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"God fucking damnit shit!" Misumi screamed, ripping off the black cloth that had covered his face and irritably ruffling his short, dark hair. At Yoroi's chuckle, he veered around, fist swinging, ready to dislocate his bones into the soft physique style and strangle his teammate.
The taller man dodged with ease, and taunted "Get a grip, would you princess?"
Misumi's eyes narrowed. "Oh, fuck off," he spat before giving his teammates a condescending look. "Everything's gone to shit and you're making jokes? This is serious. What the hell are we supposed to do with Orochimaru dead, huh?" He shoved Yoroi.
The quiet sound of a throat clearing interrupted him. "Don't be so rude, Misumi-kun," Kabuto chided calmly, expression placid and body relaxed. "We're almost to Sound."
The shortest man present snorted. "There is no goddamn Sound. I betrayed Konoha for nothing. So much for everything Orochimaru promised us." Panic made his features ugly. "I guess I could see if anyone is willing to pay for your stupid hides," he jeered.
Kabuto gave a light sigh and Yoroi's lips quirked into a faint smile, moving away from the two.
Some long-disused alarm in Misumi's head started ringing, and he glared suspiciously at his teammates. He'd never liked them anyways. Getting stuck with a stupid medic and some jackass who stole chakra had been a criminal waste of his frontline taijutsu abilities. Orochimaru had promised him so much more than that when the skinny medic in front of him had recruited Misumi from the dregs of the genin corps. What the hell was he going to do now? They had been forced to flee Konoha after the invasion, knowing that their cover would have been broken soon even if no one had yet reported seeing Konoha genin fighting with Sound and Sand.
"Oh, Misumi-kun," Kabuto shook his head pityingly. "Have you no imagination? I was Orochimaru's second in command. We're going to Sound to take over operations. I already sent the Sound five out on a mission. Now that they answer to me, everyone will."
Misumi scowled, both at the overly familiar address and the idea that his scrawny medic teammate had what it took to lead a village. He opened his mouth to tell off the silver-haired idiot—and found himself surprised at how quickly Kabuto had moved to be directly in front of him, bending slightly to stare into his eyes. Misumi couldn't gauge what the other man was thinking, as the sunlight had caught Kabuto's glasses and was obscuring his eyes. Unnerved, he raised a hand to push Kabuto away.
Kabuto caught the movement with a painfully strong grip around Misumi's wrist that moved the bones in his joint around uncomfortably. "I'm afraid that I didn't mean you," he crooned. "Sound has little use for cowards." Then Misumi knew no more.
Kabuto sighed and used earth techniques to sink the freshly made corpse into the ground. Normally he might have sealed away the body for use later, but he didn't have the materials with him. "What a waste," he sighed. He'd invested hours into Misumi's genetic modifications, and now that was all lost. He huffed a quiet laugh, and continued on with his remaining teammate following silently, wondering if this was what Orochimaru had felt like when the seal he'd placed on the Uchiha had never really taken root. It was frustrating to see all that work wasted. No wonder the man had experienced a fit of temper when he sensed the reinforcements coming in. He would have known immediately that Anko would know to suppress the seal before it had a chance to take hold. Perhaps given later action the situation would have been salvageable, but now that Orochimaru had passed and the seal couldn't feed off his chakra, Sasuke-kun's seal was probably just a tattoo.
It was actually more surprising that Orochimaru hadn't killed Sasuke-kun's other teammate out of spite. The original plan had called for leaving one of them alive to protect the Uchiha while the seal seared into his flesh and chakra, but once it had become obvious that Anko and her ANBU team (and therefore plenty of others) knew he was in the forest that the boy would never be allowed to wait out the test.
His takeover of Sound went as smoothly as he had predicted. Kabuto had proven himself by beating the Sound Five, and ninja trained in Sound learned to reluctantly bend their necks to larger predators. He expected plenty of attempts on his life, of course, but that was par for the course.
Really, the biggest problem was figuring out his next course of action. Kabuto sighed, assigning Yoroi as his bodyguard (he didn't need it, but it was better to keep one of his more reliable tools at hand) and taking stock of the medical bay. Tayuya had been more than a little bit upset about being sent on an errand to re-supply the human material for his experiments, but the indignity was necessary. On his own, Kabuto was solidly high Jounin level for combat. His major strengths lay in his medical abilities and genetic modifications. In order to rule over this snake pit, he would have to increase the pace of his experimentations and augmentations, and science required (and produced) heaps of corpses.
'Perhaps Orochimaru had the right idea about Sasuke-kun,' he mused to himself, flipping on the lights of his dank laboratory. The lack of sanitation would be something to fix now that he was in charge—he put more stock in practicalities and less in theatricalities than Orochimaru had done. 'I have always liked the look of the Sharingan.'
For now, of course, it would be difficult to go on his own. Luckily, he didn't have to. Kabuto quickly made arrangements to meet with one of his most profitable contacts. The man still thought he was a sleeper agent for Akatsuki, of course, and would see no reason not to lend assistance. Sasori of the Red Sand would be an invaluable ally. Sound knew it was weak, and they needed leverage to keep the wolves at bay—the Leaf and Sand would doubtlessly be coming for their heads when they had licked their wounds.
~~~
"Stealth training my ass," Naruto grumbled irritably to himself, crouched on a ceiling. He carefully picked his way across the room, following the vague description his mentor had given him before flouncing off to harass some poor girl.
It was a bit of an indignity—Jiraiya wasn't even here to grade him on his performance. However, he had been told that if he couldn't manage to get to the meeting room unseen before Jiraiya and his contact did, then he wasn't fit to be an apprentice.
He froze, muscles locking and breath stilling to a pattern so slow that he could hardly hear it himself. It took a few seconds for him to actually hear what he had somehow sensed. Someone was coming along the corridor. Naruto flattened against the ceiling like a tree frog, letting the vague camouflage genjutsu the pervert had taught him ripple over his body. It had seemed like a strange choice—no one had ever thought he had the intelligence and control to cast genjutsu before.
It hadn't been an easy trick to pick up, and Naruto had been stupidly relieved to have finally mastered it. Control (for a jinchuuriki at least) seemed to be a long, boring process involving a lot of meditation and mastery of techniques involving gradually less chakra. He wasn't entirely certain when he would ever use the jutsu that crushed a small rock in his hand into chakra-infused earth or the one that allowed him to manifest a thin blade of wind-natured chakra that could only cut through something like paper, but by kami he had mastered them.
The figure finally passed by with light steps that hinted they were either a genin level ninja or a civilian with special skills like a dancer. It really was just a figure, because in that long cloak and with his poor night vision Naruto had no idea whether he'd been looking at a man or a woman. Naruto carefully sniffed the air to be sure the person had actually left and not just lurked around the corner.
The old man had been surprised by how excellent Naruto's hearing and sense of smell were (and then made a ton of dumb jokes about how loud he was and how bad ramen smelled) but had given him a basic introduction into using senses other than sight for tracking. He'd never be on Kakashi's level or even Aiko's (she'd picked up a lot of tricks in an apprenticeship to a tracker) but he could pretty well tell that the person really had continued on.
He picked his way through the house, stopping in the kitchen to grab a peach scented candy on impulse (crumpling the yellow wrapper in his pocket politely instead of leaving it around) before he finally found the room he'd been told to locate.
'He didn't give me a lot to work with.' Naruto tried not to pout, thinking of this as a mission instead of a test. He liked missions much better. The room was large and open, with a table set up for tea ceremony and flowers in vases all around. There was a screen, but he immediately discarded that as far too obvious as a hiding place.
No doubt the old pervert would know he was there— especially since he'd told Naruto to listen in—but he had been told to do his best to hide.
A wicked thought occurred, and Naruto gave a wide grin that Iruka would have known meant trouble. He dropped to the floor silently and carefully pulled out one of the flower arrangements without disturbing the alignment. He didn't know what this one said, but he knew that the colors, varieties, and placements of flowers spelled a message. Ruining it would be clumsy and a dead giveaway. He hustled with the vase to a side room he had recently passed and dumped all the water out in the sink, heaving a relieved sigh when no odds and ends from flowers colored the drain. He didn't want to risk the noise of turning on the water.
The trip back to the room took less than a minute, and he carefully placed the vase back in place, the flowers almost entirely back in so that gravity would fix it if he let go, and then flipped onto the wall beside the arrangement and used his free hand to help him concentrate his chakra for the second water technique his sister had ever taught him with his head directly over the lip of the vase. "Hiding in the water," he barely breathed aloud, slipping into liquid and letting his body condense into the purple tinted vase.
It was an unpleasant feeling, especially when the flowers slid down into the water that his body had become, but he metaphorically grinned and bore it for what felt like hours before the pervert shuffled into the room behind an older woman in traditional clothing and a grumpy expression.
The meeting that followed was boring and Naruto barely managed to pay enough attention to prove he had been close enough to hear what went on. Jiraiya gave the room strange looks when his partner looked away, checking the ceiling, that screen, and even under the table. His field of vision barely managed to include the table, so Naruto couldn't be sure he caught everything that went on. He definitely noticed when his teacher starting looking over the flowers with a strange amount of attention.
He was reminded of the many flaws of this jutsu when the adults left the room and it was time to get out. Hiding in the water created a sort of wiggly space where his body was compressed within whatever shape the water took. That meant that he couldn't really control the water. It would have been easiest to simply end the jutsu and explode out of the bottle, letting whatever mess happened be and fleeing. But…
It would be a little rude to make a mess like that, and also give a pretty big hint that someone had been in that room. He was supposed to be proving that he was sneaky, after all.
Naruto coiled up as best as he could, trying to shoot upwards out of the vase and materialize as he passed the lip of the glassware. It sort of worked—the vase didn't break or go anywhere, but the flowers shot out with him, flopping awkwardly onto the ground and table.
Suppressing the urge to heave a sigh, Naruto gathered up the flora and put in back in the order it had been as best as he could. He had never really learned ikebana properly, but all ninja underwent memory training that would help them reconstruct a scene exactly. A few petals had been mangled, so Naruto pocketed them and climbed the wall back up to the ceiling. He hurried his way through the building—not the way that he had entered, as he had spotted a large open window on his way in and he was in a hurry to get back to where he was meeting Jiraiya.
The toad sage himself was a little baffled, chewing idly on a bit of grass and relaxing in the sun. The woman he'd met had been a real bummer, but she wasn't his contact. His contact had been the one to take the appointment for the meeting and prepare the room with messages encoded in ikebana and the type of tea served.
It had taken him an embarrassingly long time to spot the chakra-dense water that was his wayward genin. In his defense, the boy had seemed a bit thick and Jiraiya had been almost certain he would use the genjutsu he had been taught to hide in the room. The use of what appeared to be hiding in the water was even more baffling because Jiraiya knew damn well that the kid's primary affinity was wind. Maybe water was his secondary? Still, it was strange that he would know that jutsu at all.
When the windswept blonde dropped into a seated position at his feet and gave a long stretch, Jiraiya eyed the kid up. Something twitched in his left eye when he realized the brat had a bit of flora in his hair, but he didn't mention it.
"Where did you learn hiding in the water, and why didn't you tell me?"
Naruto gave him a strange look. "Aiko taught me."
Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "What for, gaki? There was no reason for you to learn water transformations."
The boy snorted. "Shows what you know. I could never use the tiny amount of chakra to make an Academy standard bunshin," he explained idly. "So Aiko taught me the water transformation one. It was a major pain," he groused with a pout. His expression brightened a moment later when he added that "learning a second water transformation was much easier."
The toad sannin didn't know if he wanted to laugh or cry. This kid had the strangest learning habits he'd ever encountered. Teaching Minato had been like teaching a much more intelligent version of himself—he started with basics and progressed with frightening speed up to expert level material. But Naruto was learning things that Jiraiya considered level zero like geography, tactics for low-pressure situations, and chakra control at the same time that he had apparently mastered the Chuunin level skill of completing an elemental transformation that wasn't the user's first type. Either Aiko was a hell of a teacher (and knew her student well) or Naruto was not the idiot he seemed. He didn't want to dismiss his goddaughter's influence out of hand, but he was now pretty damn sure that Naruto was actually a really clever kid.
The headache he felt at that moment was remarkably similar to the one he'd felt when the brat had picked up Rasengan in less than two weeks. Sure, it took less time to learn a jutsu than it did to invent it, but two weeks was ridiculous. It'd taken him longer than that, and he was much more experienced.
The thought occurred that perhaps the underwhelming reports he'd gotten about his godson's performance said more about the teaching methods than the student.
'Maybe I shouldn't try to hammer all the baby stuff into his head,' Jiraiya mused, staring thoughtfully off into space while his student gave him a weird look for his long silence. 'He doesn't have genin level understanding of approved procedures, but I'm not sure he needs to. The kid comes up with unconventional solutions.' Maybe it was just the way that the kid thought. He came at problems sideways instead of head on like a samurai or by sneaking around to the back like a ninja. If he couldn't predict how Naruto would deal with a problem, an enemy almost certainly wouldn't.
Using a water transformation to hide inside had actually been a rather clever trick. It was nontraditional to be sure, and he couldn't count that there would always be water around like that to use. Naruto had the benefit of crazy amounts of chakra—he would be able to maintain jutsu like that far longer than his peers. At his age, Jiraiya probably would not have been able to maintain the jutsu throughout that meeting, to say nothing of however long beforehand he had waited. It wasn't a trick that just anyone could use. That in mind…
"Kid, I'm going to teach you a non-elemental clone technique."
Naruto squawked indignantly. "What the hell for, old man!" He pointed accusingly. "You just don't want to teach me anything good!"
Jiraiya felt the irritation come creeping back. "Brat, I'm the teacher here!" he roared into Naruto's face. "This is way better than a water clone! Shadow clones are solid and can retain information. They're perfect for spying like what you just did, and you don't have to be the one crouched inside a vase."
Naruto blinked up at him. "So I could have shadow clones use hiding in water?"
"No," Jiraiya said shortly. 'Stupid. I mean, he could, but that would be pointless expenditure of chakra and an extra step.' Before Naruto could protest, he continued firmly, "Shadow clones can use henge. Since they're not material like you and I are, their henge can be an object of significantly smaller mass. Like a vase," he said pointedly. "So. For all I care, you could transform into a rubber duck and hide out in the hotsprings. Won't be able to see anything unless what you transform into has eyes, though."
That was an important caveat, and the main reason that he didn't get a lot more use out of the shadow clone technique. That and the fact that it had a hideous chakra cost, but what did that matter to an Uzumaki jinchuuriki? He could prance around all damn day blasting grand fireballs out his ass and it wouldn't matter.
He resolved not to make that statement aloud. Naruto might take it as a challenge to invent that version of the grand fireball. The kid hadn't been taught the regular version, of course, but he was determined enough that little things like facts might not stop him.
The boy rolled his eyes, but grumbled agreement. "But you gotta teach me something cool after this," he added hastily.
Jiraiya gave serious thought to using shadow clones to beat the hell out of the kid in taijutsu for a moment. The smile that crept over his features caused his student to inch backwards and eye him warily, but he didn't notice. It would be easier and less dangerous to teach him how to deal with multiple opponents that way than by finding real fights, he justified to himself. If he allowed each clone to only use certain things—one would use academy standard taijutsu, one would use what Kakashi had beat into his head, and one would pretend to be water type, etc, etc… then he could do a pretty good job of simulating the experience of dealing with multiple fighting styles at the same time that he actually taught the kid different fighting styles.
Plus it would shut him the hell up for a long time while he struggled not to get the crap kicked out of him.
"Alright, gaki. Pay attention." He slowly ran through a sequence of handsigns for Naruto's benefit. "This is how you initially learn it, maintaining constant chakra output from just one gate as you move through this sequence. You'll have to figure out the rate that's best for you- obviously, more chakra equals more clones but I want you to master one at a time to be sure you know what you're doing. When you have it ready, you hit it with about twice the amount of chakra you'll think you need all at once. Once you've got it down, we're going to cut off a handsign one at a time until you can do this with only the cross. Luckily for you, this technique requires flooding your limit gate with chakra and not any real control. So I don't want you embarrassing me by wasting time with ten handsigns."
~~~
Uzumaki Karin had never thought of herself as a front line fighting type. She had known since she entered the academy that she had brains and sensing abilities that surpassed those of Jounin. Sure, she also had the enormous chakra reserves that characterized a front-line fighter, but she had possessed the foresight to downplay that as an ace in the hole. Since she had hidden her ability as a jutsu type (and done so too well, as no one had taught her a single jutsu back in Grass) and rather honestly been merely competent with weapons and taijutsu, she had been accustomed to her peers dismissing her as dead weight on a mission.
It was true, after all. Her speed was poor and she had no more combat ability than any other fresh genin.
She had assumed that she would be able to design some sort of specialty. Karin had the intelligence and patience to do well as a poisons analyst or work in code-breaking.
"And if it weren't for these Konoha dorks, I would have gotten away with it too," she groused to the empty clearing from her position slumped on the ground. Painstakingly (and that was meant in a literal sense) she drew her legs up and began yet another round of sit-ups.
It was both stupidly unfair and highly flattering that the Hokage herself had commented that Karin had been wasting her potential. Even if she had gone the medic route in Grass, she was relatively certain that her training wouldn't be this difficult. In a way that made sense— Konoha was renowned for their medical program. In another way it didn't—why the hell did a medic have to physically work hard enough to keep up with peers who were concentrating solely on combat ability? She was stretched thin between the endless reading and paper tests, the refinement of her Mystical Palm technique, her hours at the hospital, and physical conditioning.
So of course that crazy woman had given her yet another responsibility. Starting next week, she would be dealing with about half a class of third year students at the academy in an attempt to teach them to produce medical chakra. Tsunade apparently had the bright idea to get a medic onto every squad, starting terrifyingly young. The students who didn't make the genin cut would be shipped straight off to the hospital and free up highly trained personnel instead of going into the genin corps. Karin thought that Tsunade was nuts but hadn't been quite brave enough to say that. As she pouted, Sasuke and Aiko came running back to the clearing neck and neck. She gave them a dirty look, resenting that they were so far ahead of her in the workout. It was difficult to be so fabulous.
Being fabulous became even harder once her classes started up. Karin hadn't had anything to do with the selection of her students. Medical ninjutsu had simply been added onto the curriculum in the same way that students could pursue an extra projectile weapon—it was extra work so not everyone wanted to do it, but the class was populated both by the students working to maintain top rankings and those who had been counseled that they might do well in it.
At least the standards for the class weren't too high. Karin blew her shaggy bangs off her face with pursed lips and stalked up and down the rows, watching fourteen boys and girls straining to manage the initial manifestation. They had to be taught how to gather normal chakra to their hands first before they could learn to switch it to medical chakra by separating their own elemental affinity out of the mix. Medical chakra was a bit like type O blood—it was compatible with everyone because it didn't have any special properties.
Obviously, it was far from intuitive and required either a prodigious talent in chakra control or the intense familiarity with their chakra system that came from years of experience. Failing that, this type of class could try to force students to cram chakra control down their throats through sheer repetition.
She thoroughly expected this to be a miserable waste of her time, but hey. Orders were orders.