Strength of the Sage

Chapter 4

Summary: Sasuke wasn't the only one to uncover a kekkei genkai on team seven's mission to the land of the waves. Seeing his best friend and teammate on the brink of death die pushes Naruto to unlock an ability inherited from his mother that is rarely seen among the Uzumaki.

o.o.o.o.o

Team seven sat in comfortable silence at training ground seven, waiting as they often did for their sensei to arrive.

Ever since the team had formed, their dynamic as a group was slowly changing. Right after graduation Sakura had blatantly despised Naruto, and Sasuke simply couldn't tolerate either one of his teammates, but their opinions of one another were shifting as they spent more time together. This went tenfold for the events of the previous mission to wave country.

Naruto had seen Sasuke, who was a complete bastard to him for as far as he could remember, willing to sacrifice his life for him. Granted, the teme said he wasn't thinking at the time and acted on instinct, but that action alone had forced Naruto to gain a massive amount of respect for his teammate.

Sakura had been something of a mystery to Naruto over the past week. Ever since the attack had taken place on the bridge Naruto expected his kunoichi teammate to be fearful of him, especially since she saw him in his enraged state, but instead the girl was perfectly pleasant. In fact, Sakura had been a lot nicer to him over the past week than ever before. She hit him less frequently. She even had normal conversations with him at times, although those were limited to situations when Sasuke wasn't around.

But progress was progress.

The biggest change though was how Sasuke viewed and talked to Naruto. Of course he still had his pride, and would never stop calling the blonde 'dobe', but there was no longer an undertone of superiority associated with his voice. It was as if Sasuke had finally started seeing Naruto as something more than the useless student he had known in the academy. Naruto was an enigma to Sasuke, as certain things didn't add up when he was told about how Naruto defeated the two missing nin in wave, but that didn't stop him from seeing Naruto in a new light.

Naruto was strong.

Although he tried to hide it, Sakura had caught on to Sasuke's new mindset. If the events on the bridge had happened a month earlier, Sakura would have probably tried making excuses as to why Naruto succeeded where Sasuke could not. Now though, she could tell that her dark haired teammate looked at Naruto with a hint of respect, and she would give credit where credit was due. If not for Naruto, the result of the fight with Zabuza and Haku would have likely not been so good.

Kakashi watched his students from up in a tree. Being a seasoned jounin, he had easily picked up on the small changes in his students' interactions. Even though the escort mission to wave had escalated quickly and put himself and his students in a lot of danger, he was quite happy with the results. Team seven was finally treating each other like a team, and it only took facing multiple life threatening scenarios together to get them to that point. He was just grateful that the three got a good dose of reality without any real lasting consequences.

Often times with young shinobi it would take a mission gone terribly wrong for them to realize just how rough being a shinobi could be, but his team had managed to come through unscathed.

After the last of his students arrived, Kakashi disappeared from his position in the tree with a seamless swirl of leaves and appeared in front his three charges.

"Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto spoke first as he appeared, confusion clearly etching its way onto his face.

"Yo." The man responded with his trademark careless visage, as if it wasn't completely out of the ordinary that he had shown up on time to the team meeting in the morning.

"You're on time Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura said, pointing out the obvious.

"And…?" He responded, feigning ignorance.

"And you're never on time!" She exclaimed.

"Yeah Kakashi-sensei. What gives? First you start training us real techniques when we haven't even had a single training session before our mission to wave, and now you start showing up on time!?" Naruto continued, "It's like you're not even Kakashi!"

Sasuke, although opting to remain silent was also quite baffled by Kakashi's recent actions, not that he would complain. The man had finally started acting like a real sensei.

"Well, if you don't want me to I guess I could go back to — " He tried to respond before being interrupted by his blonde student.

"No way! Now you have to train us. Dattebayo!" Naruto cut him off.

"Then let's get to it." The masked man said with a sigh before making a ram seal and two shadow clones came to life.

There was no time for discussion as the the shadow clones immediately went to split up to where the designated training would take place.

The three students went their separate ways, following their teacher. Sasuke made a tiger seal and used the shunshin no jutsu with some success, managing to accelerate his movement as he followed his copy of Kakashi for fifty feet before he had to release his jutsu.

Naruto just stared in jealousy before turning around and running to catch up to his copy of their sensei who was already sitting against the tree next to the stream with his copy of Icha Icha out.

"Lucky bastard gets a real jutsu." Naruto muttered under his breath as he removed his jumpsuit to keep dry and got ready to manipulate his chakra.

o.o.o

(flashback: 1 days ago)

Kakashi stood in the Hokage's office, patiently waiting for the man's response after recounting the details of team seven's escort mission to wave.

Hiruzen had a thoughtful look on his face as he took the account in. After a brief silence, he asked the question on his mind.

"Kakashi, your students, how exactly are they taking it?"

"Surprisingly well I would have to say. The events seemed to have only brought them closer as a team. I think that a certain amount of trust is now inherent in their dynamic after everything they went through."

"What about young Sakura? You said she saw Naruto while he was channeling a substantial amount of the kyuubi's chakra. Was she not traumatized?" The Hokage queried. Not many genin could claim to have witnessed a bijuu's power and not be changed by the experience.

"Maybe she would have been if she had paid attention to it, but at the time she was more focused on the fact that Sasuke had appeared to be dead." Kakashi replied.

"Well in any case, your team performed admirably, especially given the circumstances of what they were up against. I'm not sure if any of the other rookie teams would have fared nearly as well as they did."

Hiruzen really was impressed with team seven. He always knew he could expect great things from Naruto, and Sasuke too was an up and coming talent in the village, with being the academy's rookie of the year. Even Sakura, who admittedly didn't do too much during the mission, had worked hard to learn and improve whereas many genin in the same situation would have conceded to fate and let events play out knowing they couldn't change much.

Those genin put a lot of work in for the mission to have ended as well as it had, and it truly was admirable.

"Will that be all Hokage-sama?" Kakashi asked. He too was exhausted after how everything played out, and there was no hiding that from the knowledgeable eyes of the professor. The previous day after team seven got back, Kakashi had spent the whole day filling out paperwork for the TI unit and making arrangements for Zabuza and Haku. He had not gotten much rest, unlike his students who were relieved of duty as soon as they entered the village.

"No, sorry Kakashi, but I'll need you for just a bit longer." He said, pausing slightly before continuing, "How strong do you think each of your students are? And please elaborate on why you think so." He ventured.

Kakashi shot him a confused glance, wondering where he was going with the line of questioning before he quickly evaluated his team's individual skills.

"Sasuke is probably still the strongest, despite Naruto's new discovery of the adamantine sealing chains. I would say that his speed is actually mid chunin level while his strength is at high genin level. He has a couple fire ninjutsu in his repertoire, but at this point he doesn't exactly know how to use them properly because at long range they're easily dodged and at close range it takes too long for him to go through his hand seals. Without his sharingan he could probably fight evenly with any high genin or even some low chunin level shinobi, but the doujutsu is a game changer. Those eyes can probably give him the ability to hold his ground against a mid level chunin, especially because when awakened he gained two tomoe in each eye, meaning they are already quite matured. As you know the sharingan gives him an advantage in all three of the main shinobi fields, granting the ability to see through most genjutsu, replicate ninjutsu, and predict and counter taijutsu. Unlike me though, he could probably have them activated for an entire fight without feeling too much of a drain because he was born with them." Kakashi started.

"Naruto is also quite impressive, especially in comparison to his academy track record. In terms of speed and strength he is the opposite of Sasuke. His speed is a little lower, at high genin level, but his strength is at what I would estimate to be mid chunin level. While Sasuke has great taijutsu form, Naruto has immense stamina and can take quite a huge beating before you would ever see him slowing down to make up for it, making them close to equal in the art. In terms of ninjutsu he only really has the shadow clones, but the technique suits him quite well. He can overwhelm any genin level shinobi by sending 50 clones their way, and can recover from that drain in minutes. Naruto could probably fight to a standstill with most low chunin level shinobi. The only real reason I would say Sasuke has the edge is because the sharingan is quite straightforward to use whereas Naruto has a ways to go before he can use the chains properly in a fight." He continued, before moving on to his last student.

"Sakura is still largely overshadowed by the two boys, but I don't think that really speaks to her potential as a shinobi. It's just that she hasn't taken any of it seriously until quite recently. Her speed and strength are both low genin level, but she has excellent chakra control as well as a mind that can put most of ours to shame. Unfortunately that all adds up to her being at best, a mid genin level shinobi."

'Two rookie genin that can compete with lower end chunin.' Hiruzen thought to himself. That was something to be proud of, especially since it was clear that Kakashi hadn't done much to help any of his students progress up until about a week and a half ago.

"That's quite an impressive team you have there Kakashi. Tell me then, what do you think about them participating in the chunin exams?" Hiruzen asked the scarecrow, clearly seeing the surprise in his eyes as he did.

"Chunin exams? Already?" He said aloud.

Kakashi really was caught off guard by this, and he took a second to wrap his mind around it. The more he thought about it though, the more it made sense to him. To be honest, if the old Sarutobi didn't bring it up right now, he probably would have come to the same conclusion himself. He once more went over his genin's skills in his mind before he gave the Hokage a confident look.

"Definitely." Kakashi gave his one word answer and held eye contact with the Hokage for a moment to emphasize how sure he was of this.

Thinking over it, team seven probably had the best survivability out of any genin team in Konoha. If they were ever in over their heads, Naruto could create a thousand clones to buy plenty of time for the team to escape. Sasuke, similar to many Uchiha in the past, thrived under pressure. That's simply how the Sharingan worked. High pressure situations meant improvement for people like Sasuke. Sakura had nearly perfect chakra control, and while she couldn't do much in a combat capacity as of yet, she was oriented very well for medical ninjutsu. Kakashi was sure she would take to it like a fish to water.

It would take a minimum of an A-rank threat to team seven for Kakashi to bet against them because of their overall team survivability.

In the absolute worst case scenario, if all hope was truly lost, the team would still have a chance because of the fact that Naruto was a jinchuuriki. When backed into a corner, jinchuuriki were oftentimes known to perform miraculous feats power due to their ability to tap into the bijuu's chakra. Naruto had only recently shown that he too had this ability, and while quite unreliable it was just another card that was hidden up team seven's sleeve.

Hiruzen let out a chuckle as he heard Kakashi's reply. It was good to hear that he had such confidence in his team.

"In that case I'm going to need you to train up your students." Hiruzen ordered, "And none of those pointless team building exercises that you keep forcing onto them. I fear the only positive effect they have is that all three of your students bond over how ridiculous they are." Hiruzen lectured.

If all went according to plan, the chunin exams this year in Konoha would be maybe the biggest in history, and it would do wonders for Konoha if a rookie team was able to provide a strong showing.

Kakashi cringed as the Hokage criticized his 'team building exercises' but nodded all the same.

"Hai hokage-sama."

(flashback end)

o.o.o

Naruto woke with a grin on his face and more excitement in his bones than he had for the past three days combined.

Sure, training was fun, but there's nothing like an exciting mission, and the following paycheck to get a spring in your step. Naruto rolled out of his bed and jumped out of his pajamas, into his orange jumpsuit at an insanely fast pace, ready for what the day would bring.

Kakashi and the old man Hokage had been very enigmatic about the contents of the mission. All that team seven was informed of was that it wasn't a D-rank and that it was a high priority mission for the village.

Naturally Naruto's mind wandered to saving a princess, or freeing an enslaved nation, but he would honestly be happy with anything that didn't involve menial labor.

Within minutes of waking, Naruto was dressed, fed, and out the front door.

o.o.o

Naruto was surprised to find that he was actually the last of team seven to arrive at the hokage's office for the mission briefing.

"Took you long enough." Said Kakashi with a stern look on his face as he tapped his wrist, as if he were checking a wristwatch.

Naruto and nearly face-faulted at hearing this.

"Hah. As if you have any room to talk. I should prank you to kingdom come for just trying to pull something like that." Naruto yelled, raising his voice as he got riled up.

Immediately Kakashi's confident gaze turned into what looked like… fear?

"Okay okay let's settle down Naruto. This is only Kakashi's foolish idea of a joke. No need to retaliate." The Hokage said attempting to placate the situation, although it came off more to the sound of pleading.

Both Kakashi and the old Sarutobi had heard and seen a lot of Naruto's pranks, despite never really being directly on the receiving side of any of them. Kami forbid Naruto would start targeting them now. Elite shinobi or not, Naruto's imagination was a dangerous place, and those pranks knew where and when to hit in order to be the most effective.

The one golden rule among ANBU was not to get on Naruto's bad side, because if a single ANBU would piss him off in some way, the entire division would be on the receiving end of prank retribution.

"Hahah yeah Naruto I was only kidding. How about as an apology I take you out to for some ramen after we get back from the mission. My treat." Kakashi appeased, waving his arms in front of him to give the sense of innocence.

As quick as the tension in the air had appeared, it was gone.

"You've got yourself a deal Kakashi-sensei!"

"Hn." Sasuke stated, a smirk glued to his face. It was pretty funny how people weren't too afraid of Naruto's shinobi abilities, but when it came to pranks he could even get the 'god of shinobi' sweating.

Now that the situation had been resolved, Hiruzen picked up a stack of papers and flipped through them until he got to the page he was looking for.

"Now that you're all here I can give you the mission. Here we go." The old Sarutobi said as he pulled a specific sheet from the middle of the pile.

The three genin all perked up at hearing this. Kakashi of course didn't take his eyes off of his icha-icha pages, but that was excusable since he already knew what the mission entailed.

"This mission I'm giving you is a B-rank diplomatic escort mission." The Hokage started as he pulled another scroll from a locked drawer in his desk.

"W-wait! Hokage-sama. A B-rank mission? But were only a genin squad." Sakura chimed in protest.

Immediately the glares of Sasuke and Naruto found their way to Sakura as if to say "Don't ruin this for me", and the girl got the picture quite quickly.

Hiruzen brushed off the interruption and continued. "As I was saying, this is a B-rank diplomatic escort mission. You'll be escorting your two clients to Mizu no Kuni, and Kakashi will have this scroll" the Hokage stated as he passed the white bound scroll to the jounin, "detailing an offer we have for the Kiri shinobi regiment you will be meeting with."

Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke all nodded at hearing this while Kakashi hid the scroll into his supply pack fastened at his hip.

"You three" The Hokage continued addressing the genin, "don't have to worry about the diplomacy aspect of this mission. Your focus should be on the clients as a priority and Kakashi will deal with the diplomatic interaction. He has been separately briefed on the contents of the scroll and will do all the dealings with the Kiri shinobi. Am I clear?" The Hokage asserted in a voice that left no room for doubt.

"Hai Hokage-sama!" The three genin chorused.

"One question Hokage-sama. Why were we chosen for this mission. It's not like we are any more special than the next genin squad." Sakura asked, this time choosing to ignore the pointed looks she got from her genin teammates.

Just then the doors to the office were pushed open and two pairs of footsteps made their way into the room.

Naruto turned around to see who it was and a look of pure shock appeared on his face.

"That's because I requested you. Miss me brats?" Came the sharklike voice of a man that Naruto had not been eager to hear for the rest of his life.

The Hokage stood up as a courtesy to their guests and introduced them "I believe you have already met the clients, Zabuza Momoichi and Haku Yuki."

The room was silent as three sets of jaws hit the ground.

o.o.o

Kakashi gave team seven an hour to collect their supplies and rendezvous at the front gate of Konoha for their escort mission.

By the time Naruto had arrived, Sakura and Sasuke were already at the front gate waiting with bags strapped onto their backs, each of them already packed and ready for the mission ahead. Kakashi, Haku, and Zabuza were nowhere in sight, although Naruto had arrived fifteen minutes early so it didn't necessarily speak to their tardiness.

Sasuke was the first of the group to speak up.

"So I know that we aren't really allowed to have opinions seeing as we're all genin, but doesn't this seem a little insane to you. Like, Zabuza and Haku were trying to kill us just last week, and now we're supposed to escort them like nothing happened?" Sasuke started, his stoic facial expression disappearing from his face as he explained his confusion.

"Yeah. That just seems wrong." Sakura added, for once not because she was agreeing with Sasuke but because she really thought that it was messed up.

"One day someone is trying to kill you and the next we have to protect them." Sasuke continued.

Naruto scratched the back of his head, trying to sort out the emotions he held for their two clients. Of course at first they were both terrifying. Even after they were both tied up, and after Kakashi had sealed both of their chakra systems, Naruto was wary of them the entire trip back from Nami no kuni.

Naruto had to admit though that as prisoners, neither Zabuza nor Haku tried anything funny, but they were still the enemy and no amount of arguing on their behalf would change that.

"I just hope they don't try to kill us again." Naruto added his two cents. This morning he was hoping for an exciting mission, but now that he knew that even his clients were a danger to him, he was biting his tongue.

"Dobe you scared already?" Sasuke egged Naruto on, trying to get a reaction out of him.

"As if! I'm more scared of Sakura-chan than I am of them." Naruto lied, although it wasn't too much of stretch. Sakura's punches hurt like hell.

Sakura sent a glare Naruto's way but refrained from hitting her blonde teammate. After all, it would be unprofessional if one of the genin was injured before the mission even started.

"You're scared of Sakura? Haha, you're such a loser." Sasuke replied with a smug expression on his face.

"Hey! She punches hard. It's not my fault she refuses to ever hit you. Besides, it's no worse than being scared of your fangirls." Naruto retorted with a maniacal laugh at the end.

He had seen Sasuke's run ins with fangirls, and he had also seen the extreme lengths Sasuke went to in order to avoid the mob of pre-pubescent teens. Naruto freely admitted that those girls were quite scary, but he would never let Sasuke live it down.

Sasuke flinched as Naruto brought up the bane of his existence and seemed genuinely shaken.

"Don't joke about them. They have ears everywhere." Sasuke said ominously, eyeing Sakura and slowly edging away from her in order to make some space for a quick reaction.

Sakura looked at both of them with a deadpan. "I don't know if I should feel insulted or not" She said with her arms crossed and a pout on her face. "It's not like I've ever done anything to seriously hurt either of you."

"LAST TIME I WENT TO THE HOT SPRINGS, YOU CHASED ME AROUND THE VILLAGE WHILE I WAS WEARING NOTHING BUT A TOWEL." Sasuke burst out, not understanding how Sakura didn't comprehend her misdeeds.

Sakura, hearing this, relived it in her memory as her mouth started watering. After a couple moments of that, Sakura snapped out of it and looked towards Sasuke apologetically. "But that was the old me. I would never do that to you now." She tried to console.

"THAT WAS TWO DAYS BEFORE OUR LAST MISSION." Sasuke yelled as he made some more space between her.

Sakura only blushed in reply.

Naruto on the other hand was pulling his hair to the side on the back of his head in order to give his teammate a good view of the cranial damage she caused.

"I have more bruises and bumps on me from you hitting me than from any training or fight I've ever been in! Hell, Sasuke doesn't even hit that hard in our spars!" Naruto added.

"Hey! I hit harder than her." Sasuke angrily said in response to Naruto's declaration.

Sakura only blushed more at the accusations the boys made.

"I'm not that bad am I?" She asked the two.

"Worse!" They both practically shouted in response.

"But I'd still date you Sakura-chan!" Naruto added on quickly with a smile.

"Shove it Naruto." Sakura sat down on the open bench by the gate's entrance, arms still crossed and still pouting.

Naruto stuck his tongue out in her direction, albeit playfully and then took a seat next to Sasuke who was leaning against a tree.

"Girls."

Sasuke almost let out a chuckle. Almost.

"You said it." And he took a seat right next to him.

The three sat in relative silence, thinking about the mission that was coming up.

None of them would admit it, but they all had some level of fear due to the mission. A B-rank was something to be nervous about. The Hokage said they would meet with the leader of a group of shinobi in a war camp, meaning that they would be not too far from a warzone.

The gist of it was that a lot could go wrong in the mission, but despite that, for some reason the Hokage had enough faith in team seven to pull through.

The Hokage believed in them, and Naruto didn't have the heart to let the old man down.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

I'm back after way too long. I have to apologize about how long this took me to come out with. I actually wrote this a long time ago, but I absolutely hated it and I rewrote it twice before completely giving up. I dropped it for a while and picked it back up this week and after rewriting it a few more times I'm finally satisfied with how the chapter went.

Anyways, review if you liked it or didn't like it.

Favorite, follow, the usual.

Dattebayo.

Stats:

Naruto

Ninjutsu: 2
Taijutsu: 2.5
Genjutsu: 1
Intelligence: 1
Strength: 3.5
Speed: 2
Stamina: 4
Hand Seals: 2.5
Total: 18.5

Sasuke

Ninjutsu: 2.5
Taijutsu: 2.5
Genjutsu: 1.5
Intelligence: 2
Strength: 2
Speed: 3.5
Stamina: 2
Hand Seals: 3
Total: 19

Sakura

Ninjutsu: 1.5
Taijutsu: 1
Genjutsu: 3
Intelligence: 3.5
Strength: 1
Speed: 1
Stamina: 1
Hand Seals: 3
Total: 15

Jutsu List:

Shosen no Jutsu: Mystic Palm Technique

A-rank supplementary jutsu
The user coats their hands with medical ninjutsu chakra and channels it to an injured body part through direct contact. Although it is simple enough to learn, the effectiveness of the technique is null for all but those who have exceptional chakra control and mastery over medical ninjutsu chakra.

Shunshin no Jutsu: Body Flicker Technique

D-rank supplementary jutsu
The user channels chakra to their entire body, allowing the user to increase the speed, and impulse of the muscles for a short period of time. The technique is often times used for traveling short distances at high speeds. It is not well suited for combat due to tunnel vision while in use and oftentimes resulting in vertigo after use.