Return of the Flash by Kamikaze132

Chapter 23

A week passed after the "good news", without anything interesting happening, except Tsunade officially becoming Hokage. Naruto had put his week off to good use to train and after that, resumed started taking missions. In fact, he fully took advantage of the privileges that became available to him after his promotion to jonin. He was allowed to take missions of higher rank, and after taking a bit of advice from Kakashi, who had experience in the "young jonin" department, he started out with high C-rank to mid B-rank. So far, he had completed 5 missions, one each day, two high C-rank, two mid B-rank and one high B-rank.

The last one was actually supposed to be a mid B-rank, guarding a wealthy, wine merchant and his two friends in their journey from Konoha to the land of vegetables. Naruto was at first quite surprised that they made use of horse wagons. One was for the merchant and his friends, the other for their goods. The merchant was at first skeptical that there would only be one ninja to guard them, but Tsunade had convinced them that Naruto was more than qualified for this mission. Naruto sat on top of the second wagon in their journey. At halfway point, it seemed that this mission would be completed without any problem, and to Naruto's regret, any fight.

However, as the saying goes- Don't provoke the universe. It turned out, that when they were about to enter Na no kuni, they were ambushed by a ninja. More specifically, a missing nin. Omitsu Isshin was a high, B-rank missing nin from Kirigakure. Apparently, he had been hired to take out the merchant by a rival, or at least, that's what he said in his monologue when he was standing in front of the wagon. Poor guy never even saw Naruto coming, for the blonde's flash step was fast enough to catch Kakashi off guard, this guy stood no chance at all. He had just finished his monologue and moved to attack when-

SLASH!

- his head was cleanly cut off from his body by Naruto using a kunai coated with wind chakra. Naruto had been ready to dispose of his body when he had paused, and took out his bingo book. He had smiled when he saw the missing nin's entry on a page for 120,000 ryo. Of course, his mission pay was relatively higher, and had been bumped up because of Isshin, but extra cash hurt no one.

The client had been incredibly relieved and pleased, with him and his friends repeatedly thanking Naruto for saving their lives. Naruto had told them about the change in mission parameters, and the cost following it. Fortunately, they had offered no resistance against paying more. They wanted to repay him in any way they could, so Naruto just collected the extra money in payment.

It had taken them a total of thirty-eight hours to reach their destination. After getting their signature that the mission was complete and wishing them good luck in their endeavors, Naruto double-timed it back to the village, making just one stop at a bounty station to collect Isshin's bounty. Unfortunately, he could not use Hiraishin because his sensing capabilities were not good enough to cover countries just yet.

On the bright side, he put his recent mastery of Kurama's fist tail to good use. After they had returned with Tsunade, Naruto used his week off to master Kurama's first tail. The blonde had, after a substantial amount of hard work, mastered the use of his body in the one-tailed mode. His already impressive strength, speed and reflexes were heightened greatly. It had taken him a mere five hours of journey to reach Konoha. After he had reported his success back to Tsunade and collected his money, he had went back to his house.

His parent's house.

That was another new development for him. After the day when he was told, he was called back into Tsunade's office, where she had advised him to move into his parent's house as soon as possible. After all, his apartment was hardly a place for him to live after his marriage. And knowing how Naruto tended to finish things rather quickly to avoid any backlog, she told him to move into the house the day after.