"Hang on," said Naruto, reaching into a pocket, pulling out a rolled up carpet, and then flicking it out so that it hung in the air as if on an invisible floor.
"AGHH!" said Sakura, falling over.
Kakashi and Naruto both stared at her for a moment.
"What's with her?" asked Naruto finally.
"Kids these days," sighed Kakashi, who then noticed Sasuke was already up on the carpet - sitting on one end and apparently brooding.
Kakashi hopped up, checked the slight give in the carpet's surface, but decided what the heck.
Naruto got up on the carpet, made a handsign, and the carpet began ascending. "Had to stop and stabilize the square."
"Wise precaution," said Kakashi.
A very startled bird squawked at them as they passed it.
"There," said Kakashi after they'd ascended a pretty good distance.
Naruto peered in the direction Kakashi was pointing, nodded, and then made another couple of handsigns. The square of blackness appeared alongside them briefly, then shot off towards that mountain.
"There's nothing around that mountain for roughly a hundred miles," said Kakashi.
"How far away is it?" asked Sasuke, not used to seeing things from this angle.
"About a hundred and ten miles," said Kakashi.
"It's beginning to destabilize," said Naruto. "See the light forming along the edges?"
"Okay, drop us closer to the ground until it destabilizes, then take us back up and we'll know how dangerous the technique is," said Kakashi.
"If you say so," said Naruto, dropping them back down.
Things were briefly silent, then there was a very loud noise. The earth shook, tree limbs came down. A wall of dust swept past.
"Back up," suggested Kakashi.
After getting to approximately the same height as before, Sasuke decided it was his job to point out the obvious. "Where's the mountain?"
"That big column of dust and smoke would be my guess," said Kakashi. "Naruto?"
"Yeah?" asked Naruto.
"Consider this a Forbidden Technique. Only to be used to take out bandit encampments and enemy fortifications." Kakashi could actually think of several other uses for that technique, but that would start.
"Yeah, I don't think I'll be using that one in the village to deal with my garbage anymore," noted Naruto.
Tokumi twitched a few times and considered the thundering sound of a river emptying itself into a large crater.
As soon as she got her shaking under control, she wrote out a spy report and summoned a pigeon to carry it back to Iwa.
She'd seen some sort of observation platform rising up, using her Hawk's Eyes jutsu as part of her mission to observe Konoha. She'd made out the platform, glimpsed the three on it, and had been in the process of cursing the one who'd had a resemblance to the Yellow Flash when the motion of something through the air had set off danger reflexes.
Which she was now giving great thanks to. She was young and had dreams that did not involve dying for her village. Not quite yet at any rate. Much better if she got someone else to die for THEIR village and she went on living. Which wasn't particularly a ninja way of looking at things, but it really did take all kinds - didn't it?
Watching the bird fly away, Tokumi tried to angle closer to get a better look at the crater.
"Naruto did what?" asked Sakura.
"Blew up a mountain, created a crater of about four miles across from the look of it," said Kakashi, who'd briefly used his Sharingan for pure visual acuity. "No idea how deep, but I'd guess about a half-mile or so. Probably be a lake soon."
Sasuke put a hand. "Can I learn that?"
"No," said Kakashi firmly. "Oh, and kids? Good teamwork means that when Naruto is toying with the forces of creation and destruction - kill anything that looks like it's going to disturb him."
"Kill?" asked Sakura.
"Do you want to be where a mountain-destroying explosion is going to go off?" asked Kakashi.
"Uhm, no," admitted Sakura.
"Do you have anything to do this mission with that doesn't carry the possibility of things exploding?" Kakashi asked Naruto.
"Uhm, yeah, let's try THIS!" said Naruto, scribbling things out onto patches of flat ground.
"Something else you haven't practiced?" asked Sasuke, ready to duck and cover.
Hiruzen Sarutobi looked at his ANBU with a completely flat expression. "Mount Tuba."
"Gone," said Ferret.
"I'll have to see about getting Team 7 a C-Rank as soon as they meet the '25 D-Rank' requirement," said the Hokage aloud. "Ferret, I'm counting on you to scout the area out and determine the extent of damage. If there are any farms downstream of the area that will be negatively impacted by the time where that river is diverted. Things like that."
"Sir," responded Ferret, vanishing from the office to comply.
"Lion, Tiger, Bear," said the Hokage. "Someone keep an eye on Team 7 and let me know when they're casually violating the laws of physics, common sense, and generally breaking reality."
"Sir," said the three named ANBU as they flickered away.
"Finally, time for some light reading," said the Hokage, opening one drawer and pulling an orange-covered book out.
"So this is some form of summons?" asked Kakashi as he looked over the elaborate lines in the dirt.
"Yeah," said Naruto, checking the lines. He went over to one section, scrutinized it briefly, seemed to think about it briefly, then scuffed it out and rewrote that section.
Sakura peered over the elaborate thing. They hadn't covered fuuinjutsu that much in the Academy. Most shinobi simply bought storage and explosive seals. It was pretty much a specialized field - particularly the upper level stuff.
Sasuke glanced over the thing, frowning. He had just seen ample evidence that whatever else the dead-last of the class might have up his sleeve - devastating destructive power was possibly involved. He wanted that sort of thing himself and was beginning to consider that maybe he shouldn't have dismissed the field of fuuinjutsu as largely useless.
"There we go," said Naruto, bringing a foot down hard. Each of the lines in the dirt shifted to gleam like stone. "Don't stand in any of those circles. Don't break a line. Don't attack any of the spirits that I'm calling."
"'Spirits'?" asked Kakashi.
Naruto nodded absently and slapped the ground where two gear-shapes met. "Contract invoked!"
Shapes began pulling themselves out of the ground. Gnarled wooden shapes that were vaguely humanoid in appearance, literal stick figures, that looked over each of the shinobi briefly before all six focussed their attentions on one.
"Wha-what?" asked Sakura as they moved to surround her.
"Girl-child."
"Wha?" repeated Sakura.
"Confirmation."
"Insufficient pattern."
"Summoner?"
"Male-child"
"Compare. Sort. Blend. Sufficient?"
The other five nodded, then all six began shifting in form.
"What?!" asked Sakura after they'd finished shapechanging.
"Interesting," said Naruto.
They looked vaguely like adult female versions of Naruto, if one allowed for the green eyes and hair. And that their proportions were not exactly normal, being somewhat exaggerated in certain areas.
"WHY ARE THEY NAKED?!" demanded Sakura.
"They're dryads," said Naruto. "Spirits of wood. Expecting them to have human customs down right off the bat doesn't sound realistic."
"'Dryads'? 'Wood spirits'? 'Realistic'?" asked Sakura.
"Okay, you guys," said Naruto to the dryads. "This area is supposed to be forest. See what you can do, okay?"
Six snappy salutes. Kakashi fumbled briefly at his book, then watched as the giggling tree nymphs skipped around to examine the area.
Sakura gaped, turning a brilliant red that actually went well with her hair coloration. This turned up a couple of degrees when one went over and hugged her. From the giggles and the way others waited their turn, her reaction was amusing to them.
Sasuke was blushing a bit too, but just found a rock to sit on and brood about existence.
Naruto pulled out a book and began studying it.
"This is beginning to get strange," said Kakashi after a minute.
"GET THEM TO PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!" demanded Sakura finally. That she wanted to avoid any more incidents of Marshmallow Hell was left unsaid, mainly because she thought it might trigger another bout of it.
SHOMPF!
That drew both the attention of both Kakashi and Sasuke, as a tree growing out of the ground at such speed that it had caught Sakura in its branches and currently had her twenty feet up inside three seconds was a bit unusual.
"So, they know Wood Release?" asked Kakashi, who then covered his face with his book. "Tree nymphs. Right. Okay. I tell you what, I'm going to introduce this team to the joys of paperwork rather than fill all this out myself. Who will be filling out the forms on this?"
"Sakura has the best handwriting," said Naruto.
"HEY!" protested someone way up in a tree.
"Seconded," said Sasuke, not seeing how filling out paperwork would help him in his goals at all.
"HEY!!" protested someone still up a tree.
"Motion passes," said Kakashi. "Congratulations, Sakura."
"Gee, thanks," called out Sakura, showing she had at least a basic grasp of the fine art of sarcasm.
"You're welcome," said Naruto absently as he continued reading.
"I don't suppose anyone can get me down from here?" asked Sakura. "This tree is still growing."
There was the sound of a branch cracking.
"Oh hell," said Sakura, clearly despite her current distance.
Kakashi sighed and walked up the tree, then back down with a burden.
And that was how Kakashi Hatake found himself explaining the ninja art of tree-walking on his first day with his new team.
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(Posted Sat, 14 Jun 2014 17:15)
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