His thoughts then drifted to the mission he had been tasked with as he clinched his fists, his emotional nature spilling out. If only he had gotten back sooner, if only he hadn't stuck around for so long, if only sobody didn't get a wild hair in their ass and sabotage Otogakure's information departnt with explosives! If only all of those things hadn't happened then he would have been able to return and send word on Oto's plans.
He had found everything. He found that it was being run by Orochimaru. He found that they had a then-rookie Konoha genin, Kabuto Yakushi, as his lead spy. He found that Orochimaru had finished his immortality jutsu, he'd even had the misfortune of seeing it being perford, he couldn't eat for the rest of the week afterwards. He even knew Orochimaru's main ambition for coming, and when he saw the markings on Sasuke during the fight with Gaara he ntally kicked a pothole into his ass.
Naruto's eyes panned around the village as he walked, all of the people taking part in the restoration of their hos. If he had broken the seal on himself even a day sooner, how much loss of life could have been diverted? How many lives need not have been lost? Could the Sandai have been able to take the proper precautions to acutely prepare for Orochimaru accordingly?
He looked up at the Hokage Monunt as his thoughts drifted to the third face from the left. He had gotten much closer to the old man after he had been sealed. His mind had almost reverted back to its four year-old state and he reached out to the only person he really knew. Even trying to bury his emotions, he still felt a faint sting at his eyes that he had to push back.
He had to put his thoughts on the back-burner for now, as he saw Jiraiya leaning against a fence looking at him. Naruto strode up to his side and spoke cooly, "So what do you need from a lowly little genin like ero-sennin?"
Jiraiya pushed himself off of the wall, "I want you to co with to find soone."
Naruto raised his eyebrow, "Aren't you the Hokage now?"
Jiraiya let out a short laugh, "Those old goats wanted to take up the spot, but I have too much on my plate to just do so like that." Naruto headed past him towards his apartnt, "Then I'm not going. I'm not so escort or bodyguard, I'm a shinobi. If this isn't an order form my higher-ups then I'm not volunteering for this. I can spend my ti better by helping to rebuild, getting back to my old level of skill, and finding out who put those goddamn seals on ."
Jiraiya caught up with him quickly and placed a hand on his shoulder, "Well the other genin can help rebuild. And I was going to teach you a jutsu that makes Chidori look like child's play. And those seals, I might know sothing about that."
Naruto looked at him, "Okay, you've got on the rebuilding. And did you hear what I said? I need to get back to my old skill level, I don't need a jutsu, I have enough of those I just can't use them right now. I need to get back to my old speed and strength first and foremost. I felt weak like an infant and moved like a snail during the invasion." Naruto's eyes shone as he absorbed the last of what Jiraiya said, "And you're damn right you know sothing about my seals. You're telling whether I choose to go or not. You're just lucky that it would probably be easier to just go with you, that and I'm bored around here."
Jiraiya grinned at him, "Well let's go and get you packed. We'll leave imdiately."
Naruto pulled out four scrolls, "I already have everything here. I always keep supplies for a long mission on at all tis, you never know when you'll get called away." He placed them back into the pockets of his jacket, "This big, bright piece of crap is good for sothing I suppose." Jiraiya laughed loudly, "If you hate it then why wear it?"
Naruto's eye twitched, "When I went ho after the battle to look for clothes this was the closest thing to shinobi gear I had in my closet... What the hell did they do to ? I wouldn't be caught dead in this. How did I live for as long as I did wearing this eyesore?"
Jiraiya laughed again, getting his chuckles out of seeing the boy tear himself down. Jiraiya reached into his pocket and placed so bills in Naruto's hand, "I'll tell you what gaki. I'll give you two hours to go and get yourself outfitted. et at the main gate then and we'll take off."
Naruto let a smile cross his face as he turned to head back towards the market district. He waved back at Jiraiya and pocketed the cash. XxX
Naruto wandered through the market district looking around. While the Naruto that had beco a genin would simply enter a shop and hope he didn't get ripped off, this Naruto was sick of being broke all of the ti and was running through his head all of the shinobi shops that had done it to him, 'That place did it, that place did it, that place won't even let in TO do it...'
Naruto had gotten his tools from old scavenging habits. It amazed him how many tools were wasted by ninja just during training even back when he was little. He cultivated his pack rat habit back when he was first being trained by Danzo, storing all of the useable things he could find for himself as a sort of surplus and handing the broken and un-useable stuff to Ne's armory to be lted down and remade. Apparently he continued that little habit when he had been sealed as well, because he still had tons of weapons sitting inside one of his closets in the apartnt.
Naruto stopped at a rather plain looking shop, and having no mory of ever being in there, he opted to give it a shot.
XxX
Tenten yawned as she sat at the counter of the weapons shop her family owned. She wasn't having a good overall month. She had gotten destroyed in the preliminary rounds of the chunin exam by that Suna kunoichi Temari and was forced out of contention. She had decided to help her teammate Neji train for the final exam for the month in between tests and had even gone to the competition to watch him mop up the competition. Things don't always work out like that huh?
She then had to watch him be utterly beaten by the unassuming blonde kid that was on the sa team as the Uchiha, the dead-last of the class under hers. He cut down his Jyuuken and not only got up from Neji's best techniques and shrugged them off, he re-opened his tenketsu after they had been sealed off. He even had enough strength afterwards to run around the stadium in celebration after he won.
Then she ended up being put under a genjutsu that engulfed the stadium and missed the invasion of Oto and Suna. After the invasion was over she spent more ti at her family's shop seeing as her sensei was spending a lot of ti at the hospital with her green-clad teammate Rock Lee due to his grievous injuries, but it wasn't busy, seeing as how there weren't a lot of ninja that needed to stock up for missions, as they were helping with the reconstruction, so here she sat, bored.
Reviews
All reviews (0)