Kiba frowned and was about to throw in his own objection when Kurenai vanished in a puff of smoke. “A clone?” he asked.
“More likely a Shunshin,” Hinata corrected. “We need a plan.”
“Plan?” Kiba asked. “We don’t know what we’re going to be tested on, let alone how.”
“Not yet,” Naruto corrected. “Unless you think we should play by the rules.”
Kiba smiled slowly. “We figure out what the test is going to be now, you mean.”
“Exactly,” Naruto agreed. “We’ll need to backtrack Kurenai to wherever she might have gone to prepare the test.”
“Why not just trail her?” Kiba asked gruffly.
Akamaru yapped disparagingly.
Naruko nodded. “Pup’s right; we don’t have a chance of following a jonin. If we just go places she has been, there’s less a chance of anyone figuring out what we’re doing.”
Kiba humphed at that but nodded. “Alright so we trace where she’s been.” He sniffed a few times. “Easy enough. Got her scent, Akamaru?” Yap. “Yosh. Follow us then. Team Eight, move out!”
Naruko hung back and watched the strange procession of her team. Kiba bounded over the rooftops with Akamaru on his head, sniffing the air randomly and changing directions a few times. Hinata and Naruto followed, bouncing along with him. Then she brought up the rear, privately thinking about their teamwork.
Akamaru had picked up on the change in Naruto and Hinata and responded. He was treating Naruto as the pack alpha. Personally Naruko felt Hinata was a better choice, but she was far too willing to go along with Naruto to be an effective team leader. The problem was Kiba. He still saw Naruto as the boy he was a year ago, or just over a day ago by Kiba’s perspective. Understandable, but he had to get his head around the new dynamic sooner rather than later or Kurenai would spend all her time separating the two boys from beating the crap out of eachother.
Unless they took a page from Nanoha’s playbook and beat the crap out of eachother while forging a friendship that would stand longer than the cosmos. “Note to self, Nanoha must never make friends with Sandaime,” she muttered.
Kiba stopped again, but this time he stood up from his crouch and turned to face the others with a serious expression. “We have a problem,” he said gravely. “Kurenai-sensei’s scent splits up here in two directions. One’s only a couple hours older than the other.”
“Which ways?” Hinata asked.
Kiba pointed. One path led towards the Hokage’s office. The other out of the village proper into the training grounds. “If we go to the training grounds, we might figure out what she’s planning. But if we go to the office, we might find papers submitted that say exactly what she’s planning.” Kiba scowled. “On the other hand, I don’t think the Hokage would just let us see those papers if we asked nicely. We should head to the training ground.”
“We don’t need to choose,” Hinata said brightly. “Akamaru can track Kurenai-sensei’s scent, can’t he?”
Yap. “Yes,” Kiba said slowly.
“And so can you, Kiba-kun. And Naruko-chan can talk to Akamaru. So we split up into groups.”
“That’s a great idea!” Naruto enthused. “Okay, Kiba, you and I are probably useless at the paper stuff, so we’ll check out the training ground. Hinata, Naruko, you two take Akamaru and check out the tower.”
“W-wait a minute!” Kiba barked. “You want Akamaru and me to split up?”
“Just for a few minutes, Kiba-kun,” Hinata said placatingly, waving her hands. “Naruto-kun and I can’t do that kind of thing. We need you and Akamaru.”
“Well why don’t we do them one at a time then?” Kiba argued.
“Time,” Naruko said. “If we take Kurenai at her word, we’ll need as much time to rest and prepare as we can get. The more time we spend hunting for information, the worse our chances.”
Kiba’s jaw worked a few times and he rolled his eyes up. “Akamaru?” Yap. Kiba closed his eyes and grinned. “Pheh. Okay then, guess I’m outvoted. Go on.”
Akamaru jumped onto Naruko’s head and yapped encouragingly.
Kiba grabbed Naruto. “Yeah yeah. Akamaru, take care of the girls. Come on, Naruto.”
“I am coming! You don’t have to pull so hard idiot!”
Naruko and Hinata watched the boys trade insults as they leaped off into the distance, then looked at eachother, closed their eyes, and giggled.
Kiba and Naruto left Konoha’s buildings behind them rapidly and made their way to the training ground Kurenai had visited earlier that day. “So once we get there, how are we going to find anything?” Kiba asked. “We should have brought Hinata. That byakugan of hers would do great here.”
“we don’t need to see through walls,” Naruto countered. “The girls need her talents more than we do. Don’t worry; I’ve got it covered.”
“You have it covered?” Kiba asked. “Wait…stop. Kurenai-sensei’s scent is all over. I think we found it.”
Naruto grinned. “Okay, leave it to us. Gungnir!”
[Set up. Device Mode.]
Kiba blinked at the not-quite-weapon in Naruto’s hand and sniffed it cautiously. “What is that?”
“Oh, we didn’t tell you. Hinata and I have these devices that help us with our new jutsu.”
“And you have a jutsu that can search this field?” Kiba asked dubiously.
“Several,” Naruto bragged. “Kage bunshin is easy; I took out Mizuki with more clones than I need to search this place. But keeping that many clones in line at once is really hard.”
Kiba blinked. “Yeah, I heard something about Mizuki. You learned kage bunshin? You can barely pull off a bunshin. Badly.”
“I’m getting better at that,” Naruto lied. “Anyway, the next choice is ‘Area Search’ which can find suspicious things a lot faster, but it’s not so good with hidden things.”
“Well that might help,” Kiba said dubiously.
“Which leaves a trick I developed myself,” Naruto declared proudly. “Um, you might want to take a step back. I’ve only tried this a couple times.”
Kiba held his ground with some nervousness. He wasn’t ready to back down to Naruto yet…but he was getting closer than he was really comfortable with.
Naruto shrugged and held Gungnir forward and frowned in concentration.
[On it.] Kiba jumped back as an orange mandala expanded out from under Naruto’s feet. [Shadow Area Search.]
Naruto stood still as six streaks of orange light flew from Gungnir and bounced around the training grounds. Kiba stared at the display, utterly baffled by what he was looking at, when one of the streaks slowed, becoming a sphere of orange light about the size of a tennis ball, then burst into chakra smoke to reveal a clone of Naruto that carefully poked around in the grass for a few moments.
“What?” Kiba asked?
“This is really hard,” Naruto grumbled, voice strained like he was lifting something really heavy. “I’m getting images from all six balls as they fly through the ground. That’s not so hard; Gungnir’s helping me sort through it. Every time one of them finds something, I command the ball to become a shadow clone so it can get a closer look. Then when it’s done, it turns back into a ball and I get its memories and the ball continues on the search pattern.”
“Whoa,” Kiba muttered. “That could be really helpful in getting clones behind enemies. Look at the speed they’re going.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I can’t move,” Naruto pointed out. “Heck, even talking is hard. That’s fine for search and rescue, but it really sucks for anything else. Besides, those balls can’t take a hit any better than a shadow clone.”
Kiba nodded slightly, watching clones appear and vanish every few seconds. “So…”
“Paper bomb traps, a pitfall, ninja wire, pop-up kunai targets. Looks like an obstacle course.”
Kiba whistled and grinned. “Think you can draw us a map when you’re done? We’re going to smoke this course.”
Naruto grinned and looked to Kiba. “Dattebayo.”
Meanwhile, Hinata and Naruko followed Akamaru to a small office building in the shadow of the Hokage’s tower. There was an older genin guarding the door. The girls hid on the roof of the building across the street.
“Are you sure that’s the building?” Hinata asked.
Akamaru barked. “He’s sure,” Naruko translated. “Looks like noncritical file storage. There won’t be any secrets in there to get us in trouble, but I doubt anyone will appreciate us spying.”
“Then we’ll make this fast and get out of here,” Hinata said. “Renard, please.”
[Set up.]
Akamaru yipped in surprise and looked to Naruko, but the familiar was too busy to answer him. “Security!” she called, forming a familiar red-orange mandala that expanded to cover about half the roof. The air seemed to turn a little grey. Akamaru growled.
“It’s okay,” Hinata said, correctly guessing the puppy’s anxiety. “It’s just a spell that makes it hard for anyone to sense our chakra for a few moments. Now Renard, byakugan!”
[Ready, hime. Area Byakugan.]
At least a dozen golf ball sized beads of purple chakra exploded from Renard and streaked towards the small building. They spread themselves out evenly and made one unified pass from one side of the building to the other and vanished.
Hinata shook her head to clear it. “Got it. Let’s go!”
Kurenai watched the young kunoichi flee the rooftops with her cohorts and shook her head. “Not terribly subtle, but very fast. If she actually found the test I planted, that was one of the most efficient information thefts I’ve ever seen from rookie genin.”
“They aren’t exactly rookies,” Sarutobi corrected, looking up from his crystal. “That must be Hinata’s variation on the Area Scan Naruto mentioned.”
“Multiple simultaneous perspectives all running the byakugan,” Kurenai muttered. “I’m surprised she didn’t pass out from sensory overload.”
“Renard must sort it all and only get her what she needs,” Sarutobi guessed. “We’ll need to test our security wards against this jutsu.”
“I planted an explanation of this entire exercise in that building under the most common seal,” Kurenai said. “If she saw it, she probably wouldn’t have run away so fast.”
“Good work. So, what do you think?”
“They’ve passed the proficiency test with flying colors,” Kurenai said. “No surprise with Naruto and Hinata, but Kiba was key to their success.”
“What about teamwork?”
“That’s harder to figure. Hinata will follow Naruto’s lead, so will Naruko. Kiba still feels like he should be ‘the alpha’ since he was stronger than Naruto a day ago, but it looks like he’s accepting the new situation now that Naruto’s proved his ability. Hopefully that will create a healthy rivalry between them.”
“Hopefully?” Sarutobi asked with a wry grin.
“Do you think Guy and Kakashi could have become so strong without eachother?”
Sarutobi laughed. “Maybe not,” he admitted. “So they pass your little test.”
“Oh, they still have to take the ‘real’ test,” Kurenai sang. “But yes, they pass.”
The girls were just about to the edge of Konoha when they came under attack.
[Threat. Collision imminent. Round Shield.]
“Huh?” Hinata asked as Renard drew her chakra to form a lavender mandala. A moment later a young boy collided with it and fell to the ground. “Eep.”
[Ready, hime.]
Hinata considered the staff in her hand for a moment but crouched down to look the boy over. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not after you!” The boy yelled as he got up and scurried…over to Naruko!? “Pretty lady, please accept this…aaahhh where did the box go!?” He looked around frantically.
Hinata blinked blankly. “Eep?” she tried again.
Naruko pointed at a mess of paperboard and chocolate. “That box?”
“AAAAHHH! My gift of love has been smashed!” The young boy pointed at Hinata and raged in the Voice of Righteous Vengeance, “I will have my revenge on you! None will keep me from my…excuse me pretty lady, what’s your name?”
“Naruko Uzumaki,” Naruko said, awed by the stupidity she was watching.
“None will keep me from my Naruko-chan! So swears Konohamaru Sarutobi!”
And then the academy student vanished in a cloud of smoke. Well, he created a cloud of smoke and stood their coughing, because he used too much gunpowder.
Hinata and Naruko stared for a few seconds, then fled before Konohamaru had a chance to recover.
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(Posted Fri, 15 Jul 2011 04:23)
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