A year quickly passed and that dragged us towards the year shippuden starts but several things have changed. For starters yugito nii and fuu are not dead which is a good thing. The raikage reluctantly took tsunade's advice and sent her off to paradise island while B remains in his seclusion training with the eight tails and rapping.
Koharu and homura were removed from the elder council and replaced with teuchi and shikaku Nara to which only the old bastards had complaints. Danzo however kept his position and did nothing to defend the other two which sparked a mini war between the two. Danzo wasn't the only one forming a covert ops group. "BARK" ninja and "Root" ninja have been fighting constantly slaughtering each other out of the publics eyes.
Tsunade only made the action of rebuilding the orphan system by creating one massive orphanage near the shopping district fairly close to the yamanaka clans shops. All orphans, matrons and patrons were moved to there along with several jounin who pass it frequently. Toriko enlightened her as to how those two amassed their forces. Bloodline hunting through orphans, when he said that he also had a few brushes with them as a child it pissed her off so she handled the situation.
Speaking of handling cults toriko managed to form one without trying. Akimichi, inuzuka, hyuga, aburame, sarutobi and the yamanaka worship toriko as the food god. It was quite the site light to see the akimichi change the kanji of their armour to toriko rather than food. I'm sure your wondering how those other clans got swept up in it so I prepared a list of how it happened:
Akimichi: every type of food he created
Inuzuka: meat dishes and doggie treats
Hyūga: wines for hyuga women and Hinata threatening to castrate the men for peaking on her with toriko but he stopped her which earned their adoration.
Aburame: Fuu's honey products did wonders for their bugs growth and strength increases.
Sarutobi: all the munchies he made for their snoop dog looking asses
Yamanaka: fertiliser and new seeds he managed to breed and develop. Essentially he developed all the herbs and spices he could which made their sales skyrocket.
He had a very busy year mission wise as well. 9 B ranks, 3 A ranks and 1 S rank. The s rank was in kiri were he met up with mei. She practically tried to strangle him with her tits over how much he "improved as a man" in her eyes. The boil release drool made other men back away from her but stunningly the acid couldn't hurt toriko. In his own words "the wolves slobber is a thousand times worse than this".
The akatsuki attacked them with Hidan and a young woman named isarabi who they acquired by offering her a cure using Orochimaru. She was a character from a filler arc that naruto attempted to save but for some reason she never got to konoha. She could turn into a sort of fishman and had very powerful water jutsu.
Long story short toriko managed to use talk no jutsu about how she wasn't a monster and how he could help her for real in konoha. Orochimaru was giving her a gene suppressor for her bloodline so after the mission they gave it to tsunade who made a permanent version for her bloodline only. Couldn't have the enemy running around wiping out bloodlines after all.
Her partner was kakuzu but toriko managed to kill him with Karin and mei's help. He had six hearts rather than five somehow but toriko using his chef skills was able to crush the two he kept in his body with the Guiness punch! Karin used her chains to bind three of the masks while tayuya destroyed them. The final one was hit with a dai funko! From mei. Toriko taught her akainu's moves from one piece which she was able to recreate.
They saved the three tails and the six tails but it didn't matter as two months later they vanished due to some kind of swirl. It was identified as a space type ninjutsu so the three uzumaki (tsunade included because of her heritage) whipped up their own space lock seals. Konoha, kiri, Suna and kumo where plastered in them. Iwa still refuses to heed the warning about the akatsuki so they're left to it.
Toriko of course managed to get stronger, he met with yugito nii and gave her the seals personally so she gifted him with.... two of nibi's whiskers which he interwove into dough to create a dish called liangpi which is a cold noodle dish. He seasoned it with minced garlic, black rice vinegar from the land of rice and his own personal chilli oil.
The Chinese cinnamon, star-anise, bay leafs, fennel seeds and sichuan peppercorns needed for the dish had him traversing shikotsu forest for three weeks. The vegetables however he had himself from his own personal stash. It's true eating cat whiskers would be disgusting but to be fair it is the tailed beast that is the least edible so he had to pick something.
The results made his muscles become reinforced and allow nature chakra to pass through them more fluidly. His hands also went through a mild mutation increasing his finger nails sharpened along with his grip strength. Kurenai also had her hair become stronger and sharper somehow so she can lift more weight and slice things with her hair alone.
Other than that toriko spent his time working on nature training with shadow clone assistance. He passed pakura's fire and wind nature routines so moved onto tsunade's water and the iwa earth nature training scroll they had tucked away from the last war. Toriko didn't even have to ask her for them, tsunade just said "if my man wants them he gets them. It's what he does for me". That got her a good helping at dinner and a massive desert that had her knees shacking for days.
Kakashi offered to train toriko once naruto returns due to him doing his own training. The others in his group also didn't slack off with the konoha twelve pushing themselves to the limit to match with toriko. He can't actually go into details about their results yet except for Hinata's trigram count rising rapidly and she managed to recreate a kugi punch called kugi palm. After she performed it she had to go to the hospital due to being unaware of how much stress the technique puts on the body.
Hana trained in sage arts under the wolves and because of her inuzuka heritage she progressed rapidly. The three uzumakis have been studying fuinjutsu and have already surpassed jiraiya. Bloodline hax! Pakura got back to her old level and begun training using the fire jutsu present in konoha then making a scorch release version.
Kurenai, yugao and anko also started sage training with their respective summons but toriko doesn't know their progress.
So skip forward to the day naruto returns and toriko was sleeping in his big bed with his women wrapped around him. They were all in bliss until "IM BAAACCCKKKK!!!!!!" Someone was screaming from the top of a lamppost.
"You know if he had the red hair and didn't have the fox we could call him a rooster" toriko said grumpily. " I can't believe I ever liked him" Hinata said while hiding her embarrassment. Hana laughed at them "he smelled like rotten eggs and ramen 24/7 so hopefully that's changed." To which toriko replied " I wouldn't count on it, uzumaki have a ramen addiction" while rubbing tayuya's leg. She would have kicked him for that comment but chose to enjoy his leg rub while going back to sleep. Karin and tsume just continued sleeping.