Rebuilding and reinforcing the tower had taken far longer than demolition had, but the result was a stronger tower that was also far more flexible in how it could be used. Anko-sensei had visited as they were finishing up the work and was appalled that the old tower had been torn down...up until she found out that there was now a pair of seal-powered artificial hot springs inside the tower and new easy-access tunnels for getting to and from the tower.
The genin had needed another two days after that point to finish up their training on keeping their killing intent contained, and would probably be far less likely to dismiss being told to carry extra provisions on missions as well after needing to hunt and forage for days. A trip to the new tower and out through one of the new tunnels had followed, and the team was going to have a week off before resuming missions. Part of that was that it was the start of October, and there were several people insisting on Naruto having a proper birthday party.
"Are we going to be participating in the winter chunin exams?" Kiba asked before they broke up after leaving the tunnel from the training ground.
"No," Naruto answered immediately. "Suna would normally be running one, but they've opted not to do so and the only other village planning to is Iwa. You three might get a shot at Kiri or Kumo running exams next summer though, if Konoha doesn't end up running some for the summer cycle."
"Oh. Kiri or Kumo?"
Hinata nodded. "It feels a little ironic that we're currently in far better relations with them than we are with Suna. Now then, you three should go do your things. I know that Ino wants to take a proper shower and all four of you are hoping for a proper meal. Unless you want another training exercise today?"
Without chakra sensing and dojutsu you might have been fooled into thinking that the three genin and the nin-dog had been illusions, given how quickly they vacated the area.
In theory, the next few days were to be relaxing days, preparing for the birthday celebration. That was a nice dream, but the world didn't stop just because a party was being planned. Tsunade still wanted help at the hospital, and had even had Naruto regrow a limb for someone. Personal training still had to happen, including work on adding elemental chakra to the Rasengan like his father had always intended to do.
Naruto's first attempt at doing so was with his best 'element', that being medical chakra. Initially, he'd used pure medical chakra and created probably the coolest-looking way to unexpectedly heal someone ever created. Strike them with the green glowing orb and they'd be flooded with medical chakra infusing every one of their cells, but that likely only worked due to the 'bite-to-heal' additions causing the chakra to heal properly 'by default'. Forcing the chakra to 'chakra scalpel' mode, on the other hand...
Well, by all indications it left the skin untouched, so it didn't immediately look horrible, though it would need testing on something other than a clone at some point to confirm if it was actually as deadly as it seemed to be. It was also seemingly useless for taking out rocks, but had a somewhat devastating effect on trees.
Other elements were...more difficult, and using clones was a necessity to keep injuries down. On the basic elements front, fire kept trying to explode, wind was prone to cutting up the clone's hand and causing an early dispel, lightning didn't want to stay in the hand long enough to finish forming, earth wouldn't flow correctly to form the ball shape at all, and water started to expand pretty much immediately after the spinning got properly started. Combination elements generally had one or both of the problems from the basic elements, and he thought that he'd be better off getting what he could of the basic five down first.
Then there was training with elemental combinations. Attempting to recreate techniques that his parents knew about, learning how each element combination could be utilized, and seeing what happened when you mixed yin and/or yang chakra into each element or combination. The most useful of those for normal combat appeared to be combining wind and lightning and pushing it into your own body. Air resistance seemingly dropped to zero even as everything else sped up significantly, allowing for ludicrous movement speeds. Just wind was enough for flying, just lightning for reaction times, but the combination was greater than the individual components.
It also required a team of clones training in it to adjust to the increased speed, and Hinata was having trouble with it due to her acquired fire affinity interfering with it. If her ears or tail lit up at all then she turned into a fireball instead. Tenten was delighted with the knowledge when he'd passed it along too, but was taking training slowly because she couldn't just spam clones...and probably because her sensei told her to.
Lastly, his father had also decided that it was time to start learning the Hiraishin, starting with the history thereof. Originally created by Tobirama Senju, there were now three primary 'versions' of the technique. Tobirama's and Minato's were very similar, but the latter had been modified to allow for more permanent and stable seals that could also be used for signaling. Then there was the Hokage Guard Platoon variant, which was far more limited and required three people working together to place the target formulas or jump to them. It also only supported a handful of target formulas.
In theory, each user of the technique would need their own target seals and you could connect the target seal networks of different users of the technique. That had never been properly tested though, because the three-person version wasn't compatible with the single-user versions and you couldn't connect to someone else's seals without their aid. Sadly, this meant that Naruto wasn't going to be able to connect to his father's seals and would have to create yet another network of target formulas for his own use.
Perhaps he'd eventually teach Hinata and they'd be able to test connecting networks?
Anko had gotten put on the team assigned to give the new tower a proper examination, and the more they looked through the thing the better it got. She'd not expected the kids to think about future-proofing when rebuilding, but the ability to swap out wiring and the extra channels for future wiring were likely to be appreciated in the years to come. There were more security features in case they wanted to lock down specific areas of the tower as well, and it no longer relied on being able to pull clean water from the river.
The supply of spare clothing was properly-sorted, had been cleaned, and was now stored in purpose-designed rooms. Training and combat areas were more reinforced than they used to be, and more varied. In addition to the two full artificial hot springs there were also pools that could be used for water-walking or swimming training. Anko had used a large snake to strike the outside of the tower and done no damage at all, and a couple of Anbu had used a collaboration technique that had barely scorched the outer paint...only for the paint to repair itself over the next hour.
Discovering self-repair seals on the walls had led to other tests, such as embedding kunai into the training room walls and waiting. Within two hours they'd all popped out and onto the floors, the walls looking like nothing had happened at all. Which made a bunch of pre-installed mounting points and similar make a lot more sense, because making a hole to hang a sign only to have the hole repair itself and eject your anchor would be annoying at best.
"I wonder if Hokage-sama would be willing to test their underground construction skills for the academy," Anko mused while watching the camera system be checked over.
"For the academy?" the rat-masked Anbu also watching the camera system checks asked.
"They currently do 'camping' trips in training grounds, but could use a bunker or two that can handle training exercises as well. If only to get the kids used to working in a bunker that isn't used for other purposes. Followed, hopefully, by a number of our current out-of-village bunkers and towers being upgraded to this standard."
"Oh, that would be wonderful. Too bad that we probably can't get the Anbu bases replaced."
"We just need to get the two into the ranks," the cat-masked Anbu operating the camera feeds chimed in. "Then they can be given that task as part of initial training. You're supposed to visit all the bases anyway..."
"That would be nice, but they don't strike me as wanting to go into the ranks. Uzumaki feels more like a future Hokage candidate than an Anbu one."
"Including not wanting to go anywhere near the paperwork, yeah."
"What do you mean you burned out your contract?" Naruto asked, looking at Tenten and Yugao. The latter half-glared at him, probably unhappy with the wake-up call she'd gotten a few days ago in repayment for her having tried to screw up his schedule by modifying his alarm clock.
"I didn't use the buffer array you recommended and the entire array collapsed a few days ago," Tenten admitted...and Yugao blinked and looked mildly ashamed? Huh. Perhaps she'd thought he'd made the whole seal array?
"So why not rebuild it with the right buffer array?"
"Because I'm not as good with seals as you are and don't understand several parts you contributed. I've...had it pointed out to me that sometimes things are best left to the experts. That said, I did get some questions about the potential options for such a 'contract', both in how easily duplicates could be made for field work and if they could hold items other than weapons."
Naruto blinked a couple of times. "Other than weapons?"
"Clothing," Yugao chimed in. "Swapping Anbu outfits for civilian outfits, for example. Your genin could possibly use one built into a seal tag attached to a collar to quickly store and retrieve their clothing when shapeshifting. Akimichi would probably love it if they could literally call food to their hands too, for that matter."
"We'd have to swap out the blood-linked elements with something more generic," Naruto mused. "Can't expect everyone to lay out their own copies of things in their own blood if making it a salable item on any level. Targeting places other than the hands might be tricky too...might need to put a dressing dummy or three in the seal to target for outfits..."
"I told you he was the expert," Tenten said, gesturing at Naruto.
"You didn't tell me you'd ignored his advice," Yugao pointed out. "But yes, I can see how he's already spotted problems and is coming up with potential solutions."
"I'll probably have something workable for weapons in a few days," Naruto said. "The more complete version would definitely help everyone who needs to swap out clothing when they shapeshift, and I was never really happy with the control arrays Tenten was using anyway, but targeting the whole body will take longer to work out."
"What was wrong with my control arrays?" Tenten asked.
"I don't think you could've gotten them down to under fifteen seconds between switching between storage and retrieval. A proper bidirectional system could handle both at the same time."
"...bidirectional isn't just 'can go both directions'?"
"My preference is one that can go both directions at the same time instead of one that you have to switch modes for."
"Ooooh...I think I misunderstood that entire concept..."
Naruto's party ended up being held in the Hyuga compound, set up by Hiashi and Hanabi more than anyone else. Other guests included everyone on his current and former team plus the old man and Tsunade. Shizune had apparently been invited, but hadn't bothered to come. It was interesting how the majority of the clan now had animal features, though the features any given individual had were less predictable.
Neji's eventual arrival had seemed more of an afterthought from a party point of view, and had started with storming up to Naruto.
"Were you really the one that fixed Lee's ability to mold chakra?" Neji asked.
"...yes?" Naruto answered, wondering why this was coming up now.
"Why?"
"Because I had an experimental seal that needed testing and where else was I going to find someone willing to volunteer when the failure condition was being unable to mold chakra? Besides, it seemed like a decent thing to do."
"Do you have any clue what kind of horror you unleashed?"
Naruto raised an eyebrow. "I know that he's been working on the academy basics and chakra flow techniques, all without hand seals when possible. He really should get some elemental jutsu into the mix as well and would probably do well with the body flicker technique instead of chaining the replacement jutsu for distance traveling. I don't think he's managed to replace himself with an illusionary clone yet, but I know he's working on trying to. How's your work on doing things with your spit?"
Neji didn't seem to like the change in topic, left eye and ear both twitching a bit. "I've figured out that it can be charged with chakra for...various effects."
"It looked like you were doing a decent job of targeting chakra points a couple days ago."
"...how in the world did you spot me doing that?"
"You don't get labeled as an infiltration specialist because you're easy to spot."
"I thought his aim needed work," Hanabi commented. "He could only hit his obvious targets from about twice arm length."
That caused Neji to blink, then turn to stare at his cousin in shock. Apparently Naruto seeing him was one thing, but Hanabi had broken his brain in some fashion. Then again, the girl had been given copies of several techniques by Hinata and was getting quite good at hiding herself. Not as good as Naruto and Hinata were, or even Tenten, but very good for an academy student and likely on Anko-sensei's list of future infiltration specialists.
Transitioning to the party proper had followed, and there was a decent pile of gifts waiting for Naruto when the time came to open them. Mostly various tools, a few interesting-looking books. Anko-sensei had dug up a collection of poisons, Kurenai-sensei sent some genjutsu he might want to pick up. Old Man Hiruzen had written down more of his personal technique variations that he thought Naruto would find useful. The toads had provided a couple of smaller summoning stones like his two for the foxes, and the foxes had provided written information on how the things were made. Apparently to the displeasure of the toads.
The gift from the Hyuga clan was quite interesting. A set of three puppets, though one of them was apparently a toy snake. Naruto half-recalled that being an early training item for the puppeteer clans. Next up in size was a fox, and then there was an adult-sized human.
"I'm half-hoping that you can figure out enough to give Hanabi proper lessons," Hiashi said when a questioning look had been sent his way. "The snake is a training aid, but the other two are creations of Sasori's that were left in Suna. Hanabi hasn't made any progress at all with the cat version of the fox puppet and the human puppet is apparently considered to be 'cursed' due to how hard it is to control. I thought you might like the challenge."
Naruto frowned as he looked down at the scroll. Technically he'd not pulled out the puppets, just read the labels next to the seals. "Cursed?"
"Nobody was able to explain more."
"Huh."
After a couple more gifts, including Jiraiya's gift of a kit for placing seals on unusual surfaces and the Anbu Commander's gift of a stack of metal Anbu-style masks, Naruto came to the last gift in the pile. It was also a book, but it was unusual because it was apparently from the 'Suna siblings'.
"Why did the Suna siblings send me a book on puppetry?" Naruto wondered, flipping the book open to find that there was a note stuck in it. Reading it, he found that it said that they'd prefer that he not give puppeteers a bad name by being completely useless after hearing about where some of the puppets were going...and wishing him good luck with Sasori's 'cursed' human puppet. While also containing warnings and a request that if he killed himself fighting to control a cursed puppet that the Uzushio Anbu not be sent because it wasn't Suna's fault.
It felt likely that 'know the basics of how to control puppets so that you might not die and cause the Uzu Anbu to come after us' was really the primary reason for sending the book.
Shisui's eye twitched as he read over a report from one of the Hyuga teams. "We're going to be spending months cleaning up explosives everywhere. Do we have any clue who did this?"
"It looks like it's been decades since some of them were placed," Hiruzen said. "These are subtly placed ones too, and the first set was only noticed because a damaged pipe was being traced and happened to pass next to a line of the tags."
"Which implies a trap master of some kind, I'm aware. But I've not seen any indication in the reports as to who might be responsible. Several of the lines were also apparently broken by the multiple zombie invasions, which is nice, but a large configuration was set up in the Hokage Rock too. Which would both compromise the shelters and long-term storage there and risk the entire village in the resulting rockslide."
"Those were luckily trivially disabled as they'd not been primed yet. I've got the Anbu report here."
"That's a relief, but some clue as to who the hell planted them all would be nice."
"It would, yes, but it's possible they skipped town after we started implementing things to correct Naruto's list of ways village security has gone wrong."
"Yeah. Finding out just how...vulnerable most of the 'secure' places in the village were was an eye opener. Still don't think we're keeping him out of most of them, but needing a combination of skills most shinobi won't have to slip through is at least an improvement. Placing decoy documents in more obvious locations is also a great idea, but I'm still annoyed that we only found out about the details of his swapping out of the chunin exam scrolls after he was promoted."
Hiruzen nodded. "That might've been enough to convince me to push him to special jounin if it had been known ahead of time, yes. Or his team's medical skills, even if Tenten was lagging behind due to a very late start on some of it. They hid their true skills so well that even the village had no clue...and I'm betting we still don't know the full scope of everything he can do."
"If we did then he's not worth promoting, in part because that would imply that he wasn't still working to improve his capabilities."
Some discussion with one of the nicer Hyuga elders at the party had led to Naruto having a breakthrough in figuring out how to have his seal-made zombies engage in various taijutsu styles, but he'd not been able to work on it or Tenten's replacement seal much before heading out for another mission. A team of jounin had apparently failed to infiltrate a noble's household in the Land of Rivers to obtain some plans believed to have been stolen from Konoha, but the noble had visited Konoha and wanted a genin team to escort them back home.
As a side mission, they were to take a 'break day' before leaving to return after the noble was home, in reality attempting to slip in and get the plans. Except that Naruto had decided to go a different route and had sent clones ahead before they'd even left the village with the noble.
"I'd have hoped to have at least one jounin," the noble, Tsukuda, said as he looked over the group. "And what's with the fake ears and tails?"
"They aren't fake," Hinata replied. "A combination of things has resulted in changes to our bodies. Some of those are being more widely deployed, especially in my clan where they provide several benefits that are less of a concern to others in the village. The most common desired benefit is that shinobi who undergo the treatment have a far greater healing rate when injured, but enhanced hearing and smell are also common."
"There are downsides as well," Naruto added. "Transplants, to or from those who have undergone the treatment, are problematic. The animal is also unable to be chosen ahead of time, being dependent on the one receiving treatment more than the treatment itself, and some provide less-useful traits."
"Huh," Tsukuda said. "That's...hmmm."
It sounded like the man was going to be fishing for information on the beast man procedure, and Naruto made sure to have a clone grab a couple copies of the public advertising information on it to hand over to the man at the end of the mission. After they'd 'leaked' a bunch of theoretically useful information to him on the road, because it seemed like that was going to be what kept him from complaining about their ranks.
Orochimaru grumbled as he appeared for the Akatsuki meeting. Anko had been...far, far too clever for his own good. Sealing explosive tags that would automatically prime and detonate into the delivery specimens for his 'gift' to her, using storage seals that were also explosive, was a trick he was probably going to try to figure out how to do himself. He just wished he hadn't personally tried to get whatever she'd sealed into them out.
His people also weren't finding any signs of Uzushiogakure's remnants, which was annoying. Something weird was going on with the jinchuriki of the three- and eight-tails as well, for that matter, but what exactly was hard to figure out from his own network and he wasn't the one tasked with finding out more.
The rest of the group finished appearing, the meeting being in a...reasonably-clean looking room today, instead of a cave, and Pain stepped forward.
"We are still having difficulty locating the three missing tailed beasts," Pain said. "Zetsu has been unable to locate the Uzushiogakure remnants, though did find...disturbing news regarding them."
"Disturbing how?" Kakuzu asked. Presumably in part because there were serious bounties for any information on Uzushiogakure from several villages, in addition to Akatsuki's own interests.
"One item he was able to identify in the ruins of the original village was an experimental way to hide something in time itself, only returning to the normal timestream when called for. Doing so is apparently fatal for anything living, but the tailed beasts aren't able to be truly killed."
Orochimaru doubted that anything was truly unable to be killed, and personally felt that Konoha hadn't been fibbing when they claimed that the one-tail and two-tails had been killed. He also suspected that the nine-tails was long dead and that there had never been a 'decoy' jinchuriki at all, but wasn't sure where the remnants of that beast had gone since young Naruto hadn't picked up animal features years ago.
Possibly one of the Uzushiogakure members had the remnants and they'd decided to give a couple to Konoha as a show of good faith or something.
Whatever the case, at this point he was mostly still in the organization to spy on them, having figured out how to get rid of the ring whenever he wanted to a few years ago. Well, that and Pain paid well for a number of things, even on failure. Like the invasion, that had basically netted nothing of long-term use beyond a few extra notes to turn into later experiments and had set Akatsuki back a decade or two. Which probably meant that it wasn't a complete failure after all, because the supposed goals of the organization didn't sound like they were achievable before someone started killing off tailed beasts.
The original promises made to recruit him had not endeared Orochimaru to the organization, but he recognized when he was unprepared for an opponent and suspected that rejection at the time would've been...painful.
"Everything we found detailing the technique indicates that it has its flaws," Pain continued after a moment. "Including that the death of the one that performed the technique will bring anything 'hidden' by it back immediately. There are likely three such individuals, one for each missing tailed beast, and finding information on them is now a priority. I also want to take steps to ensure that the remaining tailed beasts aren't similarly hidden, and welcome ideas for doing so."
"Turning their jinchuriki to our side in some fashion would seem to be the easiest solution," Orochimaru volunteered. "Though moving the tailed beasts into hosts of our choosing and hiding them away could work as well. Outside of that, ensuring that they're...at least seen as friendly with Konoha may be enough."
"As if we could create even that much peace as it is," Sasori retorted.
"We don't have to do anything to promote that in the short term. The display with the one-tail and two-tails has already done the work for us. Anyone else with a tailed beast doesn't dare have it look like they may be preparing to attack Konoha for fear of reprisal."
"We've noted the same trend," Pain admitted. "It's likely only a temporary situation, but it buys us time to come up with a longer-term one." He then turned to Kakuzu. "Given that we're needing to delay things, do you have any other fundraising solutions for us?"
"Most of the new large bounties are currently for information on Uzushiogakure," Kakuzu admitted. "But there are a few useful targets...though going after any affiliated with Konohagakure may create issues. They've also dropped their mission prices significantly due to internal adjustments, making undercutting them...problematic while clients are also willing to pay more for perceived quality."
"Holding off on undercutting the other villages is understandable in light of not having the resources we'd hoped to be able to obtain. Further expanding our coffers for later will do for now."
"We should be attacking the leaf bastards," Hidan chimed in, drawing everyone's attention. He looked surprised that they were surprised. "What? We want to flush out Uzu, so attack Konoha to force them to show up."
Pain shook his head. "Orochimaru has already pointed out that we don't know the full extent of their security or capabilities right now. We'd likely have to commit the entire organization on a hunch."
"Then send Sasori and I against the Uzumaki brat," Deidara suggested, then paused while everyone turned to him. "We know he goes out on missions, and having a credible threat against him could get him to be shadowed by protective squads, hm."
Perhaps the efforts Orochimaru had put in to help recruit the bomber were less of a waste of time than previously believed. But there was a possible problem there, so he spoke up. "So long as you don't kill him, and you'd likely need an excuse for challenging him that explains why you wish to so that those wishing to protect him won't assume that Akatsuki in general wish him harm."
"He was to receive puppets of my creation from Suna's collection," Sasori volunteered. "Testing him or attempting to reclaim my creations would provide a suitable excuse. Both he and his teammate demonstrated explosion release as well, providing something for Deidara to want to test them on. But since he likely received the puppets only recently we would need to wait a month or two, which is also a good length of time to come up with a plan."
"We'll revisit this in next month's meeting," Pain said. "For now, assume we'll be attempting that, but if we find a lead before then it may not be needed."
Naruto's clones had spent two days searching Tsukuda's home while the team was still a week out with the noble, using one of the summoning stones to get there each morning. They'd not found the plans yet, but they had found seven storage seals. Given that Tsukuda had commented that he and his daughter had 'enough chakra to possibly have become genin, had they wanted to'? It was likely that anything sensitive was kept in one of the seals.
Normally, that would be trivial to deal with. Open the seal, check everything in it, reseal things if needed, and leave. Or just grab the seal and leave and worry about checking things in it elsewhere. These seals were on the building itself though, and hadn't reacted to the initial attempts by the clones to open them at all.
For the third day, Naruto left clones with the caravan and went to check things out personally. There wasn't even a bandit within several kilometers of the caravan anyway.
"This is chakra-signature locked," his father piped up from the Tome after a few minutes of examining one seal. "See the filter on the activation points?"
"I do now," Naruto replied. "But it looks more like it just needs a specific chakra nearby to open the filter, instead of filtering the chakra applied? And...one of my clones says there's a direct-chakra and nearby-chakra version on one of the other seals. Tsukuda and his daughter, perhaps?"
"That could be."
"Well, I've spent enough time around them. Let's find out."
Pairs of clones, or in the case of the original Naruto, him and a clone, transformed into copies of Tsukuda and his daughter. They didn't need to take on the forms to mimic the chakra but it made the mental exercises easier to maintain. Doing that had all seven seals opening with one of the two chakra signatures, and this revealed a lot of information and items. Plans for all the major hidden villages, some items that had Uzushiogakure markings on them, sealing instructions, a box of explosive tags, three collections of weapons, and piles of money.
Plus, in the seal in the daughter's room, a pile of expensive clothing and makeup.
Naruto decided to just grab it all, slightly damage all the seals so it looked like they might've failed due to a lack of maintenance, and leave. Except that Hinata had pointed out that they could cover their tracks better than that before he'd left the area, and that evening a couple of clones that looked like they were from Iwagakure made sure they were 'sloppy' and spotted breaking in. Alarms were sounded, and the clones damaged the house as part of responding to the various guards that were summoned. A couple of explosive tags, spilled oil on the third floor, and a lit match had the place burning nicely before the two clones hightailed it out of the small town and vanished into the night.
