Flash of Red and Black

Chapter VIII

"So, it's really done, huh?"

"Well, there are still some supplies that we need for the classrooms, but basically, yes, it's done."

"Great job, Ino. Thanks for doing this."

"No problem, Naruto. Besides, it was your plan and you were basically the one who built this place with all your bunshin anyway."

"No, I was just doing what I could to help you out since I'd be a total failure as a medic-nin. You'll be doing a lot for me by running this place. If I can ever help with anything, let me know."

We continued talking about the program for a while before I had her come back with me to my office while I summoned all the potential students and teachers to my office.

"You all should already know about the Konoha Medical Training School. Well, now everything is ready to go, and you all have been recommended to participate in the program as students or teachers. If you don't want to participate, that's fine, but you'll all be doing me a huge favor if you do this. Anyway, those who already are med-nin, please take a paper from Ino before you leave, and the rest of you take a paper from my desk. If you want to join the program, just fill out the paper and get it back to me by the end of the week. If you have questions, you can come see me or Ino any time."

From there, Ino and I passed out the papers. I was surprised when most of the shinobi went ahead and filled their papers out right then and immediately placed the form back onto my desk. At my surprised look, one of them spoke up.

"If this is how I can best serve you, Hokage-sama, then I don't need to think twice about it," said one med-nin as he placed his form on my desk. The others that were filling out their forms, both med-nin and future med-nin alike, nodded in agreement. I couldn't help grinning at all of them.

"Thank you guys, really. For those of you that are going to be teaching medical jutsu at the school, I'm going to have you meet with Ino before classes start so that she can assign your positions and give you an outline of the curriculum. If you've got any ideas, feel free to let either of us know. And thanks again, deba," I said, still grinning. I couldn't help it. Though I didn't expect much resistance in getting the program going, I also didn't expect everyone being so eager to help.

Eventually, almost everyone filled out their forms and left, but one kunoichi stayed after everyone else had left.

"Did you need something?"

"I'm sorry to bother you, Hokage-sama, but I just wondered if I could have you as an audience for a little bit. If you're busy, though, I understand," she said, placing her form on my desk on top of the others.

"Sure! No problem. Ino, you're free to go. I'll leave it to you to call a meeting for all the teachers," I said. She nodded before leaving and I turned back to the kunoichi in front of me.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama. Sorry again to bother you."

"Don't worry about it. So what can I do for you?"

"Oh, no! You've already done plenty. I just really wanted to thank you for paying a visit to the academy. You see, my son was the one who asked to see a jutsu of yours. I'm sorry if that caused you trouble, but since then he's been doing even better at the Academy, and when I asked him about it he said that it was because he and his friends want to become great shinobi like you so they can take care of the village too."

At that, I couldn't help grinning.

"So he was your kid, huh? No wonder he had good chakra control for someone his age. I was pretty surprised that he was able to make two good bunshin. Have you been teaching him?" I asked. She looked surprised that I remembered him, but smiled.

"He hasn't been interested in learning from me or his father until after you visited the Academy, but now he asks for extra lessons from us after school every day. Apparently his friends have been doing the same thing. I wasn't sure if he was going to stick with it, but he's been doing it every day since your visit."

"Well do you mind if I come visit him now? Classes should be out by now, right? I've been planning on visiting the Academy again to see how much everyone's improved, but I think I'd learn more by watching him train with you," I said, smiling at her again.

"R-right now? Of course! You don't have to bother with this, though. I'm sure you're very busy," she asked, obviously surprised. I just grinned at her.

"It's fine as long as I'm not intruding. I'd like to prove that I meant what I said when I was at the Academy that day. I want everyone to come see me anytime. I want to be able to help everyone anytime I can. Plus, paperwork gets boring."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama. You can follow me, then," she said, leaving the building. I followed and asked her about her son and his friends while we walked. After a while, we arrived at a nice little house towards the edge of the village and Hojo-san ushered me inside, calling that she was home and had a guest with her. I snickered a little and took off my shoes before entering, smiling once her son appeared to welcome her home. When he saw me, though, he froze from surprise for a moment.

"Kyou! Greet our guest. He came specifically to see how you've been doing since he visited the Academy," she scolded softly. Immediately Kyou snapped out of his stupor and gave a really deep bow before righting himself.

"Welcome! Um, thanks for coming!" he said before looking around, seeming almost panicked. I grinned back at him before his mother spoke up.

"Kyou, you can go ahead to the back and start warming up. I'll be there in a little bit," she said before asking me to make myself at home. I smiled at her and followed Kyou to the yard while Hojo-san went to the kitchen. I watched Kyou warm up, and I could tell that he was nervous since he kept fumbling and tripping. I smiled before taking off my robe and stepping off the porch to join him in the yard.

"Mind if I join you? I'm a little stiff from sitting at my desk all day," I said, smiling at him. His eyes got big, but he nodded. Then I started running through the same Academy-style warm up that he was doing. I continued watching him, but only through the corner of my vision, and I could tell that he was much less nervous with me not staring directly at him. I saw him glance over at me a few times as we ran through the routine, and I saw him adjust his positions to look more like mine occasionally. Just as we finished, Hojo-san came onto the porch with a tray of tea and snacks.

I smiled a greeting at her before looking down at Kyou.

"Nice job, Kyou-kun. Your angles are a little off sometimes, but you'll be able to fix that in no time, I'm sure," I said, smiling at him before sitting on the porch again, thanking Hojo-san for the tea.

After that, I watched them practice chakra control on the one little tree in their yard. Kyou was able to make it half way up the tree before having to jump off, which was pretty impressive to me since I had a heck of a time with that training when I was a genin. (Forget even trying it as an academy student!)

Once they finished with that, they both joined me on the porch and I turned to Kyou.

"What kind of ninja do you want to be, Kyou-kun? Are you going to be a med-nin like your mom?" I asked, glancing at Hojo-san, but he made a contemplative face before looking back at me and answering.

"I don't really know. I haven't thought about it much. I don't know if I'm smart enough to make a good med-nin, but I'm good at chakra control, and I'm better than my friends at taijutsu," he said. He seemed much more relaxed around me than before which was nice, but he was still a little stiff.

"Is that so? Well, when you decide, just let me know. As long as you work hard enough, I'm sure you'll be just fine at anything, so it's just a matter of making up your mind. It sounds like you already have the right motivation to become a great shinobi someday," I said smiling at him, and he smiled back for a moment before looking a little confused and speaking up.

"What do you mean the 'right motivation,' Hokage-sama?"

"Your mom mentioned to me that you and your friends want to become a great shinobi so that you can take care of the village, right?" I asked, getting a nod from him in return.

"That's what I mean! Working hard to get stronger so that you can protect the things that are important to you, that's the 'right kind' of motivation because you're not getting stronger for yourself. You're getting stronger for the sake of what's precious to you, so the more precious things you have, the stronger you'll get," I said smiling at him. He smiled back and nodded. After that, I stayed to chat for a while longer, but then I left to get back to work. Before leaving though, I promised to visit again, sometime when Hojo-san's husband was there too so that I could see Kyou's training with him. They both seemed glad that I wanted to come back and they thanked me for visiting.

Once I was at my office, though, I felt a familiar feeling wash over me again, one that I had been dreading. Instantly, I sent out another squad of ANBU-henged bunshin and I called another ANBU team to my office.

"I need you to get to the Land of Waves as quickly as possible. I had a team trailing some people transporting information from one of Orochimaru's old bases to another location. They were detected. I already have a team sent to back them up, but I want you four to pick up where that team left off. As soon as you know where Orochimaru's subordinates are taking the information, return to Konoha. Leave as soon as possible. Dismissed."

As soon as they left, I let myself collapse onto my desk, silently cursing. Because the team was caught at the base in the Land of Fire, apparently the sanin's subordinates were expecting company this time, and thanks to that, my bunshin had to engage double the number of super-curse-marked thugs. The team was able to escape and may have been able to swipe some more information from the base in the chaos that my bunshin created after they were detected, but in order to make sure that everyone on the team could get away safely, my bunshin had to blow its cover. It released the henge to conserve a little more chakra, and then let loose a single Rasen Shuriken to take out those attacking the team before going into the base and destroying half of it to attract the attention of all the enemies in the area while the team infiltrated, grabbed what they could, and got out, heading back to Konoha. They had plenty of time to escape, so I knew that they would be fine this time, but I wanted to have my other bunshin team to meet up with them just in case. Plus my bunshin could hold the position and escort the new ANBU team back to the base to resume trailing the snake's minions. Really, I didn't like sending a new team back into the exact same position, but I knew that it could be the only chance we would get to find where the sanin was hiding, so I couldn't just ignore it. I could, however, take extra precautions in the form of having an extra team of bunshin with them.

Still, I wanted to make sure that I really had all my bases covered, so I summoned Shikamaru and let him know what happened. He seemed to agree with the plan, but told me to immediately send word of it to Kiri to make sure that they would be prepared too, just in case the same thing would happen there. I agreed and notified the head of the intelligence department to send a message.

"You sure that you're alright, Naruto?" Shikamaru asked once everything was done.

"Yeah. Thanks. I'll be fine once they get back. They should be two days away by now, tops," I said, giving him a tired smile. Shikamaru nodded and turned to leave, knowing that I wasn't going to confide in him more than that. But he stopped just before he was out of the room.

"You might want to spend the day at the Academy tomorrow. It seems that everyone's scores started going up after you paid Iruka's class a surprise visit a while back. Sounds like some of the classes have started a competition for who could get the best scores so that you would choose to visit their class next," he said, giving me a little smile before leaving. I smiled a little too, glad that Shikamaru gave me something to do to keep my mind occupied. Of course, class wasn't going to start for another twelve hours, so until then I had to occupy myself with something else. But instead of the usual paperwork, I decided to go through the files of all the Academy students, trying to learn something about all of them.

The hours passed quickly while reading through all the files, so once I finished I went over to the Academy. I spent some time in each of the classrooms before asking everyone to join me out on the training yard.

"Alright everyone, just studying in the classroom can get boring, but I still want to see what all of you have learned. So, today instead of being in the classroom, I want you all to spar with me, but not one-on-one. You're all going to come at me at once, got it? But only use taijutsu. I don't want you guys to accidently hurt each other, alright? Also if you can land a hit on me, I'll treat you to Ichiraku Ramen. Sound good?"

All the students nodded and immediately readied themselves while I just stood there and looked around.

"Begin!" I called and immediately I started dodging blows. The students were coming from all directions, but after a couple hours, they were worn out and none of them had landed a single hit so I called an end to it.

"Alright, guys, that's it. I need to get back to work soon. All of you have better form than I expected, but when you're fighting someone stronger than you, you have to cooperate with those around you. None of you can take me on right now alone, but if you guys would have tried to work together some more, you might have landed a hit or two, and then I would be buying each of you a bowl of ramen. Now I have to go, but come and see me anytime. Also, I'll be back again, so work hard for next time, okay?" I said, smiling at everyone before heading back to my office.

"Looks like you've been busy, Naruto," said a familiar voice as I walked into my office.

"Baa-chan, Shizune! You're back! How was Suna? Did you guys get the justu scrolls and everything from here in time?" I asked grinning at the busty woman and her assistant.

"Suna was in pretty good shape and the scrolls are already being used. We personally trained some of the more experienced medic-nin in Konoha medical jutsu, so at least a few will be able to teach the jutsu to others themselves," Tsunade-baachan said, smiling at me.

"Good. I guess things were pretty quick to set up there since you didn't have to create a program from scratch," I said as I pulled some chairs over for the two women.

"Right, and Kirigakure sent a few med-nin to Sunagakure too, so that only helped," Shizune said, smiling.

"That's great! I'm glad that Gaara took Mei up on her offer. All the shinobi that helped us out here already returned, but they helped a lot here too."

"I'm sure they did. And I see that you've been causing a ruckus at the Academy," Baachan said, giving me a teasing look.

"So you saw that when you were coming in, huh?" I said, giving a sheepish grin, scratching the back of my head.

"It was pretty hard to miss, Naruto-kun"

"Yeah, but I think it'll help. I visited Iruka-sensei a while ago and talked a little, and since then pretty much all the students have been working harder. And Shikamaru said that there's even a competition between some of the classes to see who can get the best scores so that I'll be more likely to visit them," I said, grinning.

Shizune glanced at Tsunade, surprised, but Baa-chan just smiled at me.

"If anyone can make the impossible happen, Naruto, it's you," she said. I grinned, a little embarrassed.

"Well anyway, you guys are free to rest. It'll be a while before I can help the other villages with starting up programs, so if you guys can just help out at the training school here when you have time, I'd appreciate it. Classes start after the Chuunin Exam finals, but you may want to talk with Ino to know more about it."

"It's ready to begin already?" asked Shizune, surprised again.

"Yup, but feel free to go there and talk to Ino if you want to see it for yourself. It's pretty impressive, really. She's done a great job, and Neji is totally prepared too."

Again, Shizune stayed surprised, but Baa-chan just smiled like she knew it all along.

"Well, we'll talk to her tomorrow, then. Be sure to get some rest, Naruto. And good job on nearly keeping up with all the paperwork."

I grinned and waved goodbye to the two women before starting more paperwork. I had at several more hours to kill before The ANBU teams would be back, and at least another hour after that before I would be able to sleep. So I approved all the forms that the jounin-level medic-nin and genin- and chuunin-level medic-nin hopefuls turned in the day before and arranged to have a meeting the day before the third stage of the Chuunin Exam with all Neji and all those acting as security during the tournament. But since that wasn't enough paperwork to pass the time, I continued on other things and sent a note to Ino about the school and some suggestions for the day after the end of the Chuunin Exam.

Finally, I felt some familiar chakra entering the village, and I sighed with relief before summoning the head of intelligence and Shikamaru. Soon after, three ANBU-masked figures appeared in front of my desk and Shikamaru appeared next to my desk.

"Report."

"After your bunshin separated from us to cause the distraction I ordered, we took some blood samples of one curse-marked individual that your bunshin killed and we sealed the body of another into this scroll," Fox stated, handing over the materials. I nodded, and Shikamaru immediately called in another ANBU to take both to Sakura as Fox continued.

"Then we infiltrated part of the base that remained lightly guarded despite your bunshin luring most enemies towards the explosion. We took down all enemies in the area and sealed away what we could in these," he said handing me a few scrolls.

"The green scrolls contain all the documents we could find. The rest contain what looked like potions for experiments. As soon as we sealed everything we could in a five-minute time frame, we escaped and met up with your relief team a little under a day ago. We relayed what we could to them about the base's location and the trail from it," Fox finished as Shikamaru handed the scrolls filled with documents off to the head of intelligence that had just arrived.

"Thank you. Good work. I'm sorry for not expecting them to be more prepared. If I had, I would have sent another team with you from the start," I said as my fists white-knuckled behind the stacks of paper on my desk.

"Hokage-sama, you did all you could in the circumstances," Rabbit said.

"Rabbit's right. Your bunshin saved us, but we should've been more prepared ourselves. We won't mess up next time," Dog cut in.

"Regardless, good job. Rest up for a few days. Dismissed," I said before the three disappeared. Then I turned to Shikamaru who had already dismissed the head of intelligence.

"I should have seen that coming. You have enough on your plate. I'm here to predict things like that," he said before I could get a word it.

"It's fine. What's done is done, and they made the mission into a success anyway. Nothing has happened to my bunshin in the Land of Water yet either, so everything is probably going well there."

"Just let me know once the documents are decrypted. I'll let Sai know. And I'll ask Shizune-san and Tsunade-sama to stop by the hospital to see Sakura, so you can go ahead and go home and get some sleep. You look like hell," Shikamaru said before walking out, giving a little wave. I sighed. I knew he was probably right. Not sleeping from stress and worry could do that to a person, so I followed his advice.

At home, I found Kakashi on the couch, still in ANBU gear other than the mask on the ground next to him. He had one arm tossed over his eyes and I went ahead to the bathroom to grab a medical kit that Sakura gave me ages ago. Then I sat on the floor next to the couch and rolled up Kakashi's sleeves, disinfecting the scratches and covering them. I could tell that he was awake, but he was obviously too tired to even flinch.

Once I finished with his arms, I inspected the rest of him to see if his clothes were torn anywhere else, but I didn't notice anything so I rolled his sleeves back down. As soon as I finished, though, he tossed an arm over my shoulders and pulled me to him, kissing me.

"You were worrying."

"You were fighting."

"You haven't slept in days."

"I've been busy."

"You can't do this every time I'm on a mission."

"Even before I became Hokage, I've been doing whatever the hell I want," I said, getting frustrated, but he smiled tiredly.

"Fair enough. But you need to sleep more, Naruto."

"I can't."

"Because you still have those nightmares?" he asked softly, running his thumb across my cheek.

"If you aren't here, I can't sleep," I said, dodging the question, but it didn't matter. He was a master of looking "underneath the underneath" after all. (Not that it was necessary. I didn't even have to look in a mirror to know that I would look like Gaara if I went another night without sleep.)

"Well, if I'm here I might as well be with you," he said, kissing my forehead, but I was confused, and apparently it was obvious since he smiled and stifled a laugh as he continued.

"Does the offer still stand for me to move in?" he asked, and I couldn't help grinning. The next few hours served as my answer.