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"I have a better plan," Naruto said, giving the wet rice fields a hairy eyeball. It was very idyllic-looking, painted deep red by the setting sun, but crawling through knee-deep water all night long and sleeping in muddy bank sounded plain stupid. It was going to be cold, wet, dirty, wet, slow, wet and just what would Fū-chan think if she saw them covered in mud from head to toe?

"What is it?" Fū-san asked. Naruto liked this about ANBU: they always listened. They didn't always think his ideas were so great, like when he had proposed they have an office party – he had already made the hot cocoa and gotten the ramen too – but they listened first. They always remembered that even though they couldn't think of a better plan, someone else might.

"We go in as clients. We are going to have to travel through the Ta no Kuni and there are all those freak missing ninja running around free, so we are gonna need the protection," he improvised. Heh, they got to blame it all on Orochimaru! That always made Naruto's day.

"The idea has some merit, but they would see our faces," Fū-san mused, stroking the handle of his sword. "And we would have to leave most of our weapons behind."

True, Naruto hadn't thought that far, he had just wanted to avoid crawling his way to Takigakure, but now he was on a roll. But he met the weaknesses in his plans the same way he met other obstacles: not retreating, not choosing another route, but finding a way to push through.

"That's easy enough. You guys are ANBU, so you learn new jutsu quick, right? Just look at this!" And with a single handseal – ram – he was covered with white smoke. And when it evaporated…

This was what Naruto had termed as his Hyūga variation of the technique since he had modelled it after them, minus the eyes, and because it was the classy one and Hinata-chan was classy. He was about as tall as he always was but a lot more slender, with long, dark brown hair and brown eyes and dressed in simple orange travelling kimono and a funny, pointy straw hat. His skin was pale and there were no possession-marks on his cheeks. He looked, in short, like any of Hinata's cousins if not for his eyes. Oh, and he had breasts of course. Sai wasn't surprised since he had seen enough of random genderbending already, but Tomiko-chan frowned. She first cupped Naruto's right breast, making him blush and stutter, and then placed her hand on Naruto's shoulder.

"Why am I always plagued by perverts?" Naruto moaned. Tomiko-chan snorted.

"Kai," she tried to release the genjutsu. Nothing happened and Naruto looked at her oddly.

"Most genjutsu can be broken with that. Most henge doesn't pass the touch test either," she explained her actions and knitted her brows. "That's not a simple genjutsu." It wasn't a question.

"Well, I was really bad at henge because it used so little chakra I always broke it, but I found I could do it if I pushed the chakra through my body and spent the extra inside instead of just putting it over me." Kakashi-sensei had once said that Naruto trying to do a D-rank jutsu was a bit like trying to fill a glass from a dam hatch; it didn't matter how careful you were with the glass, unless you did something about the water pressure, it broke. And, well, his control had gotten better in the Root thanks to Hibari-sensei's tablets, but it still wasn't anything to write home about.

"Firefly, that sounds more like a ninjutsu," Sai said slowly and Naruto realized he had never explained to him how he did it before. Yeah, he knew that using ninjutsu to change the body was supposed to be incredibly dangerous and all, but it was the Academy teachers' fault, except Iruka-sensei's.

"Nobody told me henge was supposed to be genjutsu before I made this," he complained. He could almost see Sai rolling his eyes at him under the very cute, if a bit maniac-looking, lamb mask.

Hmmm, what if it was possible to see through things without the Byakugan? Gaara could see with that sand eyeball of his, but since he used pure chakra where Gaara used sand maybe he could see through it somehow…

"Firefly-kohai, please pay attention," Fū-san commanded him sharply. Naruto rubber his hair embarrassed.

"Uh, sorry, but I just got the coolest idea." And he referred it of course. Why not; they were all Konoha ninja so they were allies, and besides Sai and Tomiko-chan were friends too. Silence reigned.

"There are several Academy teachers I would like to kill for wasting a resource like you," Fū-san said eventually. Naruto was torn between being happy – his new team leader thought he was intelligent – and blustery since he wasn't a resource! Kami damn it.

Uprooted, Chapter 10