Vonta01: Your welcome :)

Username6166: 1)Yes, this is right before the Uchiha massacre. 2)Really? Huh. Well this is an AU so I'm changing things from canon. 3)Guess not, but I did include Iwa in Uzu's destruction for a reason.

Flameraven: Thanks for pointing that out! The reason that slipped in was because I was checking out Hinata's canon chakra natures.

lara5170: Shhhh. I'm going to go over the disappearance later in the story. I planned on going into his disappearance after entering the forest of death in the chunin exams. So please hang on because I'm going to try and make it worth your while.

AvatarUzumaki: Thanks! I always liked the idea of Archer Hinata. And I might give him a sword, but I'm not sure. I also dislike the way Hiruzen handled Naruto's childhood. He could've done so much more but he didn't. And unlike in canon, his decisions in Naruto's life will have repercussions.

Thanks for all the reviews! Please review if you spot an error or if you just want to comment your opinion.

Chapter 14: Team 10

-5 Days Earlier-

"When are we going to get there?" Ino cried out for the fifth time after they were assigned to border watch duty.

"For the fifth time Ino, we're almost there. We just have to walk a little longer before we get there." Asuma replied to the whining girl.

"But we already walked a lot! Why don't we take a break?"

"Ino, could you stop complaining for five minutes? You're being so troublesome."

"WHAT WAS THAT SHIKAMARU?!"

Shikamaru shook his head and mumbled "troublesome" before ignoring Ino's rants in favor of walking towards the border. After ten minutes, Team 10 had finally seen the border patrol shack. With Asuma in the lead, he led his team towards the shack and knocked on the door. The door opened partly and a chunin poked his head out to see who knocked.

"Ah! Hey, our replacements are here Mitsuo!"

"Finally! I can now go home and take a nice long bath." The now called Mitsuo packed all of his belongings and was walking out of the door before he caught sight of Ino and stopped to place a hand on her shoulder. "You're going to love this kid. Good luck!" He said with a grin on his face. "Come on Renjiro! Let's get out of here!"

"Yes sir!" He laughed out.

The genin of Team 10 were watching the two chunin walking towards Konoha. Shikamaru and Choji shrugged their shoulders and decided to get down to work so they could head back home sooner. Ino was left alone outside when she suddenly had enough.

"NOOO!"

-3 Days Later-

Team 10 was walking through their regular border patrol routine earlier in the morning. With Asuma leading his team with full awareness, he turned to look back at his genin squad. Choji was the most awake and alert out of the genin. Asuma chalked it up to him being the most energetic out of his bunch unless it came to cloud watching or shopping. Ino was already complaining about how she looked due to being woken up earlier and due to her drowsiness couldn't make herself that presentable. And finally there was Shikamaru. The lazy Nara was practically dragging himself along while still half asleep. Asuma would've admired the boy's laziness if it wasn't a mission that happened to be their first C-ranked.

After this mission, he'll definitely take their training up several notches when they get back to the village. Asuma shook his head and turned back to face ahead of them when he barely caught a glint from a kunai thrown at him. Acting and thinking quickly, he pulled out a kunai of his own to block the thrown projectile. If he would've jumped out of the way, the kunai thrown at him would've just struck Choji since he was right behind him.

The clang that came from the kunais snapped the rest of the genin out of whatever they were thinking and pulled out kunais of their own. Choji and Ino were a bit terrified at their first real chance at combat with enemies who were not afraid to end their lives. Shikamaru kept up an annoyed demeanor but on the inside he was quickly thinking of different ways the situation would play out and how many of them were in their favor.

'What are the right moves in this scenario? Think dammit!' Shikamaru had to block a kunai that was thrown at him from one of the hidden shinobi. Right then, the hidden shinobi decided to come out of hiding and surrounded Team 10. 'Of course it had to be Iwa shinobi! Ok the enemies revealed themselves so now I can get a better look at them.' He eyed him carefully trying to find any weakness that he could find from just a glance, but came up empty. He tried to take a step back, but a kunai embedded itself into the ground just barely missing Shikamaru's foot.

"Watch it Konoha scum." The boy that threw the kunai yelled which caused Shikamaru to turn and look at him. The boy had on a black beanie on his head with his Iwa forehead protector wrapped around his forehead. He was dressed in black pants and a beige short sleeve shirt and was wearing blue shinobi sandals. "I won't miss again."

"Shut it Sensou! Stop trying to be cool." The boy's female teammate yelled. She was wearing black leggings with a beige shirt with her Iwa forehead protector tied on a sash that was tilted and wrapped on her waist and black shinobi sandals. She had long black hair with two long bangs framing her face and the rest was tied in a ponytail that reached the middle of her back.

"Ahh come on Anaru, keep telling me to shut it and I won't stop teasing you for your name." The now named Sensou Iwa shinobi teased back.

"Stop! You know that I hate being teased about that!"

"It's not my fault your parents named you after ana-"

"I will cut your fucking balls off if you don't shut your damn mouth!" The girl loudly and rapidly shouted out.

"Sensou, Anaru. Shut up and stop bickering with each other." Their other teammate voiced his thoughts about the two's arguments. This one was only wearing a sleeveless mesh shirt with gloves covering his forearms and hands. He wore tight red pants that were cut off around his lower calves and he wore red shinobi sandals.

"Thank you Niton. Now for you Konoha scum, my team and I will personally see that your lives will be cut down today." The last member of the four spoke. Team 10 now understood that the Iwa team in front of them was a genin or chunin team. Asuma knew for certain that the Iwa team wasn't a team full of jonin because he only sensed that the one right in front of who, who was the one that spoke, had jonin level chakra.

"Choji, Ino, Shikamaru. Watch over each other! This is a jonin with his squad who have about chunin level chakra." Asuma shouted before he pulled out his trench knives and engaged in combat with the Iwa jonin. Asuma didn't channel any wind chakra through his trench knives yet so he would be able to surprise the enemy jonin later after he assessed his skills.

The jonin pulled out a kunai hoping to quickly and easily kill the Konoha jonin, but he ended up clashing it with Asuma's trench knives. The two were fighting for dominance when the Iwa jonin was surprised and shocked when suddenly Asuma's trench knives cleanly cut through his kunai and ended up making quite a large gash on his forearm. The Iwa nin jumped back and glared at the Konoha nin.

"Don't be so surprised and mad. We're enemies so I'm not gonna hold back." Asuma tightened his grip on his knives and sent out more wind chakra to his weapon of choice. Without saying another word, they charged towards one another with the intent to kill.

Shikamaru was stuck fighting against Sensou, and was having a hard time doing so. All he could rely on was his clan's Shadow Possession Jutsu and his intellect. Unfortunately his Shadow Possession Jutsu took time to activate, time he didn't have. When Sensou saw him trying to take a step back, he rushed forward and engaged the Konoha genin in a taijutsu battle by throwing a punch towards his nose. Shikamaru barely dodged the punch and retaliated by punching him away.

After punching his opponent, Shikamaru quickly flashed through hand signs. "Shadow Possession Jutsu!" Shikamaru's shadow grew to a circle that surrounded him, and then a line shot out from the circle and aimed to connect with Sensou's shadow to bind him. Sensou recovered fast enough to see the line coming towards him so he jumped away safely. He looked up and faced Shikamaru while squinting his eyes.

"You're a Nara aren't you?"

"So you figured it out. I knew I only had one shot before I was found out, this is so troublesome." Shikamaru let out a heavy sigh. "This whole thing is such a drag so how about we not fight? Why can't we just cloud watch instead? Is that too much to ask for?"

The Iwa genin had no snarky remark because he was left stupified by the lazy genin's remark. After a couple seconds, the Iwa nin got his bearings back and proceeded to throw kunai at the Nara. "Don't mock me Konoha scum. You probably said that just to make me under-estimate you! Well fine! I'll give you everything I got!" With a war cry, he charged at Shikamaru.

After hearing Sensou's words, Shikamaru couldn't help but internally cry for having to put in a lot more effort than he was initially anticipating to do. 'Dammit. Why did he misinterpret my words?!' Shikamaru barely managed to jump away after having to deflect Sensou's kunai thrust. After missing his attack, Sensou elbowed Shikamaru straight in the nose which made the Nara jump back so he could have a chance to recover from the pain.

"Uh uh, you're not getting away from me!" Sensou yelled as he charged straight towards the Konoha genin again. Due to not getting a chance to recover, Shikamaru was getting hit and cut a lot more frequently. He was quickly getting tired so he was trying to think of a way to come out alive. Sensou stopped his continuous attacks on Shikamaru, much to his pleasure, and started to belittle him. "Man you really suck! How are you a genin?! Oh wait, I forgot you guys are Konoha shinobi!"

Shikamaru groaned at the Iwa genin's taunts and wanted to knock this guy out just so he could shut up. 'Ok so far I can tell that he favors his right side majorly, so if I manage to cripple his right leg then I might have a shot to end this… Well, here goes nothing!' With that train of thought done, Shikamaru was the one that initiated the fight once again.

While he was rushing towards the Iwa nin, Shikamaru put his hand in his weapons pouch and wrapped the handle of a kunai in an explosive tag. He pulled out the wrapped kunai along with 3 more and tossed them towards the Iwa nin. Sensou saw the thrown kunai, but at the time was feeling too arrogant to consider Shikamaru a threat anymore and let the kunai get close before he blocked them. He was about to say a snarky remark until he saw the smirk on the Nara's face. Sensou saw Shikamaru make the ram hand sign and then saw a faint glow out of the corner of his left eye and it was coming from on of the kunai that was on the floor.

Sensou soon felt immense pain in his left leg, which caused him to fall down on the ground while screaming. Shikamaru got up and went towards the downed Sensou. He took a look at what he'd down and felt his stomach churn. Sensou got his leg crippled by the flying debris of the blown kunai, and it had been Shikamaru's doing.

Shikamaru shocked his head to attempt to clear the guilt away. 'No. I did what I had to and I even kept him alive. He wouldn't have that kind of mercy for me.'

Ino was having trouble trying to fight Anaru due to having almost no taijutsu skills and experience. So she tried to keep her distance but Anaru was always on her tail, waiting for the moment Ino starts to get tired so she could strike. Ino knew her plan but was struggling to think a way out of this. As more time passed, the more she was getting tired and the sooner Anaru would deal with her.

'Ugh Dammit! This bitch is making me all sweaty from running around! I need to catch her in a trap to make sure I won't miss my Mind Transfer Jutsu!' As she runs, she quickly runs through her jutsu repertoire and finds nothing but the substitution jutsu helpful. Her train of thought was cut off when Anaru closed in and kicked her hard on the left side of her hip.

After being kicked across the opening, Ino got up on one knee and quickly rummaged through her weapon pouch that was on her right leg and felt a smoke bomb. She proceeded to through down a smoke bomb for cover so she has time to rummage through her weapon pouch. 'Ok, ok. I have two more smoke bombs, three flash bombs, and three explosive tags.' She pulls out a flash bomb and throws it out of the smoke cloud into the clearing where Anaru is standing and looking around for Ino.

Anaru decided it would've wiser for her to stay put rather than chasing Ino into the smoke cloud, so she lowered into her taijutsu stance. After a couple of seconds, she saw Ino toss out what Anaru thought would be another smoke bomb but instead was blinded by a big white flash. "AHHH! WHAT THE HELL?!" Anaru rubbed her eyes in hopes that she'll be able to see faster but it's all done in vain.

After Ino threw the flash bomb, she started doing her clan's signature jutsu's hand signs and just as she finishes her last hand sign, she hears Anaru yell from being blinded. She rushes out of the smoke cloud and faces Anaru and holds up her hands to frame Anaru. "Mind Body Switch Jutsu!"

After using her jutsu, Ino's body dropped to the floor while Anaru's froze up for a second before she grinned. "Yes! It worked!" She looked around and decided to hide her actual body in a bush so she would be safer. "Ok let's go help the others." She once more looked around until she heard sounds of fighting and runs towards it.

Choji jumped out of the way of a punch thrown at him by his opponent. When everyone split apart to fight one on one battles, Niton ran straight towards Choji and chased him away from everyone else. Choji was afraid to fight against the stoic Iwa genin due to not wanting to hurt anyone. Sometimes he felt that his kind nature was more of a hindrance than anything. As he blocked another kick from Niton, he was prepping himself to attack when suddenly Niton decided to speak.

"Why do you not retaliate?" His question made Choji wince. "Why are you afraid to fight? If you are truly scared to fight, then why become a shinobi? Were you forced into becoming one?"

"No! No one forced me!" Choji shouted out without hesitating.

"Then why don't you fight back? Why are you afraid to hurt those against you? It is a shinobi's literal job to hurt those against you."

"Because I don't want to hurt anyone! I… I don't like hurting others." Choji muttered out the last part, but Niton heard nevertheless.

Hearing his reasoning caused Niton to anger. "So you chose to become a shinobi, in which the job is to literally hurt, cheat, and do anything in order to win, to make the mission a success, just so you can be kind." His lips curled into a snarl and he shook his head. "Preposterous. You're nothing but a fool." With his last words, he charged into the fight once again in hopes of cutting down the kind and gentle Choji.

Seeing his opponent charge with even more determination to end his life, Choji took a gulp and slid into a taijutsu stance. After Niton was close enough, he threw a roundhouse kick aimed at Choji's head. Choji blocked his kick and grabbed onto his leg to prevent him from getting some distance between them, but was surprised to see Niton pivot his body so he can aim a punch straight towards his head. Choji raised his arm, grabbed his fist, and shot Niton an apologetic glance before he used his partial expansion jutsu to bend his leg and arms backwards and breaking them in the process.

"ARGHHH!" Niton yelled in pain, causing Choji to shrink more and he felt worse. "L-Leaf bas-bastard." He tried to get up but when he put weight on his broken limbs, he fell back down with a yelp of pain.

"Just stay down please. You're hurt already and can't fight."

"SHUT UP! You don't know what you're talking about!" He managed to stand up by having most of his weight on his left leg and was cradling his right arm. "I can still kill you."

After he said that, a hand was placed on his right shoulder which caused him to wince a little and turn around. He saw that Anaru was the one who grabbed his shoulder. He smirked and faced Choji with a smug grin. "Guess your teammate was weak too." He was going to say more but Anaru chopped the back of her neck and knocked him out.

Choji was confused and faced Anaru while his guard was raised but when he saw her pose as Ino always did, he relaxed. "Oh it's you Ino, thank goodness." He said as he dropped to the ground on his rear from exhaustion. He smiled and pulled out a bag of chips. "Finally I can eat."

Ino rolled her eyes before smacking Choji lightly on the back of his head. "Hey, tie him and me together to the tree. After you do that, I'll release my jutsu and then come back here."

Choji nodded and got to work on tying the two Iwa genin together. After he finished, Ino released her jutsu and Choji knocked out Anaru after she regained consciousness when Ino released her jutsu. After waiting for a few minutes, Ino came back and gave Choji a nod and went with him to find Shikamaru and Asuma.

Asuma and the Iwa jonin were now fighting a long distance battle with Asuma trying to close the distance between the two. The Sarutobi relied heavily on his trench knives so he favored close quarter fights a lot more than ninjutsu battles. He had a small jutsu reporitaire to rely on, but they were also for close quarters. 'I really need to add more jutsus to my repertoire after this mission.' He internally promised himself.

"Earth Style: Earth Spear!" The Iwa jonin shouted. He channeled earth chakra throughout his whole body which soon darkened and became as hard as diamonds. 'I have to finish this leaf scum now. I have about seven minutes before this jutsu drains my chakra completely.' Usually if he used the earth Spear jutsu on one body part, it would hardly drain his chakra. However he completely covered his whole body in earth chakra, and he had to constantly channel it through his body for the technique to stay on and be durable enough.

"Tch. Now I remember you." Asuma said as he dropped his cigarette and stomped it out. "You're Faito. Iwa jonin who relies heavily on his earth style ninjutsu. You're famous for not following orders and for going off and doing what you want. The old fence sitter forced a genin team onto you in hopes that you'll cool off and learn to behave. But from what I see, you corrupted the genin."

The now identified Faito scowled and launched himself at Asuma to try and punch a hole through the bastard. After he missed his punch, he turned and saw Asuma smirk before flashing through hand signs, put a piece of flint in his mouth, and exhaled a cloud of chakra infused gunpowder which encompassed Faito. Asuma ignited the cloud of gunpowder by creating a spark from the piece of flint that he put between his teeth.

"That should've gotten him." Asuma let out a breath of relief. He turned around and was about to check up on his genin, when he saw Faito still standing with a wicked smirk plastered on his face.

"You think this weak jutsu is enough to stop me?" He yelled out with glee entering his voice. "My skin is now harder than diamonds! YOU'LL HAVE TO DO A LOT BETTER THAN THAT TO STOP ME! AHAHAHAHA!"

"The damn bastard lost his mind." Asuma chuckled out nervously. With the state that Faito was in, he was now a greater threat than before. At this point he was a literal juggernaut and Asuma didn't know if he could do anything against him at this point. 'The only jutsu that I have that might do the trick is Welcoming Approach: Thousand-Armed Murder. Guess I'll have to use it then.'

Asuma jumped back and left hand making a half-ram and then extending his right hand down with his palm parallel to the ground. After finishing the stance, the spirit of the Thousand-Armed Kannon was summoned. Faito saw the spirit but in his now berserker state, didn't care enough and continued his attack only to be punched back by the spirit.

He glared at the Sarutobi and yelled out in rage. "What the hell is that?! ERRAGHHH I'LL KILL YOU!" He charged at Asuma once again and readied a punch with all of his weight and strength in it. Once the spirit saw the man once again charge his summoner, the spirit threw a punch towards the angry juggernaut. Asuma was surprised to see that Kannon's fist managed to be stopped by Faito's punch. Faito noticed this too and was about to smirk at Asuma, but he received a punch from the other nine hundred ninety-nine fists.

'He managed to counter a punch from Kannon… I'll need to step it up.' Asuma thought. He faced the Iwa jonin with a hardened face.

'Dammit!' Faito was now breathing hard. His time for using the Earth Spear jutsu shortened by half because he had to double the chakra after getting knocked away from the spirit the first time. 'I only have two minutes remaining now…' He got onto one knee and tried to pull out a kunai, but he was frozen in place before he could.

"What the hell?!" Faito shouted.

"Shadow Possession Jutsu complete." Shikamaru said with a sigh. "This is all so bothersome. Why did you guys even bother attacking us?"

"None of your damn business!"

Asuma released his stance which caused the spirit Kannon to dispel and he started to walk towards Faito. However before he could reach him, two things happened. Ino and Choji managed to arrive at the scene and Faito released his jutsu, broke Shikamaru's hold on him, and substituted with a log that was close to Ino and Choji. He kicked Choji away and grabbed a handful of Ino's hair and yanked it back causing Ino to shout out in pain.

"INO!" All the remaining members of Team 10 yelled.

"Now, now. Everyone calm down." Faito panted out. He was low on chakra and his body was tired. He wanted to just drop on the floor to rest, but he had to get his team and himself out of this mess. He created three stone clones to go retrieve his students. After a few seconds, he was about to speak again when suddenly Ino pulled out a kunai and cut the hair that he was holding off, freeing her from his grasps.

She quickly ran towards her teammates and sensei. Faito shrugged knowing that that was enough time for his clones to get his students to safety.

"We'll meet again leaf trash. And when we do, it'll be the last day you of your lives."

Team 10 were left alone but were still on guard. After a few minutes, they relaxed and let the adrenaline die down. Shikamaru voiced all their thoughts in one sentence.

"I hate C-ranks."