Shin Ikeda
By Kassien
Written: 10/28/22 - 7/30/23
Chapter 6: Retrieval Mission
Thankfully, missions did slow down a little as word started to spread that Tsunade Senju was back in the village, and would soon be named the Fifth Hokage, after she got her hospital and the injured sorted out first, like a true medic. I considered trying to learn some medical jutsu myself, as my chakra control was quite good after years of constant multitasking, and knew chakra scalpels were quite dangerous, and mystical palm was quite useful in keeping people alive. Both skills would be really helpful, but neither really fit my fighting style, and I was still focusing on Fuinjutsu and water manipulation so much that I didn't want those skills to suffer while learning something new but continued thinking about ways to get better.
Instead of anything new to learn, I put in my own Mission request for a Maito Gai taijutsu lesson, with the goal of Konoha's taijutsu specialist, helping me discover the best possible fighting style I should be working on going forward if I wanted to compete with the biggest fighters. It cost a significant amount of money, but I didn't really have anything else I wanted or that I thought was more important for me in the long run, and put in the mission request and hoped it would be accepted soon enough. I knew with all the extra missions and uncertainty, that it might even take a while, but I had realized that I wasn't progressing much further with the basic Leaf Taijutsu, and needed to develop something that let me compete with the big boys.
It ended up only taking two days until I received word that my mission was accepted, and I excitedly met the Sublime Green Beast of Konoha on training field ten for a lesson that changed everything regarding my taijutsu. It was insane just how skilled he was in so many different taijutsu disciplines, and especially his Strong Fist style, which I was unfortunately not well suited for. Instead, we ended on Leaf's Hurricane Style which had incorporated both Leaf and Whirlpool taijutsu, and was a specialty of the Second Hokage and my new goal to master. I was left exhausted after the eight hour lesson with the impossibly youthful and energetic Maito Gai, but my spirits were soaring and my brain was filled with new taijutsu moves and a hand written scroll from the Taijutsu master himself all about the style he chose for me.
I didn't take any other missions for the rest of the week, as I worked myself to the bone each day on the new taijutsu style, until it started to feel familiar and comfortable and the mood in Konoha grew to a fever pitch for the swearing in of the Fifth Hokage, Tsunade Senju. I primarily used Shadow and Water clones to fight against at times, to help me see and feel the moves from different perspectives, and it really helped to start refining my technique into a more cohesive style. Maito Gai even found me after the week, and gave me a free follow up lesson to make sure I was understanding things, and was very complimentary of my youthful dedication to getting stronger as he beat me around the training field teaching me tons along the way.
His help was invaluable, as he worked me through corrections and combinations that I hadn't even considered for several hours, and continued to push me to keep trying to improve, and I did. When he left afterwards with my complete thanks, I was both exhausted and happy with where to focus my Taijutsu training, and ready to up my gravity seals again and keep pushing myself. I took the occasional short missions to break up my weeks of training that followed, as I spent most of my time incorporating the Leaf Hurricane Taijutsu into my fighting style while I dedicated a single shadow clone to work on water manipulation, and was seeing results that I liked very much.
My time training was eventually disrupted by a summons to the new Hokage's office that had me wondering what was going on, having only ever met the new Hokage at her swearing in ceremony along with all the other thousands of Chunin, and occasionally seeing her in the Missions Office since. It was a tense office I arrived in, with several other faces present that I recognized, as Ibiki and the Jounin Commander Nara Shikaku along with the former Hokage's two village elders, and who I knew to be Anko Mitarashi, but had never met personally. They were discussing the recent attack on the T & I building, where the Sound Three had come and retrieved their Fourth member, injured Raido and Genma in the process, and then somehow convinced the Uchiha heir to accompany them back to Sound and Orochimaru.
Having already sent off a team of rookies after them, Ibiki had just come to inform them about Kidomaru's new obsession with me, though the Sound ninja didn't know exactly who I was, I was just the one he held responsible for getting caught, and needed to be informed. I asked if they were sending backup, as I was pretty sure this was the Sasuke retrieval mission that almost crippled many of the young rookies, and was told the delegation from Sand was just sent before I arrived, and at least breathed a little bit easier. I was given a commendation for my efforts and help during the invasion, especially the barrier seals that were becoming my specialty, and told I had received several very good reports and was possibly up for a promotion if my progress continued.
It was at this moment, that we were joined by Jiraiya arriving in the window of the office between one blink and the next, and I watched his eyes quickly take in the room, recognizing and dismissing everyone, and then settle on me with a gaze that held some weight to it, and I wondered what I had done. I had only seen him in passing, and probably owed him a large thank you for saving me against Kidomaru in his transformed state, but instead I just gave him a small nod of recognition.
"This is the barrier brat?" came his rough voice, as he turned somewhat towards Tsunade, while never really taking his heavy gaze off of me.
"Shin Ikeda, Jiraiya-sama" I replied respectfully, introducing myself with a small bow of my head, but not taking my eyes off of him.
"Where did you learn the Uzumaki style barriers?" he asked gruffly, still with a serious look.
"I first learned about them from the Ikeda Clan scroll, and then later from Mito-sama's notes in Konoha's Sealing Scroll," I responded easily, as it was the truth, even if I got a lot of help from Old Jin on perfecting them along the way, "though some of your notes were also very helpful, Jiraiya-sama."
"So, you do have a copy of the Konoha Scroll?" came his now more inquisitive response.
"The Third Hokage granted me a copy after winning the Kusa Chunin Exams," I replied evenly, "that was almost two years ago now. I am still working my way through it, Jiraiya-sama."
"We are going to talk later, kid," he said evenly, before turning to the rest of the group. "I am going after Orochimaru. Kakashi already left after his boys …and I want to see if they lead me to the snake."
"Ibiki?" came the questioning voice from our Hokage after a seconds silence where Jiraiya vanished back out the window, "can I assign Anko and Ikeda a mission to help retrieve our prisoner, and assist the retrieval mission in any way they can. I would feel better with some more experience to ensure everyone comes back quickly and safely, and maybe we can get a few new prisoners."
"That works for me, Hokage, thank you." came Ibiki's serious voice, as he gave Anko and I an aggressive nod.
"Anko, you are in charge," responded Tsunade, throwing her a mission scroll, "bring all those rookies and prisoners back."
Anko wasted no time, and led me towards the northern gate, asking if I was mission ready as we dropped down and signed out with the gate guards. I replied in the affirmative, and we set off in a moderately fast rush through the trees, heading towards Sound, following a fairly obvious path with many signs of recent travel. She read the mission scroll for any additional details as we were still moving at Chunin speeds, then started filling me in on the basic details she had. I easily kept pace with her, and once the mission scroll was put back away, I told her we could pick up the pace to which she just grinned wider and started pushing it faster.
We were definitely traveling faster than Chunin speeds as we really started putting on the speed, and within a few hours of traveling, Anko unleashed hundreds of snakes from her sleeves, and set them off trying to find the trails of our comrades, while we followed the more obvious signs, hoping to find them soon. As we traveled, Anko would occasionally glance at me to see if I was keeping up and eventually fill me in on some of the details of who we might encounter from Orochimaru's forces and what she had learned about them from her job in T & I. Despite the long years since I read the Naruto Manga in my first life, I had made it a point to remember the basics of the "Main Manga Missions" and especially the main players and opponents I might find myself up against. This was slightly different though from what I remembered, as Kidomaru was rescued, instead of part of the rescue team, and I was itching to prove myself helpful and somehow make a difference.
A few hours into our journey, we found the area where the Konoha Team tried to ambush the Sound Four, and the trails of destruction split off to the north, and I remembered how they split off for individual fights, and hoped we were in time to help. Anko and I split up briefly as well, she continued north while I split off slightly to the west, and soon came upon an utterly destroyed battlefield with a frighteningly skinny and exhausted Choji Akimichi, and a dead Jirobo reduced back to his original body lying in a crater with his chest exploded. A quick black striped storage seal had his body sealed for T & I, and I was then pulling food out of my storage scrolls and feeding the skinny Akimichi, knowing that food was always helpful for them.
I created a pair of shadow clones, and handed them more food, and left them with instructions to bring Choji back to Konoha, as I turned back to the north and raced after Anko, hoping to catch up to the rest. I caught up to Anko just after she had collected a black striped seal of her own, and was continuing on north, and I filled her in on my shadow clones taking an injured Akimichi back to Konoha and the collected corpse of Jirobo. She confirmed that she had the dead body of Kidomaru, our escaped prisoner, but no Konoha fighter was still nearby and probably continued on north, as we gave chase.
It was well after dawn when we finally caught up to everyone, but again Anko and I split up to go after the two nearby fights we could see happening in the distance. She stayed in the mountainous trees continuing straight north, while I veered off to the west down a rocky cliff and into a desolate valley, where I found Kankuro with his puppets having just killed Sakon and Ukon, and an injured Kiba Inuzuka and his canine partner. I rushed to Kiba's side to check on him, making sure I announced myself as I approached, and was soon dressing and treating the stab wound in his stomach, so he could travel back to Konoha.
He was in pretty bad shape, having been possessed by Ukon, stabbed, and knocked around a lot during his fight, and I administered what "field aid" I could and got him ready for transport. Kankuro joined us soon afterwards, and I filled him in on the mission Anko and I were given by the Hokage, to come follow to offer aid and clean up afterward, also asking if I could seal the bodies of Sakon and Ukon for Konoha's T & I division to go over. Kankuro gave me a hard look, and I guessed that he probably was intending on keeping those for Suna's experimentation or his own, and made a gamble.
"One for each of us?" I asked with raised eyebrows, and received a pleased smirk from the Suna Shinobi, who was probably my age, before his puppet opened its belly and dropped Sakon's body unceremoniously to the ground, still bleeding from several holes in it.
I quickly prepared my body storage scroll, but noticed a small personal scroll attached to the back of Sakon's belt that I quickly pocketed before sealing him in a black striped scroll, glad nobody was paying me too much attention at that moment. Kankuro was eager to check on his sister to ensure she was okay as she split off to help fight Tayuya, and told us that Gaara had continued on to help Lee, Neji, and Naruto against the new guy that arrived. We quickly were able to meet back up with Anko, who had an unconscious Tayuya over her shoulder, and an exhausted and pretty battered Shikamaru leaning against a smirking Temari, visibly glad to see her brother in one piece.
"Inuzuka needs medical attention, and transportation will be a little slow," I responded to Anko quickly, trying to get out information quickly, "and, I was told Gaara went ahead to help Naruto, Neji, and Lee fight an unknown member from Sound."
"Shit," cursed Anko, before she looked back at me, and then dropped Tayuya to the ground somewhat gently, and handed over the body scroll of Kidomaaru, "take the prisoners, and bring Inuzuka and Nara back to Konoha."
"Are you coming to see your brother?" Anko turned and asked the Sand siblings, getting nods of their heads, and then turning back to me. "We will try to catch up once we've rescued everyone, you get everyone home safe, Chunin Ikeda."
"Yes ma'am," I responded seriously, turning to Shikamaru, and asking if he was capable of supporting Kiba and traveling, or if he would need assistance as well.
The others took off, and I ignored the look shared between Shikamaru and Temari, before I told him to get ready for travel and hefted my unconscious prisoner onto my shoulders, and gave the two younger shinobi nods to get moving. I set a steady pace, but not too fast as I could tell that Shikamaru wasn't at full strength, and moving too fast would aggravate Kiba's and Akamaru's injuries. Instead, I let them both know that my clones found Choji last night and were returning him to Konoha, but that he had eaten all three of his Clan's pills and it was very serious, knowing what I did about the Akimichi bloodline from my sensei.
I could tell the news wasn't easy for Shikamaru to hear, as Choji was his best friend and teammate, but just knowing he was alive had to help somewhat, and that he was getting the help of Tsunade would be instrumental. He did try to push the pace a bit more after hearing about the seriousness of Choji's injuries, but was also conscious of Kiba's fairly severe injuries as well, and didn't want to compound the problem by pushing too much, and Kiba wasn't going to complain about getting back to Konoha and getting himself and Akamaru looked over by actual medics. After a few hours of travel, two almost identical sets of memories returned to me after they successfully brought Choji to the hospital to see the Hokage, and I relayed the information to my traveling partners, lifting both their spirits, and giving me the chakra needed for another pair of shadow clones to help transport the two injured genin.
It was another hour later when we were approached by a large group consisting of several medics along with two Chunin squads, and my comrades were quickly whisked away and treated better for transport back home, while I remained responsible for my prisoner. Half the medics returned with me, as they were busy treating Kiba and Shikamaru, while the rest continued out with the Chunin squads to help the others. We reached Konoha several hours later, checking in with the gate guard before going directly to the Hokage's office, where Ibiki, Shikaku, and Tsume Inuzuka were all present to hear Shikamaru give a full report on the Retrieval Mission, before Tsunade sent them all to the hospital for treatment, Tsume and Shikaku going with their children, and leaving me alone with Ibiki and the Hokage.
I gave a verbal report of my and Anko's chase after everyone, gave them the three dead body scrolls of Jirobo, Kidomaru, and Sakon, having already secured Tayuya with a pair of ANBU upon our arrival, and left them with Anko's plan and instructions upon splitting up. I was asked to get a written report put together within the next two days, and to be available this week for a visit from Jiraiya, and thanked for my assistance, before the Hokage slipped me a scroll to bring down to Mission payment, and receive a B-Rank pay for my troubles. After that, I went home and pulled out the sealing scroll I swiped from Sakon's equipment, and found a relatively well done storage scroll that contained a travel pack filled with mission gear and several journals filled mostly with Fuinjutsu notes, and couldn't be happier.
That week was mostly spent working on Fuinjutsu in my apartment with as many shadow clones as I could make, which was now starting to get to a respectable five that I realized I could keep going, more if they were only for short bursts of training. Five additional sets of memories was more than enough for my brain to handle at night, especially if they were all vastly different topics, and I fell into a little rhythm of sorts. I also learned that one of my neighbors had perished in the Invasion, and another was moving to a different part of town, and I quickly bought up both units, and was now only one unit away from owning my building at large.
My biggest dilemma at the end of the week, was with what I found in Sakon's Fuinjutsu journals, as despite having a gold mine's worth of experiments Sakon had witnessed or participated in that looked fascinating, they also had a lot of information about Orochimaru's curse seal, and I knew it belonged with Jiraiya and Konoha, but I didn't know how to give it back now. I worried about turning it in, and possibly being marked as a traitor, for stealing secrets that belonged to my village, and wondered how to get around it. I didn't think it was THAT bad of an offense, but it still wouldn't look good for me, and I was trying hard to keep under everyone's radar.
When Jiraiya did finally show up at my apartment, I was kind of a nervous wreck until we started actually talking about Fuinjutsu, and then it became much more natural, and we were talking away for an hour when I confessed to finding and swiping Sakon's pack and what I found inside. Showing him the journal that had all of the Sound shinobi's own notes about his own curse seal and some of the others, along with a good deal of other Fuinjutsu seal formulas and research. I could tell Jiraiya was somewhat angry that my actions denied him information sooner, but he was seemingly appeased by both my admission now, and the goldmine of information he found in that journal, and soon hours had passed with further discussions of curse and barrier seals, spiral versus circular designs, Uzumaki style versus Konoha's more simplified and less demanding and weaker versions.
Eventually it got late enough that he was inviting me to continue our discussion while he checked up on his current student, promising me a wonderful bowl of ramen if I could put up with a small headache. I didn't think I would get a better chance to meet Naruto, as I think he was set to go on a traveling trip with Jiraiya soon, that would take up the next three years or so, and eagerly agreed. I was also glad that Jiraiya was seemingly putting behind my mistake, and moving on to the important part, the information he now had on the curse seal to research, while taking Naruto on a training trip.
Wow! Naruto was every bit the anime character he was portrayed as in my world, complete with the proclamations of becoming Hokage, insane eating of ramen, and overly open and friendly demeanor. It was hard to believe that this was the main character of the Manga I was familiar with, and here he was, a kid maybe three years younger than me doing the same things, but with an energy that truly was contagious. I used to dismiss the "Talk no Jutsu" skills Naruto possessed when reading the Manga, but listening to him here, boasting about missions past, and excitement to learn flashy cool Jutsu, his unshakable confidence in himself, it was truly remarkable and easy to see how he wormed his way into so many hearts.
I asked if he was also a student of Fuinjutsu, like most of his Uzumaki ancestors, as Jiraiya and I tried at times to continue our previous discussions on the topic, but Naruto's presence was simply dominating in a way I was unfamiliar with, and was curious what else he was interested in. His completely blank look told me he was completely in the dark about a lot of things still, and I was very careful not to get into too much of his history, that he probably didn't even know at this point. Instead, I mentioned reading the Fuinjutsu notes of Mito Uzumaki, the first Hokage's wife, as well as other Fuinjutsu users from our village, and the Uzumaki style sealing methods they used and developed, just like the spiral he wore.
I couldn't tell if I awoke an early interest in Fuinjutsu, but Jiraiya never stopped me and seemed happy to let Naruto hear from somebody else the values and benefits of Fuinjutsu, and learn just a bit about his Clan. The ramen was quite good too, and I reminded myself to come back occasionally when it was time to leave, thanking Jiraiya and Naruto for the company, and wishing them both well. Jiraiya tossed me a small handwritten notebook as I was getting ready to leave with a smirk, and told me to keep practicing as I showed real promise, and to stay out of trouble, with a knowing look that had me nodding like a bobblehead in grateful thanks.
I never heard another word about the Fuinjutsu journals from Sakon, though I had my own copies to reference if I ever wanted to, and I simply moved back on to training and taking the occasional mission to stay sharp, even managing to stay out of trouble for two whole months. I mostly spent that time training up my new Taijutsu and truly incorporating it into every aspect of my fighting style, along with adding in my favorite water whips and Fuinjutsu barriers. I felt ready to at least hold my own against some of the bigger opponents, though I wouldn't really know until I was put in the positions and had the experience to back it up, and that is what led me to accept Sensei Doto Akimichi's request to join his squad at the Grass border shortly after I turned 18.