“Remind me again why we’re wasting our time like this?”

Naruto found himself agreeing with Uchiha Sasuke again – something which was fast becoming a dangerous trend. Painting some rich merchant’s house did not exactly seem like an especially useful expenditure of their time, especially considering the reason why Naruto needed to become stronger.

Contrary to popular belief, I find that battles are usually decided when swords are drawn, not when they are sheathed – that was the final piece of advice the Fourth Hokage, his father, had imparted to him. And yet, Naruto found it strangely difficult to keep that thought in the forefront of his mind. Somehow, when he stepped out into Konoha’s brilliant sun, working together with his new team to do the most menial of tasks, all his father’s warnings of doom and darkness drained away and became a distant, abstract matter, like an alternate reality that was entirely distinct from what was in front of him right here and now.

“It’s to support the Village’s finances,” Sakura explained for the umpteenth time, directing her vexed reply at Naruto even though it had been Sasuke who asked the question. “The budget the Fire Daimyo sets for the Leaf only accounts for about half of our expenses. The rest comes from performing missions for clients such as assassinations or bodyguard duty, or… well, this.” She looked at the wall she was painting, clearly having some difficulty believing it herself.

“That still doesn’t make any sense,” said Naruto, who had also pointed this out many times. “We’re ninja. Even just one of us is worth about a zillion civilians, when you think about it. I mean, I get that we’re only newly trained and it doesn’t make much sense to send us on dangerous missions just yet, but come on! There’s gotta be something more useful we could do, like training or doing research, or, or something!”

In fact, Naruto was doing all of those things even as they spoke, courtesy of the Shadow Clone technique. He had tried using them to finish the missions in their place, but their only reward had been even more missions, so now he was using them to continue their other activities instead. In accordance with Kakashi’s test (though he still denied anything of the sort), they had all taken to training together in the mornings hours before their teacher arrived. Sakura would bring books from the library, while Sasuke practiced taijutsu and ninjutsu with them. Naruto had also gotten to sending a Shadow Clone to train with Hinata-chan every morning, who was very slowly improving her skills and gaining ever so slightly more confidence in herself – though she still tended to blush and stammer at seemingly random intervals. And now that Naruto had people to study with other than himself, he was even able to use his shadow clones to read effectively at several times the rate of a normal person – or half a Haruno Sakura.

“It’s probably a team building exercise,” said Sasuke. “Or it’s to teach us humility. The Konoha Council loves to make others waste time on horseshit like that. It lets them pretend they have a reason to exist.”

“I guess.” That was a pretty solid explanation actually: It was easy to come up with reasonable-sounding justifications for just about anything, but sometimes the correct answer was that it really did just make no sense. “But hey, at least we’re getting paid, right? Five thousand ryō per mission is not bad.”

“That’s five thousand ryō for the whole team,” Sakura pointed out. “And Kakashi-sensei gets the biggest share.”

“And then there’s the expenses and taxes,” said Sasuke.

“Yeah, I thought it was a bit rude when they counted out the money right in front of us and then took half of it away,” Naruto admitted. “Still, three hundred ryō is not bad. We could use it to, I dunno, all go out to Ichiraku Ramen or something. That could be fun!”

“Actually,” said Sakura, “I hear Teuchi-san nearly doubled his prices after he realized most of his customers were genin with wealthy teachers or parents to pay for it. Ordinary genin and civilians don’t really go there anymore.”

Naruto stared glumly at his paint brush. There really was no justice in the world.

“Hey kids.” Kakashi body-flickered besides them, as was his habit – the infamous jōnin had not bothered to show up for any of their D-rank ‘missions’, of course. “Nearly done? Having fun? Good, good.”

Naruto was about to bite out a sharp retort, but his teammate pre-empted him. “Enough of this!” Sasuke whirled on Kakashi, his face showing uncharacteristic anger. “I don’t know what you’re playing at – whether this is to teach us a moral lesson or if you just enjoy pushing us around, but you know perfectly well why I need to become stronger. Either give us a mission that poses an actual challenge, or we can go to the Council and find out whether my clan’s name is really as devoid of meaning as you seem to think.”

“Hmmm… we’ll see.” Kakashi rubbed the chin of his mask, seeming to consider it. “For now, I have a different kind of training in mind, which I think you’ll find interesting. Come.”

Kakashi sauntered off in the direction of the nearest training area, the rest of Team Seven following closely behind, except for a shadow clone that was left behind to finish their work. “I’ve decided that the best way to advance your skills right now is to teach you how to cast genjutsu,” Kakashi said at length.

“Genjutsu?” Sakura asked, surprised. “But isn’t that usually only taught to chūnin and jōnin?”

“Well yes, but that’s because it requires a special kind of mental aptitude, not out of any need for large chakra reserves. I’ve reason to think that you’ll fare better than most.” He turned around, but continued walking backwards. “For instance, Naruto: You’re a ninja. How come you’re wearing orange clothes?”

Naruto grinned: He had been hoping someone would ask him that. “I got it from watching other strong ninjas,” he explained. “I wondered why ninjas like Jiraiya wear bright clothes, and at first I thought they were just being stupid, but then I realized that if you’re a ninja the worst thing you can do is look like one. So since orange is the brightest colour, nobody will imagine I’m secretly a ninja until it’s too late!” There are more places to hide than in the shadows, he thought triumphantly.

They arrived at the river, and Kakashi body-flickered across, while Naruto and the others were forced to take the long way around, as they could not jump that far. “I see,” he said when they caught up with him. “Well, I have to hand it to you, Naruto: That just might be the single most moronic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“What? Hey!”

“The real reason ninja like Jiraiya wear bright outfits is because they’re already too easily recognized. They put on an outlandish getup and an eccentric act to make sure that’s all people remember about them, and then the moment they’re on a mission they lose the clothes and blend right in. As for wearing orange… the most important part of keeping a secret is hiding the fact that it exists. If you draw too much attention and people start talking about you, then that defeats the entire point. Naruto, you can’t just take the first clever idea you think of and run with it. It’s not enough to look beneath the surface of a problem: As a ninja, you must look underneath the underneath, and never stop asking yourself why.”

“I know that,” Naruto spluttered indignantly. He had been thinking about it just that morning, but somehow whenever he got excited about something he seemed to forget his lessons entirely. “It’s just…”

“No, I’m telling you this because you don’t know. You know of it, but that’s not the same at all.” Kakashi sighed. “Naruto, when you fought against me, your first instinct was to come up with a complicated plan that combined all of your team’s abilities. There is a reason I despise that sort of cleverness. There are two types of plans: Those designed to show off how smart you are and those that are designed to actually work – and one of those is substantially less likely to get your team killed than the other. Get it?”

Naruto nodded feebly. There was very little he could say to that.

“Hn. What does any of this have to do with learning genjutsu?” Sasuke asked.

“I was getting to that.” They arrived at a row of tall houses, and rather than go around it, Kakashi walked straight up the façade of the nearest wall. Naruto hastily grabbed a nearby trash bin, and cloned it until there were enough to build some makeshift stairs. Meanwhile Sasuke used a kunai with a length of chain attached as a grapple, and scaled the wall vertically. They found their teacher at the rooftop, already leaping to the next roof, and they had to use the body-flicker technique just to keep up.

“The mental aptitude that’s needed for genjutsu is the ability to think at multiple levels,” Kakashi explained mid-leap. “If you just attack an enemy head-on that’s called first level thinking, while second level is if they anticipate your attack and set up a counter in advance. Third level is if you see their counterattack coming and think of a way to prevent it, and so on and so forth. The first rule of strategy is that you should always try to play one level higher than your opponent. The second rule is that everybody always plays at second level, and so should you.”

“Second level?” Naruto spluttered, wind whipping through his hair as he struggled to keep up with his teacher’s impossibly fast jumps. “But, if everybody knows that, then…”

“Then nothing,” Kakashi said as he leaped to the next roof. “It doesn’t matter what level other people play at, because cleverness is still going to get you killed. Technically, the real second rule is that you should use the simplest possible strategy that can be made to work, so the worse the situation you’re in the cleverer you’re allowed to be. But you’re not supposed to ever get in a situation like that in the first place, so it amounts to the same thing in practice.”

“You mentioned something about genjutsu,” Sasuke reminded him. Somehow the Uchiha heir seemed to have no difficulty keeping up with Naruto, despite the massive difference in chakra reserves.

“Yes, yes. It’s important that you understand the underlying logic, or there’s no point in learning the technique.” They stopped at the top of a large building with a trapdoor on the roof, and Kakashi led the way down, still talking as they climbed the rungs of the ladder leading down into a dark corridor. “Now, do you know what the first step is to dispelling a genjutsu?”

“You have to realize you’re in one,” Sasuke said immediately.

Kakashi gave him a thoughtful look. “Exactly… The way you release a genjutsu is by flaring your chakra – moulding it and burning through it as fast as you’re able, purging the hostile chakra from your system. It’s not something you can afford to do too often: Depending on your stamina and your chakra control, you could end up burning through your reserves in a matter of seconds… though against a powerful genjutsu user, even that might not be enough. Do any of you know what the two types of genjutsu are?”

Naruto hesitated. “Uhm… it’s divided into partial immersion and body-bind techniques, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.” Kakashi reached the end of the ladder, and dropped to the ground without making a sound. “The way genjutsu works is by using your chakra to manipulate the target’s chakra flow, allowing you to affect their senses. That yields exactly two viable strategies: You can either try to subtly influence your opponent’s perception, forcing them to make a fatal mistake before they realize what’s happening, or you can attempt to overwhelm their minds completely and paralyse them using brute force.”

Naruto dropped down besides his teacher along with Sasuke, frowning as he tried to make out his surroundings in the darkness. “But, if you can control their senses with it, why not just make it so they can’t see your attacks or something? That sounds like it’s completely impossible to defend against.”

Kakashi shook his head. “The reason partial genjutsu is effective is because it bypasses the target’s natural resistance to hostile chakra, by feeding them suggestions that are more or less in line with their expectations, or by pulling visions directly from their subconscious. You can’t control what they’re seeing directly, unless of course you’re using a full body-bind technique, in which case they’ll instinctively try to resist you and dispel your technique.”

Naruto nodded slowly as he followed his teacher down the dark corridor, his footsteps echoing hollowly. “Okay… I think I get it. So if you flare your chakra but there’s no genjutsu, then you’ve wasted chakra and it could cost you the fight. But if they cast a genjutsu and you don’t dispel it, you’re probably dead. So you gotta guess what the chance is that you’re under a genjutsu, and then make a decision based on how much chakra you’ve got left compared to the enemy, while also taking into account that your enemy is trying to figure out your logic in order to use it against you… all while in the middle of a lightning-fast battle to the death.” Naruto took a deep breath. This might be the one case where a surplus of cleverness and high-level thinking was a good thing. Small wonder Kakashi thought they should learn this early.

Kakashi turned to regard him with his one visible eye. “Well, it doesn’t usually get that crazy, unless it’s a fight between two genjutsu masters, which almost never happens since those are the rarest and most powerful ninja of them all. But yes, that’s the basic idea.” He clapped his hands together, seeming to smile. “So! For your first practical lesson: Which one of you can tell me where you really are right now?”

Naruto looked around in puzzlement. He had a dim recollection that the three of them were heading towards a quiet forest glade to train in, but when he flared his chakra the trees and foliage were replaced with a dark stone corridor, and neither Kakashi nor Sakura were anywhere to be seen.

From some distant place, their teacher’s echoing voice called out. “Well. When it comes to the first step, detecting genjutsu… how can I put this? You’re not very good at it.” There was a giggling sound like Sakura laughing, and then the voices vanished, leaving Naruto and Sasuke alone in the darkness and with no clue of where the exit was.

“You know,” Sasuke said slowly. “I’m really starting to hate that man.”

Naruto found himself agreeing with him once more. It was becoming a very dangerous trend indeed.

-o-

After finally finding their way out of the hidden tunnel network beneath Konoha that Kakashi had dumped them in (and learning an important lesson about the true meaning of friendship and teamwork along the way, or so their teacher insisted), the three genin found themselves reunited once more.

Hatake Kakashi clapped his hands together and beamed at them with his one visible eye. “So, are we all ready and eager to support the Village’s finances with our missions once more? I’m glad to hear it!”

After another week of gruelling training and yet more pointless chores (though with slightly more muted grumblings), their teacher sent the three genin to go to the Konoha Armoury. Despite Naruto’s protestations, Kakashi had insisted they wear something resembling actual camouflage for their first real mission outside the Village. As for being properly equipped and not getting your team killed by rushing into combat unprepared… well, he had strong opinions about that also.

“This mission will be different from the others,” their teacher had warned them. “As Team Seven we are expected not only to follow orders, but also to act on our own initiative. We will have to choose our own objectives and enemies before we can face either. Your training is more important than ever, now.”

Sakura had displayed a natural aptitude for Genjutsu, and had taken no small amount of delight in practicing it on Naruto. It turned out that aside from cleverness, casting genjutsu required considerable mental discipline. As a result Naruto’s training consisted solely of attempting to dispel Sakura’s illusions, including but not limited to an angry swarm of bees that stung him in a thousand places, after which Kakashi had chastised her for going easy on him. And as for Sasuke… well.

Naruto turned to the boy walking besides him. “Hey, Lord Uchiha.”

“What is it, dropout?”

“Those creepy red eyes of yours… they can see raw, unfocussed chakra, right? Could you see the genjutsu Kakashi-sensei has been casting at you, too?”

“Yeah… like a blue cloud rushing at me. It’s almost too fast to track, though.”

Naruto nodded to himself. Kakashi-sensei had explained that the Sharingan was capable of projecting powerful single-target genjutsu once it reached its second stage of maturation. Taken together, this meant that Sasuke not only had an easy path to becoming a genjutsu master, but he could also detect any technique cast at him while his Sharingan was active – making it nearly impossible for anyone to gain the upper hand on him that way. Just being able to see the enemy’s chakra level alone was incredible.

All of that on top of being talented and handsome, and a wealthy noble beloved by the Village besides.

Meanwhile, all Naruto’s parentage had left him was infernal chakra stolen from a burning daemon sealed within his stomach, which might-or-might-not be a malevolent force hell-bent on their destruction but whose power was certainly too dangerous to use either way – and who might well be whispering its deceptions into Naruto’s ear while he slept, for all that Jiraiya assured him of the seal’s design.

Naruto could not help but feel very slightly bitter about the situation, when he thought about it like that.

They arrived at the entrance to the armoury, and after being checked for illusions they were allowed to enter. Aside from the thick iron bars separating them from the chūnin manning the counter, the place looked much like a store, if a very well-equipped one: Kunai, shuriken, swords and countless more exotic weapons littered the shelves. Armour stands carried armoured jackets as well as the older metal suits worn in the Warring Clans era, racks of sealing scrolls stood next to boxes filled with explosive tags, and a thick steel door in the back offered a tantalizing hint at even greater wonders to be found beyond.

Naruto made a beeline for the explosive tags – seals were the only reliable way to store chakra and thereby convert money into raw power – but recoiled upon seeing the price tag. “Wait, we gotta pay for these ourselves? If we’re gonna be risking our lives, I would’ve thought they’d at least pay for our gear.”

Sakura sighed, and put the scroll she had been examining back on the shelf where she found it. “Everything has a price, Naruto. If equipment were free they’d just take it out of our stipend instead, and the effect would be the same – except that a few ninjas would hoard all the equipment and then we wouldn’t get anything at all.” She paused, putting a finger to her lips. “Although, I suppose I could see the sense in giving a discount to genin of poorer backgrounds, so they can afford more than just the basics…”

Sasuke shot a glance at Naruto. “Doesn’t your godfather make money from those infantile books he writes, and from his missions as one of the Legendary Three? Can’t you get him to pay for it?”

“I wish,” Naruto said glumly. He had actually caught a glance of one of Jiraiya’s accounts a while back, and they had gotten into a huge, extended argument about it. Naruto did not understand how someone could throw around so much money on women, gambling and drinks, and still insist that his godson abide by the shinobi rules of prudence and frugality. It was just another thing his family had not left him.

Naruto stared at the expensive explosive tag in his fist: It was crumpled, and they probably would not even let him put it back now. Slowly, an idea started to form in his head. “Hey… hey Sasuke. Lord Uchiha.”

Sasuke was staring at an exorbitantly priced chakra-blade displayed in a glass case. “What now?”

“You’ve got enough money to pay for all three of us. Why don’t you buy our equipment for us, and we’ll pay you back later, when we’re all jōnin or something?”

“What?” Sasuke looked at him incredulously. “I’m not lending you my money. Buy your own shit.”

“Why not? You have more than enough. I mean, you’re the heir to your clan, so you inherited everything they had, right? You gotta be the richest genin in the entire Village, maybe even the richest person.”

In a lightning-quick movement, Sasuke grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him to a quiet corner of the armoury. “You think they actually let me keep all of that? They took more than half of my family’s fortune away, stole our ancestral weapons, and rented most of our lands out to the highest bidder. Expropriation, they called it. As if inventing another word for it made it anything other than theft!”

“Oh, so now you’re just the second richest person in the Village. Yeah, that sounds terrible.” Naruto matched Sasuke’s glare with a glower of his own. “What would you even have done with all that land and money that you can’t do right now? At least it’s doing other people some good this way.”

“It doesn’t matter what I would have done – the whole point of having money is that it’s my choice to make. My family fought all their lives to earn what they had, and they would have wanted me to inherit it; the Third had no right to it!” He forcibly lowered his voice. “And not that it’s any of your business, but since you’re asking so nicely, I would have used it to eventually restore my clan.”

“Okay,” Naruto said, trying a different tack. “It’s your money and you can choose how to spend it, fine. So you can choose to use some of it to buy us decent equipment, or you can choose to die alone after your teammates get killed in their first real battle because their weapons broke – in which case the Konoha Council will get everything you have and rub their hands in glee as they take all of your precious Uchiha heirlooms.” He crossed his arms and stared Sasuke down, giving him time to let the words sink in.

Slowly, very slowly, the tension in Sasuke’s muscles drained away. “…I will be expecting you to pay me back at some point,” he said at last. “Don’t think I’ll forget, dropout.”

Naruto snorted. “Yeah, I didn’t think you would.”

The chūnin behind the counter (whose amused expression indicated that their private conversation had been anything but) was only too happy to extend credit to the last of the Uchiha. That just left them with deciding what to buy. Naruto managed to convince Sasuke that they should purchase chakra blades straight away, as it was better to start practicing with them immediately even if they could not yet make use of their chakra-conducting abilities. Sasuke went straight for the chokutō he had been admiring, while Naruto selected a chakra-forged ninjatō. Sakura however refused to be indebted to Sasuke, and bought an ordinary tantō based on the logic that it must be a solid weapon if the Anbu all used it.

The three of them headed back to the training grounds in high-spirits, their steps light despite the weight of their new equipment. Naruto’s pockets were filled with all the tools he ever wanted, and Sakura’s nervousness at carrying so many weapons and explosives around was offset by her approval of their new and professional black-and-green Konoha fatigues. Even Sasuke seemed to be recovering from his earlier foul mood, his fingers trailing the brand new sword on his belt with an anticipatory gleam in his eyes.

“All right!” Naruto pumped his fist into the air. “We’re ready for just about anything now!”

“And just in time, too,” Kakashi said as he walked up to them. “I’ve just been received confirmation of your first C-rank mission. Take care of everything you need to do in the Village and tell your friends goodbye, because we won’t be coming back any time soon: We’re heading for the Land of Waves.”