Disclaimer – Kishimoto owns Naruto and the characters therein.
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Memories Of Others
Chapter 22
Assignment Of A Genin
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"Hey, Jiji. You asked for me?" Naruto said in greeting as he entered the office and Hiruzen smiled.
"I did, Naruto. As you know, the Chunin Exam is happening in three weeks time and in about a week or so, the competitors from the other nations will start arriving. As such, I'm afraid it's an 'All bodies to the walls' situation. All D-ranks will be done by…"
"Die!"
Naruto spun round and grabbed the surprisingly small intruder, hurling him against the wall even as three clones popped into existence. As the attacker rebounded, the clones closed in on him…
…then vanished in a flash of light.
"…I think that was my grandson…" Hiruzen finally managed. "Where did you send him?"
"Training ground nine." Naruto said with a wince. "I… kinda have an agreement with Gai, made after the Wave mission. If I come across anyone who I deem to be a threat to Konoha, I either summon Gai and his team to help or, if I can, I send the threat to Gai for him to deal with. Your grandson?"
"Konohamaru." Hiruzen said, moving his hands in a series of complex seals as he gazed into the crystal ball on his desk. "I only hope that…"
Hiruzen's voice faded as a scene formed in the ball, a scene focused on the young boy that Naruto had reflexively sent to confront one of the most lethal shinobi in Konoha.
A boy who had been pinned to a target post via a dozen well-thrown kunai pinning his coat, trousers and scarf so he couldn't move while Neji glared at him from barely six inches away, his byakugan fully active.
"Naruto, I think I need to rescue him." Hiruzen sighed. "If you would accompany me?"
Naruto nodded, summoning two more clones.
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Konohamaru would have been amazed that he hadn't emptied his bladder if he'd had a single instant to think of anything other than the horrifying situation that he was in.
He'd snuck away from his tutor and tried to ambush his grandfather again, only to be intercepted by an orange blur that had caused the world to blink around him, dropping him on the ground just in time to be grabbed by a green blur and flung against a wooden post, impacting at the exact instant that a veritable blizzard of kunai pinned him (without drawing even a single drop of blood) and now he was staring in terror at a pair of blank eyes that seemed to be weighing him up and finding him to be less than worthless.
"Well, this is an interesting situation you've got yourself into." A gratifyingly familiar voice commented and Konohamaru tried to tear his gaze away from the glaring eyes, but couldn't.
"G… g… gramps…?"
"You can stop glaring at him now, Neji." Hiruzen chuckled and Konohamaru sagged in relief as the eyes turned away, letting him see that it had been an older teen-aged boy who had been glaring at him and not the Shinigami as he had thought. "Tenten, excellent work with the kunai. I think I'll reward you all by marking this as an impromptu D-rank mission."
"…gramps…?" Konohamaru whimpered and Hiruzen moved to stand in front of him, casting a measuring eye over him.
"Well, now you know why launching attacks like that is a bad idea." He smiled. "I've upgraded my security."
Naruto hid a smirk as Hiruzen started to unpin his grandson, then he felt a familiar presence by his shoulder.
"Sorry, Gai." Naruto offered. "False alarm this time. I… kinda reacted a bit too quickly."
"These things are known to happen." Gai agreed. "However, my students coped admirably in restraining him without causing any injury. I am very proud of them. They will undoubtedly do well in the exam."
"I heard that Kakashi is thinking of entering his team." Hiruzen commented as he finished releasing Konohamaru.
"Kurenai and Asuma are letting their teams decide if they want to get experience of the exams while they have the home-field advantage." Naruto offered. "They've told their teams that it's extremely unlikely that they'll manage to be promoted this time, but if they do well, it'll be noted for next time."
"A wise decision, given the types of teams that they lead." Gai agreed with a nod. "Both of them have teams who specialize in evasion and stealth, so the level of danger present will be lower as long as they take care."
"And your front-line squad?" Hiruzen prompted as he finished checking over Konohamaru for any injuries.
"Trained to overcome any enemy that they will encounter and to escape any that they cannot defeat." Gai proclaimed proudly. "I believe in my team and their flames of youth!"
"…scary…" Konohamaru shuddered as the light seemed to ting off Gai's grin.
"Naruto, I'll have one of my ANBU drop off the mission scroll I was going to give you while I take my grandson home." Hiruzen said as he turned to leave. "You'll be using your clones and I've had a box of tags brought out of storage for this."
Naruto blinked in confusion.
What was going on?
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"Aaaaaaaagh! Crazy dango snake lady!"
The kunoichi in question stared at him for an instant before pointing back at Naruto.
"Aaaaaaaagh! Crazy orange ramen brat!"
"…you know, I've never had Orange Ramen before…" Naruto mused, still pointing at Anko. "Also… brat?"
"Brat." Anko confirmed with a wide grin. "But a damned impressive one, I've never had a genin manage to lose me before."
"I cheated." Naruto shrugged, finally lowering his hand and patting the box sat on the table by his side. "So, according to the mission scroll, I'm to help repair the special cameras in Area 44, during which time special tags will be placed between the mountings and the branches, since that's the one place that no-one ever bothers to look."
Anko opened the box and pulled out a bundle of tags. Her professional gaze scanned the complex seals written on it, then her eyes opened in shock.
"These are…"
"The reason that I was assigned to the job as well." Namaishi Raido said from where he was leaning against the wall in a pose that looked like he was relaxed, but which let him unsheathe his sword without problem if he deemed it necessary. "Thanks to the brat's little trick, the three of us can now operate independently."
Anko stared at the Tokubetsu Jonin in shock. "Wait, you can do what the Yondaime did?"
"No." Raido said with a head-shake as he plucked the bundle of tags from Anko's hand. "But I can do this."
Two Kage Bunshin appeared in a cloud of smoke and moved to flank their creator.
"I'll start from the tower and circle outwards." Raido said as he extended his hands to meet those of his clones. "You start from the edge and spiral in. Naruto can get more tags for you whenever you run out."
Before Anko could say anything, Raido and his clones vanished in a flash of light.
"…damn." Anko breathed in amazement. "If the other villages find out about that, they'll totally freak. And you came up with that trick?"
"I tend to use clones for loads of things." Naruto shrugged. "It just worked. My clones can transport people, but without a real person to dampen the chakra fluctuations, they dispel on arrival. So, shall we get started?"
Anko nodded as Naruto pulled a new set of tags from the box.
"The cameras are located in strategic areas." She said as she led him out of the room. "There's no way to cover the entire forest, the power requirements alone would cause the rest of Konoha to go dark, but we've put a camera on each of the primary choke-points, the entry gates, the ten biggest glades and a couple at various points of the river…"
Naruto listened carefully as he followed the Kunoichi to where the first camera was mounted.
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"Brat did good work today." Anko said as she took a sip of her Sake. "Too kind-hearted, though. Gonna have to look elsewhere for an apprentice."
Raido lifted an eyebrow at her. "You? Take an apprentice? Anko, given how you act, your hypothetical apprentice would probably do something like declare publicly that he or she was going to build a harem or something. Probably in the middle of a giant fight."
"Heh." Anko chuckled. "As long as I was in position to see everyone's faces, it could be quite funny. I wonder if any of the brat's old class-mates want extra tutoring?"
"You could try the Uchiha." Raido said after several minutes thought. "Kakashi's doing better at training his team than I expected, but he's still late in the mornings. Give the other two something to do… I think I remember something about the Haruno girl taking up medical duties and traps… or was that the Yamanaka?"
"Both, sort of." A new voice supplied as Inoichi sat down. "My daughter's becoming quite the Poison and Trap Mistress while her friend Sakura is training herself to be a combat Iryonin. I'd quite appreciate it if you didn't try to approach them in your Crazy Anko persona, though. My little princess probably doesn't need the extra stress at this time."
"As the Second Stage Proctor, I'm not allowed to anyway." Anko sighed. "I delayed getting a minion for the chance to mentally screw over a bunch of brats. Well, mentally screw them in addition to what Ibiki's planning, anyway. Wait, poison and traps? How did your daughter get into those specialties? They're not normal Yamanaka branches."
"I think I heard you talking about the reason." Inoichi smirked and Anko's eyes widened.
"Wait… Op Force?"
"He's quite a trap master himself, these days." Inoichi chuckled. "He and Ino seem to have taken to testing each others traps… it's getting quite dangerous to even knock on her door in the morning these days."
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Ino froze in the doorway and glared at the solitary chocolate placed in the exact center of her pillow.
She knew that underneath the pillow would be a couple of sheets of paper detailing how Naruto had bypassed her traps, but for now, her attention was on the chocolate.
Her favorite brand.
How the hell had he found out? Even Sakura didn't know.
Giving up, she stalked across to her bed and picked up the chocolate, unwrapping it and popping it into her mouth. Thus fortified, she reached under the pillow and pulled out the pages Naruto had left her.
Maybe she could reverse-engineer some of his techniques and then try to get him back.
Sooner or later she was going to make it through his defenses without finding herself covered in fish-guts, glued to the wall, hit with a liquid that partially dissolved her clothes, pinned to a giant magnet by her kunai pouch or anything else like that.
And she'd laugh when she finally managed to catch him in that lemon and paperclip trap.
Revenge would be so sweet.
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Sasuke sneezed and looked round suspiciously, activating his sharingan to check that none of his fan-girls had followed him home in order to peak through his window again.
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Kakashi blinked as he saw all three of his genin glaring at him.
"I'm sorry I'm late…" He began,only for Sakura to clench her fists.
"Sensei," Sasuke began, taking the role of team leader, "We would appreciate it if you would allow us to enter the Chunin Exams. Although we have agreed that we are unlikely to get promoted this time round, undergoing the exam will help us work out which areas we need to improve the most."
Kakashi beamed. "Very good! That's what I like to see, teamwork. You've talked about it and made a decision which you then approached me about. I am so proud of you! I'll get the papers for you."
Kakashi vanished in a swirl of leaves and Tobio sighed.
"Well, that's the next few hours without him again. So, should we try and find a Jonin willing to train us for a bit?"
"How about a Sage?" A voice asked just behind them, causing all three Genin to jump in shock, spinning round to confront the new arrival.
"Jiraiya." Sakura half-stated, half-sighed.
"Yep, I have some time to kill and my other student is currently working with perhaps the only Kunoichi in Konoha that I'm scared of. That genjutsu of hers…"
Jiraiya broke off with a shudder, then smiled down at the bemused teens.
"So, give me a quick overview of your roles so I can help you get better while we're waiting for Kashi-kun to return."
Sakura burst into gales of laughter while Tobio snickered.
"Kashi-kun..."