The sealed kunai

Chapter 26: Where the Big Boys Play

Naruto had his eyes closed with his sword in his lap inside of a small fissure on the side of a cliff as he caught a wink of sleep before the tough part of his current mission kicked up once more. As he heard the muffled, footsteps of his comrade enter the vicinity he let out a small sigh and started rebooting his mind to prepare for work. His hair had grown out quite a bit during his long time away from home, allowing it to trail down his neck and he was now wearing the gear he had purchased in Kumo. The sleeveless dark gray hooded vest, the black pants, the black bracers on his forearms, and his black shinobi sandals. He had grown about three inches over the past few months out and about.

As a man in a cat patterned mask entered the cave he looked Naruto over, "You're already awake. That's good. It's time to get to work kid."

Naruto chuckled, "No time for real rest, huh Tenzo?"

Tenzo sighed and pulled the mask off of his face to reveal a man with short brown hair, black eyes, and a mask-style hitae-ate in the fashion of the Nidaime Hokage, "Use the code name for the love of Kami Naruto."

Naruto put his hands up defensively, "We're in a cave, 1200 feet off of the ground, 450 more feet to the peak of the mountain. Anyone that actually hears your name is going to be dead in a few minutes anyway and if a patrol actually came all the way out here away from the base they are either completely stupid, or the others didn't do as good as they thought covering their tracks when they went and did reconnaissance, so either way, you're good."

Tenzo stared at Naruto for a moment with his eye twitching, "Lack of respect for protocol aside, you've done very well on this assignment. You're not half bad at this stuff. Who knew a fourteen year old kid was this good at sacking bases. I thought Hokage-sama was insane when she stuck you with my squad but you are damn efficient at this."

Naruto shrugged, "Just because I have a ton of chakra doesn't mean I can't operate without it. I like this kind of stuff. Though that base in Umi no Kuni was a pain in the ass with that scientist and all. Good thing you were there when it started falling apart. That sea monster thing was annoying."

Tenzo laughed and rubbed the back of his head, "It was pure water. I could control it and bend it to my will, not really a good move on that Amachi guy's part. Anko really didn't take too kindly to the way he played with that girl's head there either. I almost felt sorry for the bastard... almost."

Naruto slung his sword over his back, "And that's why we sent her and that Isaribi girl back to Konoha afterwards. Because we couldn't let her keep doing this crap if that was how she was going to react when we actually caught somebody that was willing to go down without fighting to the death. Alright, who's going with me on this one? Is Yugao heading in with me?"

Tenzo patted the boy on the shoulder, "You're going in alone on this one. If you get caught they're going to swarm and head outside. Only the best will stay inside at that point and from there if it requires it you can cut loose with the Kyuubi's chakra. I mean really cut loose, like go as hard with it as you can, that's why I'm here remember?"

Naruto nodded, "Yeah, about that. Why do you insisting that I keep going full blast with Kyuubi's chakra? I mean, it is really good practice without freaking anybody at home out, but won't people be able to tell that Konoha did this when they feel my chakra being left over afterwards, or can your Mokuton handle that too?"

"As long as you don't turn the place into a smoldering two mile in circumference crater we should be good." Tenzo admitted, "Although we were supposed to do that anyway, but not with demonic chakra, or alerting anyone that needs to stay alive to our presence. Both of which you using every bit of demonic chakra you can pump out would cause."

Naruto stood and dusted himself off before doing some light stretching, "So how am I doing this? Am I going in loud or am I doing this on the sly? Because the last loud one ended up almost being a clusterfuck."