Behind Innocent Eyes

Digging Too Close

Last Time:

'What are they planning?' Naruto's sensei voiced his suspicions as he followed Shino, Kiba, Akamaru and Kurenai out of the village. After all, it seemed strange that such a close team wouldn't say goodbye to a sick member before leaving ...

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"Wow, smells great!" Kiba exclaimed excitedly as the meal was cooking over the fire. "Can we keep you?" The dog ninja said jokingly as he was poured a bowl of the stew.

Naruto chuckled as he spooned out the stew for everyone else, "Sorry, but I have to go back eventually."

Kurenai moaned at the taste of the stew, "We'll have to talk to the hokage about that."

"About what? It's pretty clear this will be temporary since you said I will be returning for the chunin exams ... then again I remember something about genin teams being restricted to a certain number for a survival reason so it seems weird that I was allowed to leave. He already knows about this transfer, right?" Naruto asked innocently, deliberately putting the sensei on the spot.

"Of course he does." Kurenai chuckled with a slight nervous tint to her tone, "I'm just saying that if you being on a different team is an improvement something could be worked out. That's all."

(Going with that huh ... no matter, I'll find out what's going on before this mission is done.) Naruto thought, while mentally smirking a smile that did not match the innocent smile on his face, "So what's this mission about? We never actually talked about it." Naruto said as he realize the subject has been only random things or subtle comments to try and get some information about him since they left the village hours ago.

Kiba blinked, "Oh right! ... errr sensei we were briefed, but-" Kiba winced. It looked like Kurenai was smiling, but if you looked at her foot you'd notice that it was digging into Kiba's heel.

"We did forget to talk about the briefing for the mission!" Kurenai exclaimed louder than necessary.

Naruto winced as he focused more on Kiba than Kurenai's attempt to cover up the slip, (Briefed huh ... I almost wish you didn't let that slip.) Naruto thought feeling sympathetic towards Kiba despite his strong desire to figure out what exactly was going on here. The look of pain and the tiny whimper from holding back the pain made Naruto feel bad for Kiba since he knew how overzealous the jonin could be. She did drag the blonde nearly a mile to get him to the hokage tower, after all.

However, since the slip was made and couldn't be taken back it was best to ponder on the meaning behind it. To Naruto it sounded like they talked about a mission before he met up with them, but Kiba seemed clueless on this mission. Does that mean Team 8 had another mission? A mission Kurenai didn't want him knowing about, perhaps?

The possibility put Naruto on high alert. Years of dealing with surprisingly well organized and manipulative villagers made him more than a little distrustful of any sign of a plot. After all, they could be doing an off the books mission to investigate Kurama. Actually, that scenario would explain why Hinata was left behind! If that's what's going on then Team 8 planned on separating them to investigate and he can't have that. He had no idea if this was the case since they shouldn't know about Kurama even with that close call at Konohamaru's, but if it was Naruto was determined to keep Kurama safe.

"I guess this new team arrangement threw us off." Shino commented matter of factly.

"Yes it has!" Kurenai exclaimed, happy one of her students could play along and was relieved that Naruto seemed to buy the lie, "Ok, we're on a treaty type mission."

Kiba groaned a little as he flexed his hurt foot slightly, "Treaty what?" He said with a strained voice. Poor guy was clearly in pain.

"Oh, it's just a fancy way to say that we're going to try to negotiate a treaty." Kurenai explained.