The sealed kunai

Chapter 14: Say Hello To Mr. 9

The trip to Kuminari no Kuni was highly uneventful. Naruto ended up getting on even better terms with his older comrades, who seemed to genuinely like the boy's company. Up to this point however, Naruto had been having a minor stroke of luck, as he hadn't had to interact with the Konoha elder that they were escorting. The man usually relayed anything he had to say to the team through Genma, who was the leader of the mission anyway.

Naruto had taken the Kage Bunshin training to heart. He was told that the method wouldn't allow him to increase his physical attributes, so he put that on hold for the time being, it wasn't like he could train on that while he was on a mission anyway. Instead, when he woke up in the morning he would create a few dozen clones and send them off to the most remote location that they could find to train in waves. While one dozen clones would train, the rest would sit and watch until the first wave dispelled themselves. After the influx of information the next wave would train, and so on and so forth until nightfall. This allowed him to get down three more of his lost ninjutsu during the week long trip to Kumogakure no Sato, much to his delight. It seemed that the trip wouldn't be a waste of time, at least during the traveling period.

Naruto didn't expect much of a chance for combat here, but Kumogakure was the second most militarized of the five major hidden villages right behind Iwagakure for a reason. He wasn't sure how peaceful things would be and he wasn't looking forward to seeing whether or not his team could run all the way to the border and stay in one piece, and he didn't want to rely on Kumo wanting to avoid a war, Konoha was still weak from the invasion and no amount of bravado by still taking the same influx of missions could mask that against a shrewd strategist. If Kumo wanted to provoke anything, Naruto's team might have to simply bite their tongues and take it at this point in time.

As they reached the top of the mountain the carriage came to a stop at the main gate of the village. Instead of two guards there were two complete squads keeping watch, showing exactly how many ninja Kumo had to spare if they could use that many just to watch one entrance.

As Genma moved forward to get them all inside, Naruto elbowed Izumo and Kotetsu, "You guys getting gate envy here? Getting a familiar feeling?"

Izumo shrugged Naruto off of them, "Very funny kid. There's nothing wrong with watching the gate. Someone has to do it."

Naruto nodded, "Yeah I know. I hope I never end up drawing that job, gate watching is the D-rank mission of chunin-level ninja."

Kotetsu sighed, "You're telling me... I'd rather do border patrol than watch that gate one more time. I die inside a little every time I sit in that fucking booth. I think that thing sucks chakra or something."

Izumo rolled his eyes, "Stop complaining... You're on a real mission now so shut up. And look alive you guys, here comes Genma."

Right on cue, Genma came over and jumped back onto the carriage, "All right. We're going straight to the hotel they've booked for all of us and then we'll get our marching orders from Elder Mitokado when we get settled in."

The three chunin under his command nodded and set their usual position around the carriage as they made their way through town. Kotetsu and Izumo were no strangers to Kumo, having been there during the chunin exams, but seeing that Naruto wasn't even looking around to get his bearing of the village. What they didn't know was that Danzo had all of his ninja memorize the general layout of all of the major shinobi villages, since none of them ever deviated from the basic plan that had been in place for certain villages since the Second Great Shinobi War, where Danzo got all of his information on the village layouts.

Kotetsu tried to make conversation with the younger boy, "So Naruto, you've never been this far north before have you? How you dealing with the climate change?"