Chapter 9 - Daily Regimen

Hatake Kakashi observed his students from his vantage point above one of the logs of training ground three. His copy of Jiraiya's latest release in the Icha-icha series was out, but not quite being read. Once he'd released them to go about their individual training, Naruto and Sakura gave him thankful bows for his time and departed, doubtlessly to go see those that were handling their individual training.

The man had conflicted feelings about the situation, vaguely recalling that his own sensei had taken a more active role in training them up, or at least that's what it looked like when he saw Minato training Rin and Obito. Was this what it was like to train Kakashi in his youth? To take on students that had skills Kakashi had no hand in imparting.

Except this time, it applied to all three of them.

Asuma had been kind enough to point out that he was in largely the same position. The Sandaime's youngest son suggested that he focus on the elements of their training he could help them with, and trust them to know what they were doing as far as individual skills went.

Kakashi decided that was pretty good advice, so he went with it, for the most part.

Sasuke was really the only person whose individual growth he would have to micromanage. The boy knew the odd fire technique and eye-based genjutsu care of Uchiha Izumi, but only whatever the girl knew to begin with. Unfortunately for the kid, he didn't have access to the old Uchiha clan's archives on account of there being no such archives anymore.

Spirits, Rin really liked being thorough. Maybe a tad too much.

Thankfully, Kakashi knew a lot of jutsu. A lot of jutsu. His entire bingo book entry was based on that, so he'd be able to help the kid.

As far as team setup went, Sasuke was likely going to be the long-ranged operator of their group anyway. While the boy's taijutsu was some of the top in his class, his shurikenjutsu and mastery of ninja wire made him very good at cornering targets, and worked well with his fire techniques, too.

It was straightforward, but effective. Kakashi couldn't fault it, that was how he fought most of the time, anyway.

The greatest challenge was going to be chakra capacity and second was already being worked on. Apparently he'd already gotten tree-walking down on account of the other Azuchi children learning it while they were in the academy. So he got Sasuke to work on water walking.

Capacity on the other hand was tougher. The boy would need to be pushed on the regular, something he may not have been doing beforehand. Well, not with the goal of expanding his reserves in mind.

Kakashi could fix that, of course. Sasuke was motivated, he'd take advantage of that.

Naruto was better going in and out of range. The boy had already shown a lot of creativity in using his shadow clones during the exam, transforming them into weapons, transforming himself into weapons and using his clones to throw him. He still remembered how he used a substitution with a clone to get out of the fireball Sasuke used and had the clone he swapped with trap him. Yes, the kid had taken two of the academy basic jutsu and made it work with a jutsu he'd been taught due to a handicap of being a jinchuuriki ─ for he had too much chakra to ever create a normal clone ─ and turned it into one hell of a fighting style.

When he was about to take a hit, he'd have his clones substitute him out. With how he used the Namikaze clan abilities, he could have a seal left before or after the swap. Depending on how he placed his clones during a fight, he could even use it to get to an advantageous position while both getting out of harm's way, and attacking at the same time.

Almost like the Hiraishin, albeit with a lot of prerequisites and some very limited usage.

Still, that, coupled with the kid's ability to create and place seals on the spot in close-quarters, Naruto would turn into something very versatile. Kakashi was definitely going to have the boy work on mastering the shadow clone jutsu without seals. That kind of speed and versatility would be invaluable to him, and open up so many more possibilities.

Sakura, meanwhile, was going to be their nominal frontliner. While not as immediately sturdy as Naruto was as far as conditioning went, Sakura had that chakra reinforcement technique that made her stronger and more durable than normal.

When he'd first learned of it, his first reaction was immediate concern. Infusing yourself with chakra was a delicate thing, that could result in pain at least, and permanently damaged chakra pathways at worst. There was a reason why infusing a body with chakra the way she was doing was usually just being done by medics, and usually required a lot of control.

The girl, thankfully, explained that she'd first started it while under observation of a medic in the form of Rin and with oversight from both Jiraiya and Danzo. She'd been doing it for a while now, and was using it as part control exercise, part means of expanding her reserves by constantly using up chakra. Of course, this meant that the girl had more control than he'd first expected her to have, and she could already perform water-walking with ease.

Danzo refused to let her even consider the idea unless she could do at least that. Kakashi had to approve.

It also meant the girl was gonna make one hell of a medic, and he'd told the girl as much. Sakura said she'd ask Rin about squeezing the girl into the woman's schedule sometime to get her started. While the girl did that, Kakashi decided he was going to ask Gai to teach her the Strong Fist.

Because if he was getting a clone of Senju Tsunade, writ small, he was going the whole way.

As he got off the log to talk with Sasuke about the plans for today, he realized that he was about to train a ninjutsu specialist that could potentially pick up and learn as many techniques as he could squeeze in, a sealing specialist that was terrifyingly disruptive, and a frontline fighter of a med-nin.

Was he training the next Densetsu no Sannin?

~TtT~

Haruno Sakura decided that she didn't mind D-rank missions all that much.

Sure, when she and her friends had been coming in expecting to do something cool as soon as they graduated, there had been some disappointment, but after some talking with Tenten, she realized that the cool stuff was going to come anyway.

Honestly, the biggest appeal that D-rank missions had that Sakura had started to appreciate was how much more relaxed they were relative to the actual training that they did. It was like getting downtime while getting paid for it!

And she really didn't mind the bit about being paid at all, especially since her parents had cut her allowance by three-quarters since they started taking missions. Sure, she could still earn a little more pocket change if she wanted by helping out at the family izakaya part-time, but she really would rather not. For now, D-rank missions were doing nicely enough for her. It's not like she spent on a lot of stuff, anyway. Just the odd meal out or picking up something to take home after training or after missions.

Their client today was old man Motonari who owned a small store that sold fresh fruits and vegetables. It was nominally ran by his youngest son these days, since the elder couldn't really stay standing for very long anymore. But since it was just Motonari and his son working the place, they usually got genin to handle picking up their stock whenever it arrived from outside.

"Ah, it's good to see the three of you again!" Motonari's raspy voice sounded from the shaded entryway that connected his house to his store. "Right on time, right on time!"

"Good to see 'ya, Motonari-jii." Naruto, of course, was the first of them to greet the man. "So what can we help you with today?"

It was very much the usual. A shipment had arrived and was waiting for pickup at one of the gates, the southern gate this time.

There were some pleasantries after the mission details had been given. Motonari offered to give them something to snack on when they got back. She and her teammates also exchanged a brief greeting with Motonari's son when the much younger man showed up and then they were off.

Most of the missions were relaxing like this. Kakashi signed them up for around two to three a week for the past month. Sometimes they'd be helping someone repair or paint a fence, or move some stuff around the house. The more common missions they'd get were assisting people with their groceries, usually this was from older villagers like Motonari. On even rarer occasions, they'd babysit, or be one of the unfortunate teams that were set to catch Tora, the Daimyo's wife's cat.

It was less than she'd have expected, but they did spend a lot of their time training as a team, and then more time outside of that training individually.

Not that even D-rank missions were exempt from being used as training. It just didn't feel as… serious as what they were doing these days.

Sakura could feel the thrum of chakra that ran through her body. The goal had been to keep it running at a constant rate with a steadily increasing amount of chakra until she was running at the limit of what her growing body could handle. Then, she was to keep it there. Over time, this would allow her to charge her body with more and more chakra. This constant use practiced her control in the way that she was to push the charge to her current limit without going over and getting hurt, and the constant use of her chakra helped force her originally pitiful reserves to grow.

When she first started doing this, she'd been forced by her grandfather to do it while under observation, and only for a small amount of time with a small amount of chakra. Sakura had also been made to first master both wall walking and water walking while most of her friends only got around to the former.

It had been painful whenever she did lose control, of course. It felt like the parts that she'd been charging had both become bloated and ready to burst into flame. Not at all a pleasant experience, and one she'd come to learn was the cost of what she was trying to do.

Now she was far more confident, able to maintain it for the whole day as long as she wasn't doing anything more strenuous than her usual conditioning, and her growing reserves now permitted her to have her whole body charged at the same time.

For her effort, she was rewarded with stronger than normal strength and durability, improving greatly the more chakra she could enhance herself with. At the point she was now, throwing an entire tree like she did in her exam with their sensei now only mildly winded her rather almost completely taking her out of the fight. She could now also block most mundane weapons with her bare skin.

Her end-goal was to be able to combine this with Tsunade's strength technique which involved a controlled burst of chakra at the time of contact. What she was still having problems with was the timing. She'd either release it too early or too late in practice, Sakura was forced to expend more chakra than normal in order to just keep the technique usable in combat, and she still got a more muted effect than expected.

Jiraiya did his best to help her, but he never studied Tsunade's technique enough to know what the sweet spot was. He did, however, point out that Tsunade was also naturally strong to begin with. Something Sakura was aiming to match.

She hoped having natural strength, alongside her enhancement technique, would be able to get her similar results. If she ever got around to matching the female Sannin in mastery of the woman's strength technique, Sakura was sure she'd get some very impressive results.

That coupled with some of the genjutsu she was trying to pick up, light and easy to use things that she could work towards mastering to a degree where she wouldn't need hand seals to cast them, she'd be able to get some significant advantages in close quarters.

Her illusions would be simple things, ones so basic, most people wouldn't expect to see them in use anymore. A strike from the left instead of the right, being off-center by just a smidge, two or three steps front or back. They were all illusions with one goal in mind: making sure she'd get a clean hit in.

Because once she'd gotten all of the different factors to her attacks mastered, one hit may be all she'd need. And if it wasn't, then that first hit was still going to count for a lot.

So she'd continue to strengthen herself. Removing her enhancement technique during physical conditioning with Naruto in the morning, and maintaining it the rest of the day no matter what they did. Over time, she'd get the timing for the chakra burst down, too, or maybe even ask Tsunade about it if the woman was ever in town.

When they arrived at the gate, they greeted the guards and moved to pick up their quarry. Naruto, of course, spent a little more time exchanging pleasantries with the men and women that manned the entrance to the village, while Sasuke shook his head and went for the boxes.

Her friends took two each of the boxes, Sakura took twice as many.

She'd never get tired of the looks.

Many hours later when she was cleaned up and barely able to feel anything besides exhaustion and pain after burning through the remainder of her chakra reserves in training, it was those looks that let her go to sleep at night excited at the thought of sweet, sweet progress.

~TtT~

Aikuchi Tenten allowed the heat of her father's workshop wash over her.

To one side, her father's apprentice, a boy about her age named Kento, gave her a look she didn't quite recognize as she came in. Despite that she could see the heat from her father's forges tinging his face pink.

"Tenten-san!"

"Good morning, Kento-kun," she answered with a smile. "Busy morning?" Tenten walked past him and turned about to see where her father was.

Aikuchi Kaoru's workshop was attached to their house, taking a good half of the first floor of the building they'd called home all their life. To Tenten's knowledge, the place had also been home to her grandparents and great-grandparents, just as Azuchi had been in the Namikaze's ownership since the founding of Konoha.

The other half of the ground floor was dedicated to their store, where her mother did most of her work, selling not only what her father crafted, but the items they'd have brought in. Aikuchi pieces were masterwork and created, personally, by her father, and those would usually fetch higher prices. But it sold less in volume as a result. Not everyone could afford what her father could make, after all, so for everyone else that may have wanted something cheaper, the stuff they imported from other crafters would do.

Her father's tools were already prepared for use. The tongs were on top of the anvil, the hammers laid out within easy reach. It looked like everything was recently cleaned, whether by Kento or her father, Tenten wasn't sure. The girl could remember her father being very particular about how his tools were maintained, and was certain to impart the importance of that to his apprentice.

On the far end, by the crucible furnace, was her father, peaking about in the box that Naruto had gotten from his family for graduation. Looks like he was already sorting out the material they'd be using.

Aikuchi Kaoru was a small man. Even at thirteen, Tenten was already matching his height. He was also deceptively built for a man in his trade, and Tenten could never figure out why. Despite swinging a hammer just about every day, he looked slim. She knew better than to underestimate his strength, however. Her father managed to knock out men two to three times his size with a single punch. Dad was definitely strong for a civilian.

"Kaoru-sensei just got in, actually." Kaoru answered her. "He's been sorting through whatever is in that box, but he won't let me help him." He turned to give her a curious look. "Are you going to be working here today?"

Tenten grinned. "Yeah. Sorry for the trouble, Kento-kun. Dad wanted it to be just us today."

"You take the day, Kento-kun." Came her father's voice. He was still looking at the box. Now that Tenten had taken a few steps closer, it looked like there were papers scattered about in front of him, too. Probably the plans for today's project. "And tomorrow, too, since we'll be going till then, depending on how much we finish today. Paid of course."

Beside her, the boy started nodding furiously. "O-of course, sensei. Thank you! Is there anything you need of me before I go, sir?"

Her dad waved it off. The boy then turned to her.

"It's alright, Kento-kun. You have a good day." She winked. Tenten could've sworn the kid's face got even redder.

"Will you be around more frequently now, Tenten-san?" He asked as he started setting aside his tools and removing his apron.

"Probably still the same as before. I still have missions, so just when I'm not doing anything and mom or dad want help. You know how it is."

After a quick goodbye, Kento was out the door of the shop and Tenten was beside her father. He'd already set aside a crucible for her, and the hacksaw was already laid out.

"How much do we need?"

Moments later, Tenten was cutting up some of the iron branches so they could fit inside the crucible while her father readied the furnace for use.

When the iron shards were in the crucible, her father gave her a small vial of what was labelled as vanadium filings and instructed her to add it into the crucible. This was followed by crushed glass from an old bottle that her father had cleaned.

"No coal?" Tenten recalled how they made this specific steel, they usually added coal alongside the vanadium if the iron didn't have the impurities they needed to begin with.

He shook his head. "All the carbon we need is already in the iron. Benefits of the Namikaze clan's Eternal Trees. What we need are the impurities."

Once everything was inside, Tenten sealed the cover up with clay, and into the furnace it went.

The fan still sounded like some unholy beast as it went about its work, and even from a few feet away, she could feel the heat of the room rising. And it was already hot when she got in here.

Her father, meanwhile, looked completely unbothered.

As they waited, he quizzed her on what they were doing, asking her about the weights, percentages, numbers, and what was to be done next. He'd been teaching her all of this since she was a child, being permitted into the workshop to watch her father go about his day from a distance even before she'd started at the academy.

Because even if she was a ninja, Aikuchi Kaoru was determined to make sure she had another trade to ply.

"Besides," he'd tell her, "You're my daughter. The shop is going to be yours one day, even if you may not live in the house up top anymore. You ought to know how to run it."

And she did. She wasn't a master like her father was, not yet, but she knew her way about the smity, and even helped make some of the weapons she now used.

The crucible glowed an incandescent red as it was taken out of the furnace, the hot air rising up to follow. They would have to wait for the crucible to cool first before they could inspect her work. While they waited, both went up to the house to share a drink of chilled tea before checking on her mother at the storefront.

"Do you remember why I'm having you do this?" He father asked as they were headed back to the workshop.

Tenten did. "We've been making the Namikaze family's weapons and armor for generations now. Even before the time of these shinobi villages."

The older Aikuchi nodded. "We settled in Konoha because they settled in Konoha. We're also one of the few smiths in this part of the world that know how to work the iron of their trees."

"Is that why you asked Kento-kun to leave?"

"Kento will make a fine smith, and if you decide to hire him on, he'll do me proud to have been his sensei, but he's not family, and unless you decide to marry him in a few years, I'm not teaching him this."

At this, she sent her father a pointed look. He just looked back at her and smirked.

"So he can't know how we do it. It matters to the Namikaze, and so it matters to us."

She hammered the clay seal away and took out the cover. The crucible was raised to the light for inspection.

"The glass is smooth," Her father noted, sending Tenten a proud grin that had her standing straighter. "Well done."

It meant no air was left in when the ingot solidified. Good.

Glass shattered and poured out, she removed the now-solid ingot.

"Thermal cycling next?"

"Yes."

They fired up the forge after that, the ingot going in, getting heat up till it was red hot and then laid on the anvil to cool down naturally before being put into the forge again. Six times this would be repeated. Each time the ingot would become more resistant to deformation or damage during forging, less likely to crack and shatter.

When they were done, hours later, Tenten's work would be tested again in forging the cake-ingot into a bar.

There would be no folding needed for this steel. The Aikuchi smiths only used the best, and they had the furnaces needed to get rid of all the impurities they didn't need.

It was sunset by the time they finished hammering out the two bars, and later still when she finished shaping one of the bars into the form of the first of two tantos.

By the time she had finished both blades, it was late in the night of the following day, too.

Two blades sat atop the workbench. Branches of the eternal tree were dark as a starless night sky, and as blades, they were that, but imprinted with the swirls of the impurities that strengthened them. Light danced across them like smoke and shadow.

Straight, they were, lacking the usual curve that marked most of the blades used in Konoha, but the way they were tempered did not cause them to bend. There was no need for the differential hardening that naturally curved the blade, not when they used steel of such high quality. And there was no need to manually curve it as they did most of the katana they made for customers. Naruto had trained with straight tanto before, this changed nothing to him.

These blades would hold an edge like no other, and channel the chakra of someone of the Namikaze blood like the blade was a part of them.

Her father handed her a piece of paper, and Tenten looked up at him with happiness at the pride in his eyes.

Holding one of the blades, she brushed the paper along the edge. It cut like there was nothing there.

She felt a heavy hand land on her shoulder.

"Well done, Tenten-chan. Well done."

~TtT~

In the years that led up to Minato's inauguration as Hokage, many people liked to joke that the younger man was the closest thing Jiraiya of the Sannin had to a son. He'd already been in his late thirties and still hadn't settled down, he'd still had his heart set on Tsunade at the time, and couldn't really find anyone that could compare, or at least compare enough to make him want to settle down.

About fifteen years later, the old toad sage could say that he was perhaps better described as Minato's wealthy and perpetually single uncle. Looking back at that, it might have made for a good story.

Fundo and Saiki were formidable parents, and took their jobs very seriously. They managed to keep in contact with Minato despite being absent for days at a time on trips to Ame from where they handled the corporation while training their eldest, Minato's older brother, to take on the role as the next clan head.

Jiraiya had been there to see a good deal of it after Minato had become one of his genin students, and… may or may not have taken notes on how he had come to handle Naruto.

This was in stark contrast to how he handled the boy's actual father, which involved a good deal of ribbing, dirty jokes, girl watching, and alcohol after Minato was older.

He also didn't live with the boy. Jiraiya had an apartment in the eastern part of the village, relatively close to one of the village's most popular hot springs because of course he did. He'd barely used the place since the third great war ended, spending more time outside the village and on the road, so he'd given it up. Most of his worldly possessions could be sealed into scrolls and carried with him wherever he went anyway.

And then Minato and Kushina died, and Rin, the girl he'd been working with since after the war ended, had moved back to Konoha to take care of his godson.

Part of him found that he couldn't stand for that, even as another part of him wanted to just stay on the road.

Naruto was his responsibility, and if young Minato's student could stomach being back in the village that she didn't want to be in to take care of the kid, so could he.

A decade and some change later, Jiraiya wondered why he hadn't decided to have kids sooner.

Fulfilling was, perhaps, the best way he could describe raising Naruto. Every achievement, every lesson learned, every story told. The wonder he'd seen from the boy at his tales reminded Jiraiya of why he'd written his first book, and made him start reconsidering reviving the series, even if he knew it wouldn't sell as well as his Icha-Icha franchise. If his son loved it, surely other kids across the continent would.

It wasn't easy, of course. Even with him and Rin working together, it required him to adjust his lifestyle. Trips abroad were kept to a minimum, at most a week or two, and only when necessary. Both he and Rin had cultivated their contacts to be able to reach out to them remotely, and while he maintained her part of the network now, the time they'd spent doing so had paid off.

Jiraiya was now able to spend weeks to full months in Konoha before needing to step out of the village to assist their external assets. He hadn't taken non-information related missions in years, and his sensei was kind enough to not ask him for any.

But the old man was starting to ask him about becoming Hokage again, however, and considering Hiruzen was now using the fact that the position required him to stay in the village for the most part as a selling point, Jiraiya was actually having to think about it. Nothing for now, though. Maybe not a few years at least, really. He'd seen what happened to Asuma while Hiruzen was Hokage, and while that was going to be a life that Naruto would have had to live with had Minato and Kushina lived, it wasn't something JIraiya was going to subject the boy to.

Besides, Hiruzen was in good health despite his age, and with a larger council to help take on the workload and the peaceful time they were living in, the God of Shinobi had quite a few years left yet.

In the meantime, he was here, seated on a log stool in Azuchi's main training yard as he observed Naruto train.

The boy's clones were trying to speed up his ability to form seals on the fly, ideally so he could do things besides the normal explosive seals that, at this point, he could probably form in his sleep.

Skyscribing. It was such an appropriately named technique. The ability to control blood-infused ink with chakra, most commonly used by the Namikaze of past and present to create seals without the need of a brush or, in some cases, even a surface to write on, because the seals could manifest mid-air. As long as the array held and wasn't disrupted, it would do its job as long as all of the seal's prerequisite requirements were met.

The technique required no hand seals, but it did require preparation in the form of infusing one's blood into the ink. The members of the clan able to more easily channel their chakra through it to achieve with less effort what would normally be something considered very advanced.

What Jiraiya found was the real clincher was that when you really looked at it, Skyscribing was, at its core, shape manipulation. You used chakra to make sure the ink took on the form you wanted, which was usually one seal or another, or even more than that, in Rin's case.

So about when Naruto officially got accepted as a genin following Kakashi passing them, Jiraiya decided he'd put Naruto through the training for the Rasengan.

He got the water balloon to pop in one day.

He got the rubber ball to pop three days after that.

It was amazing, of course, but considering the fact that Naruto had been practically breathing shape manipulation since he was nine, not entirely unexpected. Those two stages were technically the easy parts, after all. Putting it together was what really made it hard.

And that was exactly the issue Naruto was having right now, nearly a month into it. The balloon that was supposed to contain the technique would deform or pop. He could already form it perfectly with assistance from his clones, but that required him to be imobile while the clones compressed the orb. With the high-mobility fighting style that Naruto was building with his use of the substitution technique and the kage bunshin, it didn't mesh very well outside of specific cases.

Besides, having the Rasengan available near-instantaneously could mean the difference between life and death.

Still, the final stage wasn't easy, and the boy had already progressed through the first two stages of learning the technique with more speed than anyone else. Not even Jiraiya picked it up that quickly, and he'd mastered the thing faster than Kakashi did.

Jiraiya heard the door to the veranda slide open and sandals start scraping against the concrete steps leading to the yard.

"How's he doing?" Rin asked as she stood beside him, her arms were crossed, and she had her sleeveless haori over her shoulders like a cloak.

"Still stuck on the final stage." The older man answered, "But I think he has the basic force-application seal and storage seals mastered now. Looks like he's working on the two-step explosive seal next?"

Naruto could do all of those seals by hand or if given enough time, of course, but the idea was to get those seals formed and ready for use in as little time as possible. Granted, the propulsion seal was usually best used in tandem with the storage seal, and those needed to be pre-prepared anyway, because even if you could form the seal on the fly, the thing was empty unless you loaded it mid-fight.

But there were other applications for them, anyway. A propulsion seal combined with an explosive seal could partially direct the shockwave and conflagration of the detonation. That had been the basis for the directional explosive seal, after all.

Once Naruto could start learning how to mold chakra using sealwork in the same way hand signs did, he could then start using his seals to use jutsu. That had been one of the really interesting things he'd seen with Skyscribing, and potentially one of the most powerful.

The thing needed you to be able to manipulate the chakra's shape while doing other things to truly capitalize, however. Otherwise, you may as well be using hand seals anyway, especially since Naruto's control range wasn't anywhere near far enough to use the seals to attack from a different direction. Yet.

"Actually, Jiraiya," Rin chimed in, sending him a thoughtful look. The woman looked like she just had an idea. "If he's having problems with being better at shape manipulation to completely compress the Rasengan-"

"Then maybe learning how to do two different seals at the same time might help?"

The brown-haired woman nodded.

Jiraiya crossed his own arms and looked at the boy, seeing the flying ink cycle through seals while the original focused on the fresh balloon in his right hand. Naruto had long since discarded his kimono and haori, opting to sit topless so he wouldn't continue to get his clothes wet.

There was no trick at this point. It was all practice and mastery. With time and use, he'd get it down. Continued refining of his mastery of shape manipulation through practicing Skyscribing would only accelerate the process.

Better chakra control would also help, even though Naruto was predisposed to not be very good at it.

Maybe it was time the boy learned how to waterwalk.

"Now the question is…"

Rin gave him a smug grin. "Whether we should tell him outright or try to lead him to the answer?" She tapped her foot in thought, once again turning to Naruto as the boy got himself splashed with water again. "I think we teach him water walking and ask him to try making two different seals at once with Skyscribing and let him figure out why."

Because the kid was going to ask anyway, wasn't he? They weren't going to answer him, of course, not this time. The kid needed to practice that analytical mind of his. He'd already proven that he could come up with stuff on the fly when he worked out a strategy to get the bells with a team he'd only had partial experience in working with.

It was time they got that particular skill exercised. Naruto would find it very useful in the future, it might even save his life someday. Sages knew it had managed to do that for Jiraiya more than once.

~TtT~

Jiraiya wasn't exactly all that familiar with being the one left behind. Why would he? He was the traveller, the Toad Sage. He had to live with a perpetual wanderlust that wouldn't leave him. A wanderlust he'd only learned of curb for the sake of his son.

And even before that, he'd been one to travel more often than not between missions and during peacetime anyway. The various sights and experiences helped with his writing, lent to him memories and sensations that he could put unto page, interactions with people that shaped his characters, and showed him sights that could stun his readers when described.

There was more to him than smut, dammit. It wasn't his fault, that's what ended up being what people gravitated to.

Still, it was a strange sight to him to be standing at the door to Rin's room as she finished wrapping herself in the haori that marked her as a member of the Namikaze Corporation while her packed bags sat atop her bed.

And while he knew he'd be on the road soon enough, the idea of him being the last person to be in the great big house that had been their home for the past decade left him feeling… empty? Lonely? He wasn't quite sure.

Because while he'd been used to traveling either by himself or surrounded by strangers he probably couldn't trust as far as he could push them with a gentle elbow, he'd become used to the idea of having people to come back to at the end of each of those trips.

That was probably the appeal of settling down and having a family, wasn't it? By the Great Toad Sage, it had taken him a long time to realize that, but damn if he didn't come to appreciate it.

For the first time, since maybe when it was built, Azuchi was going to be empty of all its residents. Naruto had left earlier this morning to get his first C-rank missions with his team, and they'd already packed everything, so they were to depart immediately. Meanwhile, Rin was finally starting to work again now that Naruto was a full-time ninja.

And Jiraiya? Well, he had to check on contacts in the next two or three weeks, so he'd be out of town by then, too. He expected he'd be gone till just before the chunin exams were going to be hosted by Konoha since sensei wanted him here, and he'd be damned if he missed his son participating. Because he knew there was no way in hell Konoha wasn't going to let the world see the son of Namikaze Minato crush those exams when he was already as well-prepared as he was.

Even Kabuto would be gone. He'd moved back in with his mother in the village proper, even if he spent a good deal of his time here taking care of the place.

He crossed his arms, his hands sinking into the plush thickness of his sleeping robes.

"So where are you headed to first?"

Rin didn't stop dressing up, straightening her haori before tying her now upper-back-length hair into the partial tail she'd favored since she came back to Konoha all those years ago.

"I'm headed to the old inn first." She said, "The rest of the head family wants to brief me on what's going on with the corporation before I start paying site visits."

That seemed reasonable enough. While Rin had been getting news from both her contacts and Saiki when the old woman paid her occasional visit, Rin had largely been out of the loop with the specifics of the Namikaze's family business.

"We might just run into each other then." He told her with a grin. Brown eyes looked at him through the curtain of her equally brown hair.

"Passing by the Land of Rain when you get out?"

He shrugged. "That and a few other places. I promised Hanzo I'd drop by and have a drink with him after Naruto graduated. It's about time I did that."

Rin responded to that with a considering hum before getting up and picking up her bags. It wasn't very large, but she'd make a poor student of Namikaze Minato if she didn't take full advantage of storage scrolls for carrying her possessions with her. She walked up to him and grinned.

Jiraiya did not miss the cock of her hip or the raised brow.

"Walk me to the door, Jiraiya?"

He could only oblige. He'd also offered to carry her bag, but she'd only laughed before bumping her shoulder against his arm, saying she was a big girl, and she could carry her own stuff, especially when it was this light.

She'd been about to board the horse-drawn carriage that the corporation had sent to pick her up when she turned on him and planted a kiss on his cheek. When he looked down at her with a grin, Jiraiya, instead, found her looking at him with a serious expression.

"This morning, I got word from one of my contacts that Tsunade-hime is in Tetsuki-gai. We're not entirely sure how long she's going to be there, but her room's supposedly been booked for the next two months. I thought you ought to know."

And she'd been in the carriage and riding down their mountain before he could say anything in response.

Tetsuki-gai was to the north-west, just a little off the three-way border of Grass, Rain, and Fire. A favorite place for the rich to get artisan woodwork, since the very ironwood the place was named for was grown and harvested there.

Of course, this meant that there was business for high-end gambling houses since the place was also a very popular route in or out of the country.

They were definitely talking about this next time they saw each other.

~TtT~

Namikaze Naruto had mixed feelings about this first C-rank mission of his.

On one hand, he was finally going to be taking his first mission outside of the village. The idea of travelling beyond the village's walls as part of the mission, more than anything else he'd done before, felt to him like the first, true, step on his road to becoming the next Hokage.

On the other hand, this was his first time leaving the village, too. The only time he'd ever set foot outside of Konoha's walls was that time his dad had taken him to that festival with Sakura and her family when he'd first started at the academy.

There was a nervous excitement that wouldn't leave him, one that kept him awake last night, and a bit jittery as he put himself together and had breakfast this morning, perhaps the last one he and his parents would have altogether for a while since his mom was leaving the village today as well. Actually, she should have already left the village by the time his team would finish their mission briefing.

After that, Jiraiya would remain in Konoha for another few days before he, too, would be needed elsewhere.

Which left him with just his team on whatever mission this would end up being. No Sannin, no apprentice of his father, one of the most powerful kage to ever occupy the position, no Root-trained ANBU to ensure his safety.

Just the four of them and their objective.

Naruto felt both excitement and concern war within him as he nodded to Mizuki and the Hokage's secretary before being let through. Apparently his one-time sensei had gotten a job working in the Hokage's administrative office.

Walking through the door, he saw his team already there, having what appeared to be having a rather relaxed conversation with the old man.

"Ah, Naruto-kun," The Sandaime's smile reminded him vaguely of his dad's when the toad sage wasn't in the middle of teaching him a lesson or getting up to mischief. "Right on time. I was just telling Sakura-chan here about all the times her grandfather used to go to Mitsuko's in our youth."

"Neither Danzo-jii or Nabiki-baa ever told me that he used to visit the izakaya just as my grandmother was getting off her shift!"

"Just about every day he wasn't tied down with work." The old man laughed, taking his pipe out of his mouth and knocking the ash unto a tray before taking a puff. "In all these years, he still refuses to admit he was doing it to see her, but instead because-"

"They had the best rice tea in the village." They both finished together, falling into shared laughter. Sakura wiped a stray tear before catching her breath.

"I've been to Mitsuko's many times over the past fifty years. Even got to go there when it was still your great grandmother that ran the place." The Hokage leaned back and looked up, almost lost in memory. "The rice tea is decent, but I've definitely had better."

"They say memories affect how things taste." Kakashi cut in. Naruto could hear the grin in his voice. "Maybe it was always something sweet for Danzo-sama."

Even when he wasn't here, Sakura's grandfather was being teased by the Sandaime. Naruto felt the grin touch his lips as Sakura started laughing again. To his right, Sasuke wasn't being nearly as obvious as they were, but Naruto could see the amused dancing across the Uchiha's lips. He sent the dark-haired boy a nod.

Once Naruto took his place between his two teammates and the joking at the expense of the elderly councilman had stopped, the Hokage finally got back to business. Accepting a mission scroll given to him by one of the administrative chuunin, Sarutobi Hiruzen took it out and read it.

Again, Naruto saw the amused grin on the Hokage's face.

"It seems you've been given an incredibly appropriate mission for your first C-rank, Team Seven." Beady, dark-brown eyes looked directly at Naruto.

"Your client is the Namikaze Corporation."

And so we now properly enter the next arc.

This chapter helps me setup a bunch of narrative points for the story to come, as well as hopefully gives you guys an idea of what sort of skillset I'm building for the team.

Hope you guys enjoyed it.

As for why this chapter ended up taking so long, well, I'm making it a point to finish one or so chapters ahead of every one I release. This is partially so I have a buffer, but mostly so I can make edits to ones that are about to be published to make sure they line up with the things that follow. The idea is to keep continuity at a high standard, especially since I'm treating this fic as a means to improve my writing.

Cheers!