That's right, chapter 9 already. This is actually the longest chapter I've posted so far, so enjoy it.
Chapter 9
Team 6 met their client at the Ramen stand, a special request, and they were formally introduced. Naruto was sitting with his full Hokage regalia, hat and all, and smiled as the genin approached him with their instructor.
"Hokage-sama," Gaara greeted with a bow, and thus silently indicating to his team to do the same.
"Neh, Gaara, you don't have to bow to me," said Naruto slightly embarrassed but full of himself.
Gaara did so, and said none-to-discreetly, "Naruto, shut up."
Hagaimaru looked at his teacher in wonder, "You're on a first name basis with one of the kage!"
Gaara rubbed his eyes; he didn't need this.
Naruto, on the other hand, seemed quite delighted by this, "Yes he is. You know, we took our first Chuunin exam together. On different teams of course, but whatever. Anyway, all he was wanted to do was fight my teammate, Sasuke-bastard, and I wanted to fight Sasuke, too. Have you heard before what happened at those exams?"
All of the genin, now thoroughly engrossed in the story, shook their heads no.
"Well, we all ended up getting to the final round, and he was supposed to fight Sasuke, but Sasuke couldn't make it on time, so they postponed the match. I had to fight this guy named Neji--"
"It's time to go," Gaara declared and left the ramen stand headed in the direction of the main gate of the village.
"Aw...I was just getting to the good part," Naruto complained, getting up and following the jounin.
The genin left forth a collective sigh, disappointed they wouldn't hear the end of the story. The continued on after the two adults, snickering as Naruto continually called Gaara a "spoil sport," and "party pooper," and tried to flick his ear. The attempts were, of course, stopped by the sand, but it didn't keep it from annoying Gaara.
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The genin were not disappointed for the mission. Though Naruto decided he forgot how the rest of his original story went, he began other stories, such as how he had met and trained under the Great Jiraiya-Sama, and his some of his more humorous misadventures.
He also told stories about Gaara, blowing them out of proportion to make it seem like their instructor was the greatest ninja in the world. Ones such as how Gaara had fought Kaguya Kimimaro, the last of the Kaguya clan and quite possibly the strongest. It made them wonder further about why he wasn't Kazekage.
"I tried to convince him," Naruto explained, "But I guess he was turned off by all the paper work you have to do."
Naruto had even convinced Gaara to slow their route down and have everyone train together as they continue on.
"We'll make a day out it," Naruto said, clapping his hands together.
Gaara glared, "Naruto, we will not be 'making a day' out of a mission."
"Oh come on," Naruto responded, "The team at the border isn't expecting me until nightfall anyway."
The cork on Gaara's gourd had popped off when Naruto said this.
Gaara did have to admit that the training was a good idea. The simple bodyguarding mission didn't offer much experience for the genin, so training along the way in the desert certainly helped.
The genin sparred with each other, and then Naruto decided he wanted to get in on the fun.
"Who wants to spar with me?" He asked.
After seeing no objection from Gaara, all three of the genin took the offer.
Naruto decided his first battle would be with Seiseike. The boy stepped up calmly and faced the hokage. When Yaezaki called Go, both started running to the left.
Seiseike preformed some quick handseals and called out, "Suna Bunshin no Jutsu!" Creating three clones that ran in separate zigzag patterns, but in the same direction.
Naruto didn't hold back. He stopped suddenly and bit his thumb and slammed it to the ground, shouting, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"
A frog twice the size of a tiger emerged, with Naruto sitting atop its back, and used its large tongue to lash out at one of the Seiseike's running about. It hit, moving quickly and striking its target hard. Seiseike disappeared in a cloud of smoke, a pile of sand in his place. A clone was missing.
"How clever," said Naruto, "There's nothing around for a proper replacement, so you're using sand-clones instead."
Naruto threw a kunai at another, this one simply collapsing into a pile of sand, proving it to be a clone.
The last two were moving progressively closer, both forming hand seals while dodging the tongue of the frog. Naruto knew only one was real, but bided his time. Meanwhile the Seiseike's had finished their hand seals, and yelled simultaneously, "buraindo metsuki no jutsu!"
A flash of blue. Nothing happened a moment, and then Naruto called out, "I…I'm blind!"
He held his eyes for a moment, as Seiseike jumped into the air, pulling a kunai out and readying to stab the Hokage. Then, Naruto looked right at Seiseike, shrugged, and then grinned his fox grin, "Just kidding!"
He then whipped out a kunai threw it at Seiseike, who took it full in the gut. And then disappeared in a puff of smoke, sand falling in his place.
"Damnit," Naruto chuckled, "Already forgot he had one last clone."
Naruto looked around quickly from the frog's back, when the frog suddenly reared back, throwing Naruto off.
"What the Hell!"
The frog disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving Seiseike crouched below where the huge frog's mouth had been; the kunai he had been holding to strike Naruto raised as though it had just been stabbed at an upward angle.
"Seems that even if you could throw off the genjutsu, your frog couldn't," Seiseike said with an arrogant smirk. He then threw the kunai at Naruto, who caught it, then disappeared. He reappeared behind Seiseike, with the kunai at his throat.
"Well played, kid. You," the Hokage pointed to Hagaimaru, "are up next."
Seiseike moved away as soon as the kunai had been taken away from his neck, and watched as Hagaimaru stepped up.
"Yeah!" Shouted Hagaimaru, "You might be Hokage, but I'm not gonna lose!"
Naruto must have seen the same resemblance in attitude Gaara had seen, so he called over to his friend, "Neh, Gaara, what can you tell me about this kid."
Gaara answered back, "He was the only one that could beat one of my sand clones with only taijutsu."
Naruto smiled. "Only Taijutsu? Alright, if that's how you like it, how about this is a taijutsu spar?"
"Right on!" Hagaimaru answered the challenge.
"Go!" Yaezaki called, and the fight began.
Unlike Seiseike, Hagaimaru rushed straight in to meet Naruto with a flying kick. Naruto flew at Hagaimaru with an identical kick, but landed short and spun like a top with his leg extended so that his heel caught Hagaimaru leg, throwing the boy to the side. Hagaimaru quickly recovered and rushed forward again with a second flying kick. Naruto ducked under it and sprang up to punch Hagaimaru in the jaw, but Hagaimaru wasn't there.
Naruto looked quickly over his shoulder to see if the boy had simply flown over him, but seeing that Hagaimaru wasn't there, he checked the other directions as to where the boy might be.
"Left, right, behind, ahead…" He whispered to himself. He brought his fist to the ground, causing the sand around him to separate and a deep crevice to form in the sand around him. The sand revealed nothing.
"…if all else fails, then look below," A voice confirmed his oversight, "Never forget about above!"
Hagaimaru brought his fist crashing down into the spot where Naruto had been a moment before. The older nin's reflexes were better honed than his, and Naruto was thus able to get out of the way. It was also because of this Naruto was able to deliver a strong palm strike to the center of Hagaimaru's chest, throwing him back several yards.
Hagaimaru felt an incredible anger building up toward the Hokage. Instead of taking into consideration of how much higher in level Naruto was compared to him, he thought only of how he had always been amazing at taijutsu, and here seemed to be one of the only people that might be better than him. His cheeks felt like they were burning from how embarrassed he was. He tightened his muscles, and as soon as he touched the ground, he pushed off with all of his might, which caused him to move with such speed that Naruto gave up tracking his movements with his eyes. After all, he was no Uchiha. He relied, instead, on intuition.
Hagaimaru was taking a distinctly direct route, straight toward him, that was fairly obvious, so Naruto punched forward and caught the air. Only four ways to go, and he would have felt him if the boy was beneath him. That left a one-third chance that the way Hagaimaru would be coming at him was going to be the right one.
His answer came as a fist in the face, unfortunately, not at all what he had hoped for. But as long as it was there…
Naruto grabbed the arm that had punched him and threw the boy over his shoulder, land him heavily on the ground. Hagaimaru lay, completely winded, nearly gasping for breath.
"Careful, now," Naruto said, "Gaara might have trained with Gai's team, but I'm the one that controls the entire village that they're from."
Naruto rubbed his cheek as he called up Yaezaki. Yaezaki, though, had just seen both of her teammates beaten quite easily by a man that was now supposed to be her opponent. She just wanted to weigh her options before she went in.
On one hand, she probably had no chance of winning. On the other hand, Hagaimaru would probably call her a chicken as Seiseike smirked an arrogant smirk. Possible severe Beating…total Humiliation. She swallowed her fears and stepped up to face Naruto.
"Hey!" Naruto said, "I get it. This guy," He pointed at Seiseike, "uses genjutsu, and this guy," shifted his finger to Hagaimaru, who had lamely limped/crawled to the designated sidelines, "uses taijutsu." He smiled, "Which must make you the ninjutsu specialist, neh?"
Yaezaki nodded. How he had decided that she had no time to wonder. Naruto next statement made her wonder if the utter humiliation would be such a bad idea.
"I'm sort of a Ninjutsu specialist, too."
She prayed that whatever he was going to do, he would at least attempt to tone down.
Just as Naruto said that, Gaara called, "Go."
Naruto quickly began forming hand seals, and was deep in concentration, so Yaezaki took the time to clear her head and think of what to do. She quickly lit up as an idea came to her, and she reached into her kunai holster and shuriken pack, grabbing two kunai and as many shuriken as she could hold. She threw them at Naruto, and then formed several short hand seals and calling, "Shuriken Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
The seven or so projectiles turned to fourteen, and then to twenty eight. They angled around Naruto to cover him from all sides. Naruto broke his concentration and his seal making to jump out of the way of the rain of steel. He quickly found a new place to rest and restart his jutsu.
Yaezaki tried to use the Shuriken Kage Bunshin again, but Naruto had moved further away, and therefore the shuriken and their copies couldn't reach him in time to break the attempted jutsu.
"Suiton: Suiryuudan no Jutsu!"
A dragon made of water suddenly formed in front of him, circling around and stopping the kunai with its body. It then set its sights on Yaezaki, who, seeing this, quickly formed a few more hand seals, and calling, "Suna Bunshin no Jutsu!" Creating eight clones from the sand around her.
The water dragon attempted to blast through all eight, which purposefully planted themselves in its way. But the jutsu could only take so much stress, and stopping the shurikan and blasting through about six clones and it had reached its limit, bursting into water droplets so small that they evaporated quickly in the desert heat.
Naruto pouted. "So little condensation in the air," he complained, "That's the only reason it was so weak. If there was some real water around her, it would've lasted."
Yaezaki didn't pay attention to this, as she was starting her next jutsu already. "Fuuton: Kaze tokkan no jutsu!"
A sort of mini tornado formed, but it was as though it was tilted on its side, the narrow part extending from Yaezaki out, picking up sand and whipping it around the vortex at a rapid speed. Naruto quickly realized that it was the small, normally harmless grains of sand that presented the true danger. Anything being spun around at such high speeds was going to hurt if it hit you and grains of sand, being so small, could easily dig and stick into the skin if some one was caught in the middle of the tornado. Naruto had no intention of this.
Yaezaki could not see what her opponent was doing, as her own sand tornado impeded her view of him. She thought she could make him out doing something…attempting another jutsu, perhaps. She could, though, hear his yell quite clearly, though.
"Rasengan!"
The next thing Yaezaki knew, a swirling ball of chakra was staring her in the face, her own spinning vortex offset by the opposite motion of this ball of chakra. And though Naruto had a few minor cuts, he was fine. Then, the blue ball of chakra disappeared, and Naruto announced, "Sorry, you loose."
Yaezaki sat down, a little more than slightly shaken up by the previous events. Gaara took a quick check. The genin, though beaten, had virtually no injuries. Naruto had been holding back so that he didn't hurt them. Which made Gaara's job easier, he wouldn't have to explain how his team had returned with life-threatening injuries when there had been no enemies.
"Well," Naruto said, with his biggest fox grin, "Seems that there's only one last sparring match to have."
Gaara glared, "No, Naruto."
"Oh come on, all you ever do is come to me with your problems, we never get to really duke it out. Come on, for old time's sake," Naruto pleaded.
"I think you just want revenge for making you spill soup on yourself."
Naruto's expression darkened, "Not just hot, Gaara, scalding. And not just soup, Gaara, ramen! My Ramen!"
"I can understand why you didn't go into acting," Gaara replied coolly.
"Is that a yes or no?"
"Do I have a choice."
Naruto smiled, and turned to the rest of Team 6, "That, Children, is how Gaara-sensei says, 'yes.'"
I hope that you don't mind that the battles were especially short and condensed. Ifigure Naruto's strong enough that they wouldn't last long, and I really wanted to get through it all to set up the last part.
Chapter 10 to be out whenever: Naruto vs. Gaara!