65 Naruto : Chapter 65

The time was up and the rookies hadn't managed to find Naruto. They were disappointed about that, but assembled at the meeting point. Their senseis were present. The group gave a sorry image.

Naruto did strike massively one last time with a prank before the time was up. Now Choji and Ino resembled yellow chickens having feathers glued to them all over. The glue seemed to be resistant to any way of getting rid of it.

Shikamaru sported a red afro, Shino's face was black with orange dots letting him look like a big bug, Kiba and Akamaru were scratching themselves, Hinata's normal clothes were exchanged with a tight pink spandex and Sasuke and Sakura had orange glitter all over them.

"Well, it doesn't seem like you were successful." Asuma commented.

"No, we weren't." Ino admitted grumbling. "Just how did he manage to hide that perfectly and target us with the pranks?"

"Well, Naruto will be here soon, so we will start discussing his strategy and your mistakes once he is here." Kurenai said.

She was a bit disappointed. Her team specialized in tracking. That they hadn't managed to find Naruto at all meant that they needed a lot more work. Asuma thought similarly.

His team specialized in information gathering and should have found out more. Kakashi knew that Sasuke and Sakura while they knew more about Naruto than others didn't even scratch any real knowledge about him. They had never even bothered to learn more about their blond teammate.

Well, the rookies would learn a lot this afternoon; that much was sure. Naruto appeared in the middle of the group with a cloud of smoke grinning massively, obviously enjoying the looks he got from his pranked comrades.

"Well, I guess I won this round." He commented chuckling about the grim and sometimes enraged looks on the others' faces.

"Alright, Naruto, do you want to do the debriefing here or in another place?" Kakashi asked.

They were in a classroom at the academy at the moment.

"No, here is perfect. Everybody sit down, take out your notebooks and pens and listen." He said seriously, turning to the group. "There were two major reasons you didn't even find a trace of me the past five days.

First let me start with my mission parameters. I had to be out in public, meaning in a public building, the streets of Konoha or the forest for at least four hours every day.

Second, I could only use five clones at the same time. Third, I was limited to non-lethal counter-measures to your attempts to find me, which the ones that were caught in my prank traps can attest to.

Think what would have happened if I had been able to use lethal traps and you know one of your major problems. You didn't take all possible safety precautions you could." He could see Ino gulp thinking what might have been and some others were also looking pale.

"Next to that you disregarded preparation. You should have been on guard from the moment I got the get go. You could have watched out for anything that could have been part of my plans.

I had much too easy a time to get everything set up. A ninja never plays fair but uses all ways he has to achieve his goal.

So you trying to spy on my moves or setting up counter measures to something you knew would happen was stupid to the extreme." The three jonin nodded, confirming that statement. It would be a negative part of their reports.

"From what you were told when the mission started I was an enemy spy who had stolen important information from the village that couldn't be allowed to fall into enemy hands.

You had been told that the Hokage had closed off all normal communication lines, so I needed to get out of the village myself. Normally that is. I got the information out the second day." Naruto said shocking the others.

"It was fairly simple. I know all the genin teams in Konoha. I simply disguised four of my shadow clones as a genin team tasked to capture Tora.

They got out of the village easily by simply complaining about having to catch the demon cat again. Boom, the information was out of the village.

I deposited the scroll in a hollow tree three kilometres outside of the village. To make my cover believable, I had a transformation seal make a stone look like Tora and let them return.

"Nothing out of the norm, but highly effective. Next part was finding me. Well, I was always a step ahead of you, because I had the perfect spy in your middle." Naruto said, causing outcries. He chuckled.

"I find it funny that Shikamaru didn't think of it. Kiba actually gave him the information he needed. I feared for a moment that he would realize how I listened into all of your conversations."

"Urgh, it's the floo collar." Shikamaru said. "Troublesome."

"Correct. On Akamaru's floo collar is a miniature seal that transferred everything you spoke about five meters around him to me, which was especially useful as the ones mostly tasked with tracking me were Shino, Hinata and Kiba.

As fleas in the Inuzuka compound are a regular occurrence I could use the standard response of the clan to my advantage in this training mission.

I simply sent a squirrel with fleas into the compound and only had to wait for the collars to be handed out. I know each clan compound from my pranks, so sneaking inside transformed as a small animal was easy." Naruto explained how he had placed the listening seal.

"From this you should learn to never discard any kind of information. The most regular thing can be a hint. For example I was one of the Hokage's assistants that bought ordered materials to get the things I needed for the mission. And my hiding spot was in the Hokage tower." Naruto told them.

"What? But how did you manage to do that unnoticed?" Ino cried out.

"I observed the assistants in the tower for a whole week. I did the same with the hospital and library personnel by the way. We always have somebody who is injured or sick.

And I only needed to put a harmless drug into the food of one of the assistants in the tower and I had a position I could take over. Something you could have found out had you cross-referenced the patient lists of the hospital with the list of ninjas in the public places.

You knew that I had to appear there for some hours, so it should have been one of the first things you did. While you sent Shino to the library and Hinata to the hospital, you forgot the Hokage tower. None of you looked there the whole five days. You can't exclude any place just because people there should notice an impostor.

"To be honest, the Hokage will get a report about how his assistants that normally work there didn't realize that I was an impostor. The only one that did was Danzo Shimura and he complimented me on my great disguise." Naruto said.

The three senseis didn't look happy hearing that news. If Naruto could get away for five days working at the tower there needed to be better training of intruder detection.

"Now, while I was restricted to five clones at every time of the day, that didn't restrict me as much as people might think it would. After all, while I slept my clones could still set up traps and lay false trails. That way you were kept busy." Naruto said.

"But where were you resting?" Shikamaru asked. "I can understand how you managed to blend in with the personnel at the Hokage Tower if you managed to impersonate one of the assistants perfectly.

We would never have noticed if those that normally work there didn't. But you needed to sleep at least four hours each day to function."

"That's easy as well. You know about the resting rooms for those that are working shifts in the Hokage Tower and the hospital? I simply used one of them.

I only needed to divide off a small area of the room by using standard disguise equipment like a wall-coloured cloth and a bit of wire to hide my resting place. I didn't need to worry about a bathroom as I could simply use the one at the Tower in my regular breaks.

As for food, I had everything I needed sealed up in scrolls before I started this mission. After all, supplies for five days aren't hard to store. And if I really needed anything I didn't calculate for, I could send a transformed clone to a shop.

There are so many ninjas or civilians that live in Konoha that no shop owner would have noticed anything." Naruto answered. "The important part of my techniques to stay hidden is that I didn't use anything besides basic academy knowledge." Naruto stated.

"But your seals clearly aren't academy knowledge." Kiba protested.

"Sealing scrolls are covered in third year of the academy and are available at every shinobi supplies shop." Naruto countered.

"Listening devices can also be bought there if you are at least genin and are preparing for a mission.

You only need to show the permission slip from the Hokage. For this mission I didn't draw one seal myself, I got them all from the shops. The listening seal I used is a new seal that the Hokage gave permission to use.

Every single one of those seals is tracked by a special division of the village security teams.

I used stealth, clones, transformations, scent erasing techniques, diversion tactics and everything I found useful in the academy curriculum. Well, the curriculum that was used in war times that is. I never learned the peacetime curriculum because I think that it is a waste of time."

Kakashi nodded, knowing what Naruto was talking about.

"Well, after Naruto now explained how he managed to win this scenario and how you failed the mission, let's go over how you go about a mission like this." Kakashi started and Naruto took a seat while Kakashi went to the front.

"This scenario was set up that you only had a small chance to pass it."

The genins were outraged hearing this.

"Why would you set us up for a failure?" Kiba shouted.

"To prevent you from dying in the field." Kakashi said seriously, shutting them all up instantly. "Kurenai, Asuma and I noticed that some of you were getting overconfident in your new abilities combined with your clan abilities. Overconfidence is one of the major causes for fresh ninjas being killed on missions. Another is false information.

Team seven has told you how our mission to Wave Country got upgraded from a C-rank to an A-rank. Normally we would have returned to Konoha after we found out that the client had lied about the mission parameters, but it wasn't an option because it would have given a crime lord a hold in a country that is close to Fire Country's borders.

On top the people of Wave Country were in danger of starving or being killed by an oppressor. That is a kind of mission Konoha won't refuse to do."

He looked at each of the genin.

"Normally I would have waited for backup to arrive after the demon brothers of Kiri appeared, but as I knew that technically my team didn't consist of three green genin, but a technical jonin, a genin with low chunin level skills and a genin level kunoichi, I could justify continuing the mission.

Had I done that with a real green team, Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura would probably have died when we encountered Zabuza Momochi. There are reasons why certain missions are given to certain ranks.

You may complain about the D-rank missions, but they have their reason in training you to work together with your teammates, train your bodies and give the village an easy source of income.

"The type of fake mission you were confronted with the past five days was what normally would have been classed as a B-rank depending on how dangerous Naruto's role would have been classified. It could have been an A-rank. Normally only experienced chunin or jonin get that kind of mission.

It is dangerous to try and rat out a spy. Even if Naruto intentionally gave a hint which disguise he had taken. What would you have done if your orders had been to infiltrate a village without leaving any traces, Naruto?" Kakashi asked.

"I would have spied through liberal use of shadow clones two weeks prior to infiltrating the village, checking out whom I could easily impersonate.

I wouldn't choose a high ranking member of the village; I would use somebody who is an everyday character.

Somebody who wouldn't be missed immediately. Normally I would have first captured said person, interrogated him or her for normal behaviour, quirks and the like, then I would have sealed him up in a prisoner scroll.

I would have taken the person's place, let my clones collect information in the important areas of the village and after a while I would have left the village, letting a clone take my place for two days until I was a good distance away.

After that I would let the clone free my prisoner whom I would have used a memory seal on and have my clone dispel." Naruto told his standard strategy.

"Very good, Naruto. How do you counter being detected?" Kakashi asked.

"Several ways. If I have the information, I use the hunter teams to get out of the village after making them believe I got away with important information. Hunters operate in teams of four, but normally split up at some point, which would be a perfect opportunity to get away for me. If I don't have the information, I set up a decoy and take another identity.

My special form of transformation can't be detected even by sensor ninjas. I would speed up the information gathering process if possible, if not, I would use several decoy attacks to stretch the village troops away from the information I want.

The village by that point already knows that a spy is somewhere, but finding said spy if you can't be sure how he looks is really hard." Naruto answered.

Kakashi nodded. The others were intrigued by how much Naruto seemed to know about that kind of mission.

"How do you know so much about infiltration missions, Naruto?" Hinata asked.

"How do you think I managed to do my pranks? I have years of experience in this field of expertise." Naruto answered. "You can't get away with as many pranks as I did if you don't have reliable information."

"But you were always caught." Choji said.

"For twenty per cent of everything I really did, Choji. I got away with eighty per cent of my pranks because there was no proof I did it.

And not everything I did was flashy. Some things were more subtle. Certain streaks of 'bad luck' were caused by me." Naruto replied.

"And I would like to add that by the time he was ten we needed jonin to catch him after a prank that was flashy." Asuma mentioned. "We should have noticed it then."

"Nobody wanted to notice it, Asuma sensei." Naruto countered. "After all, I was the 'Dead Last'." He said punctuating the 'Dead Last' part.

The briefing changed the genins' outlook on their missions a lot.

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