Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
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Chapter Fourteen:
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Sensei was familiar with 'accreditation' and explained it to Naruto as basically gaining an official certification of some sort. He was not fully versed on the process necessary to gain accreditation to sell seals like Tenten's mom mentioned. A quick trip to visit the Old Man netted Naruto something between an instruction manual and a study guide. It was a small book, worn with time and use, detailing the many types of seals one was expected to be capable of producing to become certified. Along with lists and brief descriptions of required seals, there was an in depth treatise on the basic underlying strictures forming the foundation of the sealing arts. You had to know them inside and out, backwards and forwards, to be trusted to craft not only recognized seals, but to create entirely new ones. Bad things tended to happen to foolish dabblers. Self-electrocution barely even rated on the scale of 'bad things' presented in the book.
Naruto had no illusions about his current level of skill or knowledge; he was years away from gaining a certification to create and sell seals. That didn't mean he was barred from creating them for personal use, or the use of his friends. Sensei indicated this was a common issue with ninja unwilling to put the time and effort into becoming a true master of the sealing arts. They learned what was necessary for their purposes or to satisfy their own curiosity and went no further. This was the path Sensei himself had taken, though he was well versed in many of the more esoteric aspects of sealing and quite knowledgeable about useful and trivial seals alike.
"What are you reading over there, Naruto?" Tenten asked. It wasn't unheard of to find her youngest teammate perusing a book or scroll, but it was worthy of some note when he was using the light from his glowing palm to illuminate the pages well enough to read in the poor pre-dawn light.
"A book I got from the Old Man yesterday. That stuff your mom said about selling seals got me interested, so I talked to Sensei about it." He turned to give Tenten a better view of the leather-bound volume, the shining seal on his palm making the Uzumaki spiral engraved on the front cover easily visible. "I've got a long way to go if I want to live up to the Uzumaki name," he concluded.
Neji's arrival at the gate prompted Naruto to seal away his new book and Tenten to re-sheath the short sword she'd been honing to pass the time. The Hyuuga boy, like his female teammate, carried a medium-size storage scroll courtesy of Naruto. On each of their backs was a lightly laden traveling pack with a few easily accessed essentials. Unlike Naruto, who could pull whatever item from storage he wished at will, neither wanted to bother unsealing a canteen or ration bar whenever they grew thirsty or hungry and having a spare change of clothes available in the event they lost their scroll was just common sense. In addition to their scrolls, Naruto altered as many of his teammates' kunai and shuriken as they wished to give each weapon the destructive potential of an explosive tag. Neji chose the path of moderation, allowing Naruto to modify an even dozen of each. Tenten, not really believing in the concept of overkill, was unsatisfied until every projectile she owned was upgraded into an explosive.
"You see Sensei around anywhere, Neji?" Naruto asked. Their jounin leader was already gone from the house when Naruto reluctantly dragged himself out of bed even earlier than he was accustomed to.
As he often did lately, Neji activated his byakugan through sheer force of will. It still took him several seconds, but the practice was paying off and he'd nearly halved the required time in the past month. This early in the morning, even Konoha's normally bustling streets were mostly deserted, allowing the Hyuuga's eyes to locate the familiar chakra-image of their Sensei as well as a small handful of other presences. "He appears to be slightly less than a kilometer away. I believe he is escorting the client now."
"I think we should keep score!" Naruto suddenly exclaimed after a few minutes of comfortable silence, much to his teams' confusion.
"Ya wanna keep it down a bit, kid?" growled one of the chuunin in the nearby guardhouse. As early as Team Nine arrived at the southern gate, they were preceded by the poor souls assigned to third shift guard duty.
In a near whisper, hoping to avoid upsetting the grouchy chuunin, Tenten asked, "What are you talking about, Naruto?"
Neji just looked at him. His stare spoke volumes.
Naruto sighed. It was hard being a font of pure awesome around normal people sometimes. "This is a really long mission and we're gonna be going all over the place. New countries and even the ocean! The client wouldn't hire ninja if he wasn't worried about stuff like bandits and pirates. I figure we might run across a lot of them. So we should keep score of who kills the most. Pirates should count for double! The winner wou-"
CHING
The kunai now embedded in the stone wall nine or ten centimeters to the right of Naruto's head silenced him quickly. Neji dropped into a ready stance, byakugan flaring reflexively. Tenten's short sword was half drawn as she surveyed the area for threats.
"You didn't hear me the first time, brat? My shift is almost over and I don't want to listen to your yapping." Now the chuunin guard had Team Nine's full attention. Late twenties, black hair, with a burn scar twisting one side of his face into a perpetual sneer now directed towards Naruto. If the look didn't broadcast habitual asshole, not much else did.
Naruto wrenched the kunai from the wall, pushed chakra into it, and then flipped it back to its owner. Iron Release: False Life Imitation!
Tenten was about to make a comment, but Neji interrupted her with a raised hand and a gesture pointing back toward the street. Sensei was in sight, leading a donkey-drawn wagon.
"Sorry for making a scene, you guys," Naruto quietly apologized to his teammates. Once they were out of the village, then he'd make a scene, or at least whatever he turned that kunai into would. Heh.
"Don't worry about it, Naruto. That guy is an asshole."
"A chuunin gate guard at such an age; mediocrity is his fate." Neji occasionally said stuff like that. Sometimes it was hard to get the gist of his ramblings or even tell whether they were positive or negative in nature. The meaning was fairly clear this time.
"Good one, Neji," Naruto laughed. "By the time we get that old, we're gonna be world freaking famous! Not stuck as mediocre gate guards." Naruto didn't notice the heated glare his team was receiving from the chuunin, distracted as he now was by visions of himself being crowned Hokage.
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Six hours into his first great adventure and Naruto was bored. The iron clone he'd created to pester the chuunin on gate duty was long gone, dispelled once the distance grew too great to maintain a proper chakra link. The road they were traveling saw a great deal of use and a corresponding number of patrols kept it mostly clear of bandits and other unsavory individuals. Sensei didn't even believe it was necessary to maintain guard positions around their client's wagon.
The wagon Naruto walked beside was interesting. It did not appear to carry any goods, Sensei said the client wasn't that kind of merchant, and was instead outfitted like a tiny house on wheels. Its peaked roof was shingled, there were windows on both sides and the back, each with curtains on the inside and shutters outside. Three large barrels of fresh water were strapped to the rear of the wagon and there was no telling what kind of food was stored within. If there had been any hope for spending much time at roadside inns during the mission, that was now lost. Naruto did wonder how the client intended to get the wagon across the ocean to Sea Country. Were there even boats large enough to carry such a wagon?
Sensei appeared content to discuss fish migration patterns with their client, who sat on a high cushioned bench in the front of his wagon, leading his donkeys by the long leather reins connected to their harnesses. The man looked to be around Sensei's age, give or take a couple years, but where the jounin was tall and lean, the client was short and pudgy. He had an oddly protruding mustache that bobbed up and down when he talked. So far he'd treated the genin of Team Nine in a respectful manner, not looking down on them for being young, not that Naruto had noticed anyway.
"This is going to be a long, long trip, Tenten," Naruto lamented as he adjusted his stride to match hers. Those donkeys might have the stamina to pull an elaborate wagon-house thing all day long, but their speed left something to be desired.
Tenten sighed and nodded. "We might as well make the most of it. There won't be much time to do any serious training on the road." She held up her right hand so Naruto could see the spark of lightning-natured chakra arcing feebly between her thumb and index finger. "This is a good chance to work on my elemental chakra conversion."
Walking down the road on tentative guard duty wasn't the best time to get back to his new book. "You're right. I've just gotta figure out something to do to keep myself busy."
That was easier said than done. He leapt over the wagon to pester Neji, but found the boy splitting his attention between practicing with his byakugan and working on some freaky new variation of the earth passage and tree climbing exercises that allowed him to slide along the ground as if he were ice skating. That was cool. He'd have to get the Hyuuga to tell him out it worked later.
Eventually Naruto settled on working with his iron rod. Tenten loved and hated the weapon. It was highly versatile and had the potential to be incredibly deadly, more so than any weapon she'd ever held, but wouldn't respond to her attempts to manipulate it, no matter how often Naruto let her play with it. He'd once discovered her threatening its life.
"How far can you reach with it now?" Tenten asked, eyeing the iron rod turned whip jealously. The Old Man had a storage scroll full of the chakra conductive iron his rod was composed of and according to Sensei a lot of it was being saved for Naruto's use. Maybe he could get some of it and have a weapon made for Tenten when the mission was completed?
Naruto shrugged. "I'm not really sure. Pretty far, I guess." When he practiced with it in their designated training ground, there was only so much open space and he'd never felt the urge to see just what its limits were.
"Well?"
"Huh?"
"That was me trying to hint to you to give it a shot, Naruto."
"Oh, haha, yeah, I knew that!" Naruto insisted, grinning at an incredulous Tenten.
The iron whip retracted so quickly into its base form that Naruto's wrist nearly buckled. He slowed, and then stopped, taking in the empty road as the wagon slowly rolled away. It was a wide stretch of compacted earth, abutted by about ten meters of grass and shrubbery that gave way to a dense forest. The road was straight for over four hundred meters before curving gently out of sight. With no one nearby and so much open space available, finding a better place to test the maximum range of the rod, or his control over it, would be difficult.
Tenten was standing well back from her teammate, remembering the results of his last experiment. She watched Naruto plant his feet and felt a tingle from her rudimentary chakra senses as he rooted himself more firmly to the ground. Naruto swung the rod and chakra flared. Despite having her full attention focused on the weapon in Naruto's hand, it still blurred out of sight for a moment, lengthening with impossible speed and narrowing to a nearly invisible wire-like strand. And then as fast as it extended, the iron was retracted, the force of its return so great Naruto nearly dropped the reconstituted rod with a pained yelp. Nothing seemed to happen for a long moment, but then every tree along the right side of the road, from perhaps thirty meters away to just short of the far off curve, and at least another thirty or forty meters back from what used to be the tree line, fell over with a crash of thunder every bit as loud as her most powerful lightning technique.
"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit," Tenten mumbled, her eyes wide and glassy, realizing she should have stood much further away. Convincing Naruto to cut loose might have been a bad idea as well.
"That…Was…Fucking…Awesome!" Naruto shouted, totally unprepared for the carnage he just visited upon the unsuspecting woodland. He took a long look at the iron rod in his hand before gazing back out at the hundreds or thousands of trees felled with a single halfhearted swing of his arm.
I am a beast!, he thought with a savage grin. Later, when he was less impressed by his own badassery, he would begin to wonder why everything to the right of the road had been hit when he'd been aiming for the left, and how come the rod didn't just lengthen and stab through the trees as he'd intended.
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Ebisu had listened to his students, only a portion of his attention remaining on the conversation he was holding with the client. It was good that each genin was finding constructive ways to occupy their minds. Later, as they moved further from Konoha and deeper into the wilds of Fire Country, then into foreign nations, there would be a need for greater vigilance. He nodded to himself, pleased that Tenten convinced Naruto to test the extent of his control over the chakra conductive iron rod he carried.
The client was in no hurry, allowing the donkeys pulling his somewhat gaudy traveling wagon to set the pace, so when the earth shook and thunder crashed, they were less than twenty meters from Naruto and Tenten's position. The animals froze, startled by the noise, bringing the wagon to a sudden halt.
"Neji, stay with Mr. Iwana," Ebisu ordered. He rushed around the wagon and was confronted by the sight of many acres of destroyed forest. Trees were toppled every which way, with some head high stumps jutting up through the foliage. It looked like a tornado had touched down or a monstrously powerful wind ninjutsu unleashed in the area. If anyone owned the deforested land so far from any settlements, it would probably be the Daimyo. Ebisu made a mental note to speak with Load Hokage on the matter, in the event reparations were demanded.
Naruto was doing cart wheels and back flips as Ebisu approached.
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Though Naruto understood Sensei's orders to no longer experiment so freely with the iron rod, not until he could find a more isolated locale, preferably when the team was not on a mission, he was not happy. He really wanted to get the hang of that attack.
"You are a remarkable young ninja," the client, Mr. Iwana, said in his high pitched voice. The youngest member of Team Nine also wasn't all that happy his lunch break was being shortened because he had been volunteered by Sensei to help the client water his donkeys at a small roadside creek.
Unsolicited praise pulled a grin from him. "Thanks, Mister!"
"You must wield a fearsome weapon to create such a mess as the one we left behind us."
Naruto retrieved the rod from storage so the client could see. "Yeah, it's pretty cool. I can do lots of stuff with it, but the last one was crazy! I've never made it do anything like that before!" Unable to resist showing off just a little, Naruto twirled the rod, changing its shape as he did so. It cycled through to the form of a staff, then a katana, and was followed by an uncoiled whip, before reverting back into an unassuming rod.
"You live up to the reputation your village, my young friend. You most certainly do."
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A/N: Now their mission has begun. Time won't be leaping forward much over the next several chapters, but Team Nine's travels won't be noted in excruciating detail, either.
Naruto won't be scything through any more forests or trying that attack on ninja, friends or foes, for a long time. Even though he's mighty impressed with himself, he's not going to start whipping around uncontrollable lines of chakra-infused razor wire for the hell of it. I've been waiting to write that little scene for a while now, though.
Please review. Comments and criticisms are greatly appreciated.
Published: 6/14/2012