Chapter 4

No one watching the gates of the Hidden Leaf Village took a second look when a tall, bulky, but nondescript man walked out of the gates. He dressed like a civilian and carried no obvious weapons on his person.

A chuunin took a picture of the man and made a notation in his log.

That was how eight year old Uzumaki Naruto left the Hidden Leaf Village for the first time in his life. He had created this special hollow puppet that he fit comfortably inside of. It had taken more than eight months to learn to control it, but now no one gave him a second look.

In his place, Naruto had left a rather crude autonomous puppet. It would walk around the apartment a few times a day, but otherwise never left. It just seemed to stare at a variety of scrolls and occasionally pour glasses of water from the tap. The crude puppet could last for a year or longer before losing power completely.

It was likely no one would even note that Naruto hadn't been seen outside of his apartment. People scowled at the boy, but otherwise didn't bother to think about him. Konoha's citizens were brutish and lazy, it seemed.

Naruto was leaving now because he couldn't learn anything in Hidden Leaf. No one taught him anything. The Old Man hadn't given him any new ninja scrolls in years.

No, he had places to visit and new worlds to discover. He planned to start in Suna, to shadow their puppet users, to see what else he could learn about his chosen art. Maybe they knew even better things.

There were so many places Naruto wanted to go. He had a map and definite plans in mind.

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Traveling inside a hollow puppet made it quite comfortable to travel through the desert. There was a small fan located in the puppet's head to push air through the hollow body. It took Naruto only a week to traverse the distance.

Getting into the ninja village was stupidly simple. He had arrived on merchant day; civilians were looked upon with a great deal less scrutiny on a day like this.

"Halt," the masked guard said.

The Naruto-puppet stopped and quirked its head.

"Name your business."

"I am a farmer from River Country and I am here to visit your merchants."

"Name?"

"Taro Ryu."

"Fine. The merchants have set up in Century Square. It's down that road there. You are not to venture into any marked ninja areas."

"I understand. Thank you."

Naruto passed into Suna and was anxious to see what he might discover.

He spent the day looking at what the merchants had to offer. He discovered three purveyors of puppetry items. He knew as a civilian he wouldn't be able to buy anything meant for military purposes, but he talked up learning puppetry for entertainment. He got a lot of tips that day. He looked over how these puppeteers constructed their weapons: what sort of joints they had ready made, what sort of attachments they could find without difficulty. He had a good idea of how lethal these standard puppets could become.

He saw nothing about miniature puppets. It made him smile.

Naruto left that night and traveled through the night back to River Country where he slept in a makeshift tent. He could safely return in a week on the next merchant day.

Until then, he had plenty to document, plenty of ideas to dissect and see what might be useful. He had ideas he wanted to attempt with wood in the forest he was sleeping in. He wanted to try developing in wood some of the parts he'd seen in the stores. He wanted to make sure he knew precisely how to duplicate all of what he'd seen.

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The week passed quickly. Naruto had constructed model after model, many failures to get to the correct components. He wanted to know every intricate detail of how a puppet worked, of how it might fail, of how it might be made better.

He placed himself inside his hollow puppet once again, Taro…. He liked that name. The puppet would keep the name of Taro.

In the predawn hours, Taro swiftly carried Naruto back into the desert. By the time the sun was over the horizon, Naruto was back at the gate, re-registering himself with a ninja guard.

This day he was lucky to see a ninja group performing a mock battle for donations in the center of the marketplace. Apparently they were trying to drum up more volunteers to learn the difficult puppet arts. One needed to know taijutsu, ninjutsu, sealing, construction techniques, poisons, basic mechanical engineering to create special weapons…and then needed to achieve mastery of chakra strings. It was much easier to be a standard ninja, so the troupe had to go to extraordinary lengths to popularize what they did.

Naruto watched for as long as the troupe performed. He traded a few valuable plants he'd discovered in River Country at a few shops. Some paid in Suna money; some paid in store credits. Now, Naruto had a bit of coin and canned foods and a bag of rice to supplement what he was eating from River Country.

His life passed this way for the next few months. One day a week in Suna; six days back in the forests of River experimenting and documenting what the folks in Suna knew. He had a whole scroll with hints he'd heard: the legendary Akasuna no Sasori and his perversions of the puppetry art, his human puppets; coordinated attack armies controlled by a single skilled puppeteer; sealing techniques to store puppets in scrolls or other objects.

The more Naruto learned, the more he realized he didn't know.

His next trip in, Naruto asked some oblique questions about Sasori. What he got in response was the equivalent of ghost stories told over a campfire. Horror stories: a powerful ninja turning people into puppets, killing and gutting a Kazekage, the single strongest ninja in Suna's history, a lethal user of magnetic sand…dead at the hands of a puppeteer.

Naruto had more money now from his trading. He bought a few more supplies and a few items for hobby puppets. He promised one vendor that he'd bring his puppet in next week and give a little performance.

That would be quite the thing. Naruto hiding inside Taro, giving the illusion that a puppet was controlling another puppet…. Actually, thinking about it, it was quite an idea. Naruto scribbled it down.

He was getting better every day. He understood now what he just cobbled together before. He taught himself the practical lessons first through trial and error; now he had the theory to go along with it. Things made sense now, even if he was learning in a backwards order.

He had drained his sources in Suna. That meant it was time to move on.

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The trip up to Grass Country was far nicer than heading into the desert. Everything was green and beautiful. Naruto brought along a large sack of roots and herbs gathered from River Country. He had a small amount of Suna money left, but he'd lose most of it if he bothered to exchange it.

It was better to start over, make a new identity. He didn't plan to stay here long.

The first day he slipped easily into Grass Country's main village. He found a number of shops, sold his collection of trimmings and roots from River Country, asked a hundred questions about the various poisonous plants found throughout this land, and bought a few scrolls identifying these plants with images.

Naruto, well protected inside his Taro puppet, spent the next two weeks roaming the land searching out every type of poisonous plant and animal. He distilled leaves and roots down. He milked snakes and toads. Everything went into vials and got loaded into the storage chamber carved into Taro's legs.

He wandered back into the village and produced some of the venoms and toxins he'd distilled. He watched as suspicious store owners tested the toxins…and came away pleased with the results.

He earned money and even more information about poison sources.

He had enough money to snoop around Grass Country's many bookstores. He didn't have a lot of storage room left to carry such things…but when he discovered a volume on sealing techniques, he snatched it up.

Naruto spent another month testing out new poisons. These ones he kept…in a sealing scroll he was now able to produce.

He was learning. He was advancing. It was time to move on. Should he go to Earth Country or Lightning? It was a tough choice.