31Chapter 1: Information is Key
AN: Now I don't normally do these, but it's necessary. I was inspired to write this when I read an old one shot called Ibiki's Apprentice and having read it I was left craving MOAR! So to fill that void, and seeing as May Wren seemed to have stopped writing, (at least on that account) I decided to basically adopt the idea. Now some of the stuff that was in the story will be in here, but my goal is to make it different, to show more interaction between T&I and Naruto, to continue the full story, and change who Naruto ends up with. May Wren, if you're reading this, and you want me to stop, start writing it. Mwahahaha thanks for the idea.
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Ibiki Morino has been called many things. But disloyal is not one of them. Today was the day when he had a singular thought about his Hokage that might have been interpreted as disloyal. What the fuck is he smoking?
"You want me, the head of Torture and Interrogation Unit in ANBU, to teach some fresh-out-the-academy brats as their Jonin Sensei? Please excuse me Hokage-sama, but what the fuck are you smoking and can you introduce me to your dealer?" Ibiki was incredulous. Sarutobi smirked and passed him a file dossier on the three Genin he was to test and teach.
"I get my stuff from a dealer in Wave Country. But that's not the issue. I am simply activating a Jōnin who had put in years ago for the position of Jōnin Sensei and had forgotten to retract the application." Hiruzen Sarutobi toked his smoke pipe leisurely as Ibiki was floored by this situation. "Honestly Ibiki," Hiruzen said condescendingly, "it's like you don't want to teach."
Ibiki growled at that but nodded in surrender. "Fine," he growled out, "but they're doing my test and if they fail, they fail. I ain't doing no favorites. The council can very well bite me." Hiruzen nodded his head in agreement. Ibiki then left with the dossier, mumbling about something. The Lord Third Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves chuckled at Ibiki's distress after he left.
"Ibiki my boy, I'm counting on it. Either Naruto and his teammates pass and you'll make sure he's ready, or he doesn't and will ruin the plan of those blasted, hateful people." He sighed, "of all the days for Iruka to become sick with the flu."
At the academy the next day Iruka was still out sick, so another Chūnin was currently assigning teams. Naruto was absolutely giddy with excitement, his Konoha Hitai-ate proudly displayed on his forehead with his goggles above that on his head. A million-watt smile plastered on his face. The Chūnin instructor started the list of teams. "Team One: Shi Ruu, Naruto Uzamaki, and Tsuki." Naruto whooped as the instructor continued, "Your Jōnin Sensei is Ibiki Morino." The rest of the class was spent like that. Eventually Ibiki showed up.
"Shi, Tsuki, Naruto, follow me." The three fresh Genin quickly followed him to training ground one. Once the three made it, Ibiki spoke, "Okay maggots. I am Ibiki Morino, and I am to be your sensei. Your career as Shinobi all hinges upon whether you can impress me. Normally a Jōnin Sensei would ask you to speak about yourselves. Instead I'm making that your test. Pass this test, you'll learn from me how to thrive as Shinobi. Fail, and you'll be busted back down to civilian." His narrowed eyes and small killing intent made all three of them freeze up. "Understand?" Only Naruto nodded slowly. "Good. Your task, which will last the entire day, is to present a written report with information on your teammates. How you find it, is up to you. Any questions?" Naruto raised his hand, "Yes?"
"Does the information we have to gather include you? Cause you're our teammate too now." Naruto cocked his head to the right in curiosity.
Ibiki nodded, slightly impressed by that. "Yes, however my information is highly classified. To get information on me requires immense skill or proper clearance. None of which you three are likely to have." He glanced at the Genin, "however, if you gather satisfactory intel upon me, that's an automatic pass." At that, the three Genin held a gleam in their eye while Ibiki smirked. "Begin!" Two of the three Genin quickly disappeared. Ibiki raised his eyebrow at the orange clad Shinobi as he started at Ibiki.
"Ibiki sensei, can you talk about yourself?" Naruto boldly asked. "I mean you said you didn't care how we got our info, only that we get it. There's no better source of intel then the actual source right?
Ibiki smiled, "true, but sometimes the source can't be trusted. However I like to reward intelligent spies. So I am going to give you three pieces of information about me, one of which will be a lie. It will be your job to confirm the information and ensure it is accurate." Naruto smiled at the man and nodded enthusiastically. "The first pocket of intel: I live in ANBU headquarters in the dorm area. Second pocket of intel: I torture people for a living. Third pocket of intel: I like bunnies." Naruto then nodded, took one last deep breath through the nose, and took off.
Naruto, once back in the village proper, started sniffing around to find traces of Ibiki's scent. Starting at where he knew ANBU headquarters was located, a mostly unassuming building where ninja seemed to gather for some unexplained reason. To Naruto it was someplace familiar as ANBU guardians would sometimes take him here on his birthday so he was most protected. Especially after his fifth birthday when he was almost tortured to death by a small group of chūnins. Naruto stopped and sniffed, knowing Ibiki had definitely spent a lot of his time here. Naruto considered going into the building like he's done before but disregarded that as too risky. Another scent of his seemed to waft and mix with a scent of snakes from the cafe nearby. Naruto entered and sat at the booth with the pineapple haired lady in skimpy attire. "Can I help you brat?" She raised an eyebrow.
Naruto pretended to fidget uncomfortably "Um…"
"Spit it out brat!"
"Is Ibiki a," he looks left and right before whispering, "torture expert?"
Anko narrowed her eyes at Naruto. "Why the hell do you wanna know?"
He looked at her, "um, I may or may not have pranked him and he threatened to take me in and shove me in a torture chamber. I-I escaped but I'm scared. He really doesn't have the authority for that," Naruto gulped, "does he?"
Anko howled with laughter, "damn brat, you must've pissed Ibiki off majorly. For your information, yeah he has the authority. Being head of the department and all." Naruto visibly paled. With a wicked grin, Anko continued, "and I'm his second in command. And I especially love to torture people Ibiki brings in himself." Anko gave a bloodthirsty grin as the blonde whiskered genin trembled as he got up.
"Well t-thank you nee-chan for your time. I gotta go hide now." The blonde ran quickly out as if scared while Anko was cackling her ass off. When Naruto was far enough away from her, he slowed down and smirked. "Not exactly how I expected it to go, but worked all the same."
Naruto sniffed the air and started following a trail of Ibiki's scent. It led to a diner owned by an Akamichi. It was fairly strong concentration of scent, with the corner booth facing the windows having the largest scent concentration. "Can I help you?" A waitress said with a scowling face.
Naruto smirked and pointed at his hitai-ate with the Konoha swirling leaf on it, "yeah! I'm a ninja and I was given a mission by Morino-san to get him lunch. He said just get him the usual." Naruto got out his toad-chan wallet brimming with money. The waitress nodded, her name tag reading Eiji.
"Aki-san, a steak and eggs, hard fried, with diced fried potatoes and a large black to go for Ibiki-kun." She charged Naruto for the meal as it was being made. "So, think you can give Ibiki-kun this for me?" She handed him a slip of paper. Naruto nodded with a smile as he put the paper away, making note to look at it later.
Naruto waited for the food, paid for it, and thanked the staff for their hard work, then left. After finding a spot to eat, Naruto had lunch and went to the residential district to find his scent. Funnily enough he found an apartment complex with his scent concentrated around two apartments. 301 and 237. Naruto thought about breaking in but dismissed it immediately, knowing a jōnin might be more prepared for that stuff. Besides he didn't know which was truly his.
Naruto then went towards the Manager's office. It was empty at the moment so Naruto quickly looked in the filing cabinet for the lease information of the two apartments. The first one, 237, was under a lease named Eiji Mori. 301 was Ibiki Morino's. The blonde quickly wrote down the most important information from both leases and replaced the files perfectly back. Naruto left like a ghost before the manager came back in.
With time to spare he decided to create a dossier on his other teammates. By the time it was nearing the ending of the time limit, Naruto made his way back towards training ground one with three folders with information and their sources about Ibiki and his two other teammates. "Ibiki sensei!" Naruto ran up to the others.
"Cutting it close, ain't ya brat?" Ibiki took his three files with a raised eyebrow. Naruto looked a bit sheepish, mumbling something about hating having to write neatly. "Alright," Ibiki said loudly, "listen up. I'm going to look over these files overnight. If you pass or fail, you won't know for sure until tomorrow." A wicked grin spread across his face. "Sleep well. Dismissed!" The three Genin left towards their respective homes while the head of Torture and Interrogation went home to look at the files. The first two were expected and absolutely trash. Naruto's was amateurish but well informed and put together. Ibiki raised an eyebrow when he got to relationships and Naruto had accurately named his genealogy by at least 5 generations back. Not to mention his connection to Eiji whom he's been seeing for the past three months. He even found a note from Eiji-chan addressed to him taped to the bottom that was basically a dirty lymeric that Ibiki loved about her. Ibiki was impressed to say the very least.
The next day in the Hokage's office, eleven Jōnins stood in front of Sarutobi. "So," Hiruzen steepled his hands as his pipe puffed slightly, "who passed and failed?"
Ibiki stood forward first, "Team one failed. Shi and Tsuki were too distracted and wasted time trying to find information about me because the rewards were greater. I suggest the two of them head back to the academy." Hiruzen nodded and waited for Ibiki to continue. "As for Naruto, his intelligence gathering, while amateurishly written, was concise and accurate. He even managed to find accurate information on me not to mention the files on his two classmates. He managed to get intel on my job, my living quarters, even my relationships and favorite diner." Sarutobi caught onto what was left unsaid. Most information would be next to impossible to get as a lot of it was redacted or off the record entirely. "I would like permission to take Naruto Uzamaki as my apprentice." Gasps were heard, and Kakashi looked up from his Icha Icha book, eyebrow raised.
The Hokage puffed his pipe in contemplation. Finally he said, "Alright, but only for a year. After which he will be reassigned to a genin team." He glanced at Kakashi briefly, caught by Ibiki who nodded in understanding.
"Understood, Hokage-sama." Ibiki bowed.
The rest of the people there continued in a similar manner, passing or failing teams. Afterwards, Ibiki met Team One on the same training ground. "Okay maggots," he glared at the three Genin, "you," he points at Shi, "you," he points at Tsuki, "fail." He then turns to Naruto, "you get an apprenticeship under me for a year before you become a Genin proper." Naruto ignored the glares from his two classmates as he celebrated loudly. Ibiki just shook his head, "not even a minute in and I'm already regretting this decision. Alright then, Naruto," Naruto halted his celebration and focused his attention on his new sensei, "meet me here at 5 a.m. Today is your last day off for an entire year so enjoy it." Ibiki's bloodthirsty grin appeared, sending chills down the blonde's spine, "Because when tomorrow comes, your ass is mine."
Despite the foreboding chill Naruto felt when told he wouldn't get a break for the next year, Naruto enjoyed his time off for the day, spending it at Ichiraku's Ramen where Ayame and Teuchi celebrated with Naruto by giving him a full 30 bowls free. He talked about his new career as a Genin and about how Ibiki-sensei was so cool and scary. He chatted about how he had wanted to get more flowers and herbs for his secret garden on his apartment's roof. One of the customers, a Shinobi who was neutral to the blonde, suggested he make a timed watering system that allows for his garden to remain fresh when on long missions. Naruto nodded and decided to spend the rest of the day figuring out how to do it after he ate his large lunch of 30 bowls of ramen. He barely got a hurry rigged version of an automatic irrigation watering system set up to his water pipes of the building.
Before going to sleep a bit late, he smiled with his frog cap and fox pajamas on, knowing he was one step closer to being Hokage. For the first time in a long while, Naruto slept soundly with a genuine smile on his face.