Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto series. This a fanfiction, and nothing more.
Author's Note at the end of the chapter.
Ninko, Chapter 9: Of Politics and Rivalries
"Oi, what are you doing?!"
With a teasing grin, Hiyori ignored the words of protest from her blond-haired teammate and lifted a thimble's worth of the boy's noodles to her mouth with a grin. "The price of inattention, Naruto-kun," the girl taunted before popping the food in her mouth.
Naturally, it sparked a round of insults that the two had fallen into as though close friends, and Hyuuga Miyuki sighed morosely as she sampled a bite from her her own dish. 'Adults in the eyes of the village,' the girl though to herself with yet another sigh, '...and yet they act like bickering children.'
She regarded Hiyori with an imperceptibly slight frown. In class, the girl had always been a...domineering personality, yet she was slow to form a rapport with anyone. How she felt so comfortable around this boy was a mystery.
Miyuki's eyes then turned towards her male teammate, and was similarly taken aback. 'And this one...his very name is a polarizing topic amongst the Branch Family, and yet he acts like a child. For one hailed as a prodigy, I'd expected someone more...reserved.'
When the boy's name had been announced earlier that day in class, her mind had conjured up the numerous whispered conversations between clan members. He managed to inspire rather passionate feelings despite his unassuming appearance, though her keen lavender eyes noted his distinctive features were shared by only one man, the late Yondaime Hokage. Is that the 'public secret' that everyone seemed to discuss in tense and worried tones?
'No, that wouldn't make sense,' the girl decided. 'If he was connected to the Yondaime, he'd not have lived the life of an orphan. He'd have been used as political leverage from the day of his birth.'
"Hey, Miyuki-chan, whatcha starin' at me for? Do I have something on my face?"
Shaking her head whilst the boy energetically wiped his face with his haori's sleeve, she responded calmly without showing surprise at having gotten caught. "I'm simply studying your rather unique hair color. Are you related to the Yamankas?" she stated civilly, her words half truth and half fabrication as she subtle shifted her attention back towards her meal.
"Nah, at least I don't think so," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, and his voice wavered with a hint of nervousness. "I suppose it is possible, though, no one really knows who my parents are."
'He's lying, how bizarre.'
Regardless of her realization, Miyuki nodded in response and ate another mouthful of her takikomi gohan.
Filing away this conversation for later, the lavender eyed girl decided to attempt to be more cordial. The blond-haired boy was a stranger to them, whereas herself and Hiyori were at least acquaintances.
"Tell me, Naruto-kun," the girl began evenly, "why did you choose to become a shinobi?"
She watched with a subdued pleasure at the plethora of emotions that flashed across the blond's face, and noted with pity that there few of them could be considered 'happy'. "Well..." the boy began, his voice far more subdued than it had been mere moments ago, "there's...really not much else, y'know? I can't really be a civilian, 'cause the civilian academy's tuition is a lo~t bigger."
"Not to mention, when I was little I always wanted to be like Jiji: wear the cool looking hat 'n all..."
"Jiji?" Hiyori echoed.
"Ah, well...you probably, uh...." the boy trailed off a bit, clearly embarrassed. His face went from healthy tan to cherry red, and the boy scratched the back of his neck in what was quickly becoming a rather distinctive nervous habit.
"Well, what is your goal now, Naruto-kun?" Miyuki stated, smoothly redirecting the conversation to a topic less uncomfortable for the boy. The blond shot her a relieved look, and Miyuki returned it with a slight incline of her head.
"I dunno. I mean, I don't wanna stay a genin, but I don't have anything in particular..."
"Tch, I guess kouhai, doesn't have any have any dreams," Hiyori remarked snidely, "must be a bit jarring to go from preschool to genin to squad. Guess you 'hafta give him time to acclimate, Miyuki-chan."
"Kouhai?! We're of the same rank, Baba! You don't even have seniority! And I do have a dream: protecting my family, blood or no!"
Miyuki shook her head at self-satisfied grin that covered Hiyori's face. 'Manipulating the poor boy into giving an answer, Hiyori-chan? You're gonna end up scaring him off.'
"If you're so experienced, senpai, what's your dream?"
"Far too important for a little child like you to understand, Naruto-chan," Hiyori responded, echoing Akane's nickname for the adolescent blond.
"Hiyori-chan," Miyuki interjected, her tone scolding, "that's a pitiful way to forge bonds between teammates."
"Oh, is that so?" the brown-haired girl replied, clearly aggravated at being ganged up on by her former classmate. "Well, why don't you offer something, then, instead of watching from the sidelines like some sort of referee!"
"Very well then," the lavender eyed genin replied with a shrug. "My dream is to become the Hokage."
Naruto closed the door to his shared apartment with a groan, staggering into the living room and collapsing bonelessly on the couch. Lunch with his teammates had been an interesting affair, and after they'd went their separate ways for the day, Naruto returned to his team's meeting area to practice a few techniques.
Primarily, Naruto focused on chakra control, as it was a constant trial for the boy to improve his. Working with clones made things exponentially easier, however his reserves were increases at a frightening rate, and he feared he wouldn't be able to increase his control of his chakra to match.
Smiling slightly, Naruto stretched his tired muscles and attempted to still his labored breathing. Seeing Akane-sensei performing single-seal jutsu had been a bit of a surprise, but while he was training he'd sent a clone to the library - which he could now access the genin-restricted sections of - and found a scroll regarding jutsu theory which described the phenomenon. It was a feat requiring both chakra control and experience with a specific jutsu, with the necessity for one being mitigated by the other. Presumably, one with abysmal chakra control would be able to reach the one-handed seal state if they used a jutsu frequently enough, and one with prodigious chakra control (Tsunade of the Densetsu no Sannin came to mind) would be able to shorten seal sequences immediately after learning techniques.
Chakra control was a gateway - or a shortcut - to everything a shinobi practiced, even many forms of taijutsu.
Shaking his head with a grimace, Naruto pinched the bridge of his nose. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu was an extremely useful tool, but it left one feeling...scatterbrained, until time was taken to sort through all the information the bunshin provided.
Eventually Naruto's thought drifted to his teammates, and he fought a grin. It was...fun, to be able to socialize with people his age. Up until now, socialization had been almost entirely with experienced ninja over a decade his senior. It made his youth all the more obvious, and he relished the opportunity to train amongst equals.
'No way I'm calling Hiyori-chan 'senpai', though. Dattebayo!'
Deciding he's spent enough time lazing about, Naruto stood up from his position lounging on the couch and walked into the kitchen. On the fridge he noticed a note from the Cyclops, and he barely even bothered to read it; the blond knew the routine by now. Another week or so home alone, it was almost enough to put damper on his spirits.
Almost.
Naruto was nothing if not optimistic, though. Opening the fridge, he noticed it was lacking much in edible food, so the boy decided to make something a bit more complex than the usual fare (namely, cup ramen).
Bringing water to a boil, he grinned, his mind drifting the the day's events. 'This team will certainly be interesting.'
The air was thick with the scent of alcohol, yet silence settled over the bar like a haze. The Twig was known to be a hangout for the higher ranked of Konoha's shinobi, in spite - or perhaps because of - it's ridiculous name.
In the rear of the establishment some of Konoha's best and brightest were gathered, sharing stories and drinking in equal measure.
"So, Akane-san," Nara Shikaku prompted during a moment of relative silence, "I hear Hokage-sama tried to saddle you with a genin team this year."
Glaring in response, Akane set down her sakazuki with a moan. "Aww, I was trying to forget, dangit!"
A round of chuckles was shared, which prompted the yukata-clad jounin to pout all the more.
"So, who'd the old man try to stick you with?" queried Sarutobi Asuma flippantly, his disrespect toward the Hokage hardly garnering a passing a glance.
"Well, there's the rub. He gave me rookie of the year: a Branch Hyuuga, Miyuki. He also gave me Mitokado Homura-san's granddaughter, and Danzou's little pet project, Uzumaki Naruto."
"Ouch," Asuma muttered with a wince. "I bet that bunch didn't take being sent back to the academy well."
Silence was his only response.
"Kami. You passed them?"
A groan, and a nod.
"Well, I never thought you'd give in," Shikaku replied with a frown.
"No kidding," Yuuhi Kurenai said somewhat bitterly. "Who'll Hokage-sama rope in next, Kakashi?"
Another chuckle passed over the table, and a few glanced over at the aggravated tokubetsu jounin. It was well known that raven-haired genjutsu mistress wanted a genin team of her own. However, despite her nearly unrivaled skill in genjutsu, she was finding it difficult to gain the rank of full jounin, primarily due to village politics.
An akward silence settled over the table, before Yamanaka Inoichi spoke up. "I'm a bit surprised that the Uzumaki boy was allowed to graduate this year. After the Uchiha incident, I figured accelerated graduations had been all but snuffed out."
"Yeah, but that's exactly why the boy was bumped up," Asuma, flicking open his lighter as he pulled out a cigarette. "With the tensions with Iwa escalating, a few influential parties want as many skilled shinobi on hand as possible. If a kid can graduate early, they can get training from a jounin far earlier, and if they survive the exams, become chuunin at a younger age, except hopefully just as skilled as if they'd stuck around in the academy for an extra few years."
The man paused, taking a drag from his cigarette, and ignoring the glare he was receiving from a certain red-eyed woman. "Danzou's had his hands in Uzumaki's development since the boy turned six, and he's a hell of a lot more stable than Uchiha Sasuke, and even more well known around the village. If he can become a success story, the program'll probably get restarted, and the old warmongerer'll get brownie points with the civilians. They might even let him revive Ne."
"So, I get to groom the feather for that one-eyed bastard's cap?" Akane said with groan. "Brilliant."
"You think the boy's got what it takes?" Shikaku questioned.
"Mmm...probably. He's skilled for a genin, might even be skilled enough to be chuunin as is, and his teammates have the abilities to match." This time the jounin took another drink of sake, this time ignoring the dish and getting it straight from the bottle. "I was hopin' to scare em off with being a little rough on em, but they all stepped up the plate. I probably coulda failed em anyway, and just taken my 'lashings' from the council, but..."
The woman chuckled, patting the hilt of her wakizashi as she did so. "That wouldn't be nearly as fun now, would it?"
"Heh," Asuma chuckled. "Poor kids."
"Good morning, children," Akane greeted in a surprisingly subdued tone. It took her genin no more than a moment to notice the bags under her bloodshot eyes and Naruto didn't even bother to contain his laughter.
His laughter was met with a rather fierce glare. "Quiet, Naru-chan. Children are to be seen, not heard."
The blond-haired genin glared at the rebuke, and was especially put off at the peal of laughter Hiyori unleashed in response. "Aww, poor little Naru-chan's upset!" the brown-haired genin drawled, leaning forward to bring her head down to the kid's eye level. "You aren't gonna pout are 'ya, kouhai?"
Miyuki sighed at her teammates antics, noticing their sensei seemed rather pleased at the free entertainment. "Naruto-kun, Hiyori-chan, shouldn't we be training instead of bickering like rambunctious children?"
Miyuki's did little to deter the two, and the normally composed girl quickly grew annoyed at their antics as the volume reached ridiculous levels.
"I'm not some little kid! I'm only three years younger than you, dangit, we're peers!"
"Tch, you can say we're peers when I'm no longer a head taller than you, shortie!"
"Screw you, Baba-"
"That's quite enough!"
Miyuki stomped up, grabbed both of the bickering genin by the collar and shook with surprising strength. "Quite acting like children! You're shinobi of Konohagakure no sato, adults in the eyes of the village. Act like it, dammit!"
Naruto was cowed by his teammate's words, whereas Hiyori was simply stupefied. 'What the hell? What happened tot he ever composed Miyuki-chan?'
'Ah, the dynamics of a genin team.' Akane reflected with an uneasy grin. 'The two mouths and the mediator. Yet which will be the leader?'
Nodding with approval as the three genin finally came to attention, she fought the urge to frown. 'I'll have to save today's little exam for later. Uzumaki's presence throws a wrench in the team's dynamics, he has no knowledge of the other two's demeanor, whilst they know each other's at least passably.'
"Now," the woman began soberly, "begins the moment the three of you have trained your bodies and minds for, a Konoha shinobi's greatest duty: missions for the continued prosperity of the village." The woman paused for a minute, and surveyed the genin's expressions. She resisted the urge to cackle evilly at the steely looks of determination reflected in all three sets of eyes. "Are you ready?"
She was deeply amused by the enthusiastic response she received.
Naturally, that enthusiasm dimmed when the Hokage handed them the scroll for their D-rank mission: catching the infamous feline, Tora.
"You suck, sensei," Naruto groaned.
His teammates nodded in agreement.
"Common, you little brats!" Akane shouted tauntingly, "put your back into it!"
The genin were doing their first mission outside of Konoha's walls, though it was considered a D-rank mission in spite of that. A farm near Konoha was short on manpower, and had contracted some Konoha genin to bring in the harvest.
"I don't know how she can be so chipper," Naruto mumbled, pushing a wheelbarrow filled to the brim with ears of maize. Behind him he could hear his sensei enthusiastically removing the ears from the stalks before then cutting the stalks as close to the ground as possible. A few of Naruto's clones worked with the farmhands to bundle the stalks for storage and pile the maize ears for drying and storage.
In the distance, Naruto's ears caught the shouts from Hiyori as she 'motivated' the farmer's oxen to till an already-harvested field. After four days of working on the farm, the end was in sight. Another as-of-yet untouched field remained, and by the point the farmer would be able to till the land and plant his winter grains with the manpower he already had.
At dinner, Naruto had learned had learned more about this farm's operation than he had ever wanted. They, along with many other farms in the area sold maize: grain and all. The grain was dried and sent by caravan to Suna, while the stalks were bundled and sent north to Iwa, where the still-rebuilding superpower would use it for building material for temporary structures. The nation prided itself on using more natural materials for it's cities homes, and a combination of stone or clay walls with maize-stalk roofs was common in the hamlets outside of the Iwagakure no Sato itself. The nation's ninja capital was carved out of rock and designed to be a fortress against any foreign power.
It was a rather complicated system, which was what Ninja Academy's spring-to-fall schoolyear was based on. Chuunin instructors took missions to guard the convoys as they traveled through bandit infested territory, necessitated by the large farming community the Hi no Kuni housed.
Many of the larger farming operations hired workers for the summer and autumn months, and laid them off when the harvesting season was over. This temps were then left without work during the time when grain prices were at their highest, and many normally law-abiding men would form into small packs of bandits and raid smaller convoys for the fruits and grain, or sometimes even raiding the silos of the farms that had hired them. Checked as they were by shinobi, the damaged they inflicted were minor and loss of life was rare. Unchecked, however, and they might destabilize the continent's delicate trading system.
Except the odd missing-nin, though, the bandits proved little threat to squads of chuunin. However, they were numerous, and often organized enough to prey upon smaller, unguarded convoys, or even the larger ones near the borders when Iwa's or Suna's ninja squads split their numbers. The reasons for doing so were obvious: a squad of three or four chuunin marching with a convoy into Konohagakure no Sato (Hi no Kuni's ninja and trade headquarters) was bound to cause political tension. A single chuunin, perhaps joined by a genin was far less problematic, and Konoha was often will to turn a blind eye towards such 'incursions' for the good of trade. Trade with Suna carried with it fewer concerns, though, since the alliance between the two powers contained a clause allowing such chuunin squads deeper within Hi no Kuni. The peace treaty with Iwa no Kuni, however, contained no such concessions.
Talks with the farmers, who certainly weren't the ignorant hillbillies that Naruto had expective, had been very informative.
And very boring.
Returning with the wheelbarrow, Naruto couldn't help but study his sensei. Her black yukata, one pristine was stained with dirt, and her raven bangs clung to her brow due to sweat. She stretched, the crescent-shaped sickled raised high in the air as her back arched, and Naruto fought the blush that crossed his cheeks.
"Oh hello, Naruto-ku~un," Akane-sensei cooed, and she grinned to herself at the blush that blossomed on the boy's cheeks. 'Aww, they grow up so fast.' Shaking her head with a chuckle, she gestured towards a pile of maize ears. "That'll be the last pile we'll be taking in today," the woman stated evenly, slipping the farming tool into her dirt-stained obi. "Drop the wheelbarrow there and fetch another, will you? I'll load this one up for ya."
"U-uh...alright, Akane-sensei!"
When the blond-haired boy passed by his sensei one his way back while she was carrying the bundled stalks in towards the warehouse, he'd nearly mastered his blush. Of course, when the bunshin which had been working with her the better part of the day dispelled, his composure was well and truly shattered.
The farmer's middle-aged wife fussed Naruto at dinner, worrying the blond was coming down with a fever, but his sensei's amused gaze proved that she knew otherwise.
'I really hope she doesn't tell this to Jiji, he'll never let me live it down...'
Japanese Term/Jutsu List:
Sakazuki: The circular dish in which sake is often served.
Hi no Kuni: Land of Fire.
Iwa no Kuni: Land of Rock/Stone
Tokubetsu Jounin: Special Jounin, a rank given to a ninja with roughly chuunin level abilities in most principals, but jounin level skill in a certain ninja art (in Yuuhi Kurenai's case, genjutsu).
A/N: Another chapter down. The information regarding Hi no Kuni's trading system with Suna and Iwa is going to be important for later chapters, but if you forget it it won't be any big deal, you'll be able to understand the situation in the future either way. If you want to read a bit more about it, I might put some more information about it in my profile later this week.
Next chapter I'll explore the dynamics in the genin team in a bit more depth, and go into some training. Also in the near future will be Team 4's first C-rank mission, and I really hope to break the mold with that one!
Regarding a good point brought up by Lord Myst, I intend to make Akane into a character all her own in these next few chapters. There's a dang good reason why Anko would never be considered for the rank of Jounin, and that isn't only because of her past interactions with Orochimaru. Akane is different, and I hope to present that well in this story but...it's a bit tough. I'll have to write myself out of a bit of a whole there, neh? You all should keep me posted on your thoughts in that regard, I don't want any of my characters to be clones of others.
Until next time, please read and review you all. Your insight is greatly appreciated!