Naruto gritted his teeth as the third Hokage read off a list of missions for Naruto's squad. "What is all this nonsense!" He shouted. "Baby sitting, rescuing cats? These aren't real mission there jobs kids do to get some extra money! We're ninjas now, we deserve a ninja mission."

"I agree with Naruto, sir. We've gone through training so we could help the village, our skills aren't being used if we are just doing D rank mission." Sakura piped.

The third Hokage stroked his white goatee in thought. "What do you think Kakashi?"

"I believe that they could handle a C rank mission, if they needed to."

The Hokage nodded with a smile. "Very well, I'll give you the mission of guarding a bridge builder from the land of waves. Bring him in!"

Naruto jumped up and down with excitement. "We're going to be body guards! This is so cool."

The door behind him slid open and out from it swaggered an old man. The old man eyed them all with a disappointed look on his face. He sighed and said. "You expect me to hand my life over to these children?"

Naruto growled but before he had the chance to say anything Kakashi stepped in. "Sir I assure you, my team is more then fit to handle this mission." He assured.

The man grumbled for a second. "Fine, we leave within the hour."

Naruto was about to burst with excitement he could hardly contain himself. This was going to be awesome!

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

Naruto stood at the threshold of the leaf village. He could feel himself quivering excitement washing over him. An immeasurable smile swept across his face as he took a step father. This was it; this was the start of his ninja career, one small step for ninja's one giant step for Naruto.

Sakura looked at him with a scowl on her face. "What are you so happy about?"

"This is the farthest I've ever been from home." He answered plainly.

"That's kind of cute Naruto."

He could feel the blood flow to his cheeks. Sakura thought he was cute?

Saskue looked over at Naruto, his usually bored face had a strange look to it. It was something in the lips. He way the right most part of his lip formed a dimple as it ever so slightly curled upwards. "What a lovely shade of red you've discovered." '

Naruto's stomach churned. He quickly looked away from his companions. Suddenly an image of Hinata filled his mind, he realized she'd performed his same move several times when she was around him. He must have picked it up from her. This however begged the question why was Hinata always blushing around him?

Tazuna looked at them with contempt. "You expect me to put my life in their hands?"

"I can assure you my team is more then qualified to protect you on this mission."

"I trust you, and the emo over there looks like he can handle himself. It's that runt over there that I don't trust he's a joke."

Naruto clenched his fist. "What'd you call me?" He voice was a growl.

"I called you a runt and a joke."

"You better not say that about me." Naruto looked Tazuna straight in the eye and smiled. "I'm one of the most powerful ninja's ever, and one day I'm going to become Hokage!"

Tazuna took a slow drought of his container. "Hokages are strong and wise, you are puny and brainless I'll become hokage before you do that I'll put money on."

"That's a bet you'll lose old man, I'll become Hokage and everyone will respect me, even you."

"You can become hokage a thousand times over and you'll still be no closer to my respect then when you started."

Naruto smiled. "Just remember that when I'm saving your life."

Xxxxxxx

"Now!" A raspy voice shouted from behind Naruto's group.

Naruto spun on his heels. He saw two men flying through the air. They both wore huge clawed gauntlets and where connected by a hideous spiked chain. The slightly smaller of the two was hurled at Kakashi. Naruto reached for his gun but by the time he reached his holster Kakashi was already tightly wrapped in the chains. The chains tore through Kakashi shredding him to pieces.

Naruto froze his eyes were wide with shock. He could feel bile crawling up his throat, it took all of his strength to hold it down. Kakashi was the strongest man Naruto knew, and these guys took him out in seconds. What chance did he have? Even as they charged him he couldn't find the strength to move.

Luckily Saskue could. With the speed and grace of a cat he leapt at the enemy closest to Naruto. He dug his foot into the mans back around where his kidney was. The man grunted and tumbled to the ground. Saskue smirked and spun around slamming his shin into the other mans throat, sending him flying in the opposite direction.

Saskue ran his hand through his hair happy with the job he'd accomplished. His joy was broken when the sound of a clattering chain rang behind him. By the time he turned around the man behind him and managed to get the monstrous chain around Saskue's perimeter. Saskue pulled out his gun and frowned. "You should be down after that kidney shot."

The men didn't say anything, they just tugged on there chain. Just before the chain sliced Saskue in half, he shot the chain, breaking it in half and sending it flying around him safely. "And not a hair out of place." He said with a smirk. "Now stand down."

The men looked from him, to the bridge builder. They charged Tazuna readying their claws for the attack.

Sakura pulled out her knife and jumped between them and the bridge builder. His face was serious he posture defiant, but before she could strike, Saskue jumped in front of her with his own attack, but before even his attack could land Kakashi cloths lined the two assailants. "I think that's just about enough." He announced.

"Show off." Saskue scoffed dropping his guard.

"Good work you two, really fine work, especially you Saskue." Kakashi turned towards Naruto who was still standing there like a statue. "I'm sorry Naruto I didn't think you'd freeze up like that."

'That was pathetic!' Naruto screamed to himself. 'I just froze up, and Saskue was so cool, like he'd done it a thousand times!'

"Hey!" Saskue shouted breaking him from his daze. "You're not hurt are you?"

"Um…" Naruto began.

"Sacredy cat."

Naruto bared his teeth and made something akin to a growl; he balled his fist and raised it threateningly. "I'm going to destroy you!"

"Naruto!" Kakashi called. "Don't move. This ninja's claws are covered in poison. Moving around is just going to spread it around."

For the first time Naruto noticed the gaping wound in his hand. He felt a cold chill come over him.

"That reminds me Tazuna, we need to talk."

Xxxxxx

"They're chunin from the village hidden in the mist, they specialize in relentless attack, they keep fighting no matter the sacrifice." Kakashi looked over at the two ninjas tightly tied to a tree.

Tazuna looked at him scrupulously. "What's your point? You're supposed to protect me from attackers regardless."

"You paid for a C Rank mission, which means you get standard protection form bandits and highway men. If we'd known ninja would be after you we would have ranked the mission higher and charged the corresponding price. I'm sure you have your reasons but lying to us is not the way to go about this."

"I'm sorry." Sakura began. "But we're only genin we can't handle a mission like this, we should go back and get Naruto some medical care."

"No!" Naruto growled as he pulled out his switchblade. "I'm not going to be the reason this mission fails." His voice didn't waver as he plunged the knife into his hand. "Bridgebuilder I swear I'll protect you, with this knife." Naruto tore his knife out and let the thick black goo drain out of his hand, followed by bright crimson blood.

"Naruto that was cool how you took the poison out and everything but If you lose anymore blood, you'll die,"

Xxx 76 Hours 32 minutes and 12 seconds later xxX

Naruto untrue to his nature trailed at the back of the group his head still hung low from his prior humiliation. He kept running the scenario through his head, contemplating what he could have done, or should have done in that situation. No matter how hard he tried to push the image of him standing there like a scared pup, it still managed to pry its self into the forefront of his mind.

"We'll make camp here for the night." Kakashi announced throwing his pack onto the ground.

"Finally!" Tazuna grunted throwing his bag under his head and falling asleep instantly.

"Well that was impressive." Saskue smirked. He brought out a roll of wire and began setting up a perimeter around the camp.

All this time Naruto had actually been carrying twice as much weight as everyone else, for two reasons: One training and two he'd managed to fit his entire workbench into a backpack. He decided to finally make use of it. He carefully laid out everything on his construction mat. He picked up a black vial filled with the poison that'd been in his body just days before. He uncorked it and listened to it sizzle and whisper sweet nothings into his ear. He took his throwing knife and gently slid it into the vial. He smiled wickedly cherishing the idea of giving the enemy a taste of their own poison.

A few months ago after they'd done a practice night raid Naruto started experimenting with the idea of attaching some sort of light to the top your gun, so you would have to use both hands for your gun and flashlight, until a few days ago the prototypes where rather clumsy and bulky. Until that is, had come across a rather powerful Spirit gem, a graduation gift from the Hokage himself. Spirit gems where jewels that had the ability to channel or focus charka dampening the damaging effect the use of charka had on the body.

Naruto passively twirled the perfectly round sapphire around in his hand as he filled some small canisters with a combustive compound and a hand full of ball bearings. Slowly but surely the Gem began to glow, and glow, until the white light was brighter than the campfire. Naruto suddenly realized that he's been channeling some charka into stone. When he stopped the gem still held its glow for a few minutes until it lost its charge and went dim suddenly. Naruto smile and broke apart the small plastic telescope he kept handy. He popped out the lenses and transferred them to a black metal cylinder that matched his pistol. (Plastic was an infamous Charka blocker.) Thirty minutes later and a little welding job and Naruto hand a functional flashlight, which could vary from a small precise dot for aiming to a blinding flashlight.

He continued to work into the night even as the thick mist from the lake began to overrun the camp and made it hard to see what he was focused on. He sat there working on his weapons unaware of just how necessary they where as a predator began stalking to stalk their camp.