Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Yet. MWAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Special thanks to Last of the Ancients for all his help with the chapter.

~~~~~~~~~~~ Konoha's Maelstrom ~~~~~~~~~~~

~ Chapter 5: Secrets of the Neko-nin ~

"My ramen," Naruto mumbled irritably. "Mine! G'way."

He knew that the Holy Ramen Festival was a dream, but he was in that magical state between sleep and wakefulness that he could slip right back. If whatever it was that kept getting shoved into his side would just go away he could return to being the Holy Emperor of Ramenia.

Naruto grabbed the offending item, not caring enough try and figure out what it was. He just wanted to keep it from poking him, and holding it still seemed like a great idea. Instead of obligingly letting him go back to sleep, the darn thing abruptly pulled away from him, his grip on it pulling him with it before he could let go. Half-asleep and trapped in a blanket, he fell to the floor with a muffled thud.

"Sushi!" he cursed randomly, his mind still somewhat trapped in dreamland. He struggled to extricate himself from the blanket. "You dare challenge the Holy Ramen?" Finally clear of his entanglements, he jumped to his feet to face… Ino?

"What are you doing in my apartment Ino?" Naruto asked, utterly confused by her presence.

"Your apartment? We're in my living room, you nitwit!"

"Who're you calling nitwit, blondie!" Naruto snapped back automatically before taking stock of his surroundings. "Oh, I guess we aren't in my apartment."

"No, we're not in your apartment! Nit! Wit!" She said, her eyebrow twitching dangerously. "What are you doing in my house?"

"I was sleeping, until someone rudely woke me," Naruto said, motioning to the couch he'd been pulled off of. It had actually been more comfortable than his lumpy mattress. He and Inoichi-san had been trying to ease past his mental defenses into his mindscape the night before, and the progress they had made was very tiring. Apparently Jinchuuriki naturally developed formidable mental barriers. The older blond had offered to let him sleep on the couch and Naruto had been far too tired to refuse. He'd simply flopped down and was out like a light. Inoichi had apparently slipped a pillow under his head and thrown a blanket over him, which was certainly nice of him.

Naruto sniggered as Ino's appearance fully registered in his mind.

Ino was vain. It was no secret that she took great pride in how she looked, and Naruto had hardly seen her with so much as a hair out of place or a wrinkle in her always fashionable clothes. Naruto could admit objectively that she was the best looking girl in his class, but the fact that Sakura-chan wasn't afraid to get messy when she got angry was large part of her charm, in Naruto's opinion.

The fact that he was the only one who made Sakura-chan lose her composure meant something good, obviously!

Seeing Ino as she was now was a rather surreal experience for him. It was like she was a completely different person. Her hair was messy and in tangles, her eyes bleary from just waking up, and her rumpled pajamas looked like they belonged to a little girl with all the cartoony kittens on it. She was holding a long handled garden hoe in a defensive stance, which was what she'd used to prod him awake.

"What's so funny?" She bit out crossly, her eyes narrowed.

"Kittens, Ino?"

She paled as she realized what she must look like, and then flushed in embarrassment and anger. "Na-ru-to!" she growled out, swinging the gardening implement at his head. Naruto leaned back just far enough for the metal to pass less than an inch from his nose. There was a moment of incomprehension on Ino's part before she realized that yes, Naruto really had dodged. She resumed trying to maim him.

Sakura isn't the only girl who's cute when she's mad, Naruto mused as he easily danced around her strikes. How odd.

Naruto was having fun, and expressed with it with a beaming grin. It took only a few dodges before he was throwing in excess acrobatics to spice things up. In the two weeks since he'd started training with Gai and Lee, he hadn't fought against anyone even close to being on his level. Lee was still completely out of his league, not to mention how utterly outclassed he was by Gai and Kakashi. He'd known he was getting better, but he hadn't had a chance to really get a sense of how much until now. There hadn't been any sparring amongst Team 7 since they'd officially passed, just boring D-Rank mission after boring D-Rank mission.

He'd sparred with Ino in the Academy, and he could reluctantly admit she'd been more skilled than him. His superior stamina and stronger build had allowed him to beat her, at least after a certain age. After meeting Inoichi-san, it made sense to Naruto that Ino had been skilled enough to take him down before he'd developed his horrendous 'brawler style'. The Yamanaka clan head was a seriously cool guy, and a jounin to boot! He would have made sure that Ino wasn't slacking off in her training.

Come to think of it, the only students that he knew for sure hadn't been beaten by Ino at some point were Sasuke and Kiba. Out of the girls in his class, Naruto would have to say that she'd been the best in taijutsu from what he'd seen.

But Sakura-chan is smarter! Naruto thought, assuaging his guilt at comparing her negatively to her rival, even though it was just in his head.

After just two weeks of training with Gai and Lee, it was amazing to 'spar' with Ino again. The gap between them was ridiculous. She simply wasn't fast enough to give him any trouble, and she was telegraphing her every move. Maybe she'd be better if she wasn't swinging a gardening tool around. But even if she was still more skilled than him, which he very much doubted, it simply wouldn't be enough to even challenge his new speed.

"Stand! Still! Damnit!" Ino snarled as she tried to hit him. In the middle of cartwheeling over a horizontal swing, Naruto absently reached out and stopped a vase from falling over. The graceful and unthinking ease of that action was another awesome benefit of the Kage Bunshin.

Naruto was intensely familiar with his body. There was a huge difference between training physically for a hundred hours total and having a hundred clones each train for an hour, aside from the fact that took a hundredth of the time. The more he trained with his real body, the more his body changed. This was a very good and very intended consequence of course. He was getting faster, stronger, more flexible and a host of other things. But Naruto had the unique ability to train with his body for hundreds of hours without it changing on him.

Gai-sensei had very excitedly explained why this was such an amazing advantage. His proprioception, muscle control, and really anything to with physical awareness or control could be trained to an incredible extent that simply wouldn't be possible without Kage Bunshin. He'd never been ridiculously clumsy before, but gracefulness hadn't been a trait he could have claimed either. Now it definitely was. Gai-sensei had spent a good deal of time making sure that Naruto could recognize what kinds of things needed to be trained with his real body for the conditioning and what could be mostly left to the clones. The increased awareness and control over his body actually made it incredibly easier to learn things of a physical nature.

There was training hard and there was training smart. It was easy to overlook because of how excessively Gai-sensei took the idea of 'train hard', but the eccentric jounin definitely knew what it meant to train smart. After Naruto had been made aware that the kind of tutelage he was receiving was generally paid for, he'd quite reluctantly broached the subject with his teacher. Reluctantly because he certainly didn't have the finances to pay even a fraction of what he valued his training with Gai and Lee at.

Gai had firmly rejected the idea of getting paid for his time. Well, he'd actually said something about how the Springtime of Youth was a beautiful and priceless thing that was a reward unto itself, but Naruto had gotten the picture. He'd already known that Gai was probably the nicest person he'd ever met, but now Naruto was positive that it simply wasn't possible to be any nicer than Maito Gai. That's how awesome he was.

Speaking (or at least thinking) of being nice, Naruto thought that letting Ino keep at trying to murder him with a garden hoe was going to end in something getting smashed. That would be a poor way to thank Inoichi-san for trying to help with the Kyuubi issue.

"Ok," Naruto acknowledged Ino's demand for him to stand still, doing so abruptly.

"Wait, what?" Ino froze mid swing as the other blond inexplicably obeyed her. "What's wrong with you? You're not supposed to actually stand still when someone's trying to hit you."

"Then why did you tell me to," Naruto teased. "Make up your mind, will ya?"

"Nitwit!" Ino growled in frustration, taking another swing at him.

Naruto could tell that this wasn't a genuine attempt to hit him. Her body language showed no intent to follow through, so he didn't move a muscle. Sure enough, she pulled back enough to miss him when he continued standing still.

Ino glared at him. "I'm going to hit you for real this time," she warned.

"Ok!" Naruto said cheerfully.

She did swing at him for real so he jumped back to avoid it, and then dashed forward the instant it was past him. It was but a moment's work to push her backwards down to the floor and disarm her in single smooth motion, ending up kneeling beside her. He'd gently but firmly pressed on the back of her load bearing knee, forcing the leg to collapse and letting her roll with the motion instead of slamming her back into the ground.

She looked up at him in shock, before pouting. "You said you were going to stay still."

Naruto smirked. "I lied. It's a ninja thing."

"Daddy, Naruto's trying to ravish me," Ino accused, so matter of factly that it took a moment for the words to really click in his mind.

Naruto scurried backwards, panicking. "What, I mean, no! I'm not, I would never!" He tripped over himself trying to protest the unfair accusation. Inoichi and a blond woman, who Naruto had never met before but assumed was Ino's mother, were watching them from the doorway to the kitchen.

Ino sat up, tucking her knees under her chin and. Her eyes were filled with hurt and her lip was quivering. "Never? You think I'm ugly, don't you." She looked like she was about to cry.

"No, nonono!" Naruto backtracked. "You're pretty, incredibly pretty!" He would have kept going, except that Ino was suddenly looking very self-satisfied and not the least bit weepy.

"You are after my body," she declared smugly. "I suppose I can't blame you for falling in love with me. You never stood a chance."

Naruto flushed in embarrassment, glaring at the girl.

"No way. You...uh...you've got cooties!" Naruto declared imperiously, wishing he could take it back as soon as it came out of his mouth. Ino had flustered him to the point of being unable to use anything more sophisticated than a six year old's taunts. Oddly enough, it turned out to be very effective.

"What!" Ino shrieked, her smugness evaporating. "Take that back!"

"Nyah-uh," Naruto replied childishly, making another dig at her pajamas. "Not guh-nyah."

"Take it back!" Ino leaped to her feet, charging at him in fury.

Ino's parents watched as their daughter tried her best to pound the boy's face in. Naruto was effortlessly dancing around her, sing songing 'Nyah!' noises as he did so, which seemed to infuriate Ino even more.

"They're thirteen, not eight, right?" Inoichi asked his wife bemusedly.

"You're the one who said she was in too much of a hurry to grow up."

"I may have been too hasty in that assessment," he admitted.

"Surprise attack of YOUTH!"

Lee snapped his leg down from above his head at a speed that Naruto wouldn't have been able to even see a week before. He barely managed to get his arm braced in the proper position to deflect the kick. Despite that Naruto was knocked to the side rather than Lee's leg being deflected.

Lee was on him in an instant, striking out with punches before Naruto had a chance to regain his bearings. "Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Yosh!"

"Oof," Naruto wheezed out as he was nailed in the stomach. He'd managed to deflect and dodge several strikes by the skin of his teeth before Lee slipped past his defenses. Not that he was under the misconception that Lee was actually going anywhere near all out. Lee was limiting himself to a speed that was just enough to run Naruto ragged and then a touch over, but nothing beyond that. It was training to get Naruto used to combat that was a pace above his own abilities, which was essential for defending against superior opponents.

"That was very good, Naruto-kun!" Lee gushed, having stopped after landing a solid hit. "Your improvement has been incredibly Youthful!"

"Thanks," Naruto said, trying to get his breath back. The twenty kilograms of weight he had on each limb had added to the difficulty of the exercise, but he wasn't complaining. Lee was wearing much more. "But you know attacking from the front and yelling surprise before you attack is not actually a surprise attack, right? If you're going to yell it out, you should do it after."

"But it is triply surprising and Youthful this way!"

"Huh?" Naruto was nonplussed.

"If no one is expecting a surprise attack from behind without warning, then giving a warning makes it doubly surprising! And doing it head on makes it triply surprising, and Youthful!" Lee was practically bouncing on his feet with excitement as he explained. He gave an enthusiastic thumbs up at his favorite word.

"A surprise that isn't a surprise isn't more surprising than a surprise that's just a surprise. Wait." Naruto's brow furrowed as he thought over what he'd just said. "Ok, yeah, that sounded about right."

"than a… surprise with… a surprise," Lee scribbled into his notebook, face scrunched in concentration as he mistranscribed what he'd heard.

"No, that's not… never mind." Naruto sighed in resignation, resisting the urge to rub his temples. Sometimes it was in the best interests of his sanity to just ignore Lee's eccentricities.

Lee's teammate Tenten giggled from where she was sitting on a tree branch watching, swinging around a wicked looking kusarigama. It had three blades which snapped into position much like a Fuuma Shuriken. The girl had a seemingly neverending arsenal of incredibly awesome sharp and pointy things.

The graceful way she was twirling it around in complicated patterns was nothing short of art. If Naruto were to try anything even a tenth as complicated as what she was doing so casually he'd probably end up chopping off his ass in about three seconds flat, not that it stopped him wanting to try. That was what Kage Bunshin were for, after all.

Naruto had met Lee's teammates a few times in passing the last couple of weeks. With Gai-sensei as their instructor, it was no surprise that they seemed deadly competent. Tenten was surprisingly normal, but Neji was a pretty much Sasuke with girlier hair. Apparently the Rookie of the Year title came with a complimentary fifteen foot pole to shove where the sun don't shine. And that was to replace the ten foot one that they came equipped with.

Tenten was nice though. Not on the level of of Gai and Lee, but she did offer to help him train instead of sneering at him like he was trash. Well, she offered to give him practice dodging projectiles in return for giving her a moving target that she didn't have to hold back on for fear of maiming. She took a bit too much pleasure in brutally killing clone after clone.

If she showed up before Gai's team was supposed to meet, he'd give her some clones to slice, stab, and otherwise sadistically lacerate to 'death'. Oddly enough, she'd started showing up about forty five minutes early every day he trained with Gai and Lee when he'd started doing that. It was probably a complete coincidence.

"Those circle things were interesting," Naruto noted. She'd been using a new kind of weapon today. "I had a weird time trying to deal with them."

"They're called chakram," Tenten informed him. "They looked like fun so I thought I'd try them out."

"You thought you'd try them out, just like that?" Naruto shook his head in amazement. "I'd hate to be on the other end of those after you've had some time to train with them. And whoever you buy all your weapons from must love you, getting that much stuff on a whim."

Tenten smirked at the praise. "Oh, he better. He's my father." She looked at him slyly. "Come to think of it, I've never seen you use kunai or shuriken. You should drop by sometime and get yourself properly outfitted. The Steel Dragon only has the highest quality gear," she shamelessly self-advertised.

Quality meant expensive, so Naruto was about to decline in some hopefully uninsulting way when he had a sudden thought. "Do you carry explosive tags?"

"The best," she promised with a knowing smile. "You boys and your explosions."

"And you don't like them? I find that hard to believe."

"Oh, I didn't say that." Tenten's tone was amused, and Naruto felt a shiver run down his spine as he imagined what she could do with explosive tags.

"I'll drop by sometime then." Naruto's interest wasn't in buying, but selling. Sure, it would be nice to buy some nice stuff for once, but that would cost money that he didn't have. He'd shifted a good deal of his training time into Fuuinjutsu after deciding that it was going to be a much needed source of income. The Sandaime had been absolutely correct about Inoichi-san being willing to do the initial consultation for free. The old man had also been right about how involved his project would be. Inoichi had confirmed that it wouldn't be simple.

Fuuinjutsu was really suited to training with clones. There was so much to learn, practice, and experiment with that there was no struggle to avoid clones overlapping in what they were learning. And he could be far less careful with seals given that any mishaps would only end up dispelling a clone.

Efficiency was something he was trying to be more aware of. At first, he'd been perfectly happy having pretty much all of his clones working on the same thing. So what if there was some useless overlap? He could makes lots of clones after all. But the instant gratification of advancing in one or two things really quickly was an atrocious waste of his training method's full potential. There were still some things he felt were worth flooding with clones though. Chakra control was important enough to warrant lots of extra clones doing exactly the same thing, for instance. It benefited pretty much everything else he did, so the 'wasted' effort wouldn't actually be wasted.

"Yosh!" Lee exploded, interrupting Naruto's thoughts. "I too shall help Naruto-kun be properly equipped! I shall get you a proper jumpsuit, like mine. No, I shall get you an orange one!"

Oh no. No way in hell, Naruto thought, panicking a little. It was true that his clothes had been taking a lot of abuse in the past few weeks and he could do with something more durable, but that was not an option.

Lee was looking so proud at the idea of tainting the purity of Orange. It was hard to resist the urge to scream 'Hell no!', but with Lee that would feel like kicking a puppy. He was just so nice and genuine, and he didn't realize the monstrous evil of his offer. Explaining what Naruto thought of his jumpsuit would be plain insulting. Definitely not something Lee would deserve. Naruto decided to try and sidestep the issue.

"Hm, did you say something?" Pretending he didn't hear seemed like a viable option.

"Geh! Naruto-kun is so hip!" Lee had an expression of ridiculous shock on his face, far out of proportion to what Naruto had said.

What the hell kind of reaction is that? Naruto wondered. A single thought–'Kakashi showed up'– pulsed from the Kage Bunshin posing as him, giving him an excuse to get away from Lee before the boy could try to turn the jumpsuit issue into some kind of competition.

Hiding somewhat in the shadows, Naruto watched as his team plus a clone exited the Hokage Tower. He was trying not to flaunt his use of the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. Sasuke had gotten really weird about it when he'd shown it as an explanation for his rapid improvement.

Sasuke seemed fine with it at first, but he'd immediately 'asked' Naruto to teach it to him. Although it had been phrased as a request, his tone made it clear that it was more along the lines of a demand. Aside from Naruto's feeling of possessiveness over the technique, the old man had explicitly forbidden him teaching it to anyone else. None of his classmates would even be able to muster enough chakra to make even one clone, and if they tried forcing the issue too much they could even end up hurting themselves. Not to mention it was a forbidden technique.

Unwilling to get into why he was allowed to use it and not Sasuke, Naruto had deflected by telling the other boy that he couldn't just ask for techniques like he was entitled to them. That seemed to settle the issue, but the next day Sasuke showed up and very begrudgingly offered to let Naruto borrow a scroll on Katon: Gokyakyu no Jutsu so he could 'try' to learn it in exchange for the clone technique.

Naruto had been beyond insulted. Gokyakyu was a C-Rank technique that he had already learned from 'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu', and he'd seen instructions for it in at least three other books he'd gone over in the library. And if that wasn't bad enough, Sasuke had implied that he didn't even think Naruto could learn the technique. The blond had told the Uchiha where he could shove his offer. The bastard even had the nerve to look affronted, as if he thought he'd proposed a fair deal.

He'd let the issue go after that, but Naruto had a very bad feeling about the predatory look in his eyes every time he saw Naruto use clones from then on.

Information on the Sharingan was something he'd come across a few times in his research, so Naruto had a fair idea what his teammate was thinking. If Sasuke already had the vaunted eyes of his clan it was doubtful he would have even bothered offering anything for Kage Bunshin in the first place.

Theoretically, Naruto wouldn't mind if Sasuke copied a few of his jutsu. Not Kage Bunshin obviously, and certainly not the things he was coming to regard as his personal jutsu, like Konohagakure no Jutsu. But if Sasuke was going to be a total dick about it, he wasn't getting anything from Naruto. He resolved not to use anything that he couldn't do without seals (or at least being able to reduce the number of seals) in front of the Uchiha, and he'd taken to periodically checking for genjutsu just in case the bastard got the smart idea to hide his stupid Sharingan. Once he'd thought of it he realized it was probably a good idea even without the threat of a hidden Sharingan.

It's not paranoia if your teammate has evil jutsu stealing monkey eyes, after all.

Naruto formed a cross-like seal similar to the modified clone seal he used for Kage Bunshin, and put a small amount of chakra into it. The clone posing as him stood still as it got his mental message, pretending to look at something off to the side.

The Sandaime had come through on his promise of letting Naruto take a closer look at the information on Kage Bunshin, and had even thrown in some other things related to it that certainly hadn't been in the scroll. One of those things had been a technique to communicate with his clones, and they to him and each other, that didn't involve making a clone and dispelling it. It allowed for a short thought to be 'broadcast' across the mental network that connected clones to him, and that thought was even easy for those not intended as recipients to ignore.

In this case, his message was 'prepare to switch' and it was aimed at the clone posing as him with his team.

Carefully using the full extended seals for the Kawarimi no Jutsu, Naruto seamlessly switched himself with his clone. There was no smoke and only the barest pulse of chakra as he stealthily performed the technique. It was something he'd practiced to the point where it should have been near impossible to detect, but nonetheless Kakashi turned and raised his visible eyebrow as though to say 'do you really think you got away with that?'

Naruto just shrugged, a bit put out that he hadn't gotten away with it. The first time he figured out that Kakashi had caught onto his game of not wasting his time waiting, Naruto thought he was in for a dressing down. The silver-haired jounin had done nothing, prompting Naruto to think that maybe he hadn't actually noticed, but the man always seemed to give him a 'look' when he showed up for real. Naruto thought that the whole lateness thing might actually be a lesson of some sort, like when Kakashi had told them not to eat before the test.

In the meantime though, it had become a game to try and switch without Kakashi noticing. So far the score was Kakashi: 8, Naruto: 0.

Naruto frowned as the memories of the clone that had been posing as him flowed into his head. They'd been assigned the 'Catch Tora' mission, again, but that wasn't what was bothering him. Sakura was the cause of his consternation in this case.

"Hey Naruto," Sakura greeted him as he arrived at the training ground.

"Morning Sakura-chan!" The clone was pleasantly surprised at her speaking to him first.

Sakura never acknowledged him before he spoke, and her responses had always been half-hearted. Not that he was holding it against her, as their team meetings were early in morning. He was used to waking up even earlier to train with Gai and Lee so he was wide awake by the time he...er…his clones showed up. In fact the real Naruto had been training with Lee for the past hour since escaping the Yamanaka house, and was still having the crap beat out of him.

Sakura was looking at him worriedly, seeming quite vulnerable. "You still like me, right?"

The scenario was so similar to what had happened with Ino earlier in the morning that the clone almost had to pinch himself. It was just a funny coincidence, he was sure. Sakura wasn't the type of girl who would tease like her rival.

"Of course I do," Naruto reassured her. He was totally bewildered by the question. How could she even doubt it? And why did she suddenly care?

"Cha!" Sakura shouted triumphantly, startling the blond. "Of course you wouldn't choose Ino-buta over me." The conversation seemed to be over as far as she was concerned.

Naruto stood stunned. What had just happened?

Thankfully the clone had thought and brooded over the incident while waiting for Kakashi, so it didn't hit Naruto like it could have. Nonetheless, it was still incredibly hurtful.

Sakura had rebuffed and even demeaned his advances for years. Most people thought that Naruto was simply too dense to realize what was happening, but that wasn't the case. The idea that he'd have to prove that he was worth her time didn't bother him. Compared to the systematic and village-wide effort to pretty much ignore his existence, Sakura's blatant rejections were practically validation in of themselves.

But that was before this.

The fact that Ino had thought to use his presence in her house as ammunition against Sakura wasn't surprising. The fact that she'd done so that incredibly quickly was surprising.

Girls are weird, Naruto thought to himself. He could deal with the fact that Sakura didn't value his affections. That was something he'd simply been planning to change. But for her assert ownership of them when she thought they might be shifting to Ino while still making it clear she didn't have a use for them made him feel… violated.

Sakura was allowed to not accept his feelings. She was not allowed to reject them and then summarily toy with them for her petty rivalries. Naruto may be a bit annoyed with Ino for her part in this mess, but he was downright angry at Sakura. It was a weird feeling.

"Are you going to help us out like last time, Naruto?" Kakashi asked as they reached the area that Tora had reportedly escaped from.

"How about another bet, Sasuke?" Naruto asked, smiling mischievously.

"No," Sasuke replied curtly. He glared at the blond as he remembered what had happened the last time they'd tracked down the cat.

This was the fourth time they'd had the mission 'Catch Tora', and it had barely been more than a week since they'd started running missions. The second time they'd gotten it, mere days from the first, Naruto had decided to plan ahead and imbue the identifying ribbon tied to the cat's ear with a lot of his chakra. And sure enough they'd been assigned the mission again a few days after that. There had still been enough chakra in the ribbon for him to sense it and track it down once they were within a couple hundred meters of the feline.

Naruto had bet Sasuke that he could track down the cat in less than ten minutes, with the terms being whoever lost the bet had to physically catch the cat. It had taken them hours to track down the damn thing the first two times, and Tora was a biter and scratcher. Sasuke had taken what he thought was a sucker bet, and Naruto had proceeded to go straight for the cat, pretending he was using his sense of smell.

Sasuke had not been happy, and had tried to renege on the bet by claiming that Naruto cheated. Naruto had just shrugged and said he should have known that Sasuke wouldn't keep his word, and that had stung the other boy's pride enough to actually go through with it. Naruto had been treated to ten very enjoyable minutes of watching Sasuke try to catch the cat. Sakura had tried to help, but Sasuke had curtly told her off, his pride still smarting from Naruto's insinuations.

Pleased by how well his tracking method had worked, Naruto had placed a simple seal on the ribbon before they returned the cat. It was just meant to store and radiate his chakra, making the chakra last longer. Without the seal, he'd estimated that the chakra would have faded too much to be useful in a total of five or six days. With the seal, he was hoping something more like two weeks, and a larger effective area. It wasn't really necessary for Tora, but the mission was a nice testing ground for his little idea.

Naruto discretely pulsed his chakra to check for genjutsu, and Sasuke's eyes still lacked the Sharingan, so he created three Kage Bunshin.

"What are you doing?" Sakura asked, wondering why he wasn't sniffing out the cat like last time.

Two of the clones faced each other, crouched down, and the third clone stepped on their outstretched palms. The third clone jumped straight up as the other two abruptly stood and threw him towards the sky. All three were using chakra to enhance the movement, so the jumping clone shot up easily higher than fifty meters into the sky. Coordinating with clones was awesomely easy.

"You expect me to reveal the ancient secrets of the Neko-nin-nyah?" Naruto said, pointing to his whisker marks. The clones dispelled, giving him a fairly exact position for the cat. "Tora's about a hundred and fifty meters thataway, by the river." Naruto pointed in the direction, and starting running that way. His team followed him.

"Ancient secrets of the Neko-nin?" Sasuke asked, looking at him seriously. Naruto was surprised at just how genuine the question seemed. Sasuke appeared to be taking his joke way too seriously. What was up with that?

"Emphasis on secrets-nyah!" Naruto said playfully as he jumped through the trees.

"That's not even close to funny," Sakura informed him.

Naruto nearly growled at her. He wasn't in the mood to simply brush off her condescension. Not after the way she'd treated him in the morning.

"It's your turn to catch the cat," Sasuke told Naruto.

"There aren't turns, teme."

"I did it last time," he insisted.

"Because you lost a bet, fair and square."

"That wasn't fair! You knew you would win."

Naruto looked at him disbelievingly. "Of course I did. Why would I if I thought I could lose?"

"That was cheating," Sasuke grumbled.

"Was not!"

"Was too!"

"Was not!"

"Was… I'm not doing this."

"That means I win-nyah!"

"Just because I refuse to play your childish games does not mean you win." He wasn't going to let Naruto have the last word though.

"Does too!"

"Does not!"

"Does t–"

"SHUT UP!" Sakura screamed, startling both boys. "I've had enough of BOTH OF YOU! Sasuke-kun, stop encouraging him. Naruto stop with the stupid cat stuff already!"

Just the day before, the fact that she was including Sasuke in her reprimand would have sent Naruto over the moon. Today, it was just surprising. Ok, really surprising, but it didn't actually make him happy. In fact, arguing with Sasuke was pretty fun when the teme didn't just go 'hn' to everything, so he was actually annoyed by her interrupting them.

"Not gun-nyah," Naruto told her stubbornly.

Sakura flinched as though she'd been struck, and even Sasuke and Kakashi were looking at him in dumbstruck shock. Naruto had never talked back to Sakura. And Sakura's standard reaction to things she didn't understand? Get very angry at them.

"Na-ru-to!" She growled as she jumped at him, a manic expression on her face.

"Nyah nyan nyan, nyan nyan-nyah!" Naruto sang out childishly as he dodged around her attempts to catch him. He took off to the side through the forest, Sakura chasing after him while shouting threats and obscenities.

"Cheh," Sasuke scoffed, smirking. "My win, dobe."

"Oh really?" Kakashi said, going back to his book. "The way I see it there's only one little genin left, and we still have a cat to catch."

Sasuke paled. He tried to go after Naruto and Sakura. "Naru-guh!"

Kakashi simply reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt without looking away from his Icha Icha, cutting off Sasuke's angry shout and his escape. "No you don't," the jounin admonished, hoisting the boy up by his shirt as he ineffectually tried to struggle out of Kakashi's grip.

Tenten's claims had not been empty boasts.

The quality of everything in the Steel Dragon was much better than Naruto was used to dealing with. He actually had a set of very nice kunai that the Sandaime had given him for his last birthday that he was now realizing had been bought here. They were so nice that Naruto hadn't want to so much as smudge them, and remained unused in a box in his apartment. Although the prices seemed pretty reasonable given the quality, this definitely wasn't a place he could afford to shop at given his finances.

That didn't stop him from looking however.

In addition to the usual fare (kunai, shuriken, wire, caltrops and the like) there was a great deal of much more exotic merchandise. Collapsable blades, barbed whips, and nodachi that were longer than Naruto was tall were just a few of the many things he never would have expected to see in a Shinobi weapons shop.

Despite the countless weirder and more interesting looking things, Naruto was drawn to odd contraption that looked like a giant crossbow with too many cables threaded through odd wheel-like devices on either side. It wasn't the kind of thing that looked to be useful in a shinobi battle, but that wasn't why he was interested in it.

That could definitely work, Naruto thought, a devious smile appearing on his face as he looked at the size of the projectiles the thing was apparently meant to fire.

"Planning to lay siege?"

Naruto spun around in surprise. A few feet behind him as a tall man with short brown hair, about Kakashi's height but much broader. He seemed a whole lot more imposing than his jounin-sensei. "Um… what?"

The man motioned to what Naruto had been entranced with. "The compound ballista is a siege weapon. It's not really used by ninja anymore, but it's still popular for larger non-shinobi forces, such as mercenaries or private armies. It's more of a showpiece, although it is perfectly functional."

"Ah, I'm not planning a siege," Naruto said, gaining his bearings. "I've just never seen anything like it before."

"I had to make sure," the man said, chuckling a bit. "You had a smile on your face that reminded me a bit of my daughter when she sees a new weapon for the first time, which is always followed by vast amounts of damage done to training dummies."

"You're Tenten-san's father," Naruto realized. "She said I should drop by if I needed any equipment."

"Oho, you know my daughter," the man said, smiling at him strangely. "I'm Higurashi Kouseki, owner and primary supplier of the Steel Dragon. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"I hope so. I'm Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto introduced himself, watching the older man carefully for any signs of a negative reaction. He'd been much more reclusive in the past couple of weeks since learning of the Kyuubi, and besides Gai-sensei and Kakashi-sensei this was really the first person he really got to scrutinize knowing what his name and face must mean to them.

"Nice to meet you Uzumak-kun! So what is it that I can do for you?" Kouseki's smile didn't falter and there wasn't even the slightest indication that the man had a problem with Naruto or even recognized him.

Was I getting all worked up for nothing? Naruto wondered. "I heard that you sell explosive tags."

"We do, but not the low-power kind you trained with in the Academy," Kouseki said, his smile fading in favor of a much more serious expression. "Weapons level explosive tags are a completely different matter, and not the sort of thing I can see a genin needing. Plus they're quite expensive. If you just want something flashy, I'll have to direct you to A Ton of Metal. They carry the lower level tags. Here's a bit of advice though: never buy lower than C-Grade for explosive seals, and anything level five and above, always spring for at least B-Grade. Yes, they're more expensive, but it's definitely worth it to avoid the risk of blowing yourself up. And don't take this the wrong way kid, but I'm guessing that if you're using explosions in your missions at this point in your career, you're doing them wrong."

"Um… ok? Thanks for the advice, but I was actually looking to try and sell them to you, not buy them," Naruto said, scratching the back of his head self-consciously.

Kouseki chuckled a bit at the misunderstanding. "Well, can't you just sell them back to wherever you got them from? Like I said, there's a certain quality assurance to my wares, and I can't be sure of the level of the work if I don't know the supplier."

"I didn't buy them, I made them," Naruto stated, a little defiantly.

Kouseki's brow furrowed disbelievingly. "You can make explosive tags?"

Naruto bristled at being underestimated. Yes, he knew that sealing was a difficult line of study and that it was entirely reasonable to think he was bullshitting, but it still felt like he was being looked down on. He wanted to retort that he was an Uzumaki, a clan that had been renowned for their sealing skills, but the Sandaime's warning about his heritage being a secret stopped him for a moment.

Well, my name is Uzumaki, he reasoned. That's not much of a secret. Seriously, is the color of my hair really going to matter on that front? He was still irritated at the old man for dangling his parentage in front of him, although he was finding that he did trust the Hokage enough to wait on that front. Didn't mean he had to like it though.

"I… yes. I can." He wasn't going to use his clan name, especially since there wasn't any guarantee it would work. Worst case scenario, it would just take longer to get started selling seals.

Oh shit, Naruto thought as Kouseki's eyes went contemplatively to his blond hair. But I didn't say anything! What the hell is up with my hair, damnit!

"Hm, I'll hear you out despite my better judgment. I don't suppose you've been certified?"

Naruto shook his head. "Not yet."

"Let me see 'em." Kouseki held his hand out. Naruto pulled a stack of seals out of his jacket and handed them over. "Huh, you actually made quite a few, and you went with one of the better designs," he said as he flipped through them quickly before picking one to examine in detail.

Naruto shifted uneasily on his feet as his work was scrutinized. He'd come a long way with explosive tags since Kakashi's 'test', and he was fairly confident in the quality of his tags. Of course, the bar here was much higher than he'd anticipated. He was suddenly very thankful for how carefully he'd made the tags. It took him about 12-15 minutes to carefully write out an explosive tag, but he'd spent 30 minutes each on these just to be extra sure. Well, his clones had. There was no way he was going to sit around for hours making seal after seal.

"I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but it looks like these are at least worth testing," Kouseki said, surprise evident in his voice. "Tenten!" he called out.

"Yeah dad?" her voice came from the behind the front counter, in another room.

"Mind the store for me, I need to check something out."

"What's going on?" she asked, walking out of the back room. She was wiping her hands with a cloth, and there were what looked like oil stains on the apron she was wearing. "Oh, Naruto-kun," she smiled as she saw him. "You came!"

"Hi Tenten-san," he waved. "I said I would, after all."

"I need to go test some tags, so cover for me," Kouseki said, holding up the tags.

Tenten's eyes zeroed in on the seals with frightening intensity. "Explosive tags?" She asked, grinning excitedly. "Can I help? Please?"

Kouseki sighed in resignation. "You'd think I would've learned to keep my mouth shut by now," he muttered.

Tenten practically skipped over to them, untying her apron and carelessly tossing it back to the counter. She snatched the tags from her father's hands without waiting for an answer, flipping through them with a look of unholy glee.

Naruto was startled when Kouseki formed a familiar cross-like seal with a look of concentration.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," the man said, and despite his intense expression only one clone popped into existence, heading towards the counter. Naruto thought that was a little odd, but he was more surprised by the technique.

"You know Kage Bunshin?" Naruto asked before he could stop himself. Kouseki raised an eyebrow at that.

Tenten laughed. "He's a jounin," she explained. "If you can do it, why is it so surprising that he can?"

"Wait, you can do Kage Bunshin?" Kouseki asked in astonishment, his eyes flicking to Naruto's hair again before turning to his daughter. "And you knew about it?"

Tenten looked at her father in confusion. "Is that a big deal? He lets me use them for target practice."

"Target practice? Kage Bunshin? That's…" Kouseki shook his head. "Ok, let's head out to the back." He led them to a door in the back of the shop. "Tenten, Kage Bunshin is a B-Rank technique. It's not something a genin can just pick up on a whim."

"B-Rank?" Tenten looked at Naruto in surprise when they were outside. "Where did you learn it then?"

"Ehehe," Naruto chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his neck. "It's, uh, classified." He avoided her eyes, taking the opportunity to look around. There was a large training area behind the shop, filled with all sort of dummies, obstacles and other things he couldn't identify.

So that's why the shop is out here, Naruto realized. He'd first tried looking for the Steel Dragon in the merchant district, eventually having to ask about it after looking at every shop twice. He'd been directed to the outskirts of the village, which had surprised him. It didn't seem like a great location for a business.

"Classified?" Tenten asked, puzzled. "What would–"

"Tenten," Kouseki cut in sharply. "Classified is classified. Don't try to guess at it. Let's just see if this kid's tags are any good and leave it at that."

Tenten perked up, looking at Naruto. "Wait, you make explosive tags? Why didn't you say so before?"

"Uh, you didn't ask?" Naruto said, unnerved by how much attention his skills were getting all of the sudden.

"But, but, explosive tags!" Tenten whined piteously.

"We're here," Kouseki said dryly, saving Naruto from Tenten. They'd stopped at a smooth crater that was about twelve meters in diameter and five meters deep.

"Hey!" she complained as her father snatched the tags out of her hands.

"This is an inspection, not a party," he said sternly, looking over one of the tags closely for about half a minute before handing it to her. Tenten was practically bouncing on her feet in anticipation while she was being forced to wait.

She immediately produced a kunai from somewhere and tied the tag to it with obviously practiced easy. "Mark!" she called out, presumably to announce having armed it with chakra, and then threw it with her typical level of skill. It shot through the air unerringly to stick at the bottom of the crater, exploding in a very satisfying manner a few seconds later. Tenten giggled, a bright and open smile on her face that should not have been eerie, but was. Kouseki was just looking at the explosion and aftermath with a critical eye.

Tenten with stabby things was scary. Tenten with stabby things that exploded… that was terrifying.

That was the routine for ten tags. The tag would be carefully inspected, passed to Tenten, and then detonated safely.

Well, that wasn't quite true. About halfway through Tenten launched a tag angled up instead of down, followed immediately by a shuriken going faster that cut the tag off of its kunai, allowing it to flutter down. It exploded exactly at the level of their feet, smack dab in the center of the crater.

Naruto was impressed at the showmanship, but the long-suffering look her father gave her probably meant that he wasn't.

"Well, I've seen enough," Kouseki declared.

"Aww," Tenten pouted, but she couldn't wipe the smile off her face enough to make it very convincing.

"I have to say I'm very impressed, kid," Kouseki said, but his tone kept Naruto from getting his hopes up too much. "The quality of your tags is much better than I would have expected from someone with just a year in the field."

Tenten looked at him, puzzled. "A year? But I thought you graduated a couple of weeks ago?"

"I did, two and a half weeks ago," Naruto admitted.

"No," Kouseki said, shocked. "Kage Bunshin and this? Really?"

Naruto blushed a bit, unable to hold down a proud smile.

"Sheesh, kids today," Kouseki grumbled. "That being said, I'd have to estimate those tags were about B-Grade in quality." Naruto's face fell a bit. "Don't get me wrong, that's amazing! It's just the consistency of a couple of things is a bit too varied, like the delay and the power. With the philosophy of my store, I can only sell A-Grade. The difference may not seem like a lot, but it's a guarantee that you know exactly how the seal will perform. Honestly, I'd say with few months of refinement you could be making A-Grade explosive tags if you keep at it, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to get certified. That'd get you access to a sealing chamber for one, which would definitely help things along. And it would allow you to charge a little more."

Naruto perked up at the relatively short time Kouseki thought it would take. A chibi Naruto was doing a victory dance in his head singing Kage Bunshin, Kage Bunshin-nyah!

Wait, what? Naruto thought, weirded out by the unintentional nyah. Maybe I've been saying that a bit too much.

"I bet I can get to that level in a few days," Naruto declared seriously.

"Is that so?" Kouseki was smiling. Not condescendingly, but still in a way that seemed to say it's not going to be that easy, kid.

"I would have had it already if I hadn't gotten sidetracked working out the kinks in my flashbang tags," he grumbled.

Suddenly, Tenten was up in his face, her eyes sparkling and giving him the very definition of puppy-dog eyes. It was so intense he could almost imagine fluffy ears and a furiously wagging tail.

"What's-a-flashbang-tag?" she asked so excitedly and quickly the words almost ran together.

Oh boy, Naruto thought in panic. I'm doomed.

AN:

Nyah is the japanese equivalent of meow, for anyone who might not have known.

It's never explicitly stated in canon, but I get the sense that Academy sparring was boys against boys and girls against girls. That just doesn't make sense in a ninja world, where I doubt the idea of 'boys shouldn't hit girls' is actually a thing for shinobi. Not even instinctively. If that's a civilian notion, I'd expect the Academy to train it out of them. Shikamaru not wanting to fight girls is just Shikamaru being lazy.

In the Chuunin Exams neither Ino nor Sakura are even close to being impressive with their taijutsu, but in the Academy it makes sense for Ino to be the most skilled of the girls. At least from Naruto's perspective.

Using Gentle Fist Hinata would have been able to defeat Ino handily in the Academy, but I'm thinking it didn't go down like that. All the evidence I see points to the conclusion that Hinata didn't use Jyuken in the Academy, and from what I understand of the Hyuuga clan I doubt she would have been allowed to. Giving other clans and possible spies the opportunity to watch a half-trained user of their style against various different opponents in a sparring situation as that user progressed in skill just gives way too much opportunity to analyze and deconstruct the style. The Hyuuga clan wouldn't bother teaching styles other than Jyuuken, so what Hinata sparred with in the Academy would have been what she learned there.

Edit: As far as Sakura is concerned, she came off looking rather mean in this chapter. This isn't a bashing fic, so I hope it doesn't feel like that although I know it's a bit futile at this point. She's insecure, especially about how she compares to Ino. It's not that she thinks Naruto belongs to her and he can't go after any other girl, which is how he's kind of perceiving it, but that for him to switch his affections to Ino is a terrible blow to her insecurities. The fact that Naruto likes her is something she appreciates on some level, and the idea of him choosing Ino over her is terrifying. She's incredibly relieved when he says he hasn't and doesn't consider how she's gone about it. She's not stupid or evil, she's just an insecure teenage girl who isn't handling her emotions very well.

Compound Ballista - I made it up. Basically a kind of modernized ballista that is like a compound bow.

Higurashi Kouseki is a tip of the hat to 'The Dichotomy of Namikaze Naruto' by Thunderreaper.