Naruto was whistling, reading the scroll on the clone jutsu his Jiji had given him, all the while walking down the southern road away from Konoha.
"How do you do it dobe?"
Naruto sighed with a shake of his head. "Really, Kiba, I get it, it was fun calling me that in the Academy but after I beat up your ass? I was expecting a change in my nickname." The blond riveted his blue eyes to the Inuzuka' face. "I don't want a title dude, just my name will be fine you know?"
"I concur. It is needlessly degrading for you to keep calling Naruto a dead-last as it is evident he is not anymore." Shino said from behind his high-collared jacket.
"I-I-I… I think… Shino i-i-is right." Hinata managed to sputter before she became red and tried to disappear in her own jacket.
"It would be good to show at least some respect to a shinobi who beat up your ass, Kiba", achieved Kurenai with a smirk.
The Inuzuka boy, looking like he had been stabbed, blanched and mumbled something about the world being against him before he sighed. "Urgh, alright, alright, sorry Naruto. It still doesn't mean you're better than me."
"At postering? That's for sure," answered the blond.
Kiba choked and his face became red before a grimace marred it. "You want to go? I'll just show you what a real shinobi is!"
Naruto looked at the boy in fault puzzlement. "Why would I need to go anywhere to see a real shinobi? I've got Kurenai-sensei right here."
"Argh, stop being such a smart-ass! You're not better than me and I'll prove it to you!" Kiba exclaimed, getting in a ready position to attack.
"By assaulting a teammate while a mission is on-going? Sure Kiba, show me how much better you are and get kicked out of the shinobi corps after I get my formal complaint signed by the Hokage."
"Naruto please don't do that," intervened Kurenai, "that's a lot of paperwork for me."
The blond smiled at the jounin. "You know I'm a crook, Kurenai-sensei. What do I get for not doing it?"
The jounin smirked. "Nothing because Kiba won't do it," she said while sending a murderous glare at the Inuzuka. "He isn't that stupid."
"Huh, could have fooled me!"
Kiba choked again before he lunged in anger. "Argh!"
Kurenai palmed her face, Hinata gave a squeaky "eep!" of alarm and Shino sighed. Naruto exploded in a cloud of smoke as the Inuzuka barrelled into him.
"You failed again, Kiba!" Kurenai exclaimed as she slapped the back of the boy's head. "Goddammit, you need to seriously control your temper. Naruto!" She bellowed, "get down from your tree!"
Naruto appeared in front of Team Kurenai, his scroll still open and one eye still on it. The blond had a pout on his lips. "You can still detect me."
"Of course, I'm a jounin, I have my ways. Now, Kiba." She turned towards the Inuzuka, fuming. "Temper. Control. What in these two words are you incapable to understand?"
Kiba swallowed thickly.
"You can't be goaded by words, mister Inuzuka, that'll get you or one of your teammates killed. Do you have any idea how much ninjas insult each other's mother in a fight, just to create an opening? Or your appearance, your supposed intellect, or whatever they can think to set you off? Your anger makes you sloppy Kiba so you need to learn how to control it. Is that understood?"
Kiba nodded hurriedly and Kurenai groaned her exasperation before she offered the Inuzuka a sincere smile. "I'm worried, Kiba," she said, cupping one of the boy's cheek. "You're too much of a hot-head and it'll get you wounded. Or worse," Kurenai explained with worry in her red eyes clear for everyone to see.
The woman suddenly glared and pinched the boy's cheek harshly, eliciting a squeal for help from Kiba. "That's why you need. To. Control. Your. Temper!" She hammered, stretching Kiba's cheek further and further with each word before letting go.
She sighed and looked at the boy. "What is your mission today?"
"To not get annoyed by Naruto," Kiba answered monotonously. In before he flailed his arms wildly and screamed his frustration. "Ahhh! I can't do it sensei! Please, anyone but him!" He wailed, crocodile tears streaming from his eyes. He suddenly gritted his teeth and squeezed his right fist. "He is so infuriating! Why can't I do that with Shino? Or Hinata?"
Kurenai rolled her eyes. "Because you know very well that the point is to pit you against someone who can get under your skin. I know it doesn't work with Shino and Hinata."
"I admit the noble art of trash-talking is still something that eludes me," admitted Shino with a dip of his head.
Hinata dipped her head down, red colouring her face and neck, looking sad. "S-sorry," muttered the girl. "I'm useless."
Kiba flailed his arms again, this time towards Hinata. "What?! Nonono, Hinata, that's fine! Leave this kind of grunt work to the dobe; he is only good for that anyway."
"That and beating your ass." The blond remarked snidely.
"Shut up Naruto!"
"You're making progress, you said my name. Soon, you'll know how to count to ten."
"I'll squish you, dobe!"
"Ah, false alert, he is still as stupid as he was ten seconds ago." Naruto slapped his forehead. "Sorry, forgot you can't count. Don't worry, I'm sure Hinata can teach you that. She was what? Second place in the Academy ranking for the kunoichi?"
"That she was," confirmed Kurenai.
"See Hinata," said Naruto with a sage-like nod. "Some people mastered the art of insulting others, that's me. Some people have mastered the art of being loud, smelly and overall not of much use, that's Kiba."
"I! Need! To! Stab! Something!" The Inuzuka bellowed, ready to pounce on the Uzumaki but restrained by Shino.
Naruto smirked. "Shino mastered the art of looming over people silently. I'm sure you have something you know how to do better than anyone else."
"W-what if I don't?" The Hyuuga girl asked shyly, her voice barely above a murmur.
"Pah!" Naruto scoffed. "Nonsense." He looked at her teammates. "What's her hobbies?"
"Flower pressing," Shino informed. "She accepted to show us some of her work and it is of rather high quality."
Naruto gave the girl a triumphant smile. "See? No one here knows how to do that." He eyed Kurenai. "You don't do flower pressing right sensei?"
The red-eyed woman gave the blond and the Hyuuga girl a smile. "No indeed."
"Hence, that makes you the master among us." Naruto bowed to Hinata. "Oh flower pressing master, I'm honoured to be in your presence."
The girl reddened to never yet reached levels just as she giggled. A frown soon marred her features, however, and she cast her eyes down again. "That's useless for being a ninja though," Hinata muttered.
Naruto shrugged. "Sure, but being good at one thing doesn't mean you can't get good at another. Were you any good at flower pressing when you began?"
"N-no," admitted the girl.
"Then that's the same for being a good shinobi. You have to work for it. Or better: around it." The blond said with a wink.
"A-around?"
Naruto shrugged. "Sure. Do you want to become a good shinobi? Shinobi aren't only those who endure, they are those who conceal, Hinata. We dissimulate, we lie, we cheat." The blond shot the girl a disarming smile and wiggled his eyebrows. "That's how I beat your ass."
Hinata produced a mixed sound, between a giggle and choking noise.
Naruto ignored her and took a pose, eyes looking up and index finger pointing at the sky. "That's how I pranked the Hokage!"
Hinata looked at the boy with admiration in her eyes.
The blond returned to a slouched pose. "And that's also how I beat Shikamaru at shogi. But don't tell him."
"I truly am unsure if that makes you more or less intelligent than Nara-san and this question puzzles me to a degree I would never have imagined," confessed Shino while Hinata was laughing quietly behind one of her hand.
"What if I tell you that's exactly what I want and it's part of a plan to make you lose your composure?"
"Wouldn't revealing that drastically lower the chance of that plan being a success?"
"Maybe, maybe not. After all, who knows if I'm telling you the truth?"
Shino breathed in as if to say something but stopped. The boy frowned. "It would seem I kept underestimating you, Uzumaki-san," the Aburame eventually said. "For that, I apologize." He bowed. "It stops now."
Kiba looked at his teammates and sighed. They had lost their mind and the Uzumaki had perverted them with his games and honeyed words. The Inuzuka squeezed his fist and silently swore he wouldn't fall to the same fate.
"Guys, look, Kiba reverted to his natural state: that of the oyster. Observe how he is staring at nothing while drool drips from his lips."
"I'm going to murder you dobe!"
Kurenai palmed her face again and sighed.
This was going to be a long mission.
Ibiki took another report from the large box on his desk and gave it a cursory glance. It was enough to be the final statistical piece of data that proved his hunch.
The return of Team Gai on one hand and Gai on the other had started an investigation and Ibiki already didn't like the implications of his first finds.
In the Land of Fire, the Daimyo gave local lords a bunch of prerogatives, like organising the police or collecting the taxes and a few duties, like keeping the defensive infrastructures in a good state. Only the courts of justice and the garrisons were independent, the judges answering directly to the Daimyo's Minister of the Left while the military commanders answered to the Minister of the Right.
As long as the Grand Accountant was happy with the amount of money sent by each lord, they were left pretty much to their own device.
In theory, something like policing could be left to any kind of private mercenary company but Konoha had ruthlessly eliminated this kind of concurrence long ago and the village was de facto the only choice for the governors.
In any case, there had been a policing contract between the previous lord of Funadamari and Konohagakure for two teams of trackers to be on a permanent post in the city in order to patrol the coast and intercept smuggling attempts.
For some reason, however, the port-city had never been deemed a place of national priority due to its size. The harbour was too little for an invading army and its equipment to land properly. Hence, when the contract hadn't been renewed, two things had happened.
Firstly, a routine investigation had been launched to understand why exactly the contract hadn't been renewed. Secondly, this investigation had been sabotaged.
The forgery was perfect and Ibiki would have been impressed if the situation wasn't so serious. The report was neat and basically told of a special corps of dog-keepers funded by the young lord of Funadamari, whose members supposedly served both as helpers during hunts and as coast-guards. There were enough details to tell Ibiki that the lord of Funadamari probably had such people in retinue.
There was only one little mistake that told the head of T&I that the report was absolutely fake.
The date of submission. Normally, even a superficial investigation took at least a weak but the report was dated two measly days after the end of the policing contract it was about. Gathering enough intel to make such a report in only two days was simply impossible when an average chuunin from the Analytic Department would need at least four to travel to Funadamari and back.
Ibiki eyed the date of the report. The writing wasn't the same as whoever had filled it so it meant one of the archivists in the Analytic Department had put the date in and stamped the piece of paper as was mandatory but wasn't aware enough of the circumstances to detect the foul play.
Whoever had covered up the affair had been too eager to smother the investigation and too hasty in doing it. Yet they would have succeeded if not for the mail-delivery mission.
There wasn't a lot of business opportunities that would send Konoha ninjas in this side of Fire Country. Sometimes, a local court of justice required a team to help an investigation or nobles would hire some muscles to keep watch over a ceremony but basically, what they did in these parts was escorting merchants or their ware and keeping the roads safe from missing-nin as part of the staggered defensive strategy of Fire Country.
However, distributing the mail was a classic task and one which ensured that anything weird happening in border fortresses was known in Konoha. It was one of those missions with two objectives genin teams were sent on: genins took care of the mail as a mock defend and deliver situation and the jounin was basically expected to report anything strange. It was also part of the staggered defensive strategy: no one suspected the mailman from spying.
Except for other shinobi. Team Gai had confronted a situation that should never have happened in the first place. Fire Country had been infiltrated by hostile ninja forces and they had a possible foothold in Funadamari. More importantly, there was a mole in Konoha. Ibiki was taking it as a critical failure as the head of Torture and Investigation. It was his job to run counter-intelligence and his oversight had almost costed the life of four young and promising ninjas including his apprentice.
That made it personal.
Ibiki breathed in deeply and mentally prepared himself to make his case to the Hokage. He had to be quick, decisive and convincing. He would get ANBU to lurk around Funadamari if it was the last thing he did as the head of T&I.
Patrolling the surroundings of Konoha was honestly a boring C-rank mission that was given to new teams as a learning opportunity for the future, when their members, promoted to chuunin, would have to accomplish the truly important - and A-rank - border patrols.
Kurenai was a good teacher, however, and more than that she was a serious jounin. That left little time for Naruto to read and work on the exercise the Hokage had given him. Instead, he learned plenty of things about tracking: how to detect hints of someone's passage and how to, on the contrary, leave as little as possible behind him. While the blond was rather good at infiltration already - he had broken in the Hokage Tower somehow and how he had done it was an S-rank secret - it was true he had never bothered to hide his trail. At one time, his pranks had been committed in the hope of attracting people's attention after all and if nobody knew it was him… Then they would have lost their meaning.
As a ninja, however, leaving traces was considered sloppy and so Naruto learned. Team Kurenai learned too, at least how to conceal their trail as tracking was something they knew how to do already.
Kiba gloated and mocked Naruto but it was as much to get a rise from the blond as from relief that there was something he was still better at than the "dead-last" so the Uzumaki allowed it.
He had ribbed Kiba for a lifetime already and he had been merciless about it so he wasn't too bothered. Especially as it was true: Kiba and his team were better than him at tracking. Which was entirely normal given they were a tracking team. If Naruto had been better, he would have been worried.
It was the fifth day of the mission, which was a week-long trek in the hilly forest south of Konohagakure when trouble arose. Naruto was teaching the genins of Team Kurenai his trick to walk silently - in exchange for some help, obviously - and all four genins were doing their best to step as stealthily as possible and trying to approach Kurenai, who was walking ahead, and touch her back.
Kiba suddenly turned his head to the right so hard Naruto thought he'd given himself whiplash.
"Kiba-san?" Shino asked.
"I smell blood. Old and nearly dried but blood."
"Animals hunting?" Naruto questioned, already drawing one of his kunai. Wolves were known to populate the mountains north of the village but a few black bears did prowl in the hills.
Kiba shook his head and looked a little pale. "Trust the Inuzuka's nose. I'm pretty sure it's human."
"How far from our position?" Kurenai interrupted her face a mask of seriousness.
"I… I can lead us there."
The Inuzuka had lost his usual poise and Naruto understood his nervousness. It would be the first time Team Kurenai would see a dead body.
Come to think of it, it would actually be his first time too. He hadn't had the chance the contemplate the body of his attacker the first time he had killed.
AN: Video games keep honest people from writing but a small chapter like "Meanwhile" would not do. Don't hesitate to leave your thoughts, you know it's like fuel. Edit: I modified chapter 11 so that the end makes sense here.