In Your Own Hands

Chapter 6 - Land of Tea

2 Months Later

It had been two months since the formation of Team 8, and everyone was doing great in both training and missions, Team 8 had done countless D rank missions, plus Naruto did some on his own. Of course some people were not happy about Naruto doing missions for them, but after realizing that the 'demon' was doing work for them, they quickly changed their minds. Naruto could only inwardly laugh at that, and how would they react after learning of his heritage, the blonde/redhead was also slowly improving his reputation, mostly among the younger part of Konoha population and those who came after the Kyuubi attack. Sure the number of people liking him didn't change much, except some notable exceptions, but the number of people being neutral to him increased. Like Naruto predicted, some people tried to scam him of his money for a job well done, after a few incidents it never happened again.

For most people it was surprising seeing a group of Naruto clones running around the village, when they asked him/his clones why he was doing more missions, his answer was that being an orphan meant that he didn't have family or clan accounts to financially support him. Lots of people that he met during his missions talked about him and that he was nothing like most people said. To most of them now he was a boy, no young man, who was a bit distant, but still perfectly polite, trying to make a living for himself, by being a ninja and doing almost professional hand work. To them he was not the demon like he was painted to be. This of course caused Naruto to smile a bit.

The seals Naruto made as Kitsune, were received very well, Hokage and the ANBU commander, who was now Yugao (or Cat) after taking the post from ANBU codenamed Dragon shortly after the genin exams, told people that he was a new seal expert hired for the job. Naruto received many positive reviews applauding the new seals and variability they provided.

During the two months Team 8 even took 2 C rank missions delivering some documents. Outside missions all the members of Team 8 trained. Kurenai learned some C and B ranked Water jutsu, mostly C ranked with few B ranked that require less chakra, she also worked on her speed, strength and taijutsu, thanks to the resistance seals Naruto gave her. Shino and Hinata both worked on their chakra control, fixing their problems, with Hinata working on her new taijutsu style, and while it was still work in progress she did well so far, Shino now worked on his taijutsu, both of them received their resistance seals. Both even learned two C ranked jutsu for their element each as well as Shunshin, Hinata learned Water Style: Liquid Bullets and Water Clone Jutsu, while Shino learned Earth Style: Headhunter Jutsu and Earth Style: Earth Binding Chains.

As for Naruto himself, he worked like he used to before, meaning on everything, with lots of Shadow clones, and even got to spar with Yugao and Anko, fixing his holes in Kenjutsu and Taijutsu, in Kenjutsu Naruto was about evenly matched with Yugao. Naruto even got to spar with the Hokage himself using Bojutsu once or twice, and while he was totally outclassed in the end, he still put up quite a good fight against the legendary bojutsu master, this also helped Naruto fix some hole in his stance. The blonde/redhead even got to spar with Hayate, who was cousin of Yugao and used the same Kenjutsu style as her or The Crescent Moon Dance, which he helped Yugao create along with Kushina. The style was somewhat based on Uzumaki kenjutsu style, with less complicated and less stamina demanding moves, it was basically watered down version and style on par with the one used by 7 swordsmen of the mist. Most notable of improvements Naruto achieved being: Lightning Edge without hand seals as well as some other mostly C rank with some B rank jutsu without them, learning a few Kenjutsu moves from his clan's style, achieving level 14 in Fuinjutsu and improving his usage of Hiraishin. Rasenshuriken was still work in progress, with now 80% to 90% success rate in his hand, and 60% in clones hand, using it himself was going slow due to damage to his arm so Naruto was not sure about the odds of success, since he didn't use the jutsu himself at all.