Lost Children Arc (9) : Sale.

Naruto was sitting loosely while leaning on the wooden cage with his head knocked back and drooling in his sleep as he did so. The other 'children' in the cage were similarly asleep even when Yamato's clone suddenly appeared in the room they were all trapped in.

"Psss~~ Naruto-kun!"

"Psss~"

*Flick*

"AHH-! *mff* *mff* *mff*"

A small stone suddenly hit Naruto's forehead causing him to wake up screaming, but Yamato's clone managed to stop him in time by grabbing his mouth.

Naruto looked around for a few seconds and then his eyes locked onto Yamato after which he calmed down.

"Yamato sensei! Why are you here?"

"The child traffickers are going to be arriving in the next few minutes according to Sasuke's intel. Be ready for anything that might happen."

Naruto looked at Yamato's serious expression before nodding himself.

"Don't worry sensei! I'll make sure to do my best!"

"Good. Make sure you don't speak unless spoken to and make sure that you don't let them catch knot the fact that you're a shinobi at any point in time."

Naruto nodded with a determined expression.

They both heard soft steps from the other side of the door and Yamato quickly vanished from his spot, vanishing into the ground soundlessly as if he never existed in the room in the first place.

The door flung open and Naruto saw Onizuka entering the room smiling and laughing along with his two bodyguards so he quickly closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep.

"Can you believe it!? Fifteen kids at once! We're going to be rich! He didn't even bargain for a higher price though!"

"Boss…don't you think we are a little too lucky?"

"Don't worry about it. You saw them leaving the town today to go back with their money. Don't worry about them anymore. And don't jinx the fortune we've landed upon!"

"Okay, boss, as you say."

The shinobi then walked up to the wooden cage in which all the children were trapped and *rattled* the cage by running a stick of his own over the bars.

Naruto woke up as if he'd been startled just like the other children and once his eyes focused on the shinobi he shouted.

"What are you going to do to us!!?"

The shinobi smiled greedily but didn't say anything.

Onizuka then stepped forward and scanned all the kids in the cage once more before looking at his two shinobi and spoke, "Give them a little water. Just enough that they can speak and don't piss themselves."

The shinobi nodded and after giving all the kids a small bowl with water they waited for them to finish it all.

As with most kids that Yamato was controlling, Naruto was a little afraid that the water was poisoned but knowing that they wouldn't harm their 'goods' he quickly gulped the water since he hadn't had anything to drink for the past three days.

But Naruto hadn't accounted for the fact that Onizuka wanted to knock out all the kids so that they could be smuggled and moved around the forest secretly and be transferred to their new owners more 'peacefully'. They had had cases of children trying to run away before after all.

Naruto tried to force his eyes to stay open, but he soon lost control and fell asleep.

Yamato noticed this but did nothing. It would serve as a good test for his team's genin to see how they would handle such a situation.

The shinobi quickly checked every one to see if any of them were still awake but once satisfied with their tests which just involved *rattling* the wooden cage loudly with a stick they stopped.

"Alright. Let's take them." Onizuka said and the two shinobi bodyguards quickly began to follow him deeper into the forest along a preset route that they had travelled multiple times before to settle their deals.

But they didn't realise that following them were six people.

Three genins, Tachibana, Sakura and Sasuke, along with three powerful shinobi, Yamato, Shizune and Tsunade.

The genin were much closer with Sasuke being the closest so that he could quickly catch the people around them off guard with a genjutsu.

Sakura and Tachibana walked parallelly along the high branches in the trees to make sure that they could scout the area they were moving towards to make any preparations that might be needed.

Tachibana quickly noticed that Naruto was asleep using his spirit vision and signalled the same to Sakura and Sasuke who nodded.

Eventually, they came upon a short clearing in the forest.

Tachibana nearly froze in his tracks as soon as he looked at who was waiting in the clearing or rather what he saw through his spirit vision.

'What!!!??'

'Seriously?'

Tachibana could see a man with several smaller life forms moving under his skin as if they'd inhabited his body and built a nest inside it.

'An Aburame.'

Tachibana frowned.

'Yamato-sensei's wood clone won't work anymore since once he checks on the children he'll realise that they're just wood clones…'

'Is there a way to trick him?'

'Sasuke's genjutsu?'

'No…I doubt he can cast a genjutsu on the hundreds if not thousands of insects in the man's body at once.'

With each step Tachibana moved towards the clearing, he wanted to signal to Sasuke and Sakura to abandon the mission to regroup and plan better but he didn't know how he would explain his ability to know this information.

But then Tachibana studied the shinobi in front of him a little better.

'He is only showing a scorpion on his shoulder and is wearing the Sunagakure headband…that's probably to divert suspicions from himself and Konoha…'

'His aura is blue and green in colour, which means he is calmly thinking about something…'

'Ah…if I'm not wrong…he probably already knows that we're here thanks to his bugs that are scouting the area.'

'So he already knows that this is a trap. Yet he isn't fleeing or even trying to check up on us.'

'So Danzo already knew that we were investigating the kidnapped children case and sent someone to interfere with the mission for some reason?'

Tachibana quickly scanned around the area and his suspicion grew into a deep confirmation when he saw the other root members waiting calmly a little deeper into the forest.

'So he plans on ambushing us…'

'But why?'

'It can't be to kill us because he knows about Naruto being the jinchuriki. Not like Yamato-sensei would've let that happen.'

'So to test us?'

Tachibana smiled in his mind as he found a window to Danzo's mind.

'So throughout the fight, they'll try to only use Wind release to stay under cover while they fight…'

'I just need to force the Aburame guy to reveal his insects in the fight in a way that's undeniable and proves that he is from Konoha…without letting anyone become suspicious that I already knew his identity.'

A plan started to form in Tachibana's mind and he almost smiled thinking about how he was going to fight in the upcoming fight.

Tachibana quickly sent signals to Sakura and Sasuke.

'I see two more enemies up ahead.'

'In case a fight breaks out, I and Sakura will take those ahead. Sasuke, you fight the guy in front of us.'

Sasuke and Sakura acknowledged with signals of their own since they found the plan reasonable.