Chapter 44: Rubbered Imposition, Team Leader
He stared at the ball in his hand with lightly frustrated determination. The ball itself was nothing special, in fact it was quite the opposite, nothing but a tan child's toy or even something used to play with a pet or two. No, the staring was due to the resistance such a simple ball was imposing on Naruto. Even when first learning to cut a leaf with his chakra, Naruto felt some sort of direction to go no matter how much issue he was having with the exercise itself, but this water-filled ball was being quite the pain in his ass.
There are only so many ways you can orient the spin of water with your chakra. You can go clockwise or counterclockwise at whichever angle on it, but the results were always the same. As the water began to spin from his chakra massaging the flow of water, the ball would titter and totter in place, when the spinning got faster and more aggressive the ball would go flatter in whichever direction the water was spinning, and when the water was spinning as fast as Naruto could push it without filtering in too much water, it would simply stay in that elongated position. The ball was more comfortable turning into a disk than it was just exploding. Everytime he stopped his pressing, the ball would form back into a perfect sphere like it never shifted at all.
He was sitting cross-legged on the ground in the center of the open space of Training Ground 3, the Sun was mostly underneath the horizon to cast a purplish color above him in the sky, and Naruto's stomach was being progressively more agitated about his lack of sustenance. As stubborn as he was, Naruto was more likely to sit here until he had some idea on how to move forward than he was to halt everything and eat something. It didn't help that the "something" was probably another bar that tasted like mud because he had no patience to learn how to cook anything significant nor has he bought any more instant ramen cups.
The day was feeling like a wash all around.
"What's with the ball?" The straight shooting voice of Sasuke pierced through Naruto's intensive thinking with little true interest. The Uchiha sat only a few feet away, finally sitting upright after needing to catch his breath from another afternoon and evening of them throwing themselves at each other. Sakura wasn't far either, though she wasn't listening all that hard as she was trying to get her pale mannequin-like puppet to take a few strong steps. She was the only one that didn't participate in the fighting so she was free of the dirt and grime that the boy's wore, but she was sweating just as they were with heaving pants. Fingers flexed rhythmically as the puppet staggered and dragged a toe across the ground in a shaky attempt at a step, only for it to fall to the ground with an animalistic growl from the pink-haired girl.
"I don't know. Jiraiya gave it to me and told me to pop it with only using chakra to control the water. Can't use wind chakra and I can't overwhelm it." Sasuke hummed lightly at Naruto's explanation, making the blonde look up from the ball and at his teammate. Sasuke's brow furrowed a little as he went into a brief pause for thought, a frown slowly falling on his lips.
"Probably training to learn how to manipulate chakra for a technique of some kind. Like the elemental manipulation training." At Sasuke's words, which were capped with dark searching eyes to see if his assumption was right. Naruto's eyebrows rose at the explanation, glancing back at the ball and then up to Sasuke again. Just like that, Jiraiya's instructions made complete sense. He had been thinking about the damn thing for hours now and Sasuke caught onto it before he did.
"He always picks up on things faster." Naruto said to himself, justifying to himself why he didn't pick up on something so obvious himself. It made it worse that Naruto hadn't seen Sasuke go through a single exercise for chakra training like Naruto did, his eyes could always make up that ground. But, they called Sasuke a genius for a reason, he supposed. Even if Naruto thought they were just kissing up to the guy at first.
"That makes a lot of sense. Whatever it is, I wasn't told anything about it or how to do the damn thing. The training better be worth it." Naruto practically grumbled, his annoyance being more clear in his voice and added to by the cursing of Sakura and the crumbling puppet that fell just to the left of the two boys. Sasuke didn't reply, but rather fell into a spell of introspective thinking as he tended to do when conversation halted. His eyes seemed to focus on the ball even further with greater intensity, like its rubbery existence was an annoyance to him.
It took a fair bit of thinking to realize what had Sasuke irritated, again, and what the ball had to do with it. When he got it, though, it sparked in him like flint and steel scraping onto kindling.
"He wants to learn more, he wants to know more, and, more importantly, he wants to get stronger." Naruto justified his friend's silent irritations in his mind, the threads connecting more and more as he thought about it. It wasn't a far-fetched thought either as it was a pattern that was showing up more consistently after their training sessions. The more they went, the longer in the day they fought Naruto would come out as the winner more and more. His body was more suited to what they were asking of themselves on the day-to-day basis. Even if Naruto was more than a little hesitant to say that these outcomes were indicative of who was better, it was clear that Sasuke's mind was getting the better of him.
"You're getting stronger too, you know?" Naruto asked, albeit with a fair amount of insecurity in his voice. Serious topics made him more than a little uncomfortable when talking about them outloud. There was too much untread ground to feel sure of his words. "You're lasting longer into the day and kicking my ass more and more."
He wasn't being kind for the sake of being kind either. It truly was harder in the earlier portion of the sparring matches for Naruto to establish himself, the hits that landed on him were harder, Sharingan eyes were harder to avoid, and they were dancing well past dinner time only a week into it. Sasuke was getting stronger, just not as much as he wanted to.
"You saw what I'm trying to surpass. I need more, somehow." Sasuke replied with a rare expression of vulnerability. They had their ways to express to each other that they appreciated one another, but with Naruto and Sasuke making two-thirds of the team there was little open-expression that went on. That was a job for Sakura 10 times out of 10. Seeing Sasuke look from him to Sakura and back, looking for anything that could help him with his troubles felt as good as it did bad. It was a reminder that he had people to care for despite the poor circumstances.
"How fast do you need to get stronger? I'm already falling behind quick enough, aren't I?" Sakura asked, popping into the conversation in the serious turn it took. From Naruto's left, Sakura was still fiddling with the puppet that lay flat on the ground but her green eyes focused solely on Sasuke. She tried to force a sense of joking into her voice in an attempt to lighten the mood, and to his surprise, Sasuke's frown gave way for a small smirk to appear on his face.
"How fast? Yesterday would be great." Sasuke joked, making the three of them all chuckle but the smiling fell away just as quick as it came to be. Sasuke held Naruto's gaze with deep questioning, like something has been settling in his mind for some time already. "If someone gave you the chance to get stronger. To try some new regimen that could speed up your development, would you do it? Even if there was a chance for it to hurt you?"
Clearly, someone had brought this up to Sasuke. The Uchiha wasn't the type to think of hypotheticals that couldn't happen. He was either in the now or thinking of the present to better prepare the future. Sasuke wouldn't entertain possibilities unless they were feasible and could truly help him. The seriousness of the dark eyes in front of him only drove those thoughts home for Naruto, but it was Sakura that answered Sasuke's question first, beating Naruto to the response.
"No, right? If it's dangerous wouldn't it be better to keep going like you are? Like Naruto said, you're getting better already, Sasuke." Sakura sounded as if she picked up on the fact that it was more likely true advice rather than some silly what-if scenario. Even so, she was still unsure about her response, choosing to be more conservative in favor of Sasuke safety. Naruto, however, couldn't agree with her if he wanted to, though.
"If it's something you think is right, go for it. I've used the Fox to get stronger when I wasn't enough by myself, why not do the same if it can help. Just don't get yourself hurt, Sasuke." Though he directly disagreed with Sakura, she didn't argue with his words. Sasuke met his gaze and it seemed like there was more clarity in his dark eyes, like he felt at peace with something and it made Naruto feel a sense of relief. He was there for a friend and helped him.
What could be better?
"Thank you, both of you. I'll see you tomorrow." Sasuke said as he stood up and dusted his jacket and sweats off before leaving heading down the path toward the village. After a couple minutes it was just Naruto and Sakura in the training grounds and he could feel the girl's gaze on him. Turning to her, Naruto was met with a worried face as the kunoichi bit into her own lip in worry.
"Are you sure that was right? What if he gets hurt?" Sakura asked with audible discomfort. Even if she wasn't as preferable to Sasuke as she was when they were fresh out of the Academy, it was clear that some of that still lingered. Naruto couldn't lie and say he wasn't worried that Sasuke may get hurt from whatever he was talking about, but he knew it wouldn't make sense to linger on it. Instead, Naruto gripped the rubber ball in his hand and worked himself into a stand, passing a smile to his teammate.
"Knowing Sasuke, he's thought of it all already and we have nothing to worry about, right?" He asked with a tone that was hopefully reassuring to the girl. Her fingers played with some piece of the puppet in her hand as she gave him a smile back though still clearly unsure. He knew it was the best he'd get, so Naruto gave Sakura his farewells and he too left their training ground and appeared at his front door in a flicker of speed.
He ate and showered in record time. Practically shoveling ration bars down his throat and scrubbing the grime from his body in his small bathroom until there was not more dirt flowing through the semi-clogged drain near his feet. As soon as he was cleaned up and his stomach was no longer complaining with very audible growls, Naruto turned back to the damned unpopped rubber ball. Sleep never came quick, but now he had something to focus his mind on as he waited for the few hours of nightmare-filled rest he would receive. Though, he couldn't help but let the simple training exercise nag deeply at him. Blue eyes stared at the tan ball and there was something within Naruto's mind that told him he was missing something blatantly obvious. It was like he knew exactly what he needed to do, as if he saw it before, but just couldn't bring it to the front of his mind.
A ball of water that could spin fast enough to pop the rubber. A sphere of fluid strong enough to create significant power. "What the hell am I missing?"
That feeling lingered in Naruto's mind for the rest of the night, through the dozens of failed attempts and into his restless sleep after discarding the rubber ball onto his bedside table. As is standard through most nights, Naruto's sleep was slow coming and greeted swiftly with images that often unsettled him more than the lack of sleep itself. However, on this night, Naruto was spared from the visions of that horrid world that Itachi Uchiha dragged him into. A separate, but equally familiar nightmare replaced the genjutsu world for the first time in weeks as Naruto was given a sight of the Hidden Leaf Village from the mountainous height of the Nine-Tailed Fox. He stared once again at the miniscule outline of his father as pure chakra formed just above the Tailed-Beast's nose, and watched as the Hokage Monument was overshadowed by a village-leveling sphere of spiraling chakra. A tingle ran through Naruto's mind, a relief of something he couldn't recall missing, but his mind didn't have the luxury of deciphering that feeling as he was forced to watch the rest of the disastrous night.
When he woke, Naruto was again greeted with the early morning light he was getting so familiar with. Nights of restful oversleep seemed to be more and more of a luxury of the past and his alarm clock looked like more of an accessory than a necessity that he was prone to ignore. When his blue eyes scanned the darkened space of his bedroom, everything suddenly clicked into place as the tan rubber ball fell into his line of sight. Swirling, spiraling chakra hung in the back of his mind and immediately a hand lashed out to grab the water-filled ball. The fingers of his right hand dug deeply into the ball's surface and his chakra swarmed into the water inside it.
Eyelids were squeezed tightly as he focused on making the water replicate the movements of the ball of chakra he saw within his dreams. Instead of one, uniformed current within the sphere of water, several small cyclones all spun together in synchronous motion. The ball didn't merely flatten when the water sped up from his ministrations, but rather began severely malformed from the multiple currents within it. The surface of the rubber rippled and bubbled, and when he saw this progress, Naruto only increased his manipulations until it all ended with a loud pop. His face, the boxers he wore, and the bedding sprawled around him all got covered in water, instantly impeding his comfort, but Naruto could only grin in triumph at his success.
"I knew I was just missing something!" The completion of the exercise filled Naruto with an energy he had severely been lacking most mornings and most days. But this morning and this day, there was bit more skip in his steps on the way to the training ground, there was a bit more energy and excitement in his movements as he trained with Tenzo once again to refine his combat prowess with the use of elemental jutsu intermingled, and when they were finished, Naruto reveled in seeing Jiraiya drop from a tree in the distance.
Tenzo lingered behind him, likely staying to listen to what Jiraiya had to pass on to the blonde, and Naruto stood as he looked on at Jiraiya's smug grin in his approach.
"How's that assignment I gave you, kid? Are you stumped yet?" Naruto could practically feel the bubbling boast in the Sannin's voice and it only stirred his own self-congratulation. Lips curled upward to meet the Toad Sage's gaze, and when Jiraiya stopped in front of him his smile faltered just a hair.
"I did it." He said, as calm as he could manage. If he was younger or spurred on to lift his fire more, Naruto would've had a bunch of colorful brags and boasts to throw at the older man's face, but now he only basked in seeing Jiraiya's face fully fall at the simple response. There was a pause in the man as he inspected Naruto, eyes slowly narrowing into a suspicious glare. Disbelief was clear in the older man and confirmed when another rubber ball that sloshed with water fell into Naruto's hands.
"Prove it." Jiraiya replied haughtily, crossing his arms while he half-heartedly glared at Naruto. Another spark of determination filtered into him as he fixed the ball firmly into his right hand, flexing his fingers almost painfully to filter his chakra into the rubber ball through the digits. Just as the ball early in the morning, the ball slowly began to ripple, then bubble, and then with a percussive pop, Naruto's face was coated in water.
Naruto didn't notice Tenzo's approach until the man was directly to his right, brown eyes bearing down on him questioningly while Jriaiya's challenging gaze was replaced with whole-hearted excitement. Had he tried, Naruto was sure Jiraiya could get the corners of his mouth to tickle each of his ears.
"I knew you could do it, kid. I had hoped it was sooner than later, but you got it in less than a day. You should be proud of that." Naruto had seen Jiraiya get excitable here and there before when he was learning summoning, but the complete excitement from the man was new. One could confuse the fame Sannin with a child given a present. Much like before, Jiraiya reached into his baggy robes and pulled another rubber ball and tossed it at Naruto. As opposed to the first two balls Jiraiya had given him, the rubber toy was not sloshing with water when Naruto caught it but just air. "Do the same thing with that ball as you did with the water, and when you can do that I'll tell you what you're doing this for."
Almost like clockwork, the second Jiraiya finished his last words a toad appeared on his shoulder. It was a small toad, red and decorated with purple along its body. From what he remembered from the sage's teachings of the Toad Summons, Naruto was sure that it was some sort of messenger toad and the Sannin quickly took his leave to handle whatever business he had to handle. The field was left to just Tenzo and Naruto, but the jounin followed Jiraiya's leave soon after and Naruto was left to his lonesome.
His day passed as all the others did. After his training with Tenzo, he met with Sakura and Sasuke to make use of the rest of the day. At any point he could, Naruto turned his attention to the air-filled ball that would rest in his pocket. He would grip the ball tightly in his hand as he did the previous rubber ball, but instead of instant success, like he'd hoped from his technique, Naruto was impeded by another obstacle. Where the water-filled ball would succumb to the movements of the water, the air-filled ball would only settle in his hand as he released his chakra within the rubbered surface.
The following days were monotonous in his training. There were no more epiphanies to come in his nightmares, only failed attempts at popping a ball, training with his teams, and smug comments in the brief meetings with Jiraiya. The Toad Sage had said, after the fifth day of no progress with the damned rubber ball, that soon he would have to leave again for another job. A shorter job, the sage had hoped, but he wouldn't be able to follow through with the rest of whatever training it was he was putting the blonde through until he came back. Whenever the hell that would be. Naruto couldn't lie to himself, he was painfully curious at what he could possibly be practicing for and with Jiraiya's coy reactions to both forward and backward progress in these exercises it only spurred that curiosity further. But first, as per the Toad Sage's own words, he would have to pass this obstacle first.
That line of thought is what found Naruto sitting on his father's head as half a moon hung high in the sky. He sat cross-legged on the stone head, ball squished in the fingertips of his upturned right hand and his left hand flexed intermittently around his right wrist. Eyes closed tightly as his chakra almost reflexively flowed into the ball and circulated within the space, but he was met with the same resistance as always. Chakra would spin violently but a limit in its aggression would be reached long before the ball could burst and his chakra would dissipate into nothingness as he gave up. For whatever reason, it seemed like no matter how tightly he spun the separate currents of chakra, the rubber just wouldn't give.
Naruto relaxed his arms in his lap and just stared out into the village with half a snarl on his face. He hated not getting it. He didn't get it the whole time he was in the Academy and fell behind everyone around him. The thought made him clench his jaw tightly and grip the ball once again. This time, when the chakra spun violently within the skin of the ball, as the aggression of the sphere hit its limit and the spiraling was going to peak before disappointedly falling away, Naruto only held his hands tighter and forwent Jiraiya's initial instructions when he was first given a ball. Naruto was told not to simply overwhelm the ball with his chakra, but right now he only wanted this damn thing to pop.
Like so many times before, the surface of the rubber ball rippled and bubbled, but as soon as it peaked Naruto flooded the ball with even more chakra that filled the rubbered skin to the brim. In a single concussive boom, the ball no longer sat in the Jinchuuriki's tight grip but rather in shreds in his surrounding area. The surface of his palm stung but pain was the last thing on his mind as relief settled in the chunin's mind. Rather than the pride of the first passed step of this exercise, Naruto was simply glad to not be bogged down by the twice-damned rubber ball that was intent on giving him so much resistance. Now, he could get to the next step without having to wait for Jiraiya to come back from wherever he was going to run off to.
Naruto carried that relief back to his apartment and into some much needed, peaceless sleep.
"How's that ball coming kid? I have places to be tomorrow, did you finally get it?" There was still no urgency to Jiraiya's questioning, like he was fully expecting Naruto to come back empty and wait until their next meeting to progress. Naruto didn't meet Jiraiya with a matching smile, but with a frustration-filled completion of this step of the process, Naruto only gave the man a silent nod. "Oh-ho, I hope you can prove it, kid. You seemed pretty lost yesterday."
And again, with another ball finding itself in Naruto's hands, Naruto followed through the same process he did the night before. But when the pop rang out through the field, Naruto half-expected to be reprimanded for not following the instructions of the first exercise.
"Well, would you look at that? You figured it out." Naruto's eyebrows shot up at the Toad Sage's words, but before a question could fall out of his mouth a hand was ruffling the top of his head roughly. "I knew you could do it kid, but I didn't take you for a stickler for rules."
Jiraiya's words only confused him more rather than clearing anything up. He looked to his right, where Tenzo was silently listening to the interaction, but the jounin only shook his head without an explanation of Jiraiya's words. Luckily, the Sannin took pity on Naruto and spoke up again.
"When I told you to not flood the ball with chakra, that was only for the first ball. The first step is only to learn how to use your chakra properly for what I'm trying to teach you. The second step is to fill the ball with chakra, not water and do the same but implement power to the rotation inside the ball. Now, I can show you the hardest part of learning this special technique. Follow me." There was a glint in the eye and a proud grin upon the face of Jiraiya as he led Naruto, and Tenzo by proxy, to the tree he tended to use as a hawk's nest while he trained. When the Toad Sage stopped in front of the tree, Naruto and Tenzo gave the man space to perform his demonstration.
"Watch carefully," Jiraiya said, half turned to Naruto while keeping the chosen tree to his left as he raised his right arm. The older man's fingers tightened just as Naruto's did, gripping the rubber ball, and almost immediately, a spherical ball of spiraling chakra formed just above the man's palm. Air around the light blue sphere was singing the highest of pitches from the sheer power that radiated from the technique. "The Rasengan. A jutsu invented by your father after he witnessed a Tail-Beast's ultimate attack. It was intended to be the pinnacle of offensive chakra usage."
As Jiraiya spoke, he took the cadence and tone of an almost entirely different person. His words were slowed, calm, and concise at almost a whisper as the man lost himself while staring into the spiraling sphere within his palms. Turning his focus from the Sannin to the ball itself, Naruto realized exactly why he subconsciously made the connection to the Nine-Tails' attack on the village. This is what the Fox tried to launch at his father, the chakra that swirled together and detonated like some sort of otherworldly explosive far in the distance. It was the same, only smaller and much more contained. The chakra wasn't pure energy from the world but coerced energy from the user, and yet it seemed dangerous all the same despite that lesser medium.
Without warning, breaking the dead air that was only filled with the savage hum of the jutsu, Jiraiya torqued his body and slammed the palm that held the ball of chakra into the trunk of the tree. The moment the spinning chakra made contact with the bark, debris flew into the air at dangerous speeds. Within seconds the thick of the trunk was chewed through and discarded, followed closely by the rest of the tree that was thrown backwards. The thick-trunked oak was naught but an inconvenience for the Rasengan, and when Jiraiya turned his body back to retract his arm, there was no evidence that his hands had anything to do with the tree's destruction.
Simply flawless.
Naruto could only stare with wide-eyes, never truly seeing a technique do so much damage so nonchalantly. And there weren't even hand seals!
"That is what I want you to be able to do by the next time I see you. You've done the first two steps, so by default you have the structure and shape of the technique down. Now, you need to perfect it." The Toad Sage led Naruto to the next closest tree as he explained himself, directing a hand to the tree's trunk to have Naruto follow his lead. The tree was of similar size as the one Jiraiya just felled, but the chunin simply stood in front of it unsure of what to do. "Form the Rasengan you created within the rubber ball you just popped and slam it into the tree. You'll see what you need to do then."
He did just as Jiraiya asked, albeit with much more struggle and a lot less grace than the previous demonstration. His right hand flexed hard enough to bring aches in many places, eyes closed and the bridge of his nose wrinkled, his left hand squeezed his wrist as he tried to form the chakra in the empty space above his hand. When the air started to sing once again, Naruto knew to open his eyes once again but the sound was an early indicator of how different his was compared to Jiraiya's. When Naruto's eyes opened, The ball in his hand looked larger than the Sannin's Rasengan, but more translucent. His Rasengan sliced through the air, but it was quieter and duller. This Rasengan was the blue of the physical representation of his pur chakra, but it was fainter than Jiraiya's, the blue paler and lacking the same luster than the Rasengan Jiraiya formed.
The differences were visibly apparent, but when his sphere met the bark of the tree he stood in front of, those differences were night and day. It would be disrespectful to even consider the two techniques similar outside of their overall composition. Instead of flying chips of wood and the sound of a collapsing oak, Naruto only watched as the sphere in his hand began to dissolve the moment the chakra touched the bark. When his palm met the bark of the tree, the only evidence that anything encountered the tree was the single spiraling gash that carved just outside his extended hand. The only proof of what should be the pinnacle of offensive ninjutsu was a carving that would only disappear in time as the bark reformed and regrew.
"Right now, what you have is an impressive demonstration of chakra control, but when I see you again, I expect a well and true Rasengan. You hear? But now I have to go so I can get my ducks in a row before Kakashi pushes me out of the gates." Jiraiya gave his instruction carefully before he discarded their company in a swirl of kicked up leaves as the man left the grounds in a Body Flicker. Even in the month he learned the details of summoning, Jiraiya had never made a lesson quite so formal. It had Naruto at a loss, making him turn to Tenzo with his eyebrow raised in question.
Teno discarded the boy's confusion and looked at Naruto with an impassive look that was common on the man's face.
"I will leave you as well, Naruto, But first I must let you know that we won't be meeting in the morning. The Hokage has requested me first thing in the morning, I will come find you after the fact should it be necessary." Much like Jiraiya, Tenzo punctuated his words by leaving Naruto in the training ground. The jounin slid into the ground as if he were one with it, and with only a few seconds of pause, Naruto joined the two older men and took his leave.
Normally, Naruto would've left in a faster fashion than a leisurely stroll, but he was in no rush to meet at Training Ground 3. His training ended earlier than usual and now he had time to relax, or rather he had time to start working on the Rasengan. The chunin followed a path back into the village, headed to the stone heads that seemed to spur his previous works with the technique, but was quickly side tracked as his blue eyes met the dark-green eyes of his friend in the crowd of villagers. She was walking opposite to where she usually did when they would run into each other, but that could be explained by the time of day.
Temari approached him with a smirk that was perpetually on her face.
"Early release, Uzumaki?" She called to him as she entered the bubble of space he was allotted in public. They both stopped in the road of the village, drifting off to the side of the dirt path so as to not clog the consistently bustling crowd.
"Yeah and no training tomorrow. Where are you going?" He asked, as his eyes drifted to the bodies that passed them in the lunch hours of the day. Usually, when Naruto would run into Temari, it would be near dinnertime when she was returning to her and Kankuro's apartment with groceries. She may have mentioned when she would train with Tenten in passing, but it seemed late, to him, for them to just get started now.
"I wait until Tenten is done with her team before I meet her," so he was wrong and by the way she responded, Naruto was sure that he was wrong and she's definitely mentioned it before. Temari looked like she was going to continue with that line of thought before he saw her head spin to him almost aggressively, "But if you're not training tomorrow morning, then I get to finally show off how to really use wind jutsu."
Naruto saw the glint in Temari's eye, the almost reflexive grab of the foot of her fan that crossed her back and ended near her right hand, and knew that he wouldn't have much of a say in this one way or another.
But, an invitation to join a friend? Unbidden? Who in their right mind would reject it, anyway?
Brown eyes read through the words on the scroll that the Hokage gave him. Orders of a mission and then more for a second mission that would never exist. It was nothing particularly extensive. How could it be if he was taking his student with him? But the fact that he and his…team? Apprentice? The fact that they were given a job at all wasn't something that Tenzo had expected in the first place.
"I trust that you and Naruto will see this done on all counts, right Tenzo?" The Hokage asked him, but not in any accusatory fashion. His superior merely wished affirmation to his orders and without hesitation, Tenzo gave him that.
"It will be done, but I'm not sure how it can be done without outside knowledge. We will be traveling with others." He inquired, but Lord Fifth's response wasn't with words. A scroll was caught inches in front of his face, but instead of a mission scroll, this one was titled "Forbidden" with dark red ink. Tenzo was familiar with the sealing formula that lined the scroll's edges, inked designs that were reminiscent of flamed markings dancing around the circled sides of the enclosed jutsu.
"He's needed a functional and practical clone, now he'll have one that can be used for what it was designed for. We need discrete eyes where we can't have them with so many operatives in the Land of Fire. See it done but don't risk too much." Tenzo nodded at his Hokage and bowed when he was formally dismissed.
Upon exiting the Hokage Tower, Tenzo went about searching for his student, but it took longer than he had hoped after the Hokage Monument, Naruto's apartment, and Training Ground 3 were all empty. Off a passing thought, Tenzo followed the path that connected grounds 3 and 6 to each other and was pleasantly surprised to see the training ground in use by a pair of shinobi. The blonde he was tasked with training and the blonde he was tasked with overseeing while they visited the village were both making use of the training ground with violent gusts of wind and kicking up dirt that tried to dig into his eyes.
It was odd, watching Naruto spar with someone that wasn't him. Especially when the blonde wasn't getting tossed around one way or another after every exchange of blows. No, Naruto seemed to be taking part in a game of cat and mouse as he tried to cut through the space Temari would create with massive swings of her fan and brief bouts of gliding. The jounin simply watched the two dance around the field for a few minutes, taking note of a few lessons he could teach Naruto in long-range combat before he journeyed further into the grounds to relay the message he had to.
"Naruto." He called out in a voice just louder than his speaking voice. With the running around the pair were doing, he'd expected to need a couple of tries to get the chunin's attention, but surprisingly enough, all was halted immediately. Granted, he was practically skewered with two sharp pairs of eyes, but it was stopped all the same. "Prepare yourself, we have a mission in the Land of Wind. We depart first thing tomorrow morning."
This was the last chapter that fit within the limits of the first doc I typed this story on, crazy to think about. There's going to be shifting around in the next few chapters, but I think it should be noted that the next few chapters aren't in a chronological order as they'll be happening around the same time. The only difference is simply which story i'm telling within that chapter.