Chapter 065

They had done everything from playing tag to giving piggy back rides. Naruto had even shown them some of his less destructive jutsu such as the jutsu he had now taken to calling the Kage Henge (Shadow Transformation), due to the fact that Anko had told him his jutsu was not an illusion like the standard Henge but a real transformation.

Once the clones had finished cooking Naruto had gotten the children to settle down, and he and his clones had passed out food to them, watching in a mixture of amusement and sadness as the group of ragtag kids devoured their meal as if they had not eaten in months. The blond suspected that this was actually very close to the truth.

"That's so cool Onii-chan!" One of the kids said, a little girl with long brown hair and green eyes.

Naruto grinned at her, "Yeah it was, until Iruka-sensei caught me at least." He finished with a bit of a sheepish expression.

"Who's Iruka-sensei Nii-chan?" asked another kid.

"He's the person who taught me to be a ninja," Naruto replied, leaning back on his hands as he looked at the group that was gathered around him. "He's pretty cool, except that he always seems to have this magical ability to find me after my pranks."

Naruto stayed with the kids for the next several hours, regaling them in tales of his pranks. He had to admit it was nice to have a receptive audience who loved to hear about his pranking career, since before it had never really been seen in anyway except a negative light aside from his 'rival for Hokage' Konohamaru, but he had only seen the kid a few times in passing since he became a ninja.

Looking up at the sky Naruto frowned when he saw that the sun was starting to set,

"Well it looks like I have to get going." He stood up, much to the disappointed of the kids.

"Awww! Do you have to Onii-chan?" asked the one who had led him here.

Naruto smiled and ruffled the kid's hair, "Yeah I do…I have to help protect the bridge builder. He's going to save this country from Gato, to make sure that you guys can all live happy lives again."

"Really?" the boy said in an awed tone.

Naruto gave the boy his foxy grin, "Of course! Which is why I have to protect him, that way Gato doesn't try to pull anything funny!"

"Wow…you're like a hero!" one of the girls said.

Naruto chuckled a bit; hiding the small amount of hurt those words gave him. Sarutobi had said he was the hero of Konoha, the one who protected it from the Kyuubi; but none of the people saw him like that. However, here were people he had just met, kids, but people none the less, that thought he was a hero. It was both a heartwarming feeling and slightly depressing.

"You think so…? Maybe," Naruto said, giving the little girl a smile, "it's nice to know some people think that anyway."

Less than fifteen minutes later Naruto walked through the front door to Tazuna's house.

"I'm back," Naruto called out as he went over to the table where his team along with Tazuna and his family were sitting, eating dinner.

Kakashi looked up from his book and gave his blond student the ever famous eye-smile, "Ah. Naruto, did you take care of whatever business you had?"

Naruto nodded as he sat down and began piling food onto his plate, "Yep. It's all taken care of."

I think I should have realized something like this would happen, Kakashi thought to himself as he went back to his book, but didn't read in favor of his thoughts. Given that while different, the situation a lot of these people are in is similar to Naruto's earlier years.

Kakashi had been able to find out what Naruto was doing through Pakkun. What he had found was both surprising, and at the same time not so surprising.

Having been in the ANBU at one point, Kakashi was one of the people who Sarutobi had placed as a guard for Naruto after giving the boy his apartment. It was an unnecessary precaution for the most part, as most people would follow the law and only a few would try and break it, mostly drunks that he and the ANBU dealt with before they became a threat to Naruto.

The blond had rarely ever been able to get any food for himself. Most if not all of the stores refused to sell to him, and the one store that did charged triple the price for rotten goods. Even after having this reported to the Hokage nothing had changed for Naruto, especially since the civilian council had managed to horde more political power after the Kyuubi's attack before Sarutobi had reclaimed his position and now controlled nearly all of the stores, and those they did not were blacklisted if they allowed Naruto entrance, making it very hard for his student to get food.

That he would already be working on water walking is impressive. It still looked a little shaky, but the fact that he can already stand on water shows he's training hard.

Kakashi was actually impressed with the initiative of his blond student, as most would wait for their sensei to begin teaching them. That Naruto had taken to learning things himself showed that he was willing to go above and beyond to learn and grow stronger.

Kakashi looked over at his other two students, both of whom did not have the same motivation and determination the blond had. Hopefully he can help me with the other two.

As everyone began eating again, Naruto looked over at his two teammates. Sakura did not look like she had done nearly as much as he had her do the other day. Obviously Kakashi had not been going as hard on her.

He probably stayed in the house and read his smut, the blond thought with a sigh.

The problem Naruto had realized when he had his Kage Bunshin helping Sakura was that she lacked the motivation to actually train. During the time his Kage Bunshin had been training her, the pinkette had taken to complaining about how he was a slave driver and how all this training would make her look 'manly'. It did not help that she refused to eat properly, preferring to diet rather than remain skinny and toned by exercising.

His eyes then landed on Sasuke who was once again bruised and dirtied, and scarfing down food even faster than him.

At least one of them knows how to work hard. While Naruto did not feel Sasuke had the proper motivation to get stronger that Naruto did, he knew that the raven-haired Genin always worked harder than the others on what he was being taught than the others that had been in their class.

"Hey teme," Naruto said, making Sasuke pause mid-bite to eye the blond. "How's that tree climbing coming?" Naruto asked with a cheeky grin.

Sasuke glared at Naruto as he swallowed. His tree climbing wasn't coming all that well; he had only managed to get ten steps higher then yesterday.

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