8

Anko-sensei looked over the group. "So, since we've officially done a C-rank mission and Naruto has brought interesting questions up, I think it's time to discuss a few things about missions that most teams never learn but that applies heavily to us." She then pulled out a scroll and unsealed a stack of wrapped bundles. "For starters, I was able to get us our kits."

"Kits?" Naruto asked even as one was thrown to him.

"Yes. Kits. A full set of forehead protectors for each known-active hidden village in normal and missing nin versions, various elements of standard uniforms for other hidden villages, and copies of each village's bingo books. Now then, I hope the academy still teaches about the three types of mission visibility?"

"High visibility for shows of force," Tenten answered. "Generally to demoralize the enemy. Normal visibility for advertising to civilians and keeping a village's reputation up. Low visibility for missions that are best accomplished with minimal fanfare, such as most courier missions."

"Very good. That lesson is a lie, because there are five visibility types. They skip deflected missions, where the goal is to make it obvious that shinobi were involved but not tie things back to Konoha, and secret missions where ideally nobody knows that there were shinobi in the area at all. Infiltration types, or teams in our case, are the ones that are trusted to handle the vast majority of these missions."

"Not that we expect there to be a whole lot that are suitable for genin," Kurenai-sensei added. "But there are plenty of missions that have no visibility requirements that we can treat as deflected or secret if we wish to."

"Though we might want to pick up a high visibility mission or two to 'show off' that we're anything but an infiltration team. The only problem is that we'd need to use skills that don't lend themselves to the infiltration side, and the best choices there are summoning and waves of shadow clones. Those...don't tend to intimidate as much as we'd need them to, especially once people realize how fragile the clones are."

Naruto half-raised his hand, and got a look from both sensei. "Er, would exploding clones intimidate? Because Itachi paid me for a not-a-mission with his exploding shadow clone jutsu and it was easier than I thought."

"What not-a-mission was that?" Tenten asked.

"Some of the clan heads wanted me to prank the academy every so often. So far I've only put glue on the seats and spiked all their lunches with hot pepper powder. I think the latter only fully worked because those that liked it were asked what they'd have done if it was poison instead."

"That was you?" Kurenai-sensei asked. "Everyone suspects that one of the younger classes was behind those, but nobody could figure out which one."

"I'm dropping notes to the five clan heads involved to warn them what's coming so that they know when it was me. Inoichi congratulated me on royally pissing off his daughter by ruining her outfit with the glue and suggested going after her hair in the next month or two, but I've not come up with a believable prank that would safely get everyone's hair. I mean, I've slipped things into shampoo before, but doing so for a bunch of clan members would be revealing a bit more than slipping into the academy classrooms."

There was a pause as they considered that, only to realize that Anko-sensei had stopped paying attention. Kurenai-sensei lightly slapped the back of her head to get her attention. "Earth to Anko."

"Sorry," Anko-sensei said. "I got lost in imagining what someone who can create as many clones as Naruto could do with exploding clones. It's just too bad that I can't see genin being allowed on any mission that would have it being used intentionally. Doesn't help with intimidation if you can't set them off on demand either though..."

"Er," Naruto said. "The trick is technically 'have the clone perform a modified suicide jutsu', so you could say that all of my clones are now exploding clones? Itachi's version includes pumping more chakra than normal into them, but I think I always use more chakra per clone than he does."

"...how many clones do you have out in the village right now?"

"Ninety or so, I think? I'm trying to figure out the routines of a few assholes that seem to think women in general exist to 'entertain' them."

"I suddenly hate that by the time you can use that to its full potential you won't be my student anymore."

Kurenai-sensei nodded. "There certainly isn't a lot of call for that until high chunin at a minimum, and even less outside of wartime. Perhaps we should get back to the deflected and stealth missions?"

Anko-sensei pouted, but nodded. "Yeah, yeah. We can take missions that nobody's going to care how we do them so long as they get done and treat them differently. Take out bandits without it looking like Konoha was involved, or that shinobi in general were involved. Some forms of border patrol work best if those on the other side of the border never notice you."

"Every so often missions come in that are essentially 'go steal something' as well. Most teams leave obvious signs of what happened, but if we get those then we'll likely try to make it seem like no shinobi entered the area at all. Well, unless the mission specifies that you should be seen doing the stealing. Those can be fun and infuriating at the same time."

"Ugh. I remember one time that I was supposed to wait for them to sound the alarm before exiting the place. Ended up having to figure out how to sound the alarm myself because none of the guards even noticed that the safe door had been torn off its hinges and the safe emptied."

"There are also rarely intel-gathering missions suitable for lower-ranked shinobi. We'll aim to do any we take without being seen, again unless specifically told to be spotted."

"Yeah." Anko-sensei then pulled out a scroll. "All of this discussion is prep work to get you thinking, and your homework is to go through your kits here and familiarize yourselves with them. There are instructions on all the components included in there. But this scroll is the Hokage's response to Naruto's question about the Uzu masks he apparently has. Long story short, he wants to test Naruto in some fashion before making his decision."

A couple days later Kurenai-sensei grabbed a mission for them that she obviously found highly amusing. On the surface it was bringing a cart with a set of crates across the village, which didn't sound all that interesting on its own. At least until it was revealed that the crates were being delivered to the shrine that Naruto, as Yoko, had spent years gradually cleaning and repairing with occasional help from volunteers.

When they arrived the Yoko clone had been finishing up some minor roof repairs with the help of a local shopkeeper. Naruto knew more about building maintenance than he'd ever cared to thanks to all the work that Yoko had done or witnessed.

"I'm sorry," Yoko said after she'd carefully climbed down from the roof, not revealing that jumping down would have been trivial for her. "I wasn't expecting anything to be delivered today."

"The mission scroll describes it as a 'gift'," Kurenai-sensei explained. "Anonymous, which is why we're delivering it instead of the sender. But it also includes a request to help you unpack it and put things in place."

Yoko nodded and collected a letter attached to one of the crates. Reading it, she bounced slightly. "Oh! I've been having trouble deciding what to do about the honden's tamagaki. Some of the original is still there, but hardly usable or appropriate."

Rebuilding the tamagaki with the stone fence pieces in the crates took a couple of hours, though the shopkeeper that had been helping with the roof had joined in as well to speed things up, and whoever had sent the new fence as a gift had done a good job of matching the remains of the original.

"So there's no priest here," Tenten said as they loaded the remains of the crates into the cart.

"No," Yoko admitted. "As I understand it, there's never been one. The Uzumaki built the shrine when the village was founded, sealing the honden itself at the time, and shrine maidens have been the only ones known to take care of it. I was told that when it fell into disrepair over a decade ago it lost the favor of Suijin." Naruto was slightly annoyed that his mother never actually told him what that meant, despite obviously knowing and implying that there was something more to it than the obvious. "The hope is that by restoring the shrine that the relationship can be restored, and several people in the area felt that my ability to enter the administrative building at all was a sign that I could do so."

Naruto was surprised when his mother piped up from inside the Tome. "There's a small stone post near the honden showing the Uzumaki crest."

"So?" he replied.

"For the benefit of the shopkeeper, have Yoko push some chakra into it. The tamagaki being restored as it currently sits should be enough."

Mentally sighing, Naruto used the communication jutsu to tell Yoko about the stone. They'd gone back to double-check that nothing had been missed in cleaning up anyway.

"This stone is one of the few signs that the Uzumaki built the shrine," Yoko said, moving over to it. "At least on the outside. There are more signs inside the administration building." Placing her hand on it, she pushed a small amount of chakra in. Nothing obviously happened, and she stepped away to look for loose items that might have been missed.

A moment later there was a rumbling, and hidden vents in the honden released some air before flaps in the base of it started releasing water. Which nicely explained some of the pathway design in the shrine area, as the water flowed out from the honden and into channels along the paths. The sound of running water closer to the torii caught Naruto's attention, and he saw that water was now flowing into the basin just inside of the entrance.

"I thought it would be another six to twelve months before we could arrange to rebuild the stone tamagaki," his mother explained. "I'm just glad that the water summoning seal in the honden still works and recognized the new tamagaki."

Based on the reaction of the shopkeeper, any thoughts that Yoko wasn't a proper shrine maiden had probably just been obliterated by the water flowing from the honden.

Sasuke had heard that some miracle had happened at a shrine and had decided to check it out after the academy let out. He had plenty of time before his brother would be helping him train and it wasn't too far out of his way. What he found was a Suijin shrine, and when he'd asked some of the civilians outside of it what was going on he'd gotten a story about it being in disrepair until the new shrine maiden had started working on fixing it up, culminating with water suddenly flowing from the honden for the first time in well over a decade.

Curious, he ended up going through the line, purifying himself at the basin, and examining the shrine. There were obvious signs of recent work across most of the shrine, including around the honden itself where it looked like most of the tamagaki had been replaced. Crouching down, as some others were doing, he checked the water coming out of the honden and flowing along the paths. It was...oddly pure, and thinking back the basin's water was similar. As though it hadn't actually come out of the ground, and it definitely hadn't come out of the village's pipes.

That was...unusual on its own, before adding in that some of the older civilians were talking about this as being what had happened decades ago. A couple were even reminiscing about using the water from the shrine as a guaranteed safe source of drinking water during the last war. This wasn't a new phenomenon, it was a renewed one.

Eventually he made it far enough to see the shrine maiden. Yoko, if some of the civilians were to be believed. A girl his age with red hair down to her mid-back tied up in a white ribbon. Violet eyes, and somewhat obviously out of her depth with the surge in visitors to the shrine. If things had changed today with the water flowing out of the honden then he could understand that. But she was still treating everyone with respect, and though it was obvious that she recognized the Uchiha fan she didn't treat him any differently than anyone else.

A cute girl his age that showed serious dedication, much more than the girls in the academy seemed to show towards becoming kunoichi most days, and that didn't seem to want to worship the ground he walked on...

"So," Old Man Hokage said. It was officially a 'day off' for Team Eighteen, but Naruto had been brought out to a training ground for his 'test'. Currently disguised as a brown-haired brown-eyed boy. "The Uzushio equivalent to the Konoha Anbu was more limited in scope, but individually more powerful. Wearing those masks would indicate that you are a significant threat, and while most that recognize them would probably run away instead of engage there are those that would simply escalate to more lethal measures immediately. I want to ensure that you can at least survive long enough to escape if someone does come at you to kill. At the same time, you ideally need to be able to be unrecognized, even by allies. As I know you're unusually good on the disguise front, I'd like to concentrate on defense and movement today."

Naruto nodded. "You suspect that I've got tricks that you haven't seen properly and want to know what I can do, don't you?"

"Yes. If you have any Uzumaki-specific tricks you've figured out that you haven't been showing off then they would help sell the deception as well, but to start with I want you to prepare to defend yourself. First against me, and then if you manage that against Anbu and jounin that I bring in to test your defenses."

It didn't take long to cast a Knight Armor spell with an Anbu-like appearance, but using a blue that matched the masks. One of the masks had been stored in the forearm weapon holders and was easily brought out and put on before Naruto moved out into the middle of the training ground. He then cast the flight spell, but didn't take to the air, and activated his byakugan.

"Are you ready?" Old Man Hokage asked, and Naruto nodded.

Now, Naruto knew that he wasn't the fastest person in existence, even if he was doing his best to train his speed up in various ways. What he wasn't prepared for was how fast the old man could be. The Knight Armor let him shrug off four attacks in the first two seconds and the flight spell was probably the only thing keeping him from being knocked back. He decided to see if using the transparency jutsu and flying into the air would cause the old man to lose track of him, and at first it didn't seem to. But after a moment the attacks tried to track him as though he'd jumped, and thus started missing.

That provided a few seconds of reprieve, as the old man blinked and concentrated, so Naruto darted off to the side and created five paperwork clones. They usefully appeared with all the same spells and jutsu active, and one of them faded back into view while the real him and the others moved off in different directions. Chakra chains then shot out of the visible clone, encircling it. That obviously took Old Man Hokage by surprise, but in the blink of an eye he switched tactics to start throwing piercing attacks to slip or punch through the chains. Naruto's chain-anchored barrier wasn't strong enough to withstand the assault and fell fairly quickly, but hitting the clone as it largely ignored gravity and momentum in the air was still difficult.

While that was happening a second clone started using the hiding in mist jutsu to fog out the area and a third dropped down and into the ground. The last two were essentially tasked with replacing themselves with the real Naruto if needed for now.

The old man started including shots at the mist-making clone and even sent a couple of things through the earth at the one underground, but seemed to be having trouble locating the real Naruto and the two other clones. What he didn't have any trouble doing was dodging the five shuriken spell-bullets sent his way, though them turning in mid-air to follow him had taken him a moment to adjust to. All of them were struck by earth balls a moment later, detonating them, but he seemed unsurprised at the explosions.

"I think that's enough," the old man called a moment later. "Or at least enough for me to call in others to test you."

Naruto dispelled the clones, which did seem to genuinely shock the old man when the visible one vanished in a puff of chakra smoke, before landing and dropping the transparency jutsu. "You're fast."

"It comes with experience and training. Your technique for replacing your clothing with layered defenses is stronger than I thought it would be and I definitely wasn't expecting you to be able to fly. You definitely need more offensive options, especially if you want to be able to take someone alive, but that will come in time."

An hour later Naruto was standing in the center of the field with five clones already made. A collection of Anbu and jounin had gathered and Old Man Hokage was off to the side to observe. Included were at least three Hyuga, so the transparency jutsu was going to be far less effective. When the signal to start was given by the old man, Naruto and the clones all created chains to form a layered dome barrier around them. Three things made it in before the dome went up, but two missed and the last splashed against one of the clones to no effect.

The dome held for nearly two minutes before combined piercing attacks from three directions broke it, and the six Narutos darted out in different directions. One clone went down, four clones went out towards the Anbu and jounin, and the real one went up. Two of the clones on the ground were trying to stick to the whirling fists taijutsu his mother had taught him, but the other two had been engaged by Hyuga and had switched to the Gentle Fist without thinking about it.

Doing so had very obviously unnerved everyone around them.

Despite that, it was very obvious that without the Knight Armor spell Naruto wouldn't have stood a chance. He was doing the best against the two Hyuga, and only because they'd made the mistake of engaging in taijutsu and had gotten several chakra points closed before realizing that their opponent could use the Gentle Fist to its full effect. The other two clones weren't being kept in taijutsu range long enough to do much, but were throwing out attacks with chakra chains and elemental balls without actually striking anyone. Swords were brought out by some of the jounin and two of the Anbu as well, which struck the Knight Armor barriers to no obvious effect as well, though those charged with chakra made it through the first three or four layers before being stopped and the barriers recovered fairly quickly.

Four jounin had engaged the underground clone as well, and a selection of the group was trying to figure out how to pick off the real him in the sky. In response, he formed several spell-bullets in kunai form, launching them at various points in the area. Not aiming to hit anyone directly to start with, because he thought that it would be better for this group to know that they were a bit more of a threat than usual before aiming to hit them. All of them struck the ground before exploding, and it was blatantly obvious that a lot more attention was being paid as he prepared the next volley.

It was another half an hour before Old Man Hokage called off the exercise, and the only way Naruto thought he'd have landed a serious hit to anyone would've been to not let them see that his spell-bullets were explosive before targeting people or to shuriken shadow clone them into impossible-to-dodge-or-block numbers.

"Thank you for your assistance," the old man called to the assembled Anbu and jounin. "We'll debrief as discussed later. Dismissed." Ten seconds later the training ground was back down to Naruto, the old man, and the old man's personal Anbu guard. "Okay Naruto, I have to say that I'm impressed enough with your defense to permit you to wear the masks. I highly suggest teaching this protective jutsu to the others on your team before letting them use the masks though, triply so if it's what lets you fly."

"Thank you," Naruto replied.

"I also highly suggest being as sneaky as possible in leaving the area as I highly suspect that some of the group will be watching the various paths away from the training ground."

Grinning, Naruto nodded and reverse-summoned himself to the Uzumaki compound.

"Where the hell did you find an Uzu battle squad?" one of the jounin asked at the debriefing, and Hiruzen hid a smirk. "They just toyed with us!"

"I didn't," Hiruzen replied. Completely accurate, but not for the reasons they thought. "And we're here for your opinions on their capabilities."

"That was the scariest encounter I've had since the nine-tails attacked," one of the Hyuga replied. "Layers of chakra shielding them making it impossible to accurately see, let alone target, their chakra points. Yet they were able to target mine, implying that they're either Hyuga or sensors that don't need the byakugan to detect chakra points."

"Flight combined with a jutsu that makes exploding kunai and shuriken that can turn corners in mid-air is ridiculous on top of that," one of the Anbu added. "Appearing over an enemy and launching those without warning would be devastating. If they hadn't been merely toying with us they probably would have wiped us out in a couple of minutes."

"At least one of them is probably training our resident Uzumaki," one of the Nara present commented, creating a moment of silence. "It would explain rumors that he knows some of the whirling fists style."

"Damn."

Hiruzen honestly wasn't sure where Naruto learned the whirling fists style from, but suspected that scrolls on it were hidden inside the Uzumaki compound. But this wasn't the time or place to bring that up. He carefully moderated the discussion while contributing very little himself, then dismissed all but a few of the group. The Anbu commander, Itachi as the head of the military police, Ibiki as head of Torture and Interrogation, Inoichi as head of the analysis division, Shikaku as jounin commander. They were the ones that needed to know more about the truth, though Itachi was just barely on that list.

"So," Shikaku said. "What convoluted method of communication do we have with this Uzu group? Especially since everyone I talked to before the meeting claims they vanished without a trace instead of leaving the area normally."

"Well," Hiruzen said. "It isn't exactly convoluted at all. Naruto's address is on file, after all, but if you want him and his clones to help out on a mission then you'll need to go through proper channels for that."

The look of absolute and total shock on their faces and in their body language were far too amusing. Definitely worth the near heart-attacks he'd had during his own short test of the boy.

"Welcome to Torture and Interrogation," Anko-sensei said after bringing the team into a nondescript office building. "While I'm not officially a member of the Intelligence Division, I've worked with them in various capacities. Thanks to that I was able to arrange for this visit. As a side bonus, it simplifies some scheduling concerns."

"Though why we had to decide to do that scheduling instead of it being a requirement eludes us," Kurenai-sensei half-spat.

"It's a bullshit policy with bullshit reasons for existing and hasn't been changed in part because most jounin are intelligent enough to treat it as a requirement. Regardless, we're not doing missions or full team training for at least a week after this, but you'll be busy."

They lapsed into silence for a minute before coming to what looked like a waiting room. Anko-sensei left the rest of them there and went to check on things. Hoshi hopped off of Naruto's head and laid down on the table as Kurenai-sensei leaned against the wall doing her best to keep herself mostly expressionless. It wasn't working entirely because it was obvious that there was some worry there.

It took only a couple of minutes for Anko-sensei to return, and it was only to grab Tenten. Naruto avoided the temptation to activate his byakugan because he got the feeling that he didn't want to know what was happening. Whatever it was, it took an hour before Anko-sensei returned and took Hinata with her. He continued to avoid looking, and another hour passed before Anko-sensei returned for him.

"I'll keep an eye on Hoshi," Kurenai-sensei said before the little fox could join Naruto.

Anko-sensei took him down the hall and around a couple of corners, through two guarded security checkpoints, and into an observation room. Inoichi and another man were there waiting for them, and through the glass Naruto could see two people tied to chairs. Both looked to be teenagers, one male and one female.

"Hello Naruto," Inoichi greeted, then gestured to the other man. "This is Ibiki Morino, head of T and I."

"Pleased to meet you," the man said. "You can call me Ibiki, since infiltration types tend to work with the department more than most shinobi and referring to Morino will usually get the wrong person." He turned to the window to look at the two people tied to the chairs. "What we have in the next room are two spies that actually obtained information, but were caught before they could escape. Part of a larger group, but because they succeeded in getting their information we can't sell them back to their home village."

"They're probably not worth the effort of trying either," Anko-sensei chimed in.

"There is that, yes. Either way, today you get to be their executioner."

It turned out that Inoichi was there to help each of them deal with the killing from a mental standpoint, and part of that was using Yamanaka techniques to create a partial personality split that could 'take on' certain kinds of stress to be let out later. They each visited him daily for a week to deal with the emotional impact and the creation of the personality split, and warnings about dumping things into the split and not doing something to release it later were given repeatedly.

Everyone released things differently, and they each received a book full of examples as well as mental exercises that would let them attempt to monitor their own mental state. It also included a set of warning signs for themselves or others, half of which needed to be reported pretty much right away if spotted. The examples provided for releasing the pressure included cooking, painting, various kinds of training, some training exercises performed in ways that wouldn't ever count as training, and even pranking. At the same time, the book repeatedly emphasized that everyone de-stressed in their own ways and to not limit yourself to the provided examples. So long as your chosen method wasn't directly harmful to yourself or others, anyway.

Inoichi sighed as he leaned back in his chair. He really wanted to know more about the three genin he'd worked with this week, but one of the reasons he was trusted to work with them was that the Hokage knew he wouldn't push too far to pick up secrets they didn't want to share. It was a delicate balancing act, and he would admit that most of his clan wouldn't have been able to resist the temptation to know more.

Tenten had been the simplest of the three and the one he was least interested in the secrets of. Completely straightforward, entirely within all expectations for a genin of her age. Had a little trouble taking to the personality split, but once she did it had stabilized at the expected rate. The girl was obviously a weapons nut, and would probably have cleaning and maintaining her weapons as one of her stress relief activities. She'd also developed a minor crush on Naruto that didn't look like it was going to go anywhere from what had slipped through.

Hinata had then been more complicated. She knew that she was too timid for shinobi work most of the time and had been working on fixing that without losing her caring side. That had started the work of splitting her personality a bit, but it was horribly lopsided and some work had needed to be done to correct it so that it could be kept in balance. Her massive crush on Naruto had shone through everything as well, and it seemed that spending time with him and her younger sister were primary stress relievers for her right now. Though he wasn't sure why one of the memories of the younger sister had her as a plush toy instead of a person.

And then there was Naruto. There was a theory that over-use of shadow clones could warp your perception of reality in various ways, but it might be provable given that the boy had several additional personalities bouncing around in his head. Fully-developed ones, though that was the most obvious with Yoko. Who happened to be his primary stress vent already with pranking coming up second. Sure, sometimes religious duties were used as a stress vent by shinobi, but having a full-time 'job' maintaining a shrine alongside being a shinobi and making it work due to clones was a bit extreme.

There were also partial personalities and 'skill packs' in there that he could slap together into a new personality at will, a technique that was known but that no Yamanaka had ever figured out how to induce intentionally in an older individual. All complete with taijutsu training to a degree that Gai would probably be elated to find out about. It was amazingly difficult to learn to adapt taijutsu training to different body types, but Naruto's shapeshifting trick had seemingly forced him to figure out how to do so to a nearly instinctive level.