Dark Phoenix of Konoha by White Angel of Auralon

Part 11 - Ups and Downs of Training

Ups and Downs of Training

Over the next week Kakashi kept his team busy and mostly out of the sight of the villagers. The only things anybody heard were from stories councillor Haruno spread, those that her daughter told her, that was if Sakura wasn't too tired to do more than showering, eating and falling into her bed. It was one point the loud councillor was complaining about, the inhuman training her daughter was forced to do.

Isami Haruno was not happy that her little princess, who was meant to become the wife of the last Uchiha and bring her family more power through said marriage, was doing that kind of training. It would disfigure her beautiful body. She would get calluses on her soft hands, which would push any man away. Her shiny silky hair didn't get the necessary care and was losing its silkiness. But she had to stay on the team to prevent any other girls from stealing the boy for themselves. And then there was the fact that her little girl was always forced to be in company of the demon. But all her complaints with the Hokage had been ignored. The only way that he would change the teams would be after the chunin exams if Kakashi nominated his team for them. The teams were made for good reasons.

Normally she and her fellow civilian councillors would have done something to sabotage the demon, but for some reason the Hokage now kept a stricter eye on them and had taken away their ability to command ninjas to do their bidding. No ninja would listen to them, citing they weren't part of the chain of command. And yesterday they had been called in for a meeting of both parts of the council with the Hokage. It hadn't been a nice meeting.

The Hokage had taken away their responsibility for the ninja academy. His reasoning was that the academy was part of the military, run by teachers that were ninja. The future ninjas of the village were taught there and therefore the curriculum was the responsibility of the military, not the civilian council. So now the shinobi council was tasked with proposing a new curriculum as the graduation results in the last three years had been abysmal. Only teams that consisted of mostly clan children passed the tests of their jonin senseis and most tests were reasonably levelled for a team to have a chance to pass them. That only thirty three per cent on average passed those tests was alarming and wouldn't be accepted anymore.

The villagers that requested genin teams for jobs, hoping to get to see the last Uchiha were disappointed. All jobs like weeding gardens, babysitting, grocery shopping and walking dogs were done by teams eight and ten. It wasn't that team seven didn't do any missions; Kakashi just selected the physically most demanding ones and the ones outside the village walls. One of his favourites was catching Tora. So far team seven had chased the cat three times in two weeks. Some jobs like painting fences, repairing roofs after bad weather, painting houses and the like, jobs that required handicraft skills in general were done by groups of shadow clones of Naruto Uzumaki. Many had questioned why he did those missions without his team and got the answer that he didn't have clan funds to fall back on or a family to help him pay his bills, so he had asked the Hokage to do a few more D-rank missions to earn more money.

With the newer residents of the village, those that had moved here after the Uchiha massacre, the boy was fairly well-liked. They had heard about his pranks and his disrespect to everybody, but were surprised about the image they now got after meeting the boy in person. While he was distant, he was perfectly polite and did his jobs well. The older villagers tried to demand other genins to take the missions they handed in, but the mission office told them to either accept who they got sent or do the work themselves. Many then just glared at Naruto and his clones, but Naruto had too much experience with dealing with hateful villagers to react to it anymore.

The Hokage had ordered the ones working at the mission office to not give in to any demands regarding complaints about Naruto taking missions. Additionally a chunin that the Hokage trusted absolutely was to inspect the missions once Naruto was done to avoid hateful civilians cheating on the money for well-done jobs. As the village had too many D-rank missions to do all the time, he didn't want to lose the one genin that did more than requested voluntarily. And with so many D-ranks getting done, the village also earned more money. With time the chunin at the mission office got used to the blond and started treating him better. There always were those that couldn't get over their long standing grudges, but their numbers were falling. It didn't really mean the number of people that liked Naruto got bigger, but many stopped disliking him. He was a genin, doing his missions for the village properly and he didn't even complain once about his missions. That alone was earning him respect.