A/N: This is the longest chapter yet, fitting because it's the first Naruto POV we have seen. Please be sure to send me advice, and I'll always take your suggestions into account if you leave a review. Have a great day and enjoy the chapter!

THE WAYWARD FOX

"... Do you understand? You are to never reveal any association with Konoha. For all intents and purposes, you are a missing-nin" With that, Danzo closed the mission brief and slid it over to Naruto.

It's a little sad, honestly. For all the claims that he was a demon, no one ever seemed to entertain the idea that Naruto was even slightly more intelligent than he let on. One partial interrogation was all it took to convince everyone that he was the same old silly Naruto from 6 years ago.

Even Danzo, a man with a reputation of obsessive paranoia, still belittled him and assumed he was happy to fight for Konoha until his preordained doom. Tobi probably would have spent a few minutes lecturing him on how fortunate he was, that his enemies stupidity was going to guarantee his victory. Naruto, on the other hand, just felt insulted at the whole affair.

Hell, even Tobi had underestimated him in the end. No one ever seemed to acknowledge his hard work or his ninja prowess. It was a rather childish thought to have, especially having it right here with Danzo offering him a golden opportunity.

The mission brief was short, and clearly lacking good intel on the target. Danzo didn't really intend for him to survive, so sufficient preparation wasn't necessary in his eyes. True to Danzo's reputation of paranoia, this mission was to hinder their own allies in Suna by capturing their Jinchuuriki. It seemed like Danzo had tried to build himself a win-win scenario, he either lost a jinchuriki he didn't want and made himself a new one, or he got another free jinchuriki courtesy of Suna and made himself two new jinchuriki.

To Danzo's credit, it wasn't a bad plan. Suna wasn't the most trustworthy of allies, and his paranoia probably wasn't unfounded in this case.

Sitting up from the table, he gave Danzo a mocking bow and sped out of the room. His ANBU guard didn't bother sneaking around, they just walked behind him or lazily jumped from rooftop to rooftop.

The mission could be started whenever he was ready, likely just an excuse to rid the village of him all the more quickly.

After gathering the surprisingly decent equipment he had been given for the mission, he set off through the gates, looking for one Sabaku no Gaara of Sunagakure.

Despite the lack of intel, the location given seemed to be correct. Rumor around the village he was in was that a team of sand ninja had passed through, and Gaara seemed to have struck fear in the residents during his short presence here.

The file wasn't clear, but considering the treatment he had faced in the leaf he had little doubt that Gaara was probably under partial control of his Bijuu, given the intel that he couldn't sleep.

Killing Gaara was unnecessary, all he needed to do was provide enough distraction to ditch his ANBU escort and make it back to Konoha, thereby halting Danzo's assasination plan and complicating his future plans.

It was a risky play, even by Naruto standards. Danzo could very well have a plan B, but Naruto was betting that Danzo had so gravely underestimated him that even his paranoia hadn't considered the option of Naruto succeeding and escaping any "accidents" he may have set up.

All he had to do was appear to succeed in the mission, long enough for him to be reluctantly cleared by the village council. Given that they cleared him, Jiji could make him a Ninja immediately and therefore bypass the civilian council's hold over him.

From then on, Danzo could only give advice on the topic of Naruto, or send his little agents in to assassinate him.

Now, he just had to do everything perfectly. No pressure, right?

After greasing a few pockets, Naruto found himself trailing the Suna ninja by a few miles, making sure they couldn't detect him. The Suna team was supposed to be dealing with bandits that had holed up in a cave a few miles north of Wind Country.

His ANBU detail wasn't far behind, but seemed less than interested in assisting him during the mission, or even talking to him for that matter.

A few hours passed, and Naruto felt bloodlust radiating from the Suna jinchuuriki, confirming they had reached their destination.

The cave they had entered had an absurdly large entrance, complete with two towering stone doors and a hallway lined with blue torches. Blood and crushed remains stained the granite floor, clearly the guards hadn't been expecting Gaara and his team to break through the door so quickly.

As he ventured further into the cave, he chanced a look back at the doors. A man had been crushed against the wall before he could move out of the way, a door of that size moving so quickly…

'Wind chakra'. It was only so obvious because he had done it too, wind chakra was at its most lethal when it was used to enhance the momentum of something already moving. A wind user shouldn't provide too much trouble, but they might be able to provide a distraction so he could ditch the ANBU. Given Danzo's order for them to stay close to him at all times, they would eventually have to follow him into the cave.

Fighting a wind user in an enclosed space… not a smart move. Without the room to maneuver around it, even a chunin-level wind user could land some devastating attacks on an ANBU. Naruto crept further into the cave, hearing a few screams echo off of the walls from further in.

Naruto didn't have to worry about a retreat, Gaara and his team had a reputation to uphold, the Kazekage wouldn't stand for a retreat even if the mission was complete. He set a few traps anyway, because "A ninja can't make any assumptions". Tobi loved to preach his ideals at every opportunity, but the ugly bastard had a sort of wisdom when it came to ninja-work.

It had been years since he had spoken with Tobi, coming on almost 3 now. Naruto didn't really regret leaving, but he couldn't lie and say he didn't think about him sometimes. His ability to teach was incredible, at least in comparison to whatever the other ninja villages were doing. It had taken him 3 years to make Naruto into what he considered a "low Chunin level ninja".

Of course, Tobi's definition of "Low Chunin" was something more akin to a Special Jounin, but Naruto took Tobi's standards as a compliment. In a twisted sort of way, it meant that Tobi thought he had potential, which was as close to a compliment he would ever get from the man.

Thoughts of Tobi fading from his head, Naruto noticed tailed beast chakra flaring again in pleasure. It seems Gaara had finished up with the bandits.

Springing into action, Naruto entered what must have been the bandit hideout. Gaara had done some messy work, not a single bandit he could see had the life in them to twitch.

Close to the entrance, two Suna genin shuddered in badly hidden fear at what they had witnessed. Naruto snuck behind a few of the bandit tents that were still standing, hoping that Gaara's handiwork would continue to distract the genin.

Gaara stood in the middle of the massive cave, bloodthirsty grin on his face as his sand soaked up the last bandit's lifeblood. Behind him stood what he assumed was Gaara's jounin-sensei, looking impassively at the horrific scene in front of him.

'I need to force the jounin into a confrontation with my ANBU guard, then I can get my ticket back into Konoha'. He would need to sell the village medics on his ruse for long enough to press the village council into pardoning him, so he would need a live body.

While simply killing Gaara would make sense, granting Danzo an emotionless and bloodthirsty Jinchuriki wouldn't be in anyone's best interest. To top it all off, he needed Gaara to kill his ANBU escort, something that would require a great deal of power.

Not that Naruto wasn't powerful, but the file he had been given stated that Gaara could fully transform, so it would be a lot less of a risk than Naruto having to kill both Gaara's team and his ANBU escort.

To put the nail in the coffin, Naruto just didn't want to kill children. Tobi would have bitched about his weakness and how "soft" he was, but Naruto had never bought into his more radical ideals.

The plan was shaky, and there were probably better options, but he didn't have the time or the resources to change things now.

With a shaky breath, he suppressed his chakra as much as he was able and threw a rock at the entrance.

The sand Jounin turned towards the noise and let out an annoyed grunt. "Is there anything back there, Gaara?"

The boy closed his eyes and reached out his hand, before his eyes snapped open again with a murderous cackle.

"Four outside, Mother will taste their blood!"

"Gaara, are they shinobi?"

The red haired jinchuuriki turned to the Jounin, chakra flaring in anger.

"ANBU, four of them. Do not get in my way".

The Jounin's eyes widened in alarm. Without another word to Gaara, he shot back towards the cave entrance to intercept the incoming ANBU.

'So he doesn't want Gaara to die?' The file had said that the Kazekage had tried many times to assassinate Gaara, but his Jounin-sensei made sure to protect him from high-level threats.

'He's valuable'. The Kazekage must have a reason to switch his behavior so suddenly, now he's put priority on protecting his rabid weapon, impractical unless he has a way to use him.

Simply put, Gaara being out on missions such as this was both a waste and a risk. The jounin could have dealt with this himself, and it was clear that Gaara wouldn't take well to the usual teamwork training these missions provided.

The Kazekage had only sent him here to make sure his weapon was still in top shape, meaning that whatever he planned on doing he planned on doing it soon.

Information that he usually wouldn't need to know, but the council could be mollified if he proved himself valuable immediately, even Danzo would appreciate having his suspicions confirmed.

He could hear the rumble of wind echo from the entrance, it seems the sand jounin had played his part perfectly.

Gaara methodically stomped towards the entrance, intent on claiming as many lives as possible.

Naruto bolted out of his hiding place, throwing a wind chakra enhanced kunai right towards Gaara's back.

As he expected, Gaara's sand reacted and formed a shield around his person, but it cracked under the force of the enhanced kunai.

Gaara slowly turned around, his cold gaze burning in anger and excitement. Naruto took the opportunity to throw some wind-enhanced shuriken, curving them around Gaara to hit his back.

The sand jumped to his defense again, but the second shuriken shattered the sand shield and the third hit Gaara right on the shoulder blade. Gaara wiped some blood off of his shoulder, his eyes wide in shock.

"You hurt me, how did you-" Naruto didn't give him the chance to recover, jumping in close with a kunai and poking through Gaara's defense. The sand was fast, but it was weak to wind chakra and couldn't handle extended clashes with his kunai.

Naruto poked at Gaara incessantly, cracking through his sand and keeping him off balance.

'He needs to sustain a real injury, or he won't transform'. Naruto took a stab at Gaara with the kunai while also kicking him, forcing the sand to block the knife and leave Gaara open for the kick. Gaara stumbled, giving Naruto the time to infuse his kunai with a great deal of wind chakra and hurl it through his sand defense, stabbing straight through the left side of his collarbone.

"What's wrong? Don't tell me you've given up. You haven't proven your existence yet" Naruto mocked.

The file had almost understated how much Gaara had cared about "proving his existence". His eyes had shifted from cold and empty to burning with unadulterated fury, all of his ire now aimed at Naruto.

Sand covered Gaara, and the ugly countenance of the One-Tailed Tanuki formed in his place. The sand already present in the cave (and the gourd) wasn't enough to fully transform, so Gaara's right side was only partially covered by the transformation.

Naruto launched towards the entrance, dodging a few sand bullets thrown by Gaara and turning the corner quickly.

By the entrance, the sand Jounin was hurling wind jutsu at the ANBU that Danzo had trailing him. There were only 4, and 2 of them were already gravely injured.

Naruto almost patted himself on the back for coming up with this plan 'Wind user in a cave, even Danzo's little bitches aren't doing so hot'.

Not to say the sand jounin wasn't harmed, he sported a few cuts on his back and looked exhausted from his heavy chakra expenditure.

Naruto didn't have the time to assess the rest of the situation, because Gaara chose that moment to slam his way through the corner and enter the fray.

The sand Jounin's head snapped towards the noise, seeing Naruto halfway up the hallway and a furious Gaara not far behind.

Having gone unnoticed by the fighters until now, Naruto frantically prepared to dodge a flurry of wind jutsus from the sand jounin.

Pushing himself off the wall, Naruto pushed the wind behind him and slammed right into the sand jounin. The man toppled over, and Naruto wasted no time in sprinting out of the cave.

"Uzumaki! Are you abandoning the mission area?" An ANBU called out. Any further protests were cut short by a sharp dart of sand shooting through his head.

'Uh oh…' Naruto chanced a look back at Gaara, who looked slightly pissed off. His two genin teammates huddled against the wall, intent on keeping Gaara's attention on Naruto.

The 3 ANBU still alive seemed to understand Naruto's logic now, and quickly hurried to move in the opposite direction of the Suna jinchuuriki. Gaara continued to fire off high speed sand darts at Naruto and the ANBU, but they were able to dodge them until they burst out of the exit.

Once they were all out of the cave, Naruto turned around and quickly made a few hand seals.

"Futon: Wind Vortex!" The jutsu pulled air out of the cave at a great speed, causing Gaara and his team to fly towards the entrance and the gargantuan stone doors to shut in their faces. A few muted slams and cracks could be heard, and Naruto and the masked ANBU all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

One of the braver ANBU pointed at the door before looking at Naruto with annoyance. "You've got one of those fuckers in you, right? How come you can't do that?

Naruto gave a half-hearted shrug in response. "In that state, the One-Tailed Beast has full control of his actions, if I did that… I'm sure your memories aren't that short".

"So, if we leave them there, will that Tanuki kid just starve and die?" Another ANBU asked hopefully.

A sad smile appeared on Naruto's features. "If only…"

With a loud bang from the other side, a small chunk fell out of the thick stone door. The atmosphere of fear overtook the ANBU once more, and Naruto sighed in relief.

"That guy looks a little miffed, good luck dealing with him guys!" With a jaunty wave, Naruto took off into the trees, heading back toward Konoha.

He supposed they would be yelling at him, too bad Gaara chose the perfect time to make his entrance.

With a murderous roar, Gaara crushed his way through the door and buried one of the three ANBU in wreckage.

"Whew, hope you kids have fun!" Naruto would stick around to rub it in a little more, but Gaara was working through the final two ANBU rather quickly.

With one last taunting grin, Naruto began his journey back to the Land of Fire.

The mood in Hi no Kuni's capital city was rather tense, Naruto decided. Apparently, a Land of Lightning delegation had arrived, sporting a Kumo escort. Not out of the ordinary by any stretch of imagination, but Kumo didn't necessarily have the best reputation here. The Hyuuga Affair had been leaked to the public soon after it had occurred, and it must have been some top-tier housewife gossip given how many citizens seemed to glare at the Kumo ninja as they passed by the busy main square.

The capital city was dense. Buildings felt shoved together and certain areas of the city felt as if they were haphazardly created to house the ever growing population, without thought for practical design or architecture. It was odd to Naruto, because Konoha and Kumo both were villages that were created to house a stable number of people. Simply put, a good deal of ninja died in a given year, so the population growth couldn't exceed the constant death.

In contrast to the sloppy nature of the outlying districts, the main drag seemed to be the only premeditated structure in the whole city. The city square was crammed to the brim with people, shops, food stands, government offices and luxury restaurants. It was almost jarring walking here from the residential district, where hotels and apartments warred for space and the streets were so narrow you had to shuffle sideways.

Naruto kept his hood up, he had quite a few… identifiable features (whiskers were a dead giveaway, and Tobi had told him he looked alarmingly similar to his father). His similarity to his father had been a source of his confusion for years, no one had ever pointed out how much he looked exactly like the fucking Fourth Hokage. He was more than a little miffed that only his incredibly violent and unhinged sensei had the decency to inform him of that.

Shaking the thought of Tobi and Minato from his head, he continued down the main drag towards the general store. The trip back to Konoha would be lengthy, and he wasn't provided nearly enough supplies (Naruto knew better than to think it an oversight) to make it back to Konoha without buying some more.

Naruto turned into the shopping district and found his destination. A large building that looked like a parody of a dojo, complete with the most aesthetically distasteful gold embossed screen doors he had ever seen.

A sign was messily nailed to the top of the door, saying in big letters (gold-embossed, a bit extra for a grocery store) "Gato General Store". Naruto sighed in annoyance, he had seen far too many of these in Kumo and Konoha.

'Gatos always has the highest prices…' Naruto let out a slight growl as he pushed open the screen door. As if that wasn't bad enough, an obnoxious bell rang off as he opened the door, signaling his entry. A scarred man stood at the counter, absently stabbing his butcher knife in between the gaps in his fingers.

Looking around the shop, Naruto was somewhat mollified by their decent selection, but everything cost a good 50% more than even the stores in Konoha (even with the upcharge he gets courtesy of his foxy friend). With a grumble of resignation, Naruto began to look around for some food that would keep through his long journey.

That terrible bell rang once more, signaling the entry of a rather conspicuous fellow. The woman that had walked in looked confident, but her movements seemed off. The steps were just… a little too wide.

'Henge' Naruto realized. To avoid suspicion, he pretended to grumble over the price of the beef jerky he had found (well, not pretend, Gato's beef jerky prices were fucking egregious).

Naruto walked up to the counter and checked out with the unenthusiastic clerk, checking through the window to confirm his theory. The shinobi was definitely there for him.

Naruto avoided eye contact with the shinobi as he made his exit. Strolling back through the main drag, he noted a few well-disguised shinobi he hadn't seen on the rooftops earlier.

'They're good. Danzo's, almost certainly." Sarutobi had given him a last warning before his departure. To watch out for Danzo's own personal ANBU force, aptly named ROOT.

He continued the main drag all the way towards the city gates. It just wouldn't do to start an altercation in the capital, not even Jiji could get him out of that.

The guards remembered him, for whatever reason, and he made it through without any issues. Danzo's forces made sure to stay far enough behind him that he couldn't sense them, so he didn't catch another glimpse until he was already on the main road.

One of Danzo's shinobi was lying flat in a bush, their black clothes barely visible through the thick leaves. Making sure not to move his lips, Naruto mentally smirked at his new plan. With a lazy jump, Naruto flew onto a tree branch and began speeding back in the direction of the village.

'Taking on Uzumaki Naruto in a contest of stamina? What a shame, what a shame'.

They were performing admirably, so far. Danzo's men didn't seem to care about hiding anymore, they had broken stealth protocol and were now plainly running behind him. They were all panting, but seemed to be ignoring their body's exhaustion in favor of the mission.

There was a river clearing up ahead, one he was intimately familiar with. They weren't even 50 miles from Konoha now.

Surveying the small waterfall at the top of the clearing, Naruto jumped down to the soft dirt and began setting a few of his traps.

'It's no Valley of the End, but it should do the trick' Naruto mused.

One by one, the exhausted ROOT shinobi landed on the opposite side of the stream.

The one in front stepped forward, and pointed at him. "Uzumaki Naruto, we are here to escort you back to the village. Please do not resist".

"Where's the headband, then?" Naruto shifted, so that he was facing the small waterfall instead of the ROOT ninja. Putting his right hand against his hip, he slowly began to make a few one handed seals with his fingers.

"Do not resist, Uzumaki. We have the right to take you by force". The man's voice remained emotionless, but the tension was steadily rising.

"Enjoy the shower". Naruto crossed his fingers, completing his last one-handed seal. With a series of lightning fast hand seals, he performed a long-distance shunsuin and dived backwards.

A deafening explosion sounded from behind the waterfall, signaling the detonation of his most powerful trap. The explosion filled the river clearing with blistering hot mist, Naruto himself was only inches away from a cloud of the heated vapor.

Naruto stood up and brushed himself off, swiping the mud off of his black and orange pants (mostly black, too much orange has nearly gotten him killed on a number of occasions).

'Well, at least that new explosive tag seemed real handy'. Naruto had spent many a sleepless night pouring Chakra into a huge sealing canvas, one that he had designed to be the largest explosive tag ever created. He didn't know if it was, to be honest, but it was way cooler to assume that he had just set off the largest explosive tag ever. He even had an extra, but that one was full of Kyuubi chakra, which was guaranteed to have some gnarly side effects that he needed to test out.

The mist started to clear, revealing three root shinobi frantically removing their masks and sucking in fresh air. Their bare faces were red and blistered, the woman in the group collapsed in shock from the pain.

'Note to self, the tag has some pretty nasty effects even without the fox chakra'. Naruto couldn't help but grimace at the sight, he knew from personal experience that those burns hurt like a motherfucker.

"Hey guys, does Danzo give you guys health insurance?" Naruto asked with faux innocence. He turned to the girl with the burns streaking down half of her face "I mean, he should at least pay for your plastic surgery, you couldn't land a homeless man with that face".

The ninja recoiled at the casual name-drop of their leader, the man who had spoken before shakily got to his feet and coughed. "Our identity has been compromised, we can not afford to fail this mission. Leader-sama would not accept us back knowing we let you live".

Naruto took out a large sword hilt from his bag, flipping around the intricate piece with a lazy grin. The hilt was engraved with a pattern of a silver sea, and a stunning blue sapphire took the place of the full moon.

Naruto's lazy grin turned feral, his once blue eyes now burning bright orange. He grabbed the hilt with both hands, and lifted it to the sky. The empty hilt flickered red, and a bright orange chakra blade materialized above it.

"Well, I'm sure Danzo wouldn't be pleased if I let you failures live now. I take no pleasure in it, but if it's for the good of the village…".