Chapter 7

Six months after his near disastrous fight in River Country, Naruto finally felt comfortable with his situation in Grass Country. He'd gotten stronger; he'd cracked the encryptions on the Suna scrolls (most of it was operational instructions, not training materials); he had several bolt holes throughout Grass Country.

He was ready for the next phase of his development as a ninja.

He had knowledge. Now he needed experience.

A tall man – nearing seven feet in high – with well tanned skin and dark black hair stalked into the main village of Grass Country. He carried two kunai holsters and an elegant sword on his back.

Two chuunin and a jounin appeared in front of him. Taro stopped walking.

"What's your business here?"

Taro looked down at the smaller men. "I have come to apply to the Grass ninja forces."

The jounin's eyebrows reached almost to his hairline. "Alright, step in here. We need to perform an initial security check before we can escort you to the recruitment office."

Taro moved quickly to the guard post. The jounin led the questioning. The two chuunin appeared to be flipping through books, likely Bingo Books.

"Name?" the jounin asked.

"I am called Taro of the River."

"Previous ninja village affiliation?"

Taro shook his head. "I have never served in a ninja force."

"How did you receive ninja training then?"

"A retired ninja in my village taught me."

"And his name?"

"He called himelf Kembuta, but I doubt it was his true name."

The jounin nodded. Ninja were often stingy with information. "What are your specialties?"

"I am a generalist. But I excel with weapons and trap setting."

The jounin was scratching away on a form. "Have you ever committed any crimes?"

"No."

The jounin looked skeptical of that. No one could rise through the ranks without doing some illegal things from time to time, at least not in Grass Country.

"Do you have any aliases?"

"None yet."

The jounin smiled at that. Famous ninja tended to pick up admiring nicknames from allies and derisive titles from opponents.

"You have no relationship with Grass ninja, correct?"

"True."

"Why join our ninja force?"

"You have a good reputation. Suna is shrinking; Konoha is full of eccentric prima donnas; Iwa is way too serious and hardcore even for me; Kumo's a bunch of assholes; and I haven't heard a single good thing about Kiri."

The jounin nodded as he scribbled. He looked up at the chuunin and apparently got a positive answer.

"Come with me, Taro of the River. I know just the person you should speak with."

Four hours later, after an even more extensive interview, Taro had to perform a placement demonstration.

He went up hand-to-hand against a taijutsu master. He held his own for five minutes. Then he had a weapons demonstration against the leading kenjutsu master of Grass. Katana against katana. The exhibition lasted ten minutes before Taro was disarmed; a very successful showing.

Finally, he had a ninjutsu examination. He had to go up against the same jounin who interviewed him. It quickly became apparent that whoever Taro's teacher had been – all aliases aside – had been supremely talented. Taro had a wind affinity, but also demonstrated familiarity with Earth and Fire techniques.

The judging jounins awarded Taro the rank of chuunin, although two of the five were willing to make him a jounin.

"Welcome to the Ninja Force, Taro. Report to Central Office tomorrow for your first assignment. Do you have housing arranged already?"

"No, could you recommend a place?"

"Let me walk you over to the realtor many ninja use here."

"I appreciate it…."

"You may call me Tenuya."

"Much appreciated, Tenuya."

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Naruto, in one of his boltholes miles from the Grass village, smiled after Taro arrived at his new apartment.

His new techniques were working. Perfectly. He was able to control Taro Mark 7 from miles away, even the voice. Taro's eyes transmitted back perfect 360 degree images.

Even better, Naruto had perfected the technique for giving a puppet a functioning chakra system. A medic nin's surface scans wouldn't show anything abnormal about Taro at all. It was a perfect puppet…in that it didn't look like a puppet.

This puppet also had the first working heartstone Naruto had managed to create. The small piece of chakra steel contained dozens of seals that directed and controlled Taro's chakra usage. It also had a few seals designed to self-repair the puppet. A severed arm would knit back onto the torso within seconds. Only the complete destruction of the heartstone could render the puppet worthless.

It was a minor miracle of engineering.

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Taro settled into his first role easily. He was assigned to a three man team that patrolled the outer perimeter of Grass Country for eight hours a day, six days a week. It was a grunt task designed to break new chuunin of their illusions about ninja service.

Naruto, of course, was busy doing his research while he only devoted a quarter of his attention to the Taro puppet. Naruto was working on the next sets of seals needed to improve on his 'heartstone' puppets, a necessary step to developing rapid-deployment Puppet Clones.

Right now it took Naruto more than a month to engrave all the seals necessary to activate a 'heartstone' puppet, one capable of wielding chakra and superficially identical to a real human. If he could finish his Puppet Clone technique, he could raise up an army of 'heartstone' puppets in seconds.

He had time now. He could get the experience he needed in battle. Eventually he might even test his own personal prowess, sans puppets, in battle. But he still looked more than a bit young for that.

For now he relegated the control of Taro to a single finger on his right hand. The other nine fingers were busy developing, improving.

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Taro of the River became famous as a denizen of the Ninja Archives in Grass Country. Over the course of his first year as a chuunin, when he wasn't performing border duty and catching smugglers or bandits, he was reading scrolls.

He read on nearly every topic. So long as it applied to the ninja arts, Taro read it. Biographies of enemy jounin; detailed plans of past Grass Country military incursions; the research and development budgets for the last fifty years; histories of the noble families of Grass Country and their famed techniques.

And when he wasn't reading scrolls, he was in the training fields. It seemed that he never slept. He had stamina that no one had ever seen before. He could perform taijutsu forms for hours before he pulled out his sword and went for even longer. There were times when he disappeared into the tall bamboo and emerged later to find some jounin who needed trap detection practice. Only two jounin in a year managed to make it through a trap field set by Taro. And they were lucky he hadn't bothered to poison any of the apparatus.

In his rare quiet moments, he typically left the villages to take a run in one of the many grassy fields nearby. He seemed to never want to stop moving.

Since no one ever saw him eat in public, the rumor started that Taro was deathly afraid of being poisoned…and Kusa was well known for its lethal, near undetectable poisons. One day, Taro dispelled that rumor by going into a poison vendor and dipping a kunai in a lethal cocktail. He cut his own skin…and did not promptly fall over dead.

Taro of the River was a complete enigma. He, unlike every other chuunin of the village, did not complain about border patrol duty. He was a perfect ninja, almost totally without personality or dangerous eccentricities.

His reputation soared even higher one unfortunate afternoon on patrol. He and his two chuunin colleagues ran into a small group of ninja, one of whom was a bone wielder.

The pale ninja remained behind while the other three ninjas bounded away, not even bothering to look back at their colleague.

Within thirty seconds, the bone wielder killed Taro's two chuunin colleagues.

Taro dodged and weaved and tried to assess exactly what this ninja could do. He tried a few exploratory attacks. A kunai did nothing. His sword was destroyed by a bone effusion from the ninja. His use of a Blade of Wind caused some damage to the bone wielder, but a kind of bone armor quickly grew over the pale ninja's entire body.

Taijutsu was contraindicated with such an opponent. Taro's primary weapons did nothing. Taro, through the chakra strings controlled by Naruto, released tiny poisoned lice. They tangled into the hair of the pale ninja and crawled toward his scalp. Twenty seconds later, the bone wielder fell over dead, a victim of one of Kusa's numerous poisons.

No ninja's ultimate defense was without holes. Even bone armor couldn't cover every part of the scalp.

Taro dispatched a few dozens tiny puppets from compartments hidden in his body, under his clothes. He was surveying the area for those other three ninja, but they already seemed to be outside Grass Country. He could only use puppets as Taro…because Taro didn't have access to a technique like Shadow Clones. Taro had to stay in character.

He knelt down and checked on his colleagues. With the horrible gashes through their bodies, it was unlikely they were still alive…but he had to verify.

Taro had three dead bodies, two colleagues and the strongest enemy he'd yet fought. He pulled out a blank scroll and a brush. Within two minutes, he had a freshly inked sealing scroll. The bodies disappeared into it and Taro scooped it up and bounded back to the village. He was reporting in three hours early, but this was a catastrophic occurrence.

A group of three jounin debriefed Taro. They were very concerned about what had happened. Allied ninja crossing Grass stopped and presented papers; they certainly didn't leave an assassin behind.

"What kind of hita-ite did he wear?"

"I don't think he wore one," Taro said.

"His colleagues?"

"I saw their backs. They did not stop even when their pale friend stayed behind."

"Do you think he was the strongest or the weakest of them?"

Taro shrugged. "No idea. I can't imagine much stronger than him, though."

One of the jounin, disguised by a mask, asked, "How did you manage to kill him?"

Here Taro was prepared to answer. He did not care to explain the micropuppets he used; or his extensive knowledge and use of poisons. A colleague today could easily be an enemy tomorrow in the world of ninja.

"I did not," Taro said. "I battled him to a standstill, my weapons could not touch him, his bone blades could not hit me. Then he flopped over, dead. He had a racking cough. It is possible he was left behind because he was so sick."

"We will have the medical corps be careful examining his body, then."

The after action report continued for hours. Taro had to recreate the battle, pose by pose, as best he could. The jounin wanted to know everything about an opponent as lethal as this bone wielder, identified as a Kaguya clan trait by one of the jounin.

In the coming days, Taro's assignment changed from border duty to service in the armory. It was a seen as a step up in the ruling cabal's confidence in Taro's loyalty to Grass Country.

Finally, after almost two years of service to Grass, Taro was invited to take the jounin exam. Everyone in the know considered it a formality. By the end of that day, Taro was the newest jounin of Grass…and probably the strongest of any of them, although no one admitted that out loud.

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Naruto had been busy. He'd finished extending the reach of his puppets. He had chakra cable relays…and was now able to wander for hundreds of miles away from Taro, rather than needing to be within five miles.

He now had boltholes established within an even dozen countries.

He had secondary puppets establishing identities in Earth, Tea, Lightning, Rain, and Wave Countries. He was thinking about setting up something in Fire Country, maybe near one of the gambling resorts.

His new puppets were farmers or beggars or even the librarian of a civilian school. One managed a small warehouse for drying tea leaves. He could pick up the strings and manage these puppets directly, but for sake of his sanity, he left the day to day work to a series of Shadow Clones. As Naruto perfected his control over the thousands of chakra strings in a chakra cable, his Shadow Clones improved their control.

He had discovered the process for inscribing seals on stone or wood. It was still a slow process. Even if he used eight or ten chakra strings, it took a few minutes to create a heartstone.

Not fast enough, not by a longshot. He had a lot of work to do.

He trained constantly, both in his physical body and in his manipulation of puppets. But he still lacked much of the experience he knew he needed.

He needed harder enemies.

He hadn't forgotten his vow back in Hidden Leaf. He would be stronger than anyone else. A little crippled boy would be stronger than everyone.

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Taro looked impassive when he received his newest assignment, a genin team. He got what the other jounin referred to as 'the dregs of this academy class.'

He met with his three nervous students the day after the assignments were made. The young students, who were about Naruto's own age, were excited and totally clueless.

Naruto, through his puppet Taro, decided that he'd had an unconventional education…a successful unconventional education. He'd had to work hard for his gains. His students deserved everything he could help them achieve.

Before the kunoichi could open her mouth, Taro waved her silent. "Let me be clear. I am here to make you as good as I possibly can. What I will teach you will likely conflict with what you learned at your Academy. I will teach you to find your individual style. I will not allow you to be seduced by wild, vibrant techniques. You need to be effective before you hang a flashing sign around your neck saying, 'Please kill me.' The boy with the silver hair will be referred to as Number 1, the girl over there is Number 2, the half asleep child who is about to need to run laps is Number 3, and I will be called Number 4. I am your teacher; I am not your friend."

The students looked scared and dismayed. Taro was pleased with the reaction. The other jounin had been willing to write off these students because of their lackluster academy performance. Taro…Naruto…would hone them into fine daggers.

"I will now assess your skills. Number 1, you will head into that stand of bamboo and hide yourself. Numbers 2 and 3 will wait five minutes and then go in to find you. When you locate Number 1, you will use taijutsu only to immobilize Number 1 and drag him back into this clearing."

Number 1, the silver haired boy, looked ready to cry.

"Go. Your time is ticking down. Go and hide. I'll call this off if you can hold out an hour. How's that?"

The boy shook his head as though his sensei was insane, but he ran off into the bamboo.

Taro just began practicing taijutsu while his other two students conferred between themselves.

Number 3 asked, "How is he assessing us if he's just doing katas?"

Taro smiled mid-exercise. "I have excellent hearing and more tricks up my sleeve than you've ever considered. By the way, you and Number 2 should go and retrieve your colleague."

Number 2 shouted out, "It hasn't been five minutes."

"I know. Ninja rarely follow any rules. I will however suspend the exercise after one hour if you're unsuccessful…."

He saw some lights go off in his students' minds. "Miserable students, of course, have to serve as my punching dummies. Keep that in mind."

Number 2 and 3 ran into the forest. They just wanted to get away from their sensei.

Taro laughed. This was going to be fun.