what gets your wife-."

"-Thank you sensei," Minato cut him off sharply before coughing and getting serious once more as he looked out at the ocean, "Soon enough I'll be seeing her again eh? I don't want to be the kind of guy that looks ahead when there's still some serious work to be done, but damn… ten years. You know, you don't have to follow me in for this."

"Of course I do. As a matter of fact, I think we should have brought more people, but you've got some sort of complex when it comes to getting other people involved in your problems."

"I'm a hands-on kind of guy I guess."

A grin spread across Jiraiya's face as he set a hand on Minato's shoulder, "Speaking of hands-on, back to your wife-."

"Not the time sensei."

XxX

(With Naruto – Northern Hi no Kuni)

"Minato-sama isn't just doing these things on his own," Kakashi explained as he and his younger companions jumped through the tree branches of a heavily forested area. They hadn't seen a road or a clearing in hours and were quite thoroughly lost. They could barely see the sun poking through the canopy leaves above, "It would be impossible to actually bring about the sort of place he wants to create without an extensive number of support from the affluent clans in the world."

Having listened to Kakashi's lecture for quite some time as they'd been traveling, Tenten frowned at the way he was explaining things, "But that's hard to do right? Clans don't really think anything of people like Minato-sama," '…Or me.'

As was the existence of clanless ninjas. It was pretty unfair, but that was the way it was.

It was a catch-22. You were either a clanless ninja and you were largely ignored by all as worthless until you stepped on a few too many toes and became a problem, or you could be born to a clan and be automatically pitted against basically every other clan in existence around yours.

Kakashi could hear the touch of self-loathing in the tail end of Tenten's remark, but decided to leave that for later, "Maybe so, but there are a fair share of clans that can think pragmatically in the regard of the benefits of such a thing. We have another mission and we need help."

Naruto's ears perked up at the sound of seemingly something else coming their way work-wise, "A new mission? What? When?"

"It's from Jiraiya-sama actually," Kakashi said with an eye-smile in the direction of his pair of kids, "It's meant to really take your mind off of your mother and father for a short while, but the way I see it, it's extremely important in its own right. I'll tell you more when we reach our destination."

"Well where is that? At the end of this forest?" Because for the life of him he couldn't see how anyone could live in that kind of place without clearing out some kind of land for themselves, "How long is it gonna take to get there?"

"It won't take that much longer, because the people we're going to see live in this forest," Kakashi answered, "This territory is under the protection of the Aburame Clan, a very special grouping of ninjas with a close relationship to insects. So close that this place is something of a preserve for forest-dwelling insects." Stopping for a moment, Kakashi pointed out an extremely subtle insect carving in the bark, "Some are quite dangerous, so you have to follow a very particular path to reach them, or else you'll draw their wrath."

"You mean the wrath of the Aburame Clan?" Tenten questioned.

"Well, them too. I was talking more about the insects in this case though. Some of those can be quite nasty. I'm talking 'leeches that can drain human beings dry in less than two minutes' kind of nasty."

Oh, so that was why he told them to follow his path as closely as they could when they entered the forest. Yeah, that could have ended badly.

Kakashi brought them to a landing on the ground where they found many well-hidden dwellings hidden amongst the trunks of the trees. Wow. That was actually a pretty cool way to hide homes. Naruto wondered how many they'd actually passed underneath them all that time, 'We would have never seen any of these if we hadn't come down here.'

And yet there were multiple men and women of this clan, going about their day, moving about their settlement, sitting outside, some with an insect or two on the end of their fingers for whatever reason.

The Aburame Clan didn't tend to vary too severely in appearance. Mostly they kept the bottom portion of their faces covered with high-collared clothing and wore some sort of dark-lensed eyewear to conceal their eyes. They kept their bodies very well covered and seemed to keep a universally aloof demeanor. Even the intrusion of complete strangers didn't seem to bear much more than a passing glance from them.

Silently following after Kakashi, they watched as a man came forth from one of the dwellings to greet him. An older man in his late thirties, he had bushy brown hair and a thin mustache along with dark sunglasses that had a small tassel hanging from them. Wearing a long, grey high-collared long-sleeved top with olive pants, he had a gourd on his back somewhat similar to Gaara's in a way.

Without hesitating, Kakashi reached his hand out and found it quickly shaken by the man before him, "Aburame-sama," Kakashi greeted, getting a silent nod from the man, "Kids, this is the leader of the Aburame Clan, Aburame Shibi."

Shibi took a moment to regard the youngsters before nodding to them as well, getting them to wave and smile nervously at him. They didn't know what to make of any of this, but they were as nice as they could be given their confusion.

"I've already been informed that Jiraiya-san's requested the assistance of my clan with something," Shibi said in a very bland and base tone of speaking, "Tell me, do you require a specialist, or any sort of ninja in particular?"

Kakashi shook his head, "No need for requesting anyone that would disrupt your clan activities too much. I'd only ask you for a ninja that you trust, and I'll do the same."

"Of course," Shibi stoically agreed, "We believe in the idea of the village where people of all sorts of clans can live in peace. It would be our honor to assist Minato-san in any way he requires. If you have no qualms against it I have already selected a candidate to assist you. I want my son to accompany you."

'Wow. I wonder how strong this guy's son would be if he's volunteering him for something,' Looking around, Tenten didn't see many Aburame that seemed set to come forward and work, but instead she managed to eagle-eye a boy crouching by a set of shrubs beneath a great tree, a small insect standing on the tip of his finger.

He wore a far lighter colored version of the lower-face concealing shirt that Shibi wore and had the same bushy brown hair as the man in question as well as a pair of round-framed sunglasses covering his eyes. Man, how could they see while wearing sunglasses in such a low-light setting?

Naruto was busy looking around and wondering what kind of methods these people used to fight. They had to be damn good ninjas in their own way if they were able to build a place for themselves in a forest that could have been so potentially dangerous for anyone else. Those guys are kind of odd, but if Kakashi said that they were right that was all he needed he guessed.

Kakashi had his jerk moments, but he had the confidence of his tagalongs to the utmost degree. What he said went, because he'd never led them astray before.

Shibi's gaze panned over to the boy that Tenten had picked out off to the side at a distance before he called out to him, "Shino, come here. I want you to meet Hatake Kakashi-san and his students. You'll be going with them for the time being. I want you to use this as a chance to see just how Minato-san's concept can work, with people so different coming together."

"Yes father," Shino replied with an air of collected acceptance and self-assurance.

It was hard for Tenten to believe at first that this was who Shibi would have been referring to as the sort of candidate that would be fit for a mission with people that he didn't know, but then she realized that the same 'ageism' thing she'd lambasted Kakashi for when it came to her and being given the chance to learn Kage Bunshin no Jutsu applied here as well. She had automatically assumed that someone being young was an automatic mark of skill.

'If nothing else I should give him a shot,' Tenten thought to herself, 'If it were me I know I'd want the same thing.'

"This is my son Shino," Shibi informed them, "If I'm correct in my estimation on-sight, he should be around the same age as the children with you. I can assure you that he is a pride to our clan and will serve well under your command."

He definitely seemed to be an odd one though from how he slowly walked over, barely a movement to his head to indicate that he'd even acknowledged that Naruto and Tenten existed. Instead he moved right up to Kakashi and gave him a slight bow, "Greetings Hatake-san. I've been told much about your capabilities and look forward to working with you on the search mission. I have already been informed of the situation."

What a cool demeanor. Even Neji didn't come off as this calm and collected. Then again, the whole clan seemed to be of that ilk from the small sample size they had to go off of.

"Well we haven't. There's a search mission?" Naruto remarked, throwing his hands up behind his neck only for Shino to glance at him for a split-second and then only regard Kakashi once more, "Oi, did he just ignore me?" He asked Tenten who shrugged and shook her head.

Shibi addressed Kakashi once more, "Godspeed, and may good fortune await you on your mission."

By now it was almost like something of an inside joke that Naruto and Tenten weren't privy to, and it was none too amusing to either of them to be left out of the loop, "What mission?" They both asked in stereo, gritting their teeth.

Ignoring their temperament, Kakashi turned to the two of them and waved his hands spiritedly, face expressionless while speaking in a monotone sing-song voice, "Briefing ti~me."

XxX

(A Few Hours Later)

It was kind of odd how Shino and his father had parted with a sparse farewell and a wishing of luck. Naruto wasn't necessarily an expert on father-son relations, but from watching other children he'd seen and from interacting with Minato and seeing how much emotion the man put into that one meeting he felt it was a little off.

And then there was Shino himself.

Despite apparently being new to the group and along for the ride as some sort of pact with Minato, he really kept to himself. He hadn't even really introduced himself to anyone other than Kakashi and seemed to more or less be accepting Naruto and Tenten's presence in the basest way possible.

Also, he was a few inches taller than Naruto to the point that it was noticeable. That was sort of annoying. He even dwarfed Tenten to a degree, though that didn't matter much to her at all if she even noticed it.

…Man, he had problems to get hung up on the guy's height didn't he?

Either way, after making it a short way outside of the insect preserve that was the home of the Aburame Clan, Kakashi sat them down side by side to talk to them. All three looked up at him, Naruto and Tenten doing so expectantly, the former with a rubber ball in his hand as he tried to multitask and pop it with his chakra.

Thus far it was common knowledge between the three younger ninjas that Minato wanted to form a community where ninjas wouldn't be bound to fight against each other in constant warfare because of clan ties. Where children wouldn't grow to consider murder as their first choice when faced with someone different from them in some way.

That was the easy part. What no one had explained to them was just what really went into making all of that happen. You couldn't just plant a flag, erect a few buildings and declare it, 'Ninjaville: come one, come all, and don't kill each other.'

There was far more that went into forming a community based at its core at bringing battle-hungry, out-for-self, military families together under a concrete, long-standing peace than simply saying there was a place like that somewhere that existed with an open-door policy. There was more to it than even Kakashi knew.

The easiest thing to convey as to the hows and whys of settlement construction in this instance however was the concept of the role that money played in it. Which was a coincidence, because obtaining money was the most straightforward part of a venture such as this. You worked for it or you took it, simple as that. Things got frustratingly more complex after you obtained the necessary capital, so it wasn't worth going into yet.

So Kakashi had to explain the concept of economics and the factors of forming a thriving community in order to get to the part where he explained what they would be doing to help Minato secure that portion of his ambition. Naruto wanted to know how he could help his old man out, so he listened until it was understood.

Then there was the matter of what they were going to do to get it all in one fell swoop.

"What do you kids know of the ninja Kakuzu?" Kakashi asked to start things out. In return he only got blank looks from the two that he had become accustomed to, "…Alright, not like I was really expecting much there to begin with."

Shino however, was more than willing to answer, "Who is Kakuzu you ask? He is an exceedingly powerful man, also noted as perhaps the wealthiest man in the entire world by the way he stockpiles his funds. No one has ever seen or counted his gains, but it has been said that Kakuzu has enough money to buy himself an entire country if he so wished, with a sizeable amount of money left over, if-."

"-If only he weren't so cheap. Very good," Kakashi remarked before launching into his explanation, "Jiraiya-sama has recently come into some very prudent information in regards to Kakuzu, and as it turns out we are going to be 'borrowing' a good portion of money from him."

"Really?" Tenten was skeptical to say the least. They'd just gotten through saying that the guy was cheap, so how would they borrow anything from him?

"No. Not really. We're going to be finding his hidden stash and taking all of it that we can to get what we need to help fund Minato-sama's village goal," Kakashi admitted bluntly, "Are you kidding? 'Borrow'? That man would kill you before he'd even cough up 100 ryo."

Once again, a lightbulb went off in Naruto's head after hearing the name Kakuzu enough and his face lit up in recognition, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute… you mean Kakuzu, as in 'Kakuzu's Money Pit' Kakuzu? Like the bedtime story? That's real?"

That was just supposed to be a warning story for kids about knowing who to trust, and how to tread around dangerous people, and how certain decisions can make you miserable despite the fact that you should theoretically have everything in the world. All of that was supposed to be crap that adults tried to offload on their children to try and shape their system of ethics and morals.

"Oh, it's real. It's really real," Kakashi pointed out, watching Naruto's eyes go wide, "You'll find out that every single legend in our ninja world is to some extent true and on the up-and-up. We traditionally aren't very imaginative people outside of combat I'm afraid."

"But in the story, Kakuzu got trapped in his hiding place and became some sort of berserk, feral green-eyed monster man that'll kill anyone that finds his stash… even if they find it by accident!" Naruto pointed out, "Even Senju Hashirama couldn't kill him."

"Well the part where he's trapped with his riches isn't true. He still does missions. He actually only goes to his hiding place to add more money to it," Kakashi said, scratching his face idly under his mask, "He will try to massacre anyone that finds it though. That's how Jiraiya-sama found this out. A banker's employee survived one of Kakuzu's rages against her manager, and one of Jiraiya-sama's contacts overheard things from her. It was simply too rich of an opportunity to ignore."

"An opportunity? Perhaps. If it is I believe that our window is very small," Shino added on after the fact, "I was told to anticipate the prospect of combat, because if we were able to obtain this information, who knows who else has it as of now?"

There were a lot of unsavory elements out there, and they all had the potential to find out everything that someone else already knew when it came to world events. People talked, people heard things, people took those things to people that would pay them a boatload of money.

From that point it was all a matter of which camp could get itself in gear the fastest and move on the information.

Alright! This was the kind of ninja work that Naruto had always wanted to get into. Outmaneuvering the other guy, taking what you need under the nose of the other guys, making off into the night and savoring the fruits of your labor, the spoils of your victory.

It was way better in theory than fighting biju on a wide open, sandy battlefield. Forget that noise. The next battlefield Naruto ever saw would be one too many. This was workable though. A real mission. Actual ninja work. He loved working for the ramen cart, but that wasn't what he'd been expecting when he became a shinobi.

"Well what are we waitin' for!?" Naruto said, grinning up a storm as he could hardly sit still out of sheer excitement, "We've gotta get to it first, so where to?"

Shino's face didn't change, even when Tenten leaned in and whispered to him, "When his accent breaks that means he's worked up."

"Understood," The young Aburame droned dully in return.

XxX

(Uzu no Kuni – Uzumaki Clan Village – Kushina's House)

As time waned and she had done nothing other than exist in the clan leader's mansion, Kushina was no longer under house arrest. She wasn't allowed to leave the clan half of the village and was under around-the-clock surveillance, still marking her status as a political prisoner, but at least she could return home.

Her empty home. Her home without her husband, and while she'd been without him for years it truly sank in that she was alone when she checked Naruto's room. It was like a heartbreaking museum of her only child that had gone the route of her beloved.

Now what?

Her husband and son had been forced away for separate reasons ten years apart. The only clan members in the village that didn't treat her like a leper were her little niece Karin and Nagato. What could she do now, take missions? No, even if she would be allowed to take them what would she fight for? She wasn't exactly strong on clan pride these days.

"This is just sad," Kushina said to herself, leaning on the doorframe of Naruto's room as she stared inside. She shook her head blew a few strands of hair out of her face before moving along, "I'd cry if it wouldn't be so damn pathetic."

Walking back into her kitchen, Kushina stopped when she noticed something on her table that was completely clear except for one item. One paper flower.

She slowly picked it up and studied it closely, already knowing where it had come from. Before she could even ponder crushing it in her hand, it floated out of her palm and off behind her. There was no wind in that room. No air conditioning. No fan going.

With a sigh, Kushina turned around to see Konan capture the flower in her hand casually, "Most people knock and wait to be invited in when they want to enter someone else's home."

"Perhaps," Konan said coolly as she unfolded the flower using nothing more than her chakra as she manipulated it into all other sorts of forms to suit her liking, "But some people simply don't care if you want them there or not. Some people have more important things to do than play to your nonexistent sense of rights."

A click of Kushina's tongue was the immediate response. She had never received any respect from this woman in all the time that she had known her, and she definitely hadn't been expecting it now of all times, but it was still vexing. Konan had insulted her turn after turn, and had volunteered to kill her only child.

It was then that Konan felt that something inside of the Uzumaki Clan woman had broken.

The most chillingly pleasant smile that Kushina had ever given another human being in her life found its way to her face as she disarmingly held her hands behind her back, "Just to be clear, I will maim you with my bare hands. You do realize that don't you?" She asked in the sweetest tone of voice imaginable, "The guards that think they're hiding from me outside are going to get to me. I know that. But the question is, can they get to me faster than I can get to you?"

"Pardon?" Konan raised an eyebrow in interest.

Kushina had no problems clarifying for her, just to be clear. She was considerate like that, "If I get to you even two seconds before they get to me, I'm going to hurt you so badly that Nagato can't fix you."

Not intimidated in the slightest despite Kushina's complete assurance that she would be more than happy with attempting to kill her and dealing with whatever fallout may come her way as a result, Konan hardly even blinked. She didn't say anything actually.

That had not been what Kushina had been expecting. The next time she had even expected to see Konan again, the first words she'd expected to come out of her mouth would have alluded spitefully to the fact that she had ended her baby's life.

None of that ever occurred though, no matter how long she waited for it.

Kushina came within close proximity, almost nose-to-nose as she studied the woman's face. A ghost of a smile slowly made its way to the lovely redhead's face that was openly taunting, "You didn't kill him," It wasn't a question. It was a statement, "It wasn't that you didn't find him, because I know that you did. You don't have to tell me that you did. No, you had him and you couldn't get the job done… could you?"

It grated Konan more than Kushina could ever possibly know. Or she did know, which was why she had chosen to try and bait her. It wasn't complex as to why she was doing so either. Kushina wanted an excuse to fight. She wanted one so badly, to vent, and were it not for extenuating circumstances she would have gotten Konan to oblige her.

If she killed Kushina, Konan knew that Nagato would never forgive her, and it was not worth the temporary feeling of satisfaction she would get from taking a person that had no position to taunt her from down yet another notch, "…I can see exactly how much of you rubbed off on Naruto. He's like a little boy version of you. You have no idea how easy it was to try and see him with your face. It scared me how easy it was to want to kill someone, a child, that I should have nothing against."

"Well actually, I can see how it's easy because he has my face," Kushina jibed back in return, sitting down at her table with a large, bright Naruto-esque grin on her face as she framed it for Konan to plainly see, "He might have gotten the lion's share of Minato's features, but the shape of his face and his proportions, that's all me."

Konan was done mincing words with this woman. Her mind games that she'd been playing had finally been reversed, "Let's cut through the small talk and the tense sniping at each other shall we? I'm only going to ask you this question once. Tell me how to fight Namikaze Minato."

Hearing that the stoic blue-haired kunoichi had brought up her estranged husband, Kushina put two and two together, causing her heart to swell. It didn't matter how knotted up she'd felt for the past plus two months, she couldn't help but smile.

And with that smile and her improved attitude, the biting wit returned.

"Well for starters… have you tried not fighting Minato?" Kushina said with a fake expression of curiosity, "That usually seems to work for people that like not being dead."

"I'll keep that in mind the next time I have Naruto set for the executioner's block. I'll have to make sure there aren't so many distractions around to keep me from slitting his throat."

"Mmm, you should be careful with that. I can only imagine how nasty your paper cuts must be compared to everyone else's."

Konan growled in exasperation and took a step forward just to feel the floor beneath her shake. She stopped at the sight of Kushina leisurely raising her right hand and balling a fist, a content, lazy expression showing, "You wouldn't use that jutsu to trap us both here just to fight with me uninterrupted. Even if you won, and you wouldn't by the way, you would be condemned."

It wouldn't have mattered if Nagato favored Kushina or not, Kushina would have been punished, and Konan knew that she was aware of it.

"I wouldn't use that jutsu?" Kushina asked rhetorically before speaking slowly and deliberately, "Listen to me. I would destroy my own home, where I've lived for my entire life, where my son lives, where I made love with my dear husband who gifted me with child, where I have so many wonderful memories. I would destroy this home and the property that it sits on in a heartbeat if you gave me a reason to fight you, and I don't care if I'd win or what Nagato would do afterwards."

This woman was insane, and yet Konan understood her completely.

Konan hated Kushina to such a degree that she would have felt the same if the roles were reversed, but she hadn't been certain that it was completely mutual until right then. It clearly was, "You can't be serious," She could barely say over the sound of infinite chains jangling horribly, "You are."

"Konan… look in my eyes and you tell me-," Kushina lifted her hand a bit higher, causing the floors and the walls to shake horribly, knocking down pictures, dishes, and entire bookcases, "-Am I lying?"

The paper-shaping kunoichi took a step back and instantly the shaking lessened in severity. Narrowing her eyes at Kushina, she wrinkled her nose in distaste at her least favorite person in the world, "I don't know where you think the rules don't apply to you because of Nagato-sama's feelings-."

"No, it's not that I think the rules don't apply to me," Kushina cut her off smoothly, "It's just that I really don't care about any demand, order, or threat that comes out of your mouth. It's really wearing thin with me."

"Who do you think you are?"

"That's my line," Kushina growled, "You think you have some kind of clout over me because the rest of the clan respect you and love you for being Nagato's sentinel, but you're not Nagato, I'm not the rest of the clan, and I don't care if you're his favorite. You're not clan head, so what you say means less than nothing to me," Kushina spat venomously, "Now anytime you want to think that you can make me do anything again, please, by all means, come back anytime and feel free-. No, feel encouraged to try," She finally let her hand fall, allowing the shaking of her domicile and the sound of chains to cease.

If you walked by the property just in passing, the sheer hatred and killing intent between the two women would have strangled an unprepared person on the spot. If a hair fell out of place they would have taken it as a sign from the universe to go at one another's throats.

This was deep-seated animosity that had more than one backstory to it, and they were all unpleasant.

Konan turned her back with only the sound of her heels clicking the floor as she walked away.

Before departing however, Konan did manage to say one last thing quietly that almost shook Kushina up, "…You're Nagato-sama's favorite." 'You always were.'

How did you react to that? Kushina didn't even want to think of how. She didn't even put forth the effort to try, "…Get out of my house."

Konan promptly vanished in a flurry of scattered papers, and Kushina simply looked around at the mess she'd made of her own place. She'd clean it up later however, because she really wasn't in the mood any longer.

"I hate that bitch."

The feeling was mutual.

XxX

(Northern Hi no Kuni)

Kakashi's plan was quite simple as to how they were going to obtain the services of the young bank employee that had survived Kakuzu's wrath. As the last loose end that could possibly help them get a bead on the actual location of his riches, her cooperation was a necessity.

Therefore his approach was meant to leave no room for refusal on her part. It was rather simple all things considered. He felt that keeping it basic here was for the best.

"You're going to kidnap her and then brainwash her?" Tenten quietly asked, hiding in the foliage along the ground as she and Kakashi slowly approached their target location, "That's horrible Kakashi-sensei! This isn't a ninja, soldier, or a bandit we're talking about here."

"Well it might not even necessarily be in that order. I might brainwash her first, then kidnap her," Kakashi casually reasoned, "I don't see the problem since we're going to bring her back after we find what we need. I'll even wipe her memory clean of any traumatic events she might experience along the way, because I'm a nice guy like that."

That moment. The moment when you realize that your mentor carelessly walks the fine line between being a responsible role model and being an awful, awful person: it's a pretty strong one.

Tenten didn't know quite how to respond to that, and she didn't know what exactly she had the problem with. The kidnapping, the brainwashing, or the memory-wiping, '…Probably the brainwashing. I don't mind everything else that much.'

Reaching position where they could conceal themselves and get a view of a small cottage in a tiny forest clearing, it was a matter of waiting for Shino and Naruto to get in position and signal them before proceeding from there.

XxX

(Meanwhile – With Naruto)

"So why are we not just knocking on this person's door and asking for help?" Naruto asked, laying underneath a bush with Shino as they eyed the cottage from a different perspective than Kakashi's and Tenten's, "Is it just me, or does that seem like a way easier approach?"

"Hatake-san is a shinobi with at least ten times your experience," Shino replied straightforwardly, eyes clad in sunglasses as he stared intently at the cottage, "I wouldn't expect you to understand the reasoning for his orders."

Naruto wasn't sure if Shino was just that abrasive without knowing it, or if he plain didn't like him, but it wasn't the first time he'd said something of that nature, "Okay, you tell me then if you're so smart. Why is this better?"

"…"

That sweet sound of silence wasn't Shino's normal operating method of silence. It was the kind that you heard when someone was at a loss for words, and it was glorious, "…Don't worry, I'll wait."

A small insect flew Shino's way and landed on an index finger that he extended for his winged ally. It beat its wings a bit before flying up and dancing in the air for Shino to clearly see. Whatever this was meant to convey clearly caused his eyebrows to raise behind his glasses.

This was his surprised face. It wasn't much, but it was the most you'd be able to get out of him in regards to that particular emotion.

"We have a problem," Shino said gravely, "We need to inform Kakashi-san to move toward the cottage now-," Before he could ask Naruto to go and be a runner for him or volunteer himself, Naruto created a clone to head off and tell Kakashi in their place, "Hmm, useful."

"Me, useful?" Naruto asked rhetorically, "You're the one that did recon on the house with a bug. How can I do that?"

"You can't, and I'm certain that you don't want to know how I myself am able to," Shino insisted, "Most people don't. But either way, follow my lead."

Naruto let it drop and before too long his blurry form could be seen moving with Shino to the side wall of the house, keeping out of sight of the window before pinning themselves against the surface. Naruto ensured that he had eye contact with Shino before pointing to both sides of the house questioningly. Front or back was the question of the hour.

Shino lifted his hand flat and pointed to the open side of his hand to indicate front. Getting a nod from Naruto, both slowly crept to the front on both sides of the door, staying low. Looking around the clearing closely, Naruto crossed his arms and clapped his shoulders twice to signal Tenten and Kakashi. He knew that they would be watching due to his clone dispelling.

It would take a matter of seconds due to him signaling them to move to the back, and as Naruto and Shino waited to give them a moment the two had to stop and marvel at the fact that the two of them meshed fairly well despite knowing almost nothing about each other.

Somewhat thrown off by Naruto's ability to actually be prepared to work, he masked this by adjusting his glasses on his face. He had honestly deemed Naruto as somewhat incompetent due to first impressions.

'Then again, he is a clan child if the crest on his shirt is to be believed,' That didn't always mean that a ninja would be good, but it did mean that there was a better chance of getting one that was, 'I need to withhold judgment before I can make a fair assessment on him and his friend.'

Either way, for the time being at least they had to work together.

"What's in there?" Naruto whispered to Shino. Communication clearly wasn't the odd boy's strongest point, but they were moving off of his suggestion and he hadn't even expressed what was wrong.

Instead of answering, Shino shook his head and opened the door, slipping inside with Naruto following. Upon doing so, Naruto quickly wished he hadn't.

The cottage was simply one room, modestly furnished with a table, a corner kitchen, a small study area. The layout wasn't what had to be noted however. The four dead bodies on the floor were. The floor was stained with pools of dried blood from the deceased.

From the back, Kakashi and Tenten entered, the latter covering her nose and mouth at the smell. The bodies had been there for quite some time, and if the sight of them hadn't been unpleasant enough, the smell pushed it over the top.

"There was an attack," Shino said, stating the obvious, "We were not the first ones here. What clan were they from?"

Kakashi barely spared them a glance before answering, "They're not ninjas. They're just hired enforcers. Probably meant to be used as a diversion," The ninja armor covering their torsos was a nice touch, but it was probably only given to the men as a show of confidence from the outsourcing clan so that they'd do their job confidently.

It was a practice that many clans readily used. They would hire freelance ninjas and local ignorant roughnecks willing to shed blood for a buck as cannon fodder to try and attack a target or infiltrate a stronghold. It was a pragmatic approach that could do a number of things given the situation. They could expose possible enemy reactions to given scenarios, allowing them to plan. They could cause a person or party to flee, which could give them an opening to strike. The second way to use the expendable bodies was what this seemed like.

There was something wrong though by Kakashi's watch.

"…I'd say that whoever killed these people is still around."

The door to the refrigerator in the house popped open just a crack, drawing everyone's attention long enough for the doors to slam shut. A folding panel on the table out of sight of the refrigerator flipped up and fired kunai at Kakashi and Tenten.

They managed to avoid the trap in their own respective ways, Kakashi smoother than Tenten. She moved in the direction of the bodies and jostled one, kicking it onto its side to reveal an explosive tag on its back that was burning down.

Each one of the corpses had an explosive tag hidden on their unseen sides, triggered by the first trap going off. Naruto immediately tried to break the door closest to him down, and failed. Shino did the same with the sole window in the residence and failed as well.

Kakashi immediately rolled through hand-seals to try and activate his jutsu that would allow them all a quick tunneling escape, but when he rested his hand on the ground he couldn't help but laugh hopelessly at their predicament, "Well… whatever's underneath this floor, it isn't earth."

Someone prepared that little house well. Too well for a quickly traveling pursuit squad to set to cover their tracks, and far too well for a civilian to have done. A ninja did this, and the ninja had been a resident as well.

XxX

The little cottage in the clearing exploded in a massive fireball that more or less assured the demise of anything inside. What a waste of such a nice little house, but the moment those first assassins came, the owner knew that it would only be just the beginning.

Luckily she had been prepared to cut and run for quite some time after the nasty bit of business with Kakuzu, but that didn't make it any more convenient. A lot of her stuff was in that house.

The owner happened to be a strikingly-figured young woman with pupil-free brown eyes and purple hair tied in a short, spiky ponytail. She wore a sleeveless mesh armor bodysuit that ran down to her thighs, mesh armbands, a tan miniskirt with a dark blue belt, and sandals with knee-length shin-guards.

"That took long enough," The young woman groused to herself as she began to leave after hearing her home explode. As much of an problem it was, she felt that it had to be done if she really wanted to try and make herself disappear, "I've been waiting three goddamn days for any stragglers so I could trigger that trap."

Before she could leave however, she found that she was completely unable to move forward any longer. She could still move and walk, but it was as if an invisible barrier impeded her path.

"What the hell?" Looking down, she saw an array beneath her feet, as well as a large amount of insects crawling on the ground coming toward her, 'How'd they find me that quickly after the trap went off? I'd just triggered it.'

"Got her Kakashi!" Naruto shouted from where he'd concealed himself with a camouflage sheet against a tree. Damn kid, the woman figured that he was the source of the barrier seal underneath her. And then there was the girl in the tree dangling several deadly weapons over her head with chakra threads, "Tenten and Shino have her covered! And by the way Shino, I didn't need to know that that was where your bugs came from."

From the shadows of the forest, Kakashi walked out with his hands in his pockets. As he came closer to the woman, the insects on the ground cleared apart to open a path for him. That answered the question of just who it was that had captured her.

"Hatake Kakashi," The kunoichi said dryly upon seeing the name ninja of the group, "…Fuck me." She said in exasperation.

"Hmm, well let's just see where this goes first shall we?" The girl snapped her teeth at him sarcastically in response, "Jiraiya-sama's contact never said that the banker's surviving employee was a kunoichi," It made sense though. Bankers did seem like they were the types that needed bodyguards, "Honestly, we were expecting an accountant or something along those lines."

"So were the guys inside," Said the woman, with a rather pleased, vaguely bloodthirsty smile and a husky chuckle.

"We didn't see that trap coming at all," Tenten admitted from her vantage point in her tree, "Poor Shino's Insect Clone." Because that thing got annihilated.

"And that's why teaching Tenten Kage Bunshin no Jutsu was a great idea, so that we don't have to do our own recon," Naruto remarked, still keeping his hand planted on the ground to trap Anko in his clan's fuuinjutsu, "It's also why I'm your hero for the month Tenten," Naruto emphasized intently,

Tenten stuck her tongue out in response since it wouldn't have been smart to do something that would give their kunoichi captive an opening to escape, "I've barely got enough chakra to make even one, so it's not that useful to me. Teach me a jutsu I can spam like you and then maybe you'll be my hero."

Three kids and a one-eyed babysitter. That was who had captured her. She almost hoped that they'd kill her, because she didn't think she'd ever live down being caught by a child's jutsu. In her opinion that was worse than having the four guys that tried to storm her house abduct her and squeeze her for information on the whereabouts of Kakuzu's money.

Actually no, she took that line of thinking back, because if those rubes had been strong enough to do anything other than die graphically they seemed like the types to take certain liberties with her body because she was a woman. On second thought this was better.

It was far from the ideal predicament, but then again the ideal predicament for her would have involved never running up against anyone like Kakuzu in the first place. That was a mug's game, especially for a freelance ninja.

"Now let's take it easy," Kakashi said, trying to keep things between them civil. As civil as things could be after their clones had all suffered horrible deaths, and they'd trapped her in return, "We have reason to believe that you can get us to Kakuzu's reserve. Would I be wrong about that Miss…?"

"Anko," The woman answered for him, crossing her arms over her rather bountiful chest, "And what if I did? I was paid extra to my bodyguard gig to do it, and then Kakuzu came along and slaughtered my boss and everybody that worked for him when he realized I'd been there."

Her employer had been a rather slimy sort, but he paid her well and had never been dumb enough to proposition her, or grab at her breasts or butt, so she could deal with him. His practices weren't always on the up-and-up, and the thought of having the plus of knowing where Kakuzu's rumored piles and piles of riches were was simply too alluring to let go.

That man wound up paying for it, along with the rest of his workers. Anko did as well to an extent, but less than any of them.

"So why didn't he kill you?"

Rubbing at a phantom pain where her left kidney was meant to be situated Anko grumbled, "It wasn't for lack of trying, I'll tell you that. I only tried to fight him because I had to. I had a contract. I gave my word to fight for my boss to the finish, guaranteed, but… well if you hear some of the legends I'm sure you can guess how well I did."

It had been the worst three weeks of her life thus far she'd wager to say, and she had been lain up healing for half of it. The other half had been spent ducking scouts from clans that wanted what she knew, and none of them were willing to take no for an answer, nor were they willing to actually pay her what she felt the info was worth.

"He dealt with you before he flew into one of his blind rages didn't he?" Kakashi asked, getting a stiff nod in return. He figured as much. If Kakuzu had fought Anko after he'd already taken to the limits of his temper there might not have been enough left of her to obtain the info on the money pit from.

"One hit. That was all it took," Anko let out a bitter laugh just from remembering it, "Can you believe that? And I thought I was good."

"Well how would you like to get some payback?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Sort of," Kakashi said with a shrug, "I'll be honest since it doesn't matter. I was going to mess with your head and make you show us what you knew, but since you're a kunoichi you'd be fighting it the entire time and it would be a boatload of trouble. So with that in mind, how about a split?"

A split? He was the first person to actually offer any sort of split with her. Everyone else that tried to be nice about it were only willing to shell out a pittance in return for her help, and when she turned down their paltry terms they took to using force.

Kakashi had just admitted that he was willing to use force as well, but he'd offered to actually split it with her. Was he lying though? She couldn't tell, 'Well if he is lying about the split, I'm pretty sure that I'll know by the time we get to where we're going.'

She didn't have a chance against Kakuzu, so she wouldn't be turning on him. But if he was going to double-cross her she could do the same by setting the greedy powerhouse on Kakashi and his gaggle of runts. Even if Kakashi could deal with him, he couldn't do it while protecting kids… unless they were miniature meat shields.

That could work, and it wasn't as if she had anything better going for her. It was either team up, or keep running around until she got unlucky enough to wind up with an Inuzuka on her heels. Then she'd never get away.

"…I'll give it a try Cyclops," Anko said, eyeing Kakashi and the kids warily, "But I'll just say that tough guys like you who think they can screw me over-," She paused long enough to suddenly snatch one of the weapons hanging over her head from the chakra strings and throw it at Naruto, hitting the ground right in front of his kneeling position and jolting him out of his jutsu, "-Usually wind up bleeding out in a ditch somewhere. Just some friendly advice."

This woman didn't seem to be very friendly.

"Noted," Kakashi chirped pleasantly, "But please don't make a habit of threatening any of my kids to make a point, or I'll probably have to skullfuck you to make mine," Naruto and Tenten's jaws dropped in horror at the very drastic and vulgar threat, while Shino's brow twitched, "…Just some friendly advice."

The thing about it was that they couldn't really tell if Kakashi was kidding or not. On one hand, Kakashi routinely used sarcasm and a never changing cadence of speaking to mask obvious jokes, but on the other hand he had been completely prepared to kidnap and alter the mind of a regular civilian beforehand. With that in mind, they weren't sure what he would do. He might not do something as drastic and as unpleasant as what he had alluded to, but they felt that there was a major chance of him doling out a disproportionate amount of retribution.

Anko didn't flinch however, smiling predatorily at the warning. So this really was Copy Ninja Kakashi after all? That was certainly interesting, "Oh, I get the feeling that this is going to be a very mutually beneficial relationship."

XxX

(Elsewhere – Northern Hi no Kuni Borderlands – Mountainside Pass)

Well, a smaller clan was going to be getting some work soon to clean the mountain road, because a battle-related rockslide had blocked the path. No commerce would be going that way for a little while.

Nawaki sighed while holding a glowing yellow sword in his hand, a weapon that surged, popped, and crackled with electricity with every slight wave through the air. Not the stealthiest weapon, but when things got nasty, he wouldn't have preferred a better tool in his hands.

His granduncle's Raijin no Ken (Sword of the Thunder God) was his weapon of choice, no matter how many treasures he found and no matter how legendary they were in theory. His family's trusty blade had carried him through hard times since he was a young boy when he'd been gifted with it. It had served him well over the years in his multiple expeditions, and it had served him well once again.

"I know whose grave I'm praying by when I get home." Nawaki said to himself under his breath as he took in the damage that he'd caused.

Looking around himself with a frown, Nawaki shook his head at the slew of Uchiha Clan members that he had killed in battle. It had been an ambush that had failed. They had clearly gotten wind that he was sniffing around the region, and with the buzz that had gone around since Kakuzu had massacred that banker's entire office staff it was obvious to anyone that knew he was there what he was looking for.

These hadn't been the first ninjas he'd run into either, but they were the first he'd come across from the Uchiha Clan. That couldn't bode well. Where there was one there was always more, and when one died in battle you could count on three more willing to come for your head without surcease.

"They can all look for the survivor of the massacre and kill each other looking for her," Nawaki said to himself, forcing the glowing electric blade of his sword to vanish back into the hilt, "I don't need to run that rat race. I can track Kakuzu without it now that I've got a general idea of where to find him."

He wasn't called 'The Hunter' just because he found lost treasures of the ninja world. He could find anything or anyone if you gave him the slightest general direction of where to go. Since Kakuzu's base of operations had finally been narrowed down to the northern border areas of Hi no Kuni due to his latest temper-tantrum, he might as well have popped a smoke signal around his hiding place, because it wasn't as if Nawaki needed any other blatant clues to find him any longer.

"Tsunade's going to kill me if I take too long with this," Nawaki said to himself, checking over the downed ninjas in the area. Some were dead, others would live, but none of them would be getting in his way again. That had been handled, and now it was time to move along. Placing his sword hilt back at his belt, he cracked his neck and took off into the woods, "Ah, she'll love me when I come back with more money than she's ever seen before."

There were patterns of movement to Kakuzu's mission acceptances around the area over the years, and the runners that Nawaki had dispatched ahead of himself only had the job of finding them for him. They had been very thorough, and had narrowed it down to one place with an 81% probability of success.

What he didn't know however was that while he'd defeated the attacking group, that hadn't been the full scope of the squad sent to deal with him.

The Uchiha Clan used runners as well however, and one had been sent to the northern post the moment that the squad had known that Senju Nawaki would be heading into their ambush. There was only one Uchiha that could cover the amount of ground needed to keep up on the trail of Nawaki before he reached Kakuzu's riches.

Very few knew how Uchiha Obito moved so quickly, but he got results and he worked efficiently. He was also the only person within reach that they had who could take on the grandson of Senju Hashirama.

After all, he hadn't been touched in battle in eight years.

XxX

(Some Time Later – Uzu no Kuni – Backcountry Forests)

The quietest nation of them all in the Elemental Nations, Uzu no Kuni was the most peaceful not only in regards to the lack of warfare that touched their lands due to their small island geography, but due to the outright tranquility of their deep forests.

There weren't patrols, there were outposts with at least one sensor capable of using Mind's Eye of the Kagura at each location. The best users could feel disturbances of chakra across the entire island. Human chakra.

Things that traveled far underground and animals were a bit harder to pin down.

Animals like toads. Even specially summoned Diving Toads, meant to be used for Gamagakure no Jutsu (Hiding in a Toad Jutsu).

Slowly surfacing in a tranquil, running river, a moderately-sized green toad swam its way to the riverbank and opened its mouth only for a full grown man to slowly climb out. Despite the impossible special parameters of this feat, there was no discomfort to the creature, or to the man himself.

"Ugh," Jiraiya said upon exiting his amphibious assistant, "It's times like this when I don't wonder why Minato didn't try to specialize in too many toad techniques," He regarded the toad that had chosen to go back into the water as it stared at him, "Thanks a lot. You're going to want to get as far away from me as you can though, because in thirty minutes I'll have half of the Uzumaki Clan's sensors sniffing up my ass."

The toad didn't need to be told twice, dismissing itself in a puff of smoke to return to its home elsewhere.

Even though it couldn't speak it could understand just fine, and it understood full well that it didn't want any part of what was about to happen. It was an infiltration-only kind of summon. Battle wasn't its forte in the least.

"Alright, let's get this underway," Jiraiya said before starting off in the direction of the Uzumaki Clan village, stashing a Hiraishin kunai on the inside of his vest, "…When I drop this thing you'd better be ready to move fast Minato."

The middle-aged shinobi knew that he didn't have to say anything of the sort to Minato's face. Sitting across the small stretch of ocean separating Hi no Kuni's coast from Uzu no Kuni, he was chomping at the bit to feel the pull on his chakra that called out to him.

When Jiraiya dropped that knife, Minato was going to do something that was ten years overdue.

He was going to get the woman he loved back, and anyone that got in the way even after Jiraiya drew the lion's share of the attention away was going to quickly find out that 'in the way' was not the place to be.

---

Omake: New Friends 2 (Hi no Kuni)

For the time being, Naruto and Tenten had a new partner. He wasn't particularly the most forthcoming or expressive, and he had a rather chilly demeanor about him, but Aburame Shino wasn't necessarily a bad person. He was just a little odd.

Naruto didn't mind odd. Even when the odd was Shino's brand of odd, in all of the forms that it came in, both personality-wise and in the concentration of his ninjutsu. It was definitely a shock to get used to when he found out where the insects for Shino's jutsu came from, but he himself was a boy who was trying to be friends with a gigantic chakra fox that slept inside of his body and made acerbic comments on the things that happened to him.

In other words, he was somewhat accustomed to strange, so it didn't take long for him to pass it off and move on to the next thing, as in they had a new teammate. Hooray.

Therefore, in his head he proceeded to the next thing on his mental docket.

I.e., the crazy purple-haired lady that kept on dancing the dance of mistrust and barely suppressed killing intent and sexual tension with Kakashi for the last day and a half. From their interactions up until that point, he was sure that she was more than likely a bad person.

Not to say that Naruto knew what the sexual tension was, because he didn't. He simply knew that there was something extra between Kakashi and Anko, and it was more than practiced indifference and shoddily veiled loathing… respectively… because Kakashi just didn't care about the opinion of others.

Tenten was less acclimated to the oddities of ninja life, so for her to find out exactly how the Aburame Clan garnered their partnership with their special bugs, it was an eye-opener.

Sitting around the place where the motley crew was set to make camp for the night, Tenten simply couldn't stop staring across the site at Shino, unable to even blink, "So… you have bugs moving around inside of you? Like, all the time?"

"Yes," Shino confirmed with a nod, "My body was offered as a hive to my special kikaichu insects, and I allow them to feed on my chakra in exchange for their complete loyalty.

"Wow. What's that like?"

"I couldn't tell you. Why you ask? Because I have never been without them. They are a part of me."

*POW!*

"Damn it that hurts!" Naruto shouted, shaking out his hand as pieces of the rubber ball he'd been trying for some time to pop exploded in his hand, "How many of those stupid things do I have to blow up? Can I just learn the rest of the jutsu now?"

"You know how Kakashi is about all of the 'look underneath the underneath' stuff," Tenten said, resting her cheek in her hand, "He probably wants you to figure it out. This is supposed to take three years anyway isn't it?"

Naruto snorted and blew on his stinging right hand, "Yeah, it took the old man three years to come up with the jutsu from scratch and put it together right. That doesn't mean it takes three years for someone else to learn."

"That actually seems like logical reasoning," Shino chimed in offhandedly, "Well done Uzumaki-san."

"Thanks," Naruto said before frowning in the bug-user's direction, a question burning in his mind, "Why do all of your compliments to me sound backhanded?"

"Shut UP brat!" Anko shouted from inside of her tent, having decided to turn in the second camp was made, "I'm the walking wounded here and I'm leading you and your scarecrow babysitter to the guy that put me in this state! Can I please get at least six hours of sleep before we get up and start this all over again tomorrow?"

Naruto did close his mouth… for all of five seconds. He really did try to let it go, but he just couldn't leave it at that, "Okay but if tomorrow morning you wake up in a bundle, tied to a raft, floating in the middle of the lake, just remember everything that happened thirty seconds ago."

"And when you wake up tomorrow morning buried up to your neck in the dirt right by a hill of imperial fire ants with your head slathered in chocolate, just remember that I don't like kids and killing you means nothing to me. I will drown you like a kitten in a burlap sack."

This was what Kakashi returned to, having caught enough fish to tide everyone present over. It was just a matter of cooking them now, and the kids had already started the fire while Shino's bugs and Naruto's clones guarded the area.

"Anko, Anko, Anko, don't be so cranky," Kakashi chided, handing the fish off to Tenten and Naruto so that they could begin preparing them to be cooked, "Remember what I told you? If you drown any of my kids as a stress-reliever, well I just can't tell you what I might do in return. Just relax and rest, because you are still injured and I'd like you to be healthy."

"He started it."

Was she pouting? Either way, Kakashi didn't care.

"No, he didn't start it. I was listening."

Anko jostled grumpily in the sleeping roll inside of her tent and intentionally muttered loud enough to be heard, "…Leprechaun's gonna fuck you up at midnight."

Alright, that was a new one. He'd never heard that one before, "What?"

"No~thing!"

---

Major Clan Information

Aburame Clan
Leader: Aburame Shibi

Population: 1.5/5
Military Strength: 2.5/5
Economy: 2/5
Notable Traits: Members live in symbiosis with insects inside of their bodies and specialize in using them as weapons in combat. Tend to keep much of their bodies and their eyes covered. Their ninjutsu is usually performed without hand-seals. Potentially powerful trackers and scouts. Powerful stealth and espionage skills. Calm, collected ninjas with reputations as an emotionless, solitary people by nature.
Area of Operations: Focus ranges across the forested northwestern portion of Hi no Kuni, bordering with other nations.

---

And that's what I've got for you. I hope you enjoyed, and if you didn't… meh.

Okay, so here, about Minato not marking Naruto directly before they separated for the time being, because I figure that sooner or later it's only a matter of time before someone's going to throw a bitch-fit over it and I want to be proactive and nip explaining my viewpoint in the bud. This is what happens when authors of the source material are vague about their shit; they leave certain parts of things open for interpretation.

In the series, Minato has only marked three people directly that we know of: Kushina, Obito, and some random Iwa ninja he killed during Kakashi Gaiden. In the last one, he only marked the guy's sandal, which is an article of clothing, which you can take off and destroy. Since the mark never goes away I'm pretty sure he's got to embed that damn mark into things, which probably isn't the most pleasant thing, so that's probably why he just gave Kakashi a Hiraishin kunai instead of making sure his entire genin squad was marked up.

When he had the mark on Kushina he mixed it in with her seal. When he put it on Obito he planted a Rasengan firmly up his ass first. Therefore, the theory I ran with was that he has to nail someone with some serious scarring kind of force if he wants to keep that damn thing on an actual person's body, like a brand or a stamp. It's why I had him put it on Hidan in the midst of shivving him like it was an episode of Oz. And even if it wasn't something like that and it was actually gentle, could you imagine how intrusive having that on you would be, especially as his kid? You couldn't do anything because watch out, Minato could pop up right in front of you anytime.

It'd be like being in some toned down version of '1984' by George Orwell, only with Minato potentially showing up at, shall we say inopportune moments, instead of the constant vigilant monitoring of your every action for obedience. God, even then that'd still be horrible. Could you imagine over the years some of the personal stuff he could teleport into to prevent, and wind up stumbling into by accident? Ugh, you'd never feel like you had any privacy.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm kind of a sick person for thinking this hard about a vaguely explained fictional technique (You should see me argue about testable things, such as the merits of actual grappling knowledge in street fights).

Anyway, I got way off-track here. What I'm interpreting is that it's not the kind of thing you put on someone just because you can, otherwise Minato and even the Hokage Guard Platoon would have had them on everybody and everything somewhat relevant, which with the proper excuse could be anything. That's the theory I'm using to make the jutsu a little less broken.

By the way, for all the kids out there. 1984 = bleak-ass book. Fuck AnimalFarm as far as Orwell's nihilistic literature goes. If you want to kill your buzz for the next two weeks plus, read 1984 to put that good sneer on your face that you can't shake off.

Man, that got off-topic didn't it?

Anyway, with my reading public service announcement of the day over with and done, Kenchi out.