Naruto : A Fool's Errand.

Tachibana looked at the special scroll in front of him. He'd purchased this scroll while purchasing ingredients today. It varied from a normal scroll because the paper was substantially thicker and could hold liquids without tearing.

Although this special scroll was used for calligraphy and painting, Tachibana had bought it to practice sealing jutsus.

Dipping the brush into an oil-based ink Tachibana carefully drew on it a complicated set of brush strokes using the sealing book as a reference.

Before each brush stroke, Tachibana would perform a hand sign and with some difficulty mould chakra to give it a property after it passed through a tenketsu.

As he drew the stroke, Tachibana would imbue this chakra into the ink so that the stroke held the same properties.

Soon Tachibana stopped and checked his work.

'Alright, they look the same.'

'Now all I have to do is pour chakra into the thing and see if it works.'

Once the ink dried, Tachibana brought his hand closer to the paper and using the tenketsu on his palm he poured in a little bit of his chakra into the paper.

Initially, there was no resistance and chakra flowed freely into the paper but after just a few seconds Tachibana felt it became rather difficult to push in more chakra, soon he couldn't push in anymore.

There was no visual change in the paper at first but it soon started to get warmer and suddenly burst into flames.

'So it worked!'

Sealing although a complicated system with several rules and regulations, could be distilled into simple words that captured its essence well.

'Sealing is the art of mimicking chakra pathways externally.'

This simple technique has several uses, for example, a good seal master who knew a high-level jutsu could create a seal that when activated could execute the jutsu even if the person using it didn't know that jutsu.

Although that was a great use for it since it meant even the lowest-ranked shinobi could perform the highest-ranked jutsu if they had enough chakra, but that wasn't all.

A good seal master could use seals to experiment and create new Jutsu that would otherwise be very dangerous for them to directly try on themselves.

But even that wasn't the end.

Sealing could be used to append extra chakra pathways to a person with a specific effect so that the time it took to mould chakra for complicated jutsu became much smaller.

Although a shinobi could use any jutsu with a paper seal, it was limited since it was a one-time-use paper seal. Extending a person's chakra pathways by adding a seal onto their body, however, allowed the seal to become reusable.

This meant a shinobi with good chakra control could spam a jutsu as long as they had enough chakra.

This method was also the basis of many mind control seals and chakra suppression seals.

'I can understand why everyone feared the Uzumaki clan now…'

'So much so that it took several shinobi villages to join hands to defeat them…'

'But this one fight probably set back humanity by quite a bit…'

'What a disappointment…'

'At least I can revive it all.' Tachibana thought with a resolute look in his eyes as he thought about all the books on sealing in the secret room.

Tachibana had become extremely careful about practising sealing and even reading the book about it. He'd use divination to make sure no one was spying on him or would spy on him soon before pulling out the book from under his bed.

He didn't want Hiruzen barging into his house one day and claiming that all the books were village property and he needed enough contributions just to see them again.

'I don't know why you left these books behind Mito-sama, but I'll make sure they find the best use ever.'

'I only have to keep Hiruzen away from these books for about four months, and after that, he'll be gone.'

'Tsunade won't use that crystal ball right?'

Although the seal that Tachibana had drawn had burst into flames earlier, Tachibana didn't know if he had any fire affinity.

The only reason he was able to make the seal burst into flames was because Mito's book explained that there was a pathway in the body that had the property to heat the chakra that passed through it. It was used by several shinobi to start fires when they were camping or to burn explosive tags.

'I should get a chakra paper to test what affinities I have so that I can train them before I get into learning elemental jutsu too.'

'I'll ask Maruboshi-sensei about it later.'

With his test done, Tachibana hid the book before going to sleep. Tomorrow was a big day, after all, he'd leave the village on his first 'real' shinobi mission.

Waking up the next morning, Tachibana freshened himself and had a heavy breakfast before leaving for the Hokage tower.

"Good morning, Sensei." Tachibana said with a smile as he flicked his forehead protector to show Maruboshi what he had on his head.

"Good morning my dearest student! I see you have a new addition to your attire."

"Hehe~ I look great don't I?"

"You do. I heard what you did." Maruboshi said placing his hand on Loki's shoulder and squeezing a little hard. "When did I tell you to use chilli powder to attack shinobi? Hm~m?"

"Hehe…I mean didn't you say I should only use tactics that I'm sure would work? So I did just that! You can't complain about that!"

Maruboshi shook his head and walked into the Hokage office along with Tachibana.

"Let's take our mission."

"Sure! I've never been more ready in my entire life!"

"We'll see."

A while later when it was their turn, Maruboshi and Tachibana stepped into the mission delegation room.

The Hokage was sitting in his official robes along with a few chunin on both his sides. One of whom Tachibana recognised because of the scar on his nose.

'Is that Iruka-sensei?'

Hiruzen's eyes lit up as soon as he saw Tachibana and Maruboshi.

"Greetings Hokage-sama." Tachibana said with a smile to which the Hokage nodded back, puzzling all the other shinobi about who the child was to talk so casually to their Hokage.

Iruka was the most puzzled since he didn't remember any kid like Tachibana in the academy. Especially since Maruboshi was leading the kid when everyone knew he was the Eternal Genin of Konoha.

"I have just the right mission for you Tachibana-kun. It's a Bandit suppression mission from a village on the way to the capital from Konoha. It would be the best for you to choose this mission."

Tachibana nodded and Maruboshi took the scroll from Hiruzen with a polite bow.

"Good luck on your first mission Tachibana-kun."

"Thank you Hokage-sama, I will keep the village's name held high."

When the two left the room, Iruka turned toward Hiruzen and asked him a question, "Hokage-sama if I may ask, who was the boy? He looked as young as Naruto but I've never seen him in the academy before."

Hiruzen laughed softly before taking a puff of smoke from his smoking pipe, breathing out the smoke from his nose Hiruzen spoke with a smile, "His identity is a secret for now. But treat him the same as any other shinobi that's a part of the village. He's a good kid."

Maruboshi and Tachibana having already packed the essentials left the village immediately, showing their mission ticket to the guards to take note of before leaving towards the village that had sent the mission.

"If you keep up that speed, I'll reach the village you Maruboshi-sensei!" Tachibana said as he ran ahead.

"As if I'll let you!" Maruboshi shouted before using the body flicker jutsu to cross Tachibana.

"That's cheating!!!!!"