"No, No, No!" Four hours later and another crumpled up piece of paper flew across the room from Naruto's battered, old and until now unused desk, the young graduate ninja barely resisting the urge to cry out in frustration.
The idea had seemed a brilliant one, Naruto had thought, as he had hastened away from the two chuunin. But now that he had sat himself down to think about it, something that he was not particularly used to, none of the girls Naruto knew as more than passing acquaintances were suitable for the strategy.
After all, most of them knew his prankster and troublemaking past too well and would reject any advances, just like Sakura did on an almost daily basis. Even then, assuming that the girl in question was somehow prepared to look past that and put up with him, that was merely the first hurdle for him. Then the girl in question would almost certainly be very suspicious about why he had suddenly stopped being interested in Sakura and had changed to liking them in such a short amount of time.
"Maybe I acted a little too carefree? Not like I could do a lot about my lack of manners when I started..." His stomach grumbled for the third time during this planning session, a sign he should do something to stop any further complaints. Without thinking about it too much with his now sleep deprived brain, Naruto moved his hands into the now familiar cross sign, summoning a Kage Bushin to fetch him some instant ramen.
"At least with Kage Bushin, I have someone who will be able to clean up all this mess..." As the clone slouched off to complete said task, no more awake than its creator, the original was sat staring dazedly at his hands.
It took a few moments for that something clicking to life inside his head to fully register. The next minute, Naruto was scribbling away on his latest piece of parchment, grinning wildly with all signs of tiredness swept from his features. Of course! If he couldn't find a correct girl, then perhaps, he could create one that would achieve the same purpose? Even as he wrote down the beginnings of his plot, his slowly reawakening mind processed the idea more and more.
Naruto belated realised something, he was setting himself probably the hardest task that he had ever faced in his young life, for what that he knew many people merely saw as a childhood crush. But he would manage any problem facing him, he was a ninja now Dattebayo! So many people had told him he would never succeed at that as well and here he was. Nothing was beyond him if he put his mind to it now.
"And besides, the look on Sasuke-teme's face would make all of this worth it by itself!" The newly dubbed Project Shadow soon stretched an entire side of A4, far more than he had written on one topic in quite some time. Whilst he had been doing this, the Bushin had returned with his ramen and seeing him busy, had placed his in the kitchen before dispelling. Naruto's mouth suddenly began watering.
"Mmm beef." He thought and went back to work before freezing for the second time this evening as he wondered how he had known that.
The clone hadn't told him or given him indication, and he hadn't asked or thought of a flavour that he had particularly wanted whilst creating it and he was far too far away for him to have smelt it that quickly. Thinking very hard, he was suddenly assaulted by a memory of him looking down at what looked like… him, sat at his desk. He remembered the other him moving to pick his pen to write once more before freezing, his vision turned away to complete his orders and he walked into the kitchen.
Picking up beef ramen and cooking it in the microwave for three minutes, the memory poked his head through the door and saw his original self, working away hard on something. Given the original was busy, the clone decided to leave it in the kitchen for him to come get when he wanted it before his vision suddenly ended, and he was back as himself.
His grin became even wider, if that was possible, at the thought of how useful this would be, in both project shadow and other plans he might come up with as he progressed as a ninja. His thoughts were stopped by another wave of tiredness and hunger and looking up at the clock, realised it was 4 am. Rushing through to the kitchen to go get his ramen, Naruto decided to leave the plan for the night and return to it tomorrow with some sleep behind him. Eating his ramen with his usual vigour and being finished in less than a minute, he was ready to set up for the night.
After preparing his traps, designed to alert him and deter anyone from entering the apartment, he had learned the hard way that a simple lock on the doors on the windows and doors was not enough to stop the more determined of his haters, he got ready for and then jumped into bed, and fell asleep quickly, a smile on his face as he did so, for the first time in years, for tomorrow was certainly going to be an interesting day.
Time Skip: Next Day
The next day rolled by quickly enough, and Naruto was soon at work on project Shadow once more. He had a week, before he was required back at the academy for graduation and team assignments, so it wasn't like he had anything else to do. With the idea that he could see what his shadow clones had done, and possibly were doing at any given time, he set to work with abandon.
Now he had the basis of the plan Naruto came across his first major problem, he needed the girl to invent and as such he needed more data about girls in general. Every time he ran into a roadblock in planning the girl, he didn't get frustrated or angry as he had initially with the project the night before. Instead, Naruto simply wrote the problem down as a question that needed to be answered. and then he moved onto the next point. This level of dedication would have made Iruka faint in shock from the usually inattentive and troublesome student, if the man had been there.
By 1 pm, Naruto had several sheets of questions to think about over lunch and surprisingly few actual facts to go off. The questions ranged from simple questions, such as the girls name and where did she come from? To why had she come to Konoha? Where were her family and why weren't they with her? How was she going to earn a living? With all of these in mind, he created almost a 100 kage bushin, ready to research all of these topics and help create this character in the plot he had woven together.
"You ten, go disguise yourselves, in the usual fashion. Then head to the market, see what information you can get. You lot." He pointed to about 20 of them, and they separated themselves into a group. Nodding in approval Naruto continued with his plan and spoke up to the others.
"Go to the Artisans district in disguise, find out what job could she do. And by that I mean, what can we learn to do in the next few days? What is realistic? Remember, we are making a civilian here, not a ninja so nothing too over the top." He paused before looking at the remainder of his new troops and gave his orders.
"30 of you, split up into groups of three. atch the gates, both the main ones and the smaller pedestrian based ones, I need to know schedules, procedures, lapses in guards and who would be the easiest to dupe. The rest of you, shadow some of the girls we know, we need to know how to act like a girl for a clone to be a girl. Though no more than one of you to a girl. If you run out, find some other civilian girls to follow." This got a wince from some of the clones but they nodded, one claiming the right to shadow Ayame straight away, obviously thinking of the ramen he would get whilst doing so.
They were about to leave when Naruto shook his head, considering something that would help, or at least make it less suspicious.
"In fact, 10 of you guys plan a prank, make it the biggest, most audacious one yet. In chaos there is opportunity, as I once heard someone say. If we distract people, and become the centre of attention, it will be some much easier on her side as well for her to get into Konoha, and that will be the biggest challenge we face first." The clones nodded, one laughing mildly evilly at the mention of pranking, gaining a few odd looks from the others before they shrugged it off. After a moment longer of waiting to see if he had anything else to say, they spilt into their different assigned groups, though one of them turned to Naruto.
"Boss, if we are doing all of this, what are you going to be doing?" Naruto nodded and grinned, it was a fair question after all, good to see that the clone was making sure he wasn't going to get lazy due to his discovery.
"I'm going to be training, we are Ninja now boys, we have to take this seriously. Pranks and stealth aren't going to be enough anymore." He then raised his arm imperiously and pumped it in what he thought was a manly action.
"Now you all know your tasks, remember, if we pull this off right, Sakura-chan is ours for sure, believe it!" Feeling that was inspiring enough as the clones cheered, he paused for a moment, allowing his minions to disperse through windows and doors, transforming into other people, animals and objects to begin their tasks.
Once they were all gone he too headed out, his destination set on the area he knew was almost always abandoned in favour of the more exciting and better kept ones nearby, training ground 5, right on the edge of the village training grounds, nice and quiet.
*Time Skip*
"So who wants to explain to me how an academy student, actually not just that but one of the year's worst students, managed to sneak past some of our most skilled operatives and into what is meant to be the most secure building in the Land of Fire?" The cat masked ANBU captain couldn't help but be thankful that her teams had been on exterior patrols yesterday, it meant they had only arrived in time to support with the search and clean-up operations, so she was not even in the periphery of the Tiger masked ANBU commander's anger.
Instead, the cold fury and killing intent being projected by the remarkably short man was focussed elsewhere, the stock still forms of Monkey and Wolf showing their nervousness despite their professionalism. Tiger stalked back to the middle of the room, the 15 ANBU captains watching his every move, with the resigned patience of men and women who knew that they had fucked up and were about to face the consequences.
"No-one is willing to own up then? Fine, since the Hokage has already torn me a new one for our lax standards I will pass his displeasure onto you now. Wolf and Monkey your squads are now assigned to double training duties for the next six months, and all non-essential leave will be cancelled effective immediately, Cat's squads will cover the remainder of you rota guarding the tower. Obviously our men now view the Hokage Tower as a relaxation posting rather than the honour and responsibility that it should be, as that is the only reason Naruto would have been able to get into the tower and out again, with only the Hokage noticing his presence!"
Cat winced ever so slightly in pity for her fellow captains, double training meant being the punching bags of the entire ANBU Division and given the trouble that was coming people wouldn't be going lightly on them, but Tiger wasn't done yet.
"And let's not forget that this whole debacle was instigated by Mizuki, a rat in our midst that we didn't even consider as a risk to our security. Dragon, your teams have been in charge of working Counter Intelligence with the T&I department for the last 18 months, and nothing has been brought to my attention regarding Mizuki or in fact any moles that have infiltrated our village. Have you in fact made any progress in improving the safety of our village?" Complacency, the bane of all superpowers, Cat could tell that Tiger had reached the same conclusion as she had regarding the true root cause of all of this.
"Obviously I have let your teams run without direct intervention for too long, and many of you have become too comfortable with the status quo that has been in effect since the Kyuubi incident, well that ends now." The spike of intent made even Cat's hairs stand a little on end as tiger slammed his fist into his desk.
"You have one month, either sort out your squads and have them back to doing their damn jobs or prepare your resignation letters, during which time I will come up with a set of exercises to assess your teams' abilities, performance and fitness. These will be sprung upon you without warning, and depending on the result… Well I suppose I should probably get ready for some new masks around here. Dismissed!" The ill-tempered bark merely reinforced the urge that was resting in Cat's stomach, to get out of there as fast as possible, pulling off a hasty salute before shushining out of the room.
Arriving in her company's squad room, Cat was pleased to see her four squad leaders waiting for her, something she hadn't ordered them to do before heading off to the meeting. Her Dragon masked squad leader, who she referred to as Drake just to avoid any confusion as to who she was talking about, spoke up with his usual slightly aloof tone.
"Tiger-san was unhappy with the others performance then Cat-taichou?" Cat nodded even as she reached up to remove her mask, the squad room being one of the only places in Konoha that she would feel comfortable removing it of her own volition, and it added a personal touch when she spoke to her ANBU that seemed to help inspire them.
"Unhappy doesn't even begin to cover it Drake, he has assigned them double training for the next 6 months and no leave, meaning that we are off the hook in that respect. However, as much as I am pleased we have avoided that chore, there is a lot of work that we need to do in the aftermath of Naruto-kun's work." The goat ANBU looked puzzled for a moment before seeming to remember something.
"Oh yes, you know the Uzumaki boy from when we used to guard him. Do you think he will end up causing us any more trouble in the near future Yugao-taichou?" Yugao Uzuki, who had insisted on using her own name when she took her mask off even when talking business, gave a short smile and shook her head.
"No, now that he has actually graduated I imagine Naruto will be too busy celebrating and hollering it from the rooftops to cause us any actual trouble for the foreseeable future, though I pity the one who ends up with him as a Jounin-sensei…" For some reason a cool breeze came from nowhere, sending shivers up her spine, but Yugao just dismissed it as a freak breeze and moved onto informing them about the tests that Tiger-taichou was preparing for the Division in the coming months.
Naruto would have had enough excitement yesterday to stop him doing anything else foolhardy right?
A/N: The first two chapters rewritten! Lots of new content in this one as well. This is primarily to flesh out Yugao a bit more, as well as to introduce a new story arc/character. Tora and the problems in the ANBU division will be something that I want to work on some more in the build up to the Chuunin exams, and given how my story is entirely about Naruto effectively showing how bad the security is in Konoha, I need to put some work into highlighting some more of what is going on behind the scenes.
Let me know what you think of the new version!
Defias out!