Quote:Remember that this is a story with a Time loop. A time loop that the known end point of which is Hokage and Pedosnake mdeathmatching inside a giant barrier that ANBU is standing around staring at dumbly. I'm going to have to tap an insulting commerical here, the one with the DUH! choir, 'Even a figgy pudding could figure this out'. If Orochimaru is tapped to assassinate the Hokage and he isn't a Sand nin... that only leaves one village for him to be from. Sound.
didn't know about Orochimaru's connection to the Sound village, why do you expect Naruto to possess this information?
It doesn't matter if this Naruto knows Orochimaru is the Sound kage or not. He is the one sent to assassinate the Hokage. So he has to be rather highly in ranked in this attack. If a ninja this disporportionately power is tapped for that important a mission he has to be command staff. All he has to know is that Sound is attacking and their are sound ninjas running around in the examine... target them.
It doesn't really matter if he knows Orochimaru is in charge or not... he knows Sound is the enemy and the other target available is Gaara. If you look for the divergence point in this from the cannon its Naruto is there to attack the barrier. Sasuke and Sakura probablly went off to go fight Perfect Gaara. Which makes them dead and liquid by that point.
As for the second point... He spends time training with Tenten and several other places in this. I think that if she couldn't get the Shadow clone in a few hours with an instructer would be a clue. He also trained his 3 minions in shapeshifting... they apparently caught on quickly also.
I agree that his perseptions of what is and isn't possible for genin are warped. Badly... however explaining his thought process more, doesn't negate the thought process itself.