Getting the three genin used to having at least one clone active all day had taken until the middle of February, and that got all of them properly compartmentalizing their 'shrine maiden' identities as a bonus. During this they'd been asked to do some demonstrations at the academy by Anko-sensei for why infiltration was under-rated by most shinobi as a useful skill. To the embarrassment of the rest of the instructors, Iruka was the only one in the entire building to notice when he had extra students. The rest took roll looking for missing students but hadn't paid enough attention to notice that they had more seats filled than they should.
Naruto's work with puppets during this time had initially been focused on building duplicates of the puppets he already had so that groups of clones could practice with them. That turned out to be fairly straightforward after the first successful copy of the new ones, quickly turning into twenty of each, and he'd branched out a bit into new designs as well. Specifically, a couple of small bird designs for scouting that probably weren't going to be all that useful in a fight.
To his embarrassment, he'd not really accomplished much on any other projects due to focusing on the puppets. Not that anyone else seemed to mind that, and Hinata had gotten caught up in some of the puppet stuff as well. She now had her own set of twenty cat puppets to train with using clones and both of them were helping Hanabi work on the basics.
"I think we're due a larger mission set outside of the village," Naruto said at their team meeting a few days into February. "Even if none of us currently need the income, there's only so much we can actually do in the village for infiltration training."
"Luckily for us," Hinata continued. "The Daimyo has a multiple-week infiltration mission that the older teams have balked at and would previously have been handled by the twelve guardians. While Naruto has plans for the line of work that made the family we'd be pretending to be rich, we need an entire noble family and happen to be the only single infiltration team large enough to pull it off."
"...we're going to be pretending to be stuffy nobles for weeks?" Kiba asked, sounding like that was going to be a horrible chore.
"Yes, but we do have some leeway in specifics. We need parents, at least one child, and at least one pet for the family itself. Then we need at least one less-stuffy retainer that can handle 'interactions between the nobles and their lessers'. A pampered pet fox is in line with the pet side of things, and having a retainer that happens to have a pet dog can explain Akamaru's presence."
"We can go with a single child and two retainers or two children and one retainer," Naruto added. "I figured that Ino and Sasuke can decide that, being less in-tune with Akamaru and more familiar with interacting as nobles due to their clan structures."
Kiba was obviously relieved to hear that.
"You've got a couple of days before we leave to decide," Hinata said. "When we leave we'll be geared up for bandit-clearing until we meet up with the Daimyo's chosen retainer. He'll be the only indication to the Daimyo that we're the infiltration team at all. Take note that we're going to be pretending to be from a much warmer climate, so will be wearing heavier clothing to 'compensate' for not being used to cooler weather, and our disguised forms will need to have deep tans or naturally darker skin. If you wish to coordinate fashions you'll need to keep that in mind."
The genin nodded, were given written copies of what they were allowed to know of the mission goals, and a few minutes later had dispersed. Naruto sighed at that, and a couple of clones arrived with supplies a moment later. "Time to get started on the money-making excuse."
"You mean the excuse for the nobles making money?" Hinata asked.
"...yes, but it has to look good enough so I'm willing to bet that this is going to make me money anyway. If only because the Daimyo wants at least one for himself."
She was obviously curious, and stuck around to watch the work after he got Shukaku and his parents out of the Tome to help.
"You made a mobile house," Kiba said as he stared at Naruto's creation in the small port village they were meeting their contact at.
Naruto shrugged. "Yeah, though mapping out all the control lines to allow for simple moving levers to control it all was annoying. Can't require chakra to use day to day because our cover has us not being shinobi, but it's all labeled consistently and we've got a day to familiarize you all with it and the gibberish language the labels are in."
"...how does it even work?"
"There are massive chakra storage seals hidden in the frame structure that do need to be charged by shinobi every so often. Those power everything, from the reinforcement seals that make the whole thing more durable to the enhanced grip seals on the wheels through to all the internal functions." He got a bit of a blank look at that, even Hinata not having gotten good explanations for how he'd figured this all out, so he sighed and continued. "The axles are linked to seals that were modified from traps with spinning rods for tightening down ninja wire, though I had to scale up the power use quite a bit. For lights, inside and out, I modified basic lighting seals from beginner lessons and slapped fancy covers and lenses on them. There's a scaled-up version of my toilet and shower systems to provide a full water system in the back. The closets are designed to be swappable for different family members through a clever storage seal trick, and those bits sticking out of the sides are accordion-style walls that expand out so that mattresses can drop down to provide sleeping areas."
Not mentioned was that the interconnected seals were...touchy to those trying to dismantle them unless you knew exactly what you were doing. Anyone trying to take the thing apart to see how it worked without knowing that was more likely to cause the whole thing to burst into flames as the seals ate themselves. If they were lucky then the main storage seal would be reasonably drained when they tried, otherwise after about ten minutes it would explode. While not an intentional design feature, it did fit a sealmaster not wanting their work to be stolen by others. Doing it 'right' to make that far less likely to happen would've required another week or two and custom-forged metal components.
"I think every noble is going to want one of these," Ino said after the initial shock wore off.
"They're probably a bit too expensive for most to keep running," Naruto said. "It took me most of a day to charge the storage seal and it'll probably last at most a month and a half while in use, so if you can't afford to pay a chakra powerhouse to fill the seal every couple of months then you won't get as much use out of it. It'll gradually charge itself if everything is powered off, admittedly, but that's going to be too slow for anything but a yearly vacation trip at the most."
"...then what's the explanation for being able to afford it if most nobles couldn't?"
"The red-haired seal masters from some far-off destroyed land of tides or something keep money coming in for regular recharging of the seals. We don't know anything about Uzushiogakure beyond that, or that the seal masters are Uzumaki, but everyone local is expected to connect the dots without much issue. I'm curious if anyone will volunteer information or not, honestly."
Showing them how everything worked, including emptying the waste container that solid waste from the toilet was filtered into, took most of the morning. Naruto would be operating the controls despite playing the nobleman, using the excuse that he just liked doing so and it saved them a retainer on the trip, but Kiba had to know how to empty the waste container as that wasn't something a noble would do themselves. They'd also all managed to learn and slip into the fake accent they'd be using with remarkable speed. It was a mixture of what Shukaku said was an older Uzushiogakure accent and one used by tribes to the south of the Land of Wind.
More surprising was the decision that Ino and Sasuke had come to, both opting to be children instead of either playing retainer of some kind. Less expected was that they were going to pretend to be sisters, Ino around ten and Sasuke around eight. One of the mission goals they knew of was spotting shinobi in other parties, and they'd decided that a couple of younger girls would be more tolerated being 'nosy' than boys would in a general sense.
Having slipped 'into character', they maintained it until the Daimyo's retainer showed up, explaining to the locals that they'd been dropped off by a ship overnight. A ship that nobody had seen, but the group was foreign-looking enough to make it believable that they had come in by ship. Some back and forth with the locals and a crude map of the area had them openly planning their route when the Daimyo's retainer showed up and found them.
Despite giving him the code phrases to identify themselves, the man hadn't wanted to believe that they were the hired team. At least until they hit the road and a demonstration was asked for. Seeing little eight-year-old 'Anita' produce a kunai and put it through a tree, at a mere gesture from Naruto, had caused the man's eyes to go wide. Not as wide as seeing the mobile household itself originally, but that was obviously enough to convince the man. Hinata then healed the two trees damaged by the throw before returning the kunai to the young girl, and that didn't rate a comment at all.
Arriving at the Daimyo's palace days later had drawn a lot of attention, from the Daimyo himself and the nobles already present for the gathering. This was expected as they were intentionally standing out, drawing attention to themselves in a way no true 'infiltrator' should. It was likely that only someone incredibly paranoid would think anything odd of the Daimyo not approaching them personally though, or would've noticed the change in the man's expression once he realized which retainer had escorted them in. After all, in theory you want to wait for strangers to be vetted before you let them approach you in his position and these were very unusual strangers.
The visible samurai guards were in full agreement on the whole not allowing the complete unknowns to directly approach the Daimyo front.
"This is a fascinating contraption," one of the more forward nobles said, looking over the mobile house. "And you operated it yourself to get here, instead of having a servant do so?"
"I find it relaxing," Naruto replied. "And it allowed us to bring one less person with us, which was appreciated over the weeks at sea."
"I've never even heard of something like this. There are no animals involved in its operation?"
"No, the seal masters came up with the first versions of this after a sickness emptied our stables some fifteen years ago. My father insisted that it was one of our rivals trying to cripple us, yet if that's the case then it accomplished the opposite."
Mentioning seals drew far more attention. "...seal masters?"
"A red-haired group that my father took in when they ran into us a little over two decades ago, I believe it was. They'd run out of supplies and their ship was obviously barely holding itself together, looking like it had barely survived a war of some kind. Pure charity on our part, but after a couple years recovering they started offering their services so long as the intentions were peaceful. Secretive of their art, but they claim that's because none of us have what's needed to learn the art and playing with it without that ability is dangerous. Once they started getting paid for their services they built a new ship and started making thrice-yearly trips in this general direction, sometimes coming back with fewer people and sometimes bringing back groups of others. Took some convincing to let us tag along even this far after hearing some stories from the trio with weird markings on them that they brought back with them on the previous trip. One adult and two children."
"Weird markings?" another of the nearby nobles asked.
"Some kind of spiral marking, placed on their backs. They don't like letting anyone get a good look at them, but I got a good look at one of the children when they were injured. I thought it looked a lot like the 'seals' that the group uses to make things like the mobile house here. But the children spoke of entire nations out this way with people that could do incredible things before the adults bade them to be quiet about it. Too late to stop my curiosity though, and we had to come take a look."
"And they...dropped you off here?" the first noble asked.
"Oh yes," Hinata said. "Barely stopped at all to do so, since they still had at least a week before reaching their destination and insisted that they couldn't bring us any further."
"But you're wearing...slightly out of date clothing? Nothing that unusual."
"They've been bringing back clothing from this area for years as well, and it was only on the journey here that we realized why what you wear is so much heavier than what we're used to. None of our normal outfits have any hope of keeping us warm enough here, and we had no chance to do any shopping for more recent options before we were found and invited to join you all."
Only incredibly subtle chakra exercises were actually keeping them cool, of course, but the nobles didn't need to know that. Or that the incredibly light and airy clothing packed away in the mobile house had been dreamed up by an Anbu tailor for the mission to better sell that they were visitors from a much warmer climate. Hopefully someone would sneak in to do a search and spot them though, since otherwise it was going to feel like a waste of effort.
"Unfortunately we were warned away from the groups with the amazing abilities," Naruto continued. "The seal masters seem to think that if we sought them out then someone was likely to kill us for the house here. One even grumbled about how annoying it would be to find it to get it back if that happened."
Several of the nobles had quickly backed that claim up, encouraging the group to not deal with the 'barbarians' that they were claiming shinobi were.
The more than a week of interacting with nobles was made somewhat more amusing by being able to act as though several of the local customs were strange and unusual, just like they were acting like the local fashions and food were. To be fair, what nobles called 'food' was nothing like what shinobi called food. Presentation was far more important to the nobles and the rituals surrounding how you ate the food were just as important as the food itself. Kiba, Akamaru, and Hoshi didn't have to deal with it, but the rest of them were well-versed in all of it...and had fun intentionally mis-understanding details. Completely failing to understand chopsticks and needing to resort to forks made their covers more believable and gave the other nobles something to snicker about 'behind their backs'.
On the mission front, Ino and Sasuke, as Ankita and Anita, had identified three shinobi spies while sneaking around and acting like curious children. They'd even managed to copy two different code books. Kiba, as Lal the retainer, had spotted a fourth spy and mis-identified a civilian that was merely being secretive and protective of their Icha Icha collection. Hoshi had spotted a fifth spy when they broke cover to slip into and search the mobile house, and reported that they'd found and made note of the fake warm-weather fashions as well as copied the 'manual' and all the other gibberish markings that the Tome had helped create. Good luck to their village's analysts on that one. The similar copy made by one of the Daimyo's guardian shinobi to be sent back to Konoha had already been warned about and would be disregarded as planted deception before anyone spent any serious time on it.
What the genin weren't allowed to know was that the Daimyo had actionable intelligence that someone was targeting two of the visiting nobles in an attempt to discredit him. Worse, the intelligence claimed that one of the shinobi guards that had replaced the guardian ninja was involved, though not which one. It was that aspect of things that had the bulk of the infiltration teams not feeling that they were up to the task, but Old Man Hiruzen and Shisui trusted Naruto and Hinata to flush things out.
Unfortunately, it appeared that the intelligence was correct. Three days in they'd located the slow-acting poison in the quarters of one of the guards, and two days later one of Hinata's clones had managed to swap it out for an identical-looking mild laxative they'd prepared. Some communication with Shisui via clone messaging had resulted in an additional plan to be enacted the day that the poisoning was attempted, should that happen.
Yoko had been as concerned as Naruto at how difficult it had become to dispel her, intentionally or otherwise. Only the fact that a constant awareness had started to kick in, negating the need for her to dispel to 'sync up', had tempered that. Their theories were a bit far-fetched on what was happening, admittedly, but literally years of keeping a single clone running could have trained Naruto's chakra to keep her active.
They didn't think that was what was actually happening, admittedly, but it was the best theory anyone they'd been able to talk to about the problem had.
Over the past couple of days things had gotten a little weirder though. She'd actually gotten hungry, and not in an 'echo from Naruto' sense. Sure, she was capable of eating, even if nobody had ever adequately explained where things a paperwork clone ate went when the clone dispelled, but beyond echoes of hunger from the original they didn't get hungry. Naruto was letting her worry about things while he was on his mission though, not needing the distraction.
He had sent an extra Yoko clone to take over in the shrine today though, so that she could focus a bit more on figuring out what was going on.
Re-reading everything they had on every variant of the paperwork clone hadn't provided any clues whatsoever, and it was admittedly possible that her near-constant use as an entire secondary personality outlet was just an extreme outlier that had never made it into any documentation that they had access to. Except that the explanation felt wrong on some level, as though there was something obvious staring them in the face that they were missing.
By lunch she'd given up and swapped with the clone so that she could openly go out to get ramen. It would certainly be nicer than the echoes of the fancy noble 'food' that Naruto was going to be having for lunch.
"We do hope that you'll be able to arrange to sell some of these mobile houses here," the Daimyo's retainer said as they waited for a few other nobles to depart ahead of them, including one near the front of the line with shinobi-induced problems with their horses.
Naruto sighed. "I doubt that I'll be able to do so, if only due to how long it takes to get here. But a mention was made of there being likely family members of the seal masters living in a...er...Konchagare?"
"Konohagakure," the retainer corrected, the corner of his mouth twitching at the obvious intentional butchering of the name.
"Ah, yes. If they're in touch then perhaps they'll be able to be a more local source. This is all the seal masters' work, after all, and I'll be sure to mention it to them."
"Many in your position would be more...controlling of such information."
"It's no secret back home that the houses are the work of the seal masters, nor are the broad details of our agreements with them. We deal with the others in our area in part so that the seal masters don't need to."
The retainer nodded, but was called off a moment later to help get a horse moving further up the line. A couple of minutes later one of Naruto's clones signaled him to indicate that the trap for the disloyal shinobi had been put into place. The poisoning attempt had happened at breakfast today, and the clone had just trapped the box that the poison had been kept in. When the extra poison was returned to the box the shinobi would trip the trap, and unless they used a solid clone technique that they hadn't demonstrated in the past week and a few days they'd find the seal tag there stripping them of their ability to use chakra at all. They should also get knocked out by the specially-prepared tag, at which point the hidden clone should be able to quickly stuff them in a prisoner transport scroll and get them back to Konoha.
Unfortunately, once they were able to get moving their suspicions about the departure problems being intentional were confirmed. The various shinobi spies were in position to follow them, which meant that they were stuck in their infiltration personas until they had reason to ditch their watchers. That wasn't likely until they reached a port and could vanish overnight as though they'd been picked up by a ship that nobody noticed. Creating a bit of a ghost ship rumor was something that they'd expected to possibly be doing though, since nobody had seen any ship drop them off either.
"Why does the Daimyo's message include a request for pricing on a mobile house?" Shisui asked as he read the missive. The man was happy with Team Yurei's successful identification and neutralization of the disloyal shinobi, who was enjoying a stay with Ibiki, but a mobile house?
"That does feel like an odd one," Hiruzen agreed. "Perhaps the team brought a mobile house with them?"
"Where would they have gotten one?"
"...Naruto has proven multiple times that he's a genuine Uzumaki."
That made far too much sense in the way that Uzumaki traditionally didn't make sense. "Okay, but that makes me dread what other craziness they've inspired with their cover for the mission."
"Or are still inspiring, given that they're stuck with shinobi following them."
"...how do you know that?"
"I visited the shrine and talked to Yoko. Originally I was concerned that the unease I noticed in her was related to the mission, but it turns out that there are...oddities with her specifically as of late."
Shisui blinked. "Oddities?"
Hiruzen nodded, leaning back in his chair. "Apparently she's become essentially impossible to dispel and bears a far more real-time connection to Naruto than any shadow clone I've ever heard of. She's worried because she doesn't know why, and possibly more so because Naruto is offloading his own mental concern about the problem onto her so that it doesn't affect him on a mission."
"That's...how does that even happen? Surely she'd just run out of chakra and dispel that way?"
"Since Team Yurei left on their mission she's found herself needing to eat, drink water, and even use the toilet for more than just appearances. I suggested doing a full reveal to Tsunade when Naruto can make it back to the village in person so that both of them can be examined together, but that may be a few days yet."
"Do you think I should preempt that with a quick discussion to ensure that she knows the full story about Yoko?"
"...no, but only because I think I'm the better one to approach her about that. I'll do so this afternoon."
Six stops in villages to be obvious tourists, including shopping that involved bartering various Tome-created chakra jewels that did nothing but look pretty, hadn't been enough to shake any of the shinobi following the group. In fact, they'd more than doubled in number, and the mobile house now had fourteen different tracking seals stuck to it in various places. Mostly on the underside where they were impossible to see, but two shinobi had been sneaky and snuck inside to place seals under the mattresses. This did mean that the following shinobi were doing so at a greater distance on average though.
Reaching a port and settling down just outside of the small port village 'to wait for the seal masters' had been easy enough, and the greater distance on the followers needed to not be spotted would hopefully make it easier to slip out when none were watching closely. Ino and Sasuke took to playing in the general area of the mobile house, their 'play area' forcing the watchers further back, but it had still taken three days for there to be a night where the following shinobi weren't keeping a personal eye on things. Clones had removed all the tracking seals within a second of one another, the entire mobile house had been slipped into a storage seal, and the entire team had been summoned back to the Uzumaki compound in approximately half a minute of total time from start to finish.
"Thank the gods that we're done," Sasuke said as he dropped the Anita personality and accent, though only Hoshi released the shapeshift he'd been using to look less like a summon fox. The rest of them weren't wearing clothing that would fit their normal selves.
"You should have changes of clothing in the houses," Naruto pointed out. "Get changed and head home or grab a bed here for the night. It's too late to turn anything in, so we'll handle that in the morning."
Hinata joined the genin by heading into the two houses in the compound, but Naruto had to unseal and double-check things on the mobile house. He'd not taken the time to close it up properly for sealing and didn't trust that it'd keep until morning. A couple dozen clones cleared the entire thing out, removed the decorative panels that had contained various 'foreign language' markings and supposed family symbols, and ensured that everything was packed up and powered down properly.
All of that took a little over an hour, and for now it was just left sitting off to the side in the compound, since it felt likely that there were going to be questions about it. By that point the clones left behind to watch the following group of shinobi had reported that the first couple had finally noticed that the group had vanished. With no sign of any ship having come into the port, and no indication of where they'd gone. The tracks from the mobile house were still there leading to where it had been sitting, but it had vanished without a trace.
Orochimaru wasn't sure why they'd been called to a meeting so early this morning, but they had. He bit back his grumbling about that aspect though, because Pain wasn't one to be frivolous with meetings. No, the open grumbling was reserved for the tardiness of the other participants.
"Sorry about the wait," Kisame said as he appeared, looking a bit ill. "Someone used a clever poison on our meal last night and I had to grab the ring and get to a safer location."
"Unfortunate," Pain said, but Orochimaru couldn't even remember the name of the idiot that Kisame had recruited a mere month ago. Kakuzu had the habit of killing any non-immortal he was partnered with, but in the past couple of years Kisame had gained a reputation for his partners not being able to handle attempts at killing him. "Sasori informed me that Iwagakure's spies finally reported in with critically important information."
"They should have reported this sooner," Sasori grumbled. "But a noble family from a far-off and much warmer land was found by one of the Fire Daimyo's retainers and brought to the capital. There they revealed far more information than Uzushiogakure is likely going to be happy with, including that three individuals with seals on their backs were taken to the far-off land recently. As of the last update, they've spent two days waiting at a small port village in the south of the Land of Fire for pickup. Their trip here was described as taking weeks, with it being at least a week of travel for the seal masters that dropped them off to reach their final destination. I can only assume that destination is the resurgent Uzushiogakure. Other reports indicate that the group appeared overnight at a different port with no sign of a ship having dropped them off though, making it likely that water-walking from a hidden or disguised ship was used to get them onto the shore."
That...was interesting, because it made the claim that the tailed beasts were merely hidden away outside of time more likely. Getting the anchors for such a technique away from the elemental nations where they'd be searched for was an excellent tactical option when you had access to a safe place to stick them. Perhaps the confidence that the tailed beasts couldn't be killed for real wasn't as misplaced as originally believed?
Or perhaps this was a very elaborate ruse to send anyone looking to reclaim the tailed beasts on a fool's errand.
"I'll get copies of everything to any of you that normally care to read the full reports in the coming days," Sasori continued. "But it includes pictures and descriptions of the family, their 'mobile house', copies of a book that appears to be instructions for the house, and all detailed notes of what they revealed. I'll need more time to make copies of the two recordings made of them speaking, but the accent is difficult to place. Following a ship at sea is also not likely to happen on such short notice, but one of the claims made is that a trip to deliver supplies is made three times a year."
Oh, now that was either horrible information security due to stupidly trusting nobles to keep their mouths shut or an excellent way to get a bunch of people to waste large amounts of resources looking for a ghost ship. The worst part was that they could only prove the former, and then only by finding the ship. Without that it could be a ruse or a ship that was better at hiding than they were at searching for it...and with likely-Uzumaki seal masters involved you could reliably bet on the potential ship being very good at hiding.
