Chapter Text
Naruto trotted down the street towards the academy in the form of a golden fox, using his small size to slip along the side of the street, unhindered by the morning crowds. None paid him any more than a slight glance. Due to Konoha having been the home of the Kyuubi no Kitsune for going on four generations now, foxes were a rather popular pet in Konoha, surpassing cats and beaten only by ninken (Though the Inuzuka rather skewed the numbers).
Today was the day for his final exam, and the only reason he wasn’t bouncing all over the place in excitement was because he was plotting. There were no doubts in his mind that he would pass, between his massive chakra reserves and the additional training given by Tou-chan’s Guards (Naruto was aware of their competition to see who could teach him the most spectacular jutsus without getting into trouble with his father and cheerfully took advantage) how could he not?
A chorus of barking abruptly started just ahead, causing everyone on the street to pause, looking for the commotion. Focusing his ears and nose, Naruto only got a few second’s warning to jump out of the way of a red fox with a chew toy in its mouth and a collar around its neck being pursued by an irate Shiba Inu, also a pet. Naruto watched them disappear down the street before it occurred to him that things had gotten worryingly quiet. Glancing up revealed that everyone was staring at him. It was at this point that he realized that when he had dodged the pets he had automatically stuck himself to the side of the building without thought. The only foxes that could use chakra like that were summons and shapeshifted shinobi, and Naruto was clearly not the former. Of the latter, only two people had the distinctive shade of his fur, and he was too small to pass as Tou-san.
The crowd of civilians surged towards Naruto, spouting a cacophony of noise that drowned out their words and set Naruto’s sensitive ears ringing as he spun and shot up the side of the stone building, inwardly cursing.
What happened? Kurama asked, concern tinged with a pit of panic.
Rather than explain Naruto shoved the memory over, causing a brief bust of amusement to cut through the Bijuu’s depression.
As Jiji had predicted, his death had broken Kurama, and the funeral certainly hadn’t helped matters. Naruto vividly remembered those early days, how Kurama’s grief had been so immense it nearly drowned Naruto’s endless optimism and cheerfulness, which had already been dimmed by Naruto’s own grief at loosing Jiji. There had been two rather terrifying days when Kurama had gotten lost in his head and memories and basically went catatonic. It had taken the combined efforts of Naruto, Kin, Dai, and all eight of the Bijuu (who contributed thorough the Saishin Sekai) to pull him out. Naruto still felt guilty at manipulating Kurama’s own guilt to get the Bijuu to manifest outside of the seal and stay there, but it was what had allowed them to finally help the ancient kitsune start to recover, his sons steadfastly remaining by his side and keeping him from dwelling. That had been several months ago, and while Kurama was still struggling with his depression he was mostly functional, and steadily improving as time went on.
Naruto eventually stopped on the roof across the street from his destination, warily watching the crowd gathered in front of the academy. Most of them were civilian parents come to wish their children good luck on the tests, he knew, but civilians had the annoying tendency to try and demand things from him, ranging from the innocuous, an autograph for instance, to trying to get Kurama to support their agenda. There was a reason most of the fangirls that bothered him were from civilian families. He also understood why Jiji had tended to stick to the primarily shinobi sections of the city when he was out, shinobi were at least circumspect in their observations and didn’t try to crowd him.
Glancing around for his ticket through the crowd without being mobbed or unwittingly stepped on (which hurt, especially when it was his tail) he saw Iruka approaching, on schedule. Dropping down from the roof into a small ally between buildings he waited until Iruka passed by before darting out and slipping in behind him, following as close to Iruka’s heels as he could without impeding the human’s movement. Iruka sighed without even looking, sensing Naruto’s chakra, and began to make his way through the crowd, no one looking down and noticing the little golden fox in the sensei’s wake due to greeting the human.
Iruka waited until they were within the academy before he spoke to Naruto.
“I don’t think you can take a written exam as a fox, so change back.”
Naruto flowed into human form and fell into step next to his sensei.
“So, you think you’re ready?” Iruka asked.
Naruto beamed.
“Always.”
Dan watched as Iruka left the classroom with the stack of tests in hand. Hopefully the reviews of contract law, official and threat rankings, and SOPs over the past week had paid off, but now it was time for the first practical exam: infiltration.
He led the class out into the training yard and to a shack that had been set up for the exam. It was a simple thing, one room with a single door and two windows that didn’t have glass but did have wooden shutters. Inside was a basic wooden table upon which lay several sheets of paper, one of which was the information the student needed to retrieve – their family tree, which started with the oldest of their relatives to move to Konoha.
In order to retrieve the information they would have to get past him and Iruka, once the latter returned from delivering the tests. Of course, Dan wouldn’t be doing his best to stop them – that would have been completely unfair – and would allow himself to be distracted, provided they weren’t too blatant, was ignoring his chakra sense, and wasn’t using any sensory augmentation jutsus. Each student had ten minutes from when he called their name to get the information, and as long as they got away and didn't destroy the shack they passed, though they obviously got more points if they didn't get spotted or go loud.
Ino, who had been the second to go, had just completed her test (Dan had let her hit him with a Yamanaka Mind Jutsu) when Iruka returned.
“Any problems?” Dan asked.
“Everything’s fine,” Iruka replied, “Though I think Naruto’s up to something.”
Dan huffed.
“On one hand, it’s good to see he’s recovering from losing Naruto Senior, but…”
“Yeah.”
Sakura was next to take the test and she succeeded, using a genjutsu to fake several suspicious noises to “distract” the senseis, once again confirming Dan’s belief that she would be an excellent shinobi if she could just stop acting like a vapid airhead mooning over her crush. Following her was Kiba, who tried to use Akamaru to distract the two adults, only to lose his head when the puppy was promptly pinned and wound up with Iruka stuffing the ninken down the back of his partner’s pants and being captured. Dan gave Iruka an odd look after they let the Inuzuka go.
“Maybe next time he’ll learn to not risk Akamaru or at least finish the mission first,” was Iruka’s response.
Then it was Shikamaru’s turn, and neither sensei realized that the Nara had gotten past them until the ten minutes were up and they checked the table and found that the information was missing. Dan made a note to ask him how he managed that later.
Sasuke’s “distraction” involved launching a Great Fireball at them, missing but setting a large chunk of the training ground on fire, then shunshining in and out while the pair were busy putting out the blaze. While the young Uchiha did succeed, Dan marked him poorly.
Using a minor wind jutsu to blow away the smoke, Iruka said
“I’m starting to get paranoid about what Naruto’s got planned. Let’s do him next.”
Dan nodded and handed Iruka the folder containing the target papers so he could restock the table before focusing his chakra on his vocal chords.
“UZUMAKI NARUTO,” he called.
Iruka stepped out of the shack and the pair resumed their patrol around the makeshift building, handing the folder back as he did so. About a minute later Iruka groaned.
“He’s trying to impersonate me,” Iruka groused, “definitely using his shapeshifting abilities. He relies on them far too much. I’m going to step away for a bit, give him an opening.”
Dan nodded and Iruka disappeared into the still lightly smoldering shrubbery dotting this section of the grounds. A few seconds later Naruto – in Iruka’s form – strode into view, looking both rumpled and irate.
“Sorry I’m late, senpai,” Naruto said, and Dan noted that he had Iruka’s voice down perfectly, “someone stuck a paralysis seal keyed to me in front of the yard door next to the main office.”
“And it took you this long to be freed from it?” Dan asked, deciding to play along for now.
“It was a customized seal, we had to wait on an Uzu nin to get me out. So who tried to set the yard on fire?”
Dan gave him a flat look.
“Really Naruto?”
“Naru – wait you think –“
“Iruka-kouhai has been with me since the start. You clearly didn’t think this through.”
“But I’m not Naruto!”
Ignoring the other mans protests Dan went though the shapeshift reversion jutsu.
And nothing happened.
Dan immediately got a sinking feeling, but cast the reversion jutsu again.
The man opposite him remained Iruka shaped.
“…paralysis seal you said.”
A nod.
Dan quickly strode to the shack and burst in, almost immediately noticing that Naruto’s target was not on the table, and a quick check through the folder revealed that it wasn’t there either.
He felt like he was about to either laugh or scream.
“That brat!”
As Naruto joined his classmates in lining up for their taijutsu exam, he became aware of Dan-sensei and Iruka-sensei glowering at him. He tried to give them an innocent look, but was unable to prevent his face from sliding into the pleased look of a fox that had managed to get into a hen house without anyone the wiser.
“I know we said that we’d have you pairing off for this test before,” Dan-sensei said, “but given two of you decided to be little shits in the previous test we’re invoking Sensei Privilege to change things a bit. Sasuke, your opponent will be Iruka. Naruto,” Dan-sensei gave him a malicious grin, “you’re mine.”
Naruto winced.
He gave a good showing, but still got soundly thumped.
The next test was evasion which… Smoke cloud, mass shadow clone, multiple shunshins, and did you pay any attention to that mouse hiding under a rock?
Needless to say, Naruto got full marks, as everyone expected.
The final test was offensive ninjutsu, which was arguably the easiest test for everyone to pass, you merely needed to demonstrate a jutsu capable of killing an enemy if it connected. This had a very wide variety of answers from the students. Sasuke launched his great fireball again, Shikamaru used shadow possession and a mock kunai, Hinata demonstrated Eight Trigrams, etc.
Naruto called up a rasengan.
When Iruka gave a small sigh of exasperation Naruto innocently asked if he would score higher if he summoned a bijuudama instead, and promptly broke down laughing at Iruka’s expression. (Not that he could have, Kurama hadn’t taught him any Chosen techniques yet, though he had been learning the rasengan as a stepping stone to learn the bijuudama, as the former was a derivative of the latter.)
Minato sighed as he went about his ritual upon arriving home from the office. Hat off, robes off, announce that he was back.
“In here,” Kushina called from the living room.
Minato entered to see his wife and their daughter leaning over a half complete seal.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Kaa-chan’s teaching me how to make reconstruction seals, like the ones Jiji carved into the Compound,” Remon answered as she carefully added another line, brushing a lock of her light red hair back behind her ear as it drifted forward again, “this way I don’t have to worry about Nii-san breaking my models again.”
Minato lightly shook his head at the reminder of the accident – and it was an accident – in question. Kakashi had been teaching Naruto how to use a cluster smoke bomb only for a malfunctioning bomblet to fail to detonate and instead go sailing through Remon’s open window and explode upon hitting the shelves she kept her model buildings on, causing several to topple onto the floor and break. Naruto had been as apologetic as Remon had been angry, and, without prompting, had immediately gone to the market to purchase replacement models and construction supplies out of his own pocket in apology. All of the adults had been quietly proud of Naruto’s immediate acceptance of responsibility.
“You do realize those seals can be a power hog, right?” Minato asked.
“So?”
He lightly chucked at the flippant response. Remon, despite having no interest in becoming a shinobi, still had chakra levels worthy of any Uzumaki. Power was rarely an issue.
“Where’s Naruto? I need to talk with him.”
Kushina groaned.
“What did he do this time?”
“Trapped Iruka in a paralysis seal and took his place in order to pass the infiltration exam.”
“Dan didn’t notice?”
“Nope. In fact, he initially thought Iruka was actually Naruto.”
Kushina huffed out an incredulous laugh while Remon shook her head in disbelief.
“On one hand, that’s quite impressive. On the other…”
“Yeah. And he used an Uzumaki special that I am fairly certain that neither of us taught him. They had to bring in a Junko to free Iruka.”
Kushina sighed.
“I have already given him permission to spend the night with Kin and Dai in the Compound. I know that those two are equivalent to a human in their late teens now, but I still don’t like them living all alone in the there. Especially since Kurama still isn’t always here mentally.”
Minato nodded.
“The conversation can wait until morning.”
Mizuki cautiously eyed the walls of the Namikaze Compound as he quietly walked towards it. In and out, he reminded himself, find the late Namikaze’s seals and haul ass to Ame. While any of Namikaze’s seals would fetch him a large price, he had been promised that if he could acquire a copy of the Chosen’s seal he would be set for life, with the wealth and influence he deserved.
It was nice to finally deal with someone who recognized his true value and appreciated it.
Best of all, this whole operation was basically risk free. With the death of Namikaze no one lived in the compound anymore, so that meant that he could take his time when he ransacked the place. His first stop was going to be Namikaze’s workshop, and finding a way around the seals on that had been a bitch and a half. The door, walls, and ceiling had all been warded well beyond his ability to break, but the floor had been neglected. Nonchalantly walking around to the back of the compound Mizuki dropped down into the carefully concealed tunnel that he had spent the past week excavating and, several minutes of dirty crawling later, emerged within the sealed workshop, summoning a dim red genjutsu light to preserve his night vision.
Unfortunately, it very quickly became apparent that the late Namikaze did not do any seal work in there, but there was a small collection of completed Elemental Orbs that Mizuki happily sealed into a storage scroll. Despite being less valuable than Namikaze’s seals, the fact that no more Orbs were being made (though he had seen several inferior varieties start popping up in the market) meant that their price had skyrocketed. Having finished stashing the lot, Mizuki scanned the walls and corners for a hidden compartment that might function as a security vault. Finding none, he used a jutsu that caused seals to flare white. The catch was that it also sent out a very noticeable chakra pulse to do so, but as the workshop was warded to prevent chakra from entering or exiting Mizuki was confident that no one would feel it. Unfortunately, the only seals that flared into existence were the security ones, which meant the vault wasn’t in the workshop.
Dropping back into his tunnel, Mizuki thought for a long moment about where else the seals could have been stashed. The first thing that came to mind was the old fox’s personal room, and if it wasn’t there… well he’d have to search the entire compound, wouldn’t he.
Emerging from his tunnel he jumped onto the roof and then down into the courtyard, immediately heading towards Namikaze’s room, which he knew the location of from previous scouting missions. Opening the door Mizuki looked around, his genjutsu light drifting in to illuminate the room.
…It still looked like someone still lived there. The futon had been removed, and a thin layer of dust was starting to settle, but otherwise it probably still looked exactly like it had when Namikaze had lived.
On one hand, there were no places for a physical hidden compartment to have been installed, aside from the non-structural interior dividers for the bathroom two of the walls face other previously occupied rooms and the other two face the exteriors of the building and the walls themselves simply were not thick enough to hide something in, so anything hidden would be by some kind of storage seal.
Mizuki grimaced and hoped the Uzumaki Manor was far enough away for the seal revealing jutsu to not be noticed as he pinged the room. He was promptly rewarded by a massive and complex seal flaring to life on the far wall behind several tables. That had to be the vault. Grinning he strode towards it, slowing when he spotted the small pile of scrolls on the floor in front of it, with a note stuck to the top in the Hokage’s handwriting.
Remember to get Kurama to seal these away, last thing I need is Naruto or Remon playing around with them by accident.
Curious Mizuki picked one of the scrolls and unfurled it, revealing an intricate fuuinjutsu seal that he couldn’t make heads or tails of.
Then he heard the door open and spun around to see Uzumaki Naruto looking at him in half-asleep confusion.