61 Naruto : Chapter 61

They all heard the signal that the mission was on and for a while nobody noticed anything. But those that had a possibility to sneak into the other's territory undetected were doing so now.

That meant Shino sent his bugs out, Naruto his disguised shadow clones and Ino possessed a mouse to go spying while Shikamaru and Choji kept her body safe.

It turned out that Shino and Naruto had the best turnout of possible hiding places for the information as they had greater numbers of spies at their command. But, contrary to team seven, team eight hadn't come up with as many decoys for their item.

Sasuke, who after Naruto's clones had informed the real one where the possible locations for the item were, had sneaked into the territory of team eight, managed to easily look through the genjutsu placed on the two places he found with his sharingan and he easily memorized the information inside the item.

Naruto and Sakura were meanwhile distracting team eight until he could go back to them. Of course using a shadow clone under transformation to look like him.

The guards for the item, Kiba with Akamaru, had been easily dispatched with some of Naruto's sleeping poison senbons that he had given to Sasuke.

They would be out for ten minutes or so. Sasuke used simple stealth to get into the territory of team eight as using jutsus would have triggered Hinata's Byakugan or Shino's bugs.

While normally Naruto was the better stealth user, with genin as the opponents Sasuke could easily hold his own. Especially after all the additional stealth training he had done to catch up somewhat to Naruto.

And considering that Shino could spread his bugs far to take out Naruto's normal clone strategy it made sense to let them think that Naruto was trying to get their information while Sasuke did the deed.

In team ten's area things were a bit easier as none of them was a sensor type or a tracking type. Naruto's clone slipped past Shikamaru and Choji in the thick underbrush and went to their hiding place. Ino was still out from using her jutsu.

The clone noticed several traps around the item. Well, nothing a mouse couldn't get through and they only needed the information. They didn't need to steal it. So the clone opened the item after several failed tries and memorized the information.

Then it closed the item again and dispelled. Normally team ten shouldn't even notice anything wrong.

...

Sakura was fighting Hinata trying to keep her from getting too far into their territory to see the decoys. Now their decision to make it really difficult to find their real item paid off. And by now Sakura had a way to counter Hinata's gentle fist style with the medic nin style of fighting.

She dodged whenever Hinata tried to land a hit and countered with her just recently learned chakra scalpels. She had seen what Naruto could do with his version of that technique and had therefore decided that it would be a good way to defend herself.

A medic mustn't fall because if the medic fell, there was no one that could treat the team after a fight. So a major part of her medic training, coupled with the dodging exercises that Kakashi had them regularly do had made her a really hard to hit target.

Not that that meant that Hinata was easy to beat. No, the formerly totally shy and insecure Hyuga girl had greatly improved since the academy. Sakura knew that if Hinata landed a good hit she would be in a world of trouble.

Meanwhile Naruto and Shino were fighting to get the upper hand. Naruto, knowing about the sense of smell that the bugs used to orientate themselves, had put up several traps where pheromones of female beetles were spread around.

Therefore Shino had to override the instincts of his bugs, which cost him more concentration and chakra than normally. But he made up for that disadvantage with his chain-sickle.

Since Naruto had told the others what he thought would be good to include in their fighting styles, they had worked on that. Shino had turned out to have a talent for the chain-sickle and used it with deadly accuracy.

Hinata had learned many genjutsu from Kurenai and some ninjutsu from Kakashi when they had switched senseis for a week to profit from each jonin's specialty training. Kakashi was the specialist for ninjutsu, Kurenai for genjutsu and Asuma for weapons.

Naruto was really happy that his comrades were getting stronger as he knew that there were serious threats outside, waiting to attack Konoha in the very near future.

If they were stronger than they would be with only their team's sensei training them, he would fully support the way this was achieved.

Naruto had found out in the ROOT archives that a group of S-ranked missing nins, including Itachi Uchiha, was taking several high ranking missions for villages like Iwa and the smaller villages that couldn't afford to train high ranking ninjas or who simply didn't have the means to train talented ninjas up to that level.

It was concerning that a group existed that was made of such strong ninjas. If they ever decided to work against the villages it could become a major problem.

Sasuke joined the fight as soon as he returned from his 'mission', which meant he took the place of the transformed shadow clone, and together they forced Shino and Hinata to retreat for now.

Sasuke's short barely noticeable nod informed Naruto and Sakura that he had got the information from team eight and that they could now go on to open the safe.

...

It wasn't as easy as they had hoped. While it had been no problem to get team ten's information, Shikamaru had seemingly come up with a plan to foil any team that got the complete set of information before them. Naruto had a good counter for it though.

Shikamaru was limited in the use of his shadow jutsu due to his chakra reserves. So Naruto let several of his clones be caught by the shadow while him, Sasuke and Sakura went to open the safe to get the prize and win the mission scenario.

Sasuke supported the clones with distant attacks on team ten, forcing Choji to stay away. Ino didn't have much on the offensive part besides weapons, which Sakura made sure to deflect.

Naruto being the one with the most practice in opening safes quickly put together the code and opened the door. Inside was a set of scrolls with elemental symbols. One for each element.

He took them out and then called out to his teammates to get to the jonins to finish the simulation.

Now team eight was also there, trying to assist team ten in stopping team seven from winning. It was hard to fight three against six, but in the end team seven managed to save the scrolls to the meeting point.

"Very well done, team seven, you win this round." Asuma called out once team seven was in the safe zone.

The three showed different states of condition. Naruto looked as if he wasn't even breathing hard, which was easy to understand considering his stamina and skill.

Sasuke was looking a bit worse for wear and was sending lightning chakra over his body to shake of the last persistent bugs that Shino had managed to put onto him. Sakura looked worst of the three, but she had the least cuts or bruises.

Finally the other two teams arrived. Kiba glared at Sasuke, a mark on his neck showed that he had been hit with a senbon before, on top of having some cuts and bruises.

Hinata's jacket was a bit singed and Shino's showed cuts. Ino was breathing hard, Shikamaru looked exhausted and Choji had a bruise on his cheek.

"This test was so unfair. Naruto could make more shadow clones than any of us were able to counter." Ino complained.

"We should have put that into consideration and worked together against team seven from the start.

If we had taken out Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura together we could have fought out who got the scrolls between us. It would have been the only way to get a chance to win this." Shikamaru analysed.

"You are correct. Having Naruto on team seven was an unfair advantage the team had." Kakashi confirmed calmly.

"But this setup was so that you could try to work around it. You won't always have the advantage of being up against opponents that are roughly your own level.

It can happen that missing nins join bandits or start bandit groups themselves. Especially after the bloodline purges that Kiri started there are some former chunin or the rare jonin that could become your opponent on a mission.

The trick to work around that is finding a weakness or overwhelming said strong opponent somehow."

The genin nodded. By now they all knew that Naruto was jonin level. He didn't lord it over them though and gave helpful suggestions how they could improve their skills themselves.

It was slow going, but with the subpar training that the academy had given them over the years compared to real shinobi training, they were doing really well.

"Now we have planned one last scenario before we let you enter the chunin exams in about two months." Kurenai said, causing them all to pay close attention to her.

"This will be an exercise that will put all members of your teams against Naruto."

Naruto looked up surprised.

"Naruto, you will be given something to keep safe from them. You can use all your skills. The intention of this setup is simulating that a spy stole important information from the village. They will have to work together to catch you and retrieve the information.

In the scenario you are forbidden to use more than five clones at the same time to make it more realistic, because no normal spy could ever match your chakra reserves." Kurenai explained.

"How long do they have to find and catch me and how long do I have to prepare for my part?" Naruto asked with his mission mode voice.

"You get one week to prepare your part, Naruto. The test will start next Saturday. They get five days to catch you. The Hokage has been informed about this, so we don't have to fear any interference from outside parties." Asuma explained.

"Alright. Which area can I use?" Naruto asked.

"The whole village, the outside training grounds and the forest around the village in a five kilometre diameter. You are limited to non-lethal means though." Kakashi answered and Naruto got a mean grin on his face that let Sasuke and Sakura gulp.

They knew that grin. It promised pain and embarrassment.

...

Thanks for the power Stones this is a bonus chapter :)

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