A week after my bounty was posted Konoha got some visitors that it really didn't want. I was not in the village at the time since I was trying to lay low while Danzo was trying to find me. According to what I heard though Itachi Uchiha and Kisame Hoshigaki simply walked into the village wearing long black cloaks with red clouds on them and wide low rimmed bamboo hats. That was how bad security was after the old man died, that two S rank missing nin could just freely waltz into the village.-
It was no lie to say we were so weak that such individuals felt no fear or hesitation to just walk right in. While on paper the loss of the old man didn't really drop our power as while we lost an S rank shinobi we got another in the form of myself. The ugly truth however was that our threat level had dramatically dropped with his passing. I was a threat sure but the old man was a much much greater one for the simple amount of versatility he had. Absolute mastery of every chakra nature transformation, a vast repertoire of jutsu, knowledge of seals and decades of battle experience.-
To name a few of the old mans feats that I simply couldn't even begin to match, at least for the moment. Reaching S rank at my age was considered a sign of extraordinary talent sure but I had to fulfill that talent first. Anyways the the missing nin didn't cause any trouble at first but when Asuma and Kurenai discovered them and confronted them things went poorly. Itachi used a genjutsu on Kakashi after the silver haired guy mistakenly thought he could handle it with his own sharingan that let him torture him for over seventy two hours which was insane by the way. -
The reason I say that is that genjutsu doesn't mess with you temporal senses due to the way they are made. In order to create a genjutsu you have to mentally envision the effect but how do you extend mere seconds into days of time? If you actually experienced that sensation then it would make sense but there was no logical way to do so as far as I knew. That was when I heard that his sharingan was not the regular three tomoe sort but was a pinwheel instead. The moment I learned that fact I was heavily tempted to track the man down just to force him to utilize the mangekyou to create a susanoo.-
Anyways Kurenai got caught in her own genjutsu because Itachi reversed it on her. Kisame on the otherhand had to deal with Guy who showed up and got his ass kicked by the man. The disturbing part was that these two were apparently after Naruto for some reason and I could only hope Jiraiya could handle them. Sasuke ended up learning that Itachi had shown up in the village and bullheadedly chased after his brother for vengeance. Needless to say that reunion did not go well at all for him.-
He even got hit with the same genjutsu Kakashi did which was annoying for me since I was the only one able to treat the brain damage it caused. Yes the genjutsu caused so much suffering mentally that the brain very literally took damage. It was the equivalent of experiencing a massive amount of torture in a mere few seconds and so naturally the brain just short of fries itself when it was experienced. Fixing the physical trauma was VERY tricky but doable for me but the mental trauma was an entirely different matter. I left that to the experts on such matters, the Yamanaka clan. -
As you might expect from a clan of mind controllers and readers the Yamanaka clan was sort of the villages top experts on the field of therapy and mental recovery. You could probably go so far as to say they were the best in the world in fact. Thanks to this Kakashi and Sasuke were back to functioning normally after a week of therapy. As for Naruto and Jiraiya they were totally fine as Jiraiya was easily able to handle both Itachi and Kisame. -
During this time period I only ever entered the village with a mitosis clone which after the first three tries to follow it back to my homes new location failed Danzo stopped sending people to tail. Unlike before where the village could find me at any time they wanted I specifically left Mizuhe in the village as my messager but cut off all other forms of communication. There was a bit of an argument about how a leaf shinobi should always be available to be contacted in case of an emergency which was the only reason i had done this.-
Mizuhe could temporarily bath an area in mist that after it used it's ability in was impossible to track it back to my location. Not that Danzo didn't try regardless but simply that he failed. I had to give it to the man he was certainly persistent in his attempts but I made sure all his efforts were little better than smashing his head against a wall over and over again. Karin was exceptionally chipper that I was effectively under house arrest just the same as she was which was confusing to say the least. I wasn't exactly absent before so nothing really changed beyond I was in the house more often.-
I wasn't just sitting on my thumbs this whole time either but grinding my shadow clones to perfect my chakra armor. It was slow progress as even by the time a month had passed I only extended the armor to the center of my torso right below my neck on both my front and back. By my estimation I'd need at least another year if not more to have the armor cover my whole body. Mind you that was with shadow clones and pretty much no other projects to work on.-
That alone should tell you just how difficult what I was trying to do was given how fast I picked up something as complicated as chakra nature transformation without shadow clones. Despite this challenge I won't say that it didn't seem like it was worth it as even just the full sleeve I currently was working with increased my defensive and damaging potential by a gargantuan amount. I hadn't tested but I was pretty sure I could tank any attack below A rank so long as it hit the chakra armor. The only reason I didn't say below S rank was that I simply wasn't familiar enough with that rank of jutsu to say for sure.-
As far as offense went my chakra armor was able to transform into any shape that didn't require extra size and that meant blades, claws, wings, fins, pincers, stingers and even mouths were possible. Add on my taijutsu and that made any attack of mine regardless of orientation potentially lethal.