A damaged device finds its way to a planet without any human mages... for now.
Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
- Created
- Status
- Complete
- Watchers
- 2,107
- Recent readers
- 1,093
- Threadmarks
- 131
-
Statistics (120 threadmarks, 650k words)
User Total CmptrWz 120 -
Loading…
-
Loading…
Welcome
Welcome to Tome of the Orange Sky, a foray into mixing a little bit of MGLN into Naruto and seeing where my muse takes it.
Don't expect it to be entirely serious.
More information may be edited in here later, I just don't like having the first post be story because then I can't as easily throw other start-of-thread information into place.
Don't expect it to be entirely serious.
More information may be edited in here later, I just don't like having the first post be story because then I can't as easily throw other start-of-thread information into place.
Prologue - A long time ago...
The Tome of the Orange Sky would have despaired if it were still capable of emotion as it fell to the planet below it. Humans inhabited the planet despite the lack of natural satellites, but even from orbit it was obvious that they didn't have access to magic. There were others that did, but the humans did not. Coupled with the low reserves the device had and the damage it had suffered it was going to be lucky if it survived landing at all. A rudimentary heat shield was formed anyway, as the Tome's self-preservation routines demanded.
A landing area devoid of humans was chosen so as to not cause any harm upon the crash landing to come, though there were only two options with the limited ability to control its approach. None of the areas where the non-human magic users resided were within reach, and far more options would have been available had its Lord survived with it, but those sadly weren't the case. And on a planet far from home where humans had no magic it was unlikely that it would ever have a Lord again.
It would probably have been a mercy for the Tome to have been destroyed, but it survived its impact with the ground. Buried deeply and embedded in rock, but it had survived. Five minutes later it powered down, the last of its reserves spent. Encased in a void in the rock, protected by a heated and compressed shell around it, deep enough to be unlikely to be found by anyone. In many ways a suitable final resting place where it was unlikely to be disturbed.
But if that were the end of the story then we wouldn't be here.
A few decades later a meteorite delivered a seed to another area of the planet, and a visitor came shortly after to ensure that the seed took root and to spread legends among the humans. They then left, and over the next thousand years a tree grew from that seed. Seemingly bringing life to the land, it was actually working to drain it. Once fully grown it started on the next stage of things, and another thousand years later it finally bore a single, solitary fruit. The legends had been well crafted, and the humans dared not attempt to even approach the fruit.
The details of the events that followed are unimportant in their specifics. When the major ones were over there was no longer a tree, a new artificial satellite was pretending to be a natural one in orbit around the planet, and life on the planet was forever changed to generate and depend on an energy that was referred to as 'chakra'.
If you could have asked the Tome what this 'chakra' was, it would tell you that it was an oddly restricted form of what it called 'mana' and that its spread meant that the humans could now be thought of as a form of mage.
Eventually a village would form over the place that the Tome had been buried, and work by various individuals and groups constructing hidden areas under the village would push the Tome gradually upwards as a side effect. Eventually ending up just out of reach inside of a cave, it would sit there until a training accident caused the cave to partially collapse. It wasn't considered an important cave though, so nobody bothered to check it further.
Three days later it was raining heavily, and a young blond boy in poorly-maintained clothing was locked out of the orphanage he had grown up in. Seeking a safe place to spend the night, he found his way through the village to the cave and ended up crawling past some of the rubble to a dry area inside of it. Too young to be able to make a fire to keep himself warm, he was only kept healthy enough thanks to the force of nature sealed within him.
Though many would eventually search for him, the rain and the delay in beginning the search would make it nearly impossible to locate him until he returned to the village proper on his own. There would be no panic over this though, as it had happened before and would be expected to happen again. But this time things were going to be different.
While the boy had fallen asleep without ever noticing the damaged Tome in the rubble next to him, the Tome had not missed the excess energy he was putting out. That energy was enough to wake the device up, rousing it from what could have been its final resting place. Still heavily damaged, it decided that the one that had woken it up was now its new Lord and established a connection.
What it found was enough oddly-corrupted mana to enact all the repairs it needed to, but also that its new Lord had a horribly split Linker Core with several odd limiting nets of sorts wrapped around them. Depending on how the automated routines looked at things it was in anything from two to five pieces, separated by odd formations of mana and linked to what looked like they could be parasites as well. With limited intelligence due to the damage it had sustained, and an unfortunate lack of surviving uncorrupted backups of its own, the Tome defaulted to devoting more resources to ensuring that its Lord was healthy than to repairing itself.
This would have gone more smoothly had it retained a non-corrupt medical database backup. Over the next two days the boy would be nearly killed several times. Pushing the fractured pieces of linker core into something resembling a coherent whole had first required pulling out the odd structures keeping the pieces apart, only to find out that those structures had somehow been linked to others that contained more pieces of core. The Tome had no clue where they'd come from or how to begin describing the direction they'd arrived from.
Then two of the pieces seemed to jointly have a collection of mana linked to them, and pulling all of that in had nearly burnt out the relevant portions of the Tome's hardware. It had almost seemed like some of it had been locked away somehow. Then there were the 'limiting nets' that on closer examination while removing them from each piece appeared to be some kind of automatic processing setup that was incomplete and poorly-assembled. A properly-assembled and completed version did turn out to be perfect for holding the various bits of core together.
Once all of that was done the Tome was further surprised when the fractured core pulsed, recombined, and flooded the child's body with mana. It had no context for the resulting warping of the child's body, but was able to determine that whatever the cause it was stable without the healing systems present in the Tome helping. The altered features of the child were thus likely fine, though figuring out how to integrate them into the corrupted medical database was going to take some processing time.
During this the Tome had more slowly worked on its own repairs, while also examining the separated possible-parasites to see if they contained anything of use. Three of those turned out to be full personalities with memories, somehow preserved in the mana, and useful for restoring functionality that the corrupted backups couldn't. Two of the three were already predisposed to care for the new Lord, only the third needed tweaking to ensure that it would be helpful. Once that was accomplished the three were booted up to help direct things further.
Despite wanting to do more for the child, restoring full functionality of the Tome was deemed more important. In part because until that was done there wasn't much more to do to help the child. Some energy was used to shape the rubble of the cave to keep the child from being found before they were ready, and then proper repairs began. It would take another three days before the Tome was repaired, though likely still missing quite a few capabilities from what it once had. It took the form of a spiral pendant on a chain around the child's neck for the duration, the standby form chosen by one of the personalities being used to conserve power while the internal repairs were completed.
Things had not been going well for Hiruzen over the past few days. It had started with the weather, torrential rain causing all kinds of problems on its own. The village had ground to a near halt as nobody wanted to go outside at all, but they had far too many things going on to actually shut down for a week. Including, but not limited to, ensuring that they weren't flooded out by keeping the water flowing where needed.
Two days into the storm he'd then been informed by two over-zealous jounin that were going out to train for hours every day despite the weather that three different training grounds were flooded, but more important was that a fourth had sprung a sinkhole instead. It appeared that one of the many tunnels under the village had cracked open, and an initial check showed that it was an old disused one that had long since collapsed at either end. But now it, and any connected sections, needed to be shored up or filled in. Something that he had sent teams to investigate before a sinkhole opened up under someone's house.
The following day someone looking for old blueprints had discovered that several storage scrolls had exploded, spreading weapons all over one of the vaults. Their index tags were destroyed, so a manual scan of the entire vault to determine which index numbers weren't present was now being done while collecting the weapons and checking for other damage. There had to be a good reason for those weapons to have been stored, but what that reason was hadn't been obvious from looking at them.
Three days ago another old tunnel had caused problems with another sinkhole by the orphanage, necessitating sending teams to both reinforce the tunnel and ensure that the building itself wasn't damaged. Given that it was the orphanage that had ended up also including several trusted Anbu to ensure that this wasn't some kind of staged attempt to gain easy access to any of the orphans with potentially 'useful' heritages, including but not limited to Naruto. On top of the normal guard rotation, of course.
Two days ago a sign of the state of things was that he'd actually cleared the paperwork from his desk due to how little was coming in. Admittedly, he knew there would be a flood of things once the rain stopped, but he had attempted to enjoy the feeling of having a clear desk. Sadly, Danzo had taken advantage of the lack of legitimate distractions to make another attempt at getting Naruto and a couple of other unnamed but likely-important orphans into Root. Homura and Koharu had taken Hiruzen's side this time, but it had eaten up the entire afternoon.
Yesterday even Might Guy had given up on training outside, shifting to an indoor routine now that you needed water-walking to move through any of the training grounds, and Danzo had been stopped from coming by for more discussions by the Root primary base starting to flood. The Merchants' Council had met and discussed possible measures for the coming couple of days before the rain was expected to end as well as what needed to happen afterwards, but the Council of Clans had decided to wait until the rain had let up to meet.
And today the emergency paperwork from the rain had taken five minutes. Hiruzen was considering just taking the rest of the day off unless someone summoned him for something urgent, maybe spend some extra time with his grandson? Visiting the orphanage while teams were looking for tunnels and damage would just be a distraction, after all. Though they had finally found out that the stored weapons had been from the two attacks of the nine-tailed fox, meaning that the beast's latent chakra had probably been weakening them and they hadn't noticed. The seals for the older set had been replaced twice before now, though he couldn't recall anyone reporting feeling the beast's chakra in the weapons when finding them...
He was interrupted from his musing by one of his Anbu barging into the office. That this was Inu giving off a sense of mild panic just meant that the normal focus generated by any Anbu barging into the office was heightened. "Report."
Inu sounded furious as he spoke. "Naruto was locked out of the orphanage at the start of the storm and hasn't been seen since. I only discovered that something was wrong when I realized that he wasn't at breakfast while a potential problem in the meal hall was being looked at."
And now Hiruzen was equally, if not more furious, but he kept his killing intent constrained for the moment. Inu and his personal guards didn't deserve his ire, after all. But before any orders could be given, Jiraiya barged in through the window.
"Where's Naruto?" the sage asked, looking and sounding panicked.
A proverbial boulder formed in Hiruzen's stomach. There was no way that this was unrelated, especially with the storage scroll incident, and Jiraiya wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the village for months. "Inu just finished informing me that he's missing. What happened?"
"Geratora was nearly killed by the key to the seal exploding and Bunta told me that the Great Toad Sage claimed that the death of the fox had shattered the future before passing out. Naruto was also supposedly still in the village then, but that was all that was passed on."
To the credit of the guards, one of them didn't even wait for orders before signaling that they would summon all the trackers and vacating the office.
Kushina knew that she was just a personality interface in the Tome of the Orange Sky now, but she was still what was left of Naruto's mother as well. They'd pulled him into the limited simulation interface, which currently served as something like the device's 'mindscape'. He looked remarkably like a mini-Minato, provided you could get past the Uzumaki-red fox ears and tail. And the little fangs, though she knew that the whiskers were less 'new' and more 'enhanced from the former markings that all children of the jinchuriki bear'.
The Tome's healing and Naruto's further-enhanced resilience couldn't keep him alive forever though, so he needed to return to the village. But to do that he needed to hide the changes he'd gone through, which meant waking him up to teach him how to shapeshift. They knew he should be able to, but weren't sure how much time it would take to teach him. But she didn't want to wake him up from his peaceful slumber, simulated head resting on her simulated lap.
"Wake up kit," Kurama spat out, slapping Naruto with a tail. Kushina scowled at the fox's avatar, only to get back a feeling of the thing not giving a shit. "He needs to get moving before he dies, and the idiots will kill him on sight if they see him with his fox features. Loathe as I am to have him hide them, he's going to have to for now."
"Wha?" Naruto said, having sat up and started rubbing his eyes.
"We have a lot to talk about," Kushina said, rubbing his head a little. "But we need to teach you to look like what others expect you to look like first."
Her little boy looked around the clearing they were seemingly sitting in. Minato had decided to leave it to her and Kurama for the moment and was instead working on a training plan as a distraction from wanting to burn down the village. She felt similarly, but they also knew that something else had to be going on and that Hiruzen appeared to be trying to do the right thing, so they were reserving their judgment. For now.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Kushina smiled sadly and tugged on his tail. "I'm your mother, but you were hurt and if someone sees you with your new tail then they will try to harm you."
It was cute seeing him try to process that he had a tail, and they ended up manifesting a mirror for him to look at himself in. Kurama then took the lead in teaching shapeshifting, being the only one of the three personalities that had any experience with it at all. Sure, they all knew what the others knew because they were all the Tome, but knowing something and understanding it from experience were different things. She wasn't prepared to try to explain any of Kurama's or Minato's skills to Naruto, and they were largely unprepared to explain hers.
Though they all agreed that solid clones were going to be included as soon as Naruto could manage them. Kushina had needed those before Kurama had been placed inside of her and couldn't imagine that Naruto's now-enhanced reserves were going to make him any different, even if those reserves were simply high for an Uzumaki instead of Kurama's level. Besides, being able to be in multiple places at once always made for an excellent alibi, especially if you kept that you could do so secret. She'd gotten away with so many pranks before others had discovered that particular detail...
Jiraiya looked over Naruto, who had been found nearly sealed in a cave thanks to what had obviously been an earth jutsu of some kind a couple hours previous. They'd ensured that he was fed, and boy could he eat, and had been examined by a medic-nin. He was surprisingly healthy given what had likely happened to him and his story was sadly lacking in useful details.
Not that the story wasn't concerning in its own way. Jiraiya had listened to his godson tell a tale of neglect and being locked out of the orphanage before a storm, only to find a recently-collapsed cave to sleep in. Then he'd supposedly met his mother and a talking fox before he was found. If the fox hadn't had multiple tails and the description of his mother hadn't been a dead ringer for Kushina then they'd have likely dismissed some of that as a dream, but given those details...
Then, of course, there was the complete lack of a seal, or any sign of one having existed. A blood test had confirmed that this was Naruto, though the rudimentary chakra test they could do on a child had been less solidly conclusive. But the previous tests had been tainted by the presence of the fox's chakra, so that was honestly expected. The kid was still an Uzumaki and a Namikaze, everything said he was his parents' child, and impossibly he was no longer the container for a tailed beast.
If not for still having to worry about Minato's enemies Jiraiya would be taking the kid out of the village with him. Sadly, those enemies still existed and the changed circumstances didn't actually do anything about them. But it was also obvious that the orphanage couldn't be trusted, which was why the staff were currently being gone over by T&I, so Naruto was going to need to move out. He was just old enough to mostly look over himself with some added supervision, and that one apartment block that the Uzumaki clan technically owned had a few open apartments right now. Jiraiya could personally fund a long-term mission set to keep an eye on the kid for the next few years easily enough, and Hiruzen would ensure that those assigned to the mission could actually be trusted.
Though the apartment would be getting enough added security seals to make a tailed beast have second thoughts about attacking it, on top of the seals already placed on the building itself by Uzumaki of the past. Sure, it would make it harder for Anbu to slip in unnoticed, but the two squads formerly tasked with keeping Naruto safe that were also in T&I's hands made it obvious that they needed to be more closely monitored too.
And then there was the cover story for what had happened, because admitting that the fox was dead was...unwise. The other villages would see that as a weakness, which would also put Naruto at greater risk. It would need to be something believable though, so required careful thought.
The rain had finally let up, flooding had been dealt with, the weapon had been found and was secure once more, and Danzo was trying to figure out why Hiruzen had called an emergency meeting of the Council of Clans, Merchants' Council, and the Advisors' Council. At the same time. Sure, the orphanage staff and some Anbu had proven to be less loyal to the village than they'd have liked, but that didn't feel important enough and the flooding hadn't done enough damage or revealed enough forgotten tunnels to be this level of concern.
Admittedly, something had happened with the weapon that Hiruzen had kept secret enough to still not be known, but whatever it was would almost certainly be kept far quieter than such a meeting would imply. Including the civilians at all would be insane for something of that level of importance.
"I apologize for the delay," Hiruzen said as he and his Anbu guard entered. It only took a moment for him to take his place, looking over the room. "I have called you all here to inform you of several things. Least importantly, four caretakers from the orphanage have been executed for crimes against the village, as have three Anbu and two medic-nin. Active jounin can check the archives for reasoning, should they wish to know the details. Two other caretakers were relieved of their duties, feel free to spread the word that replacement caretakers are being sought."
There was some murmuring about that, and notes taken. But what concerned Danzo was that this didn't warrant the meeting at all.
"To move on to slightly more important matters," Hiruzen continued, producing a storage seal and removing a stack of paper from it. "The residents of three areas on the outskirts of the village are being evacuated due to forgotten tunnels that threaten their homes. This includes a couple of businesses that need to be relocated and impacts two clan training areas."
Ah. That was just enough to warrant calling the meeting to begin with, and Danzo relaxed a bit as the details were distributed. One had to pander to the masses and Hiruzen personally informing the combined councils of this was a show that he respected them, just part of the many games one had to play when running a hidden village.
The paperwork provided included full information on where families and businesses were being relocated to, as well as what training areas were going to need to be looked at by the clans in question. It was also devoid of the security details regarding the tunnels and what uses they had once had, where known, which was also fully expected. Those who had clearance to know could find out by visiting the archives themselves, and Danzo would do so in the coming days. No need to rush to check as the information wasn't going anywhere and he had nothing planned in that area of the village right now anyway.
"Finally," Hiruzen said, startling them all. "We come to the reason that I called this meeting, now that the trivial matters have been dealt with. Despite my law, a large portion of the village has become aware that Naruto Uzumaki is the jinchuriki of the nine-tailed fox. I can only assume that knowledge becoming so widespread is responsible for an unknown enemy finding out. Luckily for us, the truth runs far deeper, but one of our most important deceptions has now been revealed. A few days ago an unknown individual attempted to take advantage of the boy being locked out of the orphanage to take the fox, only to break the decoy seal and find that he did not hold the fox after all. Whoever this was appears to have fled upon discovering this, leaving the boy in the cave used for the attempt."
"I'm sorry," the Nara head said after a moment of stunned silence. "Did you just say that Uzumaki was merely a decoy? That the true container of the nine-tailed fox is someone else?"
"Yes. The actual identity of the container is still a very well-kept secret, and will remain one. Only those already aware of it are permitted to know. That said, now that the secret is out we no longer have to fear Naruto breaking the decoy seal accidentally and I will personally be assigning him tutors to ensure that he's ready to enter the academy in the fall. His natural chakra reserves are too great to ignore and were part of why he was originally chosen to be the decoy in the first place. To better facilitate this training, he will be moving out of the orphanage into an apartment of his own and gradually taught to take full care of himself over the coming few years. Until then there will be ongoing missions for teams to keep an eye on him, in addition to four other orphans being put through the same program."
Danzo had no idea what to think about this. He'd never even heard so much as a discredited hint of a rumor that there was any other possible container, and a glance at Homura and Koharu was all he needed to tell that they were just as shocked as he was. If Hiruzen could pull a ruse like this off, right under their noses...
Perhaps his old rival wasn't nearly as soft as he appeared on the surface. A bait and switch of this magnitude, and to allow the ruse to go on for years despite knowing how the village had been gradually poisoned against the boy implied a hidden hardness that Danzo had to respect. In fact, without the accidental reveal it might have gone on for well over a decade before circumstances would have forced a reveal!
Of course, then there was the problem that the actual weapon was...completely and totally unknown. A secret so well kept that it would still be a secret if not for mistakes that had been subtly encouraged...and it was only now obvious why Hiruzen had actually been so against putting the boy through early training. This 'decoy seal' probably needed regular adjustments as the boy grew and would only have been stable enough for chakra use at the same time most children could safely start to use chakra in the first place.
Worse, the real container was probably already being trained in secret to be loyal to Hiruzen and his ideals, meaning that Danzo had absolutely no hope of ensuring primary loyalty to him. It was a move of a master, demonstrating just how well out-played they'd all been.
Minato found himself pleasantly surprised at the level of protection and privacy the seals around Naruto's apartment provided, and knew that Kushina was pleased that their son had ended up in her own old apartment. Kurama was most amused by Naruto playing around with shapeshifting and taking on a female form that looked remarkably like a younger Kushina. Something that, after minor thought, they'd decided would be a great way to help promote infiltration skills.
They'd added teaching Kushina's old lessons about being a shrine maiden, forced on her by Mito before passing Kurama along, to the plans for training Naruto. In a couple of years Naruto could use that form to 'move into' and 'fix up' the shrine near the apartment that served as one of the hidden entrances to the Uzumaki compound. Something that Minato had never known in life, as Kushina had never shared that secret with him. Mostly because he'd insisted that he didn't need to know all of the Uzumaki secrets, wanting her to be the one to share them with their children.
It would be nice if Naruto could live a simple life, but he had inherited far too many enemies and they knew that there may be greater enemies out there thanks to Kurama's memories. At the same time, the Tome had a number of things that would help keep him safe. The 'Knight Armor' spell had the potential to protect him from far more than normal ninja wear just to start. If Naruto could handle one of the three flight spells then he would have mobility far greater than most as well. Add in the ranged options that the various bullets provided and the utility of the search spell and you'd have a fairly dangerous individual. It was just too bad that more spells hadn't survived, the set available was essentially the 'starter pack' and there had to have been far more picked up later.
Then again, that was all before you added in all of the ninja techniques, those that Kushina and Minato knew as well as any that Naruto could develop or get his hands on later. Sealing was definitely a must too, with the Tome already having spotted patterns that Minato had never considered that could improve a number of seals. Kurama had actually been the one to propose a shapeshifting seal that Naruto's future teammates could possibly take advantage of as well, though that needed some development time to figure out. Assuming it was possible, of course, and it had started as grumbling that being able to get down to human size would've been nice for him and his siblings to blend in...and eliminate the Uchiha, technically.
"You have to keep us and the Tome secret for now," Kushina explained, having told Naruto about some of his past. She'd left out a few details for now, given his young age, and he looked ready to object. But she put her finger to his lips to stop him. "Think of it as practice for the secrets you'll need to keep once you become a shinobi. If you can't keep your own secrets then how can anyone expect you to keep someone else's?"
Naruto pouted, which looked far too cute on his now-'natural' fox-like face. "But they make fun of me for not having a mom and dad."
Minato sighed. "There's no way for them to meet us because we're not alive anymore. You've gotten a wonderful gift in being able to speak with us in this way, but we can only interact with you properly in this false world."
"If you make friends you know you can trust then you can tell them about us," Kushina added. "But I doubt that you'll be able to be sure that you can trust them for a few years."
"You'll also need to keep your true skills hidden, at least until you're strong enough that it won't matter. Otherwise someone might decide that they don't like how strong you're getting and go after you before you're ready."
Surprisingly, Naruto nodded at that one. "Like Masaru?"
"Er, maybe? I'm not familiar with Masaru."
"He showed off and the evil lord sent the sword guys to kill him before he got too strong."
That...sounded like it came from a story intended for children, and seemed to provide a good lesson. "Yes, then. You want to look like you're average, instead of exceptional, because future enemies are likely to ignore those that are simply 'average'."
"But pulling pranks that nobody knows you pulled is a great way to show off what you can really do," Kushina added with a grin. "It's also a tradition and a great way to get people back without them being able to blame you. At least if you do things right."
Unsaid was that getting to and maintaining that level of pranking was training in and of itself. Something that Minato hadn't fully appreciated while he was alive, but having access to Kushina's memories could see the appeal of now. Especially as it would provide a largely-harmless outlet for their frustration with the village, once Naruto had the skills needed to pull off decent pranks at all.
A landing area devoid of humans was chosen so as to not cause any harm upon the crash landing to come, though there were only two options with the limited ability to control its approach. None of the areas where the non-human magic users resided were within reach, and far more options would have been available had its Lord survived with it, but those sadly weren't the case. And on a planet far from home where humans had no magic it was unlikely that it would ever have a Lord again.
It would probably have been a mercy for the Tome to have been destroyed, but it survived its impact with the ground. Buried deeply and embedded in rock, but it had survived. Five minutes later it powered down, the last of its reserves spent. Encased in a void in the rock, protected by a heated and compressed shell around it, deep enough to be unlikely to be found by anyone. In many ways a suitable final resting place where it was unlikely to be disturbed.
But if that were the end of the story then we wouldn't be here.
A few decades later a meteorite delivered a seed to another area of the planet, and a visitor came shortly after to ensure that the seed took root and to spread legends among the humans. They then left, and over the next thousand years a tree grew from that seed. Seemingly bringing life to the land, it was actually working to drain it. Once fully grown it started on the next stage of things, and another thousand years later it finally bore a single, solitary fruit. The legends had been well crafted, and the humans dared not attempt to even approach the fruit.
The details of the events that followed are unimportant in their specifics. When the major ones were over there was no longer a tree, a new artificial satellite was pretending to be a natural one in orbit around the planet, and life on the planet was forever changed to generate and depend on an energy that was referred to as 'chakra'.
If you could have asked the Tome what this 'chakra' was, it would tell you that it was an oddly restricted form of what it called 'mana' and that its spread meant that the humans could now be thought of as a form of mage.
Eventually a village would form over the place that the Tome had been buried, and work by various individuals and groups constructing hidden areas under the village would push the Tome gradually upwards as a side effect. Eventually ending up just out of reach inside of a cave, it would sit there until a training accident caused the cave to partially collapse. It wasn't considered an important cave though, so nobody bothered to check it further.
Three days later it was raining heavily, and a young blond boy in poorly-maintained clothing was locked out of the orphanage he had grown up in. Seeking a safe place to spend the night, he found his way through the village to the cave and ended up crawling past some of the rubble to a dry area inside of it. Too young to be able to make a fire to keep himself warm, he was only kept healthy enough thanks to the force of nature sealed within him.
Though many would eventually search for him, the rain and the delay in beginning the search would make it nearly impossible to locate him until he returned to the village proper on his own. There would be no panic over this though, as it had happened before and would be expected to happen again. But this time things were going to be different.
While the boy had fallen asleep without ever noticing the damaged Tome in the rubble next to him, the Tome had not missed the excess energy he was putting out. That energy was enough to wake the device up, rousing it from what could have been its final resting place. Still heavily damaged, it decided that the one that had woken it up was now its new Lord and established a connection.
What it found was enough oddly-corrupted mana to enact all the repairs it needed to, but also that its new Lord had a horribly split Linker Core with several odd limiting nets of sorts wrapped around them. Depending on how the automated routines looked at things it was in anything from two to five pieces, separated by odd formations of mana and linked to what looked like they could be parasites as well. With limited intelligence due to the damage it had sustained, and an unfortunate lack of surviving uncorrupted backups of its own, the Tome defaulted to devoting more resources to ensuring that its Lord was healthy than to repairing itself.
This would have gone more smoothly had it retained a non-corrupt medical database backup. Over the next two days the boy would be nearly killed several times. Pushing the fractured pieces of linker core into something resembling a coherent whole had first required pulling out the odd structures keeping the pieces apart, only to find out that those structures had somehow been linked to others that contained more pieces of core. The Tome had no clue where they'd come from or how to begin describing the direction they'd arrived from.
Then two of the pieces seemed to jointly have a collection of mana linked to them, and pulling all of that in had nearly burnt out the relevant portions of the Tome's hardware. It had almost seemed like some of it had been locked away somehow. Then there were the 'limiting nets' that on closer examination while removing them from each piece appeared to be some kind of automatic processing setup that was incomplete and poorly-assembled. A properly-assembled and completed version did turn out to be perfect for holding the various bits of core together.
Once all of that was done the Tome was further surprised when the fractured core pulsed, recombined, and flooded the child's body with mana. It had no context for the resulting warping of the child's body, but was able to determine that whatever the cause it was stable without the healing systems present in the Tome helping. The altered features of the child were thus likely fine, though figuring out how to integrate them into the corrupted medical database was going to take some processing time.
During this the Tome had more slowly worked on its own repairs, while also examining the separated possible-parasites to see if they contained anything of use. Three of those turned out to be full personalities with memories, somehow preserved in the mana, and useful for restoring functionality that the corrupted backups couldn't. Two of the three were already predisposed to care for the new Lord, only the third needed tweaking to ensure that it would be helpful. Once that was accomplished the three were booted up to help direct things further.
Despite wanting to do more for the child, restoring full functionality of the Tome was deemed more important. In part because until that was done there wasn't much more to do to help the child. Some energy was used to shape the rubble of the cave to keep the child from being found before they were ready, and then proper repairs began. It would take another three days before the Tome was repaired, though likely still missing quite a few capabilities from what it once had. It took the form of a spiral pendant on a chain around the child's neck for the duration, the standby form chosen by one of the personalities being used to conserve power while the internal repairs were completed.
Things had not been going well for Hiruzen over the past few days. It had started with the weather, torrential rain causing all kinds of problems on its own. The village had ground to a near halt as nobody wanted to go outside at all, but they had far too many things going on to actually shut down for a week. Including, but not limited to, ensuring that they weren't flooded out by keeping the water flowing where needed.
Two days into the storm he'd then been informed by two over-zealous jounin that were going out to train for hours every day despite the weather that three different training grounds were flooded, but more important was that a fourth had sprung a sinkhole instead. It appeared that one of the many tunnels under the village had cracked open, and an initial check showed that it was an old disused one that had long since collapsed at either end. But now it, and any connected sections, needed to be shored up or filled in. Something that he had sent teams to investigate before a sinkhole opened up under someone's house.
The following day someone looking for old blueprints had discovered that several storage scrolls had exploded, spreading weapons all over one of the vaults. Their index tags were destroyed, so a manual scan of the entire vault to determine which index numbers weren't present was now being done while collecting the weapons and checking for other damage. There had to be a good reason for those weapons to have been stored, but what that reason was hadn't been obvious from looking at them.
Three days ago another old tunnel had caused problems with another sinkhole by the orphanage, necessitating sending teams to both reinforce the tunnel and ensure that the building itself wasn't damaged. Given that it was the orphanage that had ended up also including several trusted Anbu to ensure that this wasn't some kind of staged attempt to gain easy access to any of the orphans with potentially 'useful' heritages, including but not limited to Naruto. On top of the normal guard rotation, of course.
Two days ago a sign of the state of things was that he'd actually cleared the paperwork from his desk due to how little was coming in. Admittedly, he knew there would be a flood of things once the rain stopped, but he had attempted to enjoy the feeling of having a clear desk. Sadly, Danzo had taken advantage of the lack of legitimate distractions to make another attempt at getting Naruto and a couple of other unnamed but likely-important orphans into Root. Homura and Koharu had taken Hiruzen's side this time, but it had eaten up the entire afternoon.
Yesterday even Might Guy had given up on training outside, shifting to an indoor routine now that you needed water-walking to move through any of the training grounds, and Danzo had been stopped from coming by for more discussions by the Root primary base starting to flood. The Merchants' Council had met and discussed possible measures for the coming couple of days before the rain was expected to end as well as what needed to happen afterwards, but the Council of Clans had decided to wait until the rain had let up to meet.
And today the emergency paperwork from the rain had taken five minutes. Hiruzen was considering just taking the rest of the day off unless someone summoned him for something urgent, maybe spend some extra time with his grandson? Visiting the orphanage while teams were looking for tunnels and damage would just be a distraction, after all. Though they had finally found out that the stored weapons had been from the two attacks of the nine-tailed fox, meaning that the beast's latent chakra had probably been weakening them and they hadn't noticed. The seals for the older set had been replaced twice before now, though he couldn't recall anyone reporting feeling the beast's chakra in the weapons when finding them...
He was interrupted from his musing by one of his Anbu barging into the office. That this was Inu giving off a sense of mild panic just meant that the normal focus generated by any Anbu barging into the office was heightened. "Report."
Inu sounded furious as he spoke. "Naruto was locked out of the orphanage at the start of the storm and hasn't been seen since. I only discovered that something was wrong when I realized that he wasn't at breakfast while a potential problem in the meal hall was being looked at."
And now Hiruzen was equally, if not more furious, but he kept his killing intent constrained for the moment. Inu and his personal guards didn't deserve his ire, after all. But before any orders could be given, Jiraiya barged in through the window.
"Where's Naruto?" the sage asked, looking and sounding panicked.
A proverbial boulder formed in Hiruzen's stomach. There was no way that this was unrelated, especially with the storage scroll incident, and Jiraiya wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the village for months. "Inu just finished informing me that he's missing. What happened?"
"Geratora was nearly killed by the key to the seal exploding and Bunta told me that the Great Toad Sage claimed that the death of the fox had shattered the future before passing out. Naruto was also supposedly still in the village then, but that was all that was passed on."
To the credit of the guards, one of them didn't even wait for orders before signaling that they would summon all the trackers and vacating the office.
Kushina knew that she was just a personality interface in the Tome of the Orange Sky now, but she was still what was left of Naruto's mother as well. They'd pulled him into the limited simulation interface, which currently served as something like the device's 'mindscape'. He looked remarkably like a mini-Minato, provided you could get past the Uzumaki-red fox ears and tail. And the little fangs, though she knew that the whiskers were less 'new' and more 'enhanced from the former markings that all children of the jinchuriki bear'.
The Tome's healing and Naruto's further-enhanced resilience couldn't keep him alive forever though, so he needed to return to the village. But to do that he needed to hide the changes he'd gone through, which meant waking him up to teach him how to shapeshift. They knew he should be able to, but weren't sure how much time it would take to teach him. But she didn't want to wake him up from his peaceful slumber, simulated head resting on her simulated lap.
"Wake up kit," Kurama spat out, slapping Naruto with a tail. Kushina scowled at the fox's avatar, only to get back a feeling of the thing not giving a shit. "He needs to get moving before he dies, and the idiots will kill him on sight if they see him with his fox features. Loathe as I am to have him hide them, he's going to have to for now."
"Wha?" Naruto said, having sat up and started rubbing his eyes.
"We have a lot to talk about," Kushina said, rubbing his head a little. "But we need to teach you to look like what others expect you to look like first."
Her little boy looked around the clearing they were seemingly sitting in. Minato had decided to leave it to her and Kurama for the moment and was instead working on a training plan as a distraction from wanting to burn down the village. She felt similarly, but they also knew that something else had to be going on and that Hiruzen appeared to be trying to do the right thing, so they were reserving their judgment. For now.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Kushina smiled sadly and tugged on his tail. "I'm your mother, but you were hurt and if someone sees you with your new tail then they will try to harm you."
It was cute seeing him try to process that he had a tail, and they ended up manifesting a mirror for him to look at himself in. Kurama then took the lead in teaching shapeshifting, being the only one of the three personalities that had any experience with it at all. Sure, they all knew what the others knew because they were all the Tome, but knowing something and understanding it from experience were different things. She wasn't prepared to try to explain any of Kurama's or Minato's skills to Naruto, and they were largely unprepared to explain hers.
Though they all agreed that solid clones were going to be included as soon as Naruto could manage them. Kushina had needed those before Kurama had been placed inside of her and couldn't imagine that Naruto's now-enhanced reserves were going to make him any different, even if those reserves were simply high for an Uzumaki instead of Kurama's level. Besides, being able to be in multiple places at once always made for an excellent alibi, especially if you kept that you could do so secret. She'd gotten away with so many pranks before others had discovered that particular detail...
Jiraiya looked over Naruto, who had been found nearly sealed in a cave thanks to what had obviously been an earth jutsu of some kind a couple hours previous. They'd ensured that he was fed, and boy could he eat, and had been examined by a medic-nin. He was surprisingly healthy given what had likely happened to him and his story was sadly lacking in useful details.
Not that the story wasn't concerning in its own way. Jiraiya had listened to his godson tell a tale of neglect and being locked out of the orphanage before a storm, only to find a recently-collapsed cave to sleep in. Then he'd supposedly met his mother and a talking fox before he was found. If the fox hadn't had multiple tails and the description of his mother hadn't been a dead ringer for Kushina then they'd have likely dismissed some of that as a dream, but given those details...
Then, of course, there was the complete lack of a seal, or any sign of one having existed. A blood test had confirmed that this was Naruto, though the rudimentary chakra test they could do on a child had been less solidly conclusive. But the previous tests had been tainted by the presence of the fox's chakra, so that was honestly expected. The kid was still an Uzumaki and a Namikaze, everything said he was his parents' child, and impossibly he was no longer the container for a tailed beast.
If not for still having to worry about Minato's enemies Jiraiya would be taking the kid out of the village with him. Sadly, those enemies still existed and the changed circumstances didn't actually do anything about them. But it was also obvious that the orphanage couldn't be trusted, which was why the staff were currently being gone over by T&I, so Naruto was going to need to move out. He was just old enough to mostly look over himself with some added supervision, and that one apartment block that the Uzumaki clan technically owned had a few open apartments right now. Jiraiya could personally fund a long-term mission set to keep an eye on the kid for the next few years easily enough, and Hiruzen would ensure that those assigned to the mission could actually be trusted.
Though the apartment would be getting enough added security seals to make a tailed beast have second thoughts about attacking it, on top of the seals already placed on the building itself by Uzumaki of the past. Sure, it would make it harder for Anbu to slip in unnoticed, but the two squads formerly tasked with keeping Naruto safe that were also in T&I's hands made it obvious that they needed to be more closely monitored too.
And then there was the cover story for what had happened, because admitting that the fox was dead was...unwise. The other villages would see that as a weakness, which would also put Naruto at greater risk. It would need to be something believable though, so required careful thought.
The rain had finally let up, flooding had been dealt with, the weapon had been found and was secure once more, and Danzo was trying to figure out why Hiruzen had called an emergency meeting of the Council of Clans, Merchants' Council, and the Advisors' Council. At the same time. Sure, the orphanage staff and some Anbu had proven to be less loyal to the village than they'd have liked, but that didn't feel important enough and the flooding hadn't done enough damage or revealed enough forgotten tunnels to be this level of concern.
Admittedly, something had happened with the weapon that Hiruzen had kept secret enough to still not be known, but whatever it was would almost certainly be kept far quieter than such a meeting would imply. Including the civilians at all would be insane for something of that level of importance.
"I apologize for the delay," Hiruzen said as he and his Anbu guard entered. It only took a moment for him to take his place, looking over the room. "I have called you all here to inform you of several things. Least importantly, four caretakers from the orphanage have been executed for crimes against the village, as have three Anbu and two medic-nin. Active jounin can check the archives for reasoning, should they wish to know the details. Two other caretakers were relieved of their duties, feel free to spread the word that replacement caretakers are being sought."
There was some murmuring about that, and notes taken. But what concerned Danzo was that this didn't warrant the meeting at all.
"To move on to slightly more important matters," Hiruzen continued, producing a storage seal and removing a stack of paper from it. "The residents of three areas on the outskirts of the village are being evacuated due to forgotten tunnels that threaten their homes. This includes a couple of businesses that need to be relocated and impacts two clan training areas."
Ah. That was just enough to warrant calling the meeting to begin with, and Danzo relaxed a bit as the details were distributed. One had to pander to the masses and Hiruzen personally informing the combined councils of this was a show that he respected them, just part of the many games one had to play when running a hidden village.
The paperwork provided included full information on where families and businesses were being relocated to, as well as what training areas were going to need to be looked at by the clans in question. It was also devoid of the security details regarding the tunnels and what uses they had once had, where known, which was also fully expected. Those who had clearance to know could find out by visiting the archives themselves, and Danzo would do so in the coming days. No need to rush to check as the information wasn't going anywhere and he had nothing planned in that area of the village right now anyway.
"Finally," Hiruzen said, startling them all. "We come to the reason that I called this meeting, now that the trivial matters have been dealt with. Despite my law, a large portion of the village has become aware that Naruto Uzumaki is the jinchuriki of the nine-tailed fox. I can only assume that knowledge becoming so widespread is responsible for an unknown enemy finding out. Luckily for us, the truth runs far deeper, but one of our most important deceptions has now been revealed. A few days ago an unknown individual attempted to take advantage of the boy being locked out of the orphanage to take the fox, only to break the decoy seal and find that he did not hold the fox after all. Whoever this was appears to have fled upon discovering this, leaving the boy in the cave used for the attempt."
"I'm sorry," the Nara head said after a moment of stunned silence. "Did you just say that Uzumaki was merely a decoy? That the true container of the nine-tailed fox is someone else?"
"Yes. The actual identity of the container is still a very well-kept secret, and will remain one. Only those already aware of it are permitted to know. That said, now that the secret is out we no longer have to fear Naruto breaking the decoy seal accidentally and I will personally be assigning him tutors to ensure that he's ready to enter the academy in the fall. His natural chakra reserves are too great to ignore and were part of why he was originally chosen to be the decoy in the first place. To better facilitate this training, he will be moving out of the orphanage into an apartment of his own and gradually taught to take full care of himself over the coming few years. Until then there will be ongoing missions for teams to keep an eye on him, in addition to four other orphans being put through the same program."
Danzo had no idea what to think about this. He'd never even heard so much as a discredited hint of a rumor that there was any other possible container, and a glance at Homura and Koharu was all he needed to tell that they were just as shocked as he was. If Hiruzen could pull a ruse like this off, right under their noses...
Perhaps his old rival wasn't nearly as soft as he appeared on the surface. A bait and switch of this magnitude, and to allow the ruse to go on for years despite knowing how the village had been gradually poisoned against the boy implied a hidden hardness that Danzo had to respect. In fact, without the accidental reveal it might have gone on for well over a decade before circumstances would have forced a reveal!
Of course, then there was the problem that the actual weapon was...completely and totally unknown. A secret so well kept that it would still be a secret if not for mistakes that had been subtly encouraged...and it was only now obvious why Hiruzen had actually been so against putting the boy through early training. This 'decoy seal' probably needed regular adjustments as the boy grew and would only have been stable enough for chakra use at the same time most children could safely start to use chakra in the first place.
Worse, the real container was probably already being trained in secret to be loyal to Hiruzen and his ideals, meaning that Danzo had absolutely no hope of ensuring primary loyalty to him. It was a move of a master, demonstrating just how well out-played they'd all been.
Minato found himself pleasantly surprised at the level of protection and privacy the seals around Naruto's apartment provided, and knew that Kushina was pleased that their son had ended up in her own old apartment. Kurama was most amused by Naruto playing around with shapeshifting and taking on a female form that looked remarkably like a younger Kushina. Something that, after minor thought, they'd decided would be a great way to help promote infiltration skills.
They'd added teaching Kushina's old lessons about being a shrine maiden, forced on her by Mito before passing Kurama along, to the plans for training Naruto. In a couple of years Naruto could use that form to 'move into' and 'fix up' the shrine near the apartment that served as one of the hidden entrances to the Uzumaki compound. Something that Minato had never known in life, as Kushina had never shared that secret with him. Mostly because he'd insisted that he didn't need to know all of the Uzumaki secrets, wanting her to be the one to share them with their children.
It would be nice if Naruto could live a simple life, but he had inherited far too many enemies and they knew that there may be greater enemies out there thanks to Kurama's memories. At the same time, the Tome had a number of things that would help keep him safe. The 'Knight Armor' spell had the potential to protect him from far more than normal ninja wear just to start. If Naruto could handle one of the three flight spells then he would have mobility far greater than most as well. Add in the ranged options that the various bullets provided and the utility of the search spell and you'd have a fairly dangerous individual. It was just too bad that more spells hadn't survived, the set available was essentially the 'starter pack' and there had to have been far more picked up later.
Then again, that was all before you added in all of the ninja techniques, those that Kushina and Minato knew as well as any that Naruto could develop or get his hands on later. Sealing was definitely a must too, with the Tome already having spotted patterns that Minato had never considered that could improve a number of seals. Kurama had actually been the one to propose a shapeshifting seal that Naruto's future teammates could possibly take advantage of as well, though that needed some development time to figure out. Assuming it was possible, of course, and it had started as grumbling that being able to get down to human size would've been nice for him and his siblings to blend in...and eliminate the Uchiha, technically.
"You have to keep us and the Tome secret for now," Kushina explained, having told Naruto about some of his past. She'd left out a few details for now, given his young age, and he looked ready to object. But she put her finger to his lips to stop him. "Think of it as practice for the secrets you'll need to keep once you become a shinobi. If you can't keep your own secrets then how can anyone expect you to keep someone else's?"
Naruto pouted, which looked far too cute on his now-'natural' fox-like face. "But they make fun of me for not having a mom and dad."
Minato sighed. "There's no way for them to meet us because we're not alive anymore. You've gotten a wonderful gift in being able to speak with us in this way, but we can only interact with you properly in this false world."
"If you make friends you know you can trust then you can tell them about us," Kushina added. "But I doubt that you'll be able to be sure that you can trust them for a few years."
"You'll also need to keep your true skills hidden, at least until you're strong enough that it won't matter. Otherwise someone might decide that they don't like how strong you're getting and go after you before you're ready."
Surprisingly, Naruto nodded at that one. "Like Masaru?"
"Er, maybe? I'm not familiar with Masaru."
"He showed off and the evil lord sent the sword guys to kill him before he got too strong."
That...sounded like it came from a story intended for children, and seemed to provide a good lesson. "Yes, then. You want to look like you're average, instead of exceptional, because future enemies are likely to ignore those that are simply 'average'."
"But pulling pranks that nobody knows you pulled is a great way to show off what you can really do," Kushina added with a grin. "It's also a tradition and a great way to get people back without them being able to blame you. At least if you do things right."
Unsaid was that getting to and maintaining that level of pranking was training in and of itself. Something that Minato hadn't fully appreciated while he was alive, but having access to Kushina's memories could see the appeal of now. Especially as it would provide a largely-harmless outlet for their frustration with the village, once Naruto had the skills needed to pull off decent pranks at all.
Chapter 1 - Early Lessons
Over the past few months Naruto's life had turned around significantly. He'd gone from living in the orphanage where he was treated as trash to living in his own apartment, from being shunned or excluded from lessons to having personal tutors catching him up to beyond where he should have been, and he'd perfected splitting his focus so that he could also spend all day learning from the ghosts of his parents. Well, they claimed they weren't ghosts, but that was the best way he could describe them. But they weren't creepy-ghosts either.
Most of his lessons were in reading, writing, penmanship, and math. Using chakra would come later. His parents wanted him to only start using chakra once his living tutors thought he was ready, in case something went wrong. But he was also learning about money and cooking, as well as how to interpret what he could feel about people with Kurama's help. It was confusing for Naruto to figure out when someone felt bad in general compared to bad targeting him, but he'd been told that it would be very useful to know when someone might want to hurt him so he was working on it.
A week ago he'd even spent a day out in the village as 'Yoko' to see how differently he was treated when he looked nothing like himself. That had only worked because there was a secret exit from the apartment that those watching him from outside didn't know about, but his mother had told him how to use. It led to a small tunnel that came out in the nearby shrine, which Yoko might be cleaning up eventually, and it was weird how differently the villagers treated him. When he was out by himself he'd feel occasional spikes of negative emotions that...faded into something else? But while moving around as Yoko he was mostly ignored.
But today was the day he was starting the academy!
It had snowed a couple of days prior, and Naruto had almost forgotten to shapeshift his fox bits away before leaving the apartment. His mother reminded him in time though, as well as that he should put on his goggles that were a stand-in for when he'd eventually get a forehead protector, and he followed her directions to the academy because she knew a useful shortcut. At least until he got close, but then he felt a group of people with negative emotions nearby. He decided to investigate, and found a group of older boys picking on a younger girl with odd-looking eyes.
He'd intervened, but didn't really remember what happened because they'd knocked him out.
"I'm sorry," the girl apologized when he woke up a couple minutes later, fidgeting as he stood up.
"Why are you sorry?" Naruto asked, honestly confused. "They were picking on you."
"But you got hurt."
Naruto wasn't sure how it was her fault that he got hurt. "Where are they?"
"Er, they ran off when you stopped moving."
"Oh."
"How are you awake?"
Naruto scratched his head. "Should I be asleep?"
The girl tapped her fingers together nervously. "Father said that people don't wake up when hurt like that."
"Oh. Really?" Blinking, Naruto looked around. "What time is it?"
That startled the girl, and they both got up and hurried to the academy.
To Naruto's surprise, he ended up being in the same class as the girl he'd run into that morning, Hinata. She was the only 'clan kid' in their class, though his father said that he would count if people knew who his parents were as well. Their classmates were jerks that didn't like either of them though, and Naruto had no clue why. Well, beyond that most of them seemed to already know each other with him and Hinata as the only new ones.
The first week was spent going over basics, expectations, and what they should be doing as a minimal exercise routine. On the latter front, Hinata proved to be second only to Naruto in stamina when tested on the running track. During the week they were basically told that their first year at the academy was likely to be entirely book work and ensuring that they were physically fit enough to continue into next year where they'd start on using chakra, though they were going to get some throwing practice to prepare them for kunai and shuriken. Or to determine that they were hopeless.
Hinata and her older cousin Neji were both picked up by a 'branch member' every day, though which one varied. The branch members were friendly enough, but Neji was rude and dismissive of Hinata and indifferent to Naruto.
Over the months that followed Naruto learned a lot, but at the insistence of his parents never did perfectly on a test. Or even homework, and they even had him intentionally give the wrong answer in class at times. The only thing he was encouraged to never slack off on was his penmanship. That was 'too important to play games with' and he spent more time with them working on it than anything else.
His physical training was more limited. Stretches, strength exercises, running, climbing. He couldn't do a whole lot more, though they were hoping he could 'officially' learn to swim soon. There weren't many places to learn that right now that he could access on his own and none of his now-less-frequent tutors would bring him somewhere to learn, but he was doing well with it in the Tome world. Kurama also taught him how to move like a fox, though that was something else that couldn't be done in the real world right now.
At the end of the school year they dismissed over half of his class from the program entirely just before summer break and shuffled the rest, moving him and Hinata into different classes for the next session. They were disappointed, but planned to meet up to train with each other when they could. Which turned out to be sooner than expected, because a branch member of the Hyuga was tasked with working with him to help him 'unlock his chakra' and walk him through initial exercises with it.
"You have a decidedly odd chakra network," the woman, Reina Hyuga, said as she looked over Naruto. She then used a marker to draw spots on his hands and arms before she gave him a couple of leaves. "Despite the oddities, you don't look like you should have any problems with your chakra, but how you feel it will be a personal discovery. To get used to using it you should place a leaf on one of the spots that I marked, or on the center of your forehead. Then see if you can call up the energy flowing within you to hold it in place. Too little and it falls off, too much and it will be blown away. But first, hold out your left hand."
He did so, and the woman tapped his hand and arm on several of the points she'd marked, plus a couple of other spots. Naruto found that his arm suddenly felt incredibly weak, and something that he hadn't consciously known was there before wasn't flowing anymore. He didn't like how not having it flowing felt either.
"There," Reina said with a nod. "We Hyuga find that having your chakra cut off from your less dominant hand helps with learning what it feels like. That will wear off in a few hours if I don't undo it before then."
Knowing what chakra felt like and figuring out how to control it were two very different things, and even with his parents coaching him as well it took three days to figure out how to actually get some to leave one of the points he was told to work with. Hinata had tried to help him for the first two days, having been put through something similar years ago, but how she felt her chakra was too different to compare properly and she had to go back to training with her father. His first success had been like a small bomb going off, the initial burst of chakra damaging the ceiling in his apartment. It was a lot easier after that point, and he couldn't get it to come out like it had that first time. Hinata had figured it out after only two days, and was able to get the leaf to stick for a few seconds after four, but Naruto kept having the leaf go flying away.
The more important part of this was that the first step, even not accomplishing sticking the leaf, was enough for his parents to decide that he was ready for their own lessons in chakra. Or as they sometimes called it, magic, which was apparently a different way to use chakra. They actually taught him water-walking and had him practice in the bathtub to start with, his mother claiming that any true Uzumaki would start with water first and work their way down to leaves if they were dedicated enough.
Naruto was mostly bummed that practicing in the Tome's false world didn't quite work for this. He could stick a leaf perfectly there already!
On the 'magic' side, they started him with what they called 'Knight Armor', though they didn't know why it was called that. Just that it was, and it would replace his clothing with a magic set that could protect his entire body at once. He could practice that in the Tome world, and spent two weeks getting it down properly. Only to find out that he could actually use the Tome to help him cast it!
"Why did you tell me to cast it without the Tome's help?" Naruto asked after finding that out.
"Because the Tome is a tool," his father had answered. "One that could stop working, or be taken away from you. Anything you can do without it is something that an enemy will have that much more trouble taking away from you."
"While we can only hope that you're never parted from the Tome," his mother had continued. "We want to ensure that you aren't dependent on it, and the Knight Armor spell is too important to your safety to rely on having access to the Tome to cast it."
"But we don't want you using it when you're at the academy. Suddenly being incredibly difficult to hurt would be suspicious, and you'll learn more without it."
Naruto thought he understood. While an enemy could cut his fists and feet off, they were far more likely to catch him without weapons on him. Attacking him in the bath or something like that.
"You should give the spell a try for real now," his father continued. "Nobody is due to check up on you for a couple of hours, so now's a perfect time."
Nodding, Naruto shifted his focus to his real body. He'd been doing stretches, but switching to casting the spell only took a moment. It failed to cast properly four times before he got it correct, his clothing being replaced with a very generic shinobi outfit. He'd eventually figure out something better, but it was good enough for now.
"Very good," his mother said from inside of the Tome. "I'm curious though, would you try water-walking now?"
Not sure where that was going, he shrugged and filled the bathtub. Strangely, he found that it was easier to accomplish, and more so when the spell was removed.
"What happened?" he finally asked.
"Chakra and magic use the same energy," his father explained. "Learning to control it one way makes you more familiar with it in general, though I doubt that all lessons will help in both directions."
"I don't understand."
His mother sighed. "It's like using a muscle in different ways. You improve the muscle, but the different ways of using it affect it differently."
Oh. That was why he needed to do stretches and run and lift heavy things, so his chakra needed to be used in different ways too.
"We're going to start teaching you hand seals now," his father added. "One- and two-handed versions, but with any luck you'll be able to learn to not need them either."
"It's always fun to annoy an Uchiha by not needing hand seals to perform a jutsu," his mother agreed. "Not using the hand seals means they can't copy it."
Making it so that others couldn't copy his jutsu did sound like a good idea, though he hadn't understood the explanation of how they could copy them the last time they'd tried to explain that to him.
Danzo scowled as he read yet another report that failed to provide any hint of where the weapon actually was. Probably outside the village entirely, regularly visited by Jiraiya, but getting access to those reports was impossible as they were either delivered in person or via summons. He resisted the urge to set the report on fire and put it aside to be filed properly, though made a note to have duplicate reports delivered to him so that he could give into such stress-relieving urges in the future.
Moving on, he checked on other things. Young Uzumaki was a middling student by all accounts and might have made a good recruit, but Hiruzen had a soft spot for the boy and without the fox it wasn't worth the trouble. The civilians were...mostly sheepish that they'd so readily believed the ruse about the boy, especially those that had never interacted with him and believed the rumors without confirming them in any way.
Following that was another failure to gain access to the orphanage. Hiruzen didn't know that the tunnels that had flooded near it had been 'unofficial' Root tunnels, repurposed from their original purposes, and the staff that had been removed had been replaced with those that actually cared for the children more than anything else. Evaluating orphans for recruitment had become all but impossible for the time being.
Scowling, he moved on to copied reports on the Uchiha. Itachi and Shisui both believed that the coup was now further out than it would have been without the reveal of the decoy seal, but that the chances of negotiation were still slim. They'd met with Jiraiya about a couple of other options to attempt recently, outside of the village on a joint Anbu mission, but the details were in Jiraiya's reports for security reasons. Damn.
As part of his birthday gifts that October, Naruto received a book on basic jutsu and hand signs from Jiraiya. He'd already been working on the latter, and his parents had intended to start him on the replacement jutsu anyway. But having the book would easily explain how he knew any of them if caught practicing them, which was good. It covered the 'academy three', a collection of utility jutsu, and four chakra control exercises. His godfather had also given him a book on penmanship techniques that was apparently a precursor to sealing, but it didn't actually cover anything new to work on there.
By November the academy started covering hand seals and jutsu, starting with disguising themselves. Naruto could trivially fake it with shapeshifting, but let himself completely fail to put only the tiny amount of chakra needed into the jutsu. Mostly because he honestly couldn't put so little chakra in. Most of his class made fun of him for it until Miss Shimada brought a 'chakra meter' in.
"Normally jounin use this to see where they need to improve themselves or if their existing training is working," Miss Shimada said. "I had to ask the Anbu to borrow it, even, and they only agreed because they want to see what it says about Uzumaki as well. Normally the few we have are much more protected because we don't know how to make more. But this is going to show just why Uzumaki is having trouble with this jutsu, and you should thank him for being in class with you as it will give you insight into your own natural skills. He'll go last, but first let me show you how this works."
Naruto wasn't sure what to think of his mother commenting that the five she'd built to replace the one that she'd destroyed should last the village a century, nor the promise that there were a couple more in the Uzumaki compound when he could safely visit it for more than an hour or so. He instead focused on Miss Shimada demonstrating and explaining the twelve meters on the device. Seven of the meters covered chakra natures. Fire, wind, lightning, earth, and water sounded simple enough from his previous lessons, but Naruto didn't fully understand the yin and yang part. The remaining five covered 'capacity', with each bar being on a different scale.
"Here in Konoha the majority of our forces never get past the second scale," Miss Shimada explained. "But our elites eventually reach the third. Most of you will be solidly in the first scale, commonly thought of as the genin to chunin level. As you can see, I fall into the upper area of the second scale, high chunin but not quite to jounin levels. The third scale is treated as jounin to kage by most, though the Third actually touches upon the fourth scale slightly. To the Uzumaki, the third scale is their genin to chunin scale."
Naruto was mildly amused by his mother commenting that she'd never seen a true Uzumaki over the age of five not hit the fourth scale at a minimum and that they'd had to add the lower three for others.
"That follows that the fourth scale would be their chunin to jounin scale and the fifth scale would be their jounin to kage one," Miss Shimada continued. "As for my chakra natures, I have a strong affinity for fire, have been working on my earth, and have minor ability in the others right now. Most of you either won't have enough chakra for the scale to register natures or won't have a strong one, but we may get a surprise or two."
She then had the class go up one at a time and use the scale, a few of them taking time to figure out how to get it to read their chakra at all. Most had very low levels, but a few were surprised and a couple even registered chakra natures. Sasuke was easily the first 'decent' chakra level, well over halfway up the first meter, but seemed to be surprised that he had a strong lightning nature with a middling fire nature and looked thoughtful as he sat back down.
Eventually Naruto was the only one left, and his mother had already explained that there was a 'privacy limiter' for Uzumaki that would keep it from showing his full power. Something that existed because otherwise Uzumaki, even as kids, tended to scare allies with how much chakra they had. Two Anbu had materialized in the back corners of the room to watch as he placed his hand on the place marked for it on the chakra meter and triggered the process with a little bit of his chakra. The seals his mother said were there pulled more in, and meters started filling, starting with the capacity ones. Three full meters and three quarters of the fourth, causing a lot of gasps.
More curious were the chakra nature meters, all seven of which filled to around halfway full.
"Huh," Miss Shimada said. "That's...more impressive than I was expecting. From this you can see that Uzumaki has a lot of chakra, so for him trying to perform the jutsu is probably like trying to fill a cup with water by dropping an entire lake on it." She then turned to Naruto. "I don't suppose that you're aware of the surface-sticking or water-walking exercises?"
Naruto nodded. "I have a book with those in it."
"Wonderful! This also explains why you can't perform the leaf-sticking exercise, so we'll have to have you work your way down to it."
He half-nodded, then turned to look at the rest of the class. They were...very much shocked, and all staring at the chakra meter as though they couldn't believe what it showed.
"How is he so strong?" Sasuke asked. "Isn't he an orphan?"
Miss Shimada sighed. "I suspect that he was given the Uzumaki family name not as tribute to them, but because an old seal from before the fall of Uzu identified him as a clan member. All Uzumaki have larger than average reserves, but for most that means that learning to control their chakra is a constant battle."
Naruto wasn't sure why, but after that everyone in class, and a number of people in shops and such, suddenly started treating him better and didn't understand his father's answer of 'suck ups' when asking his parents.
Naruto had been curious why his chakra natures were so different from everyone else's, and his parents hadn't known either but had promised that they were just as curious as he was. His mother had then started teaching him how to play pranks and not get caught, since he was being watched less often now and Hinata could only spend so much time with him after classes. When she could spend time with him at all, anyway, and the group of others that suddenly seemed to want to be his friend creeped him out given that they were jerks before the chakra meter.
The first lesson on playing pranks and not getting caught had been learning the village. This started as him going out into it as himself, with the Anbu watching him knowing he was moving around, to find out where things were. He couldn't go everywhere at his age, and apparently some of the village had changed since his parents had been alive, but most of the important things were the same. Including the ramen stand.
He didn't know what his mother's 'food of the gods' description meant exactly, but it sounded perfect and he had added 'ramen' to his budget sheets. Though she seemed slightly offended that he preferred Ichiraku's ramen to her favorite brand of instant...once they'd found instant ramen at all. She'd actually despaired that it had stopped existing when none of the stores near the apartment carried any.
His father claimed that the bigger health risk remained having learned how to prepare pork and bacon in the apartment, both of which frequently got added to ramen when not eaten as a snack.
Naruto found that learning the village to his parents' satisfaction took months. First he wandered as himself, then he added in Yoko, and then they had him using different forms each outing. He'd asked about using Knight Armor for the outfits when going out, but they'd told him not to as it would probably stand out to some people and make it more obvious that the different bodies were actually the same person. They were also...loud when he suggested going out as a fox and he didn't like going out looking like a cat or a dog.
He did anyway, because he knew from his parents that doing things you don't like is frequently the best way to get to do the things you do like.
They also wanted him to be able to move around without obviously paying attention while still avoiding hitting anyone and spotting anyone following him. Including the very sneaky Anbu guards. Looking like you were paying attention was apparently a bad thing, especially just after you'd played a prank. Being distracted and obviously not paying attention to your surroundings, especially if you made it look like you'd not noticed being lightly splattered by something in your own prank, was apparently one of the best ways to have others decide that you were merely a bystander.
During those months he'd had tutors help him with water-walking and swimming, the latter as a side effect and making Naruto glad that hot springs existed, followed by surface-sticking. Well, most called it tree-climbing, and they had been using trees, but the official name was surface-sticking and could be used for a lot more than climbing trees. Like climbing buildings, or keeping yourself stuck to the ground. He'd also started working on the replacement jutsu, but it took far too long to do successfully right now and he still had to do the hand seals. This still put him ahead of his classmates in a way, as they were still working on getting believable disguises down.
Or in his case, getting one working at all. That thing took so little chakra it was insane. He'd accidentally created three different 'solid' versions that his parents had him write down the details of, one of which even let you feel people interacting with the shell of chakra. He wanted to teach Hinata that one to see if he had it written down correctly, but hadn't had enough time to do so in private. As for the one the academy wanted, that one felt like he might never get it down.
Spring had come, and Naruto had accomplished three different milestones in the same week. He'd managed to spend an hour on the wall of his apartment, could replace himself in under two seconds, and had sufficient knowledge of the village and awareness of his surroundings to wander while reading things duplicated in the Tome. Usually academy textbooks, but occasionally a cookbook or the The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi. And he usually had to ignore the book itself and just fake reading it.
He wasn't sure why his father had insisted on wandering with the Tome being done while the Tome had a plain orange cover though. Orange was awesome, admittedly, but it felt like that was a joke or prank of its own. Especially given the looks that people kept giving him, but nobody approached him to ask what he was reading so he was able to largely ignore that detail and his father had declined to explain his reasoning.
His mother had walked him through getting through the shrine into the Uzumaki compound as a reward, though it turned out that she'd not shared it before then because it required being able to safely use the surface-sticking exercise. Other entrances didn't, but the shrine entrance did unless someone opened it for you from the inside. The compound itself had two small houses and a training hall, plus a lot of overgrown plants.
"Okay Naruto," his mother said inside of the Tome. "We'll cover the other ways to get in later, but the shrine is the only one that was a complete secret. While you were wandering we noticed that the other entrances were being watched, so you have to be careful about using them. But there is one more reward for your progress, one which will help you explore and clean up here."
"This one is a new jutsu," his father said, and the Tome expanded into book form. "We don't know if you'll ever get the normal disguise jutsu down, or the clone when they get to that. But there's a much more useful version for those with enough chakra. You should have enough control to use it safely now, or we'd have shared it already."
"It's even perfect for pranking and boring paperwork! Or homework, in your case."
There was a pause, and Naruto got the feeling that his father was blinking in the Tome world.
"GODDAMMIT," his father yelled a moment later. "HOW DID I NEVER FIGURE THAT OUT?"
"...you didn't know?" his mother asked, sounding confused. "Its name in Uzu was the paperwork jutsu."
Naruto left the two to that, and Kurama to laughing his tails off at their antics, while he opened up the Tome and read the instructions for the jutsu. There were several sets of instructions of different complexities, and he ended up getting a headache trying to understand the 'full' version before skipping to the 'for dummies and children' version.
He had no problem with being considered either after seeing the 'full' instructions.
The basic version looked simple enough, and there were several paragraphs on how to use them for various things like training, but there were minor 'variations' in how they functioned that you could apply as well. One was putting less than an even split of chakra in, if you had enough to do so, that would allow you to make the clones stronger or weaker than they would normally be. Another was adjusting the strength of the connection between clones, making it stronger to allow communication without them dispelling but also putting more strain on the user trying to split their focus in real time. Lastly was a tweak to allow clones to remain active or not while the user was sleeping, but was incompatible with making the connection stronger.
Nodding to himself, Naruto re-read the instructions for the basic version three more times, then put the Tome under his arm and put his hands together into the single hand seal described.
Five hours later there were finally clones around Naruto, and he was exhausted. So were his clones, having inherited his exhaustion even before his chakra had been split.
"Very good," his father said from the Tome.
"It took me hours," Naruto complained.
"It took me two months, but I'm not an Uzumaki."
"Most Uzumaki get it in a couple of weeks," his mother added. "But the scrolls always had the easy instructions hidden in the margins as though it was a decorative border. We were still expecting it to be a few days before you got it down."
Naruto actually ended up going back to the apartment, eating in time to be checked on to ensure that he was eating, and then returning to the compound to explore afterwards. That gave him enough time to recover his energy, and a dozen clones spread out throughout the compound to both explore and start cleaning things up. It was probably a good thing that he had a clone try to figure out the push mower thing though, because it probably would have hurt a lot more getting his foot stuck in it otherwise.
A few days later Naruto pulled his first prank. His target was a store owner that treated him badly but was perfectly happy to let Yoko shop in his store. A shapeshifted shadow clone had done all the work, to make it extra-hard to tie back to Naruto. He had been in class at the time, needing to be there in person since his shadow clones were too fragile, and a clone that was in his Yoko form had been seen cleaning the shrine.
It was obvious that nobody had a clue who had pulled the prank, and Naruto found it to be glorious. He came up with a list of targets and would carefully plan out hitting one every couple of weeks, but his parents also added some other goals to that list. Specifically, while his original list of targets were all civilians, they wanted him to also pull harmless pranks on shinobi. Older academy students to start with, then genin, chunin, jounin, eventually even attempt to get things over on Anbu.
The other major thing he used shadow clones for was training everything that wasn't physical. Every day he sent several into the Uzumaki compound to do chakra-based training, though there was only so much they could do there right now as there wasn't even a pond to water-walk on. The two bathtubs in the two houses weren't really all that useful once you had the absolute basics down. But they could repeatedly work on the disguise and replacement jutsu, to try to get the proper one working in the former case and to get it down without hand seals in the latter.
His parents promised a new chakra control exercise at summer break though, wanting to ensure that he had plenty of time to do the initial work on it, and they thought that Hinata was trustworthy enough to share more with. Assuming he could get enough time with her to share things with her, anyway. That was hard with all the training she did with her father and they really needed at least a couple of hours without Ko or one of the others that watched over her present. Well, Ko might be trustworthy enough on his own, since his parents remembered him, but they weren't really sure because they didn't know how he might have changed.
Most of his lessons were in reading, writing, penmanship, and math. Using chakra would come later. His parents wanted him to only start using chakra once his living tutors thought he was ready, in case something went wrong. But he was also learning about money and cooking, as well as how to interpret what he could feel about people with Kurama's help. It was confusing for Naruto to figure out when someone felt bad in general compared to bad targeting him, but he'd been told that it would be very useful to know when someone might want to hurt him so he was working on it.
A week ago he'd even spent a day out in the village as 'Yoko' to see how differently he was treated when he looked nothing like himself. That had only worked because there was a secret exit from the apartment that those watching him from outside didn't know about, but his mother had told him how to use. It led to a small tunnel that came out in the nearby shrine, which Yoko might be cleaning up eventually, and it was weird how differently the villagers treated him. When he was out by himself he'd feel occasional spikes of negative emotions that...faded into something else? But while moving around as Yoko he was mostly ignored.
But today was the day he was starting the academy!
It had snowed a couple of days prior, and Naruto had almost forgotten to shapeshift his fox bits away before leaving the apartment. His mother reminded him in time though, as well as that he should put on his goggles that were a stand-in for when he'd eventually get a forehead protector, and he followed her directions to the academy because she knew a useful shortcut. At least until he got close, but then he felt a group of people with negative emotions nearby. He decided to investigate, and found a group of older boys picking on a younger girl with odd-looking eyes.
He'd intervened, but didn't really remember what happened because they'd knocked him out.
"I'm sorry," the girl apologized when he woke up a couple minutes later, fidgeting as he stood up.
"Why are you sorry?" Naruto asked, honestly confused. "They were picking on you."
"But you got hurt."
Naruto wasn't sure how it was her fault that he got hurt. "Where are they?"
"Er, they ran off when you stopped moving."
"Oh."
"How are you awake?"
Naruto scratched his head. "Should I be asleep?"
The girl tapped her fingers together nervously. "Father said that people don't wake up when hurt like that."
"Oh. Really?" Blinking, Naruto looked around. "What time is it?"
That startled the girl, and they both got up and hurried to the academy.
To Naruto's surprise, he ended up being in the same class as the girl he'd run into that morning, Hinata. She was the only 'clan kid' in their class, though his father said that he would count if people knew who his parents were as well. Their classmates were jerks that didn't like either of them though, and Naruto had no clue why. Well, beyond that most of them seemed to already know each other with him and Hinata as the only new ones.
The first week was spent going over basics, expectations, and what they should be doing as a minimal exercise routine. On the latter front, Hinata proved to be second only to Naruto in stamina when tested on the running track. During the week they were basically told that their first year at the academy was likely to be entirely book work and ensuring that they were physically fit enough to continue into next year where they'd start on using chakra, though they were going to get some throwing practice to prepare them for kunai and shuriken. Or to determine that they were hopeless.
Hinata and her older cousin Neji were both picked up by a 'branch member' every day, though which one varied. The branch members were friendly enough, but Neji was rude and dismissive of Hinata and indifferent to Naruto.
Over the months that followed Naruto learned a lot, but at the insistence of his parents never did perfectly on a test. Or even homework, and they even had him intentionally give the wrong answer in class at times. The only thing he was encouraged to never slack off on was his penmanship. That was 'too important to play games with' and he spent more time with them working on it than anything else.
His physical training was more limited. Stretches, strength exercises, running, climbing. He couldn't do a whole lot more, though they were hoping he could 'officially' learn to swim soon. There weren't many places to learn that right now that he could access on his own and none of his now-less-frequent tutors would bring him somewhere to learn, but he was doing well with it in the Tome world. Kurama also taught him how to move like a fox, though that was something else that couldn't be done in the real world right now.
At the end of the school year they dismissed over half of his class from the program entirely just before summer break and shuffled the rest, moving him and Hinata into different classes for the next session. They were disappointed, but planned to meet up to train with each other when they could. Which turned out to be sooner than expected, because a branch member of the Hyuga was tasked with working with him to help him 'unlock his chakra' and walk him through initial exercises with it.
"You have a decidedly odd chakra network," the woman, Reina Hyuga, said as she looked over Naruto. She then used a marker to draw spots on his hands and arms before she gave him a couple of leaves. "Despite the oddities, you don't look like you should have any problems with your chakra, but how you feel it will be a personal discovery. To get used to using it you should place a leaf on one of the spots that I marked, or on the center of your forehead. Then see if you can call up the energy flowing within you to hold it in place. Too little and it falls off, too much and it will be blown away. But first, hold out your left hand."
He did so, and the woman tapped his hand and arm on several of the points she'd marked, plus a couple of other spots. Naruto found that his arm suddenly felt incredibly weak, and something that he hadn't consciously known was there before wasn't flowing anymore. He didn't like how not having it flowing felt either.
"There," Reina said with a nod. "We Hyuga find that having your chakra cut off from your less dominant hand helps with learning what it feels like. That will wear off in a few hours if I don't undo it before then."
Knowing what chakra felt like and figuring out how to control it were two very different things, and even with his parents coaching him as well it took three days to figure out how to actually get some to leave one of the points he was told to work with. Hinata had tried to help him for the first two days, having been put through something similar years ago, but how she felt her chakra was too different to compare properly and she had to go back to training with her father. His first success had been like a small bomb going off, the initial burst of chakra damaging the ceiling in his apartment. It was a lot easier after that point, and he couldn't get it to come out like it had that first time. Hinata had figured it out after only two days, and was able to get the leaf to stick for a few seconds after four, but Naruto kept having the leaf go flying away.
The more important part of this was that the first step, even not accomplishing sticking the leaf, was enough for his parents to decide that he was ready for their own lessons in chakra. Or as they sometimes called it, magic, which was apparently a different way to use chakra. They actually taught him water-walking and had him practice in the bathtub to start with, his mother claiming that any true Uzumaki would start with water first and work their way down to leaves if they were dedicated enough.
Naruto was mostly bummed that practicing in the Tome's false world didn't quite work for this. He could stick a leaf perfectly there already!
On the 'magic' side, they started him with what they called 'Knight Armor', though they didn't know why it was called that. Just that it was, and it would replace his clothing with a magic set that could protect his entire body at once. He could practice that in the Tome world, and spent two weeks getting it down properly. Only to find out that he could actually use the Tome to help him cast it!
"Why did you tell me to cast it without the Tome's help?" Naruto asked after finding that out.
"Because the Tome is a tool," his father had answered. "One that could stop working, or be taken away from you. Anything you can do without it is something that an enemy will have that much more trouble taking away from you."
"While we can only hope that you're never parted from the Tome," his mother had continued. "We want to ensure that you aren't dependent on it, and the Knight Armor spell is too important to your safety to rely on having access to the Tome to cast it."
"But we don't want you using it when you're at the academy. Suddenly being incredibly difficult to hurt would be suspicious, and you'll learn more without it."
Naruto thought he understood. While an enemy could cut his fists and feet off, they were far more likely to catch him without weapons on him. Attacking him in the bath or something like that.
"You should give the spell a try for real now," his father continued. "Nobody is due to check up on you for a couple of hours, so now's a perfect time."
Nodding, Naruto shifted his focus to his real body. He'd been doing stretches, but switching to casting the spell only took a moment. It failed to cast properly four times before he got it correct, his clothing being replaced with a very generic shinobi outfit. He'd eventually figure out something better, but it was good enough for now.
"Very good," his mother said from inside of the Tome. "I'm curious though, would you try water-walking now?"
Not sure where that was going, he shrugged and filled the bathtub. Strangely, he found that it was easier to accomplish, and more so when the spell was removed.
"What happened?" he finally asked.
"Chakra and magic use the same energy," his father explained. "Learning to control it one way makes you more familiar with it in general, though I doubt that all lessons will help in both directions."
"I don't understand."
His mother sighed. "It's like using a muscle in different ways. You improve the muscle, but the different ways of using it affect it differently."
Oh. That was why he needed to do stretches and run and lift heavy things, so his chakra needed to be used in different ways too.
"We're going to start teaching you hand seals now," his father added. "One- and two-handed versions, but with any luck you'll be able to learn to not need them either."
"It's always fun to annoy an Uchiha by not needing hand seals to perform a jutsu," his mother agreed. "Not using the hand seals means they can't copy it."
Making it so that others couldn't copy his jutsu did sound like a good idea, though he hadn't understood the explanation of how they could copy them the last time they'd tried to explain that to him.
Danzo scowled as he read yet another report that failed to provide any hint of where the weapon actually was. Probably outside the village entirely, regularly visited by Jiraiya, but getting access to those reports was impossible as they were either delivered in person or via summons. He resisted the urge to set the report on fire and put it aside to be filed properly, though made a note to have duplicate reports delivered to him so that he could give into such stress-relieving urges in the future.
Moving on, he checked on other things. Young Uzumaki was a middling student by all accounts and might have made a good recruit, but Hiruzen had a soft spot for the boy and without the fox it wasn't worth the trouble. The civilians were...mostly sheepish that they'd so readily believed the ruse about the boy, especially those that had never interacted with him and believed the rumors without confirming them in any way.
Following that was another failure to gain access to the orphanage. Hiruzen didn't know that the tunnels that had flooded near it had been 'unofficial' Root tunnels, repurposed from their original purposes, and the staff that had been removed had been replaced with those that actually cared for the children more than anything else. Evaluating orphans for recruitment had become all but impossible for the time being.
Scowling, he moved on to copied reports on the Uchiha. Itachi and Shisui both believed that the coup was now further out than it would have been without the reveal of the decoy seal, but that the chances of negotiation were still slim. They'd met with Jiraiya about a couple of other options to attempt recently, outside of the village on a joint Anbu mission, but the details were in Jiraiya's reports for security reasons. Damn.
As part of his birthday gifts that October, Naruto received a book on basic jutsu and hand signs from Jiraiya. He'd already been working on the latter, and his parents had intended to start him on the replacement jutsu anyway. But having the book would easily explain how he knew any of them if caught practicing them, which was good. It covered the 'academy three', a collection of utility jutsu, and four chakra control exercises. His godfather had also given him a book on penmanship techniques that was apparently a precursor to sealing, but it didn't actually cover anything new to work on there.
By November the academy started covering hand seals and jutsu, starting with disguising themselves. Naruto could trivially fake it with shapeshifting, but let himself completely fail to put only the tiny amount of chakra needed into the jutsu. Mostly because he honestly couldn't put so little chakra in. Most of his class made fun of him for it until Miss Shimada brought a 'chakra meter' in.
"Normally jounin use this to see where they need to improve themselves or if their existing training is working," Miss Shimada said. "I had to ask the Anbu to borrow it, even, and they only agreed because they want to see what it says about Uzumaki as well. Normally the few we have are much more protected because we don't know how to make more. But this is going to show just why Uzumaki is having trouble with this jutsu, and you should thank him for being in class with you as it will give you insight into your own natural skills. He'll go last, but first let me show you how this works."
Naruto wasn't sure what to think of his mother commenting that the five she'd built to replace the one that she'd destroyed should last the village a century, nor the promise that there were a couple more in the Uzumaki compound when he could safely visit it for more than an hour or so. He instead focused on Miss Shimada demonstrating and explaining the twelve meters on the device. Seven of the meters covered chakra natures. Fire, wind, lightning, earth, and water sounded simple enough from his previous lessons, but Naruto didn't fully understand the yin and yang part. The remaining five covered 'capacity', with each bar being on a different scale.
"Here in Konoha the majority of our forces never get past the second scale," Miss Shimada explained. "But our elites eventually reach the third. Most of you will be solidly in the first scale, commonly thought of as the genin to chunin level. As you can see, I fall into the upper area of the second scale, high chunin but not quite to jounin levels. The third scale is treated as jounin to kage by most, though the Third actually touches upon the fourth scale slightly. To the Uzumaki, the third scale is their genin to chunin scale."
Naruto was mildly amused by his mother commenting that she'd never seen a true Uzumaki over the age of five not hit the fourth scale at a minimum and that they'd had to add the lower three for others.
"That follows that the fourth scale would be their chunin to jounin scale and the fifth scale would be their jounin to kage one," Miss Shimada continued. "As for my chakra natures, I have a strong affinity for fire, have been working on my earth, and have minor ability in the others right now. Most of you either won't have enough chakra for the scale to register natures or won't have a strong one, but we may get a surprise or two."
She then had the class go up one at a time and use the scale, a few of them taking time to figure out how to get it to read their chakra at all. Most had very low levels, but a few were surprised and a couple even registered chakra natures. Sasuke was easily the first 'decent' chakra level, well over halfway up the first meter, but seemed to be surprised that he had a strong lightning nature with a middling fire nature and looked thoughtful as he sat back down.
Eventually Naruto was the only one left, and his mother had already explained that there was a 'privacy limiter' for Uzumaki that would keep it from showing his full power. Something that existed because otherwise Uzumaki, even as kids, tended to scare allies with how much chakra they had. Two Anbu had materialized in the back corners of the room to watch as he placed his hand on the place marked for it on the chakra meter and triggered the process with a little bit of his chakra. The seals his mother said were there pulled more in, and meters started filling, starting with the capacity ones. Three full meters and three quarters of the fourth, causing a lot of gasps.
More curious were the chakra nature meters, all seven of which filled to around halfway full.
"Huh," Miss Shimada said. "That's...more impressive than I was expecting. From this you can see that Uzumaki has a lot of chakra, so for him trying to perform the jutsu is probably like trying to fill a cup with water by dropping an entire lake on it." She then turned to Naruto. "I don't suppose that you're aware of the surface-sticking or water-walking exercises?"
Naruto nodded. "I have a book with those in it."
"Wonderful! This also explains why you can't perform the leaf-sticking exercise, so we'll have to have you work your way down to it."
He half-nodded, then turned to look at the rest of the class. They were...very much shocked, and all staring at the chakra meter as though they couldn't believe what it showed.
"How is he so strong?" Sasuke asked. "Isn't he an orphan?"
Miss Shimada sighed. "I suspect that he was given the Uzumaki family name not as tribute to them, but because an old seal from before the fall of Uzu identified him as a clan member. All Uzumaki have larger than average reserves, but for most that means that learning to control their chakra is a constant battle."
Naruto wasn't sure why, but after that everyone in class, and a number of people in shops and such, suddenly started treating him better and didn't understand his father's answer of 'suck ups' when asking his parents.
Naruto had been curious why his chakra natures were so different from everyone else's, and his parents hadn't known either but had promised that they were just as curious as he was. His mother had then started teaching him how to play pranks and not get caught, since he was being watched less often now and Hinata could only spend so much time with him after classes. When she could spend time with him at all, anyway, and the group of others that suddenly seemed to want to be his friend creeped him out given that they were jerks before the chakra meter.
The first lesson on playing pranks and not getting caught had been learning the village. This started as him going out into it as himself, with the Anbu watching him knowing he was moving around, to find out where things were. He couldn't go everywhere at his age, and apparently some of the village had changed since his parents had been alive, but most of the important things were the same. Including the ramen stand.
He didn't know what his mother's 'food of the gods' description meant exactly, but it sounded perfect and he had added 'ramen' to his budget sheets. Though she seemed slightly offended that he preferred Ichiraku's ramen to her favorite brand of instant...once they'd found instant ramen at all. She'd actually despaired that it had stopped existing when none of the stores near the apartment carried any.
His father claimed that the bigger health risk remained having learned how to prepare pork and bacon in the apartment, both of which frequently got added to ramen when not eaten as a snack.
Naruto found that learning the village to his parents' satisfaction took months. First he wandered as himself, then he added in Yoko, and then they had him using different forms each outing. He'd asked about using Knight Armor for the outfits when going out, but they'd told him not to as it would probably stand out to some people and make it more obvious that the different bodies were actually the same person. They were also...loud when he suggested going out as a fox and he didn't like going out looking like a cat or a dog.
He did anyway, because he knew from his parents that doing things you don't like is frequently the best way to get to do the things you do like.
They also wanted him to be able to move around without obviously paying attention while still avoiding hitting anyone and spotting anyone following him. Including the very sneaky Anbu guards. Looking like you were paying attention was apparently a bad thing, especially just after you'd played a prank. Being distracted and obviously not paying attention to your surroundings, especially if you made it look like you'd not noticed being lightly splattered by something in your own prank, was apparently one of the best ways to have others decide that you were merely a bystander.
During those months he'd had tutors help him with water-walking and swimming, the latter as a side effect and making Naruto glad that hot springs existed, followed by surface-sticking. Well, most called it tree-climbing, and they had been using trees, but the official name was surface-sticking and could be used for a lot more than climbing trees. Like climbing buildings, or keeping yourself stuck to the ground. He'd also started working on the replacement jutsu, but it took far too long to do successfully right now and he still had to do the hand seals. This still put him ahead of his classmates in a way, as they were still working on getting believable disguises down.
Or in his case, getting one working at all. That thing took so little chakra it was insane. He'd accidentally created three different 'solid' versions that his parents had him write down the details of, one of which even let you feel people interacting with the shell of chakra. He wanted to teach Hinata that one to see if he had it written down correctly, but hadn't had enough time to do so in private. As for the one the academy wanted, that one felt like he might never get it down.
Spring had come, and Naruto had accomplished three different milestones in the same week. He'd managed to spend an hour on the wall of his apartment, could replace himself in under two seconds, and had sufficient knowledge of the village and awareness of his surroundings to wander while reading things duplicated in the Tome. Usually academy textbooks, but occasionally a cookbook or the The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi. And he usually had to ignore the book itself and just fake reading it.
He wasn't sure why his father had insisted on wandering with the Tome being done while the Tome had a plain orange cover though. Orange was awesome, admittedly, but it felt like that was a joke or prank of its own. Especially given the looks that people kept giving him, but nobody approached him to ask what he was reading so he was able to largely ignore that detail and his father had declined to explain his reasoning.
His mother had walked him through getting through the shrine into the Uzumaki compound as a reward, though it turned out that she'd not shared it before then because it required being able to safely use the surface-sticking exercise. Other entrances didn't, but the shrine entrance did unless someone opened it for you from the inside. The compound itself had two small houses and a training hall, plus a lot of overgrown plants.
"Okay Naruto," his mother said inside of the Tome. "We'll cover the other ways to get in later, but the shrine is the only one that was a complete secret. While you were wandering we noticed that the other entrances were being watched, so you have to be careful about using them. But there is one more reward for your progress, one which will help you explore and clean up here."
"This one is a new jutsu," his father said, and the Tome expanded into book form. "We don't know if you'll ever get the normal disguise jutsu down, or the clone when they get to that. But there's a much more useful version for those with enough chakra. You should have enough control to use it safely now, or we'd have shared it already."
"It's even perfect for pranking and boring paperwork! Or homework, in your case."
There was a pause, and Naruto got the feeling that his father was blinking in the Tome world.
"GODDAMMIT," his father yelled a moment later. "HOW DID I NEVER FIGURE THAT OUT?"
"...you didn't know?" his mother asked, sounding confused. "Its name in Uzu was the paperwork jutsu."
Naruto left the two to that, and Kurama to laughing his tails off at their antics, while he opened up the Tome and read the instructions for the jutsu. There were several sets of instructions of different complexities, and he ended up getting a headache trying to understand the 'full' version before skipping to the 'for dummies and children' version.
He had no problem with being considered either after seeing the 'full' instructions.
The basic version looked simple enough, and there were several paragraphs on how to use them for various things like training, but there were minor 'variations' in how they functioned that you could apply as well. One was putting less than an even split of chakra in, if you had enough to do so, that would allow you to make the clones stronger or weaker than they would normally be. Another was adjusting the strength of the connection between clones, making it stronger to allow communication without them dispelling but also putting more strain on the user trying to split their focus in real time. Lastly was a tweak to allow clones to remain active or not while the user was sleeping, but was incompatible with making the connection stronger.
Nodding to himself, Naruto re-read the instructions for the basic version three more times, then put the Tome under his arm and put his hands together into the single hand seal described.
Five hours later there were finally clones around Naruto, and he was exhausted. So were his clones, having inherited his exhaustion even before his chakra had been split.
"Very good," his father said from the Tome.
"It took me hours," Naruto complained.
"It took me two months, but I'm not an Uzumaki."
"Most Uzumaki get it in a couple of weeks," his mother added. "But the scrolls always had the easy instructions hidden in the margins as though it was a decorative border. We were still expecting it to be a few days before you got it down."
Naruto actually ended up going back to the apartment, eating in time to be checked on to ensure that he was eating, and then returning to the compound to explore afterwards. That gave him enough time to recover his energy, and a dozen clones spread out throughout the compound to both explore and start cleaning things up. It was probably a good thing that he had a clone try to figure out the push mower thing though, because it probably would have hurt a lot more getting his foot stuck in it otherwise.
A few days later Naruto pulled his first prank. His target was a store owner that treated him badly but was perfectly happy to let Yoko shop in his store. A shapeshifted shadow clone had done all the work, to make it extra-hard to tie back to Naruto. He had been in class at the time, needing to be there in person since his shadow clones were too fragile, and a clone that was in his Yoko form had been seen cleaning the shrine.
It was obvious that nobody had a clue who had pulled the prank, and Naruto found it to be glorious. He came up with a list of targets and would carefully plan out hitting one every couple of weeks, but his parents also added some other goals to that list. Specifically, while his original list of targets were all civilians, they wanted him to also pull harmless pranks on shinobi. Older academy students to start with, then genin, chunin, jounin, eventually even attempt to get things over on Anbu.
The other major thing he used shadow clones for was training everything that wasn't physical. Every day he sent several into the Uzumaki compound to do chakra-based training, though there was only so much they could do there right now as there wasn't even a pond to water-walk on. The two bathtubs in the two houses weren't really all that useful once you had the absolute basics down. But they could repeatedly work on the disguise and replacement jutsu, to try to get the proper one working in the former case and to get it down without hand seals in the latter.
His parents promised a new chakra control exercise at summer break though, wanting to ensure that he had plenty of time to do the initial work on it, and they thought that Hinata was trustworthy enough to share more with. Assuming he could get enough time with her to share things with her, anyway. That was hard with all the training she did with her father and they really needed at least a couple of hours without Ko or one of the others that watched over her present. Well, Ko might be trustworthy enough on his own, since his parents remembered him, but they weren't really sure because they didn't know how he might have changed.
Last edited:
Chapter 1 - Too Much Chakra (CmptrWz)
Eventually Naruto was the only one left, and his mother had already explained that there was a 'privacy limiter' for Uzumaki that would keep it from showing his full power. Two Anbu had materialized in the back corners of the room to watch as he placed his hand on the place marked for it on the chakra meter and triggered the process with a little bit of his chakra. The seals his mother said were there pulled more in, and meters started filling.
All twelve meters, every last one filling clear to the top and pulsing with energy before something went pop and a burst of chakra came out of the top of the machine in a rainbow-like cloud.
"Knew you had a good portion of me in ya," Kurama commented as the displays flickered and faded out, three bursts of steam coming out of other release valves in the device. One of those hit the wall and melted a hole in it.
"Did I break it?" Naruto asked in the Tome world, concerned that he was about to get in trouble.
"It'll be fine," his mother assured him. "This is probably the one I broke the limiter on, and it just needs a few days to cool off. Much better than the exploding the previous model did. And far less painful for you, actually."
"I'm glad that I don't have to deal with the paperwork for this though," his father added. "Though I've got no clue how you're going to explain that."
"He plays dumb and lets people make stupid assumptions. And probably gets lessons in stealth and evasion in the process."
"...right, because having enough chakra to overload an Uzumaki-grade chakra meter is going to draw every clan's attention."
All twelve meters, every last one filling clear to the top and pulsing with energy before something went pop and a burst of chakra came out of the top of the machine in a rainbow-like cloud.
"Knew you had a good portion of me in ya," Kurama commented as the displays flickered and faded out, three bursts of steam coming out of other release valves in the device. One of those hit the wall and melted a hole in it.
"Did I break it?" Naruto asked in the Tome world, concerned that he was about to get in trouble.
"It'll be fine," his mother assured him. "This is probably the one I broke the limiter on, and it just needs a few days to cool off. Much better than the exploding the previous model did. And far less painful for you, actually."
"I'm glad that I don't have to deal with the paperwork for this though," his father added. "Though I've got no clue how you're going to explain that."
"He plays dumb and lets people make stupid assumptions. And probably gets lessons in stealth and evasion in the process."
"...right, because having enough chakra to overload an Uzumaki-grade chakra meter is going to draw every clan's attention."
Chapter 2 - Strings, Chains, and Secrets
Summer had come, and with it summer break. More students had left the academy, either dropped out or pulled out by their parents, and classes had been merged again. The new classes didn't seem to be spreading the 'clan kids' out as much as they had been, Naruto ending up back with Hinata but also having Kiba Inuzuka as the only other 'clan kid'. Well, either that or Naruto was now being included in the 'clan kids' category to get three total in the class?
He and his parents didn't know enough to decide either way, but not having Sasuke in the class was going to be nice.
Even better, Hinata's father had been requested at the daimyo's palace alongside a couple of the other clan heads for some kind of sensitive investigation that couldn't be left to 'less trustworthy' shinobi and was going to be away for a couple of weeks, giving her more free time to spend with him. Though not without Ko watching over her, which was annoying, and he wasn't allowed to visit to see her little sister Hanabi.
The current plan was for Hinata to come by tomorrow, so Naruto had left a 'paperwork jutsu' clone in his apartment and slipped into the Uzumaki compound. Thinking of the clone that way was part of a bigger prank on Old Man Hokage, or so his father claimed, and he had no problem with that. Especially as there was a scroll labeled that in the training hall that covered the jutsu.
A few more clones were sent to do their normal surface-sticking exercises before Naruto started bouncing slightly. "I'm ready!"
"Okay," his father said from inside of the Tome. "What we're going to teach you today is the basics of making chakra strings. They're most famous for being used by Suna with puppets, but they're a lot more useful than that."
"Properly used," his mother continued. "You can use chakra strings to do a number of things that a ninja wire can be used for, including triggering some kinds of traps. But where they really excel is helping when throwing weapons, or to just move objects around without needing to touch them."
"The ultimate test of whether or not you've mastered them is to stand in the middle of a dirty room and clean it without moving at all, except to clear out beneath your feet of course. But we don't expect you to get to that level anytime soon, for now it's just another chakra control exercise you can use to train up your control."
"There's an easy way and a hard way to learn to make chakra strings," his mother explained after he'd nodded. "I had to use the hard way that involves a lot of concentration."
"We'll try the easy way first," his father continued, the Tome pulsing to indicate that they'd likely added a written version of the lesson to it for him to read. But they didn't prompt him to read it yet. "Made easier because you have plenty of chakra to throw at the problem. Your goal is to reach out with your chakra from a single finger, keeping it connected, to touch the ground with it. Push enough chakra in and you'll likely get something more like a giant rope, which is wasteful, but once you get a feel for it we can dial back the amount you use."
Naruto nodded and focused, gathering chakra into his finger. He pointed down, because that was where the ground was, and pushed the chakra out. A moment later a chain shot out, the blade on the end piercing his foot and making him yell in pain. That disrupted the chain and released his foot from being pinned to the ground, allowing him to jump backwards to cradle his foot. Which obviously had a nasty cut, but the bleeding was already slowing. The Tome's healing effect kicking in a moment later helped too.
He was going to need new sandals though...
"And that's why I needed to use the hard way," his mother sighed. "The chains normally only run in the girls of the family."
"I think that the, er," his father started, obviously pausing to consider his words. "Part of the repaired 'net' on his core activated. Which may mean that others can be granted access to the chains too."
Naruto blinked a couple of times. "Wait, does that mean that Hinata could use them?"
"Maybe," his mother allowed. "We have a theory but would need to test it, and it would take most of a day to attempt."
"Though if it works then she could probably learn Knight Armor too," his father added. "But it probably won't help her much with her reserves."
"Well, she might be able to improve them more than she would have been able to otherwise, but that's about it."
"Either way, you should read the more detailed instructions on chakra strings. We'll work on a plan for training you with the chains as well."
Naruto nodded and opened the Tome up, flipping past all of the other jutsu and exercises to the new one. He never quite knew which page things were going to be on when added as the rest of what was already there moved out of the way for the new pages.
Itachi blinked a couple of times as he realized that Jiraiya had apparently found Tsunade...and somehow convinced her to perform the eye-swap between him and Shisui. "I was under the impression that you were doing your best to remain indefinitely retired."
"He," Tsunade said, jerking her thumb at Jiraiya. "Has apparently been subtly funding my trip the entire time."
"Nothing of the sort," Jiraiya retorted. "I just bought out as much of your debt that I could find. Cost less than I expected, too, since a few of those that lent you money were more than happy to trade for signed copies of my books."
The man ignored the glare that the legendary medic gave him. "Well, you aren't going to be watching me do the actual transfer."
"Of course not. I have seals to check on the walls of the hot springs."
"...right, they did look a little rough around the edges when we arrived."
"Seals?" Shisui asked, obviously confused. Itachi was equally confused, actually, but Shisui had just beaten him to voicing the question.
"Uzushio-sourced anti-dojutsu seals. He maintains them on the walls of every hot spring he's allowed regular access to, which is most of them in the Elemental Nations. I don't think he likes the potential competition, but every kunoichi on the continent over the age of twelve is probably aware. There's an informal agreement to not kill him if he's caught peeping."
Jiraiya scowled. "Using techniques that those in the hot springs have no hope of detecting at all is abhorrent. It isn't fair if you don't give them the chance to detect you, regardless of which side you aim to peek at!" Tsunade and Shizune both blinked and turned to stare at the man, and he scoffed. "You do realize that I don't charge for installing and maintaining those, right? Well, not on the walls of hot springs. The Hyuga clan and several daimyos have me swing through every five to eight years."
"Surely you're paid by virtue of being able to better maintain your little spy network."
"Nah, I see that and the advertising for installing and maintaining them elsewhere as a bonus. I'll go start working on that, let me know when they're ready for the seal to keep anyone from stealing their eyes."
Jiraiya wandered off towards the hot springs, and Tsunade turned to look at them instead. She actually focused on Itachi and raised an eyebrow. "He came to me because you two aren't closely related enough for this to be 'trivial', or so he claimed, but he didn't elaborate on how you managed to awaken your mangekyo. Just that it was 'unusual' and 'inspired' somehow."
"He saw me and his little brother die," Shisui answered.
Tsunade blinked a couple of times. "You and his little brother?"
"Yep."
"You're standing here, very much alive."
"I might have used one of my once-a-decade-per-eye powers on him."
"It was very traumatic," Itachi deadpanned. "You might want to check if his arm was healed properly after I broke it, since he didn't warn me ahead of time."
"You wouldn't have reacted properly if I'd warned you and you're the one who convinced me to use it from both eyes so that I couldn't be ordered to use it on either side of the potential coup."
"True. You never did explain what your second use was, though."
"That was the second use. The first one was the night before while I was drunk. I, er..."
Itachi sighed. "What did you do?"
"I don't fully remember, but I think it's why Izumi stopped attending the clan meetings?"
"You'll both get a full checkup while you're here," Tsunade said while Itachi was trying to process that. "The pervert is definitely paying me enough for that."
"Good morning," Naruto greeted Hinata and Ko as he waved them into his apartment.
"Hello," Hinata said. Shyly, with the finger-tapping, which to Naruto meant that they'd not spent enough time around each other lately.
"I was asked to apologize on behalf of the Hyuga clan for your not being able to visit the compound," Ko said, bowing. "Hiashi is somewhat paranoid about Hanabi's safety right now and the elders are...touchy about you in general. You can probably expect an invitation at some point after he's returned and can personally supervise."
Naruto nodded, as that was basically what Hinata had said the reason likely was. "I don't mind, though it would be neat to see inside."
The man then sighed. "With that formality out of the way, I'd like to be clear that I was tasked with checking how secure your apartment is during the past few weeks. I apologize, but in the process I spotted a couple of things, and one of them Hinata spotted as well and asked me about."
Hinata nodded, but just blushed instead of explaining, so Naruto focused on Ko. "What kinds of things?"
"The big one is that at different times we either spotted you and a clone or two of your clones at the same time with our byakugan. Your chakra and chakra network are both distinctive, especially when visible twice at the same time, and your disguise technique is impressive but does not hide that from our eyes." The man obviously noticed that Naruto's eyes had widened, as he held a hand up. "I have not told anyone else, even other Hyuga, and will not reveal it or any other of your secrets I learn without your permission. Hinata only asked me because she wasn't sure how it was possible. I would not have brought it up at all normally, but I want to ensure that you're aware that most do not have enough chakra to use the jutsu."
"The scroll I found reads your chakra and won't open unless you have enough."
Ko blinked a couple of times. "You...learned it from a scroll? Not from the Hokage? Who in the village knows that you can perform that jutsu?"
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "You two? Maybe other Hyuga that noticed, if your eyes can spot that the clones are me..."
"Is the scroll at least in your family's compound?" Naruto nodded, and Ko sighed. "That explains why nobody noticed it." He then frowned slightly. "Sorry, that's the other thing I noticed, though I had to double-check to confirm that the shrine you're probably using a clone to clean up is owned by the Uzumaki. One of the branch family girls tried to look after the shrine a few years ago, but couldn't open most of the doors, so imagine my surprise when I saw what I suspect was your clone doing so. It was actually the next day, while checking for observers before approaching to find out if she was an Uzumaki, that I noticed what I believe was the real you slipping through while your clone was out front. Given the positioning of the shrine and the known entrances to the Uzumaki compound, boarded up and blocked as they are, it didn't take much to determine that there's likely a hidden entrance."
"Apparently the anti-dojutsu seals on the shrine are failing," Naruto heard his mother grumble from the Tome.
"Why are the other ways in blocked?" Naruto asked.
Ko flinched. "I...have suspicions, and those that did so may not even remember doing so, but it is not my place to voice them. That said, it may be dangerous if you're the only one who can get into the compound. Should you be injured there then nobody will be able to reach you, doubly so if they do not know that you're there at all."
"He has a point," Naruto's father commented. "Hiruzen and Kakashi should still be able to enter, but if they don't know that you can get in then they might not think to look there for you."
"What do I do?" Naruto asked.
"We think you can trust Ko with the 'lesser' secrets we discussed," his mother answered. "And making it so that both of them can enter the compound themselves is easy enough. You can even show Ko the scroll with the instructions if he wants to know how you know."
Mentally nodding, Naruto looked up at Ko. "Then I can let you in to find me if I get hurt."
Ko shook his head. "While I'm flattered that you trust me, you should take more time to think about things. Further, going down to the shrine will draw attention."
Naruto grinned and moved towards the corner of the living room. "Getting down without being seen is easy."
"I find myself feeling better about trusting him already," his father commented while Naruto tapped the opening sequence for the hidden exit, getting surprised gasps from the two Hyuga.
Ten minutes later they'd made it into the compound, though Naruto had been confused when Hinata had asked how he'd dropped through the floor. Apparently only those allowed to enter the compound on their own could see the hole and it acted like a solid bit of floor to anyone else. They'd had to go back and look again after he'd added her and Ko to the seals, and both had flinched upon seeing the spike trap at the bottom of the pit.
Ko had recommended having Naruto use clones to let them in whenever possible, before ensuring that he and Hinata both understood how to navigate the path in case they did need to use it.
"So this is where you've been training out of sight," Ko finally said as Naruto was showing them around.
"Mostly," Naruto agreed. He wasn't revealing the extent of his shapeshifting, or his fox features, though did wonder if looking like an animal made it harder to tell that it was him. Then he remembered the disguise variant he'd written down. "Oh! I want to see if Hinata can do something."
He darted off to the training hall, Hinata and Ko trailing behind him, and went over to the shelf of scrolls there. There weren't many unique ones. The copies of the paperwork clone jutsu scroll had fancy end caps, there were a dozen copies of the three academy jutsu that were barely rolled up at all, a few copies of each of the 'three basic' chakra control exercises were at least tied off properly, basic wooden end caps for the twenty copies of the instructions for keying people into the compound. And then there were the three copies Naruto had made of his 'solid and can feel things' disguise jutsu sitting off to the side.
"Did you just take a scroll off of an empty shelf?" Ko asked.
Naruto blinked. "What?"
"The shelves only let actual Uzumaki interact with what's on them," his mother explained.
Ko just shook his head. "Sorry. You obviously won't know how everything works. What do you have there?"
"I made a jutsu by mistake," Naruto said, blushing. "I can't make the disguise jutsu work right, and I did the hand signs wrong and got something better."
"And you want to see if this works for anyone other than you?"
"Yeah!"
"Do you mind if I try it first? You may not even realize that it only works because of your sizable chakra reserves."
Naruto blinked. "What?"
"I may not have enough chakra," Hinata clarified, blushing again when Naruto focused on her. She stuttered a little before continuing. "Ko will be able to see if it's safe for me."
"Oh. Okay."
Naruto held the scroll out for Ko, who took it and opened it up. He then read it, frowning a couple of times. "Your choice of terminology is...well, probably to be expected at your age. Hmm. Those look normal...no, wait, that's mirrored ram, boar, mirrored dog? How in the world did you get the entire sequence backwards? And your description of the chakra flow is...hmmm. Ah, I can see how you came to that conclusion..."
The man examined the scroll for a few more minutes, muttering more things, before shrugging and placing it on the ground next to him. It took him four attempts to manage the technique, two of which went wrong because he'd done the normal versions of the hand seals instead of the mirrored ones, and when he succeeded he appeared to turn into a generic-looking man with brown hair and brown eyes.
Hinata activated her byakugan and frowned. "That..."
"It's solid," Ko said, lightly pulling on the shirt. "Much more chakra-intensive than the normal jutsu, but well within a genin's range. And I can even feel the cloth on the skin of the shell."
"I had some that I couldn't feel through," Naruto offered. "But this one felt the most useful."
"Definitely. Hinata, would you strike me with the Gentle Fist? I want to see if this dispels as easily as the normal disguise jutsu."
Hinata looked nervous, but after a moment performed some hand signs to activate her byakugan. Nodding to herself, she gathered chakra into her right hand and tapped the man. He flinched as the chakra was released from her fingers, but the disguise wasn't affected. "Er, did I do it right?"
"That was fine, you even closed off one of my chakra points. This is definitely an improvement over the normal disguise technique, though not one that I'd recommend be used in the academy." He crouched down and picked up the instructions. "But I think we should sit down and rewrite this a little before having Hinata try it."
It didn't take long to do so, and Naruto admitted that Ko's choice of words sounded better. The man had also had Naruto write down that it could be used for partial transformations, after changing just his eyes. Hinata then read the first draft of the new instructions while Naruto made better copies. It took her longer to get it right, and she made herself look a lot like Yoko. But with blond hair instead of red.
Ko reached out and lightly tugged on the longer blond hair Hinata now appeared to have, causing the girl to flinch in pain. He then activated his byakugan, frowning. "Hmmm. Not quite what Naruto uses? Or perhaps it just works differently on clones, since they're already chakra constructs." He shook his head. "I suppose that doesn't matter, and maybe I'm heading down a path of prying into other secrets. Naruto, I think you do have a decision to make regarding this jutsu."
Naruto blinked, though heard his parents groan as though they'd forgotten something. "What?"
"You can either claim this as a clan technique that you have allowed myself and Hinata to learn, or you can officially register it for others in the village to be able to use. In the latter case, you can do so for the general jutsu pool or offer Anbu first dibs. The Anbu will pay more, but will also keep it more secret. For particularly useful jutsu they even offer training in another jutsu in exchange on top of the money paid. Or if you want it to benefit normal shinobi more you can go with the smaller payout of the general pool."
"Oh."
"Getting on the good side of the Anbu commander is always a good idea," his father finally commented. "And they should be able to teach you how to disguise your chakra to make it harder to be spotted. I, er, never actually bothered to learn that one."
"Nor did I," his mother admitted.
"Could the Anbu help me make my chakra look different?" Naruto asked, since his parents sounded unsure of things.
"Most likely," Ko agreed. "Put all but one copy away, and then we'll head back up to your apartment. Better to be seen leaving from there. And in a couple of days I might have an offer to officially pay you for a copy for the Hyuga as well."
"Er," Hinata said, eeping a little when they focused on her. She dispelled her own disguise, then looked at Ko. "You still have brown eyes."
The man blinked. "Oh, right. I'm almost guaranteed to have an offer from the Hyuga. I just have to talk to a couple of the more reasonable elders about funds."
Naruto was certain that Hinata had been just as disappointed with the 'public facing' Anbu office. There was a single desk, a restroom, and a filing cabinet full of blank forms. Ko had helped with filling out the single form required, which had then been taken by the Anbu at the desk 'for review'. After Ko had demonstrated changing just his eyes in particular.
"Normally they say that it could be three to four weeks," Ko said once the Anbu had vanished. "That they asked us to wait makes me think they're a bit more excited."
Before any response could be made to that, an Anbu with a white cloak and a dog-like mask appeared in the room. "My apologies for the wait. I understand that Uzumaki 'accidentally' created a solid disguise jutsu?"
"Yep," Ko said. "Still a shell, so you can't shrink down with it, but remarkably useful anyway. He's having a lot of trouble getting the chakra requirements for the illusionary one down."
"Overloading it?"
"That would be my assumption. I didn't ask him to demonstrate."
The Anbu nodded, then turned to Naruto. "Would you mind if I try the technique? If it works for me then I can arrange for several individuals in Konoha to help you learn to disguise your chakra signature."
Naruto just nodded and held out the scroll, the Anbu taking it and obviously carefully reading it. There was an impression of him frowning, as though it didn't seem right, but eventually he nodded and placed it down on the desk. It only took him two attempts before he appeared to be a she. Still dressed in the Anbu gear, but 'she' poked her chest for a moment before nodding. But when 'she' spoke her voice was different too. "Definitely solid...and the scroll said nothing about it affecting my voice."
"I don't think anyone had tried a change that would trigger that until just now," Ko admitted.
"And even if Uzumaki had, there probably wouldn't be any noticeable difference. Right." The disguise was dispelled and a sack pulled out of a pocket. "Definitely worth every ryo. I'll need to check on schedules for your lessons, expect someone to check in with you in the next two weeks."
Naruto nodded as he took the sack. He peeked inside of it, eyes going wide at the amount of money inside.
"Perhaps our next stop should be the bank," Ko mused.
The next day Ko had returned and escorted Naruto to the Hyuga compound, where a group of three elders had observed the use of the solid disguise technique before officially purchasing a copy of the scroll. They then allowed Naruto to meet Hanabi, who was nervous around him at first but then fell asleep in his lap. He hadn't known what to do at that point, but was rescued by Natsu who took the girl to have a nap in her room. He then left, Ko thanking him before going back to help teach the active ninja of the clan the solid disguise jutsu.
Naruto had swung by the bank to deposit the newly acquired money, though he kept out enough to buy new sandals. He then went home to ensure that his account ledger there was updated properly, only to find a box outside of his door. It contained higher-quality sandals than he had before, a book on disguising your chakra, two shrine maiden outfits, an orange dress, and a couple pairs of civilian-style shoes. One that looked like it was meant to go with the shrine maiden outfit and the other that looked like it was meant for the dress.
"Does this mean that someone in the Anbu noticed that I know the paperwork jutsu?" Naruto asked his parents.
"I'd have to say yes," his father replied. "Though the only one they're likely to tell is Hiruzen, and they might not even tell him."
Shrugging, Naruto pulled the Tome out and ensured that it had a copy of the book before deciding to see how the dress looked on Yoko. He'd end up leaving it on while he tried to read the book, needing a lot of help from his parents because it used a lot of words he didn't know. At least until something exploded outside, and his mother had to remind him that he looked like Yoko before he ran out of the apartment to try to see what was going on.
Obito bit back a scream for the fourth time as he appeared out of the kamui dimension, crashing down onto his side due to his right leg having been torn off. He'd crashed a clan meeting earlier, finding them talking about the impending coup. His intent had been to convince the clan to help him find the nine-tails before they killed off anyone who might be in the know. Instead they'd turned around and blamed him-as-Madara for all of the clan's problems and tried to kill him! Even that would've been a mere annoyance, except that Fugaku had surprised them all by having a mangekyo that had been able to counter the intangibility of kamui.
At least that mangekyo wasn't a problem anymore. Obito was confident that he was the only one that made it out of the meeting hall alive, and nobody was going to be collecting eyes from the ashes left behind after the accidental combination of fourteen fire jutsu. He'd taken a quick look before leaving Konoha entirely and lamented the loss of potential helpers, but if they were going to attack 'Madara' on sight then perhaps it was for the best.
Even better, nobody had to know he'd been there at all. He'd left no witnesses alive either, so it was likely that the entire thing would be blamed on an internal dispute that had erupted into all-out fighting.
Now if only he didn't have to worry about learning to use a Zetsu-stuff leg, once he had one attached...
Naruto didn't mind that it had taken the Anbu longer to arrange for him to start training in disguising his chakra, because most of the Uchiha dying in an attack of some kind was definitely more important. Well, Kurama only thought it was important because nobody had 'finished the job', but Naruto wasn't sure why. His parents were of the opinion that the Uchiha weren't as bad as Kurama thought they were, but also admitted that he had good reason to dislike them.
Old Man Hokage had let slip that they had a picture from a camera the attacker hadn't known about but the new clan head Itachi had, but clammed up before saying who had been responsible. And then successfully distracted Naruto with an extra three bowls of ramen and even paid off his tab with Ichiraku's in thanks for sharing his created jutsu with the Anbu.
But once the academy had started up again, also late, Anbu had started meeting with him three times a week to train with him. That the Anbu met Naruto in the Uzumaki compound without being keyed in was apparently a sign of how good they were, though they were setting off the silent alarm seals every time as well. Naruto didn't bother to tell them the latter, his mother insisting that it was better that the man not realize that he was failing to fool all the seals. Those lessons were going slowly, but the man was also helping Naruto learn chakra strings because more control was a good thing.
Naruto had also spent some time wandering as Yoko wearing the clothing he'd been given, and even bought some more for 'her' so as to not be relying on fakes created with jutsu otherwise. In many ways he preferred the way the villagers treated Yoko, as it was at least more consistent than the way they treated Naruto. Hinata easily found him either way, when she was looking, and the first time she'd found him wandering as Yoko had decided to put on a solid disguise to see how differently she was treated.
Hinata had liked the anonymity enough to join him wandering disguised repeatedly. So as to not create too many random faces wandering around he stuck to Yoko, and she stuck to the blond almost-Yoko that she'd dubbed Hikari. This led to a larger wardrobe for Yoko, which ended up needing to be kept in the Uzumaki compound because he didn't have enough room in his small apartment for two wardrobes. Hinata ended up claiming a closet for her Hikari clothing as well, but seemed to have far more fun convincing Naruto to dress up.
Ko found it hilarious, but also pointed out that several chunin that were infiltration specialists had second apartments for their clothing. Followed by getting both of them books on how infiltration specialists operated, even if he suspected that Hinata had the wrong personality for it. Naruto found the sections on body language interesting and his parents agreed that if he was able to get enough control of his chakra then he'd make an excellent infiltration expert.
Followed by adding more to his 'play pranks' training. Specifically, they had him get caught intentionally every so often while looking like someone else as a double-prank to see how well he could imitate the other person. So far it hadn't worked well, but he thought he was getting better.
He and his parents didn't know enough to decide either way, but not having Sasuke in the class was going to be nice.
Even better, Hinata's father had been requested at the daimyo's palace alongside a couple of the other clan heads for some kind of sensitive investigation that couldn't be left to 'less trustworthy' shinobi and was going to be away for a couple of weeks, giving her more free time to spend with him. Though not without Ko watching over her, which was annoying, and he wasn't allowed to visit to see her little sister Hanabi.
The current plan was for Hinata to come by tomorrow, so Naruto had left a 'paperwork jutsu' clone in his apartment and slipped into the Uzumaki compound. Thinking of the clone that way was part of a bigger prank on Old Man Hokage, or so his father claimed, and he had no problem with that. Especially as there was a scroll labeled that in the training hall that covered the jutsu.
A few more clones were sent to do their normal surface-sticking exercises before Naruto started bouncing slightly. "I'm ready!"
"Okay," his father said from inside of the Tome. "What we're going to teach you today is the basics of making chakra strings. They're most famous for being used by Suna with puppets, but they're a lot more useful than that."
"Properly used," his mother continued. "You can use chakra strings to do a number of things that a ninja wire can be used for, including triggering some kinds of traps. But where they really excel is helping when throwing weapons, or to just move objects around without needing to touch them."
"The ultimate test of whether or not you've mastered them is to stand in the middle of a dirty room and clean it without moving at all, except to clear out beneath your feet of course. But we don't expect you to get to that level anytime soon, for now it's just another chakra control exercise you can use to train up your control."
"There's an easy way and a hard way to learn to make chakra strings," his mother explained after he'd nodded. "I had to use the hard way that involves a lot of concentration."
"We'll try the easy way first," his father continued, the Tome pulsing to indicate that they'd likely added a written version of the lesson to it for him to read. But they didn't prompt him to read it yet. "Made easier because you have plenty of chakra to throw at the problem. Your goal is to reach out with your chakra from a single finger, keeping it connected, to touch the ground with it. Push enough chakra in and you'll likely get something more like a giant rope, which is wasteful, but once you get a feel for it we can dial back the amount you use."
Naruto nodded and focused, gathering chakra into his finger. He pointed down, because that was where the ground was, and pushed the chakra out. A moment later a chain shot out, the blade on the end piercing his foot and making him yell in pain. That disrupted the chain and released his foot from being pinned to the ground, allowing him to jump backwards to cradle his foot. Which obviously had a nasty cut, but the bleeding was already slowing. The Tome's healing effect kicking in a moment later helped too.
He was going to need new sandals though...
"And that's why I needed to use the hard way," his mother sighed. "The chains normally only run in the girls of the family."
"I think that the, er," his father started, obviously pausing to consider his words. "Part of the repaired 'net' on his core activated. Which may mean that others can be granted access to the chains too."
Naruto blinked a couple of times. "Wait, does that mean that Hinata could use them?"
"Maybe," his mother allowed. "We have a theory but would need to test it, and it would take most of a day to attempt."
"Though if it works then she could probably learn Knight Armor too," his father added. "But it probably won't help her much with her reserves."
"Well, she might be able to improve them more than she would have been able to otherwise, but that's about it."
"Either way, you should read the more detailed instructions on chakra strings. We'll work on a plan for training you with the chains as well."
Naruto nodded and opened the Tome up, flipping past all of the other jutsu and exercises to the new one. He never quite knew which page things were going to be on when added as the rest of what was already there moved out of the way for the new pages.
Itachi blinked a couple of times as he realized that Jiraiya had apparently found Tsunade...and somehow convinced her to perform the eye-swap between him and Shisui. "I was under the impression that you were doing your best to remain indefinitely retired."
"He," Tsunade said, jerking her thumb at Jiraiya. "Has apparently been subtly funding my trip the entire time."
"Nothing of the sort," Jiraiya retorted. "I just bought out as much of your debt that I could find. Cost less than I expected, too, since a few of those that lent you money were more than happy to trade for signed copies of my books."
The man ignored the glare that the legendary medic gave him. "Well, you aren't going to be watching me do the actual transfer."
"Of course not. I have seals to check on the walls of the hot springs."
"...right, they did look a little rough around the edges when we arrived."
"Seals?" Shisui asked, obviously confused. Itachi was equally confused, actually, but Shisui had just beaten him to voicing the question.
"Uzushio-sourced anti-dojutsu seals. He maintains them on the walls of every hot spring he's allowed regular access to, which is most of them in the Elemental Nations. I don't think he likes the potential competition, but every kunoichi on the continent over the age of twelve is probably aware. There's an informal agreement to not kill him if he's caught peeping."
Jiraiya scowled. "Using techniques that those in the hot springs have no hope of detecting at all is abhorrent. It isn't fair if you don't give them the chance to detect you, regardless of which side you aim to peek at!" Tsunade and Shizune both blinked and turned to stare at the man, and he scoffed. "You do realize that I don't charge for installing and maintaining those, right? Well, not on the walls of hot springs. The Hyuga clan and several daimyos have me swing through every five to eight years."
"Surely you're paid by virtue of being able to better maintain your little spy network."
"Nah, I see that and the advertising for installing and maintaining them elsewhere as a bonus. I'll go start working on that, let me know when they're ready for the seal to keep anyone from stealing their eyes."
Jiraiya wandered off towards the hot springs, and Tsunade turned to look at them instead. She actually focused on Itachi and raised an eyebrow. "He came to me because you two aren't closely related enough for this to be 'trivial', or so he claimed, but he didn't elaborate on how you managed to awaken your mangekyo. Just that it was 'unusual' and 'inspired' somehow."
"He saw me and his little brother die," Shisui answered.
Tsunade blinked a couple of times. "You and his little brother?"
"Yep."
"You're standing here, very much alive."
"I might have used one of my once-a-decade-per-eye powers on him."
"It was very traumatic," Itachi deadpanned. "You might want to check if his arm was healed properly after I broke it, since he didn't warn me ahead of time."
"You wouldn't have reacted properly if I'd warned you and you're the one who convinced me to use it from both eyes so that I couldn't be ordered to use it on either side of the potential coup."
"True. You never did explain what your second use was, though."
"That was the second use. The first one was the night before while I was drunk. I, er..."
Itachi sighed. "What did you do?"
"I don't fully remember, but I think it's why Izumi stopped attending the clan meetings?"
"You'll both get a full checkup while you're here," Tsunade said while Itachi was trying to process that. "The pervert is definitely paying me enough for that."
"Good morning," Naruto greeted Hinata and Ko as he waved them into his apartment.
"Hello," Hinata said. Shyly, with the finger-tapping, which to Naruto meant that they'd not spent enough time around each other lately.
"I was asked to apologize on behalf of the Hyuga clan for your not being able to visit the compound," Ko said, bowing. "Hiashi is somewhat paranoid about Hanabi's safety right now and the elders are...touchy about you in general. You can probably expect an invitation at some point after he's returned and can personally supervise."
Naruto nodded, as that was basically what Hinata had said the reason likely was. "I don't mind, though it would be neat to see inside."
The man then sighed. "With that formality out of the way, I'd like to be clear that I was tasked with checking how secure your apartment is during the past few weeks. I apologize, but in the process I spotted a couple of things, and one of them Hinata spotted as well and asked me about."
Hinata nodded, but just blushed instead of explaining, so Naruto focused on Ko. "What kinds of things?"
"The big one is that at different times we either spotted you and a clone or two of your clones at the same time with our byakugan. Your chakra and chakra network are both distinctive, especially when visible twice at the same time, and your disguise technique is impressive but does not hide that from our eyes." The man obviously noticed that Naruto's eyes had widened, as he held a hand up. "I have not told anyone else, even other Hyuga, and will not reveal it or any other of your secrets I learn without your permission. Hinata only asked me because she wasn't sure how it was possible. I would not have brought it up at all normally, but I want to ensure that you're aware that most do not have enough chakra to use the jutsu."
"The scroll I found reads your chakra and won't open unless you have enough."
Ko blinked a couple of times. "You...learned it from a scroll? Not from the Hokage? Who in the village knows that you can perform that jutsu?"
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "You two? Maybe other Hyuga that noticed, if your eyes can spot that the clones are me..."
"Is the scroll at least in your family's compound?" Naruto nodded, and Ko sighed. "That explains why nobody noticed it." He then frowned slightly. "Sorry, that's the other thing I noticed, though I had to double-check to confirm that the shrine you're probably using a clone to clean up is owned by the Uzumaki. One of the branch family girls tried to look after the shrine a few years ago, but couldn't open most of the doors, so imagine my surprise when I saw what I suspect was your clone doing so. It was actually the next day, while checking for observers before approaching to find out if she was an Uzumaki, that I noticed what I believe was the real you slipping through while your clone was out front. Given the positioning of the shrine and the known entrances to the Uzumaki compound, boarded up and blocked as they are, it didn't take much to determine that there's likely a hidden entrance."
"Apparently the anti-dojutsu seals on the shrine are failing," Naruto heard his mother grumble from the Tome.
"Why are the other ways in blocked?" Naruto asked.
Ko flinched. "I...have suspicions, and those that did so may not even remember doing so, but it is not my place to voice them. That said, it may be dangerous if you're the only one who can get into the compound. Should you be injured there then nobody will be able to reach you, doubly so if they do not know that you're there at all."
"He has a point," Naruto's father commented. "Hiruzen and Kakashi should still be able to enter, but if they don't know that you can get in then they might not think to look there for you."
"What do I do?" Naruto asked.
"We think you can trust Ko with the 'lesser' secrets we discussed," his mother answered. "And making it so that both of them can enter the compound themselves is easy enough. You can even show Ko the scroll with the instructions if he wants to know how you know."
Mentally nodding, Naruto looked up at Ko. "Then I can let you in to find me if I get hurt."
Ko shook his head. "While I'm flattered that you trust me, you should take more time to think about things. Further, going down to the shrine will draw attention."
Naruto grinned and moved towards the corner of the living room. "Getting down without being seen is easy."
"I find myself feeling better about trusting him already," his father commented while Naruto tapped the opening sequence for the hidden exit, getting surprised gasps from the two Hyuga.
Ten minutes later they'd made it into the compound, though Naruto had been confused when Hinata had asked how he'd dropped through the floor. Apparently only those allowed to enter the compound on their own could see the hole and it acted like a solid bit of floor to anyone else. They'd had to go back and look again after he'd added her and Ko to the seals, and both had flinched upon seeing the spike trap at the bottom of the pit.
Ko had recommended having Naruto use clones to let them in whenever possible, before ensuring that he and Hinata both understood how to navigate the path in case they did need to use it.
"So this is where you've been training out of sight," Ko finally said as Naruto was showing them around.
"Mostly," Naruto agreed. He wasn't revealing the extent of his shapeshifting, or his fox features, though did wonder if looking like an animal made it harder to tell that it was him. Then he remembered the disguise variant he'd written down. "Oh! I want to see if Hinata can do something."
He darted off to the training hall, Hinata and Ko trailing behind him, and went over to the shelf of scrolls there. There weren't many unique ones. The copies of the paperwork clone jutsu scroll had fancy end caps, there were a dozen copies of the three academy jutsu that were barely rolled up at all, a few copies of each of the 'three basic' chakra control exercises were at least tied off properly, basic wooden end caps for the twenty copies of the instructions for keying people into the compound. And then there were the three copies Naruto had made of his 'solid and can feel things' disguise jutsu sitting off to the side.
"Did you just take a scroll off of an empty shelf?" Ko asked.
Naruto blinked. "What?"
"The shelves only let actual Uzumaki interact with what's on them," his mother explained.
Ko just shook his head. "Sorry. You obviously won't know how everything works. What do you have there?"
"I made a jutsu by mistake," Naruto said, blushing. "I can't make the disguise jutsu work right, and I did the hand signs wrong and got something better."
"And you want to see if this works for anyone other than you?"
"Yeah!"
"Do you mind if I try it first? You may not even realize that it only works because of your sizable chakra reserves."
Naruto blinked. "What?"
"I may not have enough chakra," Hinata clarified, blushing again when Naruto focused on her. She stuttered a little before continuing. "Ko will be able to see if it's safe for me."
"Oh. Okay."
Naruto held the scroll out for Ko, who took it and opened it up. He then read it, frowning a couple of times. "Your choice of terminology is...well, probably to be expected at your age. Hmm. Those look normal...no, wait, that's mirrored ram, boar, mirrored dog? How in the world did you get the entire sequence backwards? And your description of the chakra flow is...hmmm. Ah, I can see how you came to that conclusion..."
The man examined the scroll for a few more minutes, muttering more things, before shrugging and placing it on the ground next to him. It took him four attempts to manage the technique, two of which went wrong because he'd done the normal versions of the hand seals instead of the mirrored ones, and when he succeeded he appeared to turn into a generic-looking man with brown hair and brown eyes.
Hinata activated her byakugan and frowned. "That..."
"It's solid," Ko said, lightly pulling on the shirt. "Much more chakra-intensive than the normal jutsu, but well within a genin's range. And I can even feel the cloth on the skin of the shell."
"I had some that I couldn't feel through," Naruto offered. "But this one felt the most useful."
"Definitely. Hinata, would you strike me with the Gentle Fist? I want to see if this dispels as easily as the normal disguise jutsu."
Hinata looked nervous, but after a moment performed some hand signs to activate her byakugan. Nodding to herself, she gathered chakra into her right hand and tapped the man. He flinched as the chakra was released from her fingers, but the disguise wasn't affected. "Er, did I do it right?"
"That was fine, you even closed off one of my chakra points. This is definitely an improvement over the normal disguise technique, though not one that I'd recommend be used in the academy." He crouched down and picked up the instructions. "But I think we should sit down and rewrite this a little before having Hinata try it."
It didn't take long to do so, and Naruto admitted that Ko's choice of words sounded better. The man had also had Naruto write down that it could be used for partial transformations, after changing just his eyes. Hinata then read the first draft of the new instructions while Naruto made better copies. It took her longer to get it right, and she made herself look a lot like Yoko. But with blond hair instead of red.
Ko reached out and lightly tugged on the longer blond hair Hinata now appeared to have, causing the girl to flinch in pain. He then activated his byakugan, frowning. "Hmmm. Not quite what Naruto uses? Or perhaps it just works differently on clones, since they're already chakra constructs." He shook his head. "I suppose that doesn't matter, and maybe I'm heading down a path of prying into other secrets. Naruto, I think you do have a decision to make regarding this jutsu."
Naruto blinked, though heard his parents groan as though they'd forgotten something. "What?"
"You can either claim this as a clan technique that you have allowed myself and Hinata to learn, or you can officially register it for others in the village to be able to use. In the latter case, you can do so for the general jutsu pool or offer Anbu first dibs. The Anbu will pay more, but will also keep it more secret. For particularly useful jutsu they even offer training in another jutsu in exchange on top of the money paid. Or if you want it to benefit normal shinobi more you can go with the smaller payout of the general pool."
"Oh."
"Getting on the good side of the Anbu commander is always a good idea," his father finally commented. "And they should be able to teach you how to disguise your chakra to make it harder to be spotted. I, er, never actually bothered to learn that one."
"Nor did I," his mother admitted.
"Could the Anbu help me make my chakra look different?" Naruto asked, since his parents sounded unsure of things.
"Most likely," Ko agreed. "Put all but one copy away, and then we'll head back up to your apartment. Better to be seen leaving from there. And in a couple of days I might have an offer to officially pay you for a copy for the Hyuga as well."
"Er," Hinata said, eeping a little when they focused on her. She dispelled her own disguise, then looked at Ko. "You still have brown eyes."
The man blinked. "Oh, right. I'm almost guaranteed to have an offer from the Hyuga. I just have to talk to a couple of the more reasonable elders about funds."
Naruto was certain that Hinata had been just as disappointed with the 'public facing' Anbu office. There was a single desk, a restroom, and a filing cabinet full of blank forms. Ko had helped with filling out the single form required, which had then been taken by the Anbu at the desk 'for review'. After Ko had demonstrated changing just his eyes in particular.
"Normally they say that it could be three to four weeks," Ko said once the Anbu had vanished. "That they asked us to wait makes me think they're a bit more excited."
Before any response could be made to that, an Anbu with a white cloak and a dog-like mask appeared in the room. "My apologies for the wait. I understand that Uzumaki 'accidentally' created a solid disguise jutsu?"
"Yep," Ko said. "Still a shell, so you can't shrink down with it, but remarkably useful anyway. He's having a lot of trouble getting the chakra requirements for the illusionary one down."
"Overloading it?"
"That would be my assumption. I didn't ask him to demonstrate."
The Anbu nodded, then turned to Naruto. "Would you mind if I try the technique? If it works for me then I can arrange for several individuals in Konoha to help you learn to disguise your chakra signature."
Naruto just nodded and held out the scroll, the Anbu taking it and obviously carefully reading it. There was an impression of him frowning, as though it didn't seem right, but eventually he nodded and placed it down on the desk. It only took him two attempts before he appeared to be a she. Still dressed in the Anbu gear, but 'she' poked her chest for a moment before nodding. But when 'she' spoke her voice was different too. "Definitely solid...and the scroll said nothing about it affecting my voice."
"I don't think anyone had tried a change that would trigger that until just now," Ko admitted.
"And even if Uzumaki had, there probably wouldn't be any noticeable difference. Right." The disguise was dispelled and a sack pulled out of a pocket. "Definitely worth every ryo. I'll need to check on schedules for your lessons, expect someone to check in with you in the next two weeks."
Naruto nodded as he took the sack. He peeked inside of it, eyes going wide at the amount of money inside.
"Perhaps our next stop should be the bank," Ko mused.
The next day Ko had returned and escorted Naruto to the Hyuga compound, where a group of three elders had observed the use of the solid disguise technique before officially purchasing a copy of the scroll. They then allowed Naruto to meet Hanabi, who was nervous around him at first but then fell asleep in his lap. He hadn't known what to do at that point, but was rescued by Natsu who took the girl to have a nap in her room. He then left, Ko thanking him before going back to help teach the active ninja of the clan the solid disguise jutsu.
Naruto had swung by the bank to deposit the newly acquired money, though he kept out enough to buy new sandals. He then went home to ensure that his account ledger there was updated properly, only to find a box outside of his door. It contained higher-quality sandals than he had before, a book on disguising your chakra, two shrine maiden outfits, an orange dress, and a couple pairs of civilian-style shoes. One that looked like it was meant to go with the shrine maiden outfit and the other that looked like it was meant for the dress.
"Does this mean that someone in the Anbu noticed that I know the paperwork jutsu?" Naruto asked his parents.
"I'd have to say yes," his father replied. "Though the only one they're likely to tell is Hiruzen, and they might not even tell him."
Shrugging, Naruto pulled the Tome out and ensured that it had a copy of the book before deciding to see how the dress looked on Yoko. He'd end up leaving it on while he tried to read the book, needing a lot of help from his parents because it used a lot of words he didn't know. At least until something exploded outside, and his mother had to remind him that he looked like Yoko before he ran out of the apartment to try to see what was going on.
Obito bit back a scream for the fourth time as he appeared out of the kamui dimension, crashing down onto his side due to his right leg having been torn off. He'd crashed a clan meeting earlier, finding them talking about the impending coup. His intent had been to convince the clan to help him find the nine-tails before they killed off anyone who might be in the know. Instead they'd turned around and blamed him-as-Madara for all of the clan's problems and tried to kill him! Even that would've been a mere annoyance, except that Fugaku had surprised them all by having a mangekyo that had been able to counter the intangibility of kamui.
At least that mangekyo wasn't a problem anymore. Obito was confident that he was the only one that made it out of the meeting hall alive, and nobody was going to be collecting eyes from the ashes left behind after the accidental combination of fourteen fire jutsu. He'd taken a quick look before leaving Konoha entirely and lamented the loss of potential helpers, but if they were going to attack 'Madara' on sight then perhaps it was for the best.
Even better, nobody had to know he'd been there at all. He'd left no witnesses alive either, so it was likely that the entire thing would be blamed on an internal dispute that had erupted into all-out fighting.
Now if only he didn't have to worry about learning to use a Zetsu-stuff leg, once he had one attached...
Naruto didn't mind that it had taken the Anbu longer to arrange for him to start training in disguising his chakra, because most of the Uchiha dying in an attack of some kind was definitely more important. Well, Kurama only thought it was important because nobody had 'finished the job', but Naruto wasn't sure why. His parents were of the opinion that the Uchiha weren't as bad as Kurama thought they were, but also admitted that he had good reason to dislike them.
Old Man Hokage had let slip that they had a picture from a camera the attacker hadn't known about but the new clan head Itachi had, but clammed up before saying who had been responsible. And then successfully distracted Naruto with an extra three bowls of ramen and even paid off his tab with Ichiraku's in thanks for sharing his created jutsu with the Anbu.
But once the academy had started up again, also late, Anbu had started meeting with him three times a week to train with him. That the Anbu met Naruto in the Uzumaki compound without being keyed in was apparently a sign of how good they were, though they were setting off the silent alarm seals every time as well. Naruto didn't bother to tell them the latter, his mother insisting that it was better that the man not realize that he was failing to fool all the seals. Those lessons were going slowly, but the man was also helping Naruto learn chakra strings because more control was a good thing.
Naruto had also spent some time wandering as Yoko wearing the clothing he'd been given, and even bought some more for 'her' so as to not be relying on fakes created with jutsu otherwise. In many ways he preferred the way the villagers treated Yoko, as it was at least more consistent than the way they treated Naruto. Hinata easily found him either way, when she was looking, and the first time she'd found him wandering as Yoko had decided to put on a solid disguise to see how differently she was treated.
Hinata had liked the anonymity enough to join him wandering disguised repeatedly. So as to not create too many random faces wandering around he stuck to Yoko, and she stuck to the blond almost-Yoko that she'd dubbed Hikari. This led to a larger wardrobe for Yoko, which ended up needing to be kept in the Uzumaki compound because he didn't have enough room in his small apartment for two wardrobes. Hinata ended up claiming a closet for her Hikari clothing as well, but seemed to have far more fun convincing Naruto to dress up.
Ko found it hilarious, but also pointed out that several chunin that were infiltration specialists had second apartments for their clothing. Followed by getting both of them books on how infiltration specialists operated, even if he suspected that Hinata had the wrong personality for it. Naruto found the sections on body language interesting and his parents agreed that if he was able to get enough control of his chakra then he'd make an excellent infiltration expert.
Followed by adding more to his 'play pranks' training. Specifically, they had him get caught intentionally every so often while looking like someone else as a double-prank to see how well he could imitate the other person. So far it hadn't worked well, but he thought he was getting better.
Chapter 3 - Spreading Changes and Contracts
As much as Naruto would have liked to make progress faster, he'd only really gotten a proper handle on his chakra by the summer before his ninth birthday. It was only after a couple years of basically all-day work with clones that he finally got the leaf-sticking exercise down, and he'd had to master the others first. Then Hinata had pushed him to be able to stick a leaf on every chakra point, a Hyuga training method for learning to expel chakra from all of your chakra points instead of just those in your hands and feet. This didn't come anywhere near as easy to him as it did for the Hyuga, but he'd eventually figured it out. The worst part was that only after mastering that could he manage the academy's clone and disguise jutsu.
If not for needing to keep his control up, he'd love to be done with chakra control exercises. But his capacity was growing with him, so he had to keep going and going and going...
At the same time, thanks to the Anbu he'd reached the point where he could mimic other people's chakra or blend into the background. That made his clones far more effective, harder to spot, and he'd celebrated by pranking the Hyuga elders. Having found out about the 'caged bird' seal a few weeks prior had made him feel a little vindictive. Pranking the Anbu to prove that he could like his parents wanted him to would need to wait a few weeks at a minimum.
He still had time to have fun, and his parents didn't know if they should be annoyed or not that he'd come up with 'turn into a naked adult to distract or knock out chunin and jounin' using the solid disguise technique. They'd been solidly in the 'annoyed' category when he'd first come up with it, but it had worked more often than not when used. Well, unless he tried it on a Hyuga. There the success rate was far lower, and he'd not made any attempt at using it around Hinata or Ko.
But today he was nervous. Hinata had recently gotten general permission to visit without Ko when she didn't have other training and he planned on revealing a little more to her...and asking for her permission for two different experiments. Kurama thought he was stupid for asking about one, but the other required her actual cooperation.
"Hello Naruto," Hinata greeted as she came into the Uzumaki compound. She'd gotten a lot less nervous around him over the past couple of years, but still had shy fits. Most of the time when they were in public, she'd gotten much better about them while it was only the two of them and Ko.
"Hello," he greeted in return.
She frowned and pulsed her byakugan. "Something is obviously wrong, because I think the only clone you have out is Yoko in the shrine."
"Er, well...I've been keeping some secrets..."
Hinata sighed. "We're supposed to keep secrets. I have to keep my clan's secrets and you have Uzumaki secrets."
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "This is a little more important than that." She didn't look convinced, so he double-checked that his pants weren't going to trap his tail and released his shapeshift.
Blinking, Hinata activated her byakugan, then tilted her head. "They...have chakra points."
"Yep."
"The solid disguise doesn't affect chakra points."
"No, it doesn't."
"...how?"
Naruto flipped the Tome to book form. "I used to have the nine-tailed fox sealed in me, but then this found me. It was broken, thought I was severely injured, and tried to heal me while fixing itself. I ended up part-fox and can change my shape while the fox and my parents ended up in the Tome. Er, the book is named the Tome of the Orange Sky, and is a lot more than just a book."
Hinata moved around him, staring with her byakugan active. Then she reached out and touched his tail, hand jerking back when she found that it was actually there. A moment later she blushed, her byakugan shutting off.
Since she wasn't freaking out...he hoped, he continued. "Um, as part of 'healing' me, the Tome did something to me that we think gave me better access to elemental chakra...and maybe even chakra chains."
"...chains?"
Naruto hadn't trained much with the chains yet as they didn't help much with chakra control and finding a place to train with them properly was problematic. There wasn't enough room in the compound. But he had enough control to make a short chain come out of the palm of his hand. "These."
"Oh."
"But, well, we're curious if we're right and want to see if the Tome can 'fix' others in the same way."
Hinata's blush deepened a little, but only for a moment before she visibly forced herself to focus. "Er, would I become a...kitsune?"
"We don't think so. This is just fixing a...'net' like thing around your chakra. Kinda? And we think that fixing it will let you increase your chakra capacity more over time."
She pouted at that, before it shifted into a blush and then she focused again. "Um, does it hurt?"
"It shouldn't, but you can be kept asleep during it and it should only take an hour."
He wasn't sure exactly what was going on in her head, but after a couple of minutes of various emotions she nodded. Gesturing to one of the houses, figuring that she should at least be on a couch, they headed inside.
Hiruzen looked over the latest summary reports from the academy, along with notes and requests from families. The latter generally fell into three categories, the most common split between clans asking that their members not be allowed to graduate early and civilian parents wanting their children to be in class or teams with specific clan students. Then there were the miscellaneous requests that made sense.
The requests that were complete lunacy never made it into the summaries.
For a number of reasons, he ended up focusing on Naruto's year. Not only did it have the largest number of potential clan heirs in it right now, but it also had Naruto himself. Since he was serving as Naruto's parent for the purposes of the academy, Jiraiya not being in the village often enough to do so himself, it only made sense to keep a closer eye on that class. Not that much had changed since the last batch of summaries.
The 'look underneath' scores indicated that most of the civilian-born were still going to fail out, but some were likely to at least make it to graduation before failing the sensei test. There were a couple of exceptions though, students that had learned something about themselves over time and had gained a better drive. If not for current policies on age of graduation outside of wartime coupled with parental requests most of the clan-born would probably have graduated already, Naruto included now that he had managed all three of the academy jutsu.
There were three new clan-originating requests. An adjustment in Sasuke's class placement had been made by Itachi, aiming to keep a couple of the more...enthusiastic fangirls away from the boy. Hiruzen had made a couple of similar requests on Naruto's behalf shortly after the chakra meter display. The Inuzuka had made their standard requests regarding a pet for Kiba, as whatever puppy the boy ended up with wouldn't be considered a nin-dog for a few years. And Hiashi had amended the standard request for members of the Hyuga clan to not graduate early to include an exception for Hinata, allowing her to graduate early if Naruto did.
It certainly made sense from the point of view of the Hyuga elders subtly supporting the girl's obvious crush in hopes of a long-term alliance with the Uzumaki. Something that had only really started after Naruto's accidental creation of an amazingly simple solid disguise jutsu by running the entire sequence of hand seals for the illusionary one backwards and mirrored, then figuring out the chakra flows to make it work. The jutsu had already made both the Anbu and the Hyuga noticeably more effective in the field, though Itachi reported that it was less useful for the Uchiha because it 'blurred' the sharingan.
Well, Hiruzen wasn't against Naruto graduating a year early, and that would help balance out some known issues in that year's class. And it was nice to see some actual subtlety with trying to build romantic relationships, since the clans at least generally recognized that being blatant with matchmaking made failure far more likely...
"I'm sorry!" Hinata said, crying lightly. "I didn't mean to!"
Naruto nodded, checking where the girl's chakra chain had pierced his arm. "I know. I put my first one through my own foot."
She blinked at that. "You...what?"
"I was trying to make a chakra string 'the easy way', but got a chain through my foot instead. Besides, I heal fast. See? Not even bleeding now."
"Oh."
"But hey, this means that one thing worked!"
That seemed to distract her a bit more. "One thing?"
He nodded. "Er, yeah. I want to try to teach you a spell, and, um..."
She sighed. "And what?"
"We think that we know how the byakugan works and I want to see if we're right? Well, I was also curious about the sharingan, but we think that they have some kind of 'connected to an external power source' thing going on instead of being internal..."
They stood there in silence for a minute while Hinata processed that. "Are you asking my permission to try to give yourself a byakugan?" He nodded, and she stared at him for a couple of minutes. Eventually she blushed and tapped her fingers together. "Would...would you lose your blue eyes?"
"Maybe only while I have them active? Um...assuming I can turn them off..."
"Why wouldn't you be able to turn them off?"
"I might have too much chakra, but if that ends up being a problem then we can undo the changes."
It took a moment, but she nodded. "You have me curious now, and you already gave me one of your clan's skills, so..."
He nodded, sitting down on the couch that she'd lain on while the Tome had worked on her. "This should only take a couple of minutes."
Going blind in one eye at a time, the blind eye itching horribly, was decidedly unpleasant. But ten minutes later he was able to see out of both eyes again...and honestly thought he was seeing better than he had before.
"Is it over?" Hinata asked.
"Yeah," Naruto acknowledged. "This is weird. I think I can see colors I couldn't before."
"I suppose that I have to teach you how to activate them to see if it actually worked."
Teaching him the normal sequence of hand signs for activating the byakugan, and explaining the relevant chakra flows, had taken half an hour. But he'd successfully activated them, only to be shocked by how much he could see. He could simultaneously see almost entirely around him and focus on specific things in significant detail, in addition to seeing the chakra of Hinata and a number of others in the area around the compound. Actually, he could see his own chakra too. Compared to Hinata, the Anbu, and a couple of civilians nearby it did look quite odd. Though he'd apparently done a good job of making Yoko look like a civilian as 'her' chakra didn't stand out.
"Are you going to try again?" Hinata asked.
He blinked. "It worked that time."
"...you don't have any bulging veins and your eyes didn't go white?"
"Um..."
"You have enough chakra to not need the extra blood flow," his mother explained. "And not having your eyes change should definitely help disguise what you're doing."
"Apparently I just have enough chakra to not need more blood feeding my eyes," Naruto said, shrugging.
Hinata pouted, but nodded. "Can you see my chakra points?"
"Yeah. It's like they're too small to see, but also highlighted as targets."
She frowned. "I don't know what the rules are for teaching someone outside of the clan the Gentle Fist. I know that it has happened, but not under what circumstances."
"Well, I can probably figure it out on my own if I need to."
"I'll ask my father."
He nodded, then grinned and grabbed the Tome. Flipping it open to the Knight Armor spell, he held it out for her to look at. "This is the spell I was talking about. There are a couple others that I haven't learned yet, but if you can cast this then you can probably learn the others too."
Hinata blinked and looked down at the Tome. "You said something about spells earlier. Shouldn't you mean jutsu?"
"They seem to use chakra, but in an entirely different way than jutsu do."
She took the Tome to look more closely. "Oh. What does this one do?"
He focused for a moment and cast the spell, with the 'generic shinobi outfit' template. A moment later his clothing had been replaced, and with the byakugan still active he could see the dozens of layers of chakra overlaid around him. They didn't seem to affect his ability to see through them, but that might be because they were his or because his eyes were inside.
Hinata activated her own byakugan, and her eyes went wide. "I can't make out your chakra points at all!" She pushed chakra into her hand and poked the layers of chakra, releasing a burst of her own to absolutely no effect. "That...it's like a perfect defense against the Gentle Fist!"
"My parents think it would stop most taijutsu-based fighting styles," Naruto admitted. "As well as anything relying on standard weapons, but the protection layers won't help as much with anything designed to be 'armor piercing'. Which I don't think describes the Gentle Fist."
"Well, it largely ignores most normal armor, but I know what you mean." She then looked down at the Tome. "And you think that I might be able to use that too?"
"Yep! We hope. It, er, took me a while to get it down, but we improved the instructions!"
Nodding, she sat down and started reading. He grinned, then realized that he should figure out how to turn the byakugan off...
It turned out that the basic forms of the Gentle Fist were routinely taught to trusted friends and teammates of Hyuga, though the degree of doing so varied, in order to permit a bait and switch on opponents that saw what they thought was the Hyuga in a group engaging them and would then ignore the actual Hyuga coming from another angle. This had been made even more open with the solid disguise jutsu allowing better deception as to who the Hyuga was in a group, so Hinata was permitted to teach Naruto anything she felt she was capable of teaching or he was capable of learning that was available in the clan's 'basic' archives.
Those rules did not seem to take into account the non-Hyuga being able to target chakra points themselves, and Hinata had apparently been very careful to not mention that Naruto would be able to. At the same time, the highest-level skills of the clan were passed down orally instead of written down and were thus not covered by the blanket permission for things in the archives. Not that Hinata knew any of those yet anyway.
They didn't go beyond starting Naruto on the 'precisely expel chakra from fingertips' exercises right away though, because Hinata had decided that they should see if she could cast the Knight Armor spell first. Naruto had been started on sealing and the basic 'bullet' spell while Hinata worked on that, getting the basic spell down fairly quickly but needing more time to learn how to make it not just a ball of light. His father had then taught him the shuriken shadow clone jutsu, only admitting that it was one of Old Man Hokage's after Naruto had learned it.
That thing was way too easy when you were already used to throwing piles of clones around, and it even worked on the spell-formed bullets if you released the jutsu and the spell at the same time. Naruto's main problem was keeping the number of duplicates down. It apparently wasn't 'mastered' unless you could seamlessly decide to make as few as three or as many as a hundred duplicates and he currently defaulted to around five hundred.
Jiraiya had also started teaching sealing when Naruto's birthday came around, with a very different style in both how he did things and how he taught it. Supposedly everyone who learned it adapted it to their own way of thinking, meaning that a master could examine examples of the same seal and generally identify who had created each just from the small details. But having official instruction in the basics justified Naruto buying supplies, which made practicing outside of the Tome's false world a lot easier to explain.
It was nearing the end of the year when Hinata finally got the Knight Armor spell working, not having the benefit of being able to connect to the Tome the way Naruto could. Just in time for her birthday. She complained that it took too much chakra right now, but also understood that working her chakra was the best way to increase her capacity. She explained the basics of the Gentle Fist's forms while getting used to the protections, and Naruto was finally able to see what they did to the byakugan from outside without it being his own chakra letting him see through it.
Thanks to deciding to keep the spell up inside the compound when not practicing the Gentle Fist, they quickly determined that Knight Armor wasn't perfect as well. It 'stored away' your pouches, making their contents inaccessible without dropping it. You either had to put those on afterwards or deal with not having your weapons and other supplies on hand. Like the pouch full of snacks they'd each had one day and couldn't access anymore.
Thanks to what was probably an abuse of clones, Naruto was pushing Hinata into learning more of the Gentle Fist by the time Spring came around. Then again, leaving a hundred to take different forms and train in the compound every morning allowed for an incredible amount of experience to build up across multiple fighting styles. Provided, of course, that he was ready to take a nap after classes let out. It was also helping him get experience with the taijutsu styles his parents were teaching him.
After his nap each day he still needed to do a bunch of physical training for real, of course, but he left clones doing his homework.
Hinata had also gotten the basic bullet spell down, but was currently planning on it being an emergency-only thing. It took her too long to cast and her chakra reserves hadn't grown enough yet. Maybe when she'd gotten to the point of being able to make a single paperwork clone she'd reconsider.
Today was one of the days that she was at home, a private gathering for Hanabi's birthday. Naruto had sent a gift along, but nobody outside of the clan had been invited for the celebration. Hell, most of those that were in the clan hadn't been invited either. In theory, that meant that Naruto would be woken up by the alarm he'd set or by his parents deciding that he'd ignored the alarm for long enough.
Being woken up because something was licking his face hadn't been something he'd expected, and he'd attempted to punch whatever it was. Missed horribly, but he'd tried. He'd blinked a couple of times as his byakugan activated and showed...a red fox. With a well-developed chakra network, wearing a vest, and looking far too amused, at least until the first set of kunai dropped from the ceiling.
"What the..." the fox said as it barely avoided being impaled, and a moment later it looked up to see the dozens of traps waiting to trigger along with the one currently activating. "Oh shit. Why do I never remember to look up before things like this happen?"
Observing the little fox trigger and dodge trap after trap was amusing. The only safe places in the apartment right now were the bed, the bathroom, and the path between them. How the fox had made it to the bed without tripping anything in the first place was an entirely different question though. Eventually the fox realized that the bed was the only place a trap wasn't pointed at and jumped back onto it.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" the fox asked. "Why would you have that many traps in your bedroom? Where you sleep!"
Naruto shrugged as he used a chakra string to flip the master safety switch for the room before getting off the bed. "I might have started a low-key prank war with some Anbu that figured out how to get in here. Why are you in my bedroom in the first place?"
The fox took a moment to realize that the traps were disabled before it followed him. "Do you know how long it took us to find you?"
"No, because I don't know who you are or why you care."
"...right. I'm Ushi, messenger of the fox summons. We've been looking for a child of the great fox for centuries."
Naruto blinked, and looked down at the fox. "What are you talking about?"
"Long ago it was decreed that only a child of the great fox could summon us."
"Huh."
"I don't know if I like this idea or hate it," his father commented from inside of the Tome. "On the one hand, I fully expect Jiraiya to offer you the chance to sign the toad contract."
"And on the other," his mother continued while Naruto silently agreed with his father. "Foxes sound a lot more fitting for a kitsune." Then again, his mother had a good point too.
"Yeah. Though I suppose the toads could still accept him even with another contract. I nearly ended up signing a second one myself, but we found a better choice."
"Foxes are far superior to toads anyway," Kurama added, as though to think otherwise was an insult. Which to him it probably was.
"You know," Naruto said, making a clone to go swap out with the Yoko clone currently in the shrine so that he could find out if anything interesting happened there. "I don't think that either of my parents was a fox."
"We know," Ushi replied. "But you were reborn with the great fox's power. It just took us a bit to track you down once we'd noticed."
"...so you know that I'm not centuries old?" And damn, he'd just realized that he probably shouldn't have just casually made and sent off that clone in front of the little fox. He was still half-asleep, apparently.
"Duh."
"So what's in it for me to become your summoner?"
Ushi stared at him in response. "Huh. Supposedly most people get really excited to get an offer of being a summoner."
"I'm expecting a competing offer in a few years."
"Really?"
"Yep."
The little fox rummaged around in a pocket on his vest, which looked odd given that it was using its muzzle to do so, and produced a scroll. That was tossed onto the table. "That's a copy of our summoning rules, general capabilities, and a twelve-hour provisional summoner contract for visiting before deciding to sign the full one."
It didn't take long to read over things, which seemed incredibly straightforward in most respects. They generally preferred to stay out of direct combat, instead preferring disguise and infiltration or support roles. A preference was stated that if you were going to set out to kill someone then it was better to do so through infiltration and subterfuge than through direct combat, though they also had no problem with larger-scale battles either as your enemy rarely let you dictate the terms of combat. On the support role side, they claimed to be some of the best hunters as well as in the top three for healing list as well, and insisted on their summoners learning to hunt as well as being able to heal to at least 'stabilize injuries in the field' proficiency. Naruto had no problem with learning hunting and healing, but they also seemed to want their summoners to keep a personal summon around at all times. Well, when it wouldn't be a problem for a mission or similar, because needing to bring a fox on an infiltration where a fox wouldn't be expected was a bad idea. And their example of when the personal summon didn't need to be around, in fact.
"I don't exactly have permission to bring a pet to school with me," Naruto noted. "And...I've not actually figured out how safe foxes will be here at all? I've not seen or smelled one in the village until, well, today." And his parents had previously admitted to not really knowing how the populace would react to foxes in general either, for that matter, never having seen one near the village either.
Ushi tilted his head. "You smell like one? Somewhat, though befitting of being a child of the great fox."
"And I'm not counting myself as a full fox, so I think my point stands."
"Okay, yeah. Our less intelligent cousins aren't stupid enough to intrude on the home territory of a hundred-plus aggressive dogs. They've marked quite a distance around here, but they're also intelligent enough to recognize allies. You carrying a personal summons around would help them figure that out, which is part of the point."
Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Part of the point?"
"Well, we foxes tend to either be loners or form close bonds with a small number of others. I like to wander on my own and chose to be a messenger to see new places. My brother settled into territory on our borders with his mate instead and rarely wanders at all. We find that some of that stems from interactions as a kit, so having one around for a few years should create a better bond. Hopefully."
"You don't actually know?"
Ushi...shrugged, Naruto supposed. "We've never had a summoner, though we've worked with humans on a regular basis in other ways. Lots of theory from a very long time thinking about things, very little practical experience."
"Oh."
Double-checking the 'provisional summoner contract' took longer and was mostly handled by the Tome. Naruto had already been taught that you couldn't trust the words compared to the chakra, but did hope that the 'guaranteed safe return' aspect wasn't a lie. While that was happening he got the memory dump from the clone that had been Yoko, flinching as he'd left 'her' active all day until now. A couple of visiting merchants had stopped by the shrine, one of whom had some nasty plans of some kind for Yoko but hadn't been able to act on them.
One of the downsides of running around as a girl when you could sense negative emotions were the horrible creeps out there, and the older he (and thus Yoko) got the more of them he ran into. Most commonly visiting merchants, who usually weren't around long enough to properly research and prank either, but he'd dropped hell onto a chunin a couple months ago.
"So do you have any other comments to make?" Ushi asked.
"Ask me when I've woken up properly," Naruto replied, then frowned. "Actually, how does your clan get along with the toads?"
"We aren't allies, but they let any non-antagonistic clan train with them in the sage arts and we've gotten a couple of sages out of the deal. Why do you...huh. Are you potentially in line to sign their contract?"
"The toads have a history with Konoha, including helping the last time the 'great fox' attacked."
"Really?"
"Yep."
Half an hour later Naruto had woken up properly, been teased by his parents for his not-quite-awake actions, and they'd decided that there shouldn't be a problem at least meeting the fox clan leaders as the short-term contract had checked out. Naruto signed it, made a couple of clones to hold down the fort, and Ushi did something that caused someone at the other end to 'reverse summon' them. Which was a weird thing to say, because it was still summoning them?
They appeared on the edge of a forest, with a single other fox standing there. For all of a second before it darted off.
"This way," Ushi said, heading away from the trees.
Naruto followed, and it only took a couple of minutes to come to the mouth of a cave with two larger foxes in front of it, though only around the size of some of the larger dogs the Inuzuka had, and a single small toad that felt far more powerful than you'd expect. One that almost looked like it had purple hair in rollers.
"So this is the child of the great fox," the brownish fox on the left said. "Smells right, at least, but doesn't look the part."
"Looks can be deceiving," the toad said. "The Great Toad Sage says that young Naruto here wisely disguises himself."
"Oh?"
Naruto sighed, checked his pants, and released his shapeshift.
"Ah!" the more gray-colored fox on the right exclaimed. "That looks more like it. Hmmm. And passes the second test, actually."
"Yes," the brownish fox said.
"Second test?" Naruto asked, confused.
"There are three tests to become a summoner of our clan," the gray fox answered. "Being able to disguise your nature like that means you pass the second."
"The first is to appear in two places at once such that outsiders cannot tell which is actually you."
Ushi snorted. "He left some kind of solid clones to clean up his apartment and take his place before we were summoned here."
"He has taken that creation of Tobirama's to a level few do," the toad agreed. "We frequently have problems identifying where he is when observing him, latching onto his clones more often than not with the viewing technique."
They stood there in silence for a moment as the two foxes took that in, then the brown one shook its head as if to clear it. "Okay, I don't think the founders of our clan expected that. I guess that leaves any questions the kit has before we move to the final test?"
"Does a toad being here mean that signing their contract won't be a problem later?" Naruto asked.
"It does indeed," the toad replied. "I don't think Ushi here was told that we informed Naoko and Toyoko about Naruto. Though we do have a request for Naruto, to keep our part in this secret from Jiraiya. We wish to see what he comes up with to 'convince' us to accept one with an existing contract once he finds out you are already working with the foxes."
Naruto could tell that whatever reservations his father had about this were gone, though that had annoyed Kurama. Nodding, he looked at the larger foxes. "But you said there were three tests?"
"The last test is the most important," the gray fox said. "Signing the contract."
"Come," the brown one said, turning and heading into the cave. Naruto followed, the rest trailing behind him. They passed through at least two chakra barriers before coming to a chamber with a large stone in the middle of it, writing covering the top.
"There are many reasons for this," the brown fox said from behind them. "And I'm sure that Naoko would be willing to elaborate later if you asked him."
"But if you want to hear it then that would be a tale for later," the gray fox said. "Other summoning clans are happy with ink and blood on paper. Their rules are occasionally intentionally vague so that they have wiggle room, and at least one clan is fond of stating that their rules are not carved into stone."
"Our rules are simpler and are carved in stone."
"And to sign our contract, you must have enough chakra to sign your name on the stone. It does not require elemental manipulation, but to succeed you will need to demonstrate that you have enough chakra to summon half the clan at once if needed."
The toad snorted. "Trust me when I say that Naruto won't have a problem there. Before his...changes he would have struggled to control his output, but he has grown quite a bit."
Naruto read the carvings in the stone while the Tome examined the chakra version. The writing at least said exactly what they said it would, and it didn't take long for his parents to tell him that the chakra version was essentially identical. They seemed more interested in the way the signing worked, so he focused chakra into his finger and placed it against the stone. The surface rippled, pulling on his chakra as he carefully wrote out his name. Enough chakra for a couple dozen paperwork clones was needed before he was done, his name left behind in a slightly-glowing crystal-like form.
"You are going to be interesting," the gray fox said. "We'll give you a week before bringing you back to see which of the kits resonates with you."
"We'll smooth things over with Hiruzen," the toad added. "By the time you're ready to show him your new partner he should be ready. Oh, and due to the foxes' contracts not requiring blood, you can probably summon yourself with your clones."
If not for needing to keep his control up, he'd love to be done with chakra control exercises. But his capacity was growing with him, so he had to keep going and going and going...
At the same time, thanks to the Anbu he'd reached the point where he could mimic other people's chakra or blend into the background. That made his clones far more effective, harder to spot, and he'd celebrated by pranking the Hyuga elders. Having found out about the 'caged bird' seal a few weeks prior had made him feel a little vindictive. Pranking the Anbu to prove that he could like his parents wanted him to would need to wait a few weeks at a minimum.
He still had time to have fun, and his parents didn't know if they should be annoyed or not that he'd come up with 'turn into a naked adult to distract or knock out chunin and jounin' using the solid disguise technique. They'd been solidly in the 'annoyed' category when he'd first come up with it, but it had worked more often than not when used. Well, unless he tried it on a Hyuga. There the success rate was far lower, and he'd not made any attempt at using it around Hinata or Ko.
But today he was nervous. Hinata had recently gotten general permission to visit without Ko when she didn't have other training and he planned on revealing a little more to her...and asking for her permission for two different experiments. Kurama thought he was stupid for asking about one, but the other required her actual cooperation.
"Hello Naruto," Hinata greeted as she came into the Uzumaki compound. She'd gotten a lot less nervous around him over the past couple of years, but still had shy fits. Most of the time when they were in public, she'd gotten much better about them while it was only the two of them and Ko.
"Hello," he greeted in return.
She frowned and pulsed her byakugan. "Something is obviously wrong, because I think the only clone you have out is Yoko in the shrine."
"Er, well...I've been keeping some secrets..."
Hinata sighed. "We're supposed to keep secrets. I have to keep my clan's secrets and you have Uzumaki secrets."
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "This is a little more important than that." She didn't look convinced, so he double-checked that his pants weren't going to trap his tail and released his shapeshift.
Blinking, Hinata activated her byakugan, then tilted her head. "They...have chakra points."
"Yep."
"The solid disguise doesn't affect chakra points."
"No, it doesn't."
"...how?"
Naruto flipped the Tome to book form. "I used to have the nine-tailed fox sealed in me, but then this found me. It was broken, thought I was severely injured, and tried to heal me while fixing itself. I ended up part-fox and can change my shape while the fox and my parents ended up in the Tome. Er, the book is named the Tome of the Orange Sky, and is a lot more than just a book."
Hinata moved around him, staring with her byakugan active. Then she reached out and touched his tail, hand jerking back when she found that it was actually there. A moment later she blushed, her byakugan shutting off.
Since she wasn't freaking out...he hoped, he continued. "Um, as part of 'healing' me, the Tome did something to me that we think gave me better access to elemental chakra...and maybe even chakra chains."
"...chains?"
Naruto hadn't trained much with the chains yet as they didn't help much with chakra control and finding a place to train with them properly was problematic. There wasn't enough room in the compound. But he had enough control to make a short chain come out of the palm of his hand. "These."
"Oh."
"But, well, we're curious if we're right and want to see if the Tome can 'fix' others in the same way."
Hinata's blush deepened a little, but only for a moment before she visibly forced herself to focus. "Er, would I become a...kitsune?"
"We don't think so. This is just fixing a...'net' like thing around your chakra. Kinda? And we think that fixing it will let you increase your chakra capacity more over time."
She pouted at that, before it shifted into a blush and then she focused again. "Um, does it hurt?"
"It shouldn't, but you can be kept asleep during it and it should only take an hour."
He wasn't sure exactly what was going on in her head, but after a couple of minutes of various emotions she nodded. Gesturing to one of the houses, figuring that she should at least be on a couch, they headed inside.
Hiruzen looked over the latest summary reports from the academy, along with notes and requests from families. The latter generally fell into three categories, the most common split between clans asking that their members not be allowed to graduate early and civilian parents wanting their children to be in class or teams with specific clan students. Then there were the miscellaneous requests that made sense.
The requests that were complete lunacy never made it into the summaries.
For a number of reasons, he ended up focusing on Naruto's year. Not only did it have the largest number of potential clan heirs in it right now, but it also had Naruto himself. Since he was serving as Naruto's parent for the purposes of the academy, Jiraiya not being in the village often enough to do so himself, it only made sense to keep a closer eye on that class. Not that much had changed since the last batch of summaries.
The 'look underneath' scores indicated that most of the civilian-born were still going to fail out, but some were likely to at least make it to graduation before failing the sensei test. There were a couple of exceptions though, students that had learned something about themselves over time and had gained a better drive. If not for current policies on age of graduation outside of wartime coupled with parental requests most of the clan-born would probably have graduated already, Naruto included now that he had managed all three of the academy jutsu.
There were three new clan-originating requests. An adjustment in Sasuke's class placement had been made by Itachi, aiming to keep a couple of the more...enthusiastic fangirls away from the boy. Hiruzen had made a couple of similar requests on Naruto's behalf shortly after the chakra meter display. The Inuzuka had made their standard requests regarding a pet for Kiba, as whatever puppy the boy ended up with wouldn't be considered a nin-dog for a few years. And Hiashi had amended the standard request for members of the Hyuga clan to not graduate early to include an exception for Hinata, allowing her to graduate early if Naruto did.
It certainly made sense from the point of view of the Hyuga elders subtly supporting the girl's obvious crush in hopes of a long-term alliance with the Uzumaki. Something that had only really started after Naruto's accidental creation of an amazingly simple solid disguise jutsu by running the entire sequence of hand seals for the illusionary one backwards and mirrored, then figuring out the chakra flows to make it work. The jutsu had already made both the Anbu and the Hyuga noticeably more effective in the field, though Itachi reported that it was less useful for the Uchiha because it 'blurred' the sharingan.
Well, Hiruzen wasn't against Naruto graduating a year early, and that would help balance out some known issues in that year's class. And it was nice to see some actual subtlety with trying to build romantic relationships, since the clans at least generally recognized that being blatant with matchmaking made failure far more likely...
"I'm sorry!" Hinata said, crying lightly. "I didn't mean to!"
Naruto nodded, checking where the girl's chakra chain had pierced his arm. "I know. I put my first one through my own foot."
She blinked at that. "You...what?"
"I was trying to make a chakra string 'the easy way', but got a chain through my foot instead. Besides, I heal fast. See? Not even bleeding now."
"Oh."
"But hey, this means that one thing worked!"
That seemed to distract her a bit more. "One thing?"
He nodded. "Er, yeah. I want to try to teach you a spell, and, um..."
She sighed. "And what?"
"We think that we know how the byakugan works and I want to see if we're right? Well, I was also curious about the sharingan, but we think that they have some kind of 'connected to an external power source' thing going on instead of being internal..."
They stood there in silence for a minute while Hinata processed that. "Are you asking my permission to try to give yourself a byakugan?" He nodded, and she stared at him for a couple of minutes. Eventually she blushed and tapped her fingers together. "Would...would you lose your blue eyes?"
"Maybe only while I have them active? Um...assuming I can turn them off..."
"Why wouldn't you be able to turn them off?"
"I might have too much chakra, but if that ends up being a problem then we can undo the changes."
It took a moment, but she nodded. "You have me curious now, and you already gave me one of your clan's skills, so..."
He nodded, sitting down on the couch that she'd lain on while the Tome had worked on her. "This should only take a couple of minutes."
Going blind in one eye at a time, the blind eye itching horribly, was decidedly unpleasant. But ten minutes later he was able to see out of both eyes again...and honestly thought he was seeing better than he had before.
"Is it over?" Hinata asked.
"Yeah," Naruto acknowledged. "This is weird. I think I can see colors I couldn't before."
"I suppose that I have to teach you how to activate them to see if it actually worked."
Teaching him the normal sequence of hand signs for activating the byakugan, and explaining the relevant chakra flows, had taken half an hour. But he'd successfully activated them, only to be shocked by how much he could see. He could simultaneously see almost entirely around him and focus on specific things in significant detail, in addition to seeing the chakra of Hinata and a number of others in the area around the compound. Actually, he could see his own chakra too. Compared to Hinata, the Anbu, and a couple of civilians nearby it did look quite odd. Though he'd apparently done a good job of making Yoko look like a civilian as 'her' chakra didn't stand out.
"Are you going to try again?" Hinata asked.
He blinked. "It worked that time."
"...you don't have any bulging veins and your eyes didn't go white?"
"Um..."
"You have enough chakra to not need the extra blood flow," his mother explained. "And not having your eyes change should definitely help disguise what you're doing."
"Apparently I just have enough chakra to not need more blood feeding my eyes," Naruto said, shrugging.
Hinata pouted, but nodded. "Can you see my chakra points?"
"Yeah. It's like they're too small to see, but also highlighted as targets."
She frowned. "I don't know what the rules are for teaching someone outside of the clan the Gentle Fist. I know that it has happened, but not under what circumstances."
"Well, I can probably figure it out on my own if I need to."
"I'll ask my father."
He nodded, then grinned and grabbed the Tome. Flipping it open to the Knight Armor spell, he held it out for her to look at. "This is the spell I was talking about. There are a couple others that I haven't learned yet, but if you can cast this then you can probably learn the others too."
Hinata blinked and looked down at the Tome. "You said something about spells earlier. Shouldn't you mean jutsu?"
"They seem to use chakra, but in an entirely different way than jutsu do."
She took the Tome to look more closely. "Oh. What does this one do?"
He focused for a moment and cast the spell, with the 'generic shinobi outfit' template. A moment later his clothing had been replaced, and with the byakugan still active he could see the dozens of layers of chakra overlaid around him. They didn't seem to affect his ability to see through them, but that might be because they were his or because his eyes were inside.
Hinata activated her own byakugan, and her eyes went wide. "I can't make out your chakra points at all!" She pushed chakra into her hand and poked the layers of chakra, releasing a burst of her own to absolutely no effect. "That...it's like a perfect defense against the Gentle Fist!"
"My parents think it would stop most taijutsu-based fighting styles," Naruto admitted. "As well as anything relying on standard weapons, but the protection layers won't help as much with anything designed to be 'armor piercing'. Which I don't think describes the Gentle Fist."
"Well, it largely ignores most normal armor, but I know what you mean." She then looked down at the Tome. "And you think that I might be able to use that too?"
"Yep! We hope. It, er, took me a while to get it down, but we improved the instructions!"
Nodding, she sat down and started reading. He grinned, then realized that he should figure out how to turn the byakugan off...
It turned out that the basic forms of the Gentle Fist were routinely taught to trusted friends and teammates of Hyuga, though the degree of doing so varied, in order to permit a bait and switch on opponents that saw what they thought was the Hyuga in a group engaging them and would then ignore the actual Hyuga coming from another angle. This had been made even more open with the solid disguise jutsu allowing better deception as to who the Hyuga was in a group, so Hinata was permitted to teach Naruto anything she felt she was capable of teaching or he was capable of learning that was available in the clan's 'basic' archives.
Those rules did not seem to take into account the non-Hyuga being able to target chakra points themselves, and Hinata had apparently been very careful to not mention that Naruto would be able to. At the same time, the highest-level skills of the clan were passed down orally instead of written down and were thus not covered by the blanket permission for things in the archives. Not that Hinata knew any of those yet anyway.
They didn't go beyond starting Naruto on the 'precisely expel chakra from fingertips' exercises right away though, because Hinata had decided that they should see if she could cast the Knight Armor spell first. Naruto had been started on sealing and the basic 'bullet' spell while Hinata worked on that, getting the basic spell down fairly quickly but needing more time to learn how to make it not just a ball of light. His father had then taught him the shuriken shadow clone jutsu, only admitting that it was one of Old Man Hokage's after Naruto had learned it.
That thing was way too easy when you were already used to throwing piles of clones around, and it even worked on the spell-formed bullets if you released the jutsu and the spell at the same time. Naruto's main problem was keeping the number of duplicates down. It apparently wasn't 'mastered' unless you could seamlessly decide to make as few as three or as many as a hundred duplicates and he currently defaulted to around five hundred.
Jiraiya had also started teaching sealing when Naruto's birthday came around, with a very different style in both how he did things and how he taught it. Supposedly everyone who learned it adapted it to their own way of thinking, meaning that a master could examine examples of the same seal and generally identify who had created each just from the small details. But having official instruction in the basics justified Naruto buying supplies, which made practicing outside of the Tome's false world a lot easier to explain.
It was nearing the end of the year when Hinata finally got the Knight Armor spell working, not having the benefit of being able to connect to the Tome the way Naruto could. Just in time for her birthday. She complained that it took too much chakra right now, but also understood that working her chakra was the best way to increase her capacity. She explained the basics of the Gentle Fist's forms while getting used to the protections, and Naruto was finally able to see what they did to the byakugan from outside without it being his own chakra letting him see through it.
Thanks to deciding to keep the spell up inside the compound when not practicing the Gentle Fist, they quickly determined that Knight Armor wasn't perfect as well. It 'stored away' your pouches, making their contents inaccessible without dropping it. You either had to put those on afterwards or deal with not having your weapons and other supplies on hand. Like the pouch full of snacks they'd each had one day and couldn't access anymore.
Thanks to what was probably an abuse of clones, Naruto was pushing Hinata into learning more of the Gentle Fist by the time Spring came around. Then again, leaving a hundred to take different forms and train in the compound every morning allowed for an incredible amount of experience to build up across multiple fighting styles. Provided, of course, that he was ready to take a nap after classes let out. It was also helping him get experience with the taijutsu styles his parents were teaching him.
After his nap each day he still needed to do a bunch of physical training for real, of course, but he left clones doing his homework.
Hinata had also gotten the basic bullet spell down, but was currently planning on it being an emergency-only thing. It took her too long to cast and her chakra reserves hadn't grown enough yet. Maybe when she'd gotten to the point of being able to make a single paperwork clone she'd reconsider.
Today was one of the days that she was at home, a private gathering for Hanabi's birthday. Naruto had sent a gift along, but nobody outside of the clan had been invited for the celebration. Hell, most of those that were in the clan hadn't been invited either. In theory, that meant that Naruto would be woken up by the alarm he'd set or by his parents deciding that he'd ignored the alarm for long enough.
Being woken up because something was licking his face hadn't been something he'd expected, and he'd attempted to punch whatever it was. Missed horribly, but he'd tried. He'd blinked a couple of times as his byakugan activated and showed...a red fox. With a well-developed chakra network, wearing a vest, and looking far too amused, at least until the first set of kunai dropped from the ceiling.
"What the..." the fox said as it barely avoided being impaled, and a moment later it looked up to see the dozens of traps waiting to trigger along with the one currently activating. "Oh shit. Why do I never remember to look up before things like this happen?"
Observing the little fox trigger and dodge trap after trap was amusing. The only safe places in the apartment right now were the bed, the bathroom, and the path between them. How the fox had made it to the bed without tripping anything in the first place was an entirely different question though. Eventually the fox realized that the bed was the only place a trap wasn't pointed at and jumped back onto it.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" the fox asked. "Why would you have that many traps in your bedroom? Where you sleep!"
Naruto shrugged as he used a chakra string to flip the master safety switch for the room before getting off the bed. "I might have started a low-key prank war with some Anbu that figured out how to get in here. Why are you in my bedroom in the first place?"
The fox took a moment to realize that the traps were disabled before it followed him. "Do you know how long it took us to find you?"
"No, because I don't know who you are or why you care."
"...right. I'm Ushi, messenger of the fox summons. We've been looking for a child of the great fox for centuries."
Naruto blinked, and looked down at the fox. "What are you talking about?"
"Long ago it was decreed that only a child of the great fox could summon us."
"Huh."
"I don't know if I like this idea or hate it," his father commented from inside of the Tome. "On the one hand, I fully expect Jiraiya to offer you the chance to sign the toad contract."
"And on the other," his mother continued while Naruto silently agreed with his father. "Foxes sound a lot more fitting for a kitsune." Then again, his mother had a good point too.
"Yeah. Though I suppose the toads could still accept him even with another contract. I nearly ended up signing a second one myself, but we found a better choice."
"Foxes are far superior to toads anyway," Kurama added, as though to think otherwise was an insult. Which to him it probably was.
"You know," Naruto said, making a clone to go swap out with the Yoko clone currently in the shrine so that he could find out if anything interesting happened there. "I don't think that either of my parents was a fox."
"We know," Ushi replied. "But you were reborn with the great fox's power. It just took us a bit to track you down once we'd noticed."
"...so you know that I'm not centuries old?" And damn, he'd just realized that he probably shouldn't have just casually made and sent off that clone in front of the little fox. He was still half-asleep, apparently.
"Duh."
"So what's in it for me to become your summoner?"
Ushi stared at him in response. "Huh. Supposedly most people get really excited to get an offer of being a summoner."
"I'm expecting a competing offer in a few years."
"Really?"
"Yep."
The little fox rummaged around in a pocket on his vest, which looked odd given that it was using its muzzle to do so, and produced a scroll. That was tossed onto the table. "That's a copy of our summoning rules, general capabilities, and a twelve-hour provisional summoner contract for visiting before deciding to sign the full one."
It didn't take long to read over things, which seemed incredibly straightforward in most respects. They generally preferred to stay out of direct combat, instead preferring disguise and infiltration or support roles. A preference was stated that if you were going to set out to kill someone then it was better to do so through infiltration and subterfuge than through direct combat, though they also had no problem with larger-scale battles either as your enemy rarely let you dictate the terms of combat. On the support role side, they claimed to be some of the best hunters as well as in the top three for healing list as well, and insisted on their summoners learning to hunt as well as being able to heal to at least 'stabilize injuries in the field' proficiency. Naruto had no problem with learning hunting and healing, but they also seemed to want their summoners to keep a personal summon around at all times. Well, when it wouldn't be a problem for a mission or similar, because needing to bring a fox on an infiltration where a fox wouldn't be expected was a bad idea. And their example of when the personal summon didn't need to be around, in fact.
"I don't exactly have permission to bring a pet to school with me," Naruto noted. "And...I've not actually figured out how safe foxes will be here at all? I've not seen or smelled one in the village until, well, today." And his parents had previously admitted to not really knowing how the populace would react to foxes in general either, for that matter, never having seen one near the village either.
Ushi tilted his head. "You smell like one? Somewhat, though befitting of being a child of the great fox."
"And I'm not counting myself as a full fox, so I think my point stands."
"Okay, yeah. Our less intelligent cousins aren't stupid enough to intrude on the home territory of a hundred-plus aggressive dogs. They've marked quite a distance around here, but they're also intelligent enough to recognize allies. You carrying a personal summons around would help them figure that out, which is part of the point."
Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Part of the point?"
"Well, we foxes tend to either be loners or form close bonds with a small number of others. I like to wander on my own and chose to be a messenger to see new places. My brother settled into territory on our borders with his mate instead and rarely wanders at all. We find that some of that stems from interactions as a kit, so having one around for a few years should create a better bond. Hopefully."
"You don't actually know?"
Ushi...shrugged, Naruto supposed. "We've never had a summoner, though we've worked with humans on a regular basis in other ways. Lots of theory from a very long time thinking about things, very little practical experience."
"Oh."
Double-checking the 'provisional summoner contract' took longer and was mostly handled by the Tome. Naruto had already been taught that you couldn't trust the words compared to the chakra, but did hope that the 'guaranteed safe return' aspect wasn't a lie. While that was happening he got the memory dump from the clone that had been Yoko, flinching as he'd left 'her' active all day until now. A couple of visiting merchants had stopped by the shrine, one of whom had some nasty plans of some kind for Yoko but hadn't been able to act on them.
One of the downsides of running around as a girl when you could sense negative emotions were the horrible creeps out there, and the older he (and thus Yoko) got the more of them he ran into. Most commonly visiting merchants, who usually weren't around long enough to properly research and prank either, but he'd dropped hell onto a chunin a couple months ago.
"So do you have any other comments to make?" Ushi asked.
"Ask me when I've woken up properly," Naruto replied, then frowned. "Actually, how does your clan get along with the toads?"
"We aren't allies, but they let any non-antagonistic clan train with them in the sage arts and we've gotten a couple of sages out of the deal. Why do you...huh. Are you potentially in line to sign their contract?"
"The toads have a history with Konoha, including helping the last time the 'great fox' attacked."
"Really?"
"Yep."
Half an hour later Naruto had woken up properly, been teased by his parents for his not-quite-awake actions, and they'd decided that there shouldn't be a problem at least meeting the fox clan leaders as the short-term contract had checked out. Naruto signed it, made a couple of clones to hold down the fort, and Ushi did something that caused someone at the other end to 'reverse summon' them. Which was a weird thing to say, because it was still summoning them?
They appeared on the edge of a forest, with a single other fox standing there. For all of a second before it darted off.
"This way," Ushi said, heading away from the trees.
Naruto followed, and it only took a couple of minutes to come to the mouth of a cave with two larger foxes in front of it, though only around the size of some of the larger dogs the Inuzuka had, and a single small toad that felt far more powerful than you'd expect. One that almost looked like it had purple hair in rollers.
"So this is the child of the great fox," the brownish fox on the left said. "Smells right, at least, but doesn't look the part."
"Looks can be deceiving," the toad said. "The Great Toad Sage says that young Naruto here wisely disguises himself."
"Oh?"
Naruto sighed, checked his pants, and released his shapeshift.
"Ah!" the more gray-colored fox on the right exclaimed. "That looks more like it. Hmmm. And passes the second test, actually."
"Yes," the brownish fox said.
"Second test?" Naruto asked, confused.
"There are three tests to become a summoner of our clan," the gray fox answered. "Being able to disguise your nature like that means you pass the second."
"The first is to appear in two places at once such that outsiders cannot tell which is actually you."
Ushi snorted. "He left some kind of solid clones to clean up his apartment and take his place before we were summoned here."
"He has taken that creation of Tobirama's to a level few do," the toad agreed. "We frequently have problems identifying where he is when observing him, latching onto his clones more often than not with the viewing technique."
They stood there in silence for a moment as the two foxes took that in, then the brown one shook its head as if to clear it. "Okay, I don't think the founders of our clan expected that. I guess that leaves any questions the kit has before we move to the final test?"
"Does a toad being here mean that signing their contract won't be a problem later?" Naruto asked.
"It does indeed," the toad replied. "I don't think Ushi here was told that we informed Naoko and Toyoko about Naruto. Though we do have a request for Naruto, to keep our part in this secret from Jiraiya. We wish to see what he comes up with to 'convince' us to accept one with an existing contract once he finds out you are already working with the foxes."
Naruto could tell that whatever reservations his father had about this were gone, though that had annoyed Kurama. Nodding, he looked at the larger foxes. "But you said there were three tests?"
"The last test is the most important," the gray fox said. "Signing the contract."
"Come," the brown one said, turning and heading into the cave. Naruto followed, the rest trailing behind him. They passed through at least two chakra barriers before coming to a chamber with a large stone in the middle of it, writing covering the top.
"There are many reasons for this," the brown fox said from behind them. "And I'm sure that Naoko would be willing to elaborate later if you asked him."
"But if you want to hear it then that would be a tale for later," the gray fox said. "Other summoning clans are happy with ink and blood on paper. Their rules are occasionally intentionally vague so that they have wiggle room, and at least one clan is fond of stating that their rules are not carved into stone."
"Our rules are simpler and are carved in stone."
"And to sign our contract, you must have enough chakra to sign your name on the stone. It does not require elemental manipulation, but to succeed you will need to demonstrate that you have enough chakra to summon half the clan at once if needed."
The toad snorted. "Trust me when I say that Naruto won't have a problem there. Before his...changes he would have struggled to control his output, but he has grown quite a bit."
Naruto read the carvings in the stone while the Tome examined the chakra version. The writing at least said exactly what they said it would, and it didn't take long for his parents to tell him that the chakra version was essentially identical. They seemed more interested in the way the signing worked, so he focused chakra into his finger and placed it against the stone. The surface rippled, pulling on his chakra as he carefully wrote out his name. Enough chakra for a couple dozen paperwork clones was needed before he was done, his name left behind in a slightly-glowing crystal-like form.
"You are going to be interesting," the gray fox said. "We'll give you a week before bringing you back to see which of the kits resonates with you."
"We'll smooth things over with Hiruzen," the toad added. "By the time you're ready to show him your new partner he should be ready. Oh, and due to the foxes' contracts not requiring blood, you can probably summon yourself with your clones."
Last edited:
Chapter 3 - Poorly Built Stone (CmptrWz)
Naruto read the carvings in the stone while the Tome examined the chakra version. The writing at least said exactly what they said it would, and it didn't take long for his parents to tell him that the chakra version was essentially identical. They seemed more interested in the way the signing worked, so he focused chakra into his finger and placed it against the stone. The surface rippled, pulling hard on his chakra as he attempted to write out his name.
He'd not even made it halfway through when the stone started glowing red, and he instinctively dove for cover just before the contract stone exploded into a collection of molten rocks.
"We told your ancestors that they'd screwed up that seal," the toad said, shaking its head. "But no, they insisted that they'd gotten it correct."
"Perhaps we should go with the scroll instead," the brown fox said. "At least until we can figure out how to make a proper stone..."
He'd not even made it halfway through when the stone started glowing red, and he instinctively dove for cover just before the contract stone exploded into a collection of molten rocks.
"We told your ancestors that they'd screwed up that seal," the toad said, shaking its head. "But no, they insisted that they'd gotten it correct."
"Perhaps we should go with the scroll instead," the brown fox said. "At least until we can figure out how to make a proper stone..."
Last edited:
Chapter 4 - New Training, Seals, and Inheritances
Hinata had pouted when told about Naruto's new summoning contract, until he told her how much chakra it had taken to sign it. At that point she'd just redoubled her efforts to increase her own chakra capacity, in case she ran into any more reasonable summoning clans. Naruto himself had, as promised, been brought back to look over the 'kits', despite them calling him a kit as well, and had learned some more.
The large gray fox was Naoko, and the brown one was Toyoko. They were the current elders of the clan, far less long-lived than other summons could manage but still far older than a wild fox would ever manage. More confusing was that only a handful of the foxes had names at all. Currently that was the two elders and the messengers, all of which took names to interact with outsiders. Otherwise the foxes identified each other by scents.
Naruto had ended up connecting with a male red fox that had a star-like pattern of yellow fur on his forehead, and had dubbed him Hoshi. They'd returned to Konoha, Hinata had cooed over the kit, and then Naruto had made his way to the Hokage's tower. Quite a few villagers had seen Hoshi, and a couple had scowled, but the majority had seemed entirely indifferent to it. True to the toad's word, Old Man Hokage had been ready for Naruto to show up with Hoshi and had even arranged for permission to have a 'pet' in the academy.
Kiba had been...far less pleased, though Akamaru and Hoshi seemed to get along well enough. Apparently Naruto already smelled too much like a fox, having an actual fox in the room with him was seemingly pushing it. Kiba's mother Tsume was nice enough though, and had insisted on Naruto bringing Hoshi by their compound to ensure that the clan's dogs would recognize the kit's scent as an ally, along with comments that perhaps meeting Naruto in person would help as well. Kiba's sister Hana was also nice and was helping Naruto learn basic healing in ways that the foxes couldn't teach him.
Training with the foxes themselves was reasonably straightforward for the time being as well. They'd pull Naruto and Hoshi back to their home for hunting training as Naruto wasn't able to easily slip out of the village safely right now otherwise, but everything else taught was summoning foxes to the Uzumaki compound to get lessons there. Most of which were for Hoshi, with only some of the fox side of field medic stuff for Naruto. The actual summoning, and getting the intended foxes, was the single biggest part of Naruto's training for now.
"I swear they're trying to bury us in homework to ensure we have no free time at all," Kiba whined as he looked over the list of things due next week on the way out of the academy. A third of it was just keeping up with exercise and jutsu practice though.
"If anyone should be complaining it's Naruto," Choji said. "I hear he spends every other afternoon learning medic-nin stuff from your sister."
"I don't know how he handles that either, because I know she keeps giving him homework too!"
"Mom's going to watch me do all this," Shikamaru said from behind Choji, before giving Naruto a look. "Actually, everyone else has complained about homework, even Hinata, but I don't think I've ever heard Naruto complain."
Naruto rolled his eyes when they turned to look at him, presumably to have him complain. "Homework is easy, finding time to get all my training in is what's annoying."
"And needing to sit down to do the homework would eat into that time."
"Nah. I know the paperwork jutsu."
The others might have said something in response to that, but Naruto suddenly found himself hoisted up by his jacket by Old Man Hokage in a manner that his father thought was reminiscent of the Hiraishin, Hoshi falling off of Naruto's head and landing on the ground next to them. "TELL ME YOUR SECRETS!"
It took a minute to recover from the shock, but Naruto shook his head. They'd planned for this...in general. This exact situation wasn't what they'd expected. "What secrets?"
"The fabled paperwork jutsu! Thought lost with the fall of Uzu!"
"Oh. The scroll said it was an Uzumaki secret that I shouldn't share with anyone, with the potential to kill any non-Uzumaki who used it carelessly."
For some reason his parents found the old man's dejected horror face amusing.
"It takes a lot of chakra," Hinata confirmed.
Old Man Hokage turned to Hinata. "You've...seen him use the paperwork jutsu? And it isn't something anyone could handle?"
She blushed, but nodded. "Yes."
His mood obviously plummeted as he put Naruto down. "I see. My apologies for interrupting." A moment later he'd vanished again, though this time Naruto could keep track of his movements as he left the area.
"Is this paperwork jutsu really that powerful?" Shikamaru asked.
"If you can use it properly," Naruto said, waving the assignment list even as he crouched down to let Hoshi hop back up onto him. "I'll have all this written work done by dinner."
"...are you sure it isn't safe for non-Uzumaki?"
Everyone in the area seemed to be interested in that. Sasuke had even stopped to listen while trying to look like he didn't actually care. Hinata was the one that spoke up though. "It uses enough chakra to likely kill any of us other than Naruto through chakra exhaustion."
Okay, the dejected looks on their classmates' faces were amusing, so perhaps he could see why his parents were amused by Old Man Hokage's.
Summer break brought new surprises. Jiraiya had shown up, freaked out about Naruto having fox summons, did his best to hide said freaking out, and then tripled-down on sealing lessons...for two days before he had to leave again. But they'd been semi-productive days and had netted Naruto six new books, one of which covered things his parents hadn't been entirely clear on.
Short visit from his godfather aside, Naruto and Hinata also started learning both the flight spell and the Rasengan. They were both awesome in their own ways, but to really test the flight spell Hinata was going to have to find a way outside of the village. Naruto figured that he'd just cheat and test it while visiting the foxes, to Hinata's annoyance as she didn't expect to be able to join him. He was waiting until they had the spell working to tell her about the 'personal summoning contract' he'd gotten from the foxes that would allow the pair of them to summon each other once they both signed it. Incredibly rare because a sage had to connect the contract to the 'summoning network', whatever that was, in order to have any range at all. Except that the foxes had a former sage that had decided to just make stacks of them that were sitting around doing nothing.
The Anbu commander had bought a stack of the things and Naruto had spent a couple of days ferrying purchased supplies back to the foxes.
Most important was Naruto having brand-new seals to practice drawing. He didn't fully understand them, but you didn't need to understand a seal to draw it and copying existing designs was part of the early lessons. For one set, the plan was to get them to the point where others could draw them and then pretend that they'd been found in some hidden cache of his father's. They were keyed summoning blockers, intended to generally prevent summoning in an area unless you were on the approved list of summoners, along with ways to allow temporary or permanent 'holes' in the protections for specific purposes. His father wanted them to cover the entire village as a default so that enemies couldn't sneak in and then summon piles of reinforcements right past the outer defenses.
On a personal front, Naruto cared more about the single seal that he'd need to draw himself for it to be effective. If he got it down well enough then when he activated it his ability to shapeshift should be granted to the person he'd drawn it on, and he was hoping to share that with Hinata. That one was also the most complicated seal he'd ever seen and he probably only had one chance to get it right on her.
"Why am I filling this mess out?" Anko grumbled as she looked over the paperwork. Applying for potentially becoming a jounin sensei for a group of brats wasn't her thing, though admittedly she'd not realized that being a special jounin was enough to apply until a couple weeks ago.
"Because you were pushing me to and I made you promise to do so as well," Kurenai replied.
"But you're the one interested in teaching brats."
"And every third time we go drinking together you complain that nobody even thinks about teaching infiltration properly until chunin."
"...well, it's true! For as much as anybody teaches infiltration properly at all, anyway."
Kurenai rolled her eyes. "I'm most interested in working with a dojutsu user as part of a team and am hoping to get one of the various Hyuga in particular as they don't need to awaken their eyes like Uchiha do. You're right about the lack of infiltration thoughts until chunin, so what are the chances that there'll be an infiltration-focused academy graduate in the next five years? But if there is, do you really want to miss your chance to get your hooks into one that early?"
And there was the completely valid argument that was keeping Anko from tearing the annoying forms up. There were far too few infiltration-types in the ranks in general. She wanted to be one, enjoying the thrill of slipping in right under the enemy's noses to get whatever the job was done without them ever knowing that she was there, but the fucking cursed hickey screwed with her chakra often enough to make it impossible to do well unless dealing with civilian-grade pissants.
There was no thrill in fooling people that weren't even a potential threat to her in the first place.
"Why does this only ask about one genin?" Anko asked a few minutes later, flipping through the pages. "Shouldn't it care more about the whole team?"
"Only if you want one of the defined team roles," Kurenai answered. "Page six has checkboxes for tracking, scouting, fortification, and heavy assault teams, but otherwise the idea is that they try to give you a team containing at least one genin that matches your criteria."
"Oh. Wait, infiltration isn't a defined team role?"
"How often do you send a team to infiltrate?"
"Not often enough. Things are a hell of a lot easier if you at least have a partner there with you, and having an evac team nearby is always a good idea. One that almost never happens for stupid reasons, admittedly."
"Seriously?"
Anko nodded. "It seems like most people in charge of infiltration teams are terrible at planning. Long-term infiltration with single operatives that are easily subverted, by those they're infiltrating or otherwise. Short-term infiltration with no plans for support or aid if things go wrong beyond what the infiltrator themselves can come up with. We even have records of 'place six year old infiltrators into the orphanage of the village' being attempted a couple dozen times here alone, as if growing up in the village and being treated well wasn't going to ruin the chances of getting reliable information out of the infiltrator by the time they could actually learn anything of importance. Not that we don't have a bunch of idiotic things like that on our own records too."
Naruto grinned as Hinata giggled while they flew over the land claimed by the fox summons. She'd been completely shocked when he'd brought out the contract that let them summon each other, though she didn't actually have enough chakra to summon him (or anything else) yet. But the point was that he could summon her to him, including when he was with the foxes and thus in a location where they could practice with flying and chakra chains.
Granted, the smaller contract didn't support 'send the person back to where they originally were' like the larger contracts did, but that just meant he had to summon her a second time when he was returned to Konoha. He'd asked if there was any way, without sending a fox to Konoha somehow, to be sent back there even if that wasn't where he'd arrived from and caused one of the sages to wander off with an odd look. There wasn't currently otherwise, but the toads were allowing use of their travel well now that Naruto had signed the fox contract.
So long as Jiraiya wasn't told until Naruto had signed with the toads as well, anyway. And the toads were 'considering' allowing Hinata to sign as well when that time came, if she'd built her chakra high enough to manage summoning reliably by then.
"You know that you're supposed to get gifts for your birthday," Hinata said as she caught up to him. "Not give them!"
"It took us both longer than we thought to get flying down," Naruto said. They'd both had the Rasengan down for over a month, flying didn't seem like it should've been as hard as it was. "And enjoying this with you is a gift on its own anyway."
That had her giggling again, and they had to swing around to not fly out of the area over the forest the foxes claimed.
"So," he said. "I think we might want to tell your father about the summoning contract."
She...well, stumbled wasn't quite right while flying, but he wasn't sure how else to describe it. "What? Why?"
"The foxes gave me more to do with as I want, more than happy with what they already got in supplies for the first stack they gave me. If someone tried to abduct you again, or they grabbed Hanabi after she'd signed a contract?"
"Oh. OH!" She tackle-glomped him in mid-air. It took a few minutes for her curiosity to overcome her excitement, and she carefully turned to look at him. "Wait, first stack?"
"I sold a stack to the Anbu after asking about ways to summon you out here, then bought a bunch of things the foxes have trouble getting their paws on normally with the money. More than they expected me to be able to get."
"...how many 'stacks' do they have?"
"I don't know. Plenty, supposedly. A few weeks ago one of the foxes admitted that the sage that made them had a bad hit of some kind of relaxation drug and just went into a loop making them for a few months. They don't want to just hand them all over at once, but a few for your clan is easy enough to handle from what they already gave me. I'm thinking about holding onto enough to let our eventual genin team sign ones for each other for emergency use too."
She frowned at that. "There's no guarantee that we'll be together."
"We can hope, but if I keep enough for two teams then I could summon your whole team for backup if a mission goes wrong."
That had her smiling again.
Naruto had figured that the handful of contracts he'd given to Hiashi would be appreciated, but he'd underestimated how much they'd be appreciated. Demonstrating the summoning ability with Hinata had been included to show that it worked, and the man had asked that the contract allowing the demonstration be kept secret for the time being. She and Hanabi had signed a contract each with Hiashi immediately, Naruto walking the man through testing for both girls, before the rest were presented to the elders. Apparently each girl had also signed a contract with a trusted elder of their choice as a backup before the remaining unsigned ones were locked away in a secure vault for the time being.
An hour later Naruto had been brought before the elders and he thought that they'd essentially declared him to be a trusted member of the family, or something close to it without needing actual adoption. He was permitted full access to the compound befitting a member of the main branch in particular, meaning that he no longer had to get permission ahead of time to visit Hinata or Hanabi.
This resulted in eating dinner with the Hyuga two to three times a week and regular lessons in how one acted as and around nobles. If not for paperwork clones and the false world inside of the Tome he'd probably feel like he had no time to work on anything of his own.
Unfortunately, the practice with the shapeshifting seal hadn't gotten to the point of being perfect by Hinata's birthday. Naruto was able to attend the celebration this year though, so that was nice. The collection of seals for blocking summoning into the village was ready though, placed onto a suitable scroll with instructions dictated by his father and supposedly appearing to be close enough to his father's handwriting.
Penmanship lessons had included duplicating the writing of others for more than just practicing in getting details correct, including being able to change the appearance of your own writing when infiltrating. Naruto felt stupid for missing that before he'd had it explained to him.
To sell the deception even more, Naruto had been told how to 'accidentally' enter the locked-down Namikaze household. There was very little of interest actually there, beyond well-hidden instructions on performing the Rasengan and a few hidden notes on the Hiraishin. But very few people had any way of knowing that and Jiraiya wouldn't have left those when he cleaned the house out if he had known, so coming out with a scroll on planned improvements to village security was unlikely to be questioned. Or at least not by Old Man Hokage.
Naruto was mostly disappointed in the lack of pictures in the house once he'd made it in.
After over an hour of double-checking for pictures his parents said didn't exist he'd left carrying the scroll, to find Old Man Hokage waiting for him. Lots of questions were asked, the scroll was examined, and then more questions were asked. That several Hyuga would probably need to be in the list of 'known summoners' had been a surprise when Naruto had brought it up, but only until the reasoning had been explained. The contract between Naruto and Hinata hadn't needed to be mentioned at that point either.
In thanks for finding the scroll, and because he couldn't be paid for the information itself as it wasn't his, he'd instead been offered jutsu scrolls to work on at his own pace. Old Man Hokage had provided a set of camping jutsu, the Anbu commander had provided transparency and scent-changing jutsu, and the barrier maintenance team had thrown in a medium-range communication jutsu.
Two weeks later Naruto was 'tied into' the barely-started seal arrays. Three times, because they had key-in seals for the Anbu, general Shinobi, and a Hokage's personal list. Naruto would have to be removed from all three to have his summoning blocked when the seals were fully activated. He later found out from Hinata that the relevant Hyuga were only told about one seal, with no implication that the other two existed at all.
"Smell wrong," Hoshi whined, causing Naruto to blink.
"It's about time you started talking," Naruto said, shaking his head. "And I know I smell wrong. I'm trying to figure out how I want Yoko to smell now that I've finally got the scent-changing jutsu working."
Supposedly the jutsu wasn't that hard to master, but it was likely that most users didn't have an enhanced sense of smell compared to normal humans. Which was probably why it also wasn't considered useful for preventing tracking as most people wouldn't be able to tell that they'd not changed aspects of their scent that canines could easily pick up on. Naruto didn't have those problems, and had confused Kiba in class by spending an entire day smelling like Hinata.
In Hoshi's defense, the current application of the technique was a horrible mixture of scent elements. Yoko needed a primary 'human female', and he was considering a slight ocean-like component. Which he could only describe now because he'd visited a beach with the foxes a few weeks ago, though he'd smelled it on some merchants on a regular basis for years and there were a couple of people in the village that just had a similar scent to them despite not leaving on trips at all.
Hinata didn't like that she couldn't even figure out how to shift her scent to the point where Kiba couldn't tell it was her, though she had managed to confuse him and had him wondering if she'd changed her soap or shampoo a couple of times. Unfortunately for her, the jutsu was limited to things that the user could consciously perceive in scents and she didn't have as much 'range' there.
"Since you're speaking a bit now," Naruto continued. "I don't suppose you have any ideas for what to get Hanabi for her birthday?" The girl's birthday was...somewhere in the last week of March. He had the exact date written down somewhere.
Hoshi shook his head, which wasn't much of a surprise. Naruto had considered things that might help the girl when she started training more seriously to eventually enter the academy, but didn't have a clue what would help there that wasn't already part of the supplies the Hyuga already provided. Hinata had suggested possibly fixing Hanabi's 'net', but that would probably require sharing secrets with Hanabi and their parents that he hadn't shared with anyone else.
Oh well, he still had a couple weeks to figure something out.
An hour later he'd had to pause his attempts to figure out Yoko's new scent because Jiraiya had finally shown up. Three hours late, though the man hadn't been peeping in the hot springs like the last time he'd been running late. A clone had been sent to check.
"Sorry I'm late," Jiraiya said as he entered the apartment, which was odd on its own. The man was usually shameless about details like that. "I had to get Sensei's permission for a couple of things, but first..."
Twenty minutes later the privacy aspects of the apartment had been reinforced, and a few seals that hadn't been keeping the pranking Anbu or Ushi out had been repaired. They'd be broken again in a week because they spread over hidden doors Jiraiya didn't know about but that Naruto used regularly.
"So," Jiraiya said. "Sensei sent me on a couple of trips on a whim, and in the process I found a couple of things. In talking with him about them, I managed to convince him to let me tell you one of the high-level secrets being kept for your own protection. Specifically, that your status as an Uzumaki was never in doubt, but your mother had personal enemies that would hunt down her child." He then pulled out a scroll and unrolled it on the table. "Her name was Kushina, and while the Uzumaki didn't have noble families like Konoha does, she was still from a prominent line." An application of chakra released a stack of scrolls and two boxes from the storage scroll. "I visited Uzushio's ruins recently in search of things and stumbled upon these. I can't open any of the scrolls or the sealed box." He then popped open the other box. "But this contains some basic chakra blades that I found in an old storeroom. Ones that I think fell behind the shelves in the rush to defend the island."
Naruto looked into that box and found that there were five knives and a scroll inside of it. Two of the knives looked to be daggers, another struck him as being designed to be held backwards, and the last two looked like one of his kitchen knives. "What's in the scroll?"
"I wrote down some chakra flow basics for you, so that you'd be able to take advantage of the special qualities of the blades. But you can look through all of this more later, I have to be back on the road soon so let's take a look at what you've accomplished with the explosive tag arrays I showed you last time I stopped by."
It turned out that every last scroll Jiraiya had found was a copy of the paperwork clone jutsu once unsealed with a drop of Uzumaki blood. Half labeled as that, the other half labeled as the shadow clone. Naruto had dumped them all into the training hall with the copy that had already been there. The sealed box had been far more interesting, containing a pair of metal spirals to be worn on the forearms and minimalistic instructions in their use. Wear them loosely, channel chakra into them to trigger them resizing to fit, and then you could store and retrieve weapons. Each one could hold up to five weapons that would just appear in your hand when retrieved.
Not mentioned in the instructions was that there was no way to remove them once you put them on as they seemingly integrated into his chakra somehow. Something he'd only discovered after checking out the two tantos sealed within them, one for each arm. Both had chakra blades, but after returning them to storage he'd been unable to find any way to release the spirals from his skin. Knight Armor treated them like part of him, shapeshifting could hide them but not cause them to fall off even if he made his arms vanish, and he wasn't crazy enough to cut his own arms off to remove the things.
Well, not so long as they weren't dangerous to him, anyway, and his parents seemed to think they were fine. He ended up shapeshifting them into being invisible, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that they still worked. Followed by sticking a dagger and kitchen knife from the box Jiraiya had brought into each as well.
Hinata had been jealous upon finding out, given that chakra blades were expensive. Followed by refusing to carry even one of the seven Naruto had. Mostly because she didn't want to blatantly violate the general creed of the Hyuga not needing weapons beyond their bodies and the occasional kunai or set of shuriken.
"He knew who his mother was before I said anything," Jiraiya reported. "Probably knows who his father is too, though I didn't bring that up. He didn't express any interest in finding out if I knew, at least."
Hiruzen sighed. "I've recently become aware that he's got access to the hidden Uzumaki compound, though he isn't using the known entrances. In a couple of months I should have the normal entrances cleared of the obstructions put in place and the traps and observers monitoring them cleared out. At which point I plan on showing him how to get in 'officially' so that he doesn't have to hide as much."
Ah, that would save Jiraiya the trouble. "Thank you. There was nothing of use left in there, right?"
"Nothing I could find, but that doesn't mean much as I wasn't privy to all the secrets of the compound. I won't even be able to show Naruto how to let others in without physically pulling them through the barrier seals."
"What about Danzo? I'm under the impression that he's one of the ones watching those."
"I officially disbanded Root months ago, but I suspect he's still running it in secret. Far too little of the resources it should have had access to were returned to the village. He's also obviously looking for the container of the nine-tails and was noticeably shaken up when the Uchiha lost most of their adults to that attack. I think he's been running a collection of plans and is on the back foot as they all go wrong."
"Sounds about right for him. Do you need me to check on any more of the anti-summoning seals?"
"Not yet. We should have them all in place before our next turn to host the chunin exams."
Jiraiya blinked a couple of times at that. "Wasn't the original plan going to be done in just over two months from now? The seals aren't that complicated at this stage."
"It was, but the barrier team requested that we set up multiple layers. One just inside the walls, one on the walls, another just outside of the walls, and two more layers further out. We've tested and shouldn't need to adjust the exclusion zones, but one of them questioned what would happen if someone summoned a giant summon just outside the walls and forced their way through. Since Minato designed the seals to be trivially monitored we can get early warning even if someone figures out that they exist, and the plan is for knowledge of all but the 'in the walls' layer and one of the two further out ones to be kept to only those that need to know for security reasons. You'll be spot-checking seals once we have a full map ready."
"I'll check the entire thing if I need to. The entire idea makes far too much sense from a security standpoint, though it does add steps to having someone sign a contract."
Hiruzen nodded. "Yes, it does, and that came up in arguments from those with existing contracts being tied in ahead of time."
"Oh? You hadn't mentioned that anyone put up a fight over it."
"I simply pointed out that both times the nine-tailed fox was used against the village it was summoned to inside of it."
Okay, yes, that would definitely shut up the nay-sayers. In fact, Jiraiya had already fully agreed with the whole setup and found himself even less opposed to it now than he had been a couple minutes ago. "How hard do you think it would be to add another layer or two inside the village, around key places that are only tied into the Anbu and Hokage-approval lists instead of including the general one?"
"Already done for the tower and a couple of Anbu areas, with plans for a few more. I just wish we had a better way to turn the main system on in stages, but the monitoring component needs to tie into all of it at once to properly highlight exception zones that pop up inside of the perimeter."
The large gray fox was Naoko, and the brown one was Toyoko. They were the current elders of the clan, far less long-lived than other summons could manage but still far older than a wild fox would ever manage. More confusing was that only a handful of the foxes had names at all. Currently that was the two elders and the messengers, all of which took names to interact with outsiders. Otherwise the foxes identified each other by scents.
Naruto had ended up connecting with a male red fox that had a star-like pattern of yellow fur on his forehead, and had dubbed him Hoshi. They'd returned to Konoha, Hinata had cooed over the kit, and then Naruto had made his way to the Hokage's tower. Quite a few villagers had seen Hoshi, and a couple had scowled, but the majority had seemed entirely indifferent to it. True to the toad's word, Old Man Hokage had been ready for Naruto to show up with Hoshi and had even arranged for permission to have a 'pet' in the academy.
Kiba had been...far less pleased, though Akamaru and Hoshi seemed to get along well enough. Apparently Naruto already smelled too much like a fox, having an actual fox in the room with him was seemingly pushing it. Kiba's mother Tsume was nice enough though, and had insisted on Naruto bringing Hoshi by their compound to ensure that the clan's dogs would recognize the kit's scent as an ally, along with comments that perhaps meeting Naruto in person would help as well. Kiba's sister Hana was also nice and was helping Naruto learn basic healing in ways that the foxes couldn't teach him.
Training with the foxes themselves was reasonably straightforward for the time being as well. They'd pull Naruto and Hoshi back to their home for hunting training as Naruto wasn't able to easily slip out of the village safely right now otherwise, but everything else taught was summoning foxes to the Uzumaki compound to get lessons there. Most of which were for Hoshi, with only some of the fox side of field medic stuff for Naruto. The actual summoning, and getting the intended foxes, was the single biggest part of Naruto's training for now.
"I swear they're trying to bury us in homework to ensure we have no free time at all," Kiba whined as he looked over the list of things due next week on the way out of the academy. A third of it was just keeping up with exercise and jutsu practice though.
"If anyone should be complaining it's Naruto," Choji said. "I hear he spends every other afternoon learning medic-nin stuff from your sister."
"I don't know how he handles that either, because I know she keeps giving him homework too!"
"Mom's going to watch me do all this," Shikamaru said from behind Choji, before giving Naruto a look. "Actually, everyone else has complained about homework, even Hinata, but I don't think I've ever heard Naruto complain."
Naruto rolled his eyes when they turned to look at him, presumably to have him complain. "Homework is easy, finding time to get all my training in is what's annoying."
"And needing to sit down to do the homework would eat into that time."
"Nah. I know the paperwork jutsu."
The others might have said something in response to that, but Naruto suddenly found himself hoisted up by his jacket by Old Man Hokage in a manner that his father thought was reminiscent of the Hiraishin, Hoshi falling off of Naruto's head and landing on the ground next to them. "TELL ME YOUR SECRETS!"
It took a minute to recover from the shock, but Naruto shook his head. They'd planned for this...in general. This exact situation wasn't what they'd expected. "What secrets?"
"The fabled paperwork jutsu! Thought lost with the fall of Uzu!"
"Oh. The scroll said it was an Uzumaki secret that I shouldn't share with anyone, with the potential to kill any non-Uzumaki who used it carelessly."
For some reason his parents found the old man's dejected horror face amusing.
"It takes a lot of chakra," Hinata confirmed.
Old Man Hokage turned to Hinata. "You've...seen him use the paperwork jutsu? And it isn't something anyone could handle?"
She blushed, but nodded. "Yes."
His mood obviously plummeted as he put Naruto down. "I see. My apologies for interrupting." A moment later he'd vanished again, though this time Naruto could keep track of his movements as he left the area.
"Is this paperwork jutsu really that powerful?" Shikamaru asked.
"If you can use it properly," Naruto said, waving the assignment list even as he crouched down to let Hoshi hop back up onto him. "I'll have all this written work done by dinner."
"...are you sure it isn't safe for non-Uzumaki?"
Everyone in the area seemed to be interested in that. Sasuke had even stopped to listen while trying to look like he didn't actually care. Hinata was the one that spoke up though. "It uses enough chakra to likely kill any of us other than Naruto through chakra exhaustion."
Okay, the dejected looks on their classmates' faces were amusing, so perhaps he could see why his parents were amused by Old Man Hokage's.
Summer break brought new surprises. Jiraiya had shown up, freaked out about Naruto having fox summons, did his best to hide said freaking out, and then tripled-down on sealing lessons...for two days before he had to leave again. But they'd been semi-productive days and had netted Naruto six new books, one of which covered things his parents hadn't been entirely clear on.
Short visit from his godfather aside, Naruto and Hinata also started learning both the flight spell and the Rasengan. They were both awesome in their own ways, but to really test the flight spell Hinata was going to have to find a way outside of the village. Naruto figured that he'd just cheat and test it while visiting the foxes, to Hinata's annoyance as she didn't expect to be able to join him. He was waiting until they had the spell working to tell her about the 'personal summoning contract' he'd gotten from the foxes that would allow the pair of them to summon each other once they both signed it. Incredibly rare because a sage had to connect the contract to the 'summoning network', whatever that was, in order to have any range at all. Except that the foxes had a former sage that had decided to just make stacks of them that were sitting around doing nothing.
The Anbu commander had bought a stack of the things and Naruto had spent a couple of days ferrying purchased supplies back to the foxes.
Most important was Naruto having brand-new seals to practice drawing. He didn't fully understand them, but you didn't need to understand a seal to draw it and copying existing designs was part of the early lessons. For one set, the plan was to get them to the point where others could draw them and then pretend that they'd been found in some hidden cache of his father's. They were keyed summoning blockers, intended to generally prevent summoning in an area unless you were on the approved list of summoners, along with ways to allow temporary or permanent 'holes' in the protections for specific purposes. His father wanted them to cover the entire village as a default so that enemies couldn't sneak in and then summon piles of reinforcements right past the outer defenses.
On a personal front, Naruto cared more about the single seal that he'd need to draw himself for it to be effective. If he got it down well enough then when he activated it his ability to shapeshift should be granted to the person he'd drawn it on, and he was hoping to share that with Hinata. That one was also the most complicated seal he'd ever seen and he probably only had one chance to get it right on her.
"Why am I filling this mess out?" Anko grumbled as she looked over the paperwork. Applying for potentially becoming a jounin sensei for a group of brats wasn't her thing, though admittedly she'd not realized that being a special jounin was enough to apply until a couple weeks ago.
"Because you were pushing me to and I made you promise to do so as well," Kurenai replied.
"But you're the one interested in teaching brats."
"And every third time we go drinking together you complain that nobody even thinks about teaching infiltration properly until chunin."
"...well, it's true! For as much as anybody teaches infiltration properly at all, anyway."
Kurenai rolled her eyes. "I'm most interested in working with a dojutsu user as part of a team and am hoping to get one of the various Hyuga in particular as they don't need to awaken their eyes like Uchiha do. You're right about the lack of infiltration thoughts until chunin, so what are the chances that there'll be an infiltration-focused academy graduate in the next five years? But if there is, do you really want to miss your chance to get your hooks into one that early?"
And there was the completely valid argument that was keeping Anko from tearing the annoying forms up. There were far too few infiltration-types in the ranks in general. She wanted to be one, enjoying the thrill of slipping in right under the enemy's noses to get whatever the job was done without them ever knowing that she was there, but the fucking cursed hickey screwed with her chakra often enough to make it impossible to do well unless dealing with civilian-grade pissants.
There was no thrill in fooling people that weren't even a potential threat to her in the first place.
"Why does this only ask about one genin?" Anko asked a few minutes later, flipping through the pages. "Shouldn't it care more about the whole team?"
"Only if you want one of the defined team roles," Kurenai answered. "Page six has checkboxes for tracking, scouting, fortification, and heavy assault teams, but otherwise the idea is that they try to give you a team containing at least one genin that matches your criteria."
"Oh. Wait, infiltration isn't a defined team role?"
"How often do you send a team to infiltrate?"
"Not often enough. Things are a hell of a lot easier if you at least have a partner there with you, and having an evac team nearby is always a good idea. One that almost never happens for stupid reasons, admittedly."
"Seriously?"
Anko nodded. "It seems like most people in charge of infiltration teams are terrible at planning. Long-term infiltration with single operatives that are easily subverted, by those they're infiltrating or otherwise. Short-term infiltration with no plans for support or aid if things go wrong beyond what the infiltrator themselves can come up with. We even have records of 'place six year old infiltrators into the orphanage of the village' being attempted a couple dozen times here alone, as if growing up in the village and being treated well wasn't going to ruin the chances of getting reliable information out of the infiltrator by the time they could actually learn anything of importance. Not that we don't have a bunch of idiotic things like that on our own records too."
Naruto grinned as Hinata giggled while they flew over the land claimed by the fox summons. She'd been completely shocked when he'd brought out the contract that let them summon each other, though she didn't actually have enough chakra to summon him (or anything else) yet. But the point was that he could summon her to him, including when he was with the foxes and thus in a location where they could practice with flying and chakra chains.
Granted, the smaller contract didn't support 'send the person back to where they originally were' like the larger contracts did, but that just meant he had to summon her a second time when he was returned to Konoha. He'd asked if there was any way, without sending a fox to Konoha somehow, to be sent back there even if that wasn't where he'd arrived from and caused one of the sages to wander off with an odd look. There wasn't currently otherwise, but the toads were allowing use of their travel well now that Naruto had signed the fox contract.
So long as Jiraiya wasn't told until Naruto had signed with the toads as well, anyway. And the toads were 'considering' allowing Hinata to sign as well when that time came, if she'd built her chakra high enough to manage summoning reliably by then.
"You know that you're supposed to get gifts for your birthday," Hinata said as she caught up to him. "Not give them!"
"It took us both longer than we thought to get flying down," Naruto said. They'd both had the Rasengan down for over a month, flying didn't seem like it should've been as hard as it was. "And enjoying this with you is a gift on its own anyway."
That had her giggling again, and they had to swing around to not fly out of the area over the forest the foxes claimed.
"So," he said. "I think we might want to tell your father about the summoning contract."
She...well, stumbled wasn't quite right while flying, but he wasn't sure how else to describe it. "What? Why?"
"The foxes gave me more to do with as I want, more than happy with what they already got in supplies for the first stack they gave me. If someone tried to abduct you again, or they grabbed Hanabi after she'd signed a contract?"
"Oh. OH!" She tackle-glomped him in mid-air. It took a few minutes for her curiosity to overcome her excitement, and she carefully turned to look at him. "Wait, first stack?"
"I sold a stack to the Anbu after asking about ways to summon you out here, then bought a bunch of things the foxes have trouble getting their paws on normally with the money. More than they expected me to be able to get."
"...how many 'stacks' do they have?"
"I don't know. Plenty, supposedly. A few weeks ago one of the foxes admitted that the sage that made them had a bad hit of some kind of relaxation drug and just went into a loop making them for a few months. They don't want to just hand them all over at once, but a few for your clan is easy enough to handle from what they already gave me. I'm thinking about holding onto enough to let our eventual genin team sign ones for each other for emergency use too."
She frowned at that. "There's no guarantee that we'll be together."
"We can hope, but if I keep enough for two teams then I could summon your whole team for backup if a mission goes wrong."
That had her smiling again.
Naruto had figured that the handful of contracts he'd given to Hiashi would be appreciated, but he'd underestimated how much they'd be appreciated. Demonstrating the summoning ability with Hinata had been included to show that it worked, and the man had asked that the contract allowing the demonstration be kept secret for the time being. She and Hanabi had signed a contract each with Hiashi immediately, Naruto walking the man through testing for both girls, before the rest were presented to the elders. Apparently each girl had also signed a contract with a trusted elder of their choice as a backup before the remaining unsigned ones were locked away in a secure vault for the time being.
An hour later Naruto had been brought before the elders and he thought that they'd essentially declared him to be a trusted member of the family, or something close to it without needing actual adoption. He was permitted full access to the compound befitting a member of the main branch in particular, meaning that he no longer had to get permission ahead of time to visit Hinata or Hanabi.
This resulted in eating dinner with the Hyuga two to three times a week and regular lessons in how one acted as and around nobles. If not for paperwork clones and the false world inside of the Tome he'd probably feel like he had no time to work on anything of his own.
Unfortunately, the practice with the shapeshifting seal hadn't gotten to the point of being perfect by Hinata's birthday. Naruto was able to attend the celebration this year though, so that was nice. The collection of seals for blocking summoning into the village was ready though, placed onto a suitable scroll with instructions dictated by his father and supposedly appearing to be close enough to his father's handwriting.
Penmanship lessons had included duplicating the writing of others for more than just practicing in getting details correct, including being able to change the appearance of your own writing when infiltrating. Naruto felt stupid for missing that before he'd had it explained to him.
To sell the deception even more, Naruto had been told how to 'accidentally' enter the locked-down Namikaze household. There was very little of interest actually there, beyond well-hidden instructions on performing the Rasengan and a few hidden notes on the Hiraishin. But very few people had any way of knowing that and Jiraiya wouldn't have left those when he cleaned the house out if he had known, so coming out with a scroll on planned improvements to village security was unlikely to be questioned. Or at least not by Old Man Hokage.
Naruto was mostly disappointed in the lack of pictures in the house once he'd made it in.
After over an hour of double-checking for pictures his parents said didn't exist he'd left carrying the scroll, to find Old Man Hokage waiting for him. Lots of questions were asked, the scroll was examined, and then more questions were asked. That several Hyuga would probably need to be in the list of 'known summoners' had been a surprise when Naruto had brought it up, but only until the reasoning had been explained. The contract between Naruto and Hinata hadn't needed to be mentioned at that point either.
In thanks for finding the scroll, and because he couldn't be paid for the information itself as it wasn't his, he'd instead been offered jutsu scrolls to work on at his own pace. Old Man Hokage had provided a set of camping jutsu, the Anbu commander had provided transparency and scent-changing jutsu, and the barrier maintenance team had thrown in a medium-range communication jutsu.
Two weeks later Naruto was 'tied into' the barely-started seal arrays. Three times, because they had key-in seals for the Anbu, general Shinobi, and a Hokage's personal list. Naruto would have to be removed from all three to have his summoning blocked when the seals were fully activated. He later found out from Hinata that the relevant Hyuga were only told about one seal, with no implication that the other two existed at all.
"Smell wrong," Hoshi whined, causing Naruto to blink.
"It's about time you started talking," Naruto said, shaking his head. "And I know I smell wrong. I'm trying to figure out how I want Yoko to smell now that I've finally got the scent-changing jutsu working."
Supposedly the jutsu wasn't that hard to master, but it was likely that most users didn't have an enhanced sense of smell compared to normal humans. Which was probably why it also wasn't considered useful for preventing tracking as most people wouldn't be able to tell that they'd not changed aspects of their scent that canines could easily pick up on. Naruto didn't have those problems, and had confused Kiba in class by spending an entire day smelling like Hinata.
In Hoshi's defense, the current application of the technique was a horrible mixture of scent elements. Yoko needed a primary 'human female', and he was considering a slight ocean-like component. Which he could only describe now because he'd visited a beach with the foxes a few weeks ago, though he'd smelled it on some merchants on a regular basis for years and there were a couple of people in the village that just had a similar scent to them despite not leaving on trips at all.
Hinata didn't like that she couldn't even figure out how to shift her scent to the point where Kiba couldn't tell it was her, though she had managed to confuse him and had him wondering if she'd changed her soap or shampoo a couple of times. Unfortunately for her, the jutsu was limited to things that the user could consciously perceive in scents and she didn't have as much 'range' there.
"Since you're speaking a bit now," Naruto continued. "I don't suppose you have any ideas for what to get Hanabi for her birthday?" The girl's birthday was...somewhere in the last week of March. He had the exact date written down somewhere.
Hoshi shook his head, which wasn't much of a surprise. Naruto had considered things that might help the girl when she started training more seriously to eventually enter the academy, but didn't have a clue what would help there that wasn't already part of the supplies the Hyuga already provided. Hinata had suggested possibly fixing Hanabi's 'net', but that would probably require sharing secrets with Hanabi and their parents that he hadn't shared with anyone else.
Oh well, he still had a couple weeks to figure something out.
An hour later he'd had to pause his attempts to figure out Yoko's new scent because Jiraiya had finally shown up. Three hours late, though the man hadn't been peeping in the hot springs like the last time he'd been running late. A clone had been sent to check.
"Sorry I'm late," Jiraiya said as he entered the apartment, which was odd on its own. The man was usually shameless about details like that. "I had to get Sensei's permission for a couple of things, but first..."
Twenty minutes later the privacy aspects of the apartment had been reinforced, and a few seals that hadn't been keeping the pranking Anbu or Ushi out had been repaired. They'd be broken again in a week because they spread over hidden doors Jiraiya didn't know about but that Naruto used regularly.
"So," Jiraiya said. "Sensei sent me on a couple of trips on a whim, and in the process I found a couple of things. In talking with him about them, I managed to convince him to let me tell you one of the high-level secrets being kept for your own protection. Specifically, that your status as an Uzumaki was never in doubt, but your mother had personal enemies that would hunt down her child." He then pulled out a scroll and unrolled it on the table. "Her name was Kushina, and while the Uzumaki didn't have noble families like Konoha does, she was still from a prominent line." An application of chakra released a stack of scrolls and two boxes from the storage scroll. "I visited Uzushio's ruins recently in search of things and stumbled upon these. I can't open any of the scrolls or the sealed box." He then popped open the other box. "But this contains some basic chakra blades that I found in an old storeroom. Ones that I think fell behind the shelves in the rush to defend the island."
Naruto looked into that box and found that there were five knives and a scroll inside of it. Two of the knives looked to be daggers, another struck him as being designed to be held backwards, and the last two looked like one of his kitchen knives. "What's in the scroll?"
"I wrote down some chakra flow basics for you, so that you'd be able to take advantage of the special qualities of the blades. But you can look through all of this more later, I have to be back on the road soon so let's take a look at what you've accomplished with the explosive tag arrays I showed you last time I stopped by."
It turned out that every last scroll Jiraiya had found was a copy of the paperwork clone jutsu once unsealed with a drop of Uzumaki blood. Half labeled as that, the other half labeled as the shadow clone. Naruto had dumped them all into the training hall with the copy that had already been there. The sealed box had been far more interesting, containing a pair of metal spirals to be worn on the forearms and minimalistic instructions in their use. Wear them loosely, channel chakra into them to trigger them resizing to fit, and then you could store and retrieve weapons. Each one could hold up to five weapons that would just appear in your hand when retrieved.
Not mentioned in the instructions was that there was no way to remove them once you put them on as they seemingly integrated into his chakra somehow. Something he'd only discovered after checking out the two tantos sealed within them, one for each arm. Both had chakra blades, but after returning them to storage he'd been unable to find any way to release the spirals from his skin. Knight Armor treated them like part of him, shapeshifting could hide them but not cause them to fall off even if he made his arms vanish, and he wasn't crazy enough to cut his own arms off to remove the things.
Well, not so long as they weren't dangerous to him, anyway, and his parents seemed to think they were fine. He ended up shapeshifting them into being invisible, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that they still worked. Followed by sticking a dagger and kitchen knife from the box Jiraiya had brought into each as well.
Hinata had been jealous upon finding out, given that chakra blades were expensive. Followed by refusing to carry even one of the seven Naruto had. Mostly because she didn't want to blatantly violate the general creed of the Hyuga not needing weapons beyond their bodies and the occasional kunai or set of shuriken.
"He knew who his mother was before I said anything," Jiraiya reported. "Probably knows who his father is too, though I didn't bring that up. He didn't express any interest in finding out if I knew, at least."
Hiruzen sighed. "I've recently become aware that he's got access to the hidden Uzumaki compound, though he isn't using the known entrances. In a couple of months I should have the normal entrances cleared of the obstructions put in place and the traps and observers monitoring them cleared out. At which point I plan on showing him how to get in 'officially' so that he doesn't have to hide as much."
Ah, that would save Jiraiya the trouble. "Thank you. There was nothing of use left in there, right?"
"Nothing I could find, but that doesn't mean much as I wasn't privy to all the secrets of the compound. I won't even be able to show Naruto how to let others in without physically pulling them through the barrier seals."
"What about Danzo? I'm under the impression that he's one of the ones watching those."
"I officially disbanded Root months ago, but I suspect he's still running it in secret. Far too little of the resources it should have had access to were returned to the village. He's also obviously looking for the container of the nine-tails and was noticeably shaken up when the Uchiha lost most of their adults to that attack. I think he's been running a collection of plans and is on the back foot as they all go wrong."
"Sounds about right for him. Do you need me to check on any more of the anti-summoning seals?"
"Not yet. We should have them all in place before our next turn to host the chunin exams."
Jiraiya blinked a couple of times at that. "Wasn't the original plan going to be done in just over two months from now? The seals aren't that complicated at this stage."
"It was, but the barrier team requested that we set up multiple layers. One just inside the walls, one on the walls, another just outside of the walls, and two more layers further out. We've tested and shouldn't need to adjust the exclusion zones, but one of them questioned what would happen if someone summoned a giant summon just outside the walls and forced their way through. Since Minato designed the seals to be trivially monitored we can get early warning even if someone figures out that they exist, and the plan is for knowledge of all but the 'in the walls' layer and one of the two further out ones to be kept to only those that need to know for security reasons. You'll be spot-checking seals once we have a full map ready."
"I'll check the entire thing if I need to. The entire idea makes far too much sense from a security standpoint, though it does add steps to having someone sign a contract."
Hiruzen nodded. "Yes, it does, and that came up in arguments from those with existing contracts being tied in ahead of time."
"Oh? You hadn't mentioned that anyone put up a fight over it."
"I simply pointed out that both times the nine-tailed fox was used against the village it was summoned to inside of it."
Okay, yes, that would definitely shut up the nay-sayers. In fact, Jiraiya had already fully agreed with the whole setup and found himself even less opposed to it now than he had been a couple minutes ago. "How hard do you think it would be to add another layer or two inside the village, around key places that are only tied into the Anbu and Hokage-approval lists instead of including the general one?"
"Already done for the tower and a couple of Anbu areas, with plans for a few more. I just wish we had a better way to turn the main system on in stages, but the monitoring component needs to tie into all of it at once to properly highlight exception zones that pop up inside of the perimeter."
Last edited:
Chapter 5 - Sharing Shapeshifting and Paperwork
It was the first day of the summer break, and Naruto was walking down the street with Old Man Hokage.
"So what do you have to show me?" Naruto asked the old man, despite having a decent idea. Having clones training all day, including occasional pranks and general wandering, had made the clearing of the known entrances to the Uzumaki compound and removal of a number of other things in the vicinity fairly obvious. Even without being able to see boards and crates moved out of the way from inside the compound.
"A legacy of your family's," the man answered. "One that I'm fairly confident you already know about, given how often you use it, even if I don't know how you found it with what others had done to the entrances or how you keep getting in and out. Regardless, the official entrances are now open."
They soon came to a stone arch between two buildings with the Uzumaki crest at the top of it. To Naruto there was an illusion of a closed gate in the arch, that he knew would allow him and those keyed in to just walk in. From the inside there was a lever that would 'open' the gates to let anyone in, assuming you knew where the little door was to reveal it. A week ago the crest on this arch and the other one like it were both painted over with different crests to further disguise them, but a genin team had cleaned both up a couple days ago.
Knowing that 'D-ranks' were glorified chores intended to help establish initial teamwork and show the civilians that shinobi generally weren't monsters was both nice and annoying. Nice to know what was coming instead of ending up on the 'wall of shame' when you had an incredibly shocked expression, annoying because knowing it was coming didn't make it sound any less boring.
"While I'm already keyed in," Old Man Hokage said as they passed through the 'gate', "you likely already know that you have to let others in more manually."
"Nah," Naruto said. "I found the instructions for keying them in."
"...where, if you're willing to share?"
"In the training hall, with the jutsu scrolls."
"I see. Would the scrolls only be accessible to you and not to others you bring in?"
Naruto nodded. "Yeah. Some kind of weird thing where they don't seem to exist to others, but if someone else puts a scroll there it takes a few days before it vanishes."
"Ah. Is something like that how you've been getting in before now?"
"There's a way in through the shrine near the apartment building."
The old man looked down at Naruto. "I wasn't aware that you were on good terms with Yoko. You're never seen with her, at least."
That stunned Naruto, and his parents for that matter. "What?"
"Surely you're aware of the shrine maiden looking after the shrine?"
Naruto blinked a couple of times, trying to decide how to respond to that.
"I think we owe you an apology or two," his mother said from inside of the Tome. "We thought you'd screwed up with Yoko enough that the shinobi of the village were generally aware of who Yoko was..."
"But I don't think Hiruzen is playing dumb," his father continued. "He somehow never connected the two identities."
"Have you been sneaking into the shrine without even noticing the girl?" Old Man Hokage asked.
"Yoko isn't real," Naruto finally said, only for it to be obvious that the old man was going to disagree. "She's just a clone."
Hoshi found the old man's expression to be funny enough to fall off of Naruto's head while laughing, but the old man recovered quickly enough. "I see. That does bring two other things up. First, I was...very much surprised to find out that you have fox ears and a tail that you normally keep hidden. I'd likely have panicked if not for finding out from the monkeys, and I fully understand why you would want to keep those features hidden. While foxes are only somewhat disliked in general, seeing you with the features would probably cause panic."
"You knew that but hadn't figured out Yoko?"
"Yes. In all fairness, the vast majority of the civilians pass beneath my notice simply because I don't have time to notice them. I only became aware of Yoko because of how long she's lasted acting as a shrine maiden in that particular shrine, and even then only because it came up as a side discussion after a Council of Clans meeting. There has been some debate over providing more direct monetary support to Yoko in maintaining the shrine." He paused and shook his head. "That aside, for your own safety I've had to inform the Anbu commander and a couple of others connected to village security about the physical changes."
Well, that did make sense, and those people were likely very trusted. "Okay."
"The other thing I need to talk to you about is the shadow clone jutsu. I can only assume that you found a scroll on it in the training hall, but it's a dangerous technique that your classmates won't be able to handle."
"The what jutsu?" Naruto asked, doing his best to sound confused.
"The solid clones you've been using," Old Man Hokage said, demonstrating by making one. "It's a dangerous jutsu."
"Oh! You know it too? Then why did you ask me to teach you it?"
"I what?"
"The scroll I found it on called it the paperwork jutsu."
Naruto had to promise his parents to never utter even half of what the old man or his clone had said in the following five minutes. On the other hand, he didn't have to worry about buying ramen every day for months if he wanted to after being paid for a very long-standing mission to rediscover Uzu's paperwork jutsu for use by non-Uzumaki.
Or maybe he'd put it towards getting Hinata a chakra blade that would be suitable for her? He'd learned that there were things that could only be reliably cut with one, and she didn't want one of the Uzumaki blades...
A couple of days after being 'officially' shown the Uzumaki compound, Naruto and Hinata met in it. Hoshi had darted off to a spot he liked to nap in, but Naruto was obviously nervous, and Hinata just as obviously wasn't sure why.
"Is something wrong?" Hinata asked, before looking around. "You don't even have your clones active."
"My parents came up with a seal," Naruto admitted. "It took me a while to be able to draw correctly, but I've finally got it down."
"Okay..."
"They say that if I draw it and activate it on you then you'll be able to shapeshift like I can. Well, I ended up having to learn an alternate way to 'draw' it because using a brush just wasn't working, but that just makes it faster."
Hinata blinked a couple of times, staring at him. "Really?"
"I mean, we haven't actually been able to test it..."
He might have continued if she hadn't glomped him in a hug, and ten minutes later they were inside the training hall. She'd had to expose her back to him as the safest place to place the seal, and he didn't mention ahead of time that to connect to his abilities better and make it easier to form the seal was going to be 'drawn' with his own blood. A quick cut of his palm was needed before he placed his hand on her back and used his chakra to spread his blood out into the seal's pattern. It expanded across her back, covering most of it, before he switched from 'forming the seal' to 'activating the seal'. His chakra was already there in the seal, so this was more of a mental switch than anything else, and the seal glowed brightly.
Hinata screamed in pain as the seal latched onto her chakra network, something that they'd hoped wouldn't be a problem but that Naruto had also forgotten to warn her might happen. But at this point Naruto knew he had to push through, and two minutes later the seal had finished forming and connecting to her. The original pattern had gradually shrunk, eventually ending up as a small spiral discoloration of her skin directly under his palm. At least to normal sight.
To a byakugan it stuck out quite a bit, which was something that hadn't been considered, and the Tome could tell it was there too. More importantly, he got a confirmation that the seal had formed correctly, so once she'd recovered they could test it.
Or, with a pulse of chakra, she could activate the ability while still half out of it, taking on a kitsune-like form with blue fur matching her hair on her ears and tail. Well, either that or there was a problem with the seal and she'd just been turned into one for real...but her scent hadn't changed, so he didn't think that was the case. Her chakra definitely had, taking on a little bit of the appearance his chakra had, but her scent seemed to be the same as it had been before they'd started.
It took her another half an hour to recover, at which point she seemed delighted with the ears and tail. At least until she realized that her normal choice of clothing didn't work well with the tail at all, which had her pouting and finally listening to the explanation of how to control things. Reverting to her normal appearance had been simple enough, and they'd quickly discovered that she couldn't shift her clothing like he could if he wanted. But then twenty minutes later she'd shifted into Hikari, apparently without intending to, which had Naruto panicking a little about having screwed something up.
"This should just be an adaptation period," his father assured him. "It should last...um...no more than four days or so?"
"Probably only two to three," his mother added. "But if it was going to take more than five then the seal would've unraveled already."
"You placed an experimental seal on my daughter," Hiashi said, looking between Naruto and Hinata, the latter having manifested fox ears again a couple minutes prior. Before yawning cutely, as each shift to something other than her actual base form was eating a chunk of her chakra and she was starting to get low. "One that lets her actually change her physical form."
"Yes," Naruto admitted.
"One that only works because it's granting her a copy of your ability to do the same."
"Also yes."
"And that appears to have a bias towards fox features, of all things?"
"Er," Naruto said, scratching the back of his head. "Those are easier for her to get right because of the seal, but I think they keep coming up because she likes them."
"So," Hinata's mother Satomi said. "Can we assume that it makes them easier because you're using your own ability to hide your own fox features?"
Gulping a little, he nodded.
"Would you be willing to show us?" Hiashi asked.
Sighing, Naruto shifted his pants a little so his tail wouldn't be caught before releasing his own shapeshift. Hiashi raised an eyebrow, Satomi squealed lightly...
...and Hanabi gave up all pretense of being a serious little girl observing all of this and glomped his tail, prompting a glare of death from Hinata that went ignored.
"What are the restrictions for applying this seal?" Hiashi asked while Naruto was trying to figure out what to do about Hanabi...without hurting her, anyway.
"Um," Naruto said as Hinata started helping remove Hanabi from his tail. "It only works if I place it, though if someone with a different special ability applied it then it might copy theirs instead. Applying it to someone who doesn't have enough chakra to water-walk for a couple of hours is probably a bad idea as well, based on how much is taken out of Hinata whenever she shifts."
"Would you mind inking it onto normal paper for one of our sealmasters to look at?"
"Sure?"
Twenty minutes later a large sheet of paper and a bottle of ink had been provided. Applying the seal with ink instead of blood was harder, but only took a few extra minutes. Hiashi and Satomi were both very surprised when Naruto hadn't used a brush though. That was followed by ensuring that Naruto and Hinata both looked normal before summoning the most trusted sealmaster in the clan, a woman named Mio, who stared at the seal for several minutes before even asking what it was supposed to be for.
"Most of this looks to be complete nonsense," Mio said as she turned around. "Yet the active elements look like they'd be excellent for use by the clan, once simplified down a bit."
Hiashi raised an eyebrow. "And what do you think the active elements do?"
"There's a ring to disguise it as a simple birthmark of some kind around the outside, but the primary function looks like it would negate the need for increased blood flow to the eyes when activating the byakugan."
"That's a useful side effect of protecting the eyes," Naruto corrected, as that was one of the few parts of the seal he actually understood somewhat. "But isn't the intent of the seal at all." Of course, his parents had just shared with him a...much simpler version that just did that, and would take on the appearance of the clan's symbol when applied instead of the spiral. "But if you want one that does that?"
"I'd appreciate seeing that before we break Mio's brain," Hiashi said, grabbing another sheet of paper for Naruto. "If you don't mind?"
Mio's eyes had gone wide, and she'd activated her byakugan, as Naruto placed the new seal onto the sheet of paper. That had also noticeably caused her to spot the seal on Hinata's back, but no questions were asked initially. Instead, she looked over the new seal when he was done, nodding. "Yes, this is much more reasonable, and we may wish to apply it to all members of the clan going out into the field, assuming that we can come to an agreement for purchasing it." She then turned and looked more closely at the larger seal. "But then what does that monstrosity do?"
With a pulse of chakra, Hinata hiccuped and imploded in her clothing, suddenly looking like a blond-haired Hanabi with dark blue fox ears and tail. Mio had jumped and spun to stare at her, and was visibly shocked.
"It currently grants my daughter the ability to change her shape," Hiashi answered. "Including, as you can see, changing her chakra points when appropriate. We've been assured that she'll gain proper control over it in the coming days, and I suspect that adding mass is more chakra intensive than removing it."
"There's no way that seal is responsible for this alone," Mio said.
"Not alone, no. Only when applied by the correct individual."
"But that..." she started, turning back to look at the seal. "No, but...hmmm. So...yes, there...still don't see what...oh...hmmm..." This continued for a couple of minutes, the woman reaching out to almost touch the seal in several places as she tried to trace elements, before she sighed and turned around. "This is a masterwork that defies conventional examination, but it does make it obvious that Uzumaki here can also use the ability. I'd like to see how that differs in appearance, if it does at all, from Hinata's use."
Naruto shrugged and shifted to look like Hinata normally did, and as standard when disguising himself as a specific person he almost-unconsciously adjusted his chakra and scent to match. The only thing he didn't do was include his clothing in the change, which left him a bit uncomfortable.
"You...but..." Mio said, eyes going wider and flicking between him and Hinata. "If I had not seen it I would think that you were Hinata right now!"
Hiashi, Satomi, and Hanabi all activated their own byakugan to look, and all seemed just as shocked.
"Er," Naruto said, realizing what they were seeing and not trying to mimic Hinata as he scratched the back of his head. "I learned how to mimic chakra from the Anbu? So it isn't part of the ability."
"I see," Hiashi said even as Hanabi got over her shock and moved to check out Hinata's tail. "I suppose we need to move on to important discussions."
By the end of the week Hinata had gotten control over her shapeshifting, only triggering it when she intended to. The Hyuga clan had officially purchased the seal that made using the byakugan less obvious, insisting on paying for it instead of accepting it as payment for being 'foolhardy' with an experimental seal once Hinata had gained the promised control. Instead, Hanabi had somehow convinced her father to have her getting the seal be payment for experimenting on Hinata.
Until getting control over things, Hanabi bounced between adding cat ears and a tail and inanimate objects. For the latter, a basic pillow and a couple of styles of plush toy were the most common, and had required the byakugan to find her several times. She stated a desire to keep the cat ears and tail all the time once she'd gotten control, but had promised to look normal outside of the house for now.
Hinata was experienced enough to know that running around with fox features would be a bad idea, but had been intrigued by the idea of shapeshifting into inanimate objects. Naruto had known he could, doing so for pranks every so often, but hadn't explored the wider implications. Such as throwing a transformed clone as a kunai or shuriken for surprise attacks. The only problem there was that 'change back' for the clone ended up being to Naruto's default form, fox ears and tail included. For Hinata and Hanabi the problem would be that they couldn't include their clothing in the shapeshifting.
Their training had started including Hinata taking on someone else's appearance while sparring though, borrowing clothing from Naruto's now-sizable collection when needed. It was something Naruto had been doing with his clones a lot already both so that he'd be comfortable fighting while disguised and to get a much more varied set of body types to practice against. This now included him taking her appearance and trying to mimic her behavior well enough to fool others...as well as her attempting to do the opposite.
He was having far more success. It was much easier to pretend to be shy than to overcome being shy to pretend to be outgoing.
Hiashi thought back over the past couple of weeks as the Council of Clans waited for the Hokage to arrive. The elders had warmed up even more to young Naruto with a new seal that made the clan even more effective, especially when paired with the solid disguise technique, and had somehow missed that Hinata and Hanabi had picked up an entirely different seal. Which was good, because Mio had admitted after Hanabi had gotten her seal that anyone with the shapeshifting seal could no longer get the so-called Caged Bird seal.
The woman had obviously expected to be punished for not mentioning it before then, but he'd been delighted that neither of his daughters could be subject to that monstrosity anymore. It took quite a bit of pressure off of him and meant he could fully stop playing some of the elders off of each other on that subject in particular. Most of them had already been on board with being unable to mark either girl because it would be an insult for Hinata to marry Naruto if sealed and she couldn't be the Hyuga clan head if Naruto was to be the Uzumaki clan head.
Luckily, Hanabi hadn't latched onto an important member of another clan yet. It was an odd side effect of the byakugan, three out of five Hyuga became infatuated with someone at a young age from the look of their chakra alone. That had obviously happened with Hinata and subtle encouragement of the friendship with Naruto had paid off significantly. Something that wouldn't have happened had that 'decoy seal' not been broken...though it was feeling more like a botched extraction had actually killed the fox and Naruto had inherited some traits as a side effect.
Voicing those thoughts out loud was tantamount to inviting war though, so they were going to stay internal musings.
Hiruzen's arrival broke Hiashi's train of thought. No advisors today, which was fairly common.
"Good morning," Hiruzen said once he'd taken his seat. "I have several items for the end of the meeting, if there's anything else to bring up today?"
Itachi indicated a desire to speak, and was waved to do so. "I have two items. First, clearing of several border areas of the Uchiha compound to create academy student friendly training areas for the village is nearly completed. There were foundation issues with the border walls put up as well, which I attribute to those from the clan who did that impromptu work being unfamiliar with construction in general. The entire wall will be torn down in the coming months and final evaluation of the clan's residential holdings will be made available for review by the end of the year."
"That wall was up for far too long," Tsume all but spat, and it was hard to argue.
"Having proof of a rogue Uchiha working against the interests of the clan has removed the need for it, though finding out the way we did was unfortunate." There was a round of nods at that, Hiashi included. "I'd also like to thank those clans whose members joined the police force and am hoping to make it through the backlog of paperwork sometime this decade to identify what rules and policies need to be officially changed."
He bowed and sat back down, and Hiruzen nodded. "Unless anyone else has something to bring up, that actually leads into one of my own topics." Saying that was enough to get their attention, so he continued. "I'm sure that you have all heard the rumors that the fabled paperwork jutsu has been rediscovered, which I can confirm. I am, in fact, using it as we speak."
Even Shikaku shifted to looking wide awake at hearing that.
Hiruzen frowned as he continued. "The jutsu was lost due to...misunderstandings, miscommunications, and evaluations that looked at the 'underneath' of things to find things that were not there. At the same time, it was never lost, the original having been a gift that Konoha gave Uzushio as part of the alliance when the village was formed. I have since discovered that many likely even realized that we still had it, though I can only confirm that Chunin Iruka Umino figured it out. He thought that our search for it was a joke or misdirection instead of an oversight. In response to this, I will be putting out new forms that all shinobi will be encouraged to fill out to confirm that either they have spotted something intentional or that they have identified something overlooked."
"You make it sound like we've had the jutsu for years," Inoichi noted.
"When they were given the jutsu, the Uzumaki noted that it shared a name with several other techniques. They immediately spotted an important implication though, and dubbed it the paperwork jutsu instead of inviting confusion in their own ranks." He paused, and looked over them. "Every single person in this room is capable of, and already trained in, the use of the fabled paperwork jutsu. Including Kuromaru, though most of you rarely use it."
The clan heads all shared a look, and Hiashi had a bad feeling that they were about to feel like complete idiots.
"No guesses?" Hiruzen asked, and they all shook their heads. "This morning I personally updated the central archives to add the additional name of the jutsu. It can now be found under both the name Uzushio gave it, the paperwork jutsu, as well as the name Tobirama Senju gave it, the shadow clone jutsu."
Yep. Complete and total morons, the lot of them, because now that it had been said aloud the implications for being able to get through paperwork were obvious.
"We're down to the last year and a half for you," Iruka-sensei said after taking attendance. For some reason this year all the 'clan kids' were now in a single class with the best-performing of the civilian-born. "Not all of you are going to graduate to become genin, and we'll be running what amounts to a full graduation exam every six months so that you can see where you need to work on things. A bad enough failure on those exams may also get you removed from the program early. The first of these we'll be doing over the next three days, explaining the what and why as we go along, but this one won't be graded as the actual exam is only a day long. Your first real run will be in January."
"This is different from what you may have heard the exam was just last year," Mizuki-sensei continued. "Some recent changes were pushed through by the Uchiha to ensure that there's a minimum physical capability to graduate after concerns about the amount of dieting and other such nonsense going on were brought up. For those aspiring kunoichi that are dieting to impress a boy in particular, everyone gets only two chances to pass the physical component of the single-day exam. If you fail it twice then you will be ejected from the program, even if you're a member of a clan, so you have at most twelve months to shape up."
Several of the civilian-born girls had looked shocked at that, but Ino looked terrified. Naruto knew that he and Sasuke were targets for a number of the girls and that many were dieting out of some twisted desire to look attractive by being unhealthily skinny and useless in a fight...while trying to get the attraction of aspiring shinobi. Which didn't paint a good picture of their intelligence. Naruto was also...less visible, you could say, spending very little time 'as himself' in the village, leading to most of the girls focusing on Sasuke.
Most, but not all. Sakura seemed to flip back and forth, usually mirroring Ino doing the same to avoid both targeting the same boy at the same time, with Ino currently being the one targeting Naruto. Actually, she'd been the one targeting him for six months or so, which might mean that she and Sakura had settled on individual targets? Rio had figured out that Naruto was a fan of orange and started including a lot of it in her wardrobe without considering that 'likes wearing' and 'likes seeing others wearing' were two different things. And Yumi...didn't seem to know what she wanted, honestly, bouncing between all the male 'clan kids' seemingly at random. While creeping most of the class out in the process.
"We'll be starting with the physical requirements today," Iruka-sensei said. "The minimum stamina, strength, and pain tolerance requirements in particular. Better accuracy with thrown weapons reduces, but does not eliminate, the strength requirement so long as you get sufficient depth of impact at the same time. If you can dodge the things we're throwing at you as part of testing your pain tolerance then you also get a pass there."
"The actual exam will have everything tested essentially at once," Mizuki-sensei explained with an evil grin. "Meaning running with weights while dodging or taking hits without stopping due to the pain and throwing weapons at targets. You'll be able to choose your weights, but lower amounts of weight will mean needing higher accuracy scores on the thrown weapons."
Okay, this was probably going to suck, and Naruto apparently needed to look into better training weights. Or making some with seals?
Hinata had been the only girl in the class to not fall over halfway through the 'stamina' portion of things that day, and her lunch probably contained more calories than any three of the other girls were trying to eat in a day combined. In fact, her lunch had grown in size regularly over the past few years as she worked to build her chakra reserves and she currently held third place for 'most bowls of ramen eaten in one sitting' at Ichiraku's. Naruto was only ten bowls behind his mother's record and figured that he'd have it beaten by the end of the year, though she claimed that he had his work cut out for him because her record had been set while pregnant with him.
He'd beaten her non-pregnant record earlier in the year.
"How do you do it?" Sakura asked Hinata at the end of the day.
"Do what?" Hinata asked.
"Survive the entire day without falling over sleeping," Ami clarified.
"I eat enough."
"...what?"
Naruto chuckled. "She once told her sister that she hoped to one day be exercising enough to eat as much as I do without getting fat."
Hinata blushed, but nodded. "All of us should aspire to be able to eat anything we want and not care because we get too much exercise to put on excess weight. Akimichi clan techniques aside."
"Akimichi have to eat anything we want in triple portions," Choji clarified from behind them, startling some of the girls who hadn't noticed him following the group. "Because otherwise we don't keep enough weight on for our higher-level techniques."
Most of the girls looked like this was an affront to their sensibilities, but Hinata pulling a package of cinnamon rolls out of a storage seal on a metal tag clipped to her belt and starting to eat one threw them for a loop.
"Oooooh," Choji said, suddenly in front of the group. "Is that a food-safe storage seal?"
Hinata blinked, but nodded. "Yeah."
"Where did you get it? Our previous supplier of small ones passed away last year so we're stuck with full scrolls only."
"...they're hard to find?" She turned to Naruto. "You didn't tell me there was any problem with making them."
Naruto shrugged. "Everyone I've talked to about basic storage seals has told me that you've not properly learned to make them until they can store food for at least six months, if not a couple of years. Anything before that point is technically faulty."
Choji blinked and stared at Naruto. "Wait, that implies that you made that seal."
"Well, yeah, but the Hyuga sealmasters make something similar for the clan's camping supplies. Hinata's is a single-bucket version, they make a four-bucket version that I haven't figured out yet."
"Huh. I'll have to let dad know, but the Hyuga aren't in the habit of selling their seals at all and we only had...you called Hinata's a 'single bucket' seal?"
"Yeah. One storage bucket, ten slots, first in first out style so that the oldest cinnamon rolls come out first."
"Huh. That actually sounds more useful than the one I have since I can only fit three in and the most recently stored one comes out first. Definitely going to tell dad, both about the Hyuga and you."
"So what do you have to show me?" Naruto asked the old man, despite having a decent idea. Having clones training all day, including occasional pranks and general wandering, had made the clearing of the known entrances to the Uzumaki compound and removal of a number of other things in the vicinity fairly obvious. Even without being able to see boards and crates moved out of the way from inside the compound.
"A legacy of your family's," the man answered. "One that I'm fairly confident you already know about, given how often you use it, even if I don't know how you found it with what others had done to the entrances or how you keep getting in and out. Regardless, the official entrances are now open."
They soon came to a stone arch between two buildings with the Uzumaki crest at the top of it. To Naruto there was an illusion of a closed gate in the arch, that he knew would allow him and those keyed in to just walk in. From the inside there was a lever that would 'open' the gates to let anyone in, assuming you knew where the little door was to reveal it. A week ago the crest on this arch and the other one like it were both painted over with different crests to further disguise them, but a genin team had cleaned both up a couple days ago.
Knowing that 'D-ranks' were glorified chores intended to help establish initial teamwork and show the civilians that shinobi generally weren't monsters was both nice and annoying. Nice to know what was coming instead of ending up on the 'wall of shame' when you had an incredibly shocked expression, annoying because knowing it was coming didn't make it sound any less boring.
"While I'm already keyed in," Old Man Hokage said as they passed through the 'gate', "you likely already know that you have to let others in more manually."
"Nah," Naruto said. "I found the instructions for keying them in."
"...where, if you're willing to share?"
"In the training hall, with the jutsu scrolls."
"I see. Would the scrolls only be accessible to you and not to others you bring in?"
Naruto nodded. "Yeah. Some kind of weird thing where they don't seem to exist to others, but if someone else puts a scroll there it takes a few days before it vanishes."
"Ah. Is something like that how you've been getting in before now?"
"There's a way in through the shrine near the apartment building."
The old man looked down at Naruto. "I wasn't aware that you were on good terms with Yoko. You're never seen with her, at least."
That stunned Naruto, and his parents for that matter. "What?"
"Surely you're aware of the shrine maiden looking after the shrine?"
Naruto blinked a couple of times, trying to decide how to respond to that.
"I think we owe you an apology or two," his mother said from inside of the Tome. "We thought you'd screwed up with Yoko enough that the shinobi of the village were generally aware of who Yoko was..."
"But I don't think Hiruzen is playing dumb," his father continued. "He somehow never connected the two identities."
"Have you been sneaking into the shrine without even noticing the girl?" Old Man Hokage asked.
"Yoko isn't real," Naruto finally said, only for it to be obvious that the old man was going to disagree. "She's just a clone."
Hoshi found the old man's expression to be funny enough to fall off of Naruto's head while laughing, but the old man recovered quickly enough. "I see. That does bring two other things up. First, I was...very much surprised to find out that you have fox ears and a tail that you normally keep hidden. I'd likely have panicked if not for finding out from the monkeys, and I fully understand why you would want to keep those features hidden. While foxes are only somewhat disliked in general, seeing you with the features would probably cause panic."
"You knew that but hadn't figured out Yoko?"
"Yes. In all fairness, the vast majority of the civilians pass beneath my notice simply because I don't have time to notice them. I only became aware of Yoko because of how long she's lasted acting as a shrine maiden in that particular shrine, and even then only because it came up as a side discussion after a Council of Clans meeting. There has been some debate over providing more direct monetary support to Yoko in maintaining the shrine." He paused and shook his head. "That aside, for your own safety I've had to inform the Anbu commander and a couple of others connected to village security about the physical changes."
Well, that did make sense, and those people were likely very trusted. "Okay."
"The other thing I need to talk to you about is the shadow clone jutsu. I can only assume that you found a scroll on it in the training hall, but it's a dangerous technique that your classmates won't be able to handle."
"The what jutsu?" Naruto asked, doing his best to sound confused.
"The solid clones you've been using," Old Man Hokage said, demonstrating by making one. "It's a dangerous jutsu."
"Oh! You know it too? Then why did you ask me to teach you it?"
"I what?"
"The scroll I found it on called it the paperwork jutsu."
Naruto had to promise his parents to never utter even half of what the old man or his clone had said in the following five minutes. On the other hand, he didn't have to worry about buying ramen every day for months if he wanted to after being paid for a very long-standing mission to rediscover Uzu's paperwork jutsu for use by non-Uzumaki.
Or maybe he'd put it towards getting Hinata a chakra blade that would be suitable for her? He'd learned that there were things that could only be reliably cut with one, and she didn't want one of the Uzumaki blades...
A couple of days after being 'officially' shown the Uzumaki compound, Naruto and Hinata met in it. Hoshi had darted off to a spot he liked to nap in, but Naruto was obviously nervous, and Hinata just as obviously wasn't sure why.
"Is something wrong?" Hinata asked, before looking around. "You don't even have your clones active."
"My parents came up with a seal," Naruto admitted. "It took me a while to be able to draw correctly, but I've finally got it down."
"Okay..."
"They say that if I draw it and activate it on you then you'll be able to shapeshift like I can. Well, I ended up having to learn an alternate way to 'draw' it because using a brush just wasn't working, but that just makes it faster."
Hinata blinked a couple of times, staring at him. "Really?"
"I mean, we haven't actually been able to test it..."
He might have continued if she hadn't glomped him in a hug, and ten minutes later they were inside the training hall. She'd had to expose her back to him as the safest place to place the seal, and he didn't mention ahead of time that to connect to his abilities better and make it easier to form the seal was going to be 'drawn' with his own blood. A quick cut of his palm was needed before he placed his hand on her back and used his chakra to spread his blood out into the seal's pattern. It expanded across her back, covering most of it, before he switched from 'forming the seal' to 'activating the seal'. His chakra was already there in the seal, so this was more of a mental switch than anything else, and the seal glowed brightly.
Hinata screamed in pain as the seal latched onto her chakra network, something that they'd hoped wouldn't be a problem but that Naruto had also forgotten to warn her might happen. But at this point Naruto knew he had to push through, and two minutes later the seal had finished forming and connecting to her. The original pattern had gradually shrunk, eventually ending up as a small spiral discoloration of her skin directly under his palm. At least to normal sight.
To a byakugan it stuck out quite a bit, which was something that hadn't been considered, and the Tome could tell it was there too. More importantly, he got a confirmation that the seal had formed correctly, so once she'd recovered they could test it.
Or, with a pulse of chakra, she could activate the ability while still half out of it, taking on a kitsune-like form with blue fur matching her hair on her ears and tail. Well, either that or there was a problem with the seal and she'd just been turned into one for real...but her scent hadn't changed, so he didn't think that was the case. Her chakra definitely had, taking on a little bit of the appearance his chakra had, but her scent seemed to be the same as it had been before they'd started.
It took her another half an hour to recover, at which point she seemed delighted with the ears and tail. At least until she realized that her normal choice of clothing didn't work well with the tail at all, which had her pouting and finally listening to the explanation of how to control things. Reverting to her normal appearance had been simple enough, and they'd quickly discovered that she couldn't shift her clothing like he could if he wanted. But then twenty minutes later she'd shifted into Hikari, apparently without intending to, which had Naruto panicking a little about having screwed something up.
"This should just be an adaptation period," his father assured him. "It should last...um...no more than four days or so?"
"Probably only two to three," his mother added. "But if it was going to take more than five then the seal would've unraveled already."
"You placed an experimental seal on my daughter," Hiashi said, looking between Naruto and Hinata, the latter having manifested fox ears again a couple minutes prior. Before yawning cutely, as each shift to something other than her actual base form was eating a chunk of her chakra and she was starting to get low. "One that lets her actually change her physical form."
"Yes," Naruto admitted.
"One that only works because it's granting her a copy of your ability to do the same."
"Also yes."
"And that appears to have a bias towards fox features, of all things?"
"Er," Naruto said, scratching the back of his head. "Those are easier for her to get right because of the seal, but I think they keep coming up because she likes them."
"So," Hinata's mother Satomi said. "Can we assume that it makes them easier because you're using your own ability to hide your own fox features?"
Gulping a little, he nodded.
"Would you be willing to show us?" Hiashi asked.
Sighing, Naruto shifted his pants a little so his tail wouldn't be caught before releasing his own shapeshift. Hiashi raised an eyebrow, Satomi squealed lightly...
...and Hanabi gave up all pretense of being a serious little girl observing all of this and glomped his tail, prompting a glare of death from Hinata that went ignored.
"What are the restrictions for applying this seal?" Hiashi asked while Naruto was trying to figure out what to do about Hanabi...without hurting her, anyway.
"Um," Naruto said as Hinata started helping remove Hanabi from his tail. "It only works if I place it, though if someone with a different special ability applied it then it might copy theirs instead. Applying it to someone who doesn't have enough chakra to water-walk for a couple of hours is probably a bad idea as well, based on how much is taken out of Hinata whenever she shifts."
"Would you mind inking it onto normal paper for one of our sealmasters to look at?"
"Sure?"
Twenty minutes later a large sheet of paper and a bottle of ink had been provided. Applying the seal with ink instead of blood was harder, but only took a few extra minutes. Hiashi and Satomi were both very surprised when Naruto hadn't used a brush though. That was followed by ensuring that Naruto and Hinata both looked normal before summoning the most trusted sealmaster in the clan, a woman named Mio, who stared at the seal for several minutes before even asking what it was supposed to be for.
"Most of this looks to be complete nonsense," Mio said as she turned around. "Yet the active elements look like they'd be excellent for use by the clan, once simplified down a bit."
Hiashi raised an eyebrow. "And what do you think the active elements do?"
"There's a ring to disguise it as a simple birthmark of some kind around the outside, but the primary function looks like it would negate the need for increased blood flow to the eyes when activating the byakugan."
"That's a useful side effect of protecting the eyes," Naruto corrected, as that was one of the few parts of the seal he actually understood somewhat. "But isn't the intent of the seal at all." Of course, his parents had just shared with him a...much simpler version that just did that, and would take on the appearance of the clan's symbol when applied instead of the spiral. "But if you want one that does that?"
"I'd appreciate seeing that before we break Mio's brain," Hiashi said, grabbing another sheet of paper for Naruto. "If you don't mind?"
Mio's eyes had gone wide, and she'd activated her byakugan, as Naruto placed the new seal onto the sheet of paper. That had also noticeably caused her to spot the seal on Hinata's back, but no questions were asked initially. Instead, she looked over the new seal when he was done, nodding. "Yes, this is much more reasonable, and we may wish to apply it to all members of the clan going out into the field, assuming that we can come to an agreement for purchasing it." She then turned and looked more closely at the larger seal. "But then what does that monstrosity do?"
With a pulse of chakra, Hinata hiccuped and imploded in her clothing, suddenly looking like a blond-haired Hanabi with dark blue fox ears and tail. Mio had jumped and spun to stare at her, and was visibly shocked.
"It currently grants my daughter the ability to change her shape," Hiashi answered. "Including, as you can see, changing her chakra points when appropriate. We've been assured that she'll gain proper control over it in the coming days, and I suspect that adding mass is more chakra intensive than removing it."
"There's no way that seal is responsible for this alone," Mio said.
"Not alone, no. Only when applied by the correct individual."
"But that..." she started, turning back to look at the seal. "No, but...hmmm. So...yes, there...still don't see what...oh...hmmm..." This continued for a couple of minutes, the woman reaching out to almost touch the seal in several places as she tried to trace elements, before she sighed and turned around. "This is a masterwork that defies conventional examination, but it does make it obvious that Uzumaki here can also use the ability. I'd like to see how that differs in appearance, if it does at all, from Hinata's use."
Naruto shrugged and shifted to look like Hinata normally did, and as standard when disguising himself as a specific person he almost-unconsciously adjusted his chakra and scent to match. The only thing he didn't do was include his clothing in the change, which left him a bit uncomfortable.
"You...but..." Mio said, eyes going wider and flicking between him and Hinata. "If I had not seen it I would think that you were Hinata right now!"
Hiashi, Satomi, and Hanabi all activated their own byakugan to look, and all seemed just as shocked.
"Er," Naruto said, realizing what they were seeing and not trying to mimic Hinata as he scratched the back of his head. "I learned how to mimic chakra from the Anbu? So it isn't part of the ability."
"I see," Hiashi said even as Hanabi got over her shock and moved to check out Hinata's tail. "I suppose we need to move on to important discussions."
By the end of the week Hinata had gotten control over her shapeshifting, only triggering it when she intended to. The Hyuga clan had officially purchased the seal that made using the byakugan less obvious, insisting on paying for it instead of accepting it as payment for being 'foolhardy' with an experimental seal once Hinata had gained the promised control. Instead, Hanabi had somehow convinced her father to have her getting the seal be payment for experimenting on Hinata.
Until getting control over things, Hanabi bounced between adding cat ears and a tail and inanimate objects. For the latter, a basic pillow and a couple of styles of plush toy were the most common, and had required the byakugan to find her several times. She stated a desire to keep the cat ears and tail all the time once she'd gotten control, but had promised to look normal outside of the house for now.
Hinata was experienced enough to know that running around with fox features would be a bad idea, but had been intrigued by the idea of shapeshifting into inanimate objects. Naruto had known he could, doing so for pranks every so often, but hadn't explored the wider implications. Such as throwing a transformed clone as a kunai or shuriken for surprise attacks. The only problem there was that 'change back' for the clone ended up being to Naruto's default form, fox ears and tail included. For Hinata and Hanabi the problem would be that they couldn't include their clothing in the shapeshifting.
Their training had started including Hinata taking on someone else's appearance while sparring though, borrowing clothing from Naruto's now-sizable collection when needed. It was something Naruto had been doing with his clones a lot already both so that he'd be comfortable fighting while disguised and to get a much more varied set of body types to practice against. This now included him taking her appearance and trying to mimic her behavior well enough to fool others...as well as her attempting to do the opposite.
He was having far more success. It was much easier to pretend to be shy than to overcome being shy to pretend to be outgoing.
Hiashi thought back over the past couple of weeks as the Council of Clans waited for the Hokage to arrive. The elders had warmed up even more to young Naruto with a new seal that made the clan even more effective, especially when paired with the solid disguise technique, and had somehow missed that Hinata and Hanabi had picked up an entirely different seal. Which was good, because Mio had admitted after Hanabi had gotten her seal that anyone with the shapeshifting seal could no longer get the so-called Caged Bird seal.
The woman had obviously expected to be punished for not mentioning it before then, but he'd been delighted that neither of his daughters could be subject to that monstrosity anymore. It took quite a bit of pressure off of him and meant he could fully stop playing some of the elders off of each other on that subject in particular. Most of them had already been on board with being unable to mark either girl because it would be an insult for Hinata to marry Naruto if sealed and she couldn't be the Hyuga clan head if Naruto was to be the Uzumaki clan head.
Luckily, Hanabi hadn't latched onto an important member of another clan yet. It was an odd side effect of the byakugan, three out of five Hyuga became infatuated with someone at a young age from the look of their chakra alone. That had obviously happened with Hinata and subtle encouragement of the friendship with Naruto had paid off significantly. Something that wouldn't have happened had that 'decoy seal' not been broken...though it was feeling more like a botched extraction had actually killed the fox and Naruto had inherited some traits as a side effect.
Voicing those thoughts out loud was tantamount to inviting war though, so they were going to stay internal musings.
Hiruzen's arrival broke Hiashi's train of thought. No advisors today, which was fairly common.
"Good morning," Hiruzen said once he'd taken his seat. "I have several items for the end of the meeting, if there's anything else to bring up today?"
Itachi indicated a desire to speak, and was waved to do so. "I have two items. First, clearing of several border areas of the Uchiha compound to create academy student friendly training areas for the village is nearly completed. There were foundation issues with the border walls put up as well, which I attribute to those from the clan who did that impromptu work being unfamiliar with construction in general. The entire wall will be torn down in the coming months and final evaluation of the clan's residential holdings will be made available for review by the end of the year."
"That wall was up for far too long," Tsume all but spat, and it was hard to argue.
"Having proof of a rogue Uchiha working against the interests of the clan has removed the need for it, though finding out the way we did was unfortunate." There was a round of nods at that, Hiashi included. "I'd also like to thank those clans whose members joined the police force and am hoping to make it through the backlog of paperwork sometime this decade to identify what rules and policies need to be officially changed."
He bowed and sat back down, and Hiruzen nodded. "Unless anyone else has something to bring up, that actually leads into one of my own topics." Saying that was enough to get their attention, so he continued. "I'm sure that you have all heard the rumors that the fabled paperwork jutsu has been rediscovered, which I can confirm. I am, in fact, using it as we speak."
Even Shikaku shifted to looking wide awake at hearing that.
Hiruzen frowned as he continued. "The jutsu was lost due to...misunderstandings, miscommunications, and evaluations that looked at the 'underneath' of things to find things that were not there. At the same time, it was never lost, the original having been a gift that Konoha gave Uzushio as part of the alliance when the village was formed. I have since discovered that many likely even realized that we still had it, though I can only confirm that Chunin Iruka Umino figured it out. He thought that our search for it was a joke or misdirection instead of an oversight. In response to this, I will be putting out new forms that all shinobi will be encouraged to fill out to confirm that either they have spotted something intentional or that they have identified something overlooked."
"You make it sound like we've had the jutsu for years," Inoichi noted.
"When they were given the jutsu, the Uzumaki noted that it shared a name with several other techniques. They immediately spotted an important implication though, and dubbed it the paperwork jutsu instead of inviting confusion in their own ranks." He paused, and looked over them. "Every single person in this room is capable of, and already trained in, the use of the fabled paperwork jutsu. Including Kuromaru, though most of you rarely use it."
The clan heads all shared a look, and Hiashi had a bad feeling that they were about to feel like complete idiots.
"No guesses?" Hiruzen asked, and they all shook their heads. "This morning I personally updated the central archives to add the additional name of the jutsu. It can now be found under both the name Uzushio gave it, the paperwork jutsu, as well as the name Tobirama Senju gave it, the shadow clone jutsu."
Yep. Complete and total morons, the lot of them, because now that it had been said aloud the implications for being able to get through paperwork were obvious.
"We're down to the last year and a half for you," Iruka-sensei said after taking attendance. For some reason this year all the 'clan kids' were now in a single class with the best-performing of the civilian-born. "Not all of you are going to graduate to become genin, and we'll be running what amounts to a full graduation exam every six months so that you can see where you need to work on things. A bad enough failure on those exams may also get you removed from the program early. The first of these we'll be doing over the next three days, explaining the what and why as we go along, but this one won't be graded as the actual exam is only a day long. Your first real run will be in January."
"This is different from what you may have heard the exam was just last year," Mizuki-sensei continued. "Some recent changes were pushed through by the Uchiha to ensure that there's a minimum physical capability to graduate after concerns about the amount of dieting and other such nonsense going on were brought up. For those aspiring kunoichi that are dieting to impress a boy in particular, everyone gets only two chances to pass the physical component of the single-day exam. If you fail it twice then you will be ejected from the program, even if you're a member of a clan, so you have at most twelve months to shape up."
Several of the civilian-born girls had looked shocked at that, but Ino looked terrified. Naruto knew that he and Sasuke were targets for a number of the girls and that many were dieting out of some twisted desire to look attractive by being unhealthily skinny and useless in a fight...while trying to get the attraction of aspiring shinobi. Which didn't paint a good picture of their intelligence. Naruto was also...less visible, you could say, spending very little time 'as himself' in the village, leading to most of the girls focusing on Sasuke.
Most, but not all. Sakura seemed to flip back and forth, usually mirroring Ino doing the same to avoid both targeting the same boy at the same time, with Ino currently being the one targeting Naruto. Actually, she'd been the one targeting him for six months or so, which might mean that she and Sakura had settled on individual targets? Rio had figured out that Naruto was a fan of orange and started including a lot of it in her wardrobe without considering that 'likes wearing' and 'likes seeing others wearing' were two different things. And Yumi...didn't seem to know what she wanted, honestly, bouncing between all the male 'clan kids' seemingly at random. While creeping most of the class out in the process.
"We'll be starting with the physical requirements today," Iruka-sensei said. "The minimum stamina, strength, and pain tolerance requirements in particular. Better accuracy with thrown weapons reduces, but does not eliminate, the strength requirement so long as you get sufficient depth of impact at the same time. If you can dodge the things we're throwing at you as part of testing your pain tolerance then you also get a pass there."
"The actual exam will have everything tested essentially at once," Mizuki-sensei explained with an evil grin. "Meaning running with weights while dodging or taking hits without stopping due to the pain and throwing weapons at targets. You'll be able to choose your weights, but lower amounts of weight will mean needing higher accuracy scores on the thrown weapons."
Okay, this was probably going to suck, and Naruto apparently needed to look into better training weights. Or making some with seals?
Hinata had been the only girl in the class to not fall over halfway through the 'stamina' portion of things that day, and her lunch probably contained more calories than any three of the other girls were trying to eat in a day combined. In fact, her lunch had grown in size regularly over the past few years as she worked to build her chakra reserves and she currently held third place for 'most bowls of ramen eaten in one sitting' at Ichiraku's. Naruto was only ten bowls behind his mother's record and figured that he'd have it beaten by the end of the year, though she claimed that he had his work cut out for him because her record had been set while pregnant with him.
He'd beaten her non-pregnant record earlier in the year.
"How do you do it?" Sakura asked Hinata at the end of the day.
"Do what?" Hinata asked.
"Survive the entire day without falling over sleeping," Ami clarified.
"I eat enough."
"...what?"
Naruto chuckled. "She once told her sister that she hoped to one day be exercising enough to eat as much as I do without getting fat."
Hinata blushed, but nodded. "All of us should aspire to be able to eat anything we want and not care because we get too much exercise to put on excess weight. Akimichi clan techniques aside."
"Akimichi have to eat anything we want in triple portions," Choji clarified from behind them, startling some of the girls who hadn't noticed him following the group. "Because otherwise we don't keep enough weight on for our higher-level techniques."
Most of the girls looked like this was an affront to their sensibilities, but Hinata pulling a package of cinnamon rolls out of a storage seal on a metal tag clipped to her belt and starting to eat one threw them for a loop.
"Oooooh," Choji said, suddenly in front of the group. "Is that a food-safe storage seal?"
Hinata blinked, but nodded. "Yeah."
"Where did you get it? Our previous supplier of small ones passed away last year so we're stuck with full scrolls only."
"...they're hard to find?" She turned to Naruto. "You didn't tell me there was any problem with making them."
Naruto shrugged. "Everyone I've talked to about basic storage seals has told me that you've not properly learned to make them until they can store food for at least six months, if not a couple of years. Anything before that point is technically faulty."
Choji blinked and stared at Naruto. "Wait, that implies that you made that seal."
"Well, yeah, but the Hyuga sealmasters make something similar for the clan's camping supplies. Hinata's is a single-bucket version, they make a four-bucket version that I haven't figured out yet."
"Huh. I'll have to let dad know, but the Hyuga aren't in the habit of selling their seals at all and we only had...you called Hinata's a 'single bucket' seal?"
"Yeah. One storage bucket, ten slots, first in first out style so that the oldest cinnamon rolls come out first."
"Huh. That actually sounds more useful than the one I have since I can only fit three in and the most recently stored one comes out first. Definitely going to tell dad, both about the Hyuga and you."
Chapter 6 - Surprises and More Surprises
For his eleventh birthday, Naruto's parents had unlocked a set of additional jutsu for him in the Tome. Two were 'untyped', the body flicker jutsu chosen as a safe starting point for learning to use chakra to enhance movement speed and a more potent genjutsu release than the basic one mentioned in the academy textbooks. The rest were tied into chakra natures as useful starting points before developing control over the natures further. Each of the five basic natures had a basic 'fire a ball of the element' jutsu and a paperwork clone variant that would leave the element behind when dispelled instead of the remaining chakra returning to the user, but another jutsu of each type was also included.
For fire, a jutsu that allowed minor control of existing fires, useful for strengthening them or putting them out as appropriate. For wind, a jutsu that generates wind flows from your palms for various purposes. For lightning, a blinding flash jutsu that could be toned down to 'flash bulb for pictures' levels. For earth, an underground movement jutsu that his parents admitted was actually a generalized combination of several related jutsu. For water, a mist-creation jutsu that they thought would work especially well with him able to use the byakugan to negate most of the downsides.
Naruto expected to have all of the new jutsu down without hand seals needed by the end of the year, but only because he could abuse the crap out of paperwork clones for training with them all. Hinata was also going to be working on getting all of the non-clone ones down, but that was going to take her far longer.
Old Man Hokage's gift had been ramen and an official copy of the shuriken shadow clone jutsu, the latter of which at least gave Naruto a justification for knowing it. The Hyuga clan had given notes on how they'd constructed their four-bucket storage seals, but no actual formulae. Jiraiya hadn't shown up in person, but had sent different notes for how he constructed multiple-bucket storage seals. That was in addition to the next set of sealing books in general as well as a bundle of ryo 'to buy some nice clothes with'.
Hinata had bought him nice clothes, Hanabi had found a fox plush that ended up in his bedroom, and Hoshi had somehow obtained an entire large box full of metal sealing tags and related supplies. Naruto preferred working in metal for smaller storage seals as it made them much harder to damage, but had been having trouble finding appropriately-sized tags for them. The foxes supposedly didn't work with metal in that way though, and Hoshi wasn't willing to admit where the box had come from.
Danzo was getting more and more frustrated as time went on. He'd kept running into timing problems with confronting Shisui to obtain the man's eyes, and then the option of claiming those eyes for better use had been removed by Jiraiya. The loss of so many Uchiha to flames instead of ending the coup through less physically destructive violence had also made it impossible to covertly collect a large number of sharingan eyes, leaving him without a bargaining chip for working with Orochimaru.
Hiruzen disbanding Root was unfortunate, but expected and planned for. Even if it had made keeping supplies up a challenge. The bigger problem was the lack of access to a number of information sources that being an official Anbu-level group had allowed. There were things being done to the village in the name of security that Danzo wasn't being informed of and that he had no suitable moles in place to find out the details for and he didn't like that. At least none of them looked to be affecting Root's hidden tunnels under the walls...or at least not yet.
And all of that paled in comparison to finding out that they'd had the fabled paperwork jutsu available all along, only for it to be the shadow clone jutsu. Some of his old injuries and a couple of mistakes made when first implanting one of the few sharingan he'd gotten his hands on rendered him incapable of using that jutsu as the clones dispelled before even finishing forming, things that he'd hoped Orochimaru could rectify. But the man was insistent on getting access to sharingan eyes over anything else for payment.
Out of pure spite, Danzo was doing his best to ensure that the secret of the paperwork jutsu did not reach the snake or any of the man's agents in the village in general.
For Hinata's birthday near the end of December, Naruto had given her a pair of chakra blade daggers with arm holders. The blades could be removed and used normally or left in the arm holders and triggered to spring forward with chakra to add a sudden stab to a Gentle Fist strike. He'd gotten matching holders that could be strapped to his own arms and accept the Uzumaki daggers for his own use.
Hiashi had questioned the gift, and Naruto had explained the benefits of chakra blades when it came to cutting chakra-reinforced materials. His thought process on the custom-ordered holders was also covered, including that Hyuga trained to use more chakra points than normal and thus shouldn't have problems with the triggers and that if someone was using chakra-reinforced armor to block the Gentle Fist then the blades would be a quick way to start putting literal holes in it. With long sleeves most enemies would also be unlikely to notice the slim mechanisms before it was too late.
The biggest hurdle to implementing something similar for the entire clan was the cost of chakra blades. Most of the benefits of the system relied on them and they didn't come cheap.
Despite that, Hinata felt that the most important 'gift' she'd received was one of the paperwork clone jutsu scrolls deciding that she had enough chakra to read it. She could only manage a single clone, and didn't have enough chakra to use any of the elemental variants, but being able to make even one was an accomplishment.
On the training front, by then Naruto had managed to use clones to get all of the jutsu his parents had provided working without hand seals and Hinata had the body flicker jutsu and all five elemental balls down similarly while working on the other five non-clone jutsu. She was working on the genjutsu release, and he wasn't sure if it worked at all because neither of them had much in the way of more advanced genjutsu to test against. They'd also learned that with minimal practice the byakugan could also tell what kind of chakra had been used to make a paperwork clone, which would be useful from a teamwork point of view.
Naruto and Hinata were working on getting the communication jutsu that he'd been given down. The instructions were horrid and even his parents were having trouble understanding them. He'd figured out how to piggy-back on the link between him and his clones a month ago by accident, but actually forming the link to another person was proving to be far more difficult. There was a 'latch onto the chakra of your target' step that just didn't want to work.
"Ow," a voice called from across the compound, causing both of them to freeze. There weren't any clones practicing over there.
A moment later Naruto had asked a clone to body-flicker over, the clone being more expendable if this was a threat. It wasn't long before it sent a message back, having found a young boy. Naked. With a fox tail. And a star-like marking on his forehead. Naruto sighed and headed over himself, signaling to Hinata to wait where she was, noting that Hoshi wasn't in the little semi-nest-thing he liked to stay in when not training himself on the way. And yes, there was a young boy that had Hoshi's star marking on his forehead.
"Okay," Naruto said. "What gives?"
"Walking on two legs is hard," Hoshi said, trying to stand up again.
"How do you have two legs?"
"Um, because you shapeshift all the time. My line of foxes gets one ability from copying the most-used ability of the one we stay with and another based on what that person is weakest in. We think that I'm probably going to be good at throwing illusions when that kicks in because you have such a hard time with putting them somewhere you aren't."
"Oh. Why didn't anyone tell me that?"
"I was supposed to once I could speak, but I forgot." He then beamed. "Akamaru is going to be so jealous!"
"You haven't even told Akamaru that you can talk."
Hoshi pouted at that. "...oh. Right. Secrets."
"Besides, you know that the Inuzuka have jutsu that let their ninken take human form."
"But Kiba doesn't know them yet and this isn't just taking your form."
Naruto sighed. "Well, you need to learn to hide your tail before going out like this. And I need to dig out some clothing for you if you want to run around in human form."
Half an hour later Hoshi had figured out how to hide his tail, was dressed, and was trying to learn how to walk on two legs with the help of a couple of clones. The little guy wasn't going to be ready to even watch a fight in this form for a while.
It was the day after the January graduation exam and Naruto was confused. So was Hinata, for that matter. Unlike some of the civilian-born in general, they'd not had any problems with the all-day exam the day before. Two girls had even been sent home halfway through the day, their performance being that bad, and rumor had it that a civilian-born boy had been told to not return today before going home. Everyone else seemed like they'd at least barely scraped by with a pass.
But for some reason Naruto and Hinata were in a classroom with a bunch of students a year older than them today, including Neji. Who seemed just as shocked to see the two of them in the room, but didn't make any move to speak with them.
"Good morning," a teacher Naruto didn't recognize greeted them. "Let me make sure everyone who should be here is, then we can continue."
Neji looked satisfied at that...up until Hinata's name was called. Naruto's coming up at the end of the list was less of a surprise.
With that done, the teacher nodded. "Most of you are likely already aware why you are here. Uzumaki and the Hyuga heiress are the likely exceptions. Congratulations, you've all passed your graduation exams and have permission to graduate! Today you will get your forehead protectors and instructions for getting your registration photos taken. In two days you'll return here for team assignments. Luckily, we have our two early graduates to get our numbers up and don't need to hold a student back until a team slot opens up."
Each of them was given a forehead protector and a selection of cloth colors to put it on, a sheet with instructions for completing their registrations, and a copy of their graduation evaluations. Neji was congratulated for being rookie of the year, two girls had apparently tied for kunoichi of the year, and a boy in green spandex had been the 'dead last' of the year. Comments were made that he'd only made it that far because a jounin had vouched for him.
"Can we take the shortcut?" Hinata asked after they'd stepped outside of the academy, their former class likely completely unaware of what had happened.
"Er, sure," Naruto agreed, concentrating on sending a signal to one of the clones back at the compound. They didn't normally do this unless they were leaving the Hyuga compound, but today was weird all around.
"Shortcut?" Neji asked, coming up behind them. "And how in the world did you two graduate early?"
He didn't get his answers as the contacted clone summoned both of them and Hoshi to the compound, leaving Neji alone back at the academy. Likely quite confused. The summoning had taken enough chakra for the clone to pop immediately upon their arrival, but that was okay and fairly standard for a clone summoning Naruto in general.
"Neji had a good point asking how we graduated early," Hinata admitted. "I thought that the clan requested no early graduations at all outside of wartime."
"Old Man Hokage letting me graduate early is a little weird too," Naruto agreed. "But you heard that teacher. They didn't have enough people for teams and we filled in the extra slots. And I don't think I want to go through another year of learning nothing more in the academy itself anyway. But I think we're probably going to be split up into two teams with older students."
"Shit. I hadn't even thought of that. Having only one person a year younger per team makes sense."
They took a few minutes to review their evaluations. Notes included that they were obviously holding back to not be at the top of the class, were in better physical shape than most of their peers, and that Naruto in particular had to have the chakra control of a jounin or better to handle the academy jutsu with what was known about his reserves. And apparently they'd been on the 'graduate early if permission is granted' list for over a year.
"Maybe we should go check in with your father and Old Man Hokage." Looking down at his sheet, he nodded. "In that order, we can probably finish up the registration stuff today if this wasn't a mistake."
She nodded, and ten minutes later they'd left the compound. Hoshi had opted to hang back and practice walking as a human some more with the clones.
They'd been told that both of them had been given permission to graduate early in part because Hiashi and Old Man Hokage both knew that the two were holding back. A lot, to the point where there was an assumption that they could probably take on any of those who they'd just graduated with. Hinata wasn't sure about that, especially when it came to Neji, but only voiced that to Naruto after they'd left her father's presence.
More important to them was the assurance from the old man that they were actually going to be paired up together as only having one team with unbalanced ages was better than having two. But he'd obviously been hiding something else from them in the process of telling them that otherwise teams hadn't been finalized, before asking that they be more open with their actual capabilities with their teammates. Naruto's parents agreed with that, provided that they passed the test their sensei gave them.
What that test would be was apparently a crapshoot. Some tested for teamwork, others for basic skills the academy didn't, a few did the absolute minimum to be considered a 'test', and at least one jounin from their time as genin was known for testing skills that no academy graduate should ever have as a form of protest. Civilian-born supposedly tended to get rougher tests than clan-born on average, but that could just be because the clan-born were usually better trained.
The two spent the next day ensuring that they had all of their supplies ready, just in case. Including a selection of clothing for different body types and picking up extra food to top up all of their storage seals. Both were also permitted to take a filled camping tag of their own from the Hyuga supply, Hiashi insisting that Naruto take one for himself when they were getting Hinata's. They'd run into Neji at the same time, and he'd pointedly ignored them at that point.
"Some teams are still in rotation," the teacher, who Naruto still didn't know the name of, said to the group. "So the numbering is going to seem a little odd."
Team numbering ended up ranging from six to twenty-three with a couple of gaps. Hinata, Naruto, and a girl named Tenten were assigned to Team Eighteen. Said girl had been one of the two tied for kunoichi of the year and was obviously disappointed to not be on Team Nine with Neji, but didn't hold Naruto or Hinata at fault for that.
"At least there were enough graduates for me to be on a team at all," Tenten said after they'd gathered to eat lunch together before their jounin sensei showed up that afternoon. "I hear that who gets held back can be random in those situations, and you two have to be good if you graduated a year early."
"We honestly mostly practice with each other," Naruto admitted, Hinata nodding her agreement. "So we aren't fully certain how we actually stack up to others."
"That's...honestly better than me. I've mostly trained alone when not sparring in the academy. So, I figure that Hinata here is going to be a taijutsu specialist because that's what all Hyuga start with. I work with weapons of all kinds, but to do so I've picked up some sealing. What about you Naruto?"
He scratched the back of his head. "I'm a little more of a generalist, I think. Infiltration, tracking, combat at probably any range. If we survive as a team then we might want to chat about sealing as I'm working my way through that too."
"...that sounds impossibly broad."
"Naruto trains harder than anyone else I've seen," Hinata defended. "He's better at taijutsu than I am too."
"Only because you never want to hurt anyone," Naruto countered. "But I'm probably weakest in genjutsu. Hinata's also got a better handle on some of the fiddly medic-nin stuff than I do thanks to my chakra reserves making those more difficult for me."
Tenten stared at him. "Infiltration without genjutsu? Seriously?"
"I cheat."
"You have abilities most don't," Hinata countered. "That doesn't mean you cheat."
"And what about the nin-fox?" Tenten asked, gesturing to Hoshi.
"Ah," Naruto said. "Hoshi isn't quite a nin-fox, even if he'd like to be some day. He's actually a summon fox."
"You have a summoning contract?"
"Yep."
"How? Where did you get it?"
"The foxes found me."
Tenten's mood plummeted at that. "Oh."
"My father has been looking for a potential contract for the clan as well," Hinata said. "But there are only so many summoning clans, and most already have summoners."
The older girl nodded and took another bite of her almost-forgotten lunch.
"So you three already talked to each other," Kurenai-sensei said after she and Anko-sensei had fetched the three, done some very basic introductions, and dragged them to a training ground. "Anko and I are both special jounin and were assigned you three as a pair, partially due to our inexperience and partially for covering specialities."
"The Hokage did bribe me with promotion to full jounin if we did well," Anko-sensei admitted. "I might not have agreed otherwise."
"I'm a genjutsu specialist and Anko is a close- to mid-range combat specialist. She was asked to help me as she's got a summoning contract like Naruto here does, but also because she wants to work with an infiltration specialist. To that end, part of our test is simple enough."
Anko-sensei produced a slip of paper and some ryo. "Buy my order of dango and get it back here without any of those we've tasked with watching for you spotting you doing so."
Naruto took the slip and the ryo, glad that he'd left some paperwork clones back at the compound instead of just having Yoko active. It didn't take long to use the communication jutsu to tell one to grab some of the ryo in the apartment and head out to buy the order in disguise, then swap to a different disguise before swinging by the training ground. "Okay then. What else?"
"...aren't you going to go make the purchase?"
"It's handled."
Kurenai-sensei raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "Okay then. Next is testing each of your combat abilities. All three of you should have decent close-range skills, so we'll be testing each of you individually. I'll start with Hinata."
"And I'll take Buns," Anko-sensei said. "Blondie will have to wait."
What followed was Naruto and Hoshi watching forty-five minutes of taijutsu with the occasional use of kunai or shuriken...or senbon and a couple of katar in Anko's case. In the middle of this a clone had slipped in using the transparency jutsu and masked chakra to drop off the dango and change. At the forty-five minute mark both sensei broke off and declared that Hinata and Tenten had passed.
"Okay Blondie," Anko-sensei said. "You're up."
"Before or after you have your dango?" Naruto asked, holding the bag up.
Both women blinked, and Anko-sensei stormed up to him to grab the bag. She checked and found that it was the correct order, and even had the receipt attached with today's date on it. "...what? How? You didn't go anywhere!"
"Here's your change," he added, holding it out.
"Keep it." She then turned to Kurenai-sensei. "Did he leave a clone behind in hopes that we'd not get to him before he returned?"
"Not that I noticed," Kurenai-sensei replied. "We'll need to see if any of the watchers noticed him."
Anko-sensei scowled and pulled out a small radio. An earpiece was put in her ear before she had a quick conversation, then waited a few minutes before getting an answer back. She thanked whoever she'd been talking to before turning the radio off and putting it away. "They didn't see any of the three. In fact, they haven't seen a single shinobi or kunoichi approach the stand since lunch."
"Interesting. Do you want to test him or eat your dango?"
"Give me a minute to eat and then I'll test him."
Nearly an hour later they'd finished and he'd gotten a pass as well.
"How many styles does he know?" Kurenai-sensei asked as Anko-sensei produced a bottle of water from somewhere.
"I spotted at least four," Anko-sensei replied. "The academy style, Gentle Fist, whirling fists, and a fourth I feel like I should know but couldn't place."
"Right." Kurenai-sensei turned towards the three genin. "Okay, you've got one more challenge to overcome. Come with me."
They followed her to the edge of a lake that the training ground bordered, Anko-sensei trailing behind them. A few hand seals triggered a set of targets to suddenly burst from the water at various distances.
"Each of you has to hit one of the close range targets and one of the medium range targets from the shore," Anko-sensei said. "Assuming you manage that, at least one of you has to hit one of the long range targets without getting wet."
"Is this an accuracy test or are barrages permitted?" Naruto asked.
"We'd prefer accuracy," Kurenai-sensei answered.
"She prefers accuracy," Anko-sensei corrected. "I think I want to see what you call a barrage."
"I'll go last then," Naruto said, waving both of the two girls ahead of him.
Tenten took the lead and easily struck her two targets, and made an attempt at the long range targets. Her kunai fell short and her shuriken were blown off target by the wind. Hinata then hit her two closer targets, but didn't attempt to hit the longer range ones at all. Naruto then took care of his close targets, before turning to the two sensei.
"So," he said. "All that's left is for one of us to hit one of the long range targets and we pass?"
"Yes," Kurenai-sensei said. "So long as you don't get wet."
"But you each want to see me hit them in a different way."
"Get on with it," Anko-sensei said, obviously impatient.
Nodding, he turned to the water. Sure, he could just water-walk closer, but since they were going to pass anyway then showing off a bit felt appropriate. A kunai-shaped spell-bullet was fired at one of the long range targets, ignoring the wind and striking it dead center before exploding. Hinata was grinning, Hoshi snickering, and the other three were staring in shock. He then pulled a real kunai out and prepared a shuriken shadow clone jutsu, which worked just as well on other projectiles. Throwing the kunai hard enough to get it approximately where the targets were, he pushed far more chakra into the jutsu than needed and caused the single kunai to become thousands.
The hail of kunai blotted out the Sun, striking a good third of the lake and sinking the remaining long range targets. A wave came back at the shore, Naruto backing away from the shore with Hinata and Hoshi while the other three just stared across the lake. All three ended up with soaked feet, which snapped them out of their surprise.
"I was expecting one of you to water-walk when we didn't specify that you had to hit those from the shore," Kurenai-sensei finally said. "I didn't expect impossibly accurate exploding kunai or...whatever we want to call more kunai than the shinobi armory likely has in stock."
"It was definitely awesome though," Anko-sensei said.
"TEACH ME!" Tenten said, suddenly on her knees in front of Naruto. "PLEASE!"
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "I don't think you have enough chakra for that one."
"Um," Hinata said. "She could manage it in smaller numbers, I think. But you were given the scroll by the Hokage, did he say you could teach others?"
"Even if he did I don't want to see Buns collapse from exhaustion trying it," Anko-sensei interjected. "We'll test her chakra levels later. For now I think that the reports on Blondie's skills are criminally incorrect."
"If we head back to the Uzumaki compound we can go over things," Naruto offered. "That should be private enough."
Naruto and Hinata had shown off everything except for the Tome itself, the 'nets' on people's cores, Hinata's chakra chains, and his byakugan. They had included the Knight Armor and flight spells, and he'd not originally expected to show his fox features but Kurenai-sensei and Anko-sensei were both already aware of them. Mentioning the possibility of cross-signing contracts for all of them had come up, as had the idea of applying the shapeshifting seal to others for maximum confusion when encountering enemies in the field. The latter had caused Anko-sensei to scowl, because she thought that her 'hickey' was going to keep that from working.
His parents were apparently aware of what she was talking about and 'working on a solution'.
"We need to report about your success tomorrow," Kurenai-sensei said. "After that we can explore some of the options in more detail. I'd already wanted a week or two before we started on missions anyway, unless any of you have financial needs that mean we need to start on missions sooner?"
"I'm good for at least three months," Tenten said.
"My clan is still taking care of most of my expenses," Hinata admitted.
"I've got the Uzumaki clan income to keep me going," Naruto added. Not mentioned was the pile of ryo from various things he'd sold to the village, or Hyuga clan, or more recently the Akimichi clan. He could probably include the donations to the shrine, for that matter, but had been keeping those separate and using them exclusively for Yoko and the shrine itself.
"Right," Kurenai-sensei said. "How about we meet here in two days with supplies to hang around for a week? Better than camping out elsewhere nearby from a privacy point of view and I can ensure that nobody worries about us by putting us down as doing extended training no matter what the actual outcome of things is."
There was general agreement there, and Naruto made sure that the three newcomers could get back into the compound on their own for now before they split up.
Kurenai waited as the Hokage went through the teams to get the reports from the jounin-sensei present. Some of them had passed, others hadn't. Gai was...overly enthusiastic about his team passing, but he'd be overly enthusiastic regardless. Team Eighteen had been skipped over initially, but that had been expected as well. She and Anko had been informed that there would be more scrutiny on them for multiple reasons. Early graduates, the two being the only special jounin in the group this year, a pair of them instead of a single sensei.
Those jounin who hadn't passed their teams were sent off, and they'd been warned of that ahead of time too, before Team Eighteen's status was to be verbally reported. Most obviously didn't want to leave, but hadn't passed their teams. The departing jounin also all knew that being sent away meant that the written report indicated a pass, but a lot of things never made it into the written reports. In this case, cross-training with other teams needed to be brought up. In theory, because of the two early graduates possibly needing to 'catch up' to their older peers.
Kurenai wanted to break out into laughter every time she thought about that. If anything, Tenten had to catch up to Hinata in several ways and Naruto was in a class of his own. For that matter, the boy was likely to end up with his two teammates vying for his affection later, as Hinata was obviously smitten with him already and Tenten's reaction to kunai blotting out the Sun alone had shown her interest.
"So now we get down to Team Eighteen," the Hokage said, focusing on Kurenai and Anko.
"They passed with flying colors," Anko said. "Weirdest overall skill set and disparity I've ever heard of though."
"Definitely a lot of catching up to do though," Kurenai agreed.
The Hokage smirked, obviously realizing what they weren't saying. "I see. What would your recommendation for accelerating that 'catching up' be?"
Anko snorted. "Blondie is in an infiltration category of his own. Kurenai and I need some serious work if we're to serve as backup for him. White-eyes is too timid for that kind of work right now, but otherwise far ahead of others."
"Getting at least to her level is going to be a challenge for us and the oldest of the kids," Kurenai added.
Yep. That surprised the jounin in the room, but not the Hokage who nodded. "I suspected as much. What would you recommend for mission loads?"
Grinning, Anko took the lead there. "Once past D-ranks Blondie and White-eyes easily have tracking and scouting down, as well as infiltration if anything suitable to their ages is available. They have plans for helping get teammates up to speed that we'll be evaluating. They can also pull support roles and have started on field medic-nin training, Blondie learning from Hana Inuzuka and then passing lessons on to White-eyes. Probably want to split Blondie off if you need him for heavy assault unless the goal is to have the rest of the team hold a fallback position."
"Hinata is a little too timid right now though," Kurenai continued. "Reluctant to risk causing injuries to allies, but aware of the problem. Anko and I may also need to at least read up on elemental releases since Hinata and Naruto are individually already capable of using at least one jutsu of each element."
"That sounds approximately as I expected," the Hokage admitted. "Naruto has been effectively infiltrating the village itself for years with very few noticing his infiltration identities, bringing Hinata along with him more recently, and even I can't use the shuriken shadow clone jutsu to blot out the Sun like he did during your test."
"...blot out the Sun?" Gai asked.
"Yes. Kurenai, would you care to show the others what you saw?"
Grinning, she wove a quick genjutsu, skipping the exploding spell-bullet kunai and going straight to the cloned one.
There was a moment of silence after the illusion ended, and the Hokage nodded. "It looks far less impressive from that angle."
Gai blinked a couple of times. "Perhaps it would be best if the rest of us had time to...stabilize our teams before beginning cross training? Or at least ensure that they each have a member that can create a protective earth dome."
Anko nodded. "That's not a bad idea. Blondie and Buns are both budding sealmasters but probably wouldn't start pulling out explosive tags in a friendly spar."
Kurenai thought that the other sensei were going to be treating their team as 'team not to be thought about' for a while.
For fire, a jutsu that allowed minor control of existing fires, useful for strengthening them or putting them out as appropriate. For wind, a jutsu that generates wind flows from your palms for various purposes. For lightning, a blinding flash jutsu that could be toned down to 'flash bulb for pictures' levels. For earth, an underground movement jutsu that his parents admitted was actually a generalized combination of several related jutsu. For water, a mist-creation jutsu that they thought would work especially well with him able to use the byakugan to negate most of the downsides.
Naruto expected to have all of the new jutsu down without hand seals needed by the end of the year, but only because he could abuse the crap out of paperwork clones for training with them all. Hinata was also going to be working on getting all of the non-clone ones down, but that was going to take her far longer.
Old Man Hokage's gift had been ramen and an official copy of the shuriken shadow clone jutsu, the latter of which at least gave Naruto a justification for knowing it. The Hyuga clan had given notes on how they'd constructed their four-bucket storage seals, but no actual formulae. Jiraiya hadn't shown up in person, but had sent different notes for how he constructed multiple-bucket storage seals. That was in addition to the next set of sealing books in general as well as a bundle of ryo 'to buy some nice clothes with'.
Hinata had bought him nice clothes, Hanabi had found a fox plush that ended up in his bedroom, and Hoshi had somehow obtained an entire large box full of metal sealing tags and related supplies. Naruto preferred working in metal for smaller storage seals as it made them much harder to damage, but had been having trouble finding appropriately-sized tags for them. The foxes supposedly didn't work with metal in that way though, and Hoshi wasn't willing to admit where the box had come from.
Danzo was getting more and more frustrated as time went on. He'd kept running into timing problems with confronting Shisui to obtain the man's eyes, and then the option of claiming those eyes for better use had been removed by Jiraiya. The loss of so many Uchiha to flames instead of ending the coup through less physically destructive violence had also made it impossible to covertly collect a large number of sharingan eyes, leaving him without a bargaining chip for working with Orochimaru.
Hiruzen disbanding Root was unfortunate, but expected and planned for. Even if it had made keeping supplies up a challenge. The bigger problem was the lack of access to a number of information sources that being an official Anbu-level group had allowed. There were things being done to the village in the name of security that Danzo wasn't being informed of and that he had no suitable moles in place to find out the details for and he didn't like that. At least none of them looked to be affecting Root's hidden tunnels under the walls...or at least not yet.
And all of that paled in comparison to finding out that they'd had the fabled paperwork jutsu available all along, only for it to be the shadow clone jutsu. Some of his old injuries and a couple of mistakes made when first implanting one of the few sharingan he'd gotten his hands on rendered him incapable of using that jutsu as the clones dispelled before even finishing forming, things that he'd hoped Orochimaru could rectify. But the man was insistent on getting access to sharingan eyes over anything else for payment.
Out of pure spite, Danzo was doing his best to ensure that the secret of the paperwork jutsu did not reach the snake or any of the man's agents in the village in general.
For Hinata's birthday near the end of December, Naruto had given her a pair of chakra blade daggers with arm holders. The blades could be removed and used normally or left in the arm holders and triggered to spring forward with chakra to add a sudden stab to a Gentle Fist strike. He'd gotten matching holders that could be strapped to his own arms and accept the Uzumaki daggers for his own use.
Hiashi had questioned the gift, and Naruto had explained the benefits of chakra blades when it came to cutting chakra-reinforced materials. His thought process on the custom-ordered holders was also covered, including that Hyuga trained to use more chakra points than normal and thus shouldn't have problems with the triggers and that if someone was using chakra-reinforced armor to block the Gentle Fist then the blades would be a quick way to start putting literal holes in it. With long sleeves most enemies would also be unlikely to notice the slim mechanisms before it was too late.
The biggest hurdle to implementing something similar for the entire clan was the cost of chakra blades. Most of the benefits of the system relied on them and they didn't come cheap.
Despite that, Hinata felt that the most important 'gift' she'd received was one of the paperwork clone jutsu scrolls deciding that she had enough chakra to read it. She could only manage a single clone, and didn't have enough chakra to use any of the elemental variants, but being able to make even one was an accomplishment.
On the training front, by then Naruto had managed to use clones to get all of the jutsu his parents had provided working without hand seals and Hinata had the body flicker jutsu and all five elemental balls down similarly while working on the other five non-clone jutsu. She was working on the genjutsu release, and he wasn't sure if it worked at all because neither of them had much in the way of more advanced genjutsu to test against. They'd also learned that with minimal practice the byakugan could also tell what kind of chakra had been used to make a paperwork clone, which would be useful from a teamwork point of view.
Naruto and Hinata were working on getting the communication jutsu that he'd been given down. The instructions were horrid and even his parents were having trouble understanding them. He'd figured out how to piggy-back on the link between him and his clones a month ago by accident, but actually forming the link to another person was proving to be far more difficult. There was a 'latch onto the chakra of your target' step that just didn't want to work.
"Ow," a voice called from across the compound, causing both of them to freeze. There weren't any clones practicing over there.
A moment later Naruto had asked a clone to body-flicker over, the clone being more expendable if this was a threat. It wasn't long before it sent a message back, having found a young boy. Naked. With a fox tail. And a star-like marking on his forehead. Naruto sighed and headed over himself, signaling to Hinata to wait where she was, noting that Hoshi wasn't in the little semi-nest-thing he liked to stay in when not training himself on the way. And yes, there was a young boy that had Hoshi's star marking on his forehead.
"Okay," Naruto said. "What gives?"
"Walking on two legs is hard," Hoshi said, trying to stand up again.
"How do you have two legs?"
"Um, because you shapeshift all the time. My line of foxes gets one ability from copying the most-used ability of the one we stay with and another based on what that person is weakest in. We think that I'm probably going to be good at throwing illusions when that kicks in because you have such a hard time with putting them somewhere you aren't."
"Oh. Why didn't anyone tell me that?"
"I was supposed to once I could speak, but I forgot." He then beamed. "Akamaru is going to be so jealous!"
"You haven't even told Akamaru that you can talk."
Hoshi pouted at that. "...oh. Right. Secrets."
"Besides, you know that the Inuzuka have jutsu that let their ninken take human form."
"But Kiba doesn't know them yet and this isn't just taking your form."
Naruto sighed. "Well, you need to learn to hide your tail before going out like this. And I need to dig out some clothing for you if you want to run around in human form."
Half an hour later Hoshi had figured out how to hide his tail, was dressed, and was trying to learn how to walk on two legs with the help of a couple of clones. The little guy wasn't going to be ready to even watch a fight in this form for a while.
It was the day after the January graduation exam and Naruto was confused. So was Hinata, for that matter. Unlike some of the civilian-born in general, they'd not had any problems with the all-day exam the day before. Two girls had even been sent home halfway through the day, their performance being that bad, and rumor had it that a civilian-born boy had been told to not return today before going home. Everyone else seemed like they'd at least barely scraped by with a pass.
But for some reason Naruto and Hinata were in a classroom with a bunch of students a year older than them today, including Neji. Who seemed just as shocked to see the two of them in the room, but didn't make any move to speak with them.
"Good morning," a teacher Naruto didn't recognize greeted them. "Let me make sure everyone who should be here is, then we can continue."
Neji looked satisfied at that...up until Hinata's name was called. Naruto's coming up at the end of the list was less of a surprise.
With that done, the teacher nodded. "Most of you are likely already aware why you are here. Uzumaki and the Hyuga heiress are the likely exceptions. Congratulations, you've all passed your graduation exams and have permission to graduate! Today you will get your forehead protectors and instructions for getting your registration photos taken. In two days you'll return here for team assignments. Luckily, we have our two early graduates to get our numbers up and don't need to hold a student back until a team slot opens up."
Each of them was given a forehead protector and a selection of cloth colors to put it on, a sheet with instructions for completing their registrations, and a copy of their graduation evaluations. Neji was congratulated for being rookie of the year, two girls had apparently tied for kunoichi of the year, and a boy in green spandex had been the 'dead last' of the year. Comments were made that he'd only made it that far because a jounin had vouched for him.
"Can we take the shortcut?" Hinata asked after they'd stepped outside of the academy, their former class likely completely unaware of what had happened.
"Er, sure," Naruto agreed, concentrating on sending a signal to one of the clones back at the compound. They didn't normally do this unless they were leaving the Hyuga compound, but today was weird all around.
"Shortcut?" Neji asked, coming up behind them. "And how in the world did you two graduate early?"
He didn't get his answers as the contacted clone summoned both of them and Hoshi to the compound, leaving Neji alone back at the academy. Likely quite confused. The summoning had taken enough chakra for the clone to pop immediately upon their arrival, but that was okay and fairly standard for a clone summoning Naruto in general.
"Neji had a good point asking how we graduated early," Hinata admitted. "I thought that the clan requested no early graduations at all outside of wartime."
"Old Man Hokage letting me graduate early is a little weird too," Naruto agreed. "But you heard that teacher. They didn't have enough people for teams and we filled in the extra slots. And I don't think I want to go through another year of learning nothing more in the academy itself anyway. But I think we're probably going to be split up into two teams with older students."
"Shit. I hadn't even thought of that. Having only one person a year younger per team makes sense."
They took a few minutes to review their evaluations. Notes included that they were obviously holding back to not be at the top of the class, were in better physical shape than most of their peers, and that Naruto in particular had to have the chakra control of a jounin or better to handle the academy jutsu with what was known about his reserves. And apparently they'd been on the 'graduate early if permission is granted' list for over a year.
"Maybe we should go check in with your father and Old Man Hokage." Looking down at his sheet, he nodded. "In that order, we can probably finish up the registration stuff today if this wasn't a mistake."
She nodded, and ten minutes later they'd left the compound. Hoshi had opted to hang back and practice walking as a human some more with the clones.
They'd been told that both of them had been given permission to graduate early in part because Hiashi and Old Man Hokage both knew that the two were holding back. A lot, to the point where there was an assumption that they could probably take on any of those who they'd just graduated with. Hinata wasn't sure about that, especially when it came to Neji, but only voiced that to Naruto after they'd left her father's presence.
More important to them was the assurance from the old man that they were actually going to be paired up together as only having one team with unbalanced ages was better than having two. But he'd obviously been hiding something else from them in the process of telling them that otherwise teams hadn't been finalized, before asking that they be more open with their actual capabilities with their teammates. Naruto's parents agreed with that, provided that they passed the test their sensei gave them.
What that test would be was apparently a crapshoot. Some tested for teamwork, others for basic skills the academy didn't, a few did the absolute minimum to be considered a 'test', and at least one jounin from their time as genin was known for testing skills that no academy graduate should ever have as a form of protest. Civilian-born supposedly tended to get rougher tests than clan-born on average, but that could just be because the clan-born were usually better trained.
The two spent the next day ensuring that they had all of their supplies ready, just in case. Including a selection of clothing for different body types and picking up extra food to top up all of their storage seals. Both were also permitted to take a filled camping tag of their own from the Hyuga supply, Hiashi insisting that Naruto take one for himself when they were getting Hinata's. They'd run into Neji at the same time, and he'd pointedly ignored them at that point.
"Some teams are still in rotation," the teacher, who Naruto still didn't know the name of, said to the group. "So the numbering is going to seem a little odd."
Team numbering ended up ranging from six to twenty-three with a couple of gaps. Hinata, Naruto, and a girl named Tenten were assigned to Team Eighteen. Said girl had been one of the two tied for kunoichi of the year and was obviously disappointed to not be on Team Nine with Neji, but didn't hold Naruto or Hinata at fault for that.
"At least there were enough graduates for me to be on a team at all," Tenten said after they'd gathered to eat lunch together before their jounin sensei showed up that afternoon. "I hear that who gets held back can be random in those situations, and you two have to be good if you graduated a year early."
"We honestly mostly practice with each other," Naruto admitted, Hinata nodding her agreement. "So we aren't fully certain how we actually stack up to others."
"That's...honestly better than me. I've mostly trained alone when not sparring in the academy. So, I figure that Hinata here is going to be a taijutsu specialist because that's what all Hyuga start with. I work with weapons of all kinds, but to do so I've picked up some sealing. What about you Naruto?"
He scratched the back of his head. "I'm a little more of a generalist, I think. Infiltration, tracking, combat at probably any range. If we survive as a team then we might want to chat about sealing as I'm working my way through that too."
"...that sounds impossibly broad."
"Naruto trains harder than anyone else I've seen," Hinata defended. "He's better at taijutsu than I am too."
"Only because you never want to hurt anyone," Naruto countered. "But I'm probably weakest in genjutsu. Hinata's also got a better handle on some of the fiddly medic-nin stuff than I do thanks to my chakra reserves making those more difficult for me."
Tenten stared at him. "Infiltration without genjutsu? Seriously?"
"I cheat."
"You have abilities most don't," Hinata countered. "That doesn't mean you cheat."
"And what about the nin-fox?" Tenten asked, gesturing to Hoshi.
"Ah," Naruto said. "Hoshi isn't quite a nin-fox, even if he'd like to be some day. He's actually a summon fox."
"You have a summoning contract?"
"Yep."
"How? Where did you get it?"
"The foxes found me."
Tenten's mood plummeted at that. "Oh."
"My father has been looking for a potential contract for the clan as well," Hinata said. "But there are only so many summoning clans, and most already have summoners."
The older girl nodded and took another bite of her almost-forgotten lunch.
"So you three already talked to each other," Kurenai-sensei said after she and Anko-sensei had fetched the three, done some very basic introductions, and dragged them to a training ground. "Anko and I are both special jounin and were assigned you three as a pair, partially due to our inexperience and partially for covering specialities."
"The Hokage did bribe me with promotion to full jounin if we did well," Anko-sensei admitted. "I might not have agreed otherwise."
"I'm a genjutsu specialist and Anko is a close- to mid-range combat specialist. She was asked to help me as she's got a summoning contract like Naruto here does, but also because she wants to work with an infiltration specialist. To that end, part of our test is simple enough."
Anko-sensei produced a slip of paper and some ryo. "Buy my order of dango and get it back here without any of those we've tasked with watching for you spotting you doing so."
Naruto took the slip and the ryo, glad that he'd left some paperwork clones back at the compound instead of just having Yoko active. It didn't take long to use the communication jutsu to tell one to grab some of the ryo in the apartment and head out to buy the order in disguise, then swap to a different disguise before swinging by the training ground. "Okay then. What else?"
"...aren't you going to go make the purchase?"
"It's handled."
Kurenai-sensei raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "Okay then. Next is testing each of your combat abilities. All three of you should have decent close-range skills, so we'll be testing each of you individually. I'll start with Hinata."
"And I'll take Buns," Anko-sensei said. "Blondie will have to wait."
What followed was Naruto and Hoshi watching forty-five minutes of taijutsu with the occasional use of kunai or shuriken...or senbon and a couple of katar in Anko's case. In the middle of this a clone had slipped in using the transparency jutsu and masked chakra to drop off the dango and change. At the forty-five minute mark both sensei broke off and declared that Hinata and Tenten had passed.
"Okay Blondie," Anko-sensei said. "You're up."
"Before or after you have your dango?" Naruto asked, holding the bag up.
Both women blinked, and Anko-sensei stormed up to him to grab the bag. She checked and found that it was the correct order, and even had the receipt attached with today's date on it. "...what? How? You didn't go anywhere!"
"Here's your change," he added, holding it out.
"Keep it." She then turned to Kurenai-sensei. "Did he leave a clone behind in hopes that we'd not get to him before he returned?"
"Not that I noticed," Kurenai-sensei replied. "We'll need to see if any of the watchers noticed him."
Anko-sensei scowled and pulled out a small radio. An earpiece was put in her ear before she had a quick conversation, then waited a few minutes before getting an answer back. She thanked whoever she'd been talking to before turning the radio off and putting it away. "They didn't see any of the three. In fact, they haven't seen a single shinobi or kunoichi approach the stand since lunch."
"Interesting. Do you want to test him or eat your dango?"
"Give me a minute to eat and then I'll test him."
Nearly an hour later they'd finished and he'd gotten a pass as well.
"How many styles does he know?" Kurenai-sensei asked as Anko-sensei produced a bottle of water from somewhere.
"I spotted at least four," Anko-sensei replied. "The academy style, Gentle Fist, whirling fists, and a fourth I feel like I should know but couldn't place."
"Right." Kurenai-sensei turned towards the three genin. "Okay, you've got one more challenge to overcome. Come with me."
They followed her to the edge of a lake that the training ground bordered, Anko-sensei trailing behind them. A few hand seals triggered a set of targets to suddenly burst from the water at various distances.
"Each of you has to hit one of the close range targets and one of the medium range targets from the shore," Anko-sensei said. "Assuming you manage that, at least one of you has to hit one of the long range targets without getting wet."
"Is this an accuracy test or are barrages permitted?" Naruto asked.
"We'd prefer accuracy," Kurenai-sensei answered.
"She prefers accuracy," Anko-sensei corrected. "I think I want to see what you call a barrage."
"I'll go last then," Naruto said, waving both of the two girls ahead of him.
Tenten took the lead and easily struck her two targets, and made an attempt at the long range targets. Her kunai fell short and her shuriken were blown off target by the wind. Hinata then hit her two closer targets, but didn't attempt to hit the longer range ones at all. Naruto then took care of his close targets, before turning to the two sensei.
"So," he said. "All that's left is for one of us to hit one of the long range targets and we pass?"
"Yes," Kurenai-sensei said. "So long as you don't get wet."
"But you each want to see me hit them in a different way."
"Get on with it," Anko-sensei said, obviously impatient.
Nodding, he turned to the water. Sure, he could just water-walk closer, but since they were going to pass anyway then showing off a bit felt appropriate. A kunai-shaped spell-bullet was fired at one of the long range targets, ignoring the wind and striking it dead center before exploding. Hinata was grinning, Hoshi snickering, and the other three were staring in shock. He then pulled a real kunai out and prepared a shuriken shadow clone jutsu, which worked just as well on other projectiles. Throwing the kunai hard enough to get it approximately where the targets were, he pushed far more chakra into the jutsu than needed and caused the single kunai to become thousands.
The hail of kunai blotted out the Sun, striking a good third of the lake and sinking the remaining long range targets. A wave came back at the shore, Naruto backing away from the shore with Hinata and Hoshi while the other three just stared across the lake. All three ended up with soaked feet, which snapped them out of their surprise.
"I was expecting one of you to water-walk when we didn't specify that you had to hit those from the shore," Kurenai-sensei finally said. "I didn't expect impossibly accurate exploding kunai or...whatever we want to call more kunai than the shinobi armory likely has in stock."
"It was definitely awesome though," Anko-sensei said.
"TEACH ME!" Tenten said, suddenly on her knees in front of Naruto. "PLEASE!"
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "I don't think you have enough chakra for that one."
"Um," Hinata said. "She could manage it in smaller numbers, I think. But you were given the scroll by the Hokage, did he say you could teach others?"
"Even if he did I don't want to see Buns collapse from exhaustion trying it," Anko-sensei interjected. "We'll test her chakra levels later. For now I think that the reports on Blondie's skills are criminally incorrect."
"If we head back to the Uzumaki compound we can go over things," Naruto offered. "That should be private enough."
Naruto and Hinata had shown off everything except for the Tome itself, the 'nets' on people's cores, Hinata's chakra chains, and his byakugan. They had included the Knight Armor and flight spells, and he'd not originally expected to show his fox features but Kurenai-sensei and Anko-sensei were both already aware of them. Mentioning the possibility of cross-signing contracts for all of them had come up, as had the idea of applying the shapeshifting seal to others for maximum confusion when encountering enemies in the field. The latter had caused Anko-sensei to scowl, because she thought that her 'hickey' was going to keep that from working.
His parents were apparently aware of what she was talking about and 'working on a solution'.
"We need to report about your success tomorrow," Kurenai-sensei said. "After that we can explore some of the options in more detail. I'd already wanted a week or two before we started on missions anyway, unless any of you have financial needs that mean we need to start on missions sooner?"
"I'm good for at least three months," Tenten said.
"My clan is still taking care of most of my expenses," Hinata admitted.
"I've got the Uzumaki clan income to keep me going," Naruto added. Not mentioned was the pile of ryo from various things he'd sold to the village, or Hyuga clan, or more recently the Akimichi clan. He could probably include the donations to the shrine, for that matter, but had been keeping those separate and using them exclusively for Yoko and the shrine itself.
"Right," Kurenai-sensei said. "How about we meet here in two days with supplies to hang around for a week? Better than camping out elsewhere nearby from a privacy point of view and I can ensure that nobody worries about us by putting us down as doing extended training no matter what the actual outcome of things is."
There was general agreement there, and Naruto made sure that the three newcomers could get back into the compound on their own for now before they split up.
Kurenai waited as the Hokage went through the teams to get the reports from the jounin-sensei present. Some of them had passed, others hadn't. Gai was...overly enthusiastic about his team passing, but he'd be overly enthusiastic regardless. Team Eighteen had been skipped over initially, but that had been expected as well. She and Anko had been informed that there would be more scrutiny on them for multiple reasons. Early graduates, the two being the only special jounin in the group this year, a pair of them instead of a single sensei.
Those jounin who hadn't passed their teams were sent off, and they'd been warned of that ahead of time too, before Team Eighteen's status was to be verbally reported. Most obviously didn't want to leave, but hadn't passed their teams. The departing jounin also all knew that being sent away meant that the written report indicated a pass, but a lot of things never made it into the written reports. In this case, cross-training with other teams needed to be brought up. In theory, because of the two early graduates possibly needing to 'catch up' to their older peers.
Kurenai wanted to break out into laughter every time she thought about that. If anything, Tenten had to catch up to Hinata in several ways and Naruto was in a class of his own. For that matter, the boy was likely to end up with his two teammates vying for his affection later, as Hinata was obviously smitten with him already and Tenten's reaction to kunai blotting out the Sun alone had shown her interest.
"So now we get down to Team Eighteen," the Hokage said, focusing on Kurenai and Anko.
"They passed with flying colors," Anko said. "Weirdest overall skill set and disparity I've ever heard of though."
"Definitely a lot of catching up to do though," Kurenai agreed.
The Hokage smirked, obviously realizing what they weren't saying. "I see. What would your recommendation for accelerating that 'catching up' be?"
Anko snorted. "Blondie is in an infiltration category of his own. Kurenai and I need some serious work if we're to serve as backup for him. White-eyes is too timid for that kind of work right now, but otherwise far ahead of others."
"Getting at least to her level is going to be a challenge for us and the oldest of the kids," Kurenai added.
Yep. That surprised the jounin in the room, but not the Hokage who nodded. "I suspected as much. What would you recommend for mission loads?"
Grinning, Anko took the lead there. "Once past D-ranks Blondie and White-eyes easily have tracking and scouting down, as well as infiltration if anything suitable to their ages is available. They have plans for helping get teammates up to speed that we'll be evaluating. They can also pull support roles and have started on field medic-nin training, Blondie learning from Hana Inuzuka and then passing lessons on to White-eyes. Probably want to split Blondie off if you need him for heavy assault unless the goal is to have the rest of the team hold a fallback position."
"Hinata is a little too timid right now though," Kurenai continued. "Reluctant to risk causing injuries to allies, but aware of the problem. Anko and I may also need to at least read up on elemental releases since Hinata and Naruto are individually already capable of using at least one jutsu of each element."
"That sounds approximately as I expected," the Hokage admitted. "Naruto has been effectively infiltrating the village itself for years with very few noticing his infiltration identities, bringing Hinata along with him more recently, and even I can't use the shuriken shadow clone jutsu to blot out the Sun like he did during your test."
"...blot out the Sun?" Gai asked.
"Yes. Kurenai, would you care to show the others what you saw?"
Grinning, she wove a quick genjutsu, skipping the exploding spell-bullet kunai and going straight to the cloned one.
There was a moment of silence after the illusion ended, and the Hokage nodded. "It looks far less impressive from that angle."
Gai blinked a couple of times. "Perhaps it would be best if the rest of us had time to...stabilize our teams before beginning cross training? Or at least ensure that they each have a member that can create a protective earth dome."
Anko nodded. "That's not a bad idea. Blondie and Buns are both budding sealmasters but probably wouldn't start pulling out explosive tags in a friendly spar."
Kurenai thought that the other sensei were going to be treating their team as 'team not to be thought about' for a while.
Last edited: