Kakashi, Sakura, Ino and Naruto were walking back to Village. The whiskered boy was still extremely confused as to why he was dragged into the forest, tied up, made listen to horrible sounds, and why he was constantly chasing the pink-haired girl for 5 years.
"Is this one of those things that I'm supposed to drop?" asked Naruto
"Yes!" the rest of the group answered at once.
"Fine, don't tell me, I don't want to know." everybody kept on walking in silence for a few minutes "Oh come on! Please tell me!!!"
Sakura turned around and put a pinecone in his mouth "Naruto, shut up"
"Ow ow ow" whined Naruto in a muffled voice, trying to take the pinecone out.
Kakashi looked at the annoyed girls, and then at the occupied Naruto. He leaned over to the girls and whispered "I don't know about you, but I think I've had enough of him for today, I'm going to leave now." he turned around and told Naruto "Naruto, go find Hinata and Kiyoshi, they'll brief you on the mission." with that he took off, jumping from house to house until he was no longer in sight.
"Uhh" Naruto was about to say something to the girls, but they also disappeared. "Aw what the hell!" he yelled in disappointment. He was confused, had horrible pain in his mouth from the pinecone, and he was now walking alone. "This day can't get any worse..." he said and got cut off by a sudden rainfall. "Frig... now I'm soaking wet as well."
Back at Tsunade's office, Hinata and Kiyoshi were till talking about random stuff with Tsunade.
"So what happened then?" asked Kiyoshi
"He tested by forehead for temperature..." answered Hinata, and they all laughed.
"Oh yeah, speaking of which, what's Naruto's count for mistaking your blush for a fever?" asked Tsunade
"507 and counting." Answered Hinata
Everyone usually found Naruto's clueless being, somewhat amusing, but this was just plain sad "You're kidding me right?" asked Kiyoshi
"No, I actually have them counted on my calendar," answered Hinata, already discussing her affection with Kiyoshi without hesitation.
Everyone looked down, and Kiyoshi was starting to doubt that it was possible to get Naruto understand Hinata's feelings. "I wonder if they managed to do it." he thought to himself, as all of a sudden Ino knocked on the window from the outside.
Tsunade slid the window open for Ino to enter, and it started raining really hard as soon as she did. Tsunade commented on Ino's entrance said, "You know... that's why I have a door."
I'm sorry Tsunade-sama, but I got great news... It worked!!!" Ino exclaimed
Grins grew on Kiyoshi and Tsunade's faces. "Are you sure?" asked Kiyoshi
Ino brought the two of them closer and whispered "He threw up at how ugly he found Sakura to be."
This shocked Tsunade and Kiyoshi; never did they think that Kakashi would have such great of a success. "Amazing" said Tsunade in awe.
"Unfortunately Kakashi, Sakura and I ditched him because he was being too annoying." Ino signaled Hinata to come over to join the conversation "You two should go and find Naruto, he probably went home because of the rain, but you need to brief him today never the less." said Ino to the two teens, Tsunade's attention was faint, she was staring out the window.
"There's no need to do that," said Tsunade looking at the gray picture outside her window. "He's coming here." Pointing down at the street below.
Everyone went to the window, and stared at the pissed off and soaked idiot heading towards the building. "Wow... you'd think he'd go home and fall asleep." said Ino looking at the scene below "He probably came to complain about what we did to him."
"Oh crap, Ino you better run or hide before he comes in here," said Kiyoshi
"You're right, I'm off," said Ino opening the window as soon as Naruto entered the building.
"Here, take this so you won't catch a cold," said Kiyoshi taking a hooded cloak out of one of his inner pockets and hanging it to Ino.
"Thanks, I'll give it back tomorrow before you leave." said Ino putting the cloak on and jumping out the window. Although the scenery was lifeless and gray all around, Ino felt bliss in the rain as she was running down the wall to the street below.
Naruto came barging into Tsunade's office "Baa-chan!!!" Tsunade and the other two were sitting comfortably as if they were for half an hour without interruption. "Kakashi and the two ugly girls tied me up in the forest and were running some kind of weird experiment on me!"
"Calm down Naruto." said Tsunade, which angered him even more. "Did you lose a limb... or your virginity?"
Naruto looked uncomfortable at the mention of that word in this situation. "No... but..."
"Then calm down, dry yourself off, and have some tea." Kiyoshi cut him off tossing him a towel that he got out of nowhere.
"Fine" Naruto dried himself off and sat down in between Hinata and Kiyoshi, and poured himself a cup of tea. When he started drinking it, he felt harmony from the aromatic taste, the warm and dry atmosphere, and the girl beside him "What the hell?" he thought to himself looking at the girl. "I've never felt this calm before..."
"N-N-Naruto-kun, you're staring..." said quietly looking at him from the corner of her eye, and blushing.
"Uhh, sorry..." Naruto shook his thoughts off and continue drinking his tea.
Everyone sat in silence, but not an awkward one. The silence was calm, without any tension or uneasy feelings. "I could get used to this..." Tsunade thought to herself examining the silence of the calm Naruto.
"So what about the mission?" asked Naruto.
"Crap, I thought I'd not have to repeat the details again," complained Tsunade. "Alright, here's the deal, you're going to be sent on a retrieval mission to the wave country tomorrow. A ship was sunk somewhere in the south-western waters of the land, with many items of value, along with a chest full of fine-cut emeralds."
"You said that this is an A-Ranked mission," said Kiyoshi looking at her inquisitively.
"Here's the twist on your mission; apparently there's a big demand on this chest, and consequentially the ship was sunk because of it, sunk by pirates."
"Pirates!!!" screamed Naruto standing up and nearly splashing his tea over everyone.
"Chill, Naruto" said Kiyoshi putting his hand on Naruto's shoulder and bringing him down.
"Yes, Pirates, seems bad enough as it is, but among those pirates are two former Mist Shinobi. Those guys aren't pushovers, so you'll have to be careful."
"I'm Mr. Careful!" exclaimed Naruto jumping up again and this time spilling his tea all over the table.
"Good job, Mr. Careful" said Kiyoshi in a teasing voice "now sit down, we aren't going anywhere until the rain stops, and we still don't know the complete details of the mission."
"Stop pulling me down" complained Naruto as he was once again pulled down by the shoulder.
"Actually, I don't know the whereabouts of the sunken ship, so you'll have to ask around if anyone's seen anything. As a matter of fact, this is more of a mission of resourcefulness, which Kiyoshi has. Hinata has her locating abilities, and Naruto has his..." Naruto leaned over to hear what she was going to say about him. Tsunade quickly came up with an excuse for the kid's presence, one that would not piss him off and splash his tea all over the office. "Naruto has numbers, so in case there's any conflict with the pirates you have less of a chance to be outnumbered."
Naruto seemed pleased by her excuse for including him, so he leaned back and said "Hell yes."
Kiyoshi thought about it and asked "May we have access to your library for today?"
"Sure thing, knock yourself out." answered Tsunade.
"We're going to read?!" Naruto jumped up.
"Naruto where did all the calmness go? The calmness you had a few minutes before you asked about the mission?" asked Tsunade
"I... don't... know..." answered the kid, scared by the thoughts coming into his head from the question.
"OK... we're going, may we have a note so that the guards will let us through?" asked Kiyoshi
Tsunade was already writing one. When she handed it to him she said "Kiyoshi, I hope you can do this with such lack of resources."
"I hope so too, we'll see." he answered
With that said, the group of three walked out and headed towards the Hokage's private library, Tsunade screamed after them "Kiyoshi!" he turned around "Don't you touch the jutsu section, only the history and information sections are you allowed to see!"
"Alright!" Kiyoshi screamed back to Tsunade through the long hallway turning back to see where he's going.
"Kiyoshi-kun, where are we going to start?" asked Hinata looking at the vast and barely organized shelves of scrolls and books.
"We'll start with the geography of the wave country." answered Kiyoshi "You look over the island formations we have on record, look for anything interesting like caves or any possibilities of concealments for ships or bases." He turned to Naruto and said "Naruto, you're going to help Hinata, and don't touch anything without her approval." Hinata blushed as Naruto pouted "I'll be in that section over there in case you need me for anything."
"Hey why do you get to slack off while we do all the work?" complained Naruto.
"I'm not going to be slacking off, and unless you want to try and figure out the complexity of seabeds, I suggest that you Shut up." replied Kiyoshi, and it truly did shut Naruto up. Then a thought came through Kiyoshi's head and he asked "Say Naruto, can your clones act as information retrievals?"
Naruto tried to understand what he meant and remembered that when a clone's destroyed, the memories come back to the rest of them. "Yeah, do you think it'll be of help to us?"
"Well of course it will, Hinata and I will need you to draw some of the maps out. For that we'll need as many hands as possible." Naruto crossed his fingers over his chest and was about to summon one hundred clones when Kiyoshi cut him off "Not yet! Summon only one at a time, too many clones will become too hectic and unorganized." Naruto nodded and put his hands down.
Hinata was reading something while the two were talking and found something interesting "Kiyoshi, I found an Island surrounded by reefs, It looks like with enough navigation, it's possible to dock ships on the lake formed within the Island."
"That's going to be our first destination, tell me the coordinates."
"50.72 degrees east and 12.51 degrees south." answered Hinata
"Good, I'll try to find the waters for that place, Naruto, make a clone and draw that map out," commanded Kiyoshi
The group got to work on the mission and was very productive in finding the terrains of the wave country. They managed to find more and more possibilities of good battlefields and ship-routes where the ship might have sunk, and found even more possibilities of hidden bases and pirate ships. Kiyoshi couldn't shake the thought of sinking to the bottom of the waters due to his mass, and the fact that he was unstable without it.
Kakashi came to Tsunade's office to tell her the news about Naruto, and for the mission briefing.
"Hey Kakashi" said Tsunade breaking away from her documents as Kakashi entered her office. He was about to speak, but she cut him off "Good job you did on Naruto, I couldn't have done better myself."
Kakashi was slightly surprised by the fact that Tsunade knew what was happening before he told her "Sure you could've, you are the famous medic-nin"
"You're right, I could've. But I don't have the time because of all these documents." she drew his attention to the countless papers scattered all over the desk.
"Uhh, can't help you there, but I need to know what the mission is, or I'll look like a slacker if they know something that I don't." said Kakashi in fear of losing face.
"Too late." said Tsunade giving the cool ninja a mocking eye "They're in the library researching information on the mission."
Kakashi's eyes widened "They're what?"
"Researching"
"Naruto too?"
"Yes, Kiyoshi dragged him into it as well."
"Wow"
"I know, Naruto never does anything productive other than training." Tsunade explained how unreal this is.
"Not only that, I've never seen any Shinobi of such low rank researching a mission."
"There's a first time for everything, I've only seen ANBU research their missions. But they're trained to do so, this Kiyoshi is really something else." said Tsunade slightly wandering off. Then she shook her thoughts off and said "Kakashi, here's the mission..."
Tsunade told Kakashi all the given information on the mission. After those three minutes were up, she told him about what happened on Hinata and Kiyoshi's briefing. Kakashi thought about it for a moment and said, "I'm going to go see how they're doing", walked out of the office and headed towards the library.
Kiyoshi was looking over a really complex rock bed, trying to find the best places to enter an island, when Kakashi entered. "Hey Kakashi-sama" said Kiyoshi not turning to look at the intruder. Hinata, Naruto and his clones were a little further inside the library and didn't notice anyone enter.
"I see you made Naruto work, good job, it may not look like it but you've made quite an accomplishment." said Kakashi and observed Kiyoshi's lack of care. His expression changed "Kiyoshi, what's up? I heard you passed out," asked Kakashi
"Oh that, I have problem with water." answered Kiyoshi
"Haha, please don't tell me that you don't know how to swim." Kakashi joked
"No, I can swim just fine, I learned how to at age 4." said Kiyoshi. "It's about my weights," explained Kiyoshi
Kakashi understood what's been bothering Kiyoshi "You're afraid of sinking?"
"I'm not afraid of death, but I'm afraid of meaningless death." Kiyoshi corrected Kakashi's logic "If I take my weights off, I'm unstable. If I keep em on, I'll sink to the bottom."
"I see, so you feel that you're useless?" concluded Kakashi "What're you going to do? Back out?"
"Hell no, I don't back out, I've face life and death situations since I was born, so this should be nothing. But still..."
"I know what you mean." Kakashi thought about it for a second, "Did you talk to Gai and Lee?"
"Yeah, Gai gave me advice on training, but I can't complete it in the four day trip, not enough time." explained Kiyoshi
"Well let's see how much you can learn to control, I don't think we're in that much of a hurry, we can take the long road there."
Kiyoshi looked up at Kakashi and smiled "Thanks."
"I'll take over from here, you can go train for now. But tell me what you've learned so far so that I don't repeat your steps." said Kakashi relieving Kiyoshi from his duty.
"Sure thing, Hinata is searching for islands. I'm researching the seabeds around the areas where the ship might've sunk, as well as the islands that Hinata finds. And Naruto is drawing the maps for us so that we can take them with us." said Kiyoshi and then updated Kakashi on the multiple areas that are already studied and recorded. "I'm off to train, I'll be back in two hours."
"It's ok, take as much time as you can." said Kakashi picking up a book and sitting down.
"I can't I'm only allowed to practice an hour a day, and that hour I'll be splitting up into 15 minute sessions." explained Kiyoshi
In an instant, Kakashi understood what Kiyoshi was worried about, having four days to train is very little, but having a total of 5 hours of training is even worse. "I see... go gain control of yourself, we'll be waiting for you." said Kakashi
Kiyoshi went off to train, leaving Kakashi and the two teens to study. He walked outside to find that the rain had stopped and the clouds were disintegrating. Rays of light shone through, lighting up the colorful streets, and making the puddles shine and reflect the lit up houses.