64 Naruto : Chapter 64

"The material used can't be too heavy, but needs to be chakra conductive. Still it needs to be sturdy enough to not be easily destroyed.

Either nature manipulation or gravity manipulation might work. Nature would be harder as wind manipulation isn't that well-trained in Konoha. But what if it was a device?"

...

The two older men looked in awe as Naruto's pen sped over the paper, writing things, drawing diagrams, crossing things out and forming basics of a possible seal or device. All the while the blue eyes of the boy shone happily from the challenge.

The hidden ANBU didn't really believe what they saw. That boy reminded them a lot of the late Yondaime when he was trying to work out how to get a seal to work while letting a shadow clone do his paperwork.

"Okay, I think I can get this done in about a week." Naruto finally announced. "I just need one of the guarded training grounds to test it once I have built a prototype."

"We can arrange that, Dark Phoenix." The Hokage said. "What other problems does our current security have?"

"That the ninjas got lazy over the time we had peace. I mean, Kakashi here is the prime example. While right now he is S-ranked, he fell to average A-rank from nearly S-rank after he left ANBU.

He allowed his skills to deteriorate. While average A-rank is still impressive, if he had had to go up against a ninja like Itachi Uchiha, he would have got his ass handed to him. And he was one of the strongest in the village while being A-rank.

It also is embarrassing how easily Naruto Uzumaki could do his pranks. Sure, he was hiding his real skills, but really, an academy student that was able to trick basically all the chunin of the village when he was eight years old? They should have been able to catch him sooner.

Or later even the jonin once he turned ten and the chunin didn't stand a chance anymore?" Naruto pointed out the blatant incompetency of those tasked to catch him after one of his pranks.

"The only restriction they had was not using lethal methods and bringing him in mostly unharmed. That means they should have been able to catch him easily, if only by using basics like transformation or replacement. I mean, Iruka Umino managed to do just fine and he is an average chunin."

Naruto didn't mention that Iruka was also a sensor and therefore able to find Naruto no matter where he hid until he figured out how to suppress his chakra. After that they had needed the jonin.

"Yes, I will that I address that problem in the next meeting." The Hokage nodded.

"On top of that you need to make it mandatory for all those with chunin rank and higher to regularly take courses to improve their knowledge. I have seen it myself.

I was allowed to do as I liked in my training and I neglected getting stronger at a certain point. While genin have their jonin senseis to improve their skills, mostly ninjas from clans get better techniques after making chunin.

Others may have some family techniques if the families have been shinobi for a while, but otherwise the development of our forces is restricted to the clans. And some keep their members for clan business and they are only reserves for the village." Kakashi said.

"I mean, we could for example implement Tsunade Sama's old idea of setting up a medic program. We still have too few competent medics out there. We have many with good chakra control in the academy. It just never really leads to anything.

Why not address those that have the control necessary to become medics while the children are young? Training a good medic takes time and it would actually help if we could send some of those that failed the jonin sensei's tests, but had the control to the hospital for more training.

They wouldn't become full ninjas directly, but a fully trained medic would gain the rank by passing their test." He suggested.

"That's actually a very good idea, Kakashi, one which is practical. The hardest part is finding ninjas that are willing to invest a lot of time in intensive study of anatomy and medicine.

But if we take the graduates that fail the test for other reasons we could build up a good base." The Hokage acknowledged.

"Good, I will call Jiraiya back to work out the barrier seals while you get to produce a working way for building up aerial combat devices that won't hinder any ninjas that use them." The Hokage then turned to Kakashi.

"Kakashi, write a draft of the idea for the program and include any other ideas on how to use the potential that is currently lost to the village from the failed graduates.

Until the new curriculum shows effects with the next batch we should utilize what we already have. I want reports in three days, dismissed."

Both Naruto and Kakashi bowed and left the room this time through the door.

...

Shikamaru sat pondering the information they had collected on Naruto and the clues to the fake case they had been tasked to solve. They had now tried for three days to find Naruto, but had completely failed.

The only positive report was that Shino's bugs hadn't noticed anything out of the norm so it was fairly safe to say that the information was still inside the village.

It was as if Naruto always knew what they had planned before they did it. They had screened the whole academy classroom for listening seals, but they had come up negative.

How did Naruto know what steps they were taking? How did he listen into their discussions? After the room had turned up clean he had the others check all their clothes and accessories in case of the girls, even their headbands had been checked and nothing had come up.

They had checked for disguised shadow clones and nothing was there. This was getting frustrating.

They had all assembled to put together all information they had got. They needed to find out just how Naruto was always a step ahead of them.

"Alright, we know that Naruto is somehow eavesdropping into our conversations. We were all told about the fake mission one week before it started.

As we have ruled out the location, our clothes and accessories as the base for him doing it, we must have overlooked something. We need to figure it out before planning something new.

We only have two days left and if we don't find the leak we will only continue to be embarrassed by falling for his fake trails." Shikamaru declared.

Ino and Sakura could only nod. They had been victims of a paint bomb trap and still had orange hair, much to their displeasure.

Sasuke and Shino had fallen into itching powder traps when they had searched the old Uchiha district, thinking that the abandoned parts of the village would make a good hiding place for Naruto. It had even effected Shino's bugs and that had made the normally stoic Aburame really annoyed.

Kiba and Akamaru had been knocked out by a really bad stink bomb for half a day after they had thought that they had found a clue in a small alley. Their noses were still hurting and next to useless for them right now. Hinata had only barely avoided getting hit by a trap she set off.

She didn't want to imagine the scolding she would have got from her father if she turned up with permanent wave like some of the civilians that had been caught by the smoke that had come from the seal she had overlooked until it was too late.

"What can we do?" Choji asked.

"We need to think of anything that happened during the week before the test mission that was unnormal. Anything out of the norm could have been Naruto's doing.

Be it unusual visits of people at the library or somebody buying an unusual amount of supplies. We can assume that Naruto would have done that using a transformation jutsu." Shikamaru said.

"We checked the stores, but the only one buying more supplies were tasked by the Hokage and that is nothing new since Dark Phoenix started equipping the village armoury with seals." Sasuke said. "It would be hard to separate who could have been Naruto and who were Hokage Sama's people."

"True, so the stores could be a lead, but hard to find out, especially with only two days' time." Shikamaru admitted.

"I don't know about anything unnormal." Kiba said. "We only had another dog bring fleas into our kennels, so our dogs all got new flea collars.

But that happens every few months and after a thorough cleaning everything goes back to normal. The collars are prepared by my clan's vets and are checked to be safe."

"Well, somebody bought all the shampoo supplies in the village two days before the test started." Hinata said, surprising the others. "Honestly, didn't you think that my clan with so many people with long hair would notice something like that?" She asked exasperated.

"Did anything come out of that, Hinata?" Shikamaru asked.

"No, the next day the stocks had been refilled." She answered.

"We have also by now checked all potential hiding places that are suited for setting up a kind of base, all places that are a bit isolated and even the complete forest area that is part of this scenario. He was nowhere." Shino stated.

"We are overlooking something. Just what could that be?" Shikamaru pondered.

"What if he uses an obvious place? He can't have used any of the places that are unreachable for us, but what if he thinks that we wouldn't look in an obvious place?" Sakura asked.

"We checked Ichirakus, the Hokage Monument, his apartment, the academy and all the training grounds." Shikamaru listed. "I don't know any others."

"And by now we should have found at least something." Shino said.

"Yeah, he can't sit in some hole for five days and not give any scent traces. He would at least need access to sanitary rooms. Otherwise tracking him would be a lot easier." Kiba added.

The pondered on the issue.

...

Naruto listened to what his comrades were thinking and got a good laugh out of it. One moment he thought that Shikamaru might get the right conclusion about the floo collars, but thankfully Kiba had told that it wasn't unnormal for it to happen.

He had based his plan on that information. It could easily happen that a stray dog brought fleas to the Inuzuka compound or that a dog caught some on a mission that weren't noticed before the dogs returned to the clan compound with their partners.

He had intentionally sent a squirrel with fleas into the compound and the dogs had chased it all around.

That a stray with more fleas had turned up had been lucky on his part. Therefore the whole compound had been infested and needed to be cleaned.

And sneaking inside after the collars had been checked to be handed out the next morning had been easy. One transformation into a mouse and Akamaru's collar got a listening seals in miniature version. He was really proud of that creation.

The seal was only as big as his little finger's nail. It blended perfectly with the enzymes the Inuzukas used to get rid of the fleas.

If the others only knew how he fulfilled the part of regularly being in public. The mission parameters he had included that he had to be out of any hiding place he used for at least four hours a day.

Well, he was out more than that. One of the Hokage's usual assistants had come down with the stomach flu and Naruto had taken over his place.

So if the others didn't check with the hospital and cross-referenced the ninjas in every department with patients, they wouldn't find him. That was the one true big clue he left for them to find him. So far they hadn't thought of that. Well, they were rookies.

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