Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto because if I did, I'm pretty sure I'd have a slightly higher quality of life right now.
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Genma Shiranui had to admit—he was excited for today. He had woken up with more cheer than he had in a while and sang while he showered. It was a loosely kept secret that Naruto was the 4th Hokage's son but it had been forbidden to reveal to the boy of his actual lineage. At least, not until he was prepped to handle it. But nonetheless, he was excited to see how his old boss's progeny would interact with the rest of the Red Guard.
Naruto was finally going to be introduced to the rest of the Guard after his entire month of fierce training. Genma shrugged on his outfit and pulled on his Guard cloak and snapped on his mask. With a quick sequence of seals, he shunshined out of his apartment onto his rooftop. Time to see how much the boy had grown.
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"Where are we!?" Naruto wailed as he sat blindfolded with his wrists tied behind his back. Sparrow had led him into a loosely wooded clearing opposite the bottom of a cliff with what looked like a giant seal array behind it. Naruto huffed, straining his head, trying to shrug off the blindfold.
The blindfold was untied, revealing Sparrow and a line of four other red cloaked and masked ANBU, all staring at him with their blank, round-eyed expressions. Naruto spotted Horse amongst the series of grotesquely smiling masks, now not looking so hulking in comparison. The thought never occurred to Naruto that he was just short.
Sparrow assumed a spot on the right hand side of the line of them behind five roughly hewn podiums with large rock blocks standing in front of each of them.
A short nod from Sparrow and they all slowly unmasked and unhooded themselves.
"You're a chick!?" Naruto yelped, the shock nearly bowling him onto his side as he boggled at the sight of Sparrow unmasked. A couple exaggerated coughs from the other unmasked ANBU were heard.
"Surprising, eh?" The woman said as she winked and violently elbowed the man clearing his throat next to her.
"Since you're the newest inductee into the Red Guard, this is the unofficial traditional unmasking spot for new inductees, even though most chuunin and jounin know who we are…
"But that aside, this is where we make our formal introductions and welcome you into the dynasty. To start off, my name is Rin and we have selected you to take my place as I enter blissful retirement."
Naruto had already freed himself of his bindings but was still on the floor with a heavy eyebrow twitch. Wow.
"How the fuck are you a chick? Normal girls don't have hands that big," Naruto barely mumbled out, his brow still cocked in astonishment.
A large twig bounced off his head, bringing him out of his shock and back to focus on a terrifying visage of Rin snapping apart a giant tree branch into small chunks with her bare hands. Face of a model with the temper of a gorilla.
"ANYWAYS," Rin grunted, ignoring the stifled laughter of the men around her,
"From the left we have Raido Namiashi with the Skunk mask, Genma Shiranui whom you've already met with the Horse mask, Aoba Yamashiro with the Cat mask, and Jiraiya the Toad Sannin with the Raccoon mask.
"We all previously served under the Yondaime and since the Sannin were dissolved long before his death, it was impossible to get the Sandaime's original Red Guard back, so here we are.
Naruto sat gaping as he took in the row of ninja that made up the Red Guard. Rag tag crew was one thing—from their faces alone they just looked like a cross between a bowling team, a high school, and a nightclub. Raido, Genma, and Aoba looked like they should be outside of a bar or a club creeping on girls, Jiraiya looked like Rin's fake flamboyant pimp, and Rin herself looked like the one cheerleader that always gets hit on by creepy older men.
"Now, your first real initiation mission begins."
Naruto perked up, not letting himself get too excited.
'There had better not be a fucking cat in this mission', Naruto thought tetchily, his fingers tensing slightly.
"You are to make a bust of each of our faces out of these granite blocks. You've got twenty minutes."
Naruto's facial expression imitated the blocks.
"… Run that by me again?" This time, none of them were smirking. They all stared down at him with equal looks of contesting intensity, as if expecting him to put his life on the line for the blocks.
"Without touching them," Rin quipped, smiling cheerfully. Naruto let out a huff. Great, ninja art project… He stood up and paced between the blocks and each of their faces before coming to a solution.
In a show of surprising skill, Naruto held his hands up as they began to glow a dim blue sheen of wind chakra. He attempted to touch the rock and found that it crumbled off slightly with a bit of force behind the touch.
He glanced back at the line of older shinobi and found a set of receptive- interested looks, all laying their expectancies on him. Clenching his jaw, he jabbed a deep gouge into the block, effectively ruining what was to be Jiraiya's face.
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Twenty minutes later…
"You really suck at sculpture…" Rin murmured, bobbing her head out in examination of her sculpture as Naruto made his finishing touches on her face. The line of ANBU burst out laughing as they broke the line and gathered around a huffing Naruto.
The sculptures had all turned out abstract to the point of landscaping material as some of their heads had just been turned into roughly hewn stones that could pass as natural phenomenon.
"What—huff—the fuck—huff—was the purpose of this thing!?" Naruto wheezed, wringing out his hands as he wobbled slightly. His fingertips were bright red from all of the minor shrapnel and constantly bashing his fingers against the stone.
"You realize you just used a constant flow of wind chakra for twenty minutes straight, right?" Genma said, his toothpick needle bobbing as he spoke.
Naruto's jaw paused itself in mid-word, his voice dying before it began.
It had only been a little longer than a month and he had grown in leaps and bounds in ways that he had only previously known from textbooks and old war stories of warriors of generations past, manipulating the elements to their very will—he had gained that control and he didn't even realize it until now. Probably because he was busy getting his face smashed in for two weeks. There was a rumor that if you got hit in the head too many times, you'd lose your memory.
Jiraiya clapped him on the back, and steadied his shoulder as he wobbled slightly from the minor exhaustion he was feeling.
"Welcome to the club kid. Before we all forget though, we've got one last little initiation thing for you to do," Jiraiya said with a solemn look of authority on his face.
"Fuck this—I ain't doin no more stupid—," but Naruto was cut off as Jiraiya whipped out a bottle and stuffed the top into his mouth. Naruto's eyes bulged and watered as he struggled with the foreign liquid pouring out of the bottle.
"Drink. Each and every member of the Red Guard has gone through the initiation of testing their alcohol tolerance level. It's partially a fun thing but it does also double as a training exercise—training your resistance to alcohol and… stuff."
Naruto broke away from the bottle gasping and coughing as he tried to right himself. Pounding his fist against his chest, he flopped down to a sitting position still wheezing.
"ULLLGHHH! You guys are crazy! What's wrong with you guys!? I'm underage! What kind of ANBU is this!? Elite fighting force!? Since when do elite fighting forces get kids drunk!?" He ranted, his eyes teary from the alcohol burn. They all looked anywhere but him as they whistled slowly pulling bottles from behind their backs.
"Well, firstly—this is an unofficial initiation for most jounin and secondly, you became an adult the moment you made your last sculpture stroke," Rin said, causing Naruto to whip his head and glare at his shoddy sculptures.
"You're ANBU now and more than that, you're Red Guard now. Man up and take your shots," Rin leered, poking Naruto in the head with another bottle that she held. Naruto glared at her and flicked his glare at everyone else, who all slowly nudged bottles at his face.
"You guys are messed up," he grumbled before taking a bottle.
With a deep breath, he took a swig that led to a sputter and a cough. The rest of them cheered for their new teammate before taking their own swigs.
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The next day, Naruto awoke with his head pounding, his shoulder being jostled awake.
"Glad to see you're alive kid," Raido said, handing the boy a cup of coffee. As Raido sat down on a couch opposite of him, Naruto began to regain his bearings and sat up slowly before attempting to turtle into his shirt.
The living room they were in was reasonably well lit from the sunlight—and it was that exact thing that Naruto was currently trying to escape. Raido chuckled as Naruto tucked his chin as far as it would go inside his shirt collar, only to have his heavily lidded eyes peeking out.
"… Where am I?" he croaked in a voice that was closer to Rin's vocal scrambler in her mask. Raido burst out laughing, hearing the dramatic change in his voice.
"You're at my apartment, I'm roommates with Genma and Aoba—but damn kid, you got some balls. You set a new record for first timers."
Naruto groaned in response as he poked his lips out in an attempt to sip the hot beverage. Noticing a throbbing pain on his left shoulder, he lifted his sleeve up to find a freshly inked ANBU tattoo, just barely scabbing over.
"… What the fuck happened?" he creaked, giving up on getting the coffee to funnel into his mouth.
"Well, we started in the forest and moved to the Lazy Horse—ANBU bar, you'll get to know the place later—and we met some of people our age there and had a bit of a drunk-off with them—you got along with them pretty well for a first timer."
"Hahahaha, the hero rises! You got in a drinking contest with Anko and won, good for you—although I'm pretty sure she's gonna axe murder you for taking her coat like that," Genma said as he unsteadily shuffled into the living room with his own steaming coffee cup, his hair a mussed birds nest under his bandana.
"Kid, you've got some blessed fucking gonads—remind me to always bet on you for… anything!" he continued as he plopped down next to Naruto on the couch and took a deep swig of his own coffee.
"... Who's Anko?" Naruto whispered, both his voice and face muddled in confusion.
"Um… ahem… The naked one—," Raido said with a straight face before he and Genma burst out laughing.
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Naruto was allowed the next couple of days off to rest and prepare before joining Jiraiya and Rin on a tour of the Fire Country outposts. During this time, he made sober contact with the number of nins he had been introduced to while he was blacked out.
For example, after he had recovered at the Red trio's apartment and walked through the village towards the Hokage tower, he had been given hi fives by a pair of chuunin, leaving him bewildered with his hand still in the air.
When he entered the tower, he was given a mild smattering of applause from the jounin who had witnessed the events of the night before. His groggy bewilderment increased as he slowly lugged himself up the stairs to the Hokage office.
Finally, he walked in to meet Sarutobi's amused gaze, Jiraiya's perverted leer, and Rin's glass melting glare of disapproval.
"Um. So I'm reporting but… I don't remember what happened and…" Naruto began whispering, causing both Sarutobi and Jiraiya's faces to widen into full grins while Rin's eyes barely softened.
"I think I was drugged?" A pause.
A simultaneous snort from the three of them startled Naruto.
The three burst out in laughter in response. Naruto gave them a withering look—for some reason this kept on happening… When was he gonna get the badass missions already?
After giving a brief statement on his recovery, he was briefed for his trip through the outposts.
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The next two weeks were a blur as Naruto was introduced and guided along the Fire Country border in his Red Guard garb. The ninja that took in his appearance either tried to size him up or took brief glances at him with astonishment given his small figure.
Naruto himself was awed by his introduction to nearly a third of Konoha's entire military force. If he had thought there was diversity in the village, the village had nothing on the range of nin spread throughout the country itself.
From the sedate guardians of assorted temples to the vicious hunter nin outfits to the jaded and weary one or two year contracted outpost nins, they were all of an entirely different cut from Konoha.
In the peace time, some had relaxed and settled—treating their tours of duty like one long vacation, while others too jaded from missions beyond their capabilities had kept an intense paranoia about them. This was all too different from the straight hustle and military strictness found in Konoha.
As Naruto continued his travels with Jiraiya and Rin, he began to see why Jiraiya looked and acted the way he did. A big flamboyant figure that could handle being the 'life of the party'—because more and more, that's what this chain of outposts seemed to be—just one unending meet-and-greet where information was extracted, money was exchanged, and relationships were sustained.
Now, it was along this border tour that Naruto had the off chance of coming in contact with various important figures along his journey. He had met the Yondaime Kazekage briefly before departing from the desert border as the Kazekage had just wrapped up his own tour of the Suna outposts. The lingering look that he gave Naruto was one of the first of many that Naruto was soon to receive.
In Grass country, he had seen Jiraiya's exaggerated swoon over Tsunade's immense upper body proportions and then Jiraiya's exaggerated pain over Tsunade's immense upper body strength. However, that was nothing compared to what came next.
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In the demilitarized zone between Fire and Stone, Naruto and his small crew briefly crossed paths with a procession of the Stone Daimyo and his jounin guard detail. It was the longest ten minutes of his life as he felt an overbearing presence bear down on the entire four points crossing that they had passed each other at.
Of the seven Iwa jounin traveling with the procession, the two eldest who looked to be in their mid-thirties had their brows furrowed in disgust particularly at Naruto. The five younger jounin who looked to be between their late teens and early twenties had silent snarls curled across their faces with their fists shuddering as they gripped their kunai tightly.
Within the four feet of space between the Konoha and Iwa groups, Jiraiya and Rin's steps seemed to tighten up as they made eye contact with the Iwa nin as if daring them to make a move. Naruto, though tense, was bewildered by the situation until he caught the eye flickers of one of the jounin. His hair.
After the Iwa procession had gone far enough down the road, Naruto perked up to break the silence.
"I don't think they like blondes very much," he said bluntly as they continued down the path.
"You got that right kid. Our Yondaime's reputation still haunts their military force and the fact that he was blonde kind of puts every one of them on guard each time they see a blonde Konoha nin. The fact that you cut a young figure is probably another tack for their anger.
"In Iwa, the Yondaime was regarded as a monster, plain and simple—and the idea that Konoha might just be raising a replica is bound to mess with their heads a bit more," Jiraiya paused in his short speech, his own eyes quite hard. Naruto imagined Jiraiya looked that way because he was crushing bad memories in his mind.
"It's probably logical to assume that all of them had friends or relatives that were killed by Minato," Rin said solemnly.
"To Fire Country, their deaths were a statistic to measure the Yondaime's strength and Konoha's might but to them—each death was a personal blow that stoked their anger. Their problem was that they simply had no one could ever match him. The first flee on sight directive. Ever." Both Rin and Jiraiya looked off into the distance their minds thousands of miles away.
As they trudged on towards the next border, Naruto wondered if it would be so bad to achieve that kind of reputation. The only flee on sight order in history. If it was for Konoha, no he didn't think it was bad to have that kind of reputation. Sure he'd be hated and feared for it—but he'd be hated and feared enough to be left alone. Right?
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The next person of note that they came across was not entirely unexpected, but caught Naruto off guard nonetheless. At a windy outpost middling the Snow Country border, the tranquility was disturbed by a three-carriage caravan approaching.
It was common knowledge that one carriage meant a noble, two meant a noble's family, and three meant either a Daimyo or someone rich enough to afford three carriages. Any more would be either a prison convoy or a merchant line but they would either have carts or the quality of their carriages would be far worse.
Whispers quickly broke out as some of the nin came to meet the elegant carriages in recognition—it was a celebrity, an actress of some repute supposedly. Not quite twelve years old yet, Naruto had been mystified by the art of filmmaking and how celebrities just seemed to light up the silver screen.
Of these celebrities, he had been completely smitten by the one Yukie Fujikaze. It was the girl's acting that had gotten to him—having been captivated by her expressive layers of emotions—emotions that he knew all too well, and that she portrayed all too vividly.
But in the way that most children are when they meet their first celebrity, Jiraiya and Rin couldn't help but notice Naruto's little crush the moment Yukie's presence was known. They both broke out into sniggers when they saw Naruto's awestruck look as Yukie emerged from the third and last carriage in her procession.
A pale, dainty hand had reached out to grasp the attendant's as she emerged, clothed in a set of beautifully crafted clothes under a luxurious fur coat, a cold haughty look surveying her surroundings with indifference. Her entirely disdainful demeanor twisted her beauty into an unattractive aristocratic arrogance that seemed to make the attendants around her all wither back in reluctance.
That image froze Naruto in his tracks—she was nowhere near the same emotionally varied beauty that she played. Jiraiya had approached them in his usual grandstanding manner, and while he had made good with the rest of the company, Yukie had barely spared him a glance.
The head of the company, Sandayu Asama spoke up as Yukie was led through the sparse spread of cabins and a tower that made up this outpost.
"Jiraiya-sama, it has come to the attention of I and my company that you are making a tour of the Fire nation border?"
"Indeed good man—after all, to be inspired by female beauty I must have—," Rin elbowed Jiraiya in the ribs.
"Yes, we're currently getting our newest member of the Red Guard up to speed in the lay of the land," she said smiling sweetly, Jiraiya doubling over in pain never registering in her smile.
"Ah… Well it would be the utmost honor if individuals of your repute were to join my company for the rest of the Snow country stretch of your journey, as I'm sure you know how… difficult some people can be towards large caravans. We'd be happy to compensate you for your expenses along the way as well."
Jiraiya grinned and nodded as he shot a glance to Naruto out of the corner of his eye.
"It would be our pleasure to travel with you all. But out of curiosity, what brings you to the Snow country border?"
"As you may have heard, one of Fujikaze-sama's films is going to be released a week from now and requires her attendance. However, since we weren't informed of the release date until two weeks ago, you know how it is—scheduling hassles and all."
"Ah of course—in any case, we were planning on leaving tomorrow morning but we'd be happy to wait for you all to recuperate. You've just arrived, haven't you?"
"We have but we were hoping to merely recuperate for the night and thought it would be best to be in the company of Konoha nins. After all, Snow country has never been a place of outdoors comfort," he said pensively, his words lingering in Naruto's mind. Jiraiya nodded in agreement.
"Well it's settled then. We'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning," Jiraiya said with a wave and clapped Naruto on the shoulder. His other hand's fingers wriggled behind Rin, as if presiding over where to touch. Rin sensing this, snapped her elbow up at Jiraiya's wrist, causing him to squawk.
"A perfect example of why inspiration must be found beyond Konoha," he muttered, wringing out his wrist.
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chapter is dooone—let me know what you think