Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

The chakra sensing stuff was no problem. I could breeze through it in my sleep. But when Tsume said 'all bases' she really meant it, because she put us through the same kind of scent tracking stuff the other Chunin were running Kiba through.

I could barely smell a flower if you stuck it under my face on a good day. Scent was not a sense I had anything 'extra' in. It just was not going to work. Or the hearing tests. Or the sight tests. Some of them I did okay in, because it was really hard to cancel out the sense crossover for chakra sensing, but it was obvious what was going on. I knew where a person was, not because I could see them but because I could sense them unless they were really good at hiding their chakra or I was otherwise really distracted.

The three of us had a bit of a competitive edge to the testing; Ino did better than me at some and worse than me at others, and Shino used completely different methods to get the same results. But it was interesting to watch them in action, to find out the kind of things that they could do.

Hell, I managed to find out new things I could do, which surprised me.

"Kuromaru hid a ball somewhere in the training field," Tsume said, splitting us up individually to different fields for one of the 'tracking' tasks. "Find it."

I could find where Kuromaru was right now, but that was less than useless because we wanted to know where he had been. Which was what scent tracking was perfect for – not just spatial locations, but temporal ones. The Hyuuga would be able to find it with their Byakugan, but I didn't have that either.

I closed my eyes and focused. Listened to the chakra. Felt Kuromaru, where he was now, what his chakra was. Felt the other chakra, of all the other ninja moving about. Felt residual dissipating energy from whoever had used the training field before us – there'd been an earth jutsu raised over there and it was still disintegrating slowly. Breathed and listened and sorted through as many impressions as I could, identifying and cataloging them.

Like trying to sort through a desert with a tea strainer.

But maybe?

I made a wobbling, vague line into the trees, and walked up one. Wedged in the branches there was a bright red ball. It wasn't hidden, really, but I wouldn't have just seen it, either.

Tsume didn't exactly look impressed, but there was something that might have been surprise.

"He used chakra to climb the tree," I said, just short of triumphant. "It sank into the bark. I guessed the ball would be nearby."

Not fool proof, clearly. He could have jumped, or it could have been a false trail. Or other things. But, I'd managed to track down residual low level chakra emissions so I was feeling pretty damn pleased with myself.

It was late when we were finished, after a few solid hours of exertion. But it was a good kind of exertion, of challenges to be faced and overcome – a test where failure in some areas was expected and unavoidable.

"Not bad," Tsume said, going over the results. "I'm almost impressed. Rock Lee… that was a solid attempt. The best results I've seen from a shinobi with no explicit abilities or training in any of these areas. You've got solid Chunin level perception. You're dismissed."

Which might have felt like a bit of brush off, but he had just completed a very specialized testing while being completely unqualified for it, so was actually pretty good. He seemed happy enough with the results anyway, giving profuse thanks.

Tsume shook her head. "The rest of you can come with me. We'll sort the details out at the tower."

Which meant paperwork. I wasn't wrong. There was a lot of very complicated and very involved paperwork involved with it, in order to record an accurate summation of abilities. Also very classified, because it was an accurate summation of abilities. We had a whole room reserved to ourselves while we did it, and the Sensory Squad ninja helpfully walked us step by step through which boxes to tick or not.

"What?" Tsume said, unhappily, when one of the tower ninja scurried up to her with a folder. "What do you mean 'reserved'?"

I ticked another box and tried not to look like I was obviously listening in. Kiba smirked at me from across the table. Yeah, okay, we were all listening in.

"Okay, fine," she barked. "You lot keep filling that in. Nara, you're with me."

I scrambled out of my seat obediently. "Okay?" I offered. Not what I had expected.

"You're in trouble," Kiba singsonged, under his breath.

His mother slapped him around the ears with the file. I caught sight of my name on it. "Bring your paperwork," she said. "We have to go and fight Research and Development."

I blinked, bemused. "Okay?" I repeated, no more enlightened. I hoped she wasn't serious.

Tsume Inuzuka seemed, somehow, wilder in the halls of the tower than she had in the forests and training fields. She was more noticeable as she strode through the halls, lipstick smirk firmly in place and spikey hair swishing around her face.

People got out of her way.

I scampered along behind her, having basically no idea what was going on. We wound through the corridors, until we reached a particular set of offices. The first door opened into a nearly empty open plan office, with a few more secure rooms around the sides. There was a barred door plastered with 'no entry' notices towards the end, but Tsume barreled onwards and rapped her knuckles roughly against the largest of the rooms.

"Oi, Tamashiro," she barked. "What's the big idea?"

The man inside looked up from his desk, puzzled but not surprised. Vaguely irritated. "Inuzuka, are you lost? Or perhaps you'd like us to build you something that can do your job better than you?"

Oooh. Without moving, I tried to discretely shuffle even further behind Tsume.

"You could try for a hundred years and you wouldn't even get close," she shot back, and slapped the file down on his desk. The paper ruffled with the displaced air, a few sad pieces drifting to the floor.

His face tightened in annoyance. He picked up the file, flickered through it. "Yes, a promising recruit. And?"

"And?" Tsume barked. "She's my recruit. Prime sensor material. This," she jabbed at something on the paper, "has no meaning."

"Sensor?" He repeated, indignantly. "She's trained in seals by Jiraiya! That's far more important. Think of the things she could create!"

Ah. Well. Now I saw it. And, this was not something I wanted to be in the middle of. Or something I wanted to be happening at all.

"She can sense hour old chakra emissions! Do you have any idea what the tracking team could do with that?" Tsume countered, looming over the desk.

Tamashiro made a dismissive noise. "We put in the request first."

Tsume looked disdainful. "There is no 'first come, first served' rule in regards to shinobi. It depends on the best fit of their abilities."

"Which is here," Tamashiro said.

"Which is in the Sensory Squad," she corrected.

They glared at each other.

I pretended that I was part of the wall and unnoticeable.

"Take it up with the Hokage," Tamashiro suggested, looking away, but with the air of someone who thought he'd won the war despite surrendering the battle.

Tsume snatched the folder back. "Fine," she said. "I will." She spun, put a hand between my shoulders and shoved me gently out the door.

Tamashiro scrambled out from behind his desk. "What?" He trailed after us, going from confident to slightly worried as Tsume rolled on right up to the Hokage's office like a steamroller.

"What is it?" Tsunade barked after the secretary had given us the go head to enter. "I'd like to go home at some point, too."

"Apologies," Tamashiro said, bowing nervously. "It's only that-"

Tsume shoved me into the room, hand still on the neck of my jacket. I felt rather like a naughty puppy and I hadn't even done anything wrong.

Tsunade looked at me and sighed. "Okay. What is it?"

"I'm signing her into the Sensory Squad," Tsume said bluntly. "She's nearly as good a sensor as Tonbo."

Tamashiro squawked. "She belongs in R&D," he protested, though to Tsume and not to the Hokage. "We claimed her first!"

And then they started talking over each other, each presenting reasons why Tsunade should listen to them.

Tsunade looked steadily less impressed. And she hadn't started off very happy.

"Enough!" she cut in. "For pity's sake, Nara, just pick one."

Tsume smoothed my jacket collar out, motherly. "We're prepared to offer you a Special Jounin position," she said.

I blinked, taken aback. That was completely and totally unexpected.

Tamashiro spluttered and looked at the Hokage like she would call it cheating.

"Thank you, Tsume-sama," I said. "I'd be honoured to become part of the Sensory Squad." And then because I didn't actually want to make enemies, I nodded at the man who was probably the head of R&D. "Thank you, sir, but I'm already part of the Nara R&D. It would be a conflict of interest."

He waved that off, grumbling that I wasn't the only one who would have been in both, but didn't challenge the conclusion. Thankfully. I felt like I had very narrowly avoided a terrible thing.

R&D was most adamantly not field shinobi. Research and Development. And fine, I liked research, I did a lot of it, but only because it helped further my abilities where I needed them. I didn't want to be stuck in the office all the time, working to someone else's schedule.

And it would have been much, much harder to decline if Tsume hadn't stood here and said she wanted me instead. Even without the promotion, I would have picked the Sensory Squad.

The promotion was just a bonus. Sort of. Special Jounin was an odd position. It meant you were an expert – or the expert in some cases – in a particular field. It was clearly and undeniably above Chunin. And yet, it was so much harder to make the jump from Special Jounin to Jounin than it was for a skilled shinobi to go from Chunin to Jounin. It was a dead end, almost.

You got pigeonholed and it was really hard to move out of. You'd have to show Jounin class skills in a lot of fields that were very disparate to your original specialization in order to even be considered for Jounin.

But I didn't consider sensing to be my greatest skill. I'd have been much, much warier about taking a promotion in sealing.

"Congratulations," Tsunade said dryly. "That might be one of the fastest promotion turnarounds I've seen."

I bowed. "Thank you, Tsunade-sama. Uhm. Could I have a word with you?"

I nearly cringed at asking but this was the nearest thing to a perfect opportunity that I was going to get, really.

She waved Tsume off, who told me to meet her back downstairs when I was done. The door shut with finality behind her.

My stomach swooped, low and full of nerves. If this went wrong, I could be in a whole lot of trouble.

But I had to do it. This wasn't something I could sit on. I'd always promised myself that when I had actual, solid, confirmable evidence… I would act on it. And if I didn't, then I'd been lying to myself, and I'd been lying about why I'd never acted on other things.

And I couldn't.

Tsunade leant back in her chair and observed me. That was equally nerve wracking, in its own way. This had been a hell of a day.

I rolled the sleeve of my jacket up. "Uhm. It's a storage seal," I said, tilting my arm so she could see it and confirm. It would be really rude (and, yknow, possibly threatening) to activate a seal without some kind of acknowledgement.

She nodded.

I pressed chakra into it and withdrew the file. I put it down on her desk and withdrew, stepping back and to attention. My fingers clasped behind my back, so they wouldn't fidget or tremble. My eyes stared out at the village over her shoulder.

She opened the file. She closed the file.

"And what," the Hokage said. "Is this?"

I coughed, clearing my throat. "Jiraiya-sama," my voice still wobbled alarmingly. I tried again. "Jiraiya-sama was looking into them for Naruto."

"He was," she agreed, which didn't seem to agree that that meant I should also have been. "And where did you get it from?"

My palms were cold and wet with sweat. "An… informant?" I tried.

She sighed and rubbed her temples with one hand, the other still pinning the file flat to the desk. "Did you know," she said, tone measured and even. "I received a hawk from Hidden Sand today. They've elected a new Kazekage. Do you know who it might be?"

"Gaara?" I offered, about ninety percent sure that I was right. Mostly. Something might have gone wrong.

But she nodded. "Gaara of the Desert is the Fifth Kazekage. So. I'm not going to ask where you got this. I want to maintain a small smidgen of plausible deniability."

Which… made sense. If Konoha was asking for, and being denied, this information through diplomatic channels, it would look very strange that we had it anyway. And it was easy to work out where I had got it because I'd only been in contact with three Hidden Sand ninja – if it wasn't the Kazekage then it was the Kazekage's siblings. Any of those options could be equally bad.

"But I am going to ask you three questions," she went on.

My stomach went back to swooping. I linked my fingers together, even tighter.

"Did you promise anything in return for this information?" she asked.

"No," I said, utterly relieved that I could answer that question.

"What did you say to get this information?"

I swallowed. "I said," I started. "I said that it would help Naruto. That he was a threat to Naruto. Specifically because Naruto was a Jinchuriki." It… wasn't a lie. But even then it was verging on the limit of the things in which I should have shared with an ally.

But the information was, conversely, more trustworthy because it wasn't free. It had been paid for with a warning and given in gratitude as well as friendship. And if Tsunade thought that it had been bargained, rather than a gift unlooked for… well.

"Have you shown anyone this information?"

"No," I said, relieved to move on. "If I couldn't give it to you, I was going to give it to Dad. Or Kakashi-sensei. I thought they would both know?"

Kakashi-sensei did, I knew, because he'd been the one that Jiraiya had been telling in the first place. Dad was the Jounin Commander. And both had better reasons to be bringing it to Tsunade's attention than I did.

I just… hadn't wanted to have this conversation with them. If they were disappointed, it would have hurt more.

She was silent for a long, long moment. I watched the sun go down over the village.

"If you're going to do this," Tsunade said, breaking the spell. "You're going to learn to do it properly. I'm assigning you to the Intelligence Division for a three month rotation – on top of whatever duties you have for the Sensory Squad. Maybe it'll keep you out of trouble if you're busy."

I bowed, muscles weak with sudden relief. "Thank you, Hokage-sama," I said, fervently.

She huffed, sounding more amused than before. "And Hatake said that Naruto was Konoha's most surprising ninja."

"I'm not even close, Hokage-sama," I assured her.