Spies and Element

This place was only temporary though until I could earn enough to get the land I actually wanted. Honestly the only reason I even set up this place was simply because it wouldn't be appropriate to continue living at my parents and the land was free for anyone who wanted to set up shop there. As I had stated previously the forest of death was not a fun place to live for anyone who wasn't me. Poisonous insects, plants, powerful beasts that despite not having chakra could endanger even average Chunin and many other unfun stuff was all found in the forest.-

My new house despite the illusion wasn't something I kept secret and would be fairly easy to find anyways since the area around it had been claimed by my beasts. I wasn't surprised as a result to find people spying on it on what I am assuming was Danzo's orders. My sensei had all but stated that the man was responsible for us getting ambushed previously even though there was no evidence of it. The modus operandi simply fit too well according to her and after she explained previous actions he had taken that she knew of for a fact I couldn't help but agree with her.-

Calling the man a snake would be an insult to snakes as according to my sensei the guy had no moral line he wouldn't cross if he thought the outcome worth it and that was a low bar to meet for him. My sensei said that he probably heard about my solid clone technique and decided to "acquire" it without letting it reach the village, out of greed most likely. Knowing this I quietly made a deal with all the squirrels living in the forest that if they found anyone spying on my home and they pelted them with some of my specially made smoke pellets I'd give the squirrel who did it some good food.-

You want to talk about unnerving? Imagine hundreds of squirrels spread across about three miles of land all armed with smoke pellets that exploded when thrown into what was basically mustard gas. Now imagine that they are all manically searching for anyone stupid enough to try and spy on my home to use those pellets on, Danzo was pissed. He even went so far as to accuse me of attacking my fellow Konoha ninjas for no reason. -

The man got an ugly slap in the face when I told the Hokage who had summoned me to discuss the matter EXCATLY what was going on. Rather than get me into trouble Danzo himself got into trouble since he had deployed shinobi to spy on me without any good reason. As should be obvious the Hokage wasn't happy with this and reprimanded Danzo before asking that I choose a less aggressive method of counter surveillance in the future. I agreed and we were effectively sent back to square one as Danzo lost this not so hidden clash and got nothing for his troubles.-

At the same time I had to figure out a different method of stopping him from spying on me. The answer was simply to employ the squirrels again but this time merely as guards. The psychotic little tree rats were more than happy to keep an eye out in exchange for a daily ration of good food. It was a little pricey to buy this small army of squirrels so much food but I could easily cover that amount with two or three C rank missions.-

Kiba and Shino also came to visit sometimes and hung out with Naruto and me. Kiba was boisterous and frankly foul mouthed while Shino just silently sat there most of the time getting ignored by everyone except me. Let me tell you nothing bothers a member of the Aburame clan like getting acknowledged. They all had almost no presence and were the embodiment of "face in the crowd" energy so getting singled out so casually throws them for a loop. Honestly I did it simply because I thought it was hilarious to see Shino's reaction. We even developed this fun little ninja game that we called Element.-

It was sort of like checkers or chess except it was based around the five basic chakra natures and only a piece of the opposite nature could remove another piece from the game permanently. If a non-opposing element took a piece that piece came back into play after two turns. You got three of each element at the start and had to take the "chakra" piece of the opponent to win. Like in chess each element moved in a way that was specific to them and similar to how that element worked in reality.-

We ended up spreading the game all over the village and further once word got out about it and people started coming to us to get a set for the game. Naruto and Kiba were to blame for that happening as they blabbed about it at the academy and from there it spread by word of mouth. Funnily enough even the Hokage requested a set and gave me a mission to teach him and Shikamaru's dad, Shikaku how to play. They both found the game impressive as it was both easy to play and at the same time held a lot of complexity as well.-

For example you needed to keep track of your upkeep to return pieces into play while also making sure you don't run out of an element or you risked having a serious handy cap afterwards. Like if you permanently lost all your fire pieces you won't be able to take any of your opponents water pieces and that gave them quite the advantage in numbers. Sure you could take their water pieces out of play for two turns at a time but they always came back like reinforcements arriving without you yourself getting any.-

As any shinobi will tell you that numbers advantage could easily mean the difference between victory and loss. I had to admit though that both of these two were monstrously skilled tacticians as they were planning four or five moves ahead at all times and I only noticed it after seeing the setups going off. Like one time the Hokage purposefully let one of his earth and fire pieces get taken only for them to come back into play now perfectly poised to permanently take two of Shikaku's pieces. The merchants that came to the village also bought some sets from me in order to sell them to the bored nobles across the land.-

Kiba, Shino and I all agreed to give the profits from the game to Naruto since out of all of us he definitely needed it the most. It wasn't much but it at the very least allowed him to get a new set of clothes since his current ones were getting in bad condition. In my free time not hanging out or doing missions I worked on mastering my new jutsus until I no longer needed handsigns to use them. It took me about three months in total to achieve that once I had started it.