The participants in the exams quickly departed before anyone could mob them, trusting family and friends to find them elsewhere. On the way out those who had earned promotion or recommendation thereof were also handed invitations for them and their teams to attend a dinner gathering. Neji had ended up tagging along with Team Yurei after they'd made it outside by dint of Hinata literally dragging him with them to the Uzumaki compound.
"We'll head back home soon," Hinata said to her cousin. "But I want to ensure that you're okay with everything that happened today before we do."
"Before you get into family stuff," Tenten interrupted. "Do you think anyone will complain if I skip out on the Hyuga celebration?"
Hinata blinked. "Er, no, but why do you want to skip out on it?"
"Because I think I want all the time I can get this afternoon sulking in a hot shower while getting explosive residue out of everything."
"...oh. I don't think anyone will be offended if you take time to properly prepare for the more public gathering?"
"Thanks." Tenten left a moment later, Naruto shaking his head as she did so.
"Where was I?"
"Ensuring that your cousin here is okay with things that happened today," Naruto answered as he made a paperwork clone to replace his warden seal with the updated one.
"Oh, right."
"What is he doing?" Neji asked, gesturing to the clone.
Naruto smirked. "Replacing the stupidly insecure warden seal with the new more secure one. Your uncle intends to ask that the old man pick a couple of others outside the clan to have the ability to punish the former elders that have the new prisoner seal. Since I'm the one that placed the seals it's easier to just have access."
"...huh."
"You seem less surprised than I'd expect."
"My uncle spent some time talking with me after our match, explaining things about my father and confirming much of what you told me. He wouldn't tell me how you were able to become so proficient with the Gentle Fist though. You don't have a byakugan, but I suppose it's possible to become a good enough sensor to pick out chakra points."
"Not sure it is, actually, so it's a good thing that I have a byakugan."
It took a moment before Neji processed that, and he gave a 'do not patronize me' glare back as though they were treating him like an idiot. Which Naruto found hilarious, and Hinata seemed to be enjoying as well based on her giggling.
"He's telling the truth," Hinata finally said. "Father figured it out when sparring with him, but it happened a while ago. I got better elemental chakra control and kekkei genkai out of the trade, though we only realized just how far that went later."
"I'm surprised you didn't notice the chakra patterns in my eyes," Naruto added. "Though I suppose you were too busy reacting to focus on little details like that."
Orochimaru frowned as he looked over the lab he'd finally found time to slip into, and the last of the ones he'd left in the village all those years ago that was still available to slip into. He hadn't destroyed the seal array in it, nor had it been destroyed, but it was obvious that someone else had been in here. So perhaps the previous issues Konoha had were tied more to a copycat trying to figure out what the seal was or how it worked.
Given that there were...problems with the forces reaching the village, only the infiltrating members of Oto having made it in at all with there being no sign of the external attackers, this was probably a good thing. Sure, the village wouldn't be anywhere near destroyed, but the chaos would provide his people time to enact secondary objectives. Like obtaining a couple of the Uchiha children. Maybe. Konoha was far too prepared, so it was likely all of those would fail too.
Sadly, he'd not been able to figure out where the research archives were currently hidden and Kabuto wasn't able to help him find them. He also wanted to be out of the village sooner rather than later after doing a frank assessment of his abilities without access to summons. It seemed he'd become far too accustomed to having access to the snakes in particular and needed to ensure that he trained his other skills up to compensate for when they weren't available instead of to be used almost exclusively alongside the snakes. Annoyingly, Anko had pointed out that flaw to him shortly after signing the snake contract herself, and he'd failed to take it to heart because she was just a little brat at the time.
Oh well. There were sayings about hindsight for a reason.
Collecting the few things he wanted from this lab only took a couple of minutes. It took longer to whip up a delayed activation trigger for the seal array and set the exclusion conditions. Telling his people that they must have their forehead protectors on and showing would be needed, but that could be disseminated along with the 'start your missions when the zombies attack' instruction.
Distributing that knowledge, telling those he didn't want captured to get out of the village ASAP, and dropping Anko's first set of basic gifts off would hopefully only take another forty-five minutes. Anko probably wouldn't realize they were gifts though, and likely wouldn't realize they came from him either, but he'd know and would figure out a better set later. Then he could leave as Rasa. Hopefully without arousing suspicion with anyone beyond the small delegation from Suna, which he'd ditch as soon as he could outside the village.
"You shouldn't have put on a show like that," Karin grumbled once they'd finally headed to the Hyuga compound. She'd tagged along with Hiashi's group and had been waiting for them there. "Doing so basically forced Hokage-sama's hand. He couldn't not promote you without losing face."
"Which is part of why they deserved the promotion," Hiashi interjected, causing Karin to blink. "Being able to point at a show like Hinata and Naruto put on and truthfully state that they had to be promoted or the civilians would question if he was going senile is one of the best ways to keep the rest of the shinobi from complaining about a promotion. I don't think anyone was likely to complain in this case, given that Naruto easily got the jounin support for special jounin and Hinata was apparently one vote short of the same, but it drastically simplifies things."
"It should also make their preferred missions even easier," Satomi said. "They're obviously heavy-assault types with no hope of blending in after that show, so nobody is going to be looking for them to be infiltrating anywhere."
Neji blinked at that, and looked at the two. "You two, infiltrate? With those features? Sure, the solid disguise jutsu allows Hyuga to hide their eyes, but there are still limits."
Naruto grinned, considered his options, and shapeshifted into an approximately four year old Hanabi. Hinata snickered and shifted to her Hikari form before picking Naruto up. She might have gone further if she didn't have to worry about her clothing not changing with her.
"They have some useful tricks," Hiashi pointed out as Neji's jaw dropped. "During wartime they'd be in high demand as well. Heavy assault and infiltration are a rare mix of capabilities, but absolutely devastating because if done right you slip behind enemy lines and then cause massive problems for them before vanishing into the night. Or day, even."
"Their chakra changed!" Neji exclaimed, obviously noticing that Naruto's now looked like Hanabi's and Hinata's now looked like a civilian's.
"And their scent as well, or so I assume, though that would be harder for you to notice. I understand that Hinata had a hard time getting some parts of scents that the human nose can't normally identify down with that jutsu but picked up the ability to mimic any scent he creates by matching the way his chakra moved as he formed the jutsu."
"Which has come in handy when we needed to fool an Aburame or Inuzuka," Naruto commented. Doing so with a young girl's voice seemed to stun Neji as well. "I don't think we've checked to see if her sense of smell is as good as mine now though, so we might not need to do that anymore. Running the jutsu slow enough for her to pick up the details is annoying. We also have issues performing most jutsu while making our chakra look like a civilian's, but if we're mimicking another shinobi we're usually okay."
Neji didn't look like he knew how to take this revelation. Hanabi coming in a minute later, seeing them changed, and shapeshifting cat ears and tail onto herself had just made it worse.
Kin frowned as she looked around the room that she'd been brought to. She'd expected a cell, but this looked like a fairly normal apartment. "Shouldn't you be locking me up?"
"You should be secure enough here," the Anbu that had brought her here replied. "We've known about Orochimaru's plans for a while now, at least in the abstract. The only reason we hadn't approached you in particular to try and convince you to defect was due to feeling that you'd not have enough information to offset the risk of you alerting him to our knowledge."
"Oh."
"Knowing what's coming and the final orders he sent out will help significantly, even if you don't know all of the acquisition targets. That your list of escape routes matches other information sources helps as well. But assuming you pass your evaluations you will remain a genin for your probationary period at a minimum."
"I figured as much. Better than being a test subject or forced to try to rein in my idiot former teammates."
"There is one request for test subjects that you might be asked about, technically. But it'll be voluntary instead of mandatory. You're just likely to be attractive because it wouldn't risk existing shinobi."
"...really?"
"So far there's been a one hundred percent survival rate and we think we know why, but the medic-nin and researchers need an 'untainted subject' to examine things further and the original set of subjects no longer qualify. Still, that's for later if it comes up at all. The apartment should be stocked for up to a week, possibly more given your body type, but I personally expect that you'll be visited and possibly moved again in the next two days."
Kin just stared as the Anbu left, closing the door behind them. She wasn't even sure if it was a male or female Anbu, and wasn't sure if the comment about being a test subject was joking or not. Instead, once she overcame her momentary shock, she sat down and focused on her surroundings. It was obvious that Konoha was going to want to ensure that her information was accurate before going too much further with her, and she didn't know enough about Orochimaru's operations to be useful beyond the immediate situation.
There were...five, maybe, shinobi watching the apartment. Or at least obvious ones. Meaning that sticking her in here without an obvious guard or even obvious security seals was likely a test. That was simple enough. A lot safer than anything Orochimaru would do to her now-former team once he found out that they'd decided to be morons. They'd been tasked with securing the exit route for the two likely-Uzumaki that he wanted to acquire, but instead Dosu had decided that they'd go after the Uzumaki themselves and tell the other teams to secure the exit route.
As if they had any chance of actually taking anyone from this village, doubly so any Uzumaki, after the show that had been put on during the finals. No, she was teamed up with complete idiots and wanted nothing more to do with them, even if she had to play nice with the tree-huggers. Then again, they were proving to be a lot more...subtle than expected. Oto was fairly straightforward, and if you didn't step into line almost immediately then you were essentially volunteering to be a test subject. Only those that were already exceptionally useful escaped that fate.
Dosu and Zaku...well, they'd both been test subjects at least twice each and it was a wonder that they'd survived at all. Kin was intelligent enough to not end up on the lab bench, but also knew that she wasn't useful enough to escape that fate eventually. Or perhaps Orochimaru would need a living sacrifice for something and she'd be the nearest expendable person. And all of this was before the monumentally stupid decision to go against orders.
No, she'd been left essentially unsupervised for the first time in ages and had taken the chance to get out while the getting was good. And if Konoha did decide to kill her instead of accepting her into the village as a probationary member of their forces then it was likely to at least be less unpleasant than anything Orochimaru would've done.
Satomi had insisted that Naruto and Hinata needed to change into something 'more formal' before heading to dinner as it was almost certainly going to include Old Man Hokage at a minimum. It ended up being Old Man Hokage, the Raikage, and the Kumo team. The Kazekage had left the village already, apparently half an hour before the remaining Suna team had done so, but no explanation for the Oto team not attending was given.
Naruto knew they hadn't left the village, but they also weren't together. Kin in particular was on the other side of the village from the others.
"I'm afraid that we're likely to have a significant interruption," Old Man Hokage said after everyone had arrived. "Specifically, we've got less than an hour before an actual zombie invasion is likely to hit as a cover for Oto agents to attempt to grab several things."
"...the rumors of there being a previous zombie invasion weren't just rumors?" the Raikage asked, sounding dumbfounded.
"That started as a prank of sorts and expanded into a large-scale test and training exercise, but it apparently accidentally mimicked something one of my students created. I have a couple of teams looking for the origin point, but doubt that they'll find it in time to stop things. But we have time for some formalities, at least." A stack of packets was picked up from a table and one lightly thrown to each of the genin, or perhaps genin and chunin. "These are your final review packets from your exam participation so that you can see where those monitoring things felt you did well or will need to improve. Hoshi, I'd have one for you but we don't know enough about your clan to evaluate you and Naruto obviously hasn't fallen into the trap of depending on his summons, making it harder to evaluate you as well." Hoshi nodded his acceptance of that. "Hinata and Naruto have their promotion paperwork and a seal tag containing their standard-issue vests as well. Some post-promotion paperwork will be scheduled in the coming week or two, keep an eye out for the summons you'll be getting to complete it."
"How did you get all of that done already?" the Raikage asked. "That's usually two or three days of headaches."
"We've been able to speed up our paperwork chains recently. Now then, as for the sensei here." Old Man Hokage left the Raikage blinking in confusion as two more packets were picked up and tossed to Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei. "These are your copies of their evaluations as well as your own evaluations and promotion paperwork. Both of you have noticeably improved your skills in various directions over the past year and a half, more than earning your promotions to full jounin. You'll also have some post-promotion paperwork summons in the coming week or two."
"How did you get your paperwork chains sped up enough to do a couple days of work in an afternoon?"
"Naruto here rediscovered the lost secrets of the paperwork jutsu that Konoha gave to Uzushio and was kind enough to share it with the village. Thanks to it we were able to clear out our backlogs and have reorganized most of our archives for easier locating of relevant paperwork."
The entire Kumo delegation looked shocked at that, and the entirety of Team Yurei took that as an invitation to take a look at their packets. Naruto flipped through the various evaluation sheets, noting with amusement some of the things that had been spotted. Helping Karin, only to flip her for the village. His likely involvement in several oddities with scrolls and the computer for the second stage even if they seemed to have no clue how he'd done either. Being reminded of being almost-fatally wounded by Orochimaru prompted a grimace, but coming out alive was seen as being significantly in his favor. Notes on what training had been seen, and what had been shown during the finals but not spotted being trained, were also included.
Various skills that he should work on were highlighted throughout, some more seriously than others. For example, apparently several examiners felt that he needed to work on acknowledging basic security measures instead of pretending that they didn't exist. He'd also simultaneously been too showy in the finals for some of the examiners and not showy enough for others, though some of that looked to be based on if they liked the diplomatic view of allowing others to show their skills being good for overall village relations.
The final sheet of the evaluations was a summary of votes and some of the reasons provided for nominating him for special jounin. There was an odd spread there, though most acknowledged his skill with seals based on his various storage seals, the resistance belts, and the little-known but well-valued portable showers he'd made a few of. Some referenced his infiltration skills, others thought that he was a genjutsu specialist like Kurenai-sensei, and a couple had said that you couldn't properly use a heavy assault shinobi at genin or chunin ranks. Plus one that referenced impossible medical abilities in the context of healing others...which sounded like it might be Gai referring to what had been done with Lee.
That said abilities were described as 'youthful' was a major hint.
After the evaluation paperwork was the promised seal tag and the paperwork confirming his promotion. He slipped the tag into one of his own metal seal tags that could store it safely. The rest of the paperwork was slipped back into the packet and stored in a different seal. Hinata and Tenten had done similarly with their packets, but Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei just reassembled their packets and held onto them.
"So," Old Man Hokage said after the Kumo shinobi had finally snapped out of their shock. The Raikage and his two guards had gone into a whispered discussion about the paperwork jutsu that they probably didn't realize that Naruto, Hoshi, and Hinata could all easily hear at a minimum. Yugito and her team were staying out of that, but all of them had looked towards the old man when he'd spoken. "Would you like to join us in shutting down the vastly diminished invasion, or would you prefer to stay here while we take care of things?"
"I want to see your new chunin in action in a real fight," the Raikage replied with a grin. "Can't do that if we're hiding like cowards, can we?"
Anko-sensei snorted. "If this turns into a real fight then you won't have a chance to see them in action. Luckily for you, we're expecting this to be more of a curbstomp than a fight."
Naruto and Hinata had been tasked with using clones to spread out and provide an overview of what was going on. Their ability to communicate with their clones and each other was being seen as a major benefit there. Officially Hinata was supposed to be using her byakugan to help spot problems, but both of them would be doing so. Whether or not Old Man Hokage knew that Naruto had a byakugan of his own didn't really matter in this case.
Their primary goals were to report concentrations of zombies to those that would be sweeping the village for them and targeting Oto shinobi going after their targets. That said targets included Karin and Yoko at a minimum had Naruto particularly annoyed, but the two would be able to handle themselves without outside help. Especially as Naruto and his parents had decided that Yoko should be free to use chakra chains.
None of the clones sent out into the village looked like them. Most were disguised as animals or civilians, meaning that the Raikage was going to have problems spotting them engaging in fights if they did so at all. Hoshi had also suggested summoning any summons that wanted to help with a 'minor zombie uprising'. That is, any foxes, toads, or snakes that wanted to participate. Anko-sensei had loved the idea and they got a quick lesson on 'mass summoning with an intent' from her. An extension of summoning an individual while providing an impression of the reason you were summoning them, useful when you needed them to immediately shield or similar.
What seemed like it might be half the foxes, a dozen toads, and two dozen snakes had accepted the summons, just in time for the zombies to start clawing their way out of the ground.
Dosu didn't know where the fuck Kin had run off to and didn't really care anymore. If she made it out of the village alive then she could explain herself to Orochimaru. Grabbing the shrine maiden that had been tending the place for a few years to use as a hostage, to hopefully provide a reason for the girl that had been a Kusa kunoichi at the start of the exams to play nice when they found her, was more important right now.
"Er," Zaku said, stopping before entering the shrine that was supposed to hold their target.
"What now?" Dosu asked.
"We've got a problem."
Scowling, Dosu pushed past the idiot, only to come to a halt. On one hand, both of their targets appeared to be present, which was in theory a good thing, though they were both dressed as shrine maidens. Their target had glasses though, which made her easier to identify. Unfortunately, the 'civilian' shrine maiden that Orochimaru was also interested in was sitting in the middle of a swarm of chakra chains, taking out zombies wandering in from the edges of the area without even looking at them, while the other one moved around in the middle of the swarm untouched healing a couple of civilians that were obviously being protected by the flowing chains.
Because of course the 'civilian' shrine maiden tending to the Uzumaki shrine for the past few years was a proper Uzumaki with the famous bloodline trait. Why the fuck hadn't anyone considered that aspect of things when she had the correct red hair?
Turning around, Dosu froze, finding that Zaku had been grabbed and muzzled by one of several chains that had popped up out of the ground behind them. A moment later both of them were trapped by the chains, their chakra seemingly being pulled out of them at the same time as they were wrapped up tightly.
Naruto and Hinata had left things to their clones and most of their summons on the surface, heading down under the village with a couple of trackers. Hoshi had scoffed at how little effort it took to take out the zombies, most civilians taking out individual zombies without much issue, and had jumped into the fray while the more experienced tracking fox helped find the seal array powering the things. With the summons running around helping the civilians take out zombies, the threat not even large enough to warrant evacuating, the shinobi could focus elsewhere.
The Oto shinobi themselves had targeted at least two members of each clan they could identify, and so far failed to grab even one person. Mostly due to underestimating their targets. Naruto's clones had needed to intervene once and Hinata's clones had chosen to do so thrice. One of those was a group trying to grab Hanabi though, and had been particularly viciously shut down for daring to do so. Only for Hanabi to whine that Hinata hadn't let her have any fun.
Other teams had run into the additional guards placed on records and supplies and failed to slip past them or had found that their intel on where to find their targets was horribly wrong. Then there was the one notable team that had been stupid enough to be anywhere near Sachie in the middle of a zombie invasion instead of moving around the sizable clear zone around her and had been taken out by overpenetrating kunai, but so far all of the others had been taken alive. Frequently heavily injured, but alive.
T&I would be busy in the coming weeks.
Only a few Suna forces had been picked up inside of the village, most of the potential attackers apparently getting lost due to the genjutsu effects placed the night before. Of those that had been in the village, half of them had joined the Oto forces and the other half had decided to help the civilians with the zombies. How much of that was communication failure compared to defection wasn't known, but only those working with Oto's forces were being taken out by Konoha's.
The Kumo group had started with attacking zombies, found them to be pathetic, and moved to hunting Oto shinobi instead. A clone popping up every so often out of disguise to direct them to various pockets of Oto shinobi helped there, though the entire group seemed confused as to where the clones kept coming from or disappearing to. Anko-sensei had sent word that she was proud of Naruto and Hinata both keeping their actions largely unseen as they helped coordinate everyone else.
"Huh," Naruto said as he and the Tome looked over the seal array that had been found in a lab deep under the village. "This...is supposed to make far more dangerous zombies, I think, but the elemental connections are all wrong and there's no proper controller."
"Can we turn it off?" Hinata asked. She obviously knew that active seals weren't always safe to just disrupt.
"Yes, but that won't do much for the existing zombies, only stop new ones from forming. I think it would be better to attach a real controller."
"...and what would that do?"
"A proper controller would allow for actual tactics instead of the mindless swarm, but we don't have time for that level of sophistication and having them suddenly turn on Oto would probably be too confusing. But a much simpler version is possible, so long as the actions can be taken without needing to worry about what's going on around them beyond grouping zombies together. The controller can also tell the seal to stop making zombies."
Partially under the direction of the Tome but honestly mostly on his own, Naruto started building a controller seal array. A simple action loop was easy enough to build out, and both Shukaku and Kurama broke out into snickering when they realized what the action loop he'd created was.
Anko blinked as the zombies near the rooftop where they were securing a couple of Oto idiots suddenly stopped their mindless shuffling and grouped up. "Fuck."
"What?" Iruka asked as he checked the knots on his own idiot.
"The zombies look like they're...huh."
He looked up at her, and then out at the zombies. "Are they dancing? As a group?"
"Looks like it."
A cat suddenly transformed into Naruto, with a grin. "Boss found the seal array and attached a controller to it. Not sure how to make them target Oto headbands instead of ignoring them without causing other problems, but sticking them in a dance loop until they can all be taken out was easy enough. Either way they're no longer an active threat and we're letting everyone know they can be ignored."
"Good job, but who told you to go after the source of the things?"
"Nobody else seemed to be and the zombies wouldn't have stopped showing up for a month. Well, Boss thinks there are some Anbu that might be looking on the old man's orders, but the lab is three to five levels deeper than they are right now, depending on how you count things, and someone collapsed and sealed off the entrance tunnel years ago. He sent a couple of clones to meet up with the Anbu and explain what not to do to the seals."
"Good initiative."
"How the fuck did you sneak up on us?" Iruka asked. "Not many people know that I'm a damned good sensor and you just appeared!"
"You're a good sensor but Naruto is a better infiltrator," Anko said with a grin, but didn't bother explaining. The distraction as he looked her way was enough for the clone to shift back into a cat and drop off the side of the building, Iruka spinning to where the clone now wasn't in shock. "Maybe the academy needs some classes on infiltration, if a proper infiltration shinobi can take you by surprise like that?"
The man scowled, but didn't argue the point.
Someone had figured out that the zombies could be 'led' by joining their dance and then moving away from the group. The rest of the zombies would then try to correct their position in the 'group' by shifting appropriately, following the people leading them. This was used to drag the zombies out to the training grounds once the Oto shinobi and those Suna shinobi working with them had been secured and dragged to holding cells. A group of academy students had even started a competition to see who could get the largest zombie group in one place.
Wide-area jutsu would likely be used to clear the training grounds of zombies in what amounted to an unusual training exercise in the coming days, if they didn't dance themselves apart before then.
Those invited to dinner had gotten their dinner and discussed the invasion while others handled clean-up. The Raikage was annoyed that things had been so low-key and wanted to arrange for a 'proper spar' before leaving in a couple of days, though with who wasn't actually mentioned. Naruto suspected him, but wouldn't put it past it being Hinata or Old Man Hokage. Yugito had also handed over a scroll to Hinata before they'd parted ways, tips for using Matatabi's fire and a couple of jutsu that Hinata might be able to perform. Or might not be able to perform, depending on how much they'd depended on Matatabi's proper existence.
On the way home, Naruto had taken a quick peek at the shrine. Most of the village was suffering from at least some damage that would likely turn into D-rank missions over the next week or two, but it appeared that the shrine had been spared most of it. Karin and Yoko had cleaned up the damage they'd caused and it looked like nothing else of note had actually made it into the grounds. No zombies appeared to have come up out of the ground in the shrine either, nor had any appeared in the Uzumaki compound, which probably meant that there was some kind of underground barrier that Naruto hadn't been aware of protecting the area.
Plenty of civilians were now more deferential to Karin and Yoko though, after seeing what they were capable of.
