Anko was enjoying this extended mission even more than she thought she would. She'd been expecting to have to fight for every scrap of training she could get, but she found there was no such shortage in sight. Even when Orochimaru had been her sensei, he'd been somewhat stingy at times, using training more as a reward for pleasing him than something to be done for its own benefit.

Certainly they were holding back of great deal of their best jutsu from Anko, but between her three companions, they knew so many that even their scraps felt like a feast. Orochimaru may have made collecting jutsu a life goal, but Naruto and Harumi in particular were veritable libraries of techniques that put even him to shame.

She'd quickly discovered that Harumi's knowledge was much more traditional for a ninja, designed for combat and stealth right from the start. Even so, it was training with Naruto she looked forward to the most, and not just for the better eye candy. True a lot of what he showed her didn't have immediately obvious applications in a fight, but figuring out just how to use it was part of the fun.

More importantly, most of his knowledge contained crazy abilities no one else in the ninja world had ever seen before. Her whole style was built around being unpredictable, so stuff like that was solid gold to her.

Now if only she had as much luck with Naruto himself as she did with his training. The more time she spent around him, the more convinced she was she'd like to at least give it a shot with him and see how things went. Naruto, however, could put any mule to shame in his stubbornness on the subject. Still, he at least grew more comfortable around her over time. She figured she could wear him down eventually, especially with Harumi doing her best to prod him along as well.

Until then, at least he was fun to tease. For a guy as old as he was supposed to be, who had children of his own, you'd think he could handle flirting a little better. Then again, she supposed his reaction was part of his charm. Speaking of charm, Anko knew she had more then her own fair share, so it really just became a question of how much longer Naruto could hold out against it.

As far as her career was concerned, Naruko had been doing absolutely great since breaking off from Naruto. Her team was succeeding on mission after mission with flying colors, even as the average difficulty of them was steadily being increased. Then there was the fact that she'd actually completed Kushina's challenge and made jonin within the year, even if only just in time. The fact that Sasuke and Neji were promoted at the same time did little to diminish her pride, even if the former of the pair spoiled her mood more than a little that day.

For the most part, she was enjoying her life as well. Actually having friends and spending time with them made for a much better time than the last few faded fragments of memories from Naruto indicated he'd had anytime recently. There was, of course, one huge black spot that prevent her life from being truly idyllic. She had yet to admit the truth of her origins to her friends.

One the one side, Kushina kept encouraging her to get it all out in the open. She claimed it was best to get it all out as quickly as possible. Shikamaru on the other hand was even more adamant that she put it off longer if she wanted the best chance of forgiveness. Minato stood right in the middle, saying that it was up to her when and if to tell them, and that their may not be a right answer.

Almost as if to relieve the stress of her silence, very early on she'd revealed to Kushina and Minato virtually every piece of information she could dredge up on Naruto. His origin and relationship with the Biju. Who exactly Harumi was. What she knew about Naruto as a person. She could no longer go into much detail about what he'd been doing most of his life, as those memories had long since escaped her, but she'd spent enough time contemplating the Biju that her own memories covered those basics.

That particular piece of intelligence, Minato quickly swore her never to reveal without authorization. Which was really just what she needed, more secrets. She understood the reasoning that made this so highly classified, but job description or not, she was sick of keeping things from her friends. She didn't know how much longer she'd be able to listen to Shikamaru as it was, no matter how well reasoned his arguments.

Naruko was near the breaking point of her patience. It was going to be sooner rather than later that she brought her friends into the loop.

At times, Hinata could hardly remember how bad her life had been early on in the academy. It all seemed like a bad dream. Ever since the day Naruko had confronted her, Hinata's life seemed to be getting nothing but better. She'd made three wonderful friends that day and the improvements hadn't even stopped there.

Her greatest fear of being separated from her friends completely had been put to rest when she was placed on Naruko's team. Certainly she'd been secretly hoping two of her three friends would make the team, but honestly if only one of them could, she was happy it was Naruko. Not that she felt Ino or Sakura were any less of true friends than Naruko was, but Naruko had always held a special place in her heart, if only because she was the one who'd actually first approached her.

As time had passed, she'd become grateful that only Naruko had joined her team, as it let her gain yet another friend. Kiba might be a little … difficult … at times, but he was a good and loyal teammate, and these days it was hard to think of anyone else taking his place.

Then there were her teachers. Getting trained by the Yondaime himself was something more than a few ninja had let known they were jealous of, but more even than the prestige was simply how great he and his wife were at teaching. Between their lessons, and Naruto and Kiba's encouragement, she'd been able to get more out of herself than she'd ever thought possible.

She'd been promoted to chunin during her first uninterrupted exam. Even her father had started to notice her improvement. Not that he said as much, but it was easy to tell simply by how quiet he was on the subject. Sure he occasionally brought up how Neji was showing more promise, but other than that, he hardly criticized her at all. That proved to be a huge weight off her back.

Hinata may never truly make her father proud, but for the first time in her life, she didn't feel like a complete disappointment. Yes, Hinata could hardly be happier with how her life was going. That just motivated her to work all the harder. She was determined to do everything in her power not to let anyone take from her what she'd finally achieved.

It was a very odd feeling for Naruto to be working on a goal other than the one he'd been focusing on for centuries. Yet Harumi had convinced him of the dangers Madara posed should he accomplish his goals. Not that it took all that much convincing. It was due to Naruto's actions that Biju were in the state they were, and as far as he was concerned, that made it his responsibility to keep their power from being abused.

That's why he'd been getting a crash course in ninjutsu and fighting ninja in general. He hadn't had any one else train him to fight since he'd been learning the sword with the samurai, so it was something of a novel experience. An experience that was only enhanced by his present company. Well, Itachi might not be much of a conversationalist, and Anko was, if anything, too much of a conversationalist. Or at least her choice of topics left something to be desired.

Nevertheless, Itachi's reserved nature, and Anko's lewd behavior aside, they weren't at all unpleasant to be around most of the time. Not to mention that whatever flaws they had were more than countered by having Harumi back in his life. He'd enjoy their time together even more when they could focus their efforts back on breaking Naruto's tie to the Biju. Even though that wasn't their goal, he still had an endless stream of ideas inspired by all the new jutsu he was learning.

First, however, came dealing with Madara, a topic they had no clear solution to yet. Madara had yet to make his move, but considering there were nine Biju and only four of them, the math simply didn't add up to playing defensively. Naruto didn't quite agree with Harumi's desire to destroy the Biju completely, but it looked like they would have to take a much more aggressive approach. After all, if they only eliminated Madara, it would all be over.

Author's Notes:

I know, after an extended break it's pretty pathetic to have barely 1,500 words of actual story. One of the big reasons for this delay is that for the first time ever, I actually threw out a partially written chapter because I just felt it was garbage. The main problem was, I knew since I started how I wanted the story to end. It was just getting difficult to write a way to connect where they are to where I want them to be.

In trying to come up with a way to get all the pieces in place just as I wanted them, I somehow ended up with a story that was both dull and overly contrived. Some of the decisions were just a bit too forced and nothing felt very exciting or important. So I threw it all out and started fighting with the planning all over again. It was difficult, but I'm pleased to say I think the new blueprint is greatly improved, and I didn't even have to sacrifice the ending I wanted.

There is one small silver lining to this short chapter, however. And that's the following news. I went back and wrote this intermission when the next chapter was about 90% finished. I decided I wanted something to cover a few key characters instead of just time skipping two years. That said, you should have a much longer chapter coming pretty soon.

Even having to make a few small adjustments to account for what I wrote here, if it takes me a full week to finish it, I'll be very surprised.