Chapter 6: Reporting In.

When he got back in his village, Mizuku walked through the streets of his smoke covered home town. He walked to the mansion in the center of the main plaza. When he entered the front door, he encountered the two guards we met earlier. “Hello Mizuku-senpai.” They said bowing.

“Let me in to see the boss.” Mizuku commanded, sounding ticked off. He waited there for a moment while the two men went in the big double doors for a few moments.

“Master Midan will see you now.” One said coming out of the doors.

“Of course he will.” Mizuku smirked and walked into the office. “Canyon village? Come on, Midan, you know I can do WAY better than that!”

“I know which is why I sent you.” The man at the desk said.

“But you said the Canyon village was bigger than the seed village! I feel ripped off! The only fun I had was the group of Leaf ninja that tried to stop me!”

“A group of Leaf ninja ran into you?”

“Yeah, at the village entrance I ran into these four leaf nin who kicked me in the face.”

“Ha-ha!” Midan started laughing heartily.

“Stop mocking me, you lazy tub of lard!” Mizuku spat. He heard a chair creaking, wind whooshing by his head, and felt cold steel lightly touching his neck. His eyes widened when he realized Midan was behind him.

“Look here, Mizuku! I am the boss, here, and I call the shots! If I find it necessary to send you to a small village, then I will! And if you take another step out of line, you’re finished here! You got that?”

“Yes sir.” Mizuku sighed. Midan lowered the kunai and walked to his desk.

“Good.” He said when he sat down. “Now, the reason I sent you to the Canyon village is so you can conserve your chakra. Now, since you encountered an unexpected ambush, I’ll give you a few hours to rest. Now leave, and I will call you in later.”

“Sir.” Mizuku saluted and left the room.

MEANWHILE

Naruto and his shadow clones were running frantically to the leaf village carrying his teammates on his back. As you know, Naruto has plenty of experience carrying filler characters on his back piggy-back style, but these four people were main characters and thus, weighed slightly more than princess Kazahana. Anyway, when he reached the Leaf, he was greeted by Lee and Gai who just got back from their tenth mission that day. “Hey Naruto!” Gai shouted enthusiastically. “It’s nice to see you running with youth back to the village you belong to!” Naruto at this point was close enough for them to see he was carrying his unconscious comrades.

“Gai-sensei, look! He’s carrying Kakashi on his back!”

“You’re right Lee…” He looked serious for a moment, and then smiled. “Looks like my rival could not handle his mission! This means another win for me! Ha-ha!”

Now Naruto was close enough to hear their “youthful” babble and collapsed, his Shadow clones disappearing as well.

“Oh, this, uh, looks more serious than we thought, Lee.”

“Let’s take them to Hokage-sama!” Lee said.

“Oh, Lee! I love you youthful problem solving abilities!” Gai yelled starting to cry.

“Oh, Gai-sensei!” Lee embraced Gai-sensei, also crying.

“Oh, for the love of Pete!” Naruto yelled in one last burst of energy. “Just get us to the damn hospital already, Bakas!” After a few hours, he woke up with Shizune finishing wrapping bandages around his bruised head. “H-huh? Wh-where am I?” He asked.

“You’re in the hospital, again.” Sakura answered for Shizune.

“Huh? Sakura-Chan!” Naruto said waking up a little more. “D-did you come to see me?”

“No!” Sakura yelled. “I’m a medic in training, Baka.”

“Gai and Lee brought you in a couple hours ago.” Shizune said calmly. “Luckily it was just in time.”

“How are the others?” Naruto asked.

As if on que, Tsunade walked in with a clipboard. “Kiba and Kakashi have no serious injuries; Asuma suffered minor burns and ruptured his stomach. He’ll be fine though. Naruto, you’ve pushed yourself too far again.”

“He, he.” Naruto chuckled.

“It’s not funny, Naruto!” Sakura reprimanded “You know what happens when you push yourself too hard!” Naruto remembered his fight against Sasuke, the mysterious red aura, and the numb feeling in his left arm.

“Yeah, I know.” Naruto said ashamed.

A few hours later, Naruto, Asuma, Kakashi, and Kiba were in Lady Tsunade’s office. “Ibiki came up with some disturbing findings in his interrogations, and wanted to let us all know. Come in!”

Ibiki walked in the office and stood, solid as rock. Without waiting to be told, he started informing everyone. “The man Naruto brought in had will power, but not much. I broke him rather fast. Turns out, the village Asuma got a glimpse of turned out to be the village hidden in smoke. They are extremely small, but they have a big goal. They take out small villages one by one, and then gradually crank it up a notch. Later, when they have enough power, they’re going to go after the five main villages.” This received a collective gasp from all in the room. “The smoke village’s ultimate goal is to become the only shinobi village in the world. Then they will hire themselves out to fight wars and win for whichever nation comes to them first.”

“That’s horrible!” Kiba yelled. “What will they accomplish from that?!”

“Shinobi villages make huge sums of money from missions. Imagine if we were the only one to carry out those missions. We would be able to buy out the land of fire.” This got another gasp.

“As you can see, this is serious.” Tsunade said breaking the long fearful silence. “We have no way of tracking their next missions, so we have no choice but to wait.”

“And if this village targets us, we’ll fight back as hard as we can, right granny?” Naruto yelled.

“For once, Naruto is right. You are dismissed.” With that everyone left leaving Tsunade with Shizune to talk about their battle plan with Ibiki.

MEANWHILE

I was sitting at my laptop with a cup of hot chocolate pondering about what to write about next. Then it hit me. AH HA! I’ll get back to Mizuku!

Now Mizuku was sitting in his small ramshackle home drinking the hot chocolate he stole from me, wondering when he’ll be called to Master Midan’s office again. Just then, there was a knock at his door. “Master Midan will see you now!”

“Finally!” Mizuku yelled. He got up and walked to the mansion. When he got to the room with Midan, he greeted him casually. “Yo, Midan, how’s tricks?”

“Sit down and be respectful.”

“Fine. So, what’s your next assignment for me, boss?”

“I did some very careful consideration for this. Are you ready?”

“Of course I am, give me your best assignment.”

What Midan said next was so terrifying, I have to put his line in the center of the page.

“I am assigning you personally… to destroy… Konoha.”

A/N: GAAAAAAAAAAAASP! What will happen next? Find out in the next chapter. Sayonara! PS: Please forgive any grammar/continuity/spelling errors. I kinda wrote this in a hurry.