The shadows

ch37

Naruto was thinking about the past few years. He was now ten years old, and a lot had changed during that time. He was standing in the temple's kitchen preparing refreshments for Shikamaru and Hinata.

After the restoration of the temple, he made sure to show the place to all his friends and tell them that they were always welcome there. It was mainly used as a place for them to hang out or do their usual activities.

Shikamaru mostly came there to practice some sealing with Naruto. Today they were working on some new lessons together. Hinata was there to show Naruto her improvements in iryojutsu. She was on her way to becoming a great medic.

She was an apprentice under Tsunade and Shizune after showing promise in her training. She planned on becoming a front-line medic. She had great fighting power due to her taijutsu and Byakugan. Shizune was teaching her the use of senbons, and she took the lessons like fish to water.

If Naruto had to rank her fighting powers, she was high chunin in skill but low chunin due to the limitations of her age. Naruto himself had finally got promoted to Jonin. His other friends were all improving as well.

The general base skills of academy students had improved a lot. They predicted that by the time the first year of students of their program graduate, they would all be at a high genin level. Tsunade had taken charge of the hospital and was already working on making active shinobi become competent in first aid. The results were obvious. The mission success rates and the number of critical injuries had decreased.

Itachi and Shisui were both ANBU captains now. They were busy training with their teams and taking missions. Their conflicting schedules limited the amount of time they could spend time together. They still did their best to train together and work on their skills.

Sometimes they would just use their time to hang out and not do anything since they were all tired. Naruto was also sent on many missions across the nations. Most of his missions had political nature or high importance.

He was becoming quite well known. He had visited all the nations and was currently listed in bingo books as a B-rank Jonin. He was trying to downplay his abilities and skills. It was common practice among many shinobi.

While being recognized could have the advantage of being famous to the village and deter enemies or intimidate them in confrontations, it also meant that people would know about your techniques and what to expect in order to counter them.

Outside the village, Naruto mostly stuck to kenjutsu and fuinjutsu. He only used his spear for fights to hide the fact he was proficient with multiple weapons. He was keeping the picture of being an Uzumaki since it was one of their traditional weapons.

During the last years, he visited all the five major villages, which gave him a chance to evaluate his clone spy network. His clones were all in their designated positions, both as civilians and shinobi. Of course, the shinobi clones tend to stick to lower ranks.

They couldn't risk high degrees of injury even though the shinobi ones were all blood clones. They inclined towards chunin-level desk jobs. Through all this information, Naruto had a great outlook on what was happening in each village.

A shocker for him was the news of Zabuza and Mei's marriage. During his time in Kiri, he noticed the two were close, but he didn't know the extent. Mei was the current Mizukage, and Zabuza was her righthand.

His clones in Kumo and Iwa didn't have anything of great interest, but his clones in Suna managed to improve the relationship between the sand siblings. When he first started sending out his clones, he managed to give himself an opportunity to go to Suna while a clone took his place in Konoha.