Author's Note: Hey guys. Uhh…..sorry for taking so long. I really don't know what happened. For a while, I told myself that I was just taking a break from writing to cool down. Then a bunch of life stuff got in the way and even though I still had some time to write, I just…..didn't. So yeah, I'm really sorry about that. Pretty soon here I'll be back to school so I might go a bit slow at first, but please trust me to always eventually come back. As I have said before, I will definitely notify you if I am quitting. On the bright side, I like to think that this break has made me more mature and that my writing will be better.

Disclaimer: Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto. Please support the official release.

Important Notes:

• Lots of dialogue early in this, I suggest that you read it so that you don't miss anything.

• In this chapter Gato's base is shown, but it's really weird and hard to explain. It is shown in episode 10 of the anime so you can go look there. It should be somewhere around 18 minutes, give or take about 30 seconds.

Chapter 9: Surprises

The Next Day, Forest Outside of wave

Kakashi scratched the back of his head. "Well you guys already know the tree walking, water walking, and body flicker techniques, so I don't really have any essentials to teach you for now that would help in the fight against Zabuza. Sasuke and Tenten, I'll teach you an elemental ninjutsu that doesn't belong to your affinity so that you have some more variety. Sasuke has fire and lightning jutsu and Tenten, you have a couple of earth jutsu, so it'll be important so that you can be unpredictable."

He turned to Naruto and thought for a moment. "Naruto you already have jutsu from four different elements, so I think that you're good there. I'd say just go ahead and develop your light style and crystal style as much as you can during this week. Those cause quite a bit of damage to your surroundings, so go ahead and work a little bit further away, but still where I can see you."

Naruto nodded and walked off to a space a little bit further away to practice his light ninjutsu.

Kakashi turned back to Sasuke and Tenten. "Alright, let's get to work. Sasuke, I'm going to teach you a wind release jutsu to compliment your fire style. You've seen Naruto use it before. This is a C-rank jutsu called the Gale Palm jutsu. As you probably know, it's a very useful jutsu because not only is it versatile in its usages, but it only requires you to clap your hands together to prepare it, letting you use it quickly and without fear of hand seal interruption."

Kakashi pulled out a few shuriken and threw them at a faraway tree, then he clapped his hands together and caused a powerful gust of wind to fly out from him and propel the shuriken forward, allowing them to dig completely into the tree and a little bit more.

"You see? If you were to combine that with a fire jutsu, it would make it much more lethal. It's an opposing affinity to yours, so it should take up most of your time. I'll describe the process to you in a minute." He said, turning to Tenten.

"Alright, you aren't as elementally focused as Sasuke, and certainly not anywhere near as much as Naruto. Although even though you're a lot more bukijutsu oriented, it's important to have elemental variety. You wouldn't want to run into a wind user who could counter you easily. I also want you to learn a wind style jutsu, but instead of a blunt force jutsu like Sasuke, you'll have one of the more traditional cutting wind jutsu. It's fairly simple in principle, but useful in a combat situation."

Kakashi took a moment to take a breath. "The jutsu is simply called the Wind Slash jutsu. By gathering sharp wind natured chakra over your hand or weapon, you can throw out a small but sharp curve of wind like so."

Kakashi pointed his right hand fingers together and pressed them to each other, raising it to the left side of his head and swiping in a diagonal arc to the right. The result was a three inch slice into the trunk of a thick tree. "Clearly yours won't be that strong with only a week of training, but it's certainly useful. This one requires even less preparation than the one I gave Sasuke, so it should go perfectly with your fast paced use of throwing weapons. Although I also think that throughout the duration of the mission, you should also be practicing with your usage of close range weapons. Your tetsubo would be an efficient weapon to use against wind users." He eye-smiled, happy to help a new student.

Before he could continue explaining the inner workings of the jutsu that he showed them, he noticed Naruto looking over to him in distress, silently calling him over with flashes of worry.

"Hold on a second guys, I'm going to go check on Naruto about something. Just stay here and practice some basic forms that won't consume too much chakra." He said as he began to walk over to Naruto.

Once he arrived, Naruto was looking down again at his hands. "What's up Naruto?"

"Can we move a little bit further away? I don't want them to see me like this."

The two of them walked until they were out of sight of the other two, including Sasuke's Sharingan.

"…..Kakashi-sensei…..I can't use my light style." Naruto said in a distressed tone.

"Damn." Recently Naruto's light style had really begun to take a larger role in his fighting style, so losing it might cause an imbalance. "But I don't understand, how? Do you know why?"

Naruto nodded. "You know how my light chakra works right?"

Kakashi nodded as well. "Of course. You flow your chakra through your soul to purify it, and it becomes light chakra. What about it?"

"…."

"My soul isn't pure anymore. I think it's because I killed those men. It's messing with me. I can't purify my chakra properly. When I try, this happens." Naruto explained in the same distressed tone.

He stretched out his right hand and faced his palm upwards. Just like he had done thousands of times, he flowed his chakra through his soul and into his chakra points on his hands. He formed it how he normally would for his light ball jutsu, but instead of the normally bright and luminescent chakra, an unstable dark purple and blue orb formed instead, wobbling and fizzling out after a few seconds.

"See? Without a pure soul, "purified" chakra can't stay stable. Hell, it can't even be called purified chakra in this state, it's more like diluted chakra. But that isn't the big problem here." He paused with an angry and defeated look.

"Well then what is?"..."Naruto?"

"Kakashi-sensei…..My soul is still connected to all of my chakra pathways, and there are two things that can go wrong with that. Either I die…or the nine-tails is released. It's just a matter of which one happens first."

Kakashi straightened out in surprise. "What?! But why? How is it that bad already?"

Naruto shook his head. "It isn't. But it will be soon. Even if I don't use light ninjutsu anymore, my soul is already opened up to my chakra pathways, and it will slowly poison me. Actually it's even worse for me since my body is used to constantly having contact with a pure soul. It will make my chakra corrosive and more deadly as time goes on until eventually it'll kill me."

"As for the nine-tails, I know because it's been done before. Back when the order was still around, a form of punishment that was used rarely was for them to seal a lesser demon inside of someone, then open up their soul pathways like what the scroll did to me. Those demons were actually just chakra mutations, but that isn't the point. The difference is that they don't implement the threat of death into it, so their tainted soul is introduced to their chakra pathways. As you know a demon seal feeds off of the holder's chakra, so that person's now tainted chakra is mixed in with the seal, weakening it quickly. The only way to stop it is to change yourself and therefore change your soul to be more pure. If they couldn't do it, the demon was able to take control of their body and escape, killing them in the process. Of course no one ever fully purified their soul, but it was a sort of way to help people find some sort of salvation before death." Naruto explained.

"The nine-tails is way more powerful than a simple chakra mutation, so it'll break out with enough weakening of the seal. No amount of altering to the seal can stop the gradual erosion, and overtime it will only degrade faster and faster as more of my chakra is introduced to my soul, until eventually my chakra will naturally take on darker characteristics. My body will start to mutate and change accordingly, and eventually I'll die and release the nine-tails. Even if the world's best seal user were to continuously keep up my seal, my chakra would eventually become too corrosive and they wouldn't be able to do anything."

Naruto was now shaking. "Even if I die first and take the nine-tails with me, it'll just reappear in several years after my death, probably wherever I die. At this rate the most likely destination of my death is….. Konoha."

Kakashi tightened up. The idea of Konoha once again being attacked by the nine-tails was somewhat of a disturbing idea for him. "I…I see. And there's nothing that you can do to stop it? You can't close the pathways to your soul or something?"

"No I can't. The only way would be if my soul were pure again, but I don't see how I can accept death and have a pure soul at the same time."

Kakashi shook his head. "You can worry about that later. Right now you need to focus on your soul being pure. We need to work this out from the start. Tell me Naruto, what makes your soul impure?"

"What do you think? I'm starting to accept killing other people as a part of my life, how could my soul be pure after that?" Naruto said bitterly at he kicked at the ground and loosened some dirt below him.

"Ah, of course." Kakashi sighed. "Well Naruto…..I know that I said otherwise before, but have you considered just…not accepting it?"

"What? Just dealing with the pain all the time?"

Kakashi shook his head. "No, not killing at all. Honestly I messed up everything with that whole thing. I shouldn't have pushed you past killing the first man, or even to kill at all. I suppose that I didn't fully understand the emotional stress that you would go through after that because I'm so used to it. It's something that I do without even thinking, so I miscalculated. Maybe I was wrong, and you should follow your own way."

"But I thought that you said a Hokage would have to accept killing. Isn't that still true?"

"…..Yes it is. I know that your dream means a lot to you, but maybe you should put off being Hokage for now, at least until you can figure out how. I'm not telling you to give up your dream, but just maybe wait a little bit longer. Maybe the world will change and you might be able to become Hokage in the future without killing one day, but right now it's an inevitable fact of the shinobi lifestyle. Is there something else that you could pursue until you figure out how to be Hokage?"

"….."

Naruto sighed. "Well there is one thing I guess. The Order still needs to be restored, and technically I'm the person most suited to do it. Someone else could always do it, but it's customary for a Child of Light to take up the mantle in the case of a fall. I could rebuild the Order again, raising temples and more bases, gathering followers again." He smiled sadly with a hint of hope.

Kakashi nodded. "Yeah, that might be good for now. Like I said, it still might be possible for you to become Hokage in the future. If you become strong enough, it's possible that you could change things. Honestly, I hope you do."

Naruto's head raised. "What do you mean?"

Kakashi looked upwards at the sky reminiscently. "Well there's a dream that Jiraiya of the Sannin has. A dream that one day someone can move the world of shinobi away from its bloody state that it's in right now. He believes that the world is plagued with violence and has long wanted to find a way to bring peace to it. After sensei died, I began to share this dream. I don't want to have to see children kill and be killed, I don't want to see people hold their loved ones in their arms as they die anymore. I don't think that you do either, am I right?"

"Of course not! I want to save everybody!"

Kakashi smiled happily. "Then there you go. Reflect on that and see if maybe that's something you want to pursue, a world of peace. Until then, are you still able to work on other elemental jutsu?"

"Yeah I think that it should be fine as long as I don't purposefully try to purify my chakra. It's still going to advance until I can purify my soul again, but it shouldn't interfere with my other jutsu. I should be absolutely unrestricted for the next few weeks at least. I shouldn't feel any physical effects for a while either." Naruto nodded.

Kakashi started to walk back to Sasuke and Tenten. "Good. I want you to meditate for a while every day and try to figure out how you're going to go forward with this."

Before Kakashi could get far, Naruto spoke again. "Kakashi-sensei…Could you not tell Sasuke and Tenten? I don't want them to know about this. Not Kiba either."

"Of course, but you know that they would support you right?" Kakashi asked curiously.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, but I just want to keep it a secret for now. Hopefully I can get all of this under control fast enough that they won't notice."

"Very well. I'll keep it a secret from them. And Naruto…I'm sorry for what I put you through. I can't go back on that now, but I'll try my best to make up for it. If I'm being completely honest, when I saw you struggling, I froze up. I've never dealt with helping someone with that, and I didn't know what to do. Hell, I still don't' know how to help you completely." The silver haired Jounin said regrettably.

"Its fine, I get why it happened and I don't blame you." Naruto shook his head. "I'm just focusing right now on fixing this whole thing. And I guess that for now I'll just practice my crystal style."

Kakashi nodded and walked away towards Sasuke and Tenten to help them with their own jutsu.

He walked back into the clearing to see Sasuke going through some basic katas and Tenten practicing with her Tetsubo like he suggested. Tenten whipped around and wiped a bead of sweat from her brow. "Hey Kakashi-sensei. What was that about?"

"Oh nothing, Naruto just wanted to show me a new development with his jutsu. Anyway, let's get into the specifics of the jutsu that I showed you." Kakashi said, diverting the topic smoothly.

A Few Hours Later, Tazuna's House

The trio of Genin slumped down at the dinner table tiredly, having expended their chakra for the day. Well, Naruto still had chakra to spare, but it didn't mean that he wasn't tired and hungry.

Kakashi also sat down across from Naruto as Tsunami set the food down on the table and also took a seat.

Everyone began to gather their food and dig in thankfully. Kakashi stopped eating for a moment and weaved his hands together with his elbows on the table and his hands in front of his mouth. "So now that we're all back to working order, let's talk strategy. How should we go forward dealing with Gato?"

Sasuke swallowed and also set down his utensils. "Hmm…Well what about a preemptive strike on their base? From what we've gathered, most if not all of Gato's forces are simple mercenaries, Zabuza and his hunter friend being the only shinobi that we know of."

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, that seems like the most logical choice. After all if we can find their base of operations and hit them before they even know that we're coming, we should be able to at least deal a big blow against Gato. If we just wait, Zabuza will be back up and ready to fight. That isn't exactly something that I want to deal with again. Of course Zabuza might still come after us, but at least we would see it coming easier."

Tenten nodded in agreement as well. "Yeah and from what Naruto told me, you've been working on stealth and infiltration skills with them lately so it should be fresh in their minds."

Before Kakashi could respond, Inari slammed his fist on the table. "Why do you guys even try?! You're all gonna die if you do, Gato is way too strong. A few people can't even touch him!" He yelled angrily.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, insulted by the clear lack of respect from the boy concerning their skills. Naruto also did so, but much more subtly. Sasuke spoke first. "Excuse me? We're ninja, not some ragtag group of mercenaries. We aren't civilians that can just be brushed to the side by some rich idiot."

This only served to anger Inari more. "You have no idea what you're talking about! You all just live nice comfortable lives in your big safe village! None of you have any idea what suffering really is! You all have people who love and support you! You haven't seen your loved ones die before your eyes!"

He was stopped when Sasuke pushed him over and Naruto stood up angrily as well. Sasuke hadn't pushed him hard, but enough to knock him over and stop him in his tracks, Sharingan spinning in his eyes.

Tenten yelled in alarm and tried to hold Naruto back. "Calm down guys! You can't hurt the client!"

Naruto broke free of the hold easily. "No Tenten! This kid doesn't know what he's talking about! He needs to be put in his place. Compared to Sasuke, he doesn't know jack shit about losing someone!"

Kakashi held back Sasuke as well, him being the one more willing to cause physical harm.

Sasuke struggled as he yelled. "Let me go Kakashi-sensei! This brat doesn't even come close to knowing how the village treats Naruto! He doesn't even know anything about being alone! He's got a family who loves him who he can come home to every day, but he sits here saying shit about Naruto like that!"

'I swear, they aren't even thinking about themselves. They're just up in arms because the other one got insulted.' Kakashi and Tenten shook their heads with a collective sigh.

Inari rolled back over and looked at the two severely angered ninja with tears in his eyes.

Tsunami stepped in front of Inari defensively. "Stay away from my son! He may have been rude, but he did nothing to warrant such treatment!"

Sasuke slowed his thrashing to yell again. "Like hell he didn't! Fuck, we aren't even supposed to be on this mission! This is an A-rank mission and for some damn reason we kept going so that we could save this town, but this brat is sitting here telling us that we're just wasting our time, so maybe we shouldn't be here!" He growled angrily.

Sasuke whipped around and stormed out of the house, with Naruto following close behind. He slammed the door and they disappeared. Inari also ran upstairs to his room, crying all the way.

Kakashi sighed. "I'm sorry about those two. What they say is true, and I honestly can't find it in my heart to fault them. However I'll be sure to talk with them about proper mission etiquette and how to treat a client. Oh and I hope that you aren't too fond of about a third of your forest."

Tazuna paled, still sitting down at the table. "What?"

"Uhhh….yeah. When they get angry they start destroying trees. They grow back fast enough around Konoha for it not to be much of a problem, but I'm not so sure about the ones here. I could stop them, but then they would just keep that anger bottled up and bad things would ensue."

"I…I see. Well I truly am sorry about all of this. Tricking all of you onto this mission and Inari's behavior. Nothing was supposed to happen like this." Tazuna said regretfully.

Kakashi's point was proven when multiple trees were heard hitting the ground powerfully, no doubt alerting anyone in the area.

Out in the forest, Sasuke and Naruto were tearing through trees with their jutsu. Sasuke was using mostly lightning jutsu as a fire jutsu would burn the trees and landscape. It had recently become dark out, and Sasuke's jutsu were lighting up the area.

Naruto had no such problems as he used his wind, earth, and crystal styles to level the area. "Wind Style: Drilling Air Bullet!"

A giant spiraling bullet of condensed wind shot out of Naruto's mouth and toppled a tree easily. It was a jutsu that Danzo had given him recently, so he was getting good practice in now.

Sasuke stepped back towards Naruto. "I fucking hate that kid."

Naruto nodded in return. "Same, he pisses me off. I can't stand weak people like that. It's one thing to be weak, but being weak and giving up is even worse. It makes me want to go take out Gato's base right now just to prove him wrong."

"…."

"Should we?" Sasuke asked slowly.

Naruto thought for a moment before responding. "Well it wouldn't hurt to do a little bit of recon. I'm sure that Kakashi-sensei will be mad if we actually do anything there though."

"True, but we could always find their base and set up a few traps around it. Maybe we can get a good layout of the outside to be ready if we go for a preemptive strike." Sasuke agreed quickly.

"….."

"Well let's go then. It shouldn't be too hard, after all it's just a bunch of mercenaries. We can deal with Kakashi-sensei later."

Both of them began to jump through the forested areas, looking for anything similar to a base.

About twenty minutes later, Naruto found a huge cone shaped building that was constructed around a large tree as support and suspended by long metal bridges. Overall it was fairly inefficient and clearly was built for aesthetic.

Naruto signaled Sasuke to come over silently. Once he did so, Sasuke face palmed. "That place has more weaknesses than a new academy student. Was he not worried about enemy ninja at all? The only people that this would stop is civilians." He whispered disappointedly.

"Yeah well that's better for us. Don't get lax though, this is about finding those weaknesses and staying hidden." Naruto sighed.

"I know, but it's still a little bit disappointing. Anyway, let's start scoping out the place and making plans. Knocking down that tree that it's built around would be a quick way to topple the place."

Naruto shook his head immediately. "We can't do that. Kakashi-sensei is probably gonna want to infiltrate silently and take out Gato. It might also be a good idea to see if he has his stash of money in there. It'll probably be a while before the people of wave can pay for an A-rank mission, so if we can get Gato's wealth everything might even out. Plus I doubt that Kakashi-sensei wants that many casualties to deal with."

"You're insane, even when you're angry you think about others. But yeah, I guess you're right. So then what are we supposed to do, just map out an outer layout of the building?"

Naruto nodded in agreement. "Pretty much. Kakashi-sensei is probably already gonna chew us out for this, so I don't think that actually engaging is a very good idea."

They both proceeded to take out small notebooks and write down notes about the building and its possible weaknesses while jumping around to get different angles. It was clear that Sasuke was right and it possessed a very large amount of weaknesses in favor of aesthetic.

They grouped back together high in the trees to compare their quick notes. Naruto had also taken the liberty of getting slightly closer to get a physical feel for the place. Apparently Gato had at least invested a large amount of money into good material that protected the base.

Naruto's eyes widened as a kunoichi flew towards them with twin swords coated in lightning. She had long light burgundy hair, black eyes, and together with a Kiri forehead protector, she also wore a simple cloth around her head, distinctively tied at both sides so as the ends of the material protruded upwards, while the remainder of hair is allowed to flow downwards. She wore a loose, pin-striped long-sleeved shirt with a dark obi around the waist, black pants which got much looser near the ends, resembling hakama, and striped leg-warmers.

Her swords were each slim and straight double-edged blades. Both blades also had an upward-curved bladed prong near the tip of one side of the blade and another one near the base of the blade's other side.

Sasuke and Naruto both began to move as fast as they could to get away, only looking back occasionally to check their progress. The Kunoichi was gaining on them fast, clearly at the speed of at least a high-Chunin, if not Jounin.

Naruto flew through multiple hand seals and released his chakra. "Crystal God Rain!"

A large wave of pink crystal shuriken formed in midair and flew towards the attacker, effectively making a wall to slow them. Unfortunately it didn't slow them much as she simply spun in midair with her twin lightning swords and tore a hole in the wall of shuriken before advancing once again.

Sasuke also released his own jutsu in an attempt to slow the kunoichi. "Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation!" He yelled before releasing a large wave of fire in a more straight pattern than normal, engulfing the kunoichi.

As Sasuke spewed the flame, Naruto used yet another jutsu and fired it in the same place. "Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"

The wave of wind combined with the flame and made it more powerful. It also served to blow out the fires that had caught on nearby trees. Sasuke halted his jutsu as they both channeled chakra into their legs and jumped away once again.

Naruto shook his head. "Who the fuck was that?!"

"Really?!" Sasuke said in disbelief. "Oh…I guess you weren't really around when we were doing research for the past few days. We looked more into the seven ninja swordsmen of the mist to find out more about Zabuza, and we also familiarized ourselves with the others in history. That was Ameyuri Ringo, the wielder of the twin lightning swords, Kiba. No one has seen her for years and some people theorized that she died of an incurable disease, but clearly they were wrong."

They both stopped and dropped down to the forest floor, ducking into some thick bushes. Naruto shook his head with a hand on his face. "Dammit. Another one of them, really? Is she chasing us anymore?"

Sasuke peeked his head out of the brush and looked around. "I don't think so. Her job is probably to patrol the base and keep people away. With Zabuza incapacitated she probably has to stay nearby just in case another squad of ninja tries to infiltrate. I'm guessing that Zabuza probably used his contacts to get her to help."

Naruto relaxed and slumped over. "That or Gato just hired both of them. I wouldn't put it past that rich bastard. Let's get back to the house to report this to Kakashi-sensei." Naruto said tiredly as he stood up. "Aw, Kakashi-sensei is gonna be angry at us for doing this."

"True, but I'm sure he'll be glad that we got info on the enemy. If we had rushed in without this information, Kakashi-sensei would get caught off guard if another swordsman of the mist all of a sudden showed up when he tried to sneak in there. If he had to fight Ameyuri and Zabuza, I doubt that even he would fare too well." Sasuke reasoned.

He nodded and they both silently made their way back to Tazuna's house, now on the lookout for an attacker.

Naruto slowly opened up the door and the two of them walked inside. No one was in the dining room, so they walked upstairs to Kakashi's room. When they opened the door, they were greeted to Kakashi and Tenten sitting down talking strategy.

Kakashi turned his head to look at the two panting boys. "Done already? I would have expected you to be going at it for hours, especially you Naruto."

Sasuke shook his head. "No time for that. We found Gato's base and scouted it out a bit. Bad news."

"You scouted out his base alone?! What were you thinking?" Kakashi hissed.

Naruto stepped forward as well. "We were thinking that sneaking around some mercenaries wouldn't be too hard, not that Gato would have another of the seven ninja swordsmen hired."

Tenten's eyes widened. "Another one?! Which one?"

"Ameyuri Ringo, apparently not dead from an incurable disease. She's guarding the perimeter. The only reason that we got away was that we distracted her for a minute and got outside of her range. She's fast as hell. A couple more seconds and she would have caught up to us." Naruto said as he plopped down on the floor.

Kakashi sighed. "I suppose that I should have expected this from you two, but I was hoping that you would at least consult me first. Although I guess I should thank you for getting that info. You were lucky enough not to lose anything from that and you got valuable information. It would have been bad not to know about her."

Sasuke turned to Naruto triumphantly. "See? I told you that he would say that."

Kakashi threw a water bottle at Sasuke's head violently. "Are you stupid?! It may have turned out alright, but Ameyuri Ringo is an extremely powerful shinobi! She was a very strong A-rank ninja years ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if she's at least bordering on high A-rank or low S-rank now. If she had taken you seriously, you wouldn't be here to report this. Luckily for you she has a reputation for playing with her food before she closes in on her prey, so she probably went slowly just to drive you away."

"So then she wasn't even trying?" Naruto groaned. "Well what the hell are we gonna do now?!"

Kakashi bit his thumb and smeared blood across his right palm. He formed five hand signs and slammed his hand on the ground, causing a poof of smoke to appear. When it cleared, a brown messenger hawk was perched on his leg.

Naruto tilted his head. "I thought that you had a personalized dog contract."

"I do, but when you're promoted to Chunin you have a messenger hawk assigned to you that you can summon to send fast messages. They can fly or reverse summon themselves back at a powerful chakra anchor keyed to their chakra signature from birth." He said as he wrote a message on a small piece of paper, most likely in code.

"A human can only reverse summon themselves to an extremely large chakra anchor usually residing in an animal summons area. Even then they have to have signed the contract and be talented enough to reverse summon themselves. These messenger hawks have much more chakra than normal animals, but still not a large amount. It makes it much easier to create a chakra anchor for them, and since their chakra signatures are relatively simple they don't have much trouble doing so.'

Kakashi rolled up the message and placed it in a small container on the hawk's leg. It nodded and disappeared with another poof of smoke. Kakashi then relaxed himself again and continued the explanation.

"You could liken them to Konoha's ninken like Akamaru in a way. They can understand human speech, and a few of them can even speak. Haru is mine, and he can speak. Although he usually stays quiet in front of people who aren't me. I basically raised him, so he's comfortable around me. He can also summon himself to me if I've recently summoned him and I stay in the same place by locking onto the residual chakra left behind from the summoning." He finished explaining with a slight smile.

Naruto's eyes sparkled. "Oooooh. That's awesome! I can't wait to be a Chunin."

"Well I'm glad you're excited, but now we need to go over our plans again. I sent a message to Hokage-sama informing him of the situation. I don't know what he'll choose. He might have us come back to Konoha or he could send reinforcements. This changes everything" Kakashi said, rubbing the back of his head.

A few minutes later, Haru popped back into the room. Kakashi opened the container and took out the paper inside. He read it out loud to avoid having to say it twice.

"Thank you for your report. I have dispatched Genma Shiranui, Raidō Namiashi, and Iwashi Tatami. As you know, they are the official Hokage Guard Platoon and together can perform the Hiraishin Technique. They will be transporting Might Guy along with them. A marker has been placed on this message for them to transport to in approximately twenty minutes. I leave it up to you whether or not to send the Genin back, however if you keep them there you must make sure that they have minimal interaction with Zabuza and Ameyuri, hopefully none."

"-Hiruzen Sarutobi, Sandaime Hokage"

Tenten perked up. "Guy-sensei is coming? What about Lee and Neji?"

Naruto stepped in front of her and wave his hands around. "Hold on! Back up! Those three can use the Hiraishin?! Since when?!"

"Since sensei became the fourth Hokage. When they were assigned to be the Hokage Guard Platoon, he taught it to them in case of emergencies. Unfortunately they can only use it when they all link hands and concentrate, so it isn't viable in battle." Kakashi said, shifting back from the advancing Naruto.

Naruto ruffled his blond hair. "How did I not know about this before?! They would probably have plenty of stories about dad!"

'That's what he cares about? Doesn't he want help with the jutsu?' Kakashi sweatdropped inwardly.

"I'm sure that Hokage-sama just forgot to mention it. Besides, you have to remember that they don't know about your connection to sensei, so you'll have to be somewhat discreet about it." Kakashi warned.

Naruto nodded in confirmation. "Got it! Don't bring up the fact that he's my dad. Dad is not dad. Dad is not dad. Dad is not dad. Dad is not dad." He repeated over and over again.

About eighteen minutes later, four shinobi appeared in the middle of the room suddenly. Three of them stood in a triangle with linked hands, with Guy standing in the middle. They disconnected and Guy rushed towards Naruto, picking him up and spinning him around with comical streams of tears flowing from his eyes.

"Oh Naruto! I am so relieved to see that you are unharmed! I know that you are strong, but fighting one of the seven swordsmen of the mist must have been terrifying! I remember when Ebisu, Genma, and I encountered them as Genin! They are truly a terrifying sight!"

Naruto, still spinning through the air began to develop a serious case of dizziness. "G-Guy sensei! Please stop, everything is spinning."

The movement was suddenly halted and Naruto was lowered to the ground, which he promptly slumped over on, with his world still spinning. "My apologies Naruto! However when I heard the news about the development of your mission, I was overwhelmed with a sense of worry when I thought about what could have happened to you! It seems that I was somewhat too excited to find you in one piece!"

Naruto weakly waved it off from the ground, which he didn't seem like he was going to move away from any time soon. "S' fine Guy-sensbhghlehhhhhhh." He muttered as he tried his best to hold in his dinner, eventually failing and letting it flow freely.

Tenten reeled back in disgust. "Ah come on Naruto, you could have tried a bit harder to hold it in than that."

"M' surry Denden." Naruto slurred out as he rolled over in the opposite direction.

With a sigh, Tenten turned on her heel and began to walk out. "It's fine, I'll go get something to clean that up with."

As Guy profusely apologized to Naruto, Genma, Raidō, and Iwashi turned to Kakashi to discuss details of the mission at hand.

Genma was the first to shake his head in disbelief after hearing the full report. "Dammit Kakashi, your genin squad's first c-rank mission ends up with them fighting the Demon of the Hidden Mist Zabuza Momochi, Lightning Spirit Ameyuri Ringo who was said to be dead years ago, and who knows who else they could have. It's just like you to have shit like this happen to you."

Kakashi sighed and leaned back. "You don't know the half of it. This whole thing has been one thing after another. If they have a third swordsman of the hidden mist, I quit."

"Well we're just two Tokubetsu Jounin and a skilled Chunin, but we'll help out as much as we can. Guy is the one who can really help you out with something like this."

Of course, upon hearing his name Guy chose to bolt over and enter the conversation. "Indeed! I look forward to entering combat with a swordsman of the hidden mist! I will show them just how much my flames of youth have grown!"

Raidō, the man with a scar across his face spoke as well. "Oh yeah, that's right. You and Genma got cornered by them when you were genin right? All seven of them too."

"Indeed! Genma, Ebisu, and I were all unfortunately caught off guard by the seven ninja swordsmen of the mist! If my father had not rushed in to save us, we most likely would not have made it out alive!"

Raidō faltered for a moment as he raised his hand apologetically. "Ah, sorry Guy. I didn't mean to bring that up."

Guy shook his head as his eyes seemed to burn brighter. "Do not be sorry! I will not be saddened at the thought of a man's resolve as he showed his flames of youth! My father was a brave man, and I know that he did not regret what he did! Therefore, neither do I!"

By this point, Tenten and Sasuke had finished cleaning up and Naruto had mostly regained his balance. 'Geez Guy-sensei, you really swing hard.'

However Tenten's attention had been drawn from Naruto to the conversation that the adults were having. "Hold on Guy-sensei! You've run into all seven of the ninja swordsmen of the mist?"

"Yes indeed Tenten! Although I believe that their members have mostly passed away, so their swords either do not have users or have new undiscovered wielders. I remember that Ameyuri Ringo was also there, and she was just as fearsome as the rest! I was truly surprised to hear that she had indeed not passed away from an incurable disease, and she may have unknown abilities that we have not seen before."

Like the other swordsmen of the mist, Tenten wasn't exactly a fan of the wielders themselves. However she had always held some level of respect for Ameyuri Ringo for being able to stand with the rest of the swordsmen, regardless of the fact that she was the only female in the history of the swordsmen.

Of course much like the other six legendary swords, Tenten had done as much research as possible on her swords, Kiba. They weren't really her style since it actually required quite specialized skill with them specifically to be very good, but she always dreamed of adding any of the seven swords to her arsenal.

They didn't require as much specific training as Kabutowari or Nuibari, but they were still quite specialized if you wanted to use them for their full purpose, rather than just two sharp shortswords.

Before Tenten could get off track talking about swords like usual, Sasuke decided that it could be saved for later and interjected. "Yes, well while that's all well and good, we should address the problem at hand a bit more. At least two highly skilled members of the seven swordsmen are employed against us, and that's basically all we know. For all we know Gato could have more waiting to catch us off guard. Our only advantage here is knowing where their lair is and some of their members."

Kakashi sighed at Sasuke's unwillingness to relax a bit, but nodded. "That's true. Although on the bright side, now these guys are here without the enemy knowing, so we may be able to execute a surprise attack of our own. Naruto, report your findings about the enemy base. It may help to know any structural weaknesses."

Naruto straightened up in attention. "Hai. Essentially, Gato's base is a huge cone shaped building that is constructed around a large tree as support and suspended by long metal bridges. Sasuke and I determined that Gato clearly didn't have it designed for defense or camouflage, but aesthetic. However it seems that he did invest quite a bit into strong materials for the buildings, and he has a numerous guards posted in groups of three posted about every thirty or forty feet. The lighting is rather poor, so it seems that a nighttime assault would be in our favor. As you probably guessed, the obvious structural weaknesses that stand out are the bridges that connect the building to the surrounding trees, the trees themselves, and the center tree that Gato's base is built around."

Kakashi nodded and turned to Sasuke. "Sasuke, any other details that you noticed?"

"Naruto covered nearly everything. In addition, I also noticed that scattered around the building are numerous hidden emergency exits, most likely for Gato in the case of a crisis. If we are able to locate these and stop all but one of them from being able to be opened, we could not only sneak in through that one passage, but we could probably also flush Gato out himself in a specific location if he was alerted of our presence." Sasuke explained steadily.

Naruto and Sasuke both handed their taken notes to Kakashi to review later, and Kakashi nodded once again. "Very good. I'm glad that you at least got a decent amount of info out of such a dangerous operation, not to mention unauthorized." He said with a glare at the end.

Both of them slightly shrank back from the clear irritation on Kakashi's face, but otherwise stayed silent and unmoving.

Iwashi finally spoke up and joined in. "Well we can't do anything about that now, so let's forget about it. We have the information, so let's use it as wisely as possible. First thing to address, are we still sticking with the plan of an ambush now that the enemy knows that we know where they are?"

After a bit of debate and consideration the group decided that they would indeed, stay the course and plan an ambush.

"That's great and all, but what are we going to do about Ameyuri and Zabuza? We also need to remember that there's that fake hunter-nin that saved Zabuza. We have no idea what his rank or abilities are, so he could potentially be just as dangerous as them." Said Tenten, who was among those who were slightly less eager to go through with said ambush.

At that, Guy crossed his arms and sat on the ground. "It's possible, however I believe that it is unlikely. From what Kakashi has told us about his battle against Zabuza, this fake hunter-nin stayed in the background waiting to help Zabuza in case of an emergency. If he were as powerful or near as powerful as Zabuza, he would have intervened when it was clear that Zabuza was in danger of taking critical damage. It's likely that his purpose was to wait in the shadows purely to play his part in the event of an escape and gain information. I'm willing to bet that he's probably high chunin level at best."

Tenten sighed a breath of relief at the knowledge, but was still somewhat on the edge about the plan. "That still leaves Zabuza and Ameyuri. What are we gonna do about them?"

Kakashi thought for a moment before responding. "Well I'm fairly confident that in a one on one fight against Zabuza now, I would be able to win even if we were both at full strength. As for Ameyuri, I think that Guy has that covered fairly well. Ameyuri should be fairly close to Zabuza in skill, and Guy can match me fairly well, sometimes flat out beating me. Not to mention we have these three here in case of an emergency." He stated, pointing to Genma, Raidō, and Iwashi.

"Meanwhile, I'm confident that you three" He said pointing towards the genin. "Could rather easily sneak into their base and snoop around. I think that you could also take on that Hunter-nin. Hell, maybe each of you individually could do it." Kakashi said with a proud eye smile.

Tenten once again sighed to herself, but accepted the reasoning.

Naruto jokingly turned away and acted as if he were blushing profusely. "Oh Kakashi-sensei, you always know how to make a genin blush."

'Well at least he retained his sense of humor.'

Genma lightly coughed to bring the conversation back. "Well now that we know the general roles of the group, but we're gonna need to go into specifics if we want this to work properly. First of all Kakashi, you said you can take on Zabuza in a one on one fight. However if we want that to happen, we're gonna need to extract Zabuza away from Gato's men and that Hunter-nin. Ameyuri shouldn't be too hard. All Guy has to do is get close enough, get noticed by her, then lead her away."

As Guy swore to do his best, and the usual shouts of youth, Kakashi nodded and continued on for Genma. "As for Zabuza, I don't think that should be too hard either. Zabuza is no idiot, but he's certainly proud of his own power. If I taunt him a bit, he'll probably order that Hunter-nin to stay out of the fight."

"And after that Sasuke, Tenten, and I can catch out that Hunter-nin and keep him from rejoining Zabuza!" Naruto exclaimed excitedly.

Genma nodded. "That's right kid. And since Kakashi is easily the best here at stealth, he can sneak in once he's fully recovered and check out the place more thoroughly. Actually, if we can completely stay away from this being a loud mission, we might not have to fight much at all. Zabuza is only in this for the money, we know that much. If we can snatch away Gato's personal stash of money, we could always just pay Zabuza using some of that."

"We plan to take the money anyway, so it might work out that way. Unfortunately Ameyuri is still unknown. We don't know if she's here because Gato hired her or because she's with Zabuza. If it's the former, that could potentially double the amount we have to pay out. If it's the latter, we might just have to pay off Zabuza."

The shinobi continued to strategize and discuss possibilities of the mission for the next couple of hours before calling it a night and deciding to get some rest.

The Next Morning, Tazuna's House

When Sasuke awoke the next morning, he noticed that the only person missing from the house at the time was Naruto. "Kakashi-sensei, where's Naruto? I haven't seen him since last night."

Kakashi looked up from his breakfast. "Hm? Oh, don't worry about him. He's just doing some solo training that he and I talked about the other day."

"Solo training? What's he doing?"

Kakashi looked back down and shook his head. "Nothing big, just some mental prep, meditation, and chakra control exercises. It's nothing strenuous or anything, so no need to worry. I think it requires quite a bit of focus though, so he's requested that we leave him be until he returns. He'll be doing this pretty much every day that he can, so don't think too much of it."

"Did he say why he needed mental prep and chakra control exercises?" Sasuke questioned.

"No, I didn't ask. I figure that after the whole fiasco with those two kiri nin, he needed time, so I didn't push it. I suggest that you don't either, regardless of your relationship with him. If he says he needs time to meditate, he needs time to meditate." Kakashi said rather seriously.

Sasuke just nodded and sat, starting to eat before he went out for the day to train.

One Mile from Tazuna's House

Naruto slowly advanced up a tall tree, and once he reached a high enough point where he was obstructed by the foliage, he found a wide area to sit himself down and did so. A few months ago, he had discovered that it wasn't necessary to be in a traditional stance to mediate, as long as he was familiar with the mental state that he needed to be in. It turned out that at a certain point, everyone became comfortable with a certain position and stuck with it.

For Naruto, that ended up being him laying down with his arms behind his head. Unconventional, but it worked well for him. As long as he got into the right state of mind, he wouldn't fall asleep.

After a minute or so of clearing his mind, Naruto's mind began to shift. As it emptied, he began to sense the more subtle things. Not things in his environment, but things about himself. He could feel his chakra flowing through him, he could feel the massive amounts of stored chakra within himself, and he could feel chakra being replenished as it was naturally expended.

As he had done many times, he became more in tune with his own body, and its inner workings. Although it was slightly more difficult than normal, he sensed his own soul, and the chakra naturally flowing into it.

However, one thing was different than normal. There was always a feeling like there was a second chakra flowing through him, different from his own. He had long ago discovered that this was the nine-tails chakra seeping through the seal, mixing with his own chakra and expanding his chakra pool and coils. It was strange. Normal people had to use chakra control exercises or repetitive jutsu to expand their chakra pools and chakra coils.

But Naruto was different. He always was after all. All he ever had to do to get higher levels of chakra was wait. Grow. Grow, and let the nine-tails chakra work. Chakra control exercises never increased his chakra levels. Only the most chakra intensive jutsu were able to strain him enough to push further.

However now, it was amplified. He could tell that more of the nine-tails' chakra was entering his body as a result of gradual seal erosion. He was no seal expert, but he was sure that if he were to look at his own seal, he would notice small signs of erosion in certain places.

As he honed in on the foreign chakra, he began to drift away further and further. Not into sleep, but into his own mind. Eventually, he opened his eyes to see a colossal ornate gate in front of him. When he looked down, he noticed that the entire floor in the room was flooded. Not to the point of danger, but probably about half an inch of water.

Before Naruto could inspect any further, a large claw shot out from the cage, barely missing Naruto.

After a couple of seconds, the claw was brought back and the full view of its owner was revealed. A huge orange fox lounged behind bars. Or at least…close to a fox. It had much larger ears that pointed upwards, and clearly its arms and legs possessed some human qualities.

Naruto gulped, but otherwise held back any obvious signs of fear. "…You."

"Yes, me. So, you've finally come to grace me with your presence at last...boy."

Author's Note: Hey! I really am sorry about the HUGE wait for this chapter, and I know it wasn't all that action packed stuff that you guys like, but I swear that this was a chapter meant to set up for the next one, which will be absolutely full of action and reveals.

I don't want to keep you guys too long, since I really don't feel like I deserve it. You may have noticed that this chapter was a bit shorter than usual, but I felt that this was a good place to leave it.

You also may have noticed that I am staying true to what I have said, and the Nine-tails is by no means going to be Naruto's buddy right off the bat.

If you guys have ANY suggestions, please leave them in reviews and I will respond as quickly as possible. No question is a stupid question, and I'm glad to hear that people really like what I do.