Chapter VI

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

It actually took a week and a half for Jaitan to be satisfied that they were ready to learn how to boost their strikes with chakra. In the mornings, they practiced chakra control with the many leaf exercises that he had thought up.

The harder set was insanely difficult for someone like Naruto, whose chakra control was erratic at best. Jaitan had some of his shadow clones doing leaf exercises the entire time to try and make up for it and improve Naruto's control. Apart from the ones he had already given to them on the first day, the leaf exercises included moving the leaf from one part of your body to another (usually sliding it along your arm), which was extremely fidgety and aggravating work. At first, Jaitan let them use their hands to push the leaves, but after a few days, he told them to do it without pushing. They had to float the leaf above their elbow, something that all of them could do with varying degrees of success, and then slowly channel chakra to a spot on their forearm directly adjacent to their elbow, then tilt the flow of chakra from their elbow so the leaf floated forward and inch of so and was floating above the adjacent spot, then they had to cut the chakra to their elbow and repeat from the new spot on their forearm. Needless to say, there was much swearing on the day that Jaitan introduced that one.

Another one of Jaitan's fiendish control exercises was to float a leaf above your hand as usual, using you chakra to keep it off of your palm. Then slowly flip your hand over, constantly moving your steam of chakra around the edge of your hand as you flipped it until your hand was palm-down and the leaf was floating over the back of your hand. Something else that Jaitan seemed to pleasure in was interrupting his students while they were having trouble. He might throw a kunai at them, forcing them to move and try to float leaves at the same time, or strike up a conversation with them, making them use their minds in two places at once. Sakura, for example, was rather efficient with the easier leaf-floating exercises, and she had even mastered how to dodge the kunai without allowing her leaf to fall, but she still began to have trouble whenever her sensei tried to talk to her while she was leaf-floating. Therefore, she got used to dashing away whenever she saw Jaitan approaching out of the corner of her eye, still concentrating for all she was worth.

Naruto was still also being made to practice the clone jutsu. He was making progress, as he could now make more than one at a time and they would stand one their own, looking a little disheveled. Jaitan had finally explained why he had wanted Naruto to master clones on top of his abilities with shadow-clones.

"For one thing, it's an excellent chakra control exercise for you to work on, which the log alone knows you need," Naruto squirmed a little and wished that his sensei was not so low on tact. Jaitan continued, "For another thing, it makes for an excellent battle and distraction tactic. Make a couple of normal clones and mix them into a crowd of shadow clones. The shadow clones land a few hits, but when your opponent goes to dispel them, they kawirimi with an intangible clone with cannot be dispelled in that way. It conserves chakra because you don't have to constantly replace shadow clones, and it also confuses your opponent, possibly enough to show an opening. Finally, you yourself can hide in the mass and kawirimi with the normal clones if you're in danger and the enemy won't be any the wiser about which is the real one. Of course, you'll have to practice kawirimi'ing with normal clones once you have them down."

Naruto could definitely see the sense in this thinking, so he resolved to have his shadow clones practice making normal clones even outside of team practice.

In that week and a half, Naruto and Hinata had not really spoken again outside of training. Everyone who listened to her noticed that Hinata's stutter, while still pretty bad with anyone else, seemed to ease a little when she said something to the blonde boy, as if she were almost sure of her standing with him, even if she wasn't sure of much else. Not even Oscar brought it up, much to Naruto's secret relief. He wasn't ready to talk about it yet.

After the first day, when Kakashi had shown up his customary three hours late, he had realized that he was missing most of the training. So he took to showing up only about forty-five minutes late, much to Jaitan's displeasure. Kakashi watched Sasuke spar with Oscar, Naruto's thousand clones practicing leaf floating exercises, and noted that Sakura was able to make her leaves float for just a little bit longer every time she tried. He quietly went away in the second week and came back with some papers, which he passed out to team seven.

Naruto stared blankly at the mission assignment. He registered that it was a C-rank, Protection and Escort detail. He looked up at the lazy Jounin. "You think we're ready for a C-rank mission already?"

Sasuke and Sakura stared at Naruto. They had been shocked when he turned up last week without his customary jumpsuit, but this was even more surprising. "Hey dobe," Sasuke growled, "What happened? I thought you would be over the moon about getting a C-ranker. I thought you were sick of babysitting."

"Well yeah, but we'll be leaving the village for this. What if we meet something unexpected? Do you think we could handle that, Kakashi-sensei?"

Kakashi approved of the question. "You tell me."

"What are you complaining about, Naruto?" Sakura asked. "I'd say we're ready. When do we leave?"

"We'll convene tomorrow at the Hokage tower to meet the customer and leave the day after. That should give you enough time to pack and get ready, that sort of thing."

As his students headed off to resume training for the day, one of the Jaitans spoke from behind Kakashi, "Taking my students from me already, Kakashi?" The silver-haired Jounin swung around to see the two expressionless faces.

"They're my students, too. I just think that their teamwork is a bit lacking. This is simply a trial-by-fire to show them that individual skills are nothing to a genin if they don't contribute to the group."

"Remember that you can never depend on things going as planned. That is all."

Kakashi tilted his head to one side. "Do you know something I don't?"

"No. I just never rest easy until I have prepared for every eventuality. Why do you think I chose to teach genin?"

The next day, team seven arrived at the top of the Hokage Tower to find Kakashi actually waiting for them. Apparently he didn't want to give a bad impression to the customer. "Wish he would do that for us," Oscar whispered before Sakura raised a threatening fist.

Sarutobi smiled at Naruto, noting the boy's new garb. "Well, I see you're all here. Ready to meet your customer?" They were. "You can come in now, Tazuna-san."

A clearly inebriated old man pushed the door open, sake in hand. "What's this, you promised me ninjas, not some brats fresh out of the academy. They don't look very reliable, especially not the short one." All eyes turned to an indignant Oscar.

"I'm not short, I'm exactly the right age for my height!" He got a few 'WTF' faces.

"Not in front of the customer! Really!" Sakura hissed.

"He may as well know what he signed up for."

"Anyway," Kakashi said hurriedly, hoping to gloss over this, "We'll meet you at the gates tomorrow morning, Tazuna-san. You guys," he turned to his team. "Pack heavy. We may be gone for up to a month, though I doubt it will take quite that long. Go on. I'll tell Jaitan to give you the day off to rest and pack." Team seven headed out of the room and down the stairs.

A few hours later, once he had packed everything and knew that training would be over for the day, Naruto went to find Hinata to say goodbye. He found her leaving the training field a few minutes after everyone else had left. She smiled shyly when she saw him and even managed a tiny wave, the blush creeping into her face. He grinned back and went to meet her.

The smile faded from her face as he explained about the mission. Three to four weeks without her Naruto-kun! She was suddenly feeling very possessive of him, afraid that she might lose him to the clutches of some beautiful foreign girl. She hesitantly took hold of his hands. "M-must you go?"

"I'm afraid I have to," he said gently. He pulled his hands from between hers in order to wrap his arms around her. He was a bit surprised when he felt her arms around his own back. She rested her chin on his shoulder.

"Be safe," she whispered. "I d-don't r-really care how l-long you take, as l-long as you can p-promise me you'll b-be safe."

"I do promise," he whispered. And she hoped he meant it. It wouldn't be the first time someone had broken a promise to her, but all she could do was hope that he really would try. Not that she had any real doubt, but he had thrown himself into dangerous situations before.

The next morning, Team seven met Tazuna at the gates to Konoha. "Where are we going again?" Naruto asked.

"We're escorting Tazuna back to Wave country," Kakashi explained.

"But that's grunt work!" the blonde objected.

"And here are the grunts, ready and able, sir!" Oscar said, addressing himself to Tazuna and snapping to a smart salute.

"What about willing?"

"For willing, you'll have to pay extra." Everyone sweatdropped.

They set off. Before too long, Kakashi had his nose buried in his tiny orange book and Sakura had begun pestering Tazuna with questions. Oscar and Naruto talked quietly in the back while Sasuke stayed silent at the front. They walked for hours until the sun began to tilt toward the horizon. Kakashi put away his book at last. "This looks like a likely spot- perhaps we should make camp for the night here."

"I'm on it." Naruto produced several dozen shadow clones. "You guys get fire wood, you guys set up the tents, you go trap us something to eat, and you find water." Naruto ordered. His clones saluted and set off. A quarter hour later, one of Naruto clones reappeared at Sasuke's side.

"Care to do the honors?" the clone smirked, indicating the newly constructed fire pit. Sasuke did care. They soon had a small fire in the middle of the ring of the three tents. A few Naruto clones were making haste to cook some rabbit over the fire. At Kakashi's warning look, Naruto quickly explained,

"It's not quite dark yet, so we won't put the fire out until then. I know that the fire makes us a target for now, but I have two tiers of shadow clones surrounding the campsite, as well as several dozen circling outside a 100-yard radius." Catching the incredulous look from his teammates, Naruto said, "What? Better safe than sorry. Anyway, I can spare them and they can take care of themselves. I'll make some more when it gets a little darker, so none of us will have to lose sleep guarding the camp." No one had any objection to getting more sleep, so they all settled down to eat before putting out the fire and retiring to their tents. After the two older men had closed their tent flap, the four genin discovered a slight hitch in the sleeping arrangements. Since there were two tents to be shared among the four of them, it seemed obvious that two people should sleep in each tent. The problem with this was that no one wanted to sleep in the same tent with Sakura. Well, Sasuke refused to and Sakura refused to sleep with Naruto, not having realized that the blonde boy had already transferred his affections to another. Oscar did not particularly like the idea of sharing the tent with the loudmouth pinkette, but he decided to sacrifice himself.

"I'll go with her." Sakura wouldn't hear of it. Apparently, it was to be Sasuke or nothing. "Well, I won't allow it, for Sasuke's sake. If I let you two bunk together, it'll end in tears, one emotionally scarred Uchiha, and an abortion. If it makes you feel better, we'll lie head to foot, facing different directions. However, I do have some conditions to my sacrifice. You," he pointed at a relieved-looking Sasuke, "If you do anything in there-"

"What?"

"Get your mind out of the gutter. If you provoke Naruto, I will sell all of your clothes to your fan girls once we're back in Konoha. And you," he pointed at Naruto who was smirking at Sasuke's plight, "If you do anything to provoke Sasuke, I will put chewing gum in your hair again."

Naruto's eyes went wide and he clutched his head. "No! That stuff took hours to get out last time!"

"Exactly." Finally he turned to face Sakura. "And you. Not one wallop out of you tonight or I'll fill your shampoo bottles and toothbrush with mud." So saying, he turned and entered one of the tents, Sakura in tow.

A/N: I am delaying the appearance of the Demon Brothers of the Mist, but I can do that since I super-glued my hands to the wheel. Anyway, the one who lied to Hinata in the past was Neji. He promised to protect her but has done nothing about it. Just in case there was confusion. That's about all except to say that chapters may come a bit slower soon, as school is starting, and of course the usual plee for reviews. Please PLease PLEEEEEAAAASSE please Review!