Chapter 10: New Mission

Naruto sat in his living room contemplating the last couple of hours. He had spent the last hour debriefing the council with Jiraiya on the mission to retrieve Tsunade. Things were going well until he disclosed his encounter with Itachi along with the traitorous snake sannin. Their involvement had automatically raised the rank of the mission to S-class. This made talking about the details of the mission to anyone who was not a jonin a crime, Naruto was seriously annoyed when some of the stricter members emphasized being punished. The whiskered blond had to hold back an eye-roll, it wasn't like the blond wasn't a walking S-class secret himself. Jiraiya had seen the blonds irritation beginning to rise and sent the blond home as soon as his part of the debriefing was over. He told him he would pass by to talk to him when he was done but it would take at least another hour, more if the council was feeling, chatty. Naruto had also learned from Shizune, who he had run into on his way out, that Tsunade had gone to the hospital already and healed his wounded teammate and his team sensei. Naruto was interrupted from his thoughts when he heard a knock on the door before Jiraiya let himself in not waiting for Naruto to come to answer the door.

"Ya know, you're supposed to wait for someone to let you in right." Naruto deadpanned as Jiraiya let out a laugh.

"That only applies to other ninjas, Jiraiya the Gallant may enter anywhere he wishes!" Jiraiya struck a pose as Naruto rubbed the bridge of his nose as he lamented the fact that all his senseis were so weird. They even got progressively weirder the stronger they got.

'God I hope I don't become a weirdo if I become an S-class ninja.'

Jiraiya composed himself as his features shifted to a more series demeanor. "Ok kid, serious talk time." Naruto sat up straighter his full focus on the white-haired toad sage. "I was going to tell you the moment you became a chuunin but with how hectic things are I put it off." Jiraiya reached into his vest and pulled out a picture of a red-haired kunoichi. "This is Kushina, she was the container of the nine-tails before you. Demon containers are also called jinchuriki so don't be surprised if you ever hear the term used to describe you if you face higher ranked ninja. All Jinchuriki act as war deterrents for their respective villages during times of peace and are often sent to the front lines as a vanguard for any scrimmages between nations as a reminder to others of the power they fight against." Naruto took a second to absorb the information as he stared at the woman who was his predecessor. It was a lot to take in, he knew having the nine-tails sealed inside him made him more valuable to the village but it was another thing entirely to know he was a war deterrent. After a second he finally responded.

"Makes sense, I wouldn't want to fight me. Facing Gaara was hard enough and he didn't even get to use his tenant's chakra." Jiraiya took a deep breath.

"There's something else you need to know about her." Naruto looked up from the picture to look at Jiraiya. "Her full name was Kushina Uzumaki. "Naruto felt his heart skip. "She was also your mother." There was an eerie silence as Naruto looked back at the picture, a thousand and one emotions racing through his eyes as he took in every single detail from the picture. He could hear his heart beating at an astounding pace.

"She's pretty." Naruto's voice cracked as a single tear ran down his eye. Jiraiya allowed the blond a moment to take everything in before he continued his explanation.

"She was a real firecracker and a hell of a Kunoichi. She and your father made big names of themselves during the third war. Things would have turned out very differently for the Leaf without them. She used to drive your old man crazy with her gung-ho attitude." Naruto nodded as he wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

"You know who my father is." There was no question in his tone and Jiraiya let out an inaudible sigh.

"Yes, it's the main secret of why we kept your heritage a secret." Jiraiya reached into his vest once more as he pulled out another picture. "The council argued over letting you know about him, but lately your actions have made them think you're mature enough to handle the information." The toad sage showed the picture to the whiskered blond. It was a picture of two people. His mother was standing to the right clearly pregnant, she had a radiant smile on her face. She was wearing a blue shirt and shorts with what appeared to be a green apron. Naruto inhaled sharply as he saw the man next to her. It was a face he saw almost daily and one when growing up the blond had idolized. Standing next to his mother with equal happiness showing on his face as he touched her stomach was the fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze.

"When I first found out about the nine-tails I always wondered why he chose me of all people." Naruto let out a small laugh. "The third always said it was because he believed in me, I asked myself why he would trust me with something as massive as this but it does make sense now. He trusted me because he was my father." Naruto held the picture of his parents tightly as he compared their features to himself.

"You can keep the pictures just try to keep them to yourself. Especially now, because of Orochimaru's attack we've been having some trouble with the Stone village. They've been sending out teams closer to our border and it has the Waterfall village on high alert. Seeing as they're our closest ally at the moment it wouldn't surprise me if you were sent out in the coming weeks for a joint patrol mission with a team of waterfall ninja to patrol their border. The Stone village's hatred for your dad is tremendous, the amount of damage he did to their ranks was a major reason we won the war. This was one of the factors that were taken into account as to why your heritage was kept secret. It wouldn't be the first time someone has targeted the children of a kage to strike at them. Even a dead one." Naruto nodded as Jiraiya patted his head. "How are you feeling? I know it's a lot to take in."

"I'm angry at the bastard for sticking the nine-tails in me but I also understand he had no choice at the time." Jiraiya sat there as the blond vented his emotions.

"I know, but he loved you and your mom so much. When he found out he was going to be a father he was like a little kid being told their birthday had come early and brought all the other holidays with it. He ran around the village to all his friends to tell them and wouldn't shut up about it." Jiraiya had a small smile as Naruto laughed softly.

"I'm just glad I finally know." Naruto kept staring at his parents. The white-haired sannin got up from his chair as he made his way to the door.

"I need to get going but if you need to talk just tell me." Naruto got up and hugged Jiraiya. The two stood there for a minute.

"I'll be fine, thank you." Jiraiya nodded as he left. Naruto made his way over to his bed as he calmed himself down and began to meditate. After a while, he felt himself being pulled into the seal.

"What do you want?" Naruto saw that the nine-tails was lazily swaying his tails. He had his left eye slightly open as he stared down at the blond.

"I just wanted to thank you for telling me about my mother." The fox huffed and sent small waves across the water in the seal. "I also wanted to thank you for calming me down during the fight with Orochimaru." The fox closed his eye and turned away from the small human.

"Just make sure not to lose yourself again. I can't have my container running around like some temperamental child." The fox curled into himself as Naruto just nodded. He had seen this reaction from the fox many times, there were days where the fox was talkative and days like today where he became a brick wall to talk too.

"Thank you anyway, I'll come to talk to you some other time alright. See you later." Naruto felt the tug in his navel and was back in his room. He saw it was already late and decided to call it a night. He was drained both mentally from the council meeting and emotionally from the bombshell of finding out who his parents where. Naruto fell asleep with dreams of what it would have been like if the nine-tails never attacked.

The next morning Naruto woke up early and he headed to the memorial stone. He wanted to pay his respect to his parents and now that he finally knew their names he could finally do it. The blond looked at all the names carved in the stone and found his parents names next to each other, Naruto traced the names with his fingers as he sent a quick prayer up. It was a very bittersweet moment, All during his childhood there was a cloud hanging over the blond. Questions that would plague his inner psyche and would attack his self-confidence during his lowest moments. He always wondered if his parents had abandoned him, that they were just like the majority of the villagers and just didn't give a damn about him. Knowing that they loved him, died for him, it cleared any and all doubts he had. The blond was interrupted from his reflections when an ANBU appeared behind him appearing in the standard leaf body flicker.

"Chuunin Uzumaki, you have been summoned to the Hokage's office." Naruto nodded as the masked ninja body flickered away.

'Well, no use in wasting time.' Naruto sent one last look at the memorial stone his gaze solely on his parents. before he also body flickered away.

Inside the Hokage's office sat Tsunade with her Kage hat hanging on her head. Shizune stood beside her mentor with a stack of papers, and Jiraiya stood near the window as he stared at the village below. "Hello Lady Hokage, Shizune, Jiraiya-sensei." The blond received a smile from the raven-haired medic and a wave from the toad sage. Tsunade gave him a quick nod as she looked the blond over.

"I was talking with Jiraiya and the council last night about what Kabuto mentioned happening during the chuunin exam. I need to know what happened between you and your team." Naruto's lips pursed, he really just wanted to forget the whole thing before he nodded and began to explain.

"I was separated from the rest of my team in the forest of death when I was hit by a massive wind jutsu. I was flung back and was attacked by what I know now was a snake summon and it managed to eat me whole." Naruto made a face of disgust as he continued. "I managed to free myself by creating hundreds of clones and bursting the snake from the inside. I traveled my way back to find both Sasuke and Sakura paralyzed from Orochimaru's killing intent and about to be attacked by another of the snake's summons. At this point, I used some of the nine-tails chakra to deal with the snake before trying to fight Orochimaru." Naruto paused at the looks the others were giving him, he developed a tick mark at Jiraiya's 'You're an idiot' face. "I didn't know it was him at the time." The others merely nodded more understanding now. "Anyway, I wasn't able to even breath on him as he smacked me around for about 2 minutes before he cut my connection with the nine-tails and I was knocked out of the fight." Naruto's face scrunched up. "He brought out his damned sword from his mouth and proceeded to play around with Sasuke for a bit when he slashed down with his sword and caught Sasuke by surprise." Naruto's tone grew slightly angry. "Then Sasuke had the marvelous idea to use me for a substitution. I landed on the floor barely conscious and watched Orochimaru bite Sasuke on his neck telling him he would come seek him out before leaving. Sakura grabbed Sasuke and left after that. I managed to heal up because the nine-tails managed to filter some of his chakra through and eventually I met back up with both my team and team 10. After that, we left the forest but had to fight a sound team and Kabuto joined up with us. No doubt keeping an eye on Sasuke for whatever reason Orochimaru wanted." Tsunade had a grim look on her face.

"That is troubling, I knew the Uchiha had problems but this is another level of what we were expecting. Under normal circumstances we would have punished him for using a teammate for a substitution, unfortunately, we can't do anything because of the rules of the chuunin exams. Still, his mental stability is concerning along with his recent encounter with his brother he will be put on watch." Naruto nodded understanding the situation. "There was another reason I brought you here. You have a mission." The blond didn't say anything as he simply nodded expecting this from what Jiraiya had told him yesterday. "As you know the upper-level ninja have been doing there best rooting out any sound village bases in the country along with dealing with the Sand and trying to work out a new treaty with them. This has caused the chuunin to pick up the slack. Normally a newly promoted chuunin would be sent put out on missions with their original genin team or with more experienced group of chuunin but your team is currently out of commission and all of the more experienced chuunin are doing high-level missions."

"So, what is the mission?" Naruto asked.

"Jiraiya told me he talked to you last night about your parents." The whiskered blond let out a low hum to confirm to Tsunade that he had. "Good, did he tell you about the situation with Waterfall and Stone?"

"Yes, he mentioned it."

"Then I won't be too long. There has been an increase in activity with Stone ninja patrolling around the border with Waterfall. We need information and one of Stones most prominent traders Ryuga Takahachi will be staying in the border town of Kuwabara near the land of grass. There is an annual weapons exposition that is happening two weeks from now in the land of rivers and he will be there till then. You along with Hana Inuzuka, Ino Yamanaka, and Ten-Ten will go and extract any information you can about his deals with the Stone village."

"What I would give to be given a mission with a team full of women." Jiraiya let out a giggle as blood ran down his nose but was stopped by the combined killing intent of the two blonds in the room. Both unintentionally mirroring the others thought.

'You perv.'

"Moving on, Hana will be leading this mission she will be able to find your target fairly quickly, Ino will go as she can enter the mind of the target to extract the information while he sleeps. Ten-Ten will be your cover so no one gets too suspicious when you get to Kuwabara town she will act as a merchants daughter to not make any of the foreign traders too nervous. You will go as a back-up in case things go south and a fight erupts." Naruto nodded along.

"When will we be leaving?"

"You and your team will be leaving in two days time, the mission should only last about a week at most."

"Got it, is there anything else?" Tsunade nodded before her eyes softened.

"How's your scar?"

"It's fine." Naruto rubbed his chest and his green necklace fell out because of the movement. "Honestly I haven't even thought about it." Tsunade nodded and she dismissed the blond.

"Naruto." The blond turned back to his Hokage.

"Yes?" Tsunade smiled at him.

"Be careful on your mission." Naruto grinned back.

"I will." Naruto made his way out with Jiraiya walking with him.

"C'mon kid, we're going to training ground 34."

"Ok, let's go." Naruto and Jiraiya ran across the rooftops, The blond looked around and saw that most of the repairs to the village had been done with only some minor cleaning needed. The villagers kept themselves busy with errands as children played in the streets. The two toad summoners stopped in the clearing that was training ground 34 after 5 minutes of travel, the clearing was a simple patch of grass with dense forest all around.

"We need to talk about something series kid."

"How many more life-altering secrets are there?" Jiraiya quickly shook his head.

"No nothing like that. I need to talk to you about the organization Itachi and Kisame belong too."

"You mentioned them the other day, the Akatsuki."

"That's right, they're a group of S-rank ninja who are targeting you and the other jinchuriki. I'll be training you into the dirt whenever I have the time. I just got some intel today telling me the Akatsuki won't be mobilizing for another 3 years so we have time to prepare. When you get back from your mission we'll be upping your taijutsu training."

"So, there's a group of S-class criminals after me?"

"Yes." The two stood there looking at each other in complete silence.

"Ok, is there anything else? " Jiraiya shook his head.

"No, why don't you go rest for your mission take these days off. You deserve the rest."

"Right, I'll see you around then." Jiraiya ruffled Naruto's hair as he left. The blond stood there for minutes allowing the information to sink in before he started walking to the memorial stone. Naruto thought about how fast and powerful Itachi, Kisame, and Orochimaru are and the level he would have to reach to stand a chance. Naruto came to the clearing of the memorial stone and saw Kakashi standing there looking at the stone. Naruto saw his team sensei look from the stone to him with an eye smile.

"Hello Naruto, congratulations on your promotion." Naruto didn't say anything as he walked next to Kakashi and looked at his parents' name. They stood side by side in awkward silence for a couple of minutes before the younger man replied.

"Thanks." Naruto's tone didn't betray any emotion. The masked ninja let out a small sigh as he stared at his student.

"Listen Naruto, I never meant to ignore you and Sakura the way I did. I honestly thought Sasuke had the best chance to be promoted. I was going to turn my attention to you and Sakura after he was promoted." Naruto kept staring at the stone not making any indication that he had heard Kakashi though on the inside we felt his anger starting to rise.

"What if he wasn't promoted?" Kakashi blinked twice before looking at his student.

"Excuse me?" Naruto let out a sigh as he turned his steely gaze to Kakashi.

"What if he wasn't promoted? What if he went and won the tournament and wasn't promoted? Would you have continued to only train Sasuke if none of us got promoted?"

"No, I would have trained all of you in that scenario." Naruto scoffed.

"Are you sure you would be able to do that? After all, we've been a team for 6 months and aside from some basic teamwork drills the only time you've ever taught us something worthwhile was during the mission to wave." Kakashi shook his head.

"You guys needed the teamwork drills. You weren't ready for more advanced teachings." Naruto glared at the older man his eyes turning purple as the fox's chakra reacted to his rage before he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"And Sasuke was? Because out of the three of us he was the one who needed to learn to be a good teammate the most. Instead, you spent the month leading up to the chuunin exams giving him one on one training and leaving me and Sakura to practice our tree climbing." Naruto turned away from his sensei and went back to staring at the memorial stone his eyes turning back to normal as his temper was back under control.

"I made mistakes leading this team and I am sorry." Kakashi's voice was solemn.

"Do you know what the worst part is Kakashi?" The silver-haired ninja let out an internal wince at the lack of sensei. "It was that you didn't believe in me enough to even try and train me for the finals." Kakashi let out a visible wince at that. "You keep telling me we were supposed to be a team but for the last two months you've shown me and Sakura that Sasuke was your student and we were just two tag-a-longs." Kakashi looked at his student with hurt evident in his one visible eye his shoulders slumped.

"I never meant to push you and Sakura away Naruto." The chuunin just sighed as he turned away from the stone after giving a small prayer and started heading to the village.

"Maybe not but you did. I'll see you later Kakashi." With that, the blond body flickered back to his apartment. Naruto went inside and was suddenly overcome by exhaustion as he headed to his room to take a much-needed nap.

Naruto woke up several hours later when his stomach rumbled he got up groggily and decided to eat out as he didn't have any food in his home. 'Looks like it's Ichiraku time.' The blond thought as he made his way to his favorite ramen stand. As Naruto got inside he let saw a familiar face in one of the chairs.

"Hey, Naruto! Congrats on the promotion, I can't believe you're the same rank as I am now." Naruto let out a smile as he sat next to his academy instructor.

"It's nice to see you Iruka-sensei." The two sat and began to catch up while they ate. Naruto spent a good hour telling his old sensei about his mission to find Tsunade and his second encounter with Orochimaru. The two soon left with Iruka paying for the meal as a gift for the blonds promotion. Naruto spent the rest of the day and the next going over his book on fuinjutsu. It was 8 in the morning when Naruto started to head off to the western gate to meet with his squad. His thoughts kept cycling back to what Jiraiya had told him about the Akatsuki. Naruto saw that he was the last to arrive as his three teammates had already gathered and with that made haste to join them, putting all thoughts about the dangerous organization in the backburner of his mind.

A/N: I meant to update last week but things got busy for me, just as a heads up the next update is gonna be in 2 weeks most likely I'll try to do it next week if I can but things at home need to settle down a bit more. Anyway I hope you guys enjoy how the stories going and I'd like to thank you guys for the positive feedback.