Huff...huff...
His lungs felt like they were on fire and his vision was starting to blur, but the man, gritting his teeth, continued to leap across the tree branches. Dark-toned and dressed in nondescript black clothes, he blended almost perfectly into the darkness of the night. The only thing that gave him away was the frayed scroll clutched in his hands that gleamed white under the stray rays of moonlight that interrupted the shade of the forest canopy. His heart thudding loudly in his chest, as sweat streamed down his face, the man cautiously looked behind him.
He was alone.
Letting out a tiny sigh of relief, the man felt some of the tension leaving his muscles. As the hot blood coursing through his veins began to slow down, he suddenly realized that the wind blowing strongly against his face was cold. At the thought, he slightly lowered his pace, letting himself catch his breath.
The rumors were true, then. Konohagakure's security, once renowned as an impassable steel wall that blocked out all intruders, was no longer what it used to be. The past fifteen years had not been kind to the village after all – their most famous trio, the Sannin, had left the village, and in the invasion of the Nine-Tails, they'd lost their Yondaime Hokage, leaving behind the increasingly decrepit Sandaime to try and rebuild the village.
He looked around – but there was still nothing, besides the occasional rustling of squirrels and birds lower down.
His lips edged up in a triumphant smile. For a man past his prime, the Sandaime hadn't done such a shabby job, but the village's strength was nowhere near what it'd been at its peak. He hadn't even been questioned at the village entrance; the chūnin on gate duty had glanced at him once and then waved him in. Breaking into the Archives had been just as easy, using a simple genjutsu to trick the chūnin at the desk into thinking he'd already left, and then slipping out just as the guards changed shifts.
However, despite how smoothly the operation was going, the man had still grown antsy – he was in a ninja village after all, regardless of how much it'd fallen from its former glory – and almost slipped up when he was leaving the village.
Just as he stepped into line behind several civilians at the exit gate, the entrance gate had creaked open to allow another stream of people in, and then the on-duty chūnin raised a hand in greeting. "Another successful mission? Good job."
"Ah, I didn't do much this time," said a deep voice.
"Sure, sure. Oh – Hokage-sama wants you in his office right away, Kakashi."
"Got it."
At the sound of the infamous name, the man had frozen – could it be the Copy Ninja himself? – and slowly turned his head to see. When he saw the infamous silver hair and hitai-ate draped over the left eye, he swore to himself. He knew the mission had been going far too easily; it'd only been a matter of time for an unexpected setback. But it was just his luck to run into one of Konoha's most famous jōnin right as he was about to leave...
Forcing himself to stay calm, he'd looked away. His eyes landing on a shorter red-headed boy beside the jōnin, his pounding heartbeat had slowly grown steadier. However, the boy must have felt his gaze, for he looked up and locked eyes with him – and for a second, he could have sworn that the boy knew exactly what he was and why he was there. But as the man felt a cold bead of sweat drip from his temple, the boy then looked away. The duo passed by, and the chūnin waved him out – and he was home free.
Despite his success, he'd felt uneasy after seeing the Copy Ninja right under his nose, and he'd booked it as soon as the walls were out of sight. But now, it seemed that truly nobody in the village had noticed his intrusion. And even if they did find out, it was too late now to catch up to him, since he'd taken care even in his haste to cover up his tracks.
The mission had been a success, then.
Jubilantly, the man looked down at the scroll in his hand. It contained some of Konoha's forbidden techniques, an increasingly valuable commodity in the black market if you knew where to look. His target was a group slowly growing in infamy, called the Akatsuki, that'd been buying out all such village forbidden techniques at prices above their competition. If he sold it to them at a good price, he'd be able to settle his debts with enough to spare.
Maybe with the extra money, he'd drop by the hot springs at Yugakure. He'd heard there'd been an incident there a year or two ago, but things had been quiet since then. Surely it'd be safe now? And the food and the service there were always so good. Lots of good-looking women too –
Suddenly, something heavy smashed into the back of the man's neck, and unable to react, he buckled. He'd been mid-jump so he felt his body hang momentarily in the air before it began to limply free-fall to the ground. As everything turned fuzzy and his vision faded into blackness, the last thing he saw was something red streak over him.
...
Naruto had just turned over the unconscious outsider to the intelligence division, when a triumphant cry rang out from behind him. Turning around, he was greeted with an excited-looking Rai skidding to a stop before him.
As the sight of his teammate, Naruto raised a critical eyebrow. In the two weeks they hadn't seen each other, it looked like the boy had again added at least another inch to his height.
After they passed the exam, Rai, like him, had switched to more standard ninja attire, complete with a flak jacket – and in the other newly-minted chūnin's case, a pair of bladed weapons strapped across his back. However, as the months passed by, the already tall boy had hit yet another growth spurt, and now towered over Naruto, who, despite his best efforts, could still pass for an Academy student playing dress-up.
"I saw Kakashi-sensei just a few minutes ago!" Rai said as a means of greeting, glancing curiously at the chūnin taking away the body. "He told me I'd find you here. We're wanted at the Hokage's office."
Nodding in affirmation, Naruto began to briskly head down the mostly-empty street towards the village centre. Trotting along easily by his side, Rai looked around discretely and then lowered his head.
"So that's another B-rank mission done in record time?" he whispered conspiratorially, a hand raised to cover his mouth.
"I wasn't aware there was a record to be broken," Naruto answered absently, as he took mental inventory of his remaining equipment.
"Oh you don't know?" Pulling back, Rai rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "The younger chūnin keep a running bet on how much time some of the longer missions will take. The general consensus was that it'd take you and Kakashi-sensei at least three weeks to finish that mission with the Fire Lord's treasurer...but I had faith in you guys."
"You put money on us, didn't you?" said Naruto amusedly.
Rai grinned gleefully, and held up two fingers in a victory pose. "I'll need those winnings if I don't want to be cleaned out, what with celebrating Mayu's promotion and all."
"You're still celebrating?" Naruto raised his eyebrows. They'd received news of her passing the chūnin exam just before he had left for his most recent mission.
"We didn't even start. We can't exactly celebrate without the entire team 7, now can we?" Rai waved a hand dismissively.
Naruto felt the corners of his mouth quirk upwards. "That's true."
Smiling came easier to Naruto nowadays. He'd have thought that what with knowing the truth – or at least some of it – his situation would have grown more difficult, but on the contrary, life had proceeded fairly normally afterwards. Or as normal as life could get for a ninja with the Nine-Tails sealed inside him, anyways.
Naruto wasn't winning any popularity contests, and he wasn't surprised that he hadn't known about the chūnin's betting games for most of them tended to keep their distance from him, but both Rai and Mayu's relaxed attitude towards him had helped to ease some of the misgivings their new comrades may have had toward him.
Their fellow chūnin didn't include him, but they didn't go out of their way to bother him, and that was all he wanted.
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