Chapter 2: Of Genjutsu and Psychosis 1/4

Disclaimer : Naruto isn't mine. I have barely a thousand bucks in the bank next to my laptop, suing me will do nothing for anyone. I really have to look up that guy's name and do an actual one of these eventually.

Rating : T at least for bad language. And the idea of child sized killers. And crazy people with many issues. Oh my. Currently, anyways. And… err… my own language, actually. Oh joy.

Author's Note : So apparently, there will be more than my supposed five chapters. Seriously, Jiraiya grabbed the plot and storyline and ran off giggling like a little girl after screaming at me that he was the GREAT TOAD SAGE AND MASTER SPY! NO HALF TRAINED GAKI WAS GOING TO PULL THE WOOL OVER MY EYES! I really … okay, I have no excuse beside I didn't see this coming. I'm no longer going to postulate the general number of chapters any story will reach, cause I suck at it, and realized I would have to rehash the whole Naruto storyline eventually since we're starting at the end of the Second Shinobi War and Natsumi would absolutely fuck up a number of plot lines just to keep in character as desperately half-nuts and in trying to keep Minato alive.

Clinkzbone, Matron,Plalanx213; the grammar, terms, and name you corrected me on for part one have been fixed, thank you for telling me. I'm sorry I was a little dense when you reviewed, Plalanx213, but I did eventually realize what you were getting at. Maybe a few more words like; hey, you screwed up _blank_ and _blank _. I won't get pissy hearing that. My pissyness is reserved for others that can't get off their soapbox about technical details when writing reviews. Yours' was brief and directly to the point you wanted to raise, perfectly fine and informative for me … after a brain-dead moment on my end.

For my reviewer who asked, that's you snail24, I read somewhere that the Third Shinobi War and chūnin through jōnin was where the Shika-Ino-Cho team-up became famous for Intelligence's snatch and grab missions. I'm sticking with that, so we'll see it formed here.

Nianque, hello again; TheSpiceOfLife-Insanity and Mybffisazombie, awesome handles by the way; thanks for reviewing. I'm glad Natsumi doesn't seem like a typical SI who will solve everything with a flick of the wrist, but then again I have this thing for head cases. Let me know if she gets too Mary Sue once everything starts happening, but I have a number of roadblocks planned to keep that from occurring.

Part Two : Of Genjutsu and Psychosis

Who's to say we won't be thought of as ill-bred fanatics of a madman in fifty years by a different society able to see our situation in hindsight?

Adolph Hitler was considered a brilliant man in Germany back before World War II. Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned for a while during that same war.

At the time, Hitler was a great leader and visionary, Gandhi was a political criminal. Now, Hitler's a madman and Gandhi's a revolutionary icon for peace.

Ninja psychology and shinobi mindsets were a fascinating subject if you had the time to study them. Paranoid with a curious bent, relaxed but ready for anything, self-assured one moment, cagey the next, opportunistic and skeptical to everything; a ninja had to be all that and more at the same time.

Problem was, no shinobi was that good and that slight, minor difference every ninja had between the two extremes was exploitable even if you really didn't know what you were doing.

The target this time was both at once more paranoid than anything she had seen before and more lax than most civilians that had the guts to work the trade routes during war time. He didn't seem too bright, though.

Panther peered at her target through the leaves and carefully flexed her fingers to complete the last hand sign for her supposedly 'original genjutsu' to settle on the man calmly strolling along the battered road that lead to one of the little farming towns just outside of Konohagakure's protective shade. It took a few minutes, but the man's head abruptly snapped to the side and he peered suspiciously at the undergrowth in the outer reaches of the forests.

His hands gave away his prior training in shinobi arts to her and her ANBU squad as they flicked to where small blades had been concealed on his person, while he verified that he hadn't seen anything that needed to be killed. The ANBU squad's next mark cautiously continued on his way, hitting his civilian's confident stride after a few more moments watching the forest closely for any suspicious movement.

No matter how many times she did it, nor how many times Yamanaka Inoichi told her it wasn't magic or her delusions acting up just chakra; the only odd jutsu she could use always felt and seemed more like magic powers than anything else she had ever done. How else could you affect another person by will alone?

She wished she could use more of it than she could, but her taicho had told her she would never be a ninjutsu specialist with her still horrific control over her chakra.

Her only combat useful jutsu wasn't really a real genjutsu, which was the snag most shinobi tripped over in trying to sense and dispel it if they realized or knew it was there in the first place. It was simply an influence on how much information a target takes in. As explained to her by her taicho, her jutsu just convinced a target that the flash of tan, brown, or green wasn't a part of the scenery but the movement of some kind of impending doom and they had to defend themselves or be killed... or that the oddly hand shaped thing holding that rather sharp looking knife wasn't really there because it really was a coatrack.

It had developed from trying a common focusing technique using chakra that most ninja used almost on automatic to sharpen the senses when on mission, merely overblown in a heavy handed way that Panther once did on accident in a training exercise. She then realized that if it had screwed her taicho up so badly it was probably just as hard on another person they didn't like in ANBU. It took such a minute amount of her concentration to apply that an academy student could pull it off with their chakra reserves and control, something that she was not too long ago.

There was some discussion between Wolf-taicho and Bear-sama about having it introduced as a beginning part of the standard procedure in marking out infiltrators, if she could ever get around to teaching someone else how the jutsu worked.

Panther wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Something else to talk to Inoichi about the next time she caught the blond mind walker on a day off.

Wolf-taicho touched her right shoulder, giving the non-verbal confirmation she was waiting for to go ahead with the second part of the planned ambush. He must have already conferred with the others of the squad while she was wool-gathering like a green recruit.

Panther obediently slipped off the branch she had been hidden on, silently landing on a studier one lower on the tree and jumping to the next available branch in her desired direction.

Another thing to wonder about when she had the time. Ninja traveling methods.

Halfway between the mark and the next town the ANBU assassin touched ground in a clearing somewhat removed from the rutted animal trail the ninja would be coming along on, grasping at a skinned knee and whimpering like any good civilian child would when injured and alone.

Carefully standing up in the clumsy manner of a untrained farm girl, she would know since one of her 'training exercises' had her pitching in on a farm once the mission was over and she was waiting on a pickup, she weakly leaned against a tree and tested her 'injured' leg by shifting twenty percent of her weight onto it. Keening lowly in pain from the back of her throat once she got a little over thirty.

"Something wrong, little lady?"

Starting at the rough voice behind her the girl turned around too quickly and lost her balance, landing on her ass with a graceless thump. With her grass green eyes watering in pain and her long, dark, and loose hair falling around her ratty and patched kimono, she truly looked the part of a young war-starved farm girl that was injured and lost. "Who! Ano… who are you?"

The scruffy man smirked at her as he moved around the ancient tree and crouched next to the waif, thinking more along the lines of a free meal ticket than being suspicious of a young girl lost in the forest surrounding an infamous ninja village. She was scrawny, had hair far too long for any serious kunoichi to stand, and the brat couldn't even walk. Easy pickings. "I'm just traveling here and there, little girl. But I heard you in pain, and what kind of man would I be if I left a little injured child out here all alone? Do you want some help getting home?"

A sniff and a wobbly, grateful smile had the man swinging the 'injured farm girl' over onto his back. He took special care of her skinned knee, keeping his arm under her thigh instead of around the crook of the joint. Mentally patting himself on the back on finding a cover that was even more believable than his original one because who would stop some young girl from getting medical help just to question the man carrying her?

So caught up in his supposed good fortune he never felt the wisps of razor wire that settled around his neck with the strands of the girl's long hair, aided by the still active bastardized genjutsu that pulled his attention to the scent of girl on his back, apples and … metal polish?

Two seconds later with a sound like a bursting water balloon, the Iwa infiltrator's head rolled down the tiny dirt road without the rest of him.

Panther back flipped off the corpse before it hit the ground, and before her own head was taken by the razor wire now held taut by Jackal and Horse.

The child-sized ANBU agent took a few moments to whisk off the blood soaked kimono over her skin tight, short black bodysuit and mop up as much of the mess on her as she could while her teammates unpinned the wire's ends from the trees. Horse then coiled the thin metal back up while Jackal helped her frisk the corpse for the information the spy had stolen from the jōnin assignment hall. Once that was secured Horse handed her back her mask and bent to heal her minor, self-inflicted injury as she took out the dark green contact lenses out and stowed it back in her odd contact case, right next to the dark blue ones.

Blinking her mismatched and pale eyes, she slipped on her mask and the parts of her armor Jackal handed to her piece by piece then looked back to where Wolf-taicho was observing the cleanup. Their captain simply nodded to them and one Katon jutsu later only greasy ash, charred bone, the dull glow of molten iron, and the stench of burned pork remained in the clearing.

Two more targets until they could return to Konohagakure.

\V/

Jiraiya frowned absently as he noticed that two of his little minions were distracted that afternoon. The mandatory kunoichi of the team was sharpening her kunai while they loitered about but the two boys he had been given, a future clan leader and an orphan like he had been once, had their heads together and were whispering furiously.

They were doing a piss-poor job of keeping the argument from him, even if the girl was happily oblivious to any disagreement between her teammates. Point in fact, he had noticed even if he was mostly distracted by the beauty bathing just beyond the tall wooden wall of the public onsen. Twisting around sharply in a whirl of white hair, the sannin slapped the bickering boys on the back of their heads with his ever handy sketchbook.

Softly, of course.

Wouldn't do for that busty brunette to hear it and draw the conclusion someone was around that shouldn't be. He had a reputation as a bit of a letch around Konoha, and she would probably hit first and ask later.

Leveling a glare at his two boys had no effect. After two months of genin training and an additional two months of D-ranked missions both of them lost whatever awe they had held for him. At least the girl was still biddable.

"You two should just shut up about her." Keiko-san spoke up in a normal tone of voice, both proving the sannin wrong about the direction of her attention and probably alerting the beauty he had been spying on. "Since it's been so long, you'll probably find her on the KIA lists."

Snatching up his so called students, all the while thinking why did the old man saddle him with them again; Jiraiya executed a hasty shunshin to their normal training grounds before anyone could come investigate the voice and dumped the load of wanna be ninjas once the familiar trees of training ground three came into view. "Do you want to tell me just what this is all about?"

The kunoichi pushed herself up, knocking both Inoichi and Minato off her back and ignoring them as they hit the ground again, then started to dust herself off with an aggravated air. "There's this annoying girl they know. Mesuji Natsumi-"

Sensing that this was about to go horribly wrong in a bad way, Namikaze was an easy going kid more often than not but he was starting to turn an alarming shade of red at the direction this conversation was going, the sannin clapped his hands together gleefully and turned to his two young, male students with a broad and perverted grin plastered onto his face. "Why boys! Are you telling me you're fighting over a girl?"

Inoichi's face screwed up like he was trying to wrap that statement around whatever argument they had been having, turning greenish around the edges like any other prepubescent preteen boy would when confronted with a girl's affections or accused of favoring one, but Minato's face lost all color at the bent the Toad Sage's mind had seemingly wandered.

That was… unusual. Interesting. One of the two.

Jiraiya then turned to the harpy of a kunoichi who now had a face like she just bit into a lemon. That little comment of hers was well beyond anything he would accept out of a fellow shinobi. When worrying over the location and health of another ninja, one did not make allusions to the death of said missing comrade in a nonchalant way, especially to the ones doing the worrying. That raised a whole lot of little red flags in his head about the girl's suitability as a kunoichi, and it wasn't the first time he had the same thoughts about the snot-nosed little brat. "Tell me about this girl."

Keiko huffed again, brushing brown hair out of her eyes and scowling at him for the subject matter.

"A kunoichi that was in the same year as us, I think she went for one of the specialist slots. But they haven't seen her in three weeks and are starting to panic about it, sensei. She was pulled out of the academy before anyone else was, even Uzumaki-san, and wasn't returned like about half of our year was after a few weeks." She snorted, crossing her arms over her non-existent chest and sticking her nose up in the air. "She was average the whole time we were in the academy, and was rather stuck up to the rest of the kunoichis while she was there. No great loss, I say."

The only question in the Toad Sage's head once the girl was done with her bitter report was what crawled up your ass about her?

He could see the girl mocking the concern maybe in a few years, most C or B-ranked missions were weeks long, even months sometimes, but at the rank and age they were at now? The concern the boys had was a good one. Add to that the twit's inability to let childish slights go, whatever it was about the missing girl that bothered her so, and it wasn't looking good for the kunoichi's future in the shinobi corps.

Making a snap decision, since it was the brat's fault the beauty at the onsen probably wasn't there anymore, he dismissed her on the grounds he had to talk to the boys about ninja life and the toll it took.

Once Keiko was out of sight he leveled a stern look on Minato, and the kid crumbled. Sort of.

Supposedly, Mesuji Natsumi-sempai was a slightly older girl that had taught him a few useful taijutsu tricks and helped them all, them being the group of clan heirs and other noteworthy clan genin, out through the academy years. They were supposedly concerned because she had said she would be back by today and wasn't around like she said she would be.

Jiraiya nodded along at the right points, noting where the orphan faltered and where the mini mind walker filled in for him.

Reading between the lines told the Toad Sage much more than what little his kids were verbally, and intentionally, giving him. A skilled, older sister figure to a fellow orphan, or rather a large group of brats if the small set of shinobi Namikaze gathered still met up as regularly as he thought they did. Since he had even overheard the snobbish Uchiha heir asking if his little minions had seen her recently, he had to conclude that was most likely. Something had them worried, but not something physically to do with the girl, they weren't concerned over her supposed death as much as they were concerned over her mental state. They knew nothing beyond when she was supposed to be back, just knew that this was the longest that Mesuji-san had been gone for.

In short; someone that even the heirs of a large group of clans thought was important in some way, skilled enough to be of note to those looking over the academy for immediately useable talents for the waning war effort, and not currently able to meet up with her friends, probably not even in the village at the moment to begin with.

Adding that to the comment of Keiko-san's about the girl being pulled before even the next jinchūriki, meant that she had to be either Hunter-nin or ANBU. This Natsumi-sempai had to still be in whichever branch if she was on mission and missing her projected return date by a week without KIA or MIA alerts going out to all chūnin or higher ninjas holding the name Mesuji and whoever she was out of the village with. Even still, it was a horrifying thought to realize a friend of his boys was neck deep in that side of shinobi life. Kids this age should still be playing with garden weeding missions and bodyguard babysitting duties, in his humble opinion. War or no. However, that would account for any worry over her mental state.

Heck, even he was now slightly worried for the girl.

Ignoring the polite fiction his two blond brats were weaving for him, Jiraiya sighed gustily, letting go of the niggling idea of returning to the bath house to continue listening to the current gossip among civilians and tugging a hand through his unruly hair. "It's going to be hard, getting information on this girl of yours, if you can't tell me which black ops branch she's with."

Inoichi looked faintly stunned at the blunt question but Minato nodded seriously and dropped any attempt of pretense to match the sannin's direct confrontation. "She's ANBU. Wolf-san is her taicho. We only saw him once, but that's what Natsumi-sempai called him before her graduation."

\V/

The night before the now very late ANBU squad would make for home, their last target had almost gotten to Sunagakure only to be misled by the assassin on the squad into dead-ending himself in a canyon native to the region they were in, Wolf took a seat next to the small figure of Panther perched on a rock similarly colored to her cloak and held out a ration bar for her to take.

The little assassin, on watch for the first quarter of the night, took it doubtfully and inspected it with narrow eyes through her mask.

"You need to eat more."

She snorted before carefully picking the wrapper apart to keep the noise down.

"Ate a while ago, taicho. While we were skipping along that deer trail and stalking some of our own on their way out." She took a bite anyways, peering at her captain in the fading twilight with mismatched eyes after she had swallowed. "What's wrong?"

Wolf cocked his head to the side and dropped the act, knowing by now that the girl would be suspicious of any favoritism he would show. Rightly so, since he used that mostly to alert the squad he wanted to talk with one of them and not to pamper the youngest there. Anything further meant he wasn't who he appeared to be and they needed to kill him before catching sight of Konoha. "How are you feeling with the kills you made so far?"

She was being oddly subdued and not the sly little assassin that had no problem messing with the other ANBU that tried hazing her, something that happened once the trees fell away and the scrub ground succumbed to sand. He was starting to wonder if the blood on her hands was weighing her down somehow, though she had never shown signs of it before.

The small figure shrugged, the motion almost lost in the dark and her oversized gray and tan cloak keeping the cold desert night out of her bones.

"Descriptive."

Panther-chan snorted lightly, losing the bland edge to her words as she accepted he was asking as an older shinobi to a younger ninja and not as her ANBU captain.

"I want to go home and bug Uchiha-sama and his girlfriend so he sneers at me so I can grin and pick on him some more. I want to bother Namikaze and Yamanaka about their sensei's habits, to go have tea with the twins, and talk fūinjutsu with Uzumaki. But most of all, I want to do all that and make sure no one can murder them in the manner we killed these spies and traitors scratching at our doorstep." She made a throwing away gesture with the hand not holding onto the ration bar, since you didn't waste food you didn't have to cook while out of the village's walls. "Beyond that? I'm glad they're dead and we're not."

Wolf nodded once and left her alone for the rest of her watch, intending to get some kind of shuteye before his graveyard shift. That was good enough for him in the immediate future, though he made plans to drop off the younger ANBU agent with her blond friends. It was probably a good thing one was a psychologist in the making and she hung out with them when she could.

\V/

If he didn't know any better, Jiraiya would have said Hiruzen-sensei had been expecting him to ask much sooner about his boys' little missing friend than he had.

For his excuse, tracking the name of a young girl and a captain's mask, familiar though that may have been, to a singular ANBU squad took some finesse in Konoha. Even for him with the recent boost to his reputation.

The Toad Sage drummed his finger tips on the arm of the chair he was occupying in the spacious Hokage's office, making polite conversation with the ambassador from Sunagakure while the older shinobi puffed on his pipe and looked through the drawers of his cluttered office desk for something. When the Hokage finally found the scroll he had been searching for, the sannin made their excuses to the ambassador and only pinned his old teacher with an exasperated look once the old civilian finally shut the office doors behind him. "So?"

"You never could leave a mystery alone, Jiraiya-kun." The scroll was tossed to him with little fanfare, the Sandaime directing a weary smirk to his most surprising student before blowing out a lungful of smoke and dismissing his ANBU office guards.

All those years ago and standing between Orochimaru and Tsunade, he would have been hard pressed to find any worthwhile skills in the orphaned white haired boy with no family name he had been given along with their year's Rookie of the Year and the Senju heiress. Jiraiya had his own surprises to bring to the table though, along with his eventual interest in senjutsu, fūinjutsu, and mastery of the Toad Summoning Contract.

A master spy in the works was now sitting before him, one that had a surprising success rate given the unorthodox methods he employed.

The young man, still in his early twenties compared to Hiruzen's age which was rapidly approaching the half a century mark, rapidly scanned the ninja file in his hands, paled, and went back to the beginning to read it more thoroughly. The Hokage could almost see the moment he read Bear's notations of young Mesuji's academy years, Wolf's additions on the kunoichi's skills, and exactly where the ANBU assassin Panther was now.

"I thought border patrols were only given to ANBU squads when one member was out of commission for whatever reason. Not to season a younger squad member."

Sarutobi sighed wearily, removing his pipe from his mouth and rubbing the bridge of his nose as his student's furious glare was leveled on him.

Jiraiya had always been an idealist, something that even the shinobi lifestyle had been unable to cure him of and something he had been unwilling to erase from the younger shinobi himself. Unfortunately, the war they had been fighting was not helping in bolstering that streak of hope his student stubbornly held in a death grip. Border patrols were ANBU's polite way of saying assassination likely missions to weed out spies and infiltrators in the forests around Konoha.

"We needed an assassination capable team to handle this patrol, given Intelligence is insisting that three known spies would be trying to return to their handlers this month. The ninja in question didn't protest-"

"Of course she didn't, she's ANBU!" The sannin exploded, ranting furiously at the older man about the age of the girl and the injustice of having someone so young listed as a B-ranked assassin.

It was safer to let the Toad Sage yell at his old sensei, rather than a high placed shinobi berating the Hokage about the division of younger ninjas. Jiraiya's rant eventually wound down, aided by the injuries that still pained the younger man from the fight with Hanzō, and the real reason he had been sent back to the village in the first place without his teammates.

The war had ground down to an uncomfortable halt two months ago with the end of the three day long fight between the team Sarutobi Hiruzen the Professor, the Hokage of Konohagakure, had taught against Hanzō the Salamander, the kage-level leader of Amegakure no Sato.

The three jōnin Sarutobi taught from genin on had already been known as the team of sannin, the three shinobi, before the fight with Hanzō because they represented the dream team of Konoha's visible ninja ranks; a ninjutsu combat specialist, a subterfuge specialist, and a medical support specialist; and were known for three way teamwork comparable to the understanding between twin shinobi.

It was the kage-level leader of Ame that had labeled them the Legendary Three Ninja before his retreat from battle, and the title had caught on everywhere according to the information the white haired sannin brought back with him.

Orochimaru and Tsunade had remained behind on the front lines to ensure the newly named Densetsu no Sannin's presence was still felt even if they were down a team member, Jiraiya's skills as an up and coming spy master aiding him cover his retreat as conferring with their old sensei as the only reason he was back in Konoha. The polite fiction of being saddled with a genin team now that the war was winding down instead of being redeployed was the cover for recovering from the worst of his injuries, a number of them gained from covering his teammate's backs during the epic length fight.

Tsunade had been the one to initially order the Toad Sage back to the village for medical reasons, unable to treat all of the injuries Jiraiya had accrued in the field, aided by Orochimaru's stern lecture about taking care of oneself. The white haired man had been unable to argue in the faces of both the Snake Summoner's unusual worry and the Slug Princess' clinical evaluation and had left the frontlines to them as he returned with the reports and intelligence gathered outside the walls of the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

None of the great shinobi villages wanted to take on another that had both a kage and three other shinobi, now labeled legendary by a legend himself and who combined held a kage's battle skills without the sensitive position the title held, without a lot of planning or sabotage to even the playing field.

Frantic cease-fires were in the works from Ame, Iwa, and Kumo; leaving a large amount of ninja in all four villages antsy and tense with the lack of the usual missions and conflicts. Suna was secure in its position as Konoha's best support, and Kiri was oddly silent since the obliteration of a large force that tried to take out a good chunk of Sunagakure and failed due to a seven-year-old puppet master.

"So what would you have me do, Jiraiya?" Hiruzen puffed on his pipe as he calmly gazed back at his riled student. "At the time we sorely needed assassins, and she's doing well in ANBU by nearly all reports."

The Toad Sage only just kept himself from sneering at his old teacher through sheer willpower.

Doing well and half-baked was the assumption generally drawn from that comment.

ANBU was not filled with well-adjusted individuals by any account. Cold blooded assassinations purchased by wealthy civilians were the responsibility of ANBU, along with high profile seduction missions and kidnappings, and that sort of thing left its mark on even jaded ninjas.

Jōnin only took assassination missions and the like on when there wasn't enough ANBU to take all the missions directed to Konoha, and that was only during truly desperate times when they couldn't turn away the gold. He knew a few good natured ANBU members, his best friend outside his team was one, but they were outweighed by the number of ANBU he would never trust at his back given the type of missions they carried out. He never could figure out why the shadow ranks were so loved by civilians and genin alike.

Hiruzen smirked a bit more broadly when the white haired man slumped into his chair, well aware that Jiraiya probably wasn't thinking good things about the shadow guards of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. He puffed on his pipe again, only to almost choke on the lungful of smoke at his student's next statement.

"I'll take her."

The Sandaime blinked, looking sharply over to where the file was in his student's hands before back up to Jiraiya's serious face. "What?"

"I'll take her on, Natsumi-san that is."

The Toad Sage waved the file in his hands at his old teacher, consequently waving the smoke out the open window as well. He was warming up to the idea even as he justified it to his Hokage.

"I wouldn't give Keiko-san long after her first C-ranked mission. She'll probably flake out given what I've seen out of her so far." The white haired man tugged his free hand through his mane with a gusty sigh and scowled out after the dissipating pipe smoke. "She'll be a career genin for her term of service, never see an actual battle, retire at twenty and probably seamlessly go back to being a civilian afterwards to raise two kids with a husband who wouldn't hurt a fly."

Hiruzen grimaced and tilted his hat over his eyes as he accepted his student's analyses of the girl on his team. Jiraiya was a good analyst of human nature, he had to be with his skills, and that meshed with the collective assumption among the academy instructors. They had protested his placing the girl with the two blond boys with so much talent initially to begin with, but she did have the scores at the time for a high placed genin team. "She passed my bell test, didn't she?"

Jiraiya grunted a grudging affirmative.

"Only because Minato-kun all but hit her over the head with the teamwork angle to snatch the bells before deciding what to do with them. He and Inoichi-kun had to drag her away to hammer that through to her after her first pitiful attempt at getting a bell. Honestly, I would have dropped the girl before long anyways, she's way too set in her ways to adapt and be a good kunoichi above genin rank. Natsumi-chan, on the other hand," the scroll was waved in the air between the two of them again, "has both the history and skills to seamlessly join up with my boys if I drop Keiko-san. You could even argue that Mesuji-san's too skilled for a genin team, though she might need the experience to round out any rough edges in her general skill sets and someone to figure out why she can't use anything besides this assassination technique she's noted for."

"Hmm… I have no objection to you taking her on, if the cease-fires continue." As a matter of fact, the Sandaime also had to find something else to do with the other three generally genin aged ANBU agents as well as the five about chūnin aged ANBUs if the war truly was stopping with the show of power from Konoha against Ame. If Jiraiya could figure out and solve Panther-chan's difficulty with jutsus she'd be an A-ranked assassin in no time at all, able to take out other C to A-ranked shinobi by herself instead of E-ranked civilian targets to maybe B-ranked ninjas in a squad now, and a good return for the sannin's time and effort compared to the girl that had them now and would never get to be a C-ranked general kunoichi at the very least. "You will need to make up a suitable reason to drop… Keiko-san, was it? Keiko-san onto the Genin Corps full time. One that preferably won't get the civilian council up in arms over discrimination against civilian born ninjas, Jiraiya-kun."

The Toad Sage grimaced at the thought of telling the girl on his team he was dropping her. That was surely going to go over as well as a ton of bricks with Keiko-san, though he didn't see any real protest from his boys coming out when they got wind of her replacement. "Alright, Hiruzen-sensei. Let me know when Natsumi-chan gets back to the village and I'll swing by ANBU headquarters to pick her up."

"I have a better idea." Sarutobi smirked over his pipe at his suddenly wary student. "We can tell her now."

Before the white haired man could ask what the Professor meant by that, four figures suddenly jumped through the open window, landing in the crouch of reporting ANBU before the desk.