"Let him do a few C-rank and B-rank missions and he will be ready to become jonin. There were a few rookie mistakes that you only get corrected through experience. You should for example not wait to see if your jutsu really hit an opponent and neglect your surroundings. Your sensor ability helped you out there, but you should have been more on guard in those situations." Asuma told Naruto who nodded.
"I will remember it next time, Asuma." He replied.
"Okay, the next part is Arata's specialty. I would like a bit more about your knowledge in poisons." The Hokage said.
Naruto nodded and went over to Arata. Meanwhile Asuma talked to his father.
"He is really good. How did you train him and where? I wouldn't have thought you could hide the Yondaime's son for twelve years." Asuma asked.
"Well, even I don't know how he trained. I didn't know he was this strong before he told me some days ago when he brought back the forbidden scroll that Mizuki had stolen." The Hokage answered.
"You want to tell me that kid learned all that on his own? Where would he get the jutsus?" Asuma asked. "And why didn't you teach him? I would have thought he would have got special training regarding his father's enemies."
"I wanted to, but the political situation after the Kyubi attack was extremely shaky. We had to fear that Iwa or Kumo would use our weakness to kill him if they knew who he was. So I hid him away. I couldn't have the villagers talk about him even existing. If he had got special training, people would have asked why. And I didn't want to let Danzo or one of the other idiots know about him. The civilians would have pestered me with the CRA nonsense, even if he doesn't have a bloodline limit, made marriage proposals for their daughters to get more power and similar things would have happened through the ninja clans that would have fought to raise him to increase their power." The Hokage explained.
"That makes sense. But it is fishy that he could get this strong on his own with nobody noticing." Asuma admitted.
"Indeed. I will have a long talk with him how he managed it, but I guess he will keep a lot secret. There are certain reasons he informed me about his skills a few days ago, but they are classified. Now let's see what Arata says about his knowledge about poisons. And then I will ask him to show us some of his seals. He said he was a seal master, so I am curious what he can do."
Asuma just nodded.
"Okay, I think that will do for now, Dark Phoenix. You have a very good foundation in your knowledge. If you continue your studies there, you should reach proficiency in a year or so." Arata said.
"So what is your verdict?" The Hokage asked.
"He has good knowledge about poisonous plants and animals from which he gets his ingredients for the poisons he uses. His techniques to mix those poisons are good. But his knowledge is limited to paralysing and lethal poisons. If he wants to go further in the area he needs to branch out. I estimate he is a solid high chunin level in his skills here. For his age that is still impressive. I don't know many ninjas that are allrounders like he is. He should be able to take B-rank missions without too much problem in an experienced team as support." Arata said.
The Hokage nodded. There was no way he would let Naruto take A-rank missions in the near future, even if he was skilled. But his team would need to be trained properly so they could send them on C-ranks after a short time.
"Okay, then if I didn't miss anything only fuinjutsu is left." The Hokage said.
Naruto nodded enthusiastically. He loved fuinjutsu. He took out some seals he had brought with him to show the Hokage.
"Okay, these are some of the seals I prepared to show you, Hokage Sama. I think they are some of the most useful in the field. This is a modified explosive seal. It first sends a chakra wave out that imitates killing intent, then the explosion goes off. The intention is to briefly paralyse an opponent with the KI to keep them within the range of the seal. The next one is a combination of a storage seal and an explosive seal. The weapons stored in the storage part are shot out by the explosive part and can surprise an opponent who doesn't expect to have to dodge weapons. The seal can be prepared in two ways. First, you trigger it with your own chakra from a certain distance or second you involve a perimeter seal that reacts to foreign chakra. It has a range about twenty metres. " He then took out another type of seal.
"This is a modified chakra storage seal. You can store chakra of a certain type, like water or fire chakra in here and release it when you need it. You would only have to meld the chakra into a jutsu after that."
"Do you mean, with those seals ninja could use jutsus of an element they normally can't use?" Asuma asked.
"Yes. Of course they would need to know the handseals for the jutsu and meld the chakra, but the elemental manipulation would be taken care of." Naruto said.
"Fantastic. That would make fights much easier. You would be able to prevent being caught at a total disadvantage. With my element wind and knowledge in fire jutsus I would have problems with water types. If I had some earth seals I could take care of that problem." Asuma mused. "But how do you load them? Don't you need the elemental chakra first to charge them?"
"That was a problem in the beginning until I came up with chakra converter seals. I am a primary wind type with a secondary water affinity. So I would be hard pressed against earth techniques if I didn't recognize the jutsu first, which still takes some time for me. I wanted to have a way to use lightning jutsus. So I worked on a seal that would change my wind chakra to lightning chakra. Took me some time to develop it, but after three months I had it. And I found out that by using the seals regularly I developed a lightning affinity as my third affinity. I think it is comparable with the sharingan training a user to use jutsus of all kinds as it can copy them." Naruto reported proudly.
"Are you going to sell some of your seals?" Asuma asked.
"Perhaps, I'm not sure yet." Naruto said.
He had thought about making money through selling his seals, but who would buy them if they knew he made them? And he didn't know how it would work through a proxy. Perhaps the Hokage could help him there.
"Okay, I see you really know your seals. To see how good you are overall we would have to wait for Jiraiya to return from his travels. He's out of the village most of the time maintaining his spy network." The Hokage said.
Naruto nodded. He knew that Jiraiya of the sannin had been his dad's jonin sensei and was a seal master, the only one the village had at the moment besides himself and he needed to be evaluated to be acknowledged first.
"I think we are done here. Dark Phoenix, I want to see you in my office in two hours. Arata, thanks for your help, you're dismissed. Asuma, please come to my office in four hours, we will then finalize the new genin teams with the other jonin senseis."
"Okay." Asuma said and Arata bowed.