Chapter 9

A Scarecrow, a Drunk, and Three Kids Walk into a Puddle…

"-so then I took the ten skunks I'd caught in my traps that week and knocked them out, then set them loose in half the grocers in town!"

Raucous laughter bellows from the slightly drunken and aged architect, peeking back to the troublesome blonde with the widest grin he'd managed in weeks. "Brat, that has to be one of the best damn revenge pranks I've ever heard! And believe me, I work construction, I've seen some shit go down on the job!" He barks out another laugh and takes a heavy swig. "You ever see what happens when bored construction lackeys have a passed-out coworker and a surplus of cement?"

Naruto's eyes nearly light up. "I have yet to witness this majesty, but damn do I want to."

Kakashi groans and covers his face for a moment. "You're going to learn to use cement as a jutsu trap now, aren't you?"

"Hmmm…" Naruto scratches his chin as he thinks over the application. "Well… depends on the elements required. I have earth, and I can probably learn the minimum of water needed to pull that off if I really push it, but… I'm not sure about what else would be involved."

Kakashi pauses as he watches Naruto think. It's such a marvel to hm, watching him set himself to solving a problem like this. So much like his father. It's far from a conventional puzzle, either, yet he still views the pieces and seeks an abstract solution to an abstract issue. He can nearly see from the twitches in his face that he's already conceptualized the elements as the largest pieces of the puzzle but isn't certain if it's set with those two or needs another. Eventually, he decides to pitch in on the issue. "As best I know, cement based jutsu tend to require a combination of earth, water, and fire. It's a pretty abstract combination, and the only time I've ever seen anyone use it…" He pauses and looks to the sky. "Well, last time was someone of considerable rapport from Iwa. I believe he was the Tsuchikage's son, Kitsuchi."

Naruto whistles. "Damn. Well, I'll have to settle for making a seal with that function then. Maybe seal some wet cement, and it'll be preserved and come back out still wet? Or maybe focus on earth and wind to produce aerated soil that acts like quicksand?"

Sakura blanches at the thought of that. "Naruto, has everyone ever told you your mind is scary?"

"Dad, Kakashi-sensei, Hokage-jiji, several anbu, Yoko, and Shika."

"Of course you had an answer for that."

Sasuke blurts out from the back. "How fast can your current explosive stock launch Tora from a 10-inch-wide canon?"

"THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EIGHT MILES PER HOUR!"

Kakashi side-eyes his demented student. "How many exploding tags did you make?"

"Are we talkin normal ones, or specialty?"

Kakashi groans and slouches. "You're gonna make me the first acting shinobi to die of a heart attack." He nearly uprights himself at the sight of a puddle up ahead, but acts natural as he can manage whilst paying close attention to his students. Sakura calms down surprisingly fast from the horrors of Naruto's mind and positions herself closer to Tazuna rather slowly. Sasuke remains at the back, eyes steeled and attentive. Naruto shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket to hide his handsign, and there's a light, almost imperceptible puff of smoke in the front of his jacket, where Yoko had been hiding.

Soon after they pass the puddle, two cloaked shinobi in facemasks and wearing a pair of bladed gauntlets connected by a bladed chain emerge from the puddle and rush them from behind.

The moment after they step out, a subterranean exploding tag goes off behind them and blasts them into the air. They manage to upright themselves and throw kunai from the air, but the set of people they throw them at fade from view. By the time they've landed, Sasuke is roundhousing them both in the head from behind, then grabbing their backs and releasing a light shock through the water still soaking them thanks to their choice of camouflage jutsu. They both fight through the shocks and glare back to Sasuke before bursting into water. As the water clones drop, Sasuke leaps back towards the troop, still standing back behind where the puddle had been before Naruto's trap went off. Pulling a kunai from his pouch, he peeks about to assess where they may attack from next. Yoko pops from the ground beside Naruto and yaps towards the southeast. On cue, Sakura unloads a handful of senbon that way, and Naruto backs it up with a kunai. At first, the twin assassins dodge them with ease, but the kunai unleashes another explosion and almost splits them up, without having an attached tag. The seal was carved onto the metal. The tension of their chain keeps them together and wrenches both their arms as it brings them to an abrupt halt mid-air. Naruto's laughter can be clearly heard from their failed hiding spot in the woods. "You heard me talkin' shit about my specialty tags!"

"Damnit, these kids are making fools of us!" One of the twins struggles to his feet, but his brother throws down a smoke bomb and pulls him back.

"Didn't you fucking see who their sensei is? That was Hatake Kakashi! We need to get the hell out of here and give Zabuza our intel, and he'll have a better shot at this." His brother knows better to argue, considering who they're up against. They retreat in silence, leaving Team 7 and Tazuna to gather their thoughts and address the elephant in the room.

Kakashi slowly turns to stare down their client, followed by his students. "Just bandits, huh? So then, Tazuna… why were the Demon Twins after you specifically when they attacked Sakura's illusion?"

"O-oh, um… heheh…" Tazuna slowly raises his hands and backs himself into a tree. "I-I've got no idea what that was about, I s-swear!" The four shinobi and their loyal fox stare him down with increasingly potent glares and even a small burst of killing intent from Kakashi by the time he cracks. "O-Ok, ok! It's Gato, the shipping mogul! He's been bleeding my country dry for years, and my bridge is the only thing that's gonna break his hold on us! If I don't finish this bridge, my people are gonna starve to death under Gato's watch, and he'll drag the survivors into his human trafficking ring!"

Silence falls as the stakes sink in. Kakashi slowly uprights himself and shoves his hands into his pockets. "Ugh… You've been in deep for a while now, and you've gotten us to wade in after you. Well…" He sighs and closes his eyes. "technically, we're no longer obligated to complete this mission, as you've misinformed us and had it labeled as two ranks below what it now clearly is. We have the right to turn around and head back home-"

Kakashi pauses as he feels Naruto slap a tag onto his back. He can't be sure what this one's meant to do. "No. Hell no. Sensei, you heard what the man said. If you turn this team around now, I'll set off this modified glitter bomb tag on your back. I call it the glitter geyser. It won't stop for about an hour, and I have dozens of others to plaster all over your apartment."

Sasuke stammers for a moment as his eye twitches at the sheer absurdity of what Naruto's just done. "O-Ok, I'm with the dobe here on continuing the mission, but... what the hell?"

"Yeah… Naruto?" Sakura turns to her teammate and cracks her knuckles. "Why did you think it's a good idea to threaten our sensei?"

He gives her a nearly blank stare, brows slightly raised as though to say he expected this to be obvious. "It's a threat of a prank, not harm. No rules against that."

"… Oh. Why the hell do so many of your traps use glitter, though?"

"Are you kidding?!" He throws his arms into the air, signaling the start of yet another rant that fuses brilliance and absurdity in equal measure. "Glitter is the best prank material ever! It's physically harmless, the stuff made from seaweed is healthy and biodegradable, but it gets everywhere and becomes a sparkly long-term annoyance you just can't ignore! And any trap I can rig with glitter, I could just as easily rig with dozens of smaller scale explosives or poison! And don't even get me started on the applications of the geyser sty-"

Kakashi clears his throat. "As I was about to say…" Annoyance bleeds through his nearly clenched teeth. "I know my students would protest, and morally, I can't bring myself to turn around either. So please, remove the tag from my back, and I'll call in for backup."

Tazuna drops to sit beneath the tree with an exasperated sigh, nearly collapsing. "Thank Susanoo. My people still have a chance…" He buries his face in his hands, taking deep breaths to try and calm himself, emotional exhaustion leaving him looking further aged than his wrinkles ever could.

Naruto peels the tag off and slips it back into his hoodie pockets. "Don't thank us yet, Tazuna. We've still got a lot to do. So, sensei, how're we calling in backup? You got one of those messenger hawk scrolls?"

Kakashi shakes his head and shifts through a few handsigns. "I've got something better. Kuchiyose no jutsu!" He kneels and slams his hand on the ground, producing a plume of smoke. Sitting before him now is a ninken with light brown fur and white markings, with very spiked fur sweeping to the front of his head. The back of his open blue vest displays a series of hiragana forming a scarecrow face, topped with a headband worn around his neck. "Urushi, good to see you. I've got a task for you that'll take a bit of sprinting and a bit of stealth. Up for the job?"

The sharp-featured ninken grins and wags his tail. "Aw, ya shouldn't have. Yeah, I'm game. So, what's the deal- hm?" He turns to face Yoko as she approaches and yips away in the Inuzaka clan's tongue. He soon returns with a series of growls and yaps. This exchange continues as Kakashi writes the mission details and request into a scroll. Before he's done, Naruto's even joined their conversation.

"Uru, do you really need to set my girl up on a date in front of me? Disrespectful, man." He just receives a couple of yaps and barks in return from both of them. "Ok, point taken."

Kakashi rolls his eyes and secures the scroll into a pocket inside Urushi's vest. "Ok, take this back to the Hokage. Don't dispel yourself until he's instructed you to. Keep an eye out for anyone trying to intercept your message, as always. Think you can manage that?"

The mutt scoffs. "You know what I can do. This'll be easy. Next time, try and summon me for a fight, alright? A lot of us are getting tired of being messengers."

"Bull doesn't mind."

"Bull's the biggest wimp among us! Why are all the biggest, toughest dogs such pansies?" He growls and turns to face back to the west and towards Konoha. "See ya again soon, I hope!" He takes off at twice Yoko's top speed, and Naruto can already tell he's still holding back.

"Well… I guess we're set to go, then." He turns to keep walking with a grin on his face and his arms behind his head.

"Naruto…" Kakashi drones as he watches his student pass by. "What did you do?"

"Nothing you have to concern yourself with, sensei."

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"Sensei…" Shikamaru sighs deeply and scratches the back of his head "Why do we have to take this C rank anyway?" He glares into the distance through the thick forests outside Konoha. About fifty meters ahead is a bandit camp that they'd been assigned to deal with. They were waiting beside a major shipping road and assaulting shipments of valuables to resell at a profit. Either they had some nukenin to bolster their strength and bravery, or they were remarkably stupid.

Asuma pulls the cigarette from his mouth but doesn't blow any smoke. "Because Kakashi's brats already got one, and I'm not letting us fall behind the lazy bastard. Besides, your strategies are more than capable of a job like this now." He looks to his left as Ino slowly rises from her slumped position against a tree nearby. "What ya got for us?"

Ino sighs and rubs her temples as she mentally sifts through it all. "Ok… There's twelve of them, lot of young punks, toying with some of their more valuable finds as prizes. Really full of themselves. One of them seems to have some training, but clearly dropped out of the academy and got pissed enough to bail. Kinda guy who thinks he's the hottest shit just because he can throw a kunai straight. I'd say one display of Chouji's jutsu, and half of them will already be cowering."

Chouji chuckles as he peeks back to her. "Which one?"

"Hmm…" She grins. "How about we test your newest addition? It's a bit flashier, sure to get their attention."

Shikamaru smirks and rises from his seat. "And set things up for me. Yeah, this won't take long. You set up a good distraction, right?"

"Yep." She stands and stretches, restoring her formerly abandoned body. "I went and screwed with them a bit before I left that bird's body. Ruined the dinner they were making."

Chouji slowly turns to her with a glare. "… You didn't."

"Don't complain, Chouji. Their stew was shit anyway, the kinda stuff you wouldn't touch if you were paid to."

"Stop bickering." Asuma growls and raises his trench knives. "Ok, kids. You know the play."

Chouji nods and prepares a few handsigns. "Scare the masses."

Ino grins almost sadistically as she prepares one of her family's signature handsigns. "Undermine the leader."

Shikamaru pulls a scroll from his pouch. "Restrain, contain, and conquer."

Asuma smirks as his students move ahead. "Pops, I can't thank you enough for giving me these kids."

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"Ya know… I really hate fog." Naruto's eyes narrow. "The humidity in the air messes with my ink and makes it runny. I can't make any good seals in these conditions."

"There's many more reasons for us to dislike this fog, Naruto." Kakashi puts his book away and focuses all his attention on their surroundings. "You and Sakura especially should understand that."

Sakura nods and pulls a few senbon. "Could Gato have really gotten Kiri nin on a job like this?"

"Under the current regime there?" Kakashi tilts his head and peeks back over his left shoulder. "Possibly. But, I doubt he would risk such a large organization knowing what's going on beneath his company. He'd probably go for missing nin, which Kiri currently has an abundance of."

Sasuke groans and hunches over. "Great. Well, my fire's near useless then. Lightning it is, I guess." He sighs and uprights himself. "Whatever, I need more practice with it anyway."

Naruto chuckles grimly and slowly pulls a kunai from his pouch. "No better practice than being thrown head-first into a shitstorm, right? Do or die… Kami, what am I saying? This is exactly why I use clones test all my seals."

Tazuna's starting to visibly shiver as he takes another swig of his sake, face sunken and eyes wide. A bit spills from the bottle as he lowers it, entirely due to the constant shaking of his hand. "Please don't be serious."

Kakashi grabs Tazuna and pulls him down. "DUCK!"

His students barely manage to get down in time to avoid taking a direct hit from a spinning slab of sharpened steel nearly the size of their own bodies. It swerves up into a nearby tree and embeds itself halfway up the trunk to the lower branches, soon supporting its wielder as he stands upon the hilt. The genin slowly raise their heads from nearly cowering stances to find the man towering over them to be wearing baggy striped gray pants closed at the ankles by almost cow-patterned leg warmers with a matching pair on his arms. Despite these, his chest was bared save for the leather strap meant to carry his blade upon his back via a small spring-loaded locking mechanism for the hole in the blade and a hook for the notch in it. His face is almost entirely hidden by a combination of bandages wrapped tightly from his neck to the bridge of his nose and a Kirigakure headband tilted to the right on his brow. His spiky crew-cut black hair barely sticks out above the headband.

Kakashi identifies the man instantly as he uprights himself, speaking almost casually to the attempted assassin. "The Demon of Kirigakure, Momochi Zabuza. Of course Gato would hire someone with such a record as you."

"Hatake Kakashi…" He chuckles and crosses his arms, the only evidence of his grin being a few wrinkles in his face wrap. "When the twins told me you were involved in this mission, I actually got a little excited to deal with someone of my own caliber. It's not often I get to actually fight someone instead of just slaughter them."

"Does tend to be a problem when you get to our level, doesn't it? If you revel in a fight that much, anyway, but I do know a few people like that back home." He sighs and reaches for his headband. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to turn around and ignore this job, would you?"

"No can do." Zabuza tilts his head and elicits a series of pops and snaps form his neck. "That'd be terrible for business." He starts bolting through handsigns. "So let's get this over with quickly!" Kakashi pushes up his headband and his sharingan eye spins to life, pupil contracting as the three tomoe expand. The fog thickens and Tazuna is surrounded by his four guards.

Naruto grits his teeth and frantically peeks around. "Visibility's cut to about ten feet. At shinobi speeds, that's far from enough for me to react. Sasuke?"

"I've got nothing. Fire's weakened in these conditions, I have no distance lighting jutsu yet, and trying taijutsu with a guy who can wield a sword that size so easily is suicide."

"Cool it, boys. There's something off about this mist." Sakura closes her eyes. "This chakra feels… malicious. He's mixed killing intent into the mist to cause paranoia, anxiety, and panic. The less clearly we think, the harder it'll be to counter."

Kakashi grins beneath his mask. "Good work, Sakura. Focus less on what you can't do, stick to what you can. Naruto?"

The blonde falls silent for a moment, but a sickeningly wide grin slowly spreads on his face. If Zabuza could see it through the mist, he would have reason to be afraid. A moment after, puffs of smoke reveal four more Narutos surrounding the crew and spitting streams of mud onto the ground around them. Walls of stone rise from them and surround the party, followed by another stream being spit onto the top of the walls to close them off beneath a ceiling.

Zabuza sighs and shakes his head. "No target speech this time, huh? Pity... I always enjoy watching them shake after it." He reels back his blade and swings in at half the height of the wall. A Doton: Doryūheki is too soft for his blade, especially coming from a rookie genin.

Of course, Naruto was banking on that. The blade stops halfway through, and as he attempts to tug it free and retreat, something within the stone chamber explodes, breaking his blade in half and battering him with chunks of stone. He immediately falls apart and splashes into a few scattered puddles, exposed as a water clone.

"Clever brat." Another Zabuza amidst the trees tightens his grip on his blade. The blast blew away enough of the mist to see the softened earth they'd tunneled through and a series of charred tags and steel wire. He caught my blade with the wire, and trying to tug it free set off the explosives. Either lose my blade or potentially lose my life. Who knew Konoha still had anyone this devious?

He slips back into the shadows and thickens the mist, conjuring a few more water clones spread across the clearing and a few in the trees. A clone tracks one of them, the little Uchiha, cowering and panting among the bushes. A swing of his cloned blade makes quick work of them, but the clone is dispersed as an electrified hand runs through it. Three more fall to simple kunai. One of them wanders onto an exploding tag. At this point, Zabuza is starting to get a little pissed off. The sensation in the mist grows more oppressive by the moment. I'll show you little shi- His thoughts are cut off by a fox leaping from the earth behind him and biting into his collarbone. "GAH! What the fuck?!" He grabs Yoko by the neck and throws her into a nearby tree, only for Naruto to leap in and catch her, rolling to a stop with Zabuza bringing his blade down on them both. He registers the grin on the kid's face just in time to leap back and avoid the exploding log he swapped himself with. "How the FUCK does one kid have this may exploding tags?!"

"He made them all himself." Zabuza slowly turns to glare at Kakashi about twenty feet off to his right, his hand starting to spark and chirp. "Honestly, Zabuza. You got too full of yourself. You've let your skills rust and made one of the oldest rookie mistakes: underestimating someone with no record. My kids are quite a lot more than you bargained for, aren't they?"

Zabuza growls and steps backwards. "Maybe… but mine's even better." Kakashi's eyes widen as he's forced back by the sudden spawning of a thick wall of ice, frosting the surrounding ground and turning the mist to snow. Kakashi's tempted to give chase, a lasting effect of his Anbu training, but halts as he recalls his current mission detail. When the ice cracks and shatters moments later, Zabuza's gone. Kakashi sighs and lowers his headband back over his eye before stumbling out of the woods to address his students. What he finds is Sasuke leaping up and kicking the last clone in the back of the head as Sakura's genjutsu dissipates. The moment the illusion falls, Sakura is revealed kneeling and panting beside Tazuna right at the edge of the forest with the hole they'd resurfaced with beside them. Naruto walks back out of the woods with a grin on his face and Yoko cradled in his arms.

"Oy, Sasuke." Naruto steps up to his teammate for a fistbump. "Thanks for providing the wire for that one. Your clan's wire stock is the best I've ever seen, man. I doubt anything of lower quality would have stood up against that blade, even in that quantity."

Sasuke nods and rolls his wrist. One of the clones had blocked a punch with the flat of his blade. Most people would complain about their knuckles in that case, but too much pressure on a joint will have some nasty lasting effects. "Because of my clan's fire proficiency and eye for detail, a lot of retired shinobi or trained civilians were blacksmiths. Most of the tools and weapons in my compound were made by and for the clan."

"No shit?" Naruto kneels to observe the remains of his trap. "No wonder. Any chance I can look through your stocks sometime? In return, I'll rig some seals on whatever weapon you decide to take up, and probably keep upgrading them as we go."

He perks up and turns to stare at Naruto's back. "… Ya think we could make something legendary?"

Naruto peeks back with the very same grin he'd given Zabuza through the mist. "Sasuke, given a few years and the right supplies, we could make something Kiri would be sending anbu to steal."

Kakashi sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Well, can't say they're not ambitious or driven, but I should be more worried about them blowing themselves up than an enemy killing them."

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"Kotetsu, Izumo, how ya been?"

"Oy, hey Uru!" The eternal gate guard duo of Konoha leans over their booth to look down over the ninken that just arrived through the west gate. "Guess you've got something from Kakashi for the Hokage, right?"

Urushi nods and hops up on the desk. "Yep, but you can be sure next time he summons me that I get some time to stick around, I'm lookin for you boys first." He steps up to the logbook and presses his paw onto the ink pad to sign with it. "Alright, I'm off to the tower." He takes off at full tilt through the bustling streets of Konoha. Innocent and clueless civilian children try to chase after him to play. Inuzuka ninken bark greetings and insults alike. He gladly returns fire at the later. The few shinobi who've worked with Kakashi and his ninken team wave as he passes. It isn't long before he's running up the wall of the tower and barking through the window.

Hiruzen raises his eyes from the mess of paperwork on his desk and turns to stare out the window at the messenger ninken. He sighs and rolls his chair over to open the window. "Urushi, good to see you. I suppose Kakashi figured out what was off about his mission?"

He hops in and lays down on the windowsill. "Scroll's in my right pocket. Said I should stick around for further instruction after you read it."

Hiruzen grumbles and pulls the scroll free, taking his time reading it to memorize every detail. I had some intel suggesting how corrupt Gato was, but this is far worse than I suspected. I should have ordered him assassinated years ago. Well, Jiraiya's meeting them there, so they won't need much backup. Good excuse to send someone who just got back to active duty until the next semester.

He chuckles and prepares a note of his own. "Urushi, you're to remain here until their backup arrives and is briefed. He'll be coming with you as you dispel yourself, then be summoned with you wherever Kakashi is at the time."

"Ah, that old trick? Alright then. Well, while we wait, Naruto had another letter for you. It's in my left pocket."

"Oh?" Hiruzen digs into it and pulls out-

He takes a blast of glitter to the face and drops the tag as it continues to spew a continuous stream of glitter into his office.

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A.N.: Told yas I'd mix things up. So we already have one known new player in the mix on both sides of this conflict, the Twins are still around and in on it, and Team 7's about to get backup. A little fairer with Team 7's buffs and gives me an excuse to avoid Biju Ex Machina. As for Team 10's appearance, I figured I'd break up the monotony of this arc by occasionally breaking away to what the rest of our cast is doing. I figured you all wouldn't mind. So, please review, even if ya have before just lemme know what ya think so far!