Chapter 175: CH 175
There was nothing but Naruto's handwritten notes taken from his own point of view and that of Hamako's for Deidara, as Iwa wasn't exactly very forthcoming with that information.
So one was down, there were five more that he knew of... and there were three more that he didn't. In addition to that they only had at the most a little over half a year to find Sasuke Uchiha before Orochimaru turned him into his own personal Uchiha body skin and then came back to Konoha to raze the place to the ground which would give them nine months to a year from now, accounting for Orochimaru's time needed to adjust to the new body and mobilize for another offensive. Why was he the only person that seemed to take this little aspect into account?
He needed to find Sai, and Jiraiya needed to get his ass back to Konoha in a hurry...
They had work to do. (Omake – Lost Missions 1)
Naruto had been with Team Gai plus Shikamaru on a B-ranked border patrol assignment for the last week by now. Border patrols weren't really B-rank material, they were more along the lines of glorified C -ranks, but since they vaguely had something to do with national security or whatever they were given one step up above being that lowly ranked. There were minute chances of some action going down; a few smugglers here and there, a bandit party trying to hop borders and try their luck in a new country, hell if you were there at the right/wrong time you might even get something of a skirmish against foreign ninja, though that hadn't really happened on a significant scale in over ten years. For the most part it was just a rare question to a travelling civilian or merchant group here, some suspicion and even rarer checking of possessions there, and a whole lot of walkabout.
And here is where we found our blonde hero on this particular day of his routine countryside perambulation, made all the more simpler with his ungodly amount of Kage Bunshin littered about the borders, thus depositing him and his partner for the day in boredom, a state of being that his partner was doing his best to fight off.
"Naruto-kun! I spy something with my little eye, something that is green!" Lee shouted, far too enthusiastically for a person his age to be over a game of I Spy.
Naruto sighed, he really wished he had drawn Shikamaru as his partner for the day. At least if it were Shikamaru the lazy bastard would have been okay with him littering the woods with clones, leaving the others to guard the main roads, and simply sitting still and relaxing or something. Maybe Neji, at least he wouldn't be yelling at the top of his lungs every seven seconds. Hmm, maybe Tenten, at least it would definitely improve the scenery, "Gee I don't know Lee. The last time you said green you meant your spandex suit so I'm going to go ahead and guess the fucking leaves on the trees because that's about the only damn thing we have out here to look at!"
Lee paused for a moment before whipping out a small notebook, "Well done Naruto-kun! Once again you keep yourself firmly ahead of me in our rivalry. This one puts you the lead now with 28 wins to my 6. But I will catch up to you soon! If I cannot I will do 100 squats while drinking a gallon of water, and if I cannot do that I will-."