This had to be completely without trace, other than those traces that would be planted after the strike.
This late at night, there was little activity. While ninja could be up and active at any hour, most civilians and genin would be inactive. Which, of course, was why the ramen stand was shutting itself down for the night and would normally re-open a little before mid-day.
The business owner would die, leaving the young and impressionable daughter in charge of the shop. She'd go through a period of mourning for her father and then she'd find a boyfriend who could help out. That the boyfriend would be working for ROOT would be a secret of course. Evidence would be planted that Ayame would start trying to poison the child, and that she blamed him for her father's death.
As these were mere civilians, events up until the "poisoning attempt" would not be investigated beyond a cursory non-ninja investigation. Once the attempt to poison Uzumaki had been made, things WOULD get investigated a bit more but there were techniques available to make sure that Ayame herself would confess to the crime. Admittedly, if a Yamanaka examined her - such tampering had a chance to be found. So things would have to be arranged to make sure that the Yamanaka mindbenders would be otherwise occupied.
There, the man was alone and walking towards their apartment. The ninja dropped down to the ground and followed the man, looking like just another late-night civilian rushing about on some task. Brushing up against the cook, a tiny needle with a numbing agent mixed with a paralytic venom broke skin. After a few hours, the poison would degrade and leave no trace of itself behind.
The cook would die overnight and Danzo-sama's plan could be appropriately put into motion.
"WARNING"
Ayame groaned as one of Naruto's little gifts, a clockwork nightingale, spoke in its melodious voice. "It's too early for whatever this is."
"Warning," repeated the nightingale. "Lifesigns failing in human designated 'Teuchi'. Respiratory distress noted."
Ayame grumbled for a moment, lifting her pillow as she considered throwing it at the metal bird. At which point what the bird was saying began making sense through her sleep-muddled brain. "Wha?"
"Warning. Lifesigns failing. Heartrate erratic. Respiratory arrest within one minute."
Ayame lifted her head, looking at the bird for a moment. "Whazza EH?!" At which point she went fully awake and was running for her father's room.
She reached him just as he stopped breathing.
"DAD?!" asked Ayame, looking around. "What do I do?"
"Warning. Respiratory arrest. Request immediate medical care be given."
"Well, DO something," commanded Ayame. "I'm a ramen chef. I'm not a doctor."
"Using wireless connection," indicated the bird. "Contacting active medical personnel. Requesting immediate response."
"You can do that?" asked Ayame. "I thought you were just a burglar alarm."
"I didn't even know we HAD a fast-response team," noted Ayame five minutes later.
"Something Uzumaki-san came up with three days ago," said the medic as he continued to work. "Low to median grade medics, apprentice medic-nin, nurses wanting a little extra on their paychecks - an emergency response team that can go to where medical personnel are needed immediately at any time of the day. Still getting all the bugs worked out. Hokage gave it tentative approval. Think mainly he understood that Uzumaki-san is still seeking approval from the masses and something like this might save lives - and that would help out with his little popularity problem."
The other medic frowned at something, taking a break and letting the first medic operate the bag to manually force respiration. "If I didn't know better, I'd think this was Suna King Scorpion Venom - but they can't handle the moisture we have down here."
"Is he going to make it?" asked Ayame.
"We'll have to find out what happened before we can determine that," admitted the one medic. "We'll have to get him into the hospital."
Danzo Shimura considered his options carefully. He had agents in place, he could very easily have the man killed while in the hospital.
The only problem as he saw it was that apparently some of the little "gifts" the boy had given out to his "precious people" were rather more than they appeared.
The rapid-response medical team had apparently come to the boy after he'd observed similar ANBU groups though applied to a very different purpose. Where the ANBU teams would respond to infiltrators or similar ninja-related problems, a medical team which could respond to civilian OR ninja emergencies was both more specific (in what they could/would do) and more general (in that there was a wide number of circumstances to elict a response from them) and also more difficult to discredit.
"How many of these 'nightingale' have been given away?" asked Danzo, glancing back at the bearer of this bad news.
"Seven, Danzo-sama," said the ROOT ninja. "One at Ichiraku's. One at their home. One belonging to Iruka Umino, a chunin teacher. One at the Hokage's tower. One was given to the ANBU operative Cat after she spoke at length with the Uzumaki child about potential medical treatments."
"One moment, 'potential medical treatments'?"
The ROOT-nin nodded. "Yes, sir. She was inquiring about an ANBU who recently had to go to reduced-duty status. Hayate Gekko."
"Ah, him. Continue."
"Two are currently unknown as to location. Another four were requested by the Hokage himself and are expected to be given out as gifts," reported the ROOT-nin.
"Troublesome," indicated Danzo. And it WAS troublesome. That meant they could be anywhere. "Circulate a description of these clockwork birds. Any operation within Konoha should include the destruction of such things in the vicinity as prepwork to take place on mission commencement."
He would have to postpone action until he knew more.
"Okay, next. Not you, Naruto. You've already passed. Next is..."
"Wait a minute! What do you mean he's already passed!" Sakura demanded. "He's missed half the classes!"
Iruka glanced up from where he'd been scribbling notes. "Excuse me?"
"She's got a point, we have to be fair about this," said Mizuki.
"He's already had three successful C-Rank missions and one B-Rank on his record," noted Iruka. "Word from above is that they want him passed and then put on 'mission specialist' track towards chunin instead of with a genin team."
"That may be true," allowed Mizuki, "but other people aren't allowed to break the rules and we really shouldn't be making special exceptions. Sorry, Naruto, but it isn't fair to the others in the class."
Naruto twitched a bit.
"Well then, Naruto. The 'clone' technique." Iruka shrugged.
Naruto glanced at K-9 then shrugged and made a hand-sign. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!"
Iruka blinked as six Naruto stood there. "Kage bunshin? That's a high level technique."
"I mentioned how I needed to be able to keep working at several projects at the same time," explained Naruto. "Jiji let me try this one. Works pretty good for when I have multiple deadlines."
"Well, can't you produce a standard clone?" asked Mizuki.
"No, actually, it never comes out right," said Naruto. "I can produce those, and I can produce holographic images of myself, but the standard technique never seems to work."
"I think that's a pass," said Iruka.
"Hey, Naruto," said Mizuki, walking up to the youth. "You passed the genin test, but there's another test you can take that'll get you fast-tracked to chunin."
"Oh? What's that?" asked Naruto.
"All you have to do is sneak into the Hokage Tower, get a really big scroll that's in the storage room two doors down from the Hokage Office, and meet me outside the village at a woodcutter's shack about a half-mile away."
"Warning, Master. Unsafe levels of BS detected," reported the little robot dog.
"We're a ninja village," Mizuki reminded both of them. "Hidden tests, secret missions, and the like are pretty much a given for ninja."
"Well, that sounds about right," admitted Naruto.
"Bring along a couple of your gadgets though, it should impress the judges," added Mizuki. "Whatever you've got that's new."
"-whatever you've got that's new."
The fan of light with Mizuki's image on it snapped off.
The Hokage sat back in his chair with a sigh. He raised one hand and snapped his fingers.
Four ANBU appeared in blurs of motion.
Pursing his lips for a moment, the Hokage considered and discarded a series of plans. Finally he nodded. "Naruto, meet him at the specified location. I want to find out who else might be in on this, if he's acting alone, and find out where he's planning on going."
"You sure?" asked Naruto.
"How's your fuuinjutsu coming along?" asked the Hokage.
"Pretty good, the fabber can't help with that but it can make the materials easy enough," said Naruto. "That book you got me was a lot of help."
The Hokage nodded. With information constantly working its way from the Fab-1 device to Naruto, he'd steadily gotten more intelligent and his memory had improved. Encouraging his study of fuuinjutsu had been a chance for him to have a second major skillset to bring to his career, and possibly to work into his "tech" skills. "That was the intent. Good to see its working out. If I provide you a large scroll, do you think you can put something suitably interesting in it?"
"There is something I wanted to try," admitted Naruto.
Naruto stared up at his teacher. "I'm... what?"
"The Nine-Tailed Fox! That's why everyone hates you! Including Iruka!" Mizuki smirked down at the kid, waiting for him to go into shock or unleash the beast.
"No, he's not the Kyubi! He's my student!" said Iruka, slumping down with the fuma shuriken in his back.
Fsssst! went a spray along the cut.
"That's biofoam," said Naruto as he wiped the nozzle and put the cannister back in his utility belt. "It'll seal the wound and disinfect it, allows you to heal faster."
"Naruto, you're not the fox," said Iruka.
"I know," said Naruto. "And that's not the kinjutsu scroll."
"WHAT?!" asked Mizuki, unfurling the scroll to check.
A storage seal automatically unsealed itself as soon as it was exposed to air. A couple of metal eggs dropped out, then levitated as if orienting on Mizuki's head.
"Wha?"
SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKK!
Mizuki dropped off the tree limb, retching and covering his head.
"Sonic assault grenades for when you absolutely have to take a prisoner but you don't want to deal with a lot of BS," declared Naruto. "One of my newest items! Now in a short-range version!"
"Naruto, you knew about the fox?" asked Iruka.
"Huh? Oh yeah. Fabber-chan was able to determine the chakra source and Jiji gave me a book on fuuinjutsu. I asked him about it, oh - I guess it was a year or so ago. Said if I'd figured that much out he'd have to tell me the rest. That was the time I was gone for three days straight while I was working through all that." Naruto shrugged. "Looks like he was working alone. Pity."
"That's a 'pity'?" asked Iruka, still trying to follow the student's often disconnected method of thinking.
"Yeah, means he's not connected to the mysterious figure who injured Teuchi-san awhile back," said Naruto. "I was kind of hoping he'd provide some clue there."
"Oh," said Iruka. "So, this was set up to catch potential traitors?"
"That is correct," said an ANBU as he loomed over the twitching Mizuki. "Is he supposed to be foaming from the mouth?"
"I may need to adjust the frequency a bit," admitted Naruto.
"Okay," said Iruka a couple of days later. "Team sorting. Naruto, I've been told you're going to be a specialist with your fuuinjutsu and technojutsu. You'll work with other teams as a specialist on specific missions, and your jonin-sensei will be Tekuno Kanden for purposes of reporting to him and for further development of your ninja skills."
"WHAT?! How does he rate a private tutor?!" demanded Sakura.
"Classified above genin level," said Iruka. "If you want to research it on your own time, that's up to you. Just know there are likely to be consequences. Now, if I can get to the team assignments?"
"Uhm, right," said Sakura, eyeing Naruto and wondering what was going on. Sure, he had those weird gadgets and a dog that was made of metal - but he certainly didn't seem to have any cool or useful skills that she'd seen.
"Kabuto. What of this information about the Uzumaki boy?"
Kabuto stopped trying to eat dinner and lowered the fork. "Should you be in the village?"
"I've heard some fascinating stories about the devices the boy has been building. Any truth to them?"
Kabuto didn't bother looking around. Obviously Orochimaru was hiding in the shadows for a reason. Possibly the whole "love of the dramatic" was part of it, but whatever. "I've seen and worked with the 'bacta tank' - I've acquired a sample of the bacta solution. It's in the scroll marked 'fecal sample data' on my dresser."
"Ah. It works as advertised?"
"Without manipulating chakra, it accelerates healing rates by a factor of ten," said Kabuto. "A patient came in with 70% surface area having severe burns. Normally they'd die of system shock and the related failures. He was the one with the longest period in the tank, and after two weeks was released to more normal care."
"Oh?" asked Orochimaru.
"Even normally if someone somehow survives that degree of burning, they'd be permanently disfigured," pointed out Kabuto. "So - yes. The device works as advertised."
"Interesting. I may have to acquire some of this 'technojutsu' so that it can be properly studied and made use of."
"There's a problem," said Kabuto. "Much of it is something called 'molecular circuitry' - something that can't be easily duplicated outside of the devices Uzumaki has. According to my contacts in ROOT, the devices to make and repair such will not function without Uzumaki's presence."
"If they won't function without him, then they would just be a useless distraction. Still, I'm going to want to take a closer look at some of them."
"One question. How did you manage to get past the sensor web surrounding the village?" asked Kabuto, curious.
"I was provided a means of entry as payment for past services," said Orochimaru with a chuckle.
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(Posted Tue, 01 Oct 2013 17:57)
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