Kakashi felt his heart leap into his throat when Naruto started stomping and splashing in the puddle the rogue Mist Ninja were hiding in with a mischievous look on his face. He completely ignored Sakura's loud complaints as the Chakra tainted water splashed her, as they were completely important. About ready to panic, he jumped over and grabbed the boy, pulling him away from the puddle and its surely disoriented contents before he did the substitution jutsu as he had the last time, preparing for battle.
The log was killed as it had been the first time, startling Sakura, Sasuke, and Tazuna. Instead of hanging back to see who his target was and how his students would fair against the enemy, he decided to leap back into the battle almost immediately. Before he could get into the thick of things however, Naruto was already flying towards one of the Demon Brothers, and the other had somehow managed to get behind him. The eyes of the Ninja behind Naruto widened almost comically.
"Holy Shit! It's an Uzumaki!" the Demon Brother behind Naruto yelled.
The Demon brothers then did something completely unexpected which completely wrecked his attack strategy before he could implement it. They turned tail and ran, each going in opposite directions. This had been all of the opening Naruto needed apparently, as he created about two dozen clones and sent them after the brothers who returned five minutes later unconscious, being dragged by a pair of shadow clones each. As soon as they were back in the middle of the road, Naruto's shadow clones then proceeded to strip the pair of hapless ninja down to their underwear and bind them to a nearby tree while Naruto himself proceeded to haphazardly cram their equipment into a spare storage scroll that he had happened to be carrying.
"Naruto, what just happened?" he asked confused.
This had definitely not happened the last time around. The last time around, Naruto had frozen up and ended up getting himself poisoned. If it hadn't been for the Kyuubi, the boy would have been dead after that attack. Another question that came up was, why were the Mist Ninja afraid of Uzumaki? And if so, why hadn't they behaved that way last time this fight happened then if they were?
"I captured them." Naruto replied simply as he rolled up the now full storage scroll and put it away both answering and not answering his question.
"Why'd they run like that?" he asked, expecting to get a "Hell if I know." in reply, and wondering why he'd even bothered wasting his breath asking.
It had probably been the shock of seeing Naruto singlehandedly catching a pair of Chunin-level missing-nin that had made him start asking stupid questions.
"There's been a standing Flee-On-Sight order in Mist regarding the entire Uzumaki clan for the last fifty years." Naruto replied, not bothering to look up at him as he was busy snapping his pack shut. "I found a note on it in the library when I tried researching my family recently."
He stood there dumbfounded. Why hadn't any of the Mist ninja they'd fought fled when they had faced Naruto the last time around? What was it that had made the difference this time?
It was then that he remembered. The Mist ninja had started yelling after he'd gotten behind Naruto, after he had seen the Uzumaki clan symbol on the boy's back. The last time around, Naruto had been wearing a rather hideous jumpsuit which had the symbol for Uzushogakure on it rather than the Uzumaki Clan's symbol. Since every Chunin and Jounin vest and numerous articles of ninja clothing in Konoha had the exact same spiral sewn onto them or incorporated into their design, the ninja would not have found Naruto's to be significant, and wouldn't understand why he was wearing it despite it being rather non-standard amongst Genin who usually wore their clan markings on their clothing if any.
"We're turning back, this mission has gone above C rank and is beyond your abilities to handle." he finally said once he'd returned from his musings.
Despite the fact that Naruto seemed to be able to handle himself, and there was a chance that the Demon of the Mist might choose to run rather than fight this time, he wasn't going to risk it. They were going to turn around before Tazuna started on his sob story and reeled Naruto in. He would probably feel guilty for a long time for allowing Gato to keep his stranglehold on Wave, but he'd feel even guiltier if he let Naruto get hurt. In the balance between virtual strangers and his Sensei's son, Naruto came first.
"No!" Naruto howled, his blue eyes flashing in anger in a manner that was reminiscent of his father, despite his response being more something his mother would do. "We started this mission and we have to finish it! Besides, I defeated these guys all by myself."
"And, what if we end up facing a much stronger opponent?" he asked, hoping that the boy would see his logic.
"If they're from Mist, it probably wouldn't matter." Naruto replied, smirking at having come up with an appropriate comeback.
"Point taken." he said, knowing that he'd end up losing this argument with Naruto like this as he was as persistent as both of his parents combined, and he'd never won an argument with Minato-sensei.
The swordsman Momochi Zabuza had been from Mist, and even missing-nin tended to follow Flee-On-Sight orders since they knew that they were put in place for a reason. But, there was still the possibility that the Momochi could harm Naruto before he even noticed that he was an Uzumaki. Then, on the other hand, there was the fact that Naruto had survived the last time around. That, and he probably wouldn't forgive him if he ever learned that he'd had the chance to save a whole bunch of people and hadn't been able to because he'd been turned back by an overprotective teacher. He knew full well that he wouldn't be able to stand looking into Minato-sensei's disappointed blue eyes every day for years, even if they were in someone else's face. He would just have to make sure that Naruto wasn't injured, even if it meant locking him in a trunk at the first available opportunity.
Great, he'd just done all of Naruto's arguing for him, and the kid still won.
"Fine, I'll just send a message back to Konoha informing them of our prisoners and we'll move out." he said, defeated.
If he'd known that signing up for the Tora capture mission in the hopes that the Uchiha would be scratched to hell and back by the damn beast when he was forced to carry it back to the Hokage tower would result in this, he'd have taken that baby sitting job that involved the pair of brats that had sent the last ten of their babysitters running for the hills instead.
Naruto smiled as they set off down the road to Wave. Instead of panicking, freezing up, getting poisoned, panicking again and cutting his own hand open, he had handled himself admirably. That, and the irrational fear that the Mist had towards the Uzumaki who had become some sort of bogeymen to them over the years was finally working out for him. The last time around, he'd somehow been marked down as "Not an Uzumaki", and the Flee-On-Sight order had been disregarded in his case. It probably had something to do with the fact that he'd generally been the loser in the fights he'd had with the few Shinobi from Mist that he had faced, hadn't killed his other opponents in a creative and rather embarrassing manner, sucked at Seals, and didn't have the dark red hair that had been the trademark of the Uzumaki for generations.
Whistling, he made his way over to Tazuna. He was planning on asking him about the conditions in Wave so the others could be informed, since Kakashi hadn't interrogated him this time around, and therefore hadn't forced him to spill his sad tale.
"Are you really an Uzumaki?" Tazuna asked, looking at him strangely.
"Yep, on my mother's side." he replied cheerfully.
He'd initially been resentful of the possible implication that he had been a bastard but, since he learned who his father was, and how the little ruse had kept his father's enemies - especially almost the whole of Iwa - from pounding him into the dirt or killing him, he'd become much less so. That, and he was still a bit pissed at his father for sealing that damn fox inside him. Forgiven didn't exactly mean forgotten.
"You don't have a weird obsession with sticking things up people's butts do you?" Tazuna asked, still giving him that strange look.
"No, why?" he asked, completely puzzled by the question.
After all, why would he be obsessed with sticking things up people's butts? He wasn't a pervert of any sort. Well...not much of one at least. The Oiroke Jutsu was an anti-pervert move. Honest!
Tazuna looked immensely relieved by his response. A moment later, he started mumbling something under his breath.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Thanking the gods that you take after your father's side of the family." Tazuna replied.
"You sent him where?" Jiraiya said, almost unable to believe his ears.
He'd interrupted his writing to come to the Hokage's office because his former Sensei had sent him a message indicating that something might be wrong with his godson. When he arrived, he learn that things weren't going as well as they could have been and Naruto had yet again been sent on that A-Rank mission that had been disguised as a C-Rank.
"On a mission to guard a bridge-builder from Wave from bandits." the Hokage replied calmly after briefly looking at his notes.
Despite the fact that he'd wished for the answer to change, it had been what he'd heard the first time. Due to some extremely bad luck and factors he'd had no control over, the boy had been sent on a mission that had greatly traumatized him the last time around, again. If he knew that it would even have been possible after all of the little changes that had been made, he would have gone out looking for that damned bridge-builder and turned him away from Konoha or gone to Wave and dealt with things himself. It had never really occurred to him that the changes he'd made had mostly been local, and wouldn't really have had all that much effect on things that were outside of the village, except that an informant that had been killed shortly after meeting with him the last time around had survived because that particular meeting had never taken place.
What bearing would Naruto no longer living in a crap heap of an apartment, Naruto getting attention from Kakashi, Iruka becoming paranoid about pedophiles and eventually catching a few, the other Jonin believing the Uchiha might be a danger to their students and refusing joint training exercises for that reason rather than because Naruto was on the team really have on when an old man in another country decides to set out in an attempt to get some ninja on the cheap so he could complete a bridge that a shipping magnate was attempting to prevent since it would cut into his profits?
Any one of the Genin teams or even a team of Chunin could have drawn that mission. It was just Naruto's bad luck that he'd been there at the right place at the right time once more, and he would just have to hope that the mission went the same as it had the last time around, or a bit better, and be there for Naruto when he returned. There was little else he could do really since he was already a day behind them and would be extremely late to any of the battles they would face on the road to Wave.
Tenzo gaped at the pair of missing-nin that had been tied to a rather large oak wearing only their headbands, underwear and socks. Since he was less than an hour behind Team Seven, whatever battle these Shinobi had fought and apparently lost had taken place recently. Since there wasn't any blood on the ground, he could only conclude that besides the Mist ninja who were bound to the tree apologizing profusely and thanking somebody for something, nobody had been injured.
"What happened to you?" he asked.
"We dared to go up against an Uzumaki." they said.
"And?" he asked.
"Uzumaki-sama was merciful. He only stripped us and robbed us." the one on the left said.
Tenzo could only stare after that proclamation. Naruto had stripped them and robbed them, and they considered that merciful? When the men had gone back to apologizing for every bad thing they had ever done and swearing that they wouldn't do it again, he was back on more familiar ground. Naruto could get a mass murderer to change his ways in under an hour. He seemed to have set a new personal record with these guys though.
Edited 11-2-12