Naruto :The sealed shinobi

Naruto was far more ornery than usual as he partook in the usual D-rank missions that genin teams like Team 7 got. While part of him knew that this was truly necessary at this point in time, seeing as how the village was getting over the damage incurred during the invasion of Oto and Suna, the part of him that was locked away at the age of eight that was used to missions that could end with him being killed and the brash childish part of him that resurfaced after his memory had been sealed and longed for missions with potential for action like that.

With the knowledge of his sealing Naruto was able to sort out what memories were fake and which were his own. It helped that the genjutsu seal that was placed on him to change his appearance was broken, revealing the numerous battle-scars that littered his body from his time in Ne. It really helped having a visible association to certain memories; his first night in his apartment after the invasion was for the most part spent in front of a mirror repeating the line, 'Oh I remember getting that one!' over and over throughout the evening.

Over the course of the next two weeks he had to adjust to just being a normal genin with a true elite's mindset, Tora was lucky that she hadn't tried to run away since the invasion or Naruto might have killed her retrieving her… accidentally of course.

His rapport with his team, whatever he might have had, shifted tumultuously after the chunin exams. Naruto's thoughts on Sakura had changed to a clearer line of thought. The girl thought he was useless for the most part, and while compared to how he was supposed to be she was right, it stood to reason that even grossly handicapped as he had been he had still been vastly superior to her when it came to the ninja arts.

While he may have been a goofy annoyance while he had been a genin he had still been nothing but pleasant to the girl and had given his all at every corner. Her habit of fawning over the Uchiha and downplaying anything Naruto accomplished grated on his nerves at this point. Naruto ruthlessly crushed his mental facilities that she was a good person, and that he had romantic interest in her because when it came to him she was a bitch. She was his teammate, that didn't really mean they had to be close, he just had to tolerate her and work with her to accomplish his mission. He didn't see anything pleasant about trying to associate with her outside of missions.

Sasuke had taken to the habit of staring at him and trying to verbally provoke him when he offered any input into their missions. Sasuke had been feeling inadequate after seeing how Naruto not only saved him from Gaara, he had dispatched Gaara handily without too much effort, captured the Kazekage's children swiftly thereafter, and headed back to Konoha and routed an Oto ambush against a Konoha squadron.

This lead to now. He had been trying to goad Naruto into a fight so that he could really test his own capacities against the blonde, but not only was there no time for sparring as they didn't have team training while rebuilding the village, Naruto left so quickly after the day's work was done that Sasuke couldn't follow him, and he was never able to trail the boy for too long before losing him.

Kakashi had noticed quite a few changes in his blonde student since he had let him go during the invasion. While the scar over his eye was the most glaring one, his attitude was another. He didn't try to keep his team's spirits up with indomitable brightness. He still cracked jokes, and his overall timing was vastly superior now Kakashi had to admit, but they were bright flashes in an otherwise dreary day of rooting through Konoha's rubble.

Naruto no longer took to calling him Kakashi-sensei. When he reprimanded Naruto on this habit he had seemingly picked up Naruto responded by saying that he hadn't taught Naruto anything other than tree-climbing, and he technically learned how to do that years ago, he just 'forgot'. Kakashi noted the bitter tone in Naruto's voice when he said 'forgot' but didn't press too much. He figured that Naruto was still bitter from being cast aside during the chunin exams.

The differences in Naruto's gait, actions on missions, and how he now treated his teammates showed him that there was a vast change in Naruto that he couldn't pinpoint exactly.

He watched Naruto drop another stack of wood by the building that his team was working on at the moment, and walk off again to grab more. There was something he was missing about this.

XxX

Team 7 had been dismissed for the day and Naruto had taken to wandering around Konoha. He had taken to treating the villagers with the same apathy and looks of annoyance that they gave him. He didn't care about them, he was in a bad enough mood as it was.

He had been unable to find Danzo since the invasion ended. In his haste to track his trainer down and report back to him, as he technically never failed or completed his mission, he had found that the older base for Ne had been abandoned. Cursing the old cripple out in his head he realized just how difficult it truly was to find Danzo when he didn't already know where he would be, 'You'd think there would only be so many places that you could hide a group like Ne in this village.'

Naruto understood things from both sides of the fence. He understood how Sarutobi disliked a secret branch of the military that he didn't directly control running rampant under his nose. It wasn't good for a supposed military dictatorship, as Konoha was supposed to be, to have something like that among them. It was unnerving to say the very least. But Naruto knew that if he truly knew that honestly, Danzo only had around twenty/twenty-five well-trained ninja, including himself. Compared to Konoha's forces it was simply a drop in the bucket. And while Konoha's true forces had a never ending supply of recruits and potential, only certain types ever had a chance in Ne, and they weren't readily replaceable.

Ne took Konoha's dirty missions. The jobs that somebody had to do, the kind of stuff that stepped on people's toes on the large scale of things but if they never took place then it would expose Konoha's back to the lions. The killings that Konoha couldn't be caught having any hand in, the alliances that could substantially benefit Konoha but that had less than moral bases. There was a reason that the seemingly most powerful village in the nations didn't have too many problems regularly compared to the others.

Sarutobi directly chose not to accept certain missions for the sake that they could be seen as an aggressive move on Konoha's part, Danzo took these missions for Ne. Ne had to be better than the majority of other ninja simply for the sheer difficulty that their missions entailed. There were no D-rank missions, hell there weren't even any C-ranked missions. Everything you did in Ne was B-rank and up. If you weren't ready then you trained and drilled until you were, no other way about it. If you couldn't cut it after all of the things you were put through until that point then you died, namelessly, facelessly, and miles away from home.

He needed to find Danzo. He knew that the second he actually put on Konoha's hitae-ate he was basically no longer Ne's shinobi, but he still had the mindset of completing his mission. He also wanted to find out exactly what the hell happened to him. If anyone knew, Danzo did.

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