I do not own naruto anime, manga or other released formats.

The D rank missions were just as horribly boring as what he believed. Missions my foot, they were chores. This only made him believe in his reforms even more. But the strange thing was that they were still debating whether or not to implement some of them in the council. After having caught the Fire Lord's cat for the 6 time he simply did what he should have done in the first place.

He simply used the Shadow Clone Jutsu and made 200 clones. Then he ordered them to finish as many available D rank missions while he and his team trained and did teamwork exercises. Sakumo was not opposed to it one bit. He used to think reading reports all day was bad, I guess he forgot how dull these so called missions were.

The Hokage did not make matters easy though, he made it perfectly clear that Team Hakate was to be limited to 10 D Rank Missions a day. The clones had been doing them so quickly that the other teams were left with nothing to do. The Jounin Teachers felt that their teams would never meet the necessary mission completion requirement to move to higher rank missions. A few teams also felt if that happen they would be genin teams till either they had been married or till Naruto was Jounin which ever came first.

Mikoto was still following Naruto's training schedule, and the thing was Koji was doing it too. Not doing it in a good mood, as he used to complain to Naruto instead of to Sakumo. He called Naruto a slave driver every chance he got. Naruto simply ignored the comments from him, when he notices the results lets see him complain anymore...

Fugaku was the other problem, he was constantly trying to do 2 things. Get Mikoto to give him the time of day, and get someone to try and kill Naruto. He was failing miserably at both. Mikoto was very happy to spend time with her training partner. If the way they acted they where teased something awful by Mikoto's new friends. The toad senin had gotten finally a student and after a daring rescue from the same student he got himself a girlfriend. Minato and Kushina had met truly at the academy, but the feelings and romance came after the attempted kidnapping of Kushina.

Months later the couple was as in love as any couple could be, and they both shared a hobby. Tease and torture Mikoto about her love interest Naruto. "Look, you train together, eat together, and live under the same roof? When are you to just going to make it official and tie the knot already!" Minato told her as Kushina and Mikoto were trying to have a nice lunch together. If Naruto had been there she knew that they would tease her calling it a double date.

But surprisingly Naruto was also busy sometimes, helping the research projects of one of the senin was busy work. Orochimaru, or as people would call him the slug prince was walking through the park one day and heard someone talking to himself. It had been Naruto and he had tried his best to figure a way to cure the Sharingan blindness that came to the people of his clan after they awaken the Magenkyou Sharingan. If he made his theory and method to awake it public, there would be one clan of blind people before too long. He needed to find a cure.

Orochimaru was surprised to hear a genin trying to figure something that had plagued the clan since their first became aware of the problem. He went to Naruto who was too busy to notice, "So you want to find a cure? How about they receive the eyes of the dead clan members?" He had though of that, "No, that will not work. Even though they would be from the clan, there was always the risk of organ rejection. The only one I came up with was to clone the eyes of the person after they awaken them to that level. This would prevent rejection and loss of ability." Orochimaru had to tell him that was not such a bad idea, "But our cloning techniques are not that advanced yet."

So the pair came up with the plan to help him and tried to improve their cloning techniques to meet the required level. This was slowly being done by Orochimaru allowing Naruto access to all his medical books, and advance biology, chemistry and analysis books as well. With a small army of shadow clones Naruto was learning as fast as he could. He did not use that many of them to complete the 10 D Ranks that he did daily.

Kagami was completely sure that Naruto would be an excellent successor to being Clan Head eventually. But Naruto had been quite clear, Mikoto was to be considered first. He would not have time with his own research and missions by then. When Tsunade heard the experiments being done to improve cloning she jumped at the chance in helping them. The snake princess as some called her did not do this out for the public good. She did it because if she could clone herself in a young version of herself, then if she figured a way to transfer her mind to the clone. She would have what she wanted all along. She would obtain eternal youth, after all who deserved to be young forever if not someone as beautiful as herself!

Tsunade would get the genetic material for the experiments and Orochimaru and Naruto would try various methods to improve the cloning and stimulate the growth of the clone tissue. But at some point Orochimaru took over the research alone. The council wanted the team lead by Sakumo Hakate to take higher rank missions.

Much as he wanted to continue the research Naruto knew that he had to do what was best for his entire team, and not only his own clan. With a heavy heart he told Orochimaru, and he understood. His first C Rank Mission was going to be assigned the next day. He wished him good luck to his research partner, and he wished him luck on the research. Maybe he could send reports and he could try and think of anyway to help when he had free time, if he had free time.

The day finally came for Naruto and his team to take a C Rank Mission. "Hokage-same Team Hakate reporting for duty." As the Hokage looked up he saw the team. "No need for formalities, I have a perfect C Rank mission for all of you. It is an escort mission. A business man needs escort back to his home in wave and is afraid that some business rivals will try and kill him. Could you please send Mr. Gato in." Hokage mentioned to his assistant thru the intercom.

As the young woman appeared she lead a short, round man to the desk. "I am happy to see you Hokage, but where is the team that will escort me to my home?" The hokage simply told him that the teens and jounin present were that team. Gato could hardly contain his laughter. "Hokage, I have no doubts on someone of Jounin Sakumo Hakate, but these kids are not even old enough to work in my company. How much protection can they provide?"

As soon as he said that the teens were upset. Naruto without even thinking vanished from sight, and appeared with a trench knife in hand behind Gato. He held the knife to his throat. "I assume that is a good enough demonstration for you? Right, Sir?" Gato was sweating bullets. "Well I guess I was wrong, sorry to underestimate you young man." Naruto simply walked toward his team mates who were looking very happy.

"Team Hakate be at the gates in 30 minutes, Mr. Gato you have nothing to worry about. My team does not fail!" Sakumo Hakate finished giving orders to his team and they all vanished using the body flicker technique. Gato was the last to speak, "At the very least this trip will not be boring."