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 somebody didn't get a wild hair in their ass and sabotage Otogakure's information department 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 performed, 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 mentally 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 homes. 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 Sandaime have been able to take the proper precautions to acutely prepare for Orochimaru accordingly?
He looked up at the Hokage Monument 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 me ero-sennin?"
Jiraiya pushed himself off of the wall, "I want you to come with me to find someone."
Naruto raised his eyebrow, "Aren't you the Hokage now?"
Jiraiya let out a short laugh, "Those old goats wanted me 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 apartment, "Then I'm not going. I'm not some 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 time better by helping to rebuild, getting back to my old level of skill, and finding out who put those goddamn seals on me."
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 something about that."
Naruto looked at him, "Okay, you've got me 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 something about my seals. You're telling me 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 immediately."
Naruto pulled out four scrolls, "I already have everything here. I always keep supplies for a long mission on me at all times, 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 something I suppose."
Jiraiya laughed loudly, "If you hate it then why wear it?"
Naruto's eye twitched, "When I went home 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 me? 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 some bills in Naruto's hand, "I'll tell you what gaki. I'll give you two hours to go and get yourself outfitted. Meet me 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 become 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 time 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 me 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 melted 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 apartment.
Naruto stopped at a rather plain looking shop, and having no memory 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 same 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 time at her family's shop seeing as her sensei was spending a lot of time 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.
.
.
.
🧿Visit my site at tiendup for more advanced content...🧿
🧿Read the complete novel in PDF, available at my Store!…🧿
https://fictiontopia.tiendup.com/