Tsunade's Advice
Chapter 3: a/n at the end of the chapter. Enjoy.
Naruto is walking towards one of his favorite places in the village after leaving the Hokage Tower. He sure missed this particular place, but he missed the people who ran the place even more. He still clearly remembers the first time his encounter with Teuchi, the man who has seen him as a hungry little boy rather than a monster. Not just him, his daughter Ayame, was one of the first people around his age who didn't shy away from him nor bully him. His thoughts stopped just as he reached the small yet homely stand.
"Hey Teuchi! Ayame! Guess whose back?" he greeted them with a cheeky smile which widened more when they registered his presence and smiled at him.
"Naruto! My boy, how are you? Did you just come back from the trip?" greeted Teuchi while Ayame came and straight up hugged him as a greeting. Which he reciprocated by bear-hugging her.
"Wow Naruto, you have grown taller huh?" Ayame questioned while pinching my cheeks.
"Haha, I sure did. And I'm as great as ever Teuchi-jiji" The man shook his head at the younger boy's cheeky response. "And can I get a large chicken ramen by the way?"
"Sure, coming right up, and this bowl is on the house." Naruto silently thanked the older man as he and his daughter went to prepare the food.
While eating, Naruto talked to them about his experiences outside the village how he encountered different people and different places, and how various villages and towns have their specialty in the Fire country. After some time, as the crowd started pulling up to the stand, Naruto bid them his farewell and headed towards his apartment.
His apartment looked much cleaner than he could ever imagine. Konohamaru and his team certainly did number one here. Now take some rest, but before that take a bath. After an hour of thorough soaking and cleaning, he finally went to bed and did not wake until the next morning.
Next morning
Naruto woke up to the knocking noises from his window and when he looked outside, sitting on a nearby branch Kakashi waiting for him to wake up.
"Hey Kakashi sensei, what's up? Is there a team meeting?" Kakashi eye smiled at his student.
"No Naruto, there's a meeting sure but not a team meeting, but to meet at the Hokage Tower. It's urgent so come there quick." Just like that Kakashi turned into smoke indicating that he's a shadow clone.
"Damn, to think that Kakashi's the one to say something urgent and to be the first to call me, something sure is happening big." He got up and got ready in 5 minutes and started rushing towards the Hokage's office.
As soon as he entered the room, he observed the people that were present in the room, Sitting on her chair is the Hokage herself, to her right leaning on the wall is Kakashi, and standing right before her is Sakura, and the final figure is the one he never in a typical Jounin attire with a face plate as forehead protector, standing there with his back straight, which conveys the all-business posture.
"Good, everyone's here, let's start." Everyone stood with their backs straight hearing her all-business voice. "Yesterday night, Akatsuki successfully infiltrated Suna and managed to defeat and kidnap their Kazekage, Sabaku no Gaara." Absolute pin-drop silence. To think that Akatsuki managed to infiltrate and kidnap Gaara, who can control the sand to his will that too in the middle of the desert is nothing but frightening.
Once everyone was able to grasp the information, she continued "Your Primary goal is to rescue and retrieve Gaara and secondary is to kill as many Akatsuki as possible. But do not forget your primary goal. Kakashi you're to lead the squad and Yamato will be your fourth member of the squad and the second in command. You should be able to meet Temari on the way. Now go."
"Okay, everyone meet me at the gate in 15 minutes, we don't want to waste any more time." Kakashi gave his orders, soon everyone left to gather their things.
Soon everyone met at the gate and started heading toward Suna and to pick up Temari on the way. After an hour of tree hopping, they reached Temari and delivered her the news, which to her credit handed the situation well.
"Team, take a 5-minute break, we have to start moving soon." Ordered Kakashi. But Naruto has another idea.
"Sensei, I have a plan to reach Suna in a more time-efficient way. I leave the technicalities later but I can shapeshift my shadow clones into big hawks and can fly us to Suna." Everyone stood there dumbfold. Shape-shifting shadow clones into hawks and fly them to Suna? How absurd was it?
"I know it's hard to believe, but trust me, this way we can save more time and have much more chance of saving Gaara." Nobody can deny that. Soon Naruto made 5 shadow clones and transformed them into big hawks that could easily hold a person on their backs.
As soon they reached some elevation, Naruto gave them a warning. "Everyone hold on to your hawks with chakra, don't cause any harm to them, While they look like hawks, they still are shadow clones. Remember that, and hold tight."
The hawks reached more altitude and started manipulating the air around them and started to pick up the speed. The shadow clone hawks were manipulating the wind chakra with their wings and tails and started going faster so that the team could cover the distance 4 times much faster than running on the land.
Just as they could barely see the walls of Suna, the hawks started to slow down and were shifting the wind around them so that no one from the outside would notice them unless the observer had some sort of dojutsu that could track the chakra.
"What happened Naruto, why did you dismiss the haw-err shadow clones?" asked Sakura once they reached the ground.
"I don't know if there are any spies in the village to observe the rescue team, I don't want to give any more information regarding my abilities or want to tip them off that we have a faster means of travel." This made perfect sense to everyone, the risk was too big to land directly at the gate of the village.
Soon, everyone started running towards the village, and within a few minutes they entered the village Sakura went to treat Kankuro while Kakashi, Naruto, and Yamato started planning how to rescue Gaara.
"Really Naruto, that's an ingenious technique that you got there. Because of you we were able to travel from Konoha to Suna in less than 24 hours otherwise at best it would have taken us more than 3 days or worst, more than that." Kakashi praised Naruto with pride.
"That's true Naruto, Without you, we would have been exhausted and it would have taken us much more time to be ready to move." Even Yamato complimented Naruto with an obvious admiration.
"Ah! Thank you Kakashi sensei, Yamato Taichou, please do keep this a secret, I don't want to give the enemies the benefit of knowing my abilities." Requested Naruto.
"Maa, Don't worry Naruto, I swear, Tenzo-"
"-Yamato."
"-and I won't say this to anyone, though you have to warn Temari and Sakura about this. And I'm guessing that Hokage-sama knows about this?"
"Hai, Sensei, she knows, Ero-sennin has debriefed her about my abilities. Though it does take a considerable amount of my chakra especially since I used 5 as hawks for 20 hours along with Wind chakra." Explained Naruto.
"That's a very great control of wind chakra I've ever seen Naruto. You must have worked hard to achieve that level."
"Thanks, Kakashi sensei, though I did use the shadow clone ability to the fullest during my Training trip." Answered Naruto to which Kakashi just eye smiled. They spent their time like that while they waited for Sakura to treat Kankuro and prepare the antidote for the poison, in case they ever needed that.
Thank you everyone for reviewing and reading my story. Never thought I'd actually be able write any sort of story let alone a fanfiction, still I have a long way to improve on story-telling and character and power level building.
I am still not sure on pairings and I don't think I'd be able write romance in an Action/Adventure story. I actually thought about just writing this as a one-shot, but since you guys did asked and started following the story, I thought I should at least try something with this story.
Thank you all for reading this story. I have an idea of how to write the fight with Diedara and Sasori, if you have any idea about what should I do with the story please do write in the review section or PM me.
