"Sir, you aren't going to believe this," said the ANBU who came to report the results on Tora.
"What? Is that damn cat an actual demon so we can legally kill it?" said Sarutobi, who was merely voicing the popular opinion of the cat.
"You can't kill Tora sir," said the ANBU nervously.
"And why the hell not? If we kill the cat claiming the thing was a demon, then it would take months for her next cat to get as good as that damn thing, by which time we could have created a seal to keep it contained in the Fire Daimyo's palace," said Sarutobi irritably.
"That's just the thing sir... Tora is already dead."
"...What?"
"For some reason all our scans claim the same thing. Tora is not actually alive. There isn't any blood, heartbeat or any other sign it's alive other than the fact that it hisses and tries to claw the crap out of us..."
"So what you're telling me is that we've been sending genin out to catch a ghost cat?"
"I don't know if it's a ghost or a zombie."
"Excuse me while I have a chat with the Fire Daimyo's Wife..."
As it later turned out, the woman had accidentally killed Tora one night by rolling on top of him and suffocating him to death. Tora, in a bid for revenge, decided to insure she never saw her husband again by constantly escaping and forcing her to rent a room in Konoha.
Apparently she had created a room that made it impossible for him to escape, but she never had the chance to use it because she didn't know Tora was dead.
The Hokage hired the best exorcist in the Hidden Continents, and created a festival to honor the fact that the accursed Tora missions were finally over with.
When people learned it was because of Naruto, Harry, Sasuke and Itachi who brought it to the Hokage attention that something clearly was wrong with Tora, they were declared heroes of the village. Quite a few people changed their opinion of Naruto after that.
The Fire Daimyo was quite happy with this, since he missed his wife...and it meant he wouldn't have to keep paying for that damn mission ever again.
She did get a new cat though. This one was immediately placed in the specially sealed room, and the genin were pleased to never have to catch it once.
"UZUMAKI! UCHIHA! BLACK! GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!" yelled the teacher.
Naruto had been hit with a fit of absolute boredom, since he hated history with a passion. So, in the spirit of mischief, he had hexed the teacher's hair blue.
The man hated blue.
Suddenly the trio paused, feeling a familiar presence.
"Again?" said Itachi wearily. The boys grin...only to realize Itachi had caught them and they now had to face the wrath of the teacher.
The man's eyebrow was twitching rampantly.
"Well boys, since you seem to have trouble learning history the normal way, I suppose that there is only one solution for you. You'll have to experience history as it happens!" he growled.
Itachi raised an eyebrow at that.
"How do you plan to do that?" he asked.
The teacher huffed.
"For trouble students who cannot appreciate the rich history this world has to offer, several graduates and professors came up with another solution in order to decrease the number of delinquents. The only odd side effect we've seen is that it causes quite a few to join the military and police. It basically sends them to whatever point of history we are studying that day, and makes them live through it personally. Since the history of the world is quite bloody, you can see that quite a few parents had problems with it, even if it did straighten out several problem children."
"...Personally I think you could make a killing back home. Konoha has a less...protective...view of death and war. Though it wouldn't be allowed to any of the young Academy students who probably wouldn't handle the sight very well."
"Remind me to bring this solution up next time you write home."
Harry, Naruto and Sasuke were in awe of the sheer amount of magic and planning it took to create the 'Living History' trick.
But that was nothing when Harry accidentally recreated the Kaiten with magic...and then proceeded to turn himself into a living disaster by playing pinball in Konoha. Sirius had laughed so hard he made himself sick, and had to spend a week in the hospital recovering...when the Hyuuga hit him with a jyuken strike to the nads.
In order to prevent a repeat, Sirius bought Harry a pinball machine for his birthday, and it was often a battle between the brothers to see who got the right to play it, because it was an addicting game. Funnily enough, Sasuke somehow earned his Sharingan by accident trying to predict where the ball would go, to which Itachi claimed if their father had seen that he would have had a heart attack because Sasuke had earned it outside battle.
Though Itachi was cursing when Sirius happened upon the Unspeakable Genjutsu...and somehow managed to recreate it with Naruto, Harry and Sasuke, to the horror of the newly traumatized ANBU...and the Hokage who hadn't covered the seeing globe of his in time.
Needless to say Sirius would be banned from doing that again within village limits...unless the Hokage gave him the signal to do so.
(Hey, he had to get his kicks in somehow, and pranking the civilian council with that was just perfect! Besides, the looks on their faces would be priceless!)
"I HATE THESE CRAPPY MISSIONS!" said Naruto.
In another life, they would still be trying to catch Tora. Instead they had been given an entire month of boring missions that involved grocery shopping, walking the regular hounds of the Inuzuka (those who didn't have the requirements to become ninja hounds), picking weeds out of a garden, simple home repairs, dishes and laundry and the one Naruto hated the most helping the teachers grade the papers at the Academy.
(The mostly did the most obvious errors, which the teachers went over again to insure that they were graded properly.)
Needless to say Naruto's short patience for boredom had been spent a week in, and he was making the entire team ready to murder someone.
Thankfully for the blond, they did so on his clones, though he did get some rather...unpleasant...memories of said deaths. One involving a pineapple and the 1,000 Years of Death...
"You are in luck Naruto. That last mission was the 50th one you have taken as a genin team, qualifying you for a C rank. We have a few lower level ones, so pick wisely."
Harry, the chosen leader of the group (only because he could get the other two to quit arguing long enough to get the mission over with) went up to the desk.
He skimmed the top, skipping the one to Wave because he wanted to see more of his home and not go to the nearest town. Besides he heard a rumor from some civilians that there had been issues with Wave recently like the local hero being killed by a tyrant. He wasn't too fond of Kumo, as he had heard from another shinobi that there was a Might Gai that rapped horribly every time he spoke that lived there.
Finally he settled on a simple run to Taki. He hadn't heard anything too bad about it, and it had to be better than an exchange of medicinal plants in the middle of the desert.
Harry held up the scroll to Taki, which involved bringing a fresh scroll full of missions that Konoha was sending their way as a show of friendship. In return they would exchange some plants and books with Konoha.
"We'll take the mission to Waterfall, Old man," said Harry.
The Hokage nodded, wondering why he hadn't picked the others. Taki was a pain to get into, plus it took forever to be cleared by the bureaucrats to leave.
Team 9 (Gai's team) walked in ten minutes later and took another C rank. Since Lee was still recovering from a broken leg from landing wrong a week earlier, he chose something close to home.
They were off to Wave by morning.
Ten hours after they left, Gai sent a summon requesting aid, because the client had mislabeled the mission, and they had faced enemy shinobi close to Konoha.
"Naruto, I swear to Kami if you mimic that damn cartoon on the way there I will strangle you and not a clone," said Harry.
"Which one?" said Naruto.
"That dumbass one with the talking Sponge," said Harry flatly.
He did not like Spongebob. It was so retarded that it made him want to gouge his eyes out.
Naruto had watched only one episode, but he hadn't liked it that much. Fairly Oddparents was better in his opinion. He could relate to the main character.
As the boys argued over shows they had seen (thanks to an influx from the portals) Kakashi's sweatdrop grew bigger the longer he listened. On the plus side, the boys had been cleared for skipping magical lessons until they got back.
Mostly because half the things that were on the schedule they had already learned through Sirius.
After two days traveling, Kakashi got a reprieve from their bickering (which was more like a trio of brothers ribbing each other than any real fighting) when they reached the village.
It was at the village entrance that they ran into a girl with green hair and a Taki headband around her right shoulder. She spotted them right as they came out of the trees.
"Hi! You guys from Konoha?"
"Yup! Name's Uzumaki-Black Naruto!"
"Potter-Black Harry."
"Uchiha Sasuke."
"My name is Fuu. I'm coming off a mission, so when I spotted you I figured I could help you get in," she said cheerfully. She preferred foreign ninja to Taki nin, because they didn't hate her on sight.
As she and Naruto chatted about all sorts of things, Kakashi had a sneaking suspicion.
There was a very high chance that she was like Naruto. He knew Taki had a bijuu (seven tailed bug) and one of the characteristics was that the jinchuriki had green hair.
He could only hope he was wrong.
Kakashi and Team 7 returned from Taki, tired but pleased.
As it turned out, Naruto had accidentally befriended the jinchuriki of Taki. Not that he knew that until much later of course.
By the time they got to Konoha, a few things had happened.
BOOM!
"DAMMIT NARUTO, I SAID NOT TO ADD THE QUILLS UNTIL AFTER YOU TOOK IT OFF THE HEAT!" roared the voice of Sasuke.
"YOU SAID NO SUCH THING!" roared the annoyed Naruto.
Zabuza had enough. A week of living in the Uchiha district had been enough for him to pick up unspoken rules.
One: no one gave a damn about the odd noises from the other house.
Two: fan girls were banned from coming within fifty feet of the wall, which Sirius had never taken down because it marked the area they weren't allowed to come in, since it was hard to get anyone to guard the area.
Three: if someone pisses you off, then you are allowed to throw kunai at them or punt them outside the wall for the fan girl horde to attack.
However he had a hangover at the moment, so he couldn't aim a kunai properly. So he settled on yelling.
"WILL YOU BRATS KNOCK IT OFF? SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!" he yelled.
Haku winced.
Someone threw something in the general direction of the house they were living in, and a silence tag hit it. He couldn't even hear the damn birds anymore.
"I don't care who threw it, I'm sleeping today," said Zabuza, crashing on his bed.
He didn't know what the deal was with Black, or why he volunteered to let them stay in the old Uchiha compound (which was heavily guarded after the incident) and frankly he could care less.
All he knew was that being a Konoha nin was infinitely better than being on the run, even if he did have to deal with the oddity that was the remaining Uchiha and the lone Uzumaki of the village.
Learning magic was real didn't concern him. What concerned him were the pranks the boys played on him and the fact that one of them was an unholy spawn of the bijuu who took sadistic pleasure in waking everyone in the compound up at five in the damn morning.
Haku seemed to like living in Konoha, and got along with their new neighbors even better than his master/father.
This was because Sirius had started him on potions, and even had a few books on healing magic, which Haku had a real knack for. It took little convincing for one of the Mediwizards from Japan to teach Haku spells Sirius didn't know.
In other unrelated news, Sirius had to find a new job once the Mediwizards and Healers started to come into the village, because they conspired with the Medic Nins and regular doctors. He was currently renovating one of the houses outside the wall into a small school for beginning magical children, those too young to be accepted in Japan.
Konohamaru, the Sandaime's grandson, was one of those children. Unfortunately for the Hokage, said grandson was enamored with Naruto who had recently humiliated Ebisu, the boy's tutor and who was the first person to treat the kid like a regular child and not the grandson of the Hokage.
The end result was that Konohamaru had taught Naruto's infamous Sexy Jutsu to his two friends...and the insane cackling from the Fox Container gave Sarutobi headaches. This was only compounded when Naruto ran into Anko...and hit it off with the Snake Bitch.
Sarutobi promptly tells the children any damage will come out of their paycheck and that any paperwork caused by the mess would be done by them.