Naruto Of The Shadow Clones

chapter 9 : Bell Test: Take Two: Part One

Hidden Leaf Village: Day after "Bandit Mission"

Word of what had happened to Naruto's team got around the village fast. People were wondering how a mission could have such bad Intel for it. Almost everyone was wondering how a Genin team that has only been together for just around a year could have gotten out of that without actually any of the Genins dieing.

Most of the younger groups figured that Naruto had proved his nickname of one man army and simply swamped the missing nins with so many numbers that they had to fall.

Most of the older ninjas however had another idea. They believed that Naruto had somehow tapped into the Kyubi's power when things got rough. When some of them confronted Kakashi about this idea, they were shocked to find they were right. There would have been a mass panic except for the fact that Kakashi told them exactly how it happened.

When the older shinobis heard about the conditions they were in at the time, they realized the blond had no choice in the matter. And while they were concerned that he had done it at all, they were relieved to hear that he dropped the chakra cloak as soon as all the enemy nin were taken care of.

They all agreed to keep the fact that Naruto had used the Kyubi's chakra to themselves and that they would do their best to make sure the actual truth was not made known to the younger group by encouraging the shadow clone army rumor.

It goes without saying that when Naruto heard of this he was extremely grateful to them. Meanwhile, the Hokage had decided that Naruto was not mentally fit to be on active duty right now and gave him and Kakashi the week off so that he could cope.

Speaking of Naruto, he was handling what happened reasonably well thanks to Hinata. The two had a long talk the day he got back and she was able to get him out of his depressed state. The two started spending so much time together that they actually moved from just friends to something more. And while it wasn't a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship yet, they were definitely getting close.

In the afternoons for the next couple of weeks, Hinata and Naruto were almost always seen together, whether they were training or just hanging around the village.

Mizuki and Iruka helped out as well, both had their own talks with the blond while Mizuki took it one step further by helping Naruto pull off a few pranks to blow off some steam.

What really did the trick for him was when he painted the hokage monument so that each face's hair had a different tie-dye color to it. No one knew how he managed doing that without being noticed until he was done, though some wondered briefly if he could do genjustu after all.

There was one other person that really helped Naruto pull through: Rock Lee. Lee would challenge Naruto at least once every day and would really put the sapphire eyed boy through his paces. This was good for Naruto because it not only made him take his mind off the mission, it also pushed him to get better with each match. By the end of the week, the blond was back to the way he was, and was ready for active service again.

But although Naruto was mentally ready to be back on active duty, He and Kakashi were only a two man team, meaning they could only do D-ranks until they got new teammates.

And while Naruto had been relieved to hear his two teammates would be fully recovered in a year at most, neither one want him or Kakashi to wait for them. So it was decided that Kakashi would receive two of the academy students that would be graduating in a week.