AN- Hi guys, I'm so sorry because I'd just found out that whilst updating this chapter, I realised that the last chapter I'd posted was my first draft version. I've reposted that chapter and there have been some significant changes so please go back and read it again.
Marshmellow212 – Thanks for the review, and also when you said what I could do to improve my writing, was that referring to the last chapter or the whole story, because the last chapter was completely raw, no spell check, no editing no nothing. It was something in which I just had to write my ideas down. So please tell me so that I know where I need to improve Thanks for pointing it out anyway!
Start of Chapter 4 -
"Hiruzen! What the hell is going on?" Jiraiya shouted, thrusting his fist repeatedly onto the doors in front of him.
Once Team Kage and their new member Anko had left him with Naruto, Jiraiya was very confused. Having just been told information that, to him, could not be true, Jiraiya fully intended to find out what was going on. But Naruto definitely didn't help when he tried asking, all Naruto was focused on was laughing at all the questions he'd asked and the only normal answers Naruto had given him was not very enlightening. They had just consisted of "Ah, don't worry, you can trust them", "its ok they won't tell." Etc. except Jiraiya couldn't just trust someone out of the blue, especially if they had information on one of the best kept secrets in Konoha. However, there was also the fact that they had Anko to back them up. If Anko thought that they were trustworthy then they couldn't be that bad could they? After all, Anko is a fully fledged jounin.
In the end he'd resorted to go to the Hokage whom he was sure would be able to shed some light onto the present situation.
This was why he is now shouting at the top of his voice and banging on the doors of the Hokage's office.
The Hokage's secretary was trying with all her might to tell him that the Hokage was busy and that his appointment with him wasn't until later. But that did nothing to help.
Sarutobi's POV
"Hiruzen! What the hell is going on?" A muffled voice came from the doors direction.
"Damn" I said. My head fell forward and landed none too softly onto my waiting hands, breathing a sigh as I wondered why no one had taken the initiative to explain things to Jiraiya before something like this happened.
"But Jiraiya-sama, you can't go in there!" I sighed once again as I heard Saiki shout once again. Then I got up and walked to the door.
I opened it.
"It's okay Saiki, he can come in." I said along with a gesture for Jiraiya to get inside quickly. After closing the door I turned to face a rather grumpy looking Jiraiya. "What do you want Jiraiya?"
He raised an eyebrow, knowing that I knew full well what he was talking about.
"Fine, let me rephrase, who did you see and what did they tell or not tell you." I said.
"I met three kids and Anko, they told me that their 'Team Captain' fired you, was the one who called me back to teach Naruto and was also the one who assigned me Akatsuki missions. " He shouted. "Let me ask you again Hiruzen. What the hell is going on?"
Sarutobi sighed before starting to explain. He didn't get far until he was interrupted.
"Nani!"
This is going to be one long day He thought.
Meanwhile at the training grounds Team Kage was getting on with their team introductions and their 'Genin Test'. Although they were obviously not Genin level, it was still a formality.
"Right! I know who you are and you know who I am, so we can just skip to the second boring part" Anko said, leaning back onto a tree.
"..." All three of Anko's 'Genin' blinked.
She blinked, head tilting slightly to her right.
"Actually, I already know all of your skills and I already know about your teamwork. Heh, that means we're done!" Anko shouted, as if she'd only just realised.
"Mataku" Shikamaru said before propping himself up. "Since we've got this done and over with, we have a meeting to go to. Knowing Naruto, he probably didn't answer any of Jiraiya's questions so he's probably still at the academy so we should probably stop by and pick him up. "Mataku, why did we even come here, we could have just stayed at the Academy.
The others just nodded and followed his lead as he stood and started walking.
"Ne, Taichou... Didn't you say that you'd explain everything during the team introductions?" Hinata suddenly asked.
"Oh yeah, I forgot." Shikamaru said after pausing for a while. "Oh well, you'll probably get a run through when we get to the office anyway."
"Aa, sure"
When the group reached the Academy they went in and walked towards Iruka's classroom. Only to be met with an unwavering stream of loud cackles. Hinata, who was at the front rolled her eyes and smiled before pushing the door open.
"Naruto-kun!" Hinata shouted as the door was opened.
"Hinata-chan! What are you doing here?" Naruto said, his laughing finally fading.
"Naruto, did you forget that you have a meeting with the Hokage now." Shikamaru said.
"Umm...No, uh I was um" Naruto paused "I was just about to head there!"
'Mataku' Shikamaru thought
In record time, Shikamaru managed to subdue Naruto's hyper behaviour and brought the group to the Hokage's office. Naruto having calmed down had a much more serious expression.
As the group entered the room, the two people currently in there both quietened and turned to face them.
"Hokage-sama, shall we begin the briefing?" Shikamaru said smirking, obviously amused at the Hokage's exasperation.
The Hokage waved his hand, beckoning Shikamaru to come closer. Shikamaru, whilst confused, complied and walked up till he stood directly in front of him.
He leaned forward and glared.
"What took you so long? Do you have any idea how much work it was to explain everything to Jiraiya! He doesn't know anything! And don't even get me started on the how loud he was and how many questions he asked, irrelevant ones at that!" He whispered angrily.
"Hey, we were quite quick, or would you rather have had us actually do the test and introductions?" Shikamaru said, his previous smirk still lingering.
Sighing, the Hokage closed his eyes and turned towards Jiraiya and began rubbing his temple.
"Jiraiya, Shikamaru. Shikamaru, Jiraiya." He said, gesturing to each person. "Jiraiya, Prodigal Genius. Prodigal Genius, Self-proclaimed super pervert and the one you've been ordering around on things related to Akatsuki."
"Yoroshiku" Shikamaru said, extending his hand.
Jiraiya, while he was still looking apprehensive, also extended his hand. "Yoroshiku" He said.
Both of them inclined their heads slightly before returning to the matter at hand.
"Now, since you have seen so much already, I believe that you are entitled to the basic explanations to what is actually going on." Shikamaru said to his team. "You both know the very basic fact that it has something to do with a rising criminal organisation called Akatsuki. What you don't know is that they are after the jinchuuriki and that it is composed of S-class missing ninja."
Neji raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Ok, we admit that the jinchuuriki thing is new to us but do you honestly think so lowly of us? S-class secret, kept from even your teammates. We'd expect this thing to be pretty dangerous."
"And because of that we were pretty worried whenever you had your bouts of sadness. We know that you've always wanted to tell us and we know that even now we probably won't hear the whole truth" Hinata said. "But that doesn't matter because we know that you're strong. The only thing that really worries us is what mental state you might be in when in danger."
Shikamaru shook his head. "You're right, but know that I'll be fine." He said. "My mental state is and will always be controlled in the midst of battle, I am lucky to be able to forget most of my troubles among adrenalin."
Hinata smiled and said. "Well that's good Shika."
"Right, we need to continue the briefing, so the only other thing that you two need to know is that the baseline of the plan is to protect the jinchuuriki, namely Naruto in this village, and you need not know the others. So if you ever see Naruto in danger, please help him." Shikamaru said.
"Sure!" Hinata said
"Hey! I'm not useless you know!" Naruto said, playfully punching Shikamaru's arm.
Smiling at Naruto he thought 'Yeah, of course you're not useless but you're pretty much useless at ninjutsu with no one to learn from. The only thing you're really good at is taijutsu and that's pretty much only because you'd practiced the Academy style to such extremes that you managed to improve it. The fact that your stamina is incredible and that the Kyuubi helps heal your wounds doesn't hurt.'
He then looked at Neji, seeing no signs of disagreement to what he'd previously said he took that as another 'sure'. Looking back up at the Hokage he inclined his head as a signal to carry on.
"Right, now I'm really sorry Shikamaru, but since you've told them so much I believe that they could be useful. They will not have any missions of that outside of the village but they will be told to help train Naruto and weed out any Root members in the village." The Hokage said, not even stopping when Shikamaru tried to interfere. "Do you accept?"
"Hai" The two replied in unison.
"B-but" Shikamaru stuttered.
"Then you will begin your mission tomorrow, start gathering information and you can start...eradicating the threats as soon as possible." The Hokage said, once again ignoring Shikamaru's interruption.
"Hai" Hinata said while Neji just nodded.
"Oi, Hokage-sama!" Shikamaru said, once again trying to stop the Hokage.
"Right then, you will be given more information on the suspects after the briefing."At this point it seemed that Shikamaru had given up, his head in his hands and sighing continuously.
"Mataku, fine then, but you need to promise me that they get no missions related to the Akatsuki and that they do not meet my other teammates. That may be cause to huge repercussions." Shikamaru said, his hands waving and gesturing to make his point clear. However, gesturing may work for the average person, but for someone who regularly lives his life with as little movement as possible, waving and gesturing while speaking was almost a miracle, not to mention it was very funny.
Covering up their snickers, Neji and Hinata were given a scroll with a blood seal along the edge, which they were told to spread their blood on it after the Hokage had made the snake and dog seal, their blood now enabled them to open the many scrolls related to their mission. The blood seals however weren't just limited to finding spies within the village, it also included the information on the Akatsuki and the jinchuuriki. So they were told if they wanted any information, they were to formally request the scroll in which the information was stored directly from the Hokage. They were then dismissed.
Continuing with the briefing the Hokage went on to discuss the biggest problem.
"The Akatsuki being so close to finding the bijuu medium is worrying, this means that they would be able to start hunting them much earlier than we had anticipated. Our estimation was that we would have another year before they would find it. But it seems that Akatsuki may have either found some more information or they'd followed a different path of logic that hadn't been considered before." The Hokage said. He turned to Jiraiya, as if to ask for confirmation on either of the theories.
"Well, so far intelligence on the Akatsuki is saying that they haven't found any new information or that any of them have had a breakthrough, but this is only from the limited amount of contacts that I've been able to integrate into the Akatsuki. The Akatsuki really only have ten members, any others who have any affiliation with them are rarely updated on information." Jiraiya said. "Where did you even get that information? And how do you even know that it's accurate?"
"Rest assured Jiraiya-sama, the information comes from a very reliable source, and there is a very low chance that it would be wrong."Shikamaru said. "Fire said that he would meet me again at a much safer time and update me on the details, the only reason he had come out at this time was because the ample amount of information he has given me was just a warning, extra precautions were needed and very little information was leaked. The only thing that he really needed to tell me was that we had to get our act together and bring our behind schedule plan up to date."
Jiraiya frowned when Shikamaru's contact was addressed by code-name. "Wait a minute, who's Fire?"
Shikamaru opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off. "Jiraiya." The Hokage said in a serious tone. "That is classified information, please refrain from inquiring the identities of any other people referred to by code-name."
Jiraiya, surprised by the sudden grave tone that the Hokage used immediately returned the order with a cautious "Hai"
Most of the time, the Hokage was quite lax with the rules, so this means that if he wasn't trusted enough to release the information to, it had to be very important, something that even a trusted and loyal shinobi would not be privy to the information unless absolutely need. But even though it was technically part of his mission as well, he at least knows that it wouldn't affect it.
Recently the shinobi countries had fallen into a tense peace, a peace that convinced civilians and many ninja but not the people involved in the politics. Meetings of all sorts were tense and filled with subtle threats.
Yes, many countries were still at each other's throats since the last shinobi war, usually tensions between countries would have cooled by now, but this generation of Kage's seem to be rather content in holding grudges. Especially since the war had many shinobi fighting with underhanded means, many of these things would cause the peace minded civilians to wretch. Since most of the villages income came from the civilians, many of these 'incidents' were used as blackmail. Especially since there wasn't a post war treaty. The prolonged tension may also be because every Nation had many fatalities, the war had quickly become a war of attrition.
In an effort to continue replace their soldiers, the nations turned to their younger generation. Simply because of their inexperience many children had also faced death.
Jiraiya hadn't seen the third this serious since the war. So in this case the best possible way he could be of the most use would just be to follow orders. Because he couldn't know all the information, anything that may be seen as misjudgement may just be because of lack of information on his part. After all who better to conduct something of this scale than the Hokage. He doesn't have that title just because of his strength, he was a great strategist as well. But...Why the HELL is the twelve year old KID privy to more information that ME! The great and powerful JIRAIYA-SAMA!
The briefing had continued smoothly, deciding that they would discuss that subject again when they received the new information. The next thing they discussed was Shikamaru's suggestion to find a new Hokage.
When the Hokage announced that he would follow Shikamaru's plan after Shikamaru was asked to explain his logic once again for the sake of Jiraiya, Jiraiya couldn't help but agree, the reasons were sound and this way Danzo would have a lot of the influence on the ninja taken away from him.
But throughout the whole time, they had forgotten one thing. Naruto.
At this point Naruto was still just listening, he was also walking around, flipping through books, opening drawers, drawing, poking things, sitting on the sofa, talking to the secretary, trying to work the Hokage's crystal ball, eating ramen, drinking, jumping and a lot more. But he was listening. So when Shikamaru finally realised that Naruto was actually still in the room, they had no need to further brief him. Shikamaru and the Hokage had prematurely decided to give him as much information as Jiraiya, so that was fine.
"Ahaha, gomen gomen." Shikamaru said. The briefing had just ended and they were stood outside the Hokage's office. Jiraiya and Naruto had arranged to start training the next day so the sannin had gone off to find more permanent living arrangements.
"Huh? Oh, that's fine, I couldn't contribute much anyway. Just listening got me everything I needed anyway." Naruto said. "Hey, are you hungry? Let's go have ramen!"
"..."
"Naruto, we've already had ramen today though." Shikamaru said after a pause.
"So?"
"Mataku, you never change do you."Shikamaru said under his breath. "Right, I have to start on contacting Ice and sorting the Team things. So I can't get ramen with you."
"Dang, oh well see ya!"Naruto shouted and ran off towards Ichiraku's.
Shikamaru just waved.
