Naruto was rather embarrassed to find himself being carried for the two days following the snakebite. He could walk fine after the first day despite the fact that he'd still been feeling queasy but, Tetsuo-sensei tended to be slightly overprotective of him after he got into such situations as the snakebite and hadn't allowed him to do so. Fortunately for his reputation, Tetsuo-sensei had let him down before they had reached the small trading outpost from which the caravan they would be escorting would be departing. Since the place was little more than a watering hole for the animals who pulled the traders' carts that was surrounded by a few houses and a couple of shops that sold a few items that the merchants might have forgotten to bring with them and a small discreetly placed brothel, there had been little need to run around and explore, and potentially risk another day of being carried.
The night of the snakebite had been exceedingly miserable, and there had been several points during it that he'd wished that he would have died in under an hour like a normal person. He had been feverish and vomiting constantly for that entire night. By midnight that night, he had run out of things to puke up, even bile, and had dry heaved for the next several hours. But fortunately, by dawn the following morning, the fever had broke and the heaves began to subside. Throughout the following day, the fever, which had most likely been caused by the Kyuubi's Chakra burning through his system in order to remove the poison, had subsided and the queasiness had slowly vanished until both were finally gone completely by sundown. Of course, that hadn't stopped Tetsuo-sensei from carrying him for the entire day after that until they'd reached the trading outpost.
His situational awareness had improved greatly over they years but, it still wasn't perfect, and he was almost willing to swear that that damn snake that had bit him and its ilk were invisible, their camouflage was so good. That, and he had a potentially lethal tendency to ignore breathing things that looked like they belonged such as squirrels, mice, and lizards when he was on the lookout for traps, which could be an exceedingly dangerous oversight considering the number of summons and other animals ninja often used. But, if he treated every creature in the vicinity as a threat, he would end up becoming a paranoid wreck, which would make him worse than useless in the long run. Fortunately, thanks to the Kyuubi and his own dumb luck, he'd survived this incident like he had the others, and he was well enough to complete the mission and contribute to the protection of the caravan that he and his team would be traveling with when the time came.
The caravan they would be escorting to Tanigakure was going to be made up of several much smaller caravans from several countries, including the Land of Iron and the Land of Tea, hence the somewhat isolated meeting place, and the rather slow travel time, as it would take a while for the separate groups and whatever new employees they picked up in town to get into synch and adapt to the new routine. Such caravans were ideal for new Genin who were starting out, as the longer travel time got the young ninja accustomed to life on the road in such a setting, and the bandits who attacked caravans knew that the larger ones tended to be better guarded thanks to the training opportunities they provided. That didn't mean that such caravans were never attacked by bandits however, hence the hiring of ninjas for escort duty, as most bandits had at least a little ninja training that they'd picked up from somewhere which tended to make them overconfident and occasionally lucky.
The path that the caravan would be following was one that would navigate through the safer byways of the Fire Country borderlands where two more merchants would be picked up in a pair of small towns - one of which was known for its textiles and the other of which was popular for its pottery - before the caravan took a sharp turn into River Country and made its way into Tanigakure with its shipment of goods. Because most of this trip would be through Fire Country it had made sense to the caravan leaders to hire Konoha ninja despite the caravan's eventual destination. Naturally, this choice would create some friction when they arrived in Tani but, that couldn't be helped. All they could do about that however was do their best to stay out of trouble, and get out of the Village Hidden in the Valleys as quickly as possible after confirmation of mission completion was received.
As the caravan prepared to get underway, Shimura Tetsuo looked as if he were waiting for the other shoe to drop. While it was possible that the snakebite had appeased whatever curse Naruto was apparently under, it was clear that he was almost certain that such a minor mishap wouldn't be enough of a disaster even considering the fact that had that snake bitten someone else they would've most assuredly died. Wood vipers, though rare, were exceedingly deadly.
For a while, nothing of note happened, and then one day Naruto ran into the elderly red-haired ox-cart driver while wandering amongst the carts of the caravan. Whether or not this would be considered a good thing was up for debate. While on the one hand, Naruto had gotten to meet and learn from a relative, on the other, Naruto had met and learned from a relative. Back when the Uzumaki were still a force to be reckoned with, "Work hard, play harder." could have been the unofficial Uzumaki family motto. Perhaps, the only reason Uzushiogakure had stood as long as it had with the Uzumaki in residence had been the seals that the Uzumaki were famous for. Of course, those self-same seals had caused most of the continent to fear them enough that three of the five largest hidden villages had banded together to destroy the village and scatter the Uzumaki to the winds.
"Are you sure you're not a Senju?" Uzumaki Hiroki laughingly asked his young cousin as he watched the boy struggle to make a basic water-holding seal for his canteen.
Hiroki wasn't the best person to teach the boy for several reasons but, he was pretty much the only one who could teach him at the moment since there weren't any other Uzumaki in the caravan, and they weren't likely to run into any during the trip. Unlike the child who reminded him of the younger brother he'd left behind when he'd left home, he was not and never had been a ninja. He was an old man who had gone wandering in his long-ago youth back before the fall of Uzushiogakure and had remained on the road since.
Because he'd never been a ninja, aside from his odd and - for him - basically useless talent, he pretty much only knew the basics of his clan art, and most of the seals he knew how to make and put together had been learned through obsessive practice and rote memorization. As he had chosen not to become a shinobi, his few talents in sealing weren't geared towards combat, because his studies been more focused on the softer side of the art during his short period of interest in it before he'd set out for life on the road.
"Yes, I'm sure I'm not a Senju!" the boy growled as he tried the seal once more.
One more failure, and the boy would be needing a new canteen. Considering the amount of Chakra he was putting into his efforts, the child was already lucky that the canteen hadn't crumpled, imploded, or exploded into hundreds of pieces of lethal shrapnel that would either maim or kill anyone in their path. Sealing could be an exceedingly deadly art as well as a useful one, and failed seals could be the deadliest of all. One of the largest causes of death amongst the Uzumaki aside from death in combat had been Seal failure. One of the most common causes of Seal failure had been experimentation with untested seals. He himself had lost two close cousins to seal experiments before he left.
Most of the time, when a seal failed, nothing would happen but sometimes...
The boy who resembled his Uzumaki kin in more than just looks had been almost uninterested in seals until he had offered to teach him. Apparently, aside from storage seals, the boy had lost interest for the most part due to the combination of a lack of talent and a lack of proper instruction. Aside from some rather excellent storage seals that had been mastered through constant practice, and some explosive seals that had been mastered through a similar method, the boy had almost no skill in the area. Not all Uzumaki possessed the innovative talent in that field that had made the clan famous however. Many Uzumaki had gotten by on seals that they had learned through rote memorization like Naruto appeared would have to.
Since he had learned how to create seals through rote memorization himself, he knew what Naruto would be going through if he didn't give up here and now. Because of that, he decided to show Naruto what he could achieve through practice if he tried often and hard enough. Going to the back of his cart, he pulled out what he considered to be his best sealing project to date, a portable mini-fridge that didn't depend on electricity. Of course, one of the main methods of electricity generation for cities - especially in the Hidden Villages - was seals, but still...
"Why don't you take a break and come have a look at this?" he said as he brought out the light mini-fridge that he usually used for beer storage.
"Wow." Naruto said as he examined the box into which a number of intricate seals had been carved. "That's a neat puzzle box."
"Puzzle box?" he asked in confusion.
It was at that point that the boy did something unexpected, and frankly exceedingly annoying considering how much work he'd put into the mini-fridge. The brat deconstructed every last one of the seals on the thing while he stood there watching in disbelief. While the Uzumaki were well known for their seals and Seal Masters had been rather thick on the ground while the Uzumaki had been alive, there was one type of Uzumaki who appeared once or twice a generation at most, the same type of Uzumaki he was. Like him, Naruto could pop seals apart and get into whatever they were meant to protect as if they were never there.
While he would be able to learn to make them and make them work together by rote, the Naruto boy would never become a master at creating seals. No natural seal breakers ever were.
Danzo smiled slightly as he looked over the latest progress reports on the program that was running at the Academy. Based on the numbers, it looked that Konoha would be scrabbling to find enough Jounin who could be pulled off of their missions without seriously depleting Konoha's available numbers of such to instruct the new batch of ninja that would be graduating in January.
Two Genin level civilians that could be called up in dire emergencies for each active shinobi would normally be good numbers but, the number of active shinobi had seriously been slipping over the past three decades, creating a serious need for more active shinobi to cover both the missions that the village had been receiving as well as home defense. For the next several years, the numbers would have to be reversed in order to bring the level of Konoha's forces up to where it should be. Based on the reports he was reading, it looked like those numbers would be met, at least for this year.
Hiruzen had caught the crisis before it destroyed Konoha, reaffirming at least some of his faith in the other man. That faith had been steadily diminishing over the last few decades, and had almost completely vanished within the most recent one. Seeing how quickly Konoha was turning around now that Hiruzen was aware of and paying attention to the problem, he was beginning to see the boy and later young man that he had chased after and striven to equal once more.
After the way the last few years had gone, he had been starting to think that Biwako had been the brains behind the operation.
Edited 1-15-13