Naruto : Chapter 60

Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura were training with their sensei again. Since the revelation of Naruto's true level the other two had trained with much more enthusiasm. Naruto even acknowledged that Sakura wasn't useless anymore.

She was a solid high genin level kunoichi on a good way to become a competent medic nin. Since their return from Wave Country she had used all her free time to study medical jutsus, read up on medicine-making, antidotes and poisons.

She knew the anatomy book backwards and forwards and spent two mornings each week when Naruto and Sasuke worked on ninjutsu at the hospital learning from other medic nins how to perform the jutsus for battlefield healing.

Kakashi still kept his team on the rigorous physical training program, but Sasuke and Sakura now had control over their seals all the time.

Today a sparring session with teams eight and ten was planned. A team battle simulation. At the moment team seven was leading by two points on team eight with team ten following by three points.

While you couldn't really call team seven a real team, they were a properly working unit, a fact that Kakashi was really happy about. When it counted they could perform flawless teamwork, something that made missions a lot easier.

The sparring session would be in one hour, so they now ended their training to eat something before the session.

They weren't informed how the exercise would go, they never knew beforehand to not give any team an advantage. Naruto knew that the whole team competition was a way to give him more bonds inside the village as the Hokage feared that he would run away otherwise.

He had to agree that the strategy was a sound one, even if he had wished that the others his age were closer to his level. But they would need time. Naruto had planned how to turn the opinion of Konoha about him around for years.

He knew the civilians would only stop tormenting him once they found out his heritage. It didn't matter to him, they weren't important. They could rot in hell as far as he was concerned; a few exceptions were to be noted like the Ichirakus and the Takashimas.

His menu had been expanded a bit as the Takashimas happily sold him products from their new farm for fair prices.

So now he could regularly get eggs, fresh milk, vegetables that normally were cultivated in Water Country and sometimes cheese from them as he had no problems giving them his money contrary to other civilian shop keepers. He was always welcome at the farm.

The ninjas were now respecting him as a comrade and that was what was important. They counted as he needed to be able to trust them in case he took missions with them in the future, which would happen. He would only be a genin for at most two months now that the chunin exams were approaching.

All of Konoha was gossiping about the information that the Sandaime Hokage had chosen a new successor. Most thought it would be Jiraiya, but Naruto knew that it was Kakashi. And Kakashi was the better choice for Hokage. He was young, their best jonin in the village and most importantly, he hadn't left the village for long periods of time.

While Jiraiya had maintained his spy-network, which was important for the village, he wasn't that well-known from his constant presence, contrary to Kakashi who was now connected with a few new very impressive missions like the liberation of Wave Country which now was an ally of Konoha.

Then there was the mission to Takigakure where team seven had helped Shibuki, the leader of Taki, to end an attempt of a group of rogues to take over the village. It had started as an escort mission, a low B-rank to be precise, but then the team had been tasked with cleaning the river of waste and had stayed there for a little longer.

Things had then developed from there and ended with the take-over attempt. It had been a really short attempt.

The attackers, even if they knew their way around Taki perfectly and tried to get Shibuki to lead them to the hero-water, a powerful substance with high drawbacks, hadn't counted on how high the level of team seven was.

Sakura had taken care of anybody who had been injured by the rebels, Sasuke and Naruto had taken out the minions of the leader who had been faced by Kakashi.

The whole take-over attempt had been dealt with within fifteen minutes, much to the shock of Shibuki. The man had thankfully been smart enough to realize that close ties to a village that had shinobis of that level ranked as genin, fresh out of the academy genin at that, would be very smart and had signed a new treaty as soon as he could.

The next mission had been escorting a diplomat to Bird Country only to prevent the assassination of the daimyo and returning the princess who had been sent to another country as a hostage. Naruto could only shake his head at that kind of political backstabbing.

A child should grow up loved and with its family in his opinion and he didn't hide said opinion at all. Maybe he was harsh, but damn if he let people think that any child deserved to suffer like that. The princess seemed to wholeheartedly agree with him.

Some other missions that hadn't been as spectacular had also happened, but they had improved the impression that team seven had all around Konoha.

Now they finished their lunch and walked over to the training ground where the team battles would happen. As they had enough time they decided to simply walk and not use the body flicker that they had learned by now.

...

Teams eight and ten were already at the designated training ground. They exchanged greetings and then listened to what their senseis had to tell them.

"Alright, as you know today is a team battle simulation. This means we will set up a mock mission which will include fighting for a common mission goal. Each team will get an area that they will have to defend.

Inside that area is an item in a set location that contains secret information. The items can't be removed from their spots. The other two teams will try to steal the item from the other teams to get the information.

Put together the three pieces of information will give you the code to open a safe in which your true mission goal is held. You have to bring the content of the safe to us once you have got it. The safe is kept in the middle of the areas.

You have half an hour to come up with a strategy, find your own item and decide how to go about the overall mission. Until you get the signal to start you aren't allowed in the other two teams' areas. Good luck." Kurenai informed them.

Each team then took a map with their area and ran there. Team seven reached their area and Naruto quickly made a dozen shadow clones to search for the item.

"Okay, what's the plan?" Sakura asked.

"We first need information where the other two teams will have their item once we get ours. It's unfortunate that we can't move the item whatever it is. It's easier to defend while moving around." Sasuke replied.

"Oh, we probably can still do that. We just need to set up a good decoy to our item and just take the information out of it if possible. Next to that I will see if I can open the safe without the correct code. Nobody said that we had to have the code." Naruto said.

"That makes sense. We have to explore the mission parameters to the fullest without breaking the rules." Sakura realized.

"I can set a genjutsu around the real item to keep it hidden. On top of that I suggest setting up fake hiding places with genjutsus to confuse the other two teams. If they notice only one genjutsu they would know it is the hiding place. With multiple options they can't be sure."

"Good idea. But we will better hide the real place by normal means and use all the genjutsu ones as decoys. That way even if one of the other teams manages to get too close to our hiding place they won't be able to quickly find the information which will give us a time advantage." Sasuke said.

"Good, I will send transformed shadow clones into the other teams' areas as soon as we get the starting signal. That way we can find out their strategies and their hiding places. Once we know which locations we need to target we will leave our item under the protection we discussed.

Perhaps it is even possible to take the information out of the item or destroy it after we read it. On top of the genjutsus we will trap the area around each real and fake hiding place thoroughly.

We don't have a time limit for this test, so we can use it. If we stop the other two teams from getting information, we can win this." Naruto added and got nods from his teammates.

Then one of Naruto's shadow clones dispelled telling him that he had found the item.

"Alright. Let's go." Naruto said and jumped into a tree, Sasuke and Sakura closely behind him.

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