'Today is as good a day to die as any.'

Technically true, but Suzaku Nara hadn't really planned on being killed by a six year-old child. Oh, he understood why but the who and how were...troublesome.

Kosuke was out of town on a mission and Dazaifu had helpfully volunteered his services as a babysitter for the two day mission. Granted, her civilian job saw her working longer hours than him (usually) and Suzaku, in turn, volunteered Yōshoku for the vast majority of the work that babysitting entailed but...why him?

They didn't even have kids!

He quickly wiped that thought from his head before it could take root: Dazaifu had been hinting that she had no long-term project at the museum for the moment and could take a year or two off for maternal purposes if needed.

Still, it wasn't his wife that had requested he put Naruto into a flight or fight response. That had been Shikaku.

Naruto didn't seem to realize that 'flight' was one of the two options.

Generally Naruto loved the liveliness that was a large city, but that didn't mean he couldn't also enjoy the great outdoors as well-at least when it wasn't boring.

At the moment, he may have preferred boredom.

"Bright Fawn, run!"

A whip like tendril of shadowed earth reached up from his right as Yōshoku fought off two mud demons behind him. Naruto scrambled under a branch as he whipped himself around one of the smaller trees and threw a pellet at their attacker.

Smoke exploded outwards as Naruto let loose a yip of elation, "Ha! Take that you stu..."

The whip burst out of the smoke entirely intact and struck Naruto hard on both calves, "Stupid eh? Did you really think standing still in victory was a good idea? Are you actively trying to die?"

Suzaku's taunt prodded Naruto back into action even as the pain in his legs hobbled his movement severely.

Naruto growled as he glanced at where Yōshoku gallantly held off his two opponents.

"You really should run." Suzaku's grin darkened as shadow and fire dribbled from his mouth and nostrils, "You are too slow, too weak…" the shadow and fire curled around his body before it coalesced into a moon-shaped polearm that disturbingly resembled his hair, "and as has already been shown, simply too stupid to beat me!"

The man was scary! Earth, fire and shadow danced across his form as the sunlight flickered through the tree leaves and backlit him in additional patches of light and darkness. Naruto tried to keep his legs moving even as his brain stalled. He just couldn't take his eyes off of Suzaku.

"Bright Fawn, look at me!" The deep words were spoken in a voice Naruto didn't quite recognize even as he knew it came from Yōshoku. The words almost physically turned Naruto towards the Shadow Deer.

Everything slowed down as Naruto's stared into a pair of burning eyes and his mind reached a clarity he had never felt before.

A muted light appeared to glow just underneath Yōshoku's skin.

The two mud demons that had been attacking him slowly crumbled back into the earth.

Light burned through Yōshoku in wisps of luminescent shadow.

Naruto gawked wide-eyed as a large orange-red fox started to grin while it waved its tails behind it.

The radiant shadow started to fuse together just in front of Yōshoku's foreleg.

The fox's grin morphed into one of anger as his tails thrust towards Naruto.

A child of light stood with one hand brushing the Shadow Deer's flank, "Afraid… yes. Courage though. Hatred? Yet to be determined. Temper!" the words were spoken in an absolutely flat, ethereal tone, "Pain, passion... Fidelity."

Naruto blinked.

So what if Suzaku was kind of scary right now? Yōshoku was helping him, there was no way he'd just run!

Yeah, he'd do it. Otter said to only use it as a last resort but he figured this had to count...

Naruto pulled out another small pellet and, legs still smarting, charged straight towards Suzaku. He'd only get one chance but he was Naruto, there was no way he'd miss! He skid to a halt even as his arm pulled back and finally whipped his entire body forward.

The pellet flew through the air at incredible speed until… the polearm cut across Suzaku in a perfect arc, slashing the pellet cleanly in two.

Naruto grinned as he hopped up and down, "Hahaha! Take that Suzaku Demon!"

Suzaku looked down at himself where orange paint had splattered from the pellet across his entire upper and lower torso with a clean diagonal slash of clothing bisecting the two colorful stripes.

Shadow and fire tumbled away even as he fell to his knees, "No, how could this happen?" One arm slammed into the ground as he drooped further, "I'm too young to die!" Suzaku flopped onto his side for a moment before sitting upright as he gasped for air once more, "Perhaps a divorce shall save me from the monster to come?" He looked to recover some colour in his face before it all drained away, "But then who will do all the chores? All the work?" Suzaku looked torn between two thoughts before once more falling to the forest floor, "Death calls me, I must heed its call."

Naruto ran around in a victory dance, injured legs completely forgotten before running over to Yōshoku, "We won! Oh yeah, we beat the evil demon-we totally whupped his..."

"Don't finish that sentence! Dazaifu might be nearby." A dead voice piped up from his spot on the ground.

This time it was Naruto who paled, "butt."

Yōshoku shook his antlers and chortled lightly, "We should totally brush my fur down in honour of this victory." He said in a perfect non-sequitur.

Naruto, of course, vigorously agreed and followed the Shadow Deer back to his clearing.

"Well?" After a moment Suzaku rose and looked up at a random tree.

Shikaku appeared, walking down the trunk of the tree while he thought over the encounter.

"I wasn't expecting Yōshoku to use the Mystic Art: Omoikane on the boy. Had I known he was willing to do so I would have asked earlier."

Suzaku shrugged, "I was just as surprised as you." Suzaku looked to where the two had walked off, "Actually, while I expect Yōshoku will be exhausted for a few days, for some reason he has taken the boy into his herd so in retrospect perhaps it is not as surprising."

"I would be interested in what the...Naruto saw. I couldn't be sure, but for a moment…" Shikaku looked blankly at the clouds before refocusing, "But that is not for us to know. I cannot trust Yōshoku's judgement alone, but his friendship with Naruto is still telling. Even before Omoikane was used, I believe I would judge him fit to join the daycare until the academy starts."

The two Nara started to wander back to their domiciles as they talked, "While kids can be meaner and cause greater hurt than you did, he reacted better than many children might under the circumstances. I can't say I'm looking forward to him being in the same room as my Shikamaru but I will not deny it either."

As they left the forest and thought about the chores before them, they simultaneously turned right, "Go and Tea?"

"Yep, I'm pretty stressed after all that though, I'd better add something to my tea, for my health of course..."

Shikaku simply nodded amiably.

Kōjin Saburo could never, would never, have dreamed he could live. There was only revenge, only justice. He had died just as surely as the twenty-three men and women under his command. The only reason he had, technically, lived beyond that day was that he had made the impossible choice to save whoever he could with the four people still capable of movement in his platoon rather than kill as many of the enemy as he could.

Only when the five of them had burst into a civilian hospital had they realized that only one of the wounded they had carried through the night remained alive.

Nine days later he was told to stand down, Konoha and Iwa were in the process of negotiations.

… Negotiations.

He hadn't set foot in Iwa since.

Instead he and Heiko had followed a rumor that one of The Bastard's students had died.

Even now, Saburo couldn't help but grin as his eye flashed red. The boy had died, eventually.

It really was amazing how resilient human beings could be.

But even as his eye flared he smiled again, this time, somehow, untainted.

Lovingly.

Full of life.

His baby girl was about to fall right about...now.

Which meant that was the farthest she had ever gotten on her own two wobbly legs.

"Darling," Kaiyo poked her head around the corner, "Kiko will survive the five minutes it will take you to clean the floors."

There was some irony there. Although he daren't use that word for the situation aloud in front of Kaiyo. He would never understand what she meant by the 'vernacular misrepresentation of words'…

Six years ago, Heiko and the twins had enacted the greatest atrocity in Konoha's history under his leadership with only minimal help from the snake, and now he was scrubbing the floor while he tried to keep one eye on his quickly mobilizing child.

It had taken him several years to master his Sharingan while Heiko developed a technique they could only hope would counter The Bastard. They had picked up the twins along the way for their reverse transportation sealing abilities and like-minded hatred of Konoha.

It had taken another year of disciplined execution of the same maneuver again and again, while failing to achieve a level they would cause them to actually succeed, before the snake had given them the last piece of the puzzle.

After their deaths, he had wandered for another two years. Two years of wandering as a living dead man, despite their overall success.

Kaiyo had changed that as she refused to let even a stranger die in the tiny village he had chosen to be buried in. She had argued, pushed, cajoled, yelled and loved him for years...and after all that, it had taken Kiko ten seconds to bring him back to the land of the living.

"Come on gramps!"

Kosuke followed at a sedate pace. He supposed being that excited about going to school, whatever they were calling it, was a good thing. But that was no reason to not enjoy the journey it took to get there.

'We'll see if he's this excited a week from now.'

To be fair, the daycare the Nara's provided would not resemble the few years of civilian schooling he had received prior to his acceptance into the academy. He had been informed that subjects such as reading and maths would be covered but only as an auxiliary to whatever the children were taught in their homes. Obviously he didn't know precisely how they did things, but he thought it was likely to be quite practical, educational and fun rather than a lot of desks, tests and addresses from stressed out teachers.

They had requested him for several excursions with the kids, similar to his yearly survival training at the academy, in which he had taught basic geometry, trigonometry and triangulation among other survival skills… to kids as young as three. And they had mostly picked the concepts up with relative ease.

Kosuke looked around for a teacher to officially pass the responsibility of Naruto's care for the day while his young charge… charged towards a group of children to introduce himself.

"Miss Yamanaka?"

The blonde turned to Kosuke, "It's Mrs. Ando now." Her entire being seemed to radiate happiness as she smiled at Kosuke.

"Ah, congratulations." Kosuke paused somewhat awkwardly before continuing, "Is there anything I need to know or do?"

"Shouta dear," She called out loudly to one of her young charges, "could you go get a pamphlet for this gentleman? It should be just inside the shed on the left."

She turned back to Kosuke, "First we'll have to take your signature if you don't mind?" She pulled out a small strip of paper from her pouch and moved to place it over his forearm.

Kosuke waited patiently for her to finish even as he wondered what she was doing (having been an avowed bachelor his entire life).

"This will allow us to recognize you whenever you come to pick up..." She looked at a clipboard quickly, "Naruto from our care. If you have anyone else who is allowed to retrieve him you'll have to come by with them to have the same procedure done for them." She pulled the strip of paper off and smiled, "That should do it."

"Thank you, Shouta." She smiled as she gave Kosuke a small pamphlet, "Everything else should be in there. I would like to reiterate that, while we are open all day, the use of our overnight oversight is for emergencies only and childcare during longer missions falls under your own responsibility. Should you hire a Genin team, we do keep constant updates on their signatures and would accept their oversight on condition they provide an official scroll with your own signature."

"Did you have any questions Mr. Maruboshi?"

Even as she gave, what Kosuke could only assume was a rote message (and he imagined one that lazier parents might need to be reminded of more than once), she couldn't stop grinning.

"No, thank you for accepting Naruto into your care." Kosuke bowed slightly as he prepared to leave, "And congratulations once again Mrs. Ando."

As he left he gave a lazy wave towards Naruto who was completely engrossed in whatever the other children were doing and didn't even notice.

Naruto grinned as he looked around. Uncle Suzaku had been really scary yesterday, like really scary... but so cool! He couldn't wait to join the academy and learn to be that cool himself but he wasn't going to waste his precious mind thinking about the future (where he would, of course, be scarily cool himself!), he had people to meet and play with right now!

And so, with his one-track mind he barely noticed when gramps left, "Hi guys, what'cha doing?"

The three girls he had joined giggled, one of them stuck out her tongue at Naruto, "We're girls!"

Naruto grinned, "Yeah?" he stuck his tongue out in response, "So what prank are you pulling, and can I join?" He saluted, fist to heart, "I promise not to tell!"

Had Otter been there, she would have been proud to learn 'girl' meant 'awesome pranks' for the young Naruto. His interactions had been quite limited with girls but, surprisingly perhaps, in this case it worked out perfectly.

"Oh… oh! Just a second."

The oldest of the three, a Yamanaka, grinned as she gathered the other two girls into a huddle. "I think I know just how to beat Shikamaru this time!" She whispered conspiratorially. The second Yamanaka shook her head, "But he's a boy!" "Oh come on, this is pure psychological warfare here! And he's so small and cute!" "But he's a boy!" the smaller of the two whined. The third spoke up for the first time, "Hurry, the boys'll be rounding the house in a couple minutes." "More likely Shikamaru got to the other side of the running path and decided to take a nap!" the second girl muttered. The first took immediate advantage of her tone, "Just think how he'll look when we pull this… prank on him."

Naruto waited patiently as the three quietly talked, he knew the importance of keeping conspiracies (a word he had quickly added to his vocabulary once learned) in specific cells on a need-to-know basis!

"Alright," the oldest one held her hand out to him in a formal manner, "I'm Yamanaka Asagao and this is Yamanaka Ino and Ueda Utano."

Naruto gravely accepted her offer of alliance, "I'm Uzumaki Naruto."

"Well Naruto," a predatory grin appeared on her face as she pulled him forward into the small group, "Here's what we're going to do!"

Naruto frowned as he threw the ball lightly against the shed, careful to keep his mannerisms even and downcast.

"...no way dude! This is so much easier." The four boys came into sight shortly after the drifting voices had given Naruto all the warning he had needed.

The youngest boy, maybe four, breathed in and out heavily as he puffed, "Slow down . . please."

The first voice, a well-muscled boy maybe a year or two older than himself turned and ran backwards as he faced the three boys behind him, "Oh come on, why'd you invite him along anyways Shika? Oh right, probably so you wouldn't have to run as hard."

"I already told you," The skinny boy with dark hair replied, "I hate running laps like this. It won't really help me."

"So the obvious solution is to run those stupid wind sprints? Your crazy!"

"I don't want to run wind sprints," the boy grimaced as he slowed down even more to keep pace with the youngest along with the fourth boy (an Akimichi if Naruto had to guess based on the baby-fat the boy retained), "but at least they aren't completely troublesome as they have an actual use-like keeping me alive."

"Whatever, I could run these laps all day and not get tired at the speed you go!"

Naruto was trying to appear not to pay attention so he wasn't sure but he thought he heard a muttered, 'you just made my point.'

Mrs. Ando walked over, "Alright, good job, especially you Naoko." She patted the youngest of the four on the head as she gave each of them some water. "The girls are ready for a new round of truth and lie."

"Ha, sweet. Shika has never lost, we'll be sure to win this!"

The aforementioned Shikamaru sighed, both at the troublesome task and the familiar use of his name by someone he really didn't think to highly of. "Fine, let's get this over with."

He started to walk over to the three waiting girls before glancing briefly around and muttering something to the Akimichi.

"Ok, hmm. Ino, are you pretty?"

The question was asked in quiet tone, a monotone of doldrums so as to elicit a specific response, which the boy got immediately... in a shriek, "What? You think I'm not pretty do ya Shikamaru, of course I'm pretty you little….boy!" the insult was not the most well thought-out response as the older Yamanaka tried, and failed to get her attention before she fully answered. "What?" The blonde glared at her friend.

"Oh…" The gaze quickly transferred back to the original source of her ire, "that's not fair!"

"Whatever. Asagao, do you have the scroll?"

The oldest Yamanaka glanced at Ino and shook her head despondently, "Yes."

Naruto continued to bounce his ball against the shed until he noticed the Akimichi approach him, "Hey, want to join me?" he asked with what, he hoped, was an non-expectant tone mixed with a touch of hope.

"Well, I think you can join us if you wanted." The Akimichi smiled kindly, "Um, I don't suppose you saw which girl had a scroll, about this big," he showed the dimensions with his hand, "did you?"

"Oh. I'm not really sure, but it was definitely one of the blond-haired ones!"

"Thanks. I'm Akimichi Choji by the way."

"Oh yeah? Akimichi are all really awesome! I'm Uzumaki Naruto."

Choji looked a bit surprised at the compliment but smiled, "Come on and join us."

As Choji turned around Naruto made sure the Shikamaru boy wasn't looking in his direction before giving a thumbs up to the girls.

He barely turned it into a wave as the skinny kid (not that Naruto was one to talk about being skinny) turned towards his friend and they had a brief conference.

"Meh, just to make sure I'll ask a few more questions."

"Oh come on, if the new kid is right it's clearly Ino." The older boy groused.

"It's troublesome, but hearsay isn't always fact."

The interrogation lasted a few more minutes before Shikamaru nodded to himself, "Ok, Ino has the scroll."

"Finally, I told you that ages ago."

The group turned to Mrs. Ando and she smiled, "Very good deduction on your part and excellent information gathering." She waited a moment, "Although still incorrect."

All four boys gaped at her as they heard that word for the first time in relation to Shikamaru. The girls, meanwhile, simply smirked.

Shikamaru quickly sat down and began to compose his line of interrogation in his head, "Were they allowed to cheat? They used two lies in a single pairing on my second and fourth que…" Even as he looked to Mrs. Ando to see if his guess that they had been allowed to cheat was a possibility his mind spun through the other possibilities one more time in an effort to prove himself wrong, 'Truth, lie. Lie, lie. Truth, Lie. Truth, Truth... Except if the third question were Truth. In that case…'

"The blond hair… the…" Shikamaru's head slowed turned from Ino to Asagao to… Naruto if he remembered when he briefly met him at Uncle's house.

"Naruto has the scroll?!" The statement was more than a question as the information settled steadfastly through the checks and balances of his mind.

"Correct on the second guess, very good. Still, Asagao, Ino, Utano and Naruto won that round. Better luck next time boys!" Mrs. Ando allowed herself a half-celebratory grin before returning to a neutral third party smile.

"Yeah girls, we rocked!"

"Dude, you're a guy."

"Obviously?"

"Whatever, I'm going to go work on my kata."

Naruto shared high-fives with the three girls before grinning at the three remaining boys, "That was fun, what are we going to do next?" "Oh, I'm Uzumaki Naruto."

Shikamaru muttered under his breath, 'I'm pretty sure I'm going to regret this, way too much energy...' "Nara Shikamaru, you met Choji already? And this is Naoko Akimichi."

The foursome had traveled four days outside of Konoha before they stopped for a week. They were still well within the territory of Fire but within several days journey of the Land of Forests. Kinoe was a registered Ninja of Konoha so they weren't particularly hiding as they trained, he just happened to have picked a location that would almost certainly not see any civilians in a whole year and the likelihood of a Konoha patrol was almost as low.

"Sora, what is the most difficult mission for a Ninja?"

Shin and Sai bear-crawled to the first tree while Sora stood at attention.

"Assassination." While his body remained motionless, his brain and tongue betrayed him slightly as he quietly muttered 'obviously' under his breath.

"Wrong." Kinoe released a slight amount of killer intent enter his voice, "Sora, what is the most difficult mission for a Ninja?"

Sora barely restrained a growl as he watched Shin reach the tree and start to climb it, Sai was only a half-step behind. 'Focus! But assassination was the right answer-it's the culmination of a Ninja's training! No, he'd already… fine' "Infiltration." His tone didn't convey the certainty he had felt on his first answer but it was a vague enough answer to accommodate any number of thoughts his Sensei might have in mind, from spying to seduction.

"Wrong."

Sora glanced over at the tree again, Shin was acrobatically shooting up the tree while Sai tried to catch up. Of course Sai would show off by clambering up the main trunk like an ant using his chakra control. Afterwards he'd probably just pretend it was perfectly normal. Sora, on the other hand was perfectly content to smirk as Sai started to slide back down. 'Mister perfect, my ass.'

The smirk fell from his face as a wooden switch connected with his side, "Sora, why were you punished?" Kinoe got right in his face. Perhaps it was a little intimidating, but it also looked like a pleasant thing to punch.

Shin grabbed the flag and slid down the trunk in seconds, slowing his fall by increasing his chakra connection as he neared the ground.

This time Sora did growl, "Because you ask stupid questions."

Kinoe smiled.

Only then did Sora's mind catch up to his tongue.

Shin skidded to a halt and placed the flag cautiously on the switch.

The smile remained for a half-second. And yes, it was more than a little intimidating.

"Thirty seconds." Kinoe motioned towards the water before flashing a hundred meters away and dropping the flag in a hole he quickly made and covered back up.

"Walking burpees-3, 2, 1"

The three dropped to the ground, "Shin," The oldest of the three immediately stood to attention, forfeiting the burpee he had half-completed, "Why was Sora punished?"

Sora and Sai managed two burpees, and two meters closer to the flag, before Shin decided on his reply, "I was not paying enough attention to the task beyond retrieving the flag and have insufficient data to answer that question."

Kinoe nodded, "Acceptable in part, three questions."

Shin was surprised but filed the information away. Sora looked back incredulously and not a little bit angry before noticing that Sai was now pulling ahead.

"Because he answered incorrectly?"

"No."

Shin nodded, Kinoe generally did not punish due to mistakes (at least not until after the first several attempts.) He also generally didn't punish vindictively, so…

"Because he lost control?"

Kinoe waved his hand in a circle, "Specifics?"

Shin didn't have to think long on this one, Kinoe allowed mistakes, but after a lesson was learned he fully expected it to remain learned, "He acted precipitously on his emotions, spurred on by his competitive nature?"

Kinoe hid a smile, trust Shin to answer like that. He and Sai got along way to well and seemed to spur each other on to use some big word they had read in manual from their readings. If they hadn't been expected to pair up together long-term it would be a problem. The smile may have looked a little too much like a grimace as Shin very carefully did not move a muscle. After all, Shin and Sai would make an excellent long-term pairing… but so would Kinoe and Sora.

"Correct, 10 meters."

Shin gratefully moved into place as he started his first burpee, only a few meters behind the other two. Had he been paying enough attention during the previous exercise as he ought to have he would have been well ahead of them.

"Sai, what is the most difficult mission for a Ninja?"

Sai stopped and stood at attention while Sora continued to sweat and pulled ahead and Shin, relatively rested, blew past him. "Ninja's are best known for assassinations and best paid for information through spying and its various derivatives, however, the protection detail and bodyguard missions are the hardest missions a Ninja can receive." The words flowed monotonously as if they had been rote. "In fact, quite a few companies and even governments have decided to hire Samurai for said jobs as they are generally more amenable and better trained for longstanding protection details."

The kid was six. If he weren't one of Danzo's, Kinoe would probably say he needed to lighten up and get out more. Than again, Kinoe didn't really have much to say in regards to being a kid, or getting out for that matter. 'Maybe I should look up Kakashi after this mission and visit a bar. He always manages to create a hilarious situation. Better than Fu talking my ear off…'

"Correct, 7 meters. Next time answer the question directly. Oh, and if you ever do manage to find a word I don't know and use it in a report, your remuneration might be… ugly." He smiled winningly at the boy as he jogged off.

Mirrors were such a useful tool for a Ninja! He had practiced his smiles everyday for a month in front of one before he was satisfied with five similar, but very different smiles.

Meanwhile, Sora was fuming. Whether it was because his failure of a father had been a bodyguard or because Sai had insinuated even Samurai were better than his failure of a father was unclear, but when Sai ran past him (despite his long-winded answer) Sora started to turn red.

"Mission, Echo!" Kinoe snapped off the words, fully expecting the absolute attention of the three boys. He got it as all three immediately stood to attention before him, even Sora. "Shin, civilian. Sora, guard the civilian for two minutes. Sai and I will assassinate the target." The echo designation insured they knew it was a training exercise and would not literally try to kill Shin. Had he used a primary designation, they were supposed to do as commanded no matter the command.

The four sprang into action while Shin, the most experienced of the younger three (at least with bodyguard protocol), complained loudly and yelled in paranoid fear.

Kinoe swayed to his left before he bolted to his right and started to make quite a scene of attacking Sora with alternating waves of earth and wood.

A shriek of pain followed by a dramatic death caught Sora's attention as he turned and saw a black snake inject 'poison' into his 'client'. The fight has lasted a full 17 seconds.

Kinoe nodded approvingly to Sora, "I believe an average engagement for a skirmish of this magnitude would generally be less than 10 seconds." He motioned towards the prone civilian, "While many assassination missions rely on a single assassin to actually kill the target, a proper protection detail must remember that bodyguards cost a lot more in the long term and generally assassinations are handled by an entire team that, as often as not, can outskill their competition simply through sheer economy of pricing." This time Kinoe motioned to Shin, "That is one reason why, after you get past the cheap muscle, you should never let your guard down. If your opponent is a bodyguard for anything of true importance, they are likely the best trained opponent you will ever face-they have to be."

Kinoe noted that Sora had calmed down and had started to understand that particular lesson. He did note a look of competitive pride flash across his face as he briefly glanced at Sora though. Just lovely, Sora normally only got worked up when around Sai. 'Hopefully his stubborn pride will actually become useful at some point… why am I the one that needs to pair with him!' He continued to grumble in his mind as he turned to his three proteges, "The flag won't magically appear in my hand…"

The three immediately returned to their positions and finished up the exercise that he had interrupted. 'Meh, if Sora had been part of the normal program he would have been dropped immediately, or at least put into remedial emotional training. Why me?' The answer to that was a little to apparent in the wood he retrieved for later use and the loss of his own childhood and innocence.

After several minutes Sai returned with the flag while Sora, surprise surprise, glared at him. Evidently Sai hadn't finished the exercise quite as fast as the other two, but had thought ahead and used an ink mole to retrieve the flag even as they were sweating their way across the field.

After the trio had been given their menial tasks to prepare for dinner he set up a perimeter and began his customary evening lecture, "While protection detail may be the hardest job for a Ninja, infiltration, and more specifically, information and misinformation can ruin nations. For the next week you will have a single strategic assignment for the evenings." He consciously ignored any misgivings he may have had, "You will discuss amongst yourselves, and you may also consult with me, a way to plant evidence of a third party's exclusive involvement in an assassination. For the sake of this exercise, the third party will be…" he paused to think and very non-chalantly said, "Hmm, let's say an Uchiha?"

A/N: Whew, another chapter. Someone mentioned they wanted to see more of a perspective from Naruto in the story. Looking at it, I completely agreed and hope this chapter helped.

However, I would like to remind people that Naruto often makes a terrible protagonist simply due to his age. Protagonists are supposed to interact with the Antagonist and proactively move the story along… not react to events they had nothing to do with and can't really fix without pure luck and a main character's will to survive anything.

Seeing as this is an AU story, the protagonist and antagonist may be quite different than you might think. Or they might be exactly who you think… I guess we'll have to see? :)