The Rise of a Warlord

Chapter 10: Tsunade the Slug Princess

(I own nothing)

-X-

"Speaking"

'Thinking'

-X-

Warning-

Naruto will be darker...

There will be harsh language...

There may be lemons...

This list may grow in time...

-X-

"Hey Billboard Brow!"

Sakura's eye started twitching as she heard her one time friend turned rival call out her nickname in the middle of a busy street in the shopping district of the village.

Turning to glare at the blond she replied with a growl, "What do you want Ino-pig?"

"Have you seen Naruto?"

That caused the pinkly to calm down, taking her mind off of the nam she'd been called as she thought about her... once upon a time teammate.

"No I haven't, he was transferred off the team, at least that's what Kakashi-sensei said." she spoke while looking down at the road. No longer could she find it in herself to call him an idiot or think about hitting him, not after what she saw.

The more she thought about it the more it hurt. She had always called him names and degraded him over stupid things, believing that he'd never become a good ninja in a hundred years. Yet, she saw him fight Neji, the rookie of the year in the graduating class before them and win. Then she saw him fight alongside the Hokage and nearly die. Compared to that she knew that she'd never measure up to something like that. There was just no way that she would be able to even claim to have done something as amazing and terrorizing.

When she saw him take down the first she'd been shocked and started to cheer, but that cheer quickly turned to a horrified gasp when he was stabbed and left to die.

"Why are you looking for him anyway?"

Ino moved the fringe of hair covering the side of her face, only for it to fall back in place, "I want to know what happened to him, he's so different now. I mean the last time I saw him he was bouncing around wearing orange then he shows up during the exams acting like an ice-cube and dressed for war."

"Oh..." Sakura muttered, "Well, I haven't seen him, actually, I haven't seen him for a long time, after we came back from Wave, he just disappeared until the exams, Sensei told us that the Hokage personally removed Naruto from our team until the exams for a classified reason."

Smelling a good story and juicy rumor material for one of her favorite pastimes of gossiping, Ino found herself even more intrigued than before, "Really... well then, looks like I got some snooping to do. Want to come with? It'll be just like old times!"

Sakura thought about it for a minute and nodded, "Sure,"

-X-

"What do you want Jiraiya?" Snapped the irritable looking blond with narrowed hazel eyes.

As Naruto sat next to the white haired pervert he found himself seated across from a dark haired woman in a dark kimono while holding a small piglet in her arms that wore a small red vest with white wrappings around it's belly and a pearl necklace around it's head.

"Can't a guy come visit his teammate and say hi?" he asked, making Naruto inwardly sigh as he already saw that the man was beating around the bush.

The bar they were at wasn't anything fancy but it did double as a small grill, cooking up simple things for people as they got drunk.

"Can I get you anything to drink sir?" questioned a man while looking pointedly as Naruto, as he was the only one without a drink, Tsunade was pouring herself Saki out of a large bottle while Jiraiya joined in, producing a cup of his own from... somewhere. The woman across from him had a glass of melting ice and a small bowl sitting in front of her, most likely for the animal in her arms.

"Tea will be fine," He told the man before he left to get the order, he wasn't much of a drinker so he wasn't going to get any saki despite being able to now that he was technically an adult.

"Hey who's the brat?" The female sannin asked after downing another shot of saki and beginning to pour another.

Jiraiya chuckled a bit, "Naruto Uzumaki."

"Here's your tea sir,"

Naruto didn't notice the widening of Tsunade's eye or the woman's across from him, as the man had distracted him momentarily. Thanking him, he turned back to them to notice that Jiraiya had pulled out a deck of blue cards and was shuffling them.

The two went back and fourth for awhile, playing a couple games with Tsunade mainly losing or folding. Jiraiya finally told her that she had been chosen to be the Hokage since the old man wanted to retire... again, but the woman wasn't thrilled. She even had the gall to insult the position and any who wanted to be the Hokage, saying that only a fool would take the job.

"So your great grandfather was a fool?" Naruto questioned with a low voice as he looked cooly at the woman, "Your great-uncle was the Hokage too so was he a fool too?"

Her grip tightened on the cards.

"Jiraiya told me about you while we were looking for you, he said that your brother died dreaming of being chosen to be the Hokage... was he a fool too?"

"Shut up, you don't know anything," the woman hissed out with a glare.

Naruto hummed, finishing off the tea and setting it down on the wooden table, "I know enough and the only thing that Old man Hokage was foolish about was believing that a dried up old prune with a drinking problem an has every debt collector from every end of Fire Country on her tail could be a good Hokage." He frowned before standing up, "I have better things to waste my time on besides this failed mission, I'll be training on finishing the Rasengan if you need me pervert."

The woman turned her sharp gaze to her former teammate, "You taught him the Rasengan? Why set him up for failure like that?"

Naruto stopped with his back to them, "That's the same question I think I'll ask the old man when we get back to the village. Why choose an old bitch like you and set Konoha up for failure?"

"What did you say punk!" The blonde demanded as she stood, nearly knocking the table over as she did, "You want to fight right now?"

Naruto smirked, "Outside?"

"Right now!"

-X-

Standing in the now empty street, Naruto and Tsunade stared each other down while Shizune, the girl in the kimono, and Jiraiya stood to the side.

"Tsunade-sama, please don't do this!" the girl pleaded, "Can't you two just talk about this?"

"Shut it, Shizune, this punk wants to pick a fight then he's got one."

"Me pick a fight?" Naruto replied with a raised eyebrow, "Is your old age catching up with you? You challenged me,"

"Be careful Tsunade-chan," the other Sannin warned, "He's better then you think."

The woman vanished and appeared directly in front of Naruto, flicking him in the forehead with a smirk of her own that snapped his head back and knocked him off his feet.

But Naruto turned to smoke, making their eyes widen.

'Shadow clone... but when did he switch?'

"Rasen-Kaze!" Announced the teen as he burst through the smoke with a glowing blue ball in his hand, thrust out towards her chest.

Tsunade caught it and pulled his arm past her, pulling his whole body along as well and into her knee, causing him to lose control of the attack in his hand.

But instead of bursting into nothing but strong breezes of wind in every direction, it all burst forward and carved a large oval shaped spiral into the ground which made the two Sannin's gape in astonishment.

Naruto fell to his knee gasping for breath while the woman just stood there, taking advantage, he quickly palmed a kunai and stabbed downwards only to be punted like a ball as the blade stabbed into the ground, just barely missing her foot.

"Just give up punk, you can't beat me!" she mocked him as he stood up, only to raise an eyebrow when he smirked over at her.

Jiraiya's eyes widened, "Tsunade jump!"

Her old training taking over, the blonde leapt into the air just in time for the Kunai to explode with a human sized fireball that scorched the ground and left a small hole where the now ruined blade lay without a handle.

"Exploding tags?" She mused as she landed perfectly well out of the blast radius, which was impressive as she was wearing some heels.

Exploding tags were one of the more expensive tools used by ninja, aside from custom swords and armor that older ninja had made, exploding tags were probably the most costly basic item available.

"Naruto that's enough!" Jiraiya yelled while getting between them, seeing that the teen had another kunai in hand, "We can't have you throwing those damn things all over town, someone might get hurt!"

That made Tsunade's eyebrow raise, that brat used explosive tags regularly? That had to be pretty expensive and with what she knew about him being treated unfairly due to his... condition it really made her question how it was possible.

Spinning the kunai by the ring, Naruto hummed and slid it back into the equipment pouch on his thigh, "Your right, besides... I already won."

"What?" The woman asked, "What makes you think that?"

The teen-aged blond looked at her, "If the pervert here didn't say anything, my bomb would've taken you down."

"I'm tougher than I look," she shot back, making Naruto smirk.

"Your older than you look too,"

"Why you little-!"

In a flash, Shizune was in front of the woman holding her back while the piglet Tonton had Tsunade's pants leg in her mouth, trying to help the dark haired woman. "Tsunade-sama, no please calm down!"

-X-

"So this is where Naruto lived?" Sakura spoke while standing on the dirt road outside of a old apartment building in the poorest slums of the village. Part of which was still damaged due to what happened a while back.

Ino nodded, "That's what I heard, come on lets go check it out."

They jumped to the top floor where a decent sized chunk was taken out of the wall while the door was blown to hell. The wood still there was blackened and charred, having been on fire at one point and shards of broken wall still littered the floor.

"Damn, I wonder what happened here," Ino muttered as they walked in, "This is... or it was his apartment, there's no way he'd still be living here."

A couch laid on the far wall, overturned and torn up with the fabric molding from water damage due to the roof leaking.

"Come on, let's look around." Sakura said before going in opposite directions. Ino heading towards the only other room while Sakura headed towards the kitchen part of living room.

There was a small two door cabinet on the wall above a counter made of rotting wood, a stove that was older than her sat next to it while an even older fridge sat on the other side.

'How could anyone live like this?' Sakura asked herself, not knowing what she'd do since she lived a pampered life at her parents large house as she checked the cabinets and drawers in the counter only to find them empty.

Opening the fridge proved to be the worst mistake she had ever made, the smell of mold and sour milk filling her nose and making her gag as she slammed it. The smell was so bad that she could feel it hit her like a wave.

Ino walked into the next room to find a bare bedroom with a dirty old mattress leaning against the wall with a small wooden box sitting next to it. The closet door was open and empty so she went to the door leading to the bathroom and looked around.

It was dark so when she flipped on the lights, causing the single light bulb hanging above her to flicker on and off like a horror movie, she jumped back at the sight of roaches scurrying out of sight and shuddered. No offense to Shino and his clan but bugs were creepy crawly and gross!

Refusing to go any further in, she just looked at what she could see and saw what appeared to be blood dried on the broken mirror over the sink... in the shape of a hand print. Smaller spots were dried to the outside rim of the sink and were dark from age, how long has it been there... and why was it there for that matter?

-X-

Naruto didn't know what changed Tsunade's mind about returning to become the fifth Hokage, at first he suspected that Jiraiya bribed her but when a debt collector found her, Tsunade sent him running under the threat of bodily harm, officially killing that thought.

But now he found himself laying on a futon in a small inn that they decided to stay in for the night. Jiraiya and Tsunade went out to drink, leaving the other three behind at the inn to do whatever and since neither really knew each other, him and Shizune just went there separate ways.

"Hey Jiraiya, tell me about the kid." Tsunade spoke as they sat at the bar next to each other with their own bottles in front of them. The teen had been on her mind lately for some reason and she found herself wanting to know more, after-all, if she was going to be the Hokage then she'd need to know her ninja right?

The pervert hummed into his cup, "Not much that I can say right now," he told her which really caught her interest, "Everything except his standard file is classified now with S-Rank clearance. Only the Hokage can read them and he's planning on telling you personally so I'm honor bound to take what I know to the grave."

"Really..." she mused, trailing off. While he couldn't tell her exactly what was there what he did say was his way of going around the rules for her.

S-Rank clearance could only mean a few things, either the teens information was a dirty little secret of the village that their sensei didn't want anyone to know, which wasn't possible with the situation, or the information was classified for security reasons. Like how ANBU were required to hide their identities from the public.

And if it was restricted to 'Hokage's-eyes-only' then it meant that it was a very important secret as even ANBU commanders and certain other trustworthy people could get access if they had to. A Hokage only file was kept hidden away from the other files and only the Hokage could know where.

"Yep,"

"So what can you tell me?"

The man shrugged, "He's a chunin... loves explosives... hates his former team-"

"He hates his team?" she questioned in surprise, "How do they get anything done?"

"Former team, I said 'Former'." Jiraiya told her while making sure that the word was heard, "Sensei removed him from the team and only put him back in for the exams, he's been on medical leave since then. But I can tell you this, you'll be working with him a lot more than you will any other ninjas."

"Why?"

Usually a group of retired ninja handled the assigning of missions to ninja, the Hokage only did so if he/she wanted to or if it was an important mission.

He took a sip of his drink before speaking lower so that no one could overhear, "Sensei's been personally assigning him missions, I can't say why but you'll understand when you speak to sensei."

Tsunade poured herself another glass, "I heard that Orochimaru attacked the village and was killed, didn't hear much more though, did sensei do it?"

Jiraiya waited until she started drinking, "Nope, Naruto killed him,"

She spat the Saki all over the bar, choking and coughing.

"That kid did it?" she said in shock as she wiped her face clean of the saki, "How in the hell did he pull that off?"

"Well..."

-X-

Shikamaru looked up to where Ino was standing and sighed, muttering a 'troublesome' under his breath, "I don't know where Naruto is, I haven't seen him since the finals," he told them as they interrupted his cloud gazing time asking if he knew where Naruto was, even though he would like to know some things about said blond.

Choji looked thoughtful, "I didn't see him, but I've heard a rumor," he said next to his friend and teammate while holding a bad of chips, "That scary lady from the second exam might know where he is, I heard that they've been hanging out together."

That caused Ino and Sakura to share a glance, they were scared of her enough just from that one day and didn't like the idea of approaching her to ask if she's been hanging out with Naruto. No telling what she might do to them.

-X-

Tsunade just sat there and listened to the story, at first it seemed to unrealistic, something you'd see in a movie or read in a book but Jiraiya swore on Icha Icha that he was truthful and that if he was lying, he'd give up writing.

Now if she knew anything about the man then she knew that writing smut was his pride and joy in life, so he wouldn't ideally risk it if she did check his story later with their sensei.

Naruto and Sensei fought together against Orochimaru then against the second and first Hokages... the thought of Orochimaru bringing the shells of her family made her blood boil but when Jiraiya told her about Naruto being stabbed and nearly dying made her anger drop.

But the guy had somehow found the strength and got back up after pulling the blade out of his lower chest, sneaking up on Orochimaru to stab him before blowing both the snake and him up with a explosive tag.

'Damn Naruto-kun, now that's what I call a man...' she thought with her heart thumping inside her chest, 'wait!' she then said inwardly with a hint of shock, 'did I really just think that?'

To be continued...

-X-

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