- Location
- Scotland
That actually fits with the Doctor quite well since he's known to be quite the troll when the mood strikes him and is a tricky devil even when he's being serious.
Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
*nods* in RL I bet there are loads of people who have to pause before they toast the British Throne, since foir the first time in decades it's "God save the King" rather than 'the Queen".
Or like when a friend gets a new phone number after having the same one for years. It'll be a while until you think of the new version rather than the old.
You know, I can't help but wonder now if Uzuishogakure and the Uzumaki clan themselves are actually direct descendants of Belka. One's with a penchant of humiliation but still with their indication of increasing violence against idiots.
Makes me wonder if and when Naruto finally goes to the Uzu ruins he might find a few more devices hidden in a cache somewhere ridicules, like a random outhouse that somehow survived destruction.
Then again I doubt the author would be going that route any time soon.
Still think that the Uzumaki clan probably hid some secrets in a completely random location that's going to make everyone do a doubletake when it comes out.
Makes me wonder if and when Naruto finally goes to the Uzu ruins he might find a few more devices hidden in a cache somewhere ridicules, like a random outhouse that somehow survived destruction.
Then again I doubt the author would be going that route any time soon.
Still think that the Uzumaki clan probably hid some secrets in a completely random location that's going to make everyone do a doubletake when it comes out.
sainen
Elder Lich
Given the prologue? extremely unlikely, if not outright impossible.
no human on the planet had Mage Potential when the Belkan Device crashed into the world, which rules out it there being a belkan colony there.
the Uzumaki have somewhat a known lineage, traceable back to the Ōtsutsuki, so we know where their mage potential comes from.
they worked with the one tails on seals, like the creation of bloodlines, and the One-tail has instinctive Sealing knowledge.
hidden secrets still to find because their were that unpredictable? highly likely.
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Chapter 46 - Promotions, Finals, Promotions
"You brought promotion paperwork with you?" Naruto asked, staring at the packet he'd just been handed. Hinata had a smaller one.
"Yes," Shisui said. "That you're surprised just means that your in-Konoha spy network is properly ignoring things it should be ignoring, in my opinion, but it was decided that you and Hinata would be promoted regardless of what happens with your genin."
"Doubly so after I weighed in on the value of your maps," Jiraiya added. He'd made a special trip back to Konoha to play second guard for Shisui. "Why didn't you tell anyone that you'd been mapping every single settlement you visited, or just happened to pass near in some cases?"
Naruto gave him a look. "Why wouldn't I be? The academy handbooks say that all shinobi should be keeping maps of areas they pass through for reference purposes, if only to be able to spot significant changes from year to year."
"That is something added after the last war," Shisui agreed. "The real surprise is the quality of your maps. You do realize that the ones you provided with the mobile house are at least three times better than those previously on file in the village?"
"He honestly doesn't see his maps as exceptional," Hinata noted as she opened and flipped through her packet. "We skipped special jounin and went straight to jounin?"
"You skipped special jounin," Jiraiya corrected. "Naruto skipped straight to elite jounin."
"And he's the third person in Konoha history to be declared an honorary member of Anbu," Shisui added. "In addition to being at the top of the lists for becoming the sixth Hokage, next jounin commander, or next Anbu commander for his paperwork skills alone."
"I'd be more useful focusing on infiltration," Naruto pointed out.
"That's almost certain to remain your focus for a number of years yet, and you're well aware that being on the lists doesn't mean you have to take the jobs."
Naruto found it interesting that he was being better-treated by the other guards in the Kage Box than Jiraiya was. Actually, all three Kages and the other guards were treating him well, though likely for widely different reasons.
"I hear that the betting indicates that the only reason Konoha won't be the only one left with genin after the first set of matches is because there's a Kiri vs Kumo match included," Mei commented.
"That is indeed the case," the Raikage agreed. "It was expected on our end though, as our most promising candidates didn't end up participating for unavoidable reasons."
"We understand that the survivors got field promotions," Shisui added.
"...yes, though I'm not sure how you learned that."
"Kakuzu was hunting one of our jounin for a bounty placed by Iwa at the time of the encounter, who identified the two surviving genin from a previous message-delivery run. They were then noted to be chunin on wall duty here in Kumo during the last couple of weeks before the exams began."
The Raikage seemed to be appeased by that, though Naruto suspected this was partially a cover for Konoha's intelligence department having copies of all the new paperwork since the visit for sparring.
Some more back and forth followed before Yugito did standard introductions of the Kage and the genin. She even drew attention to Kumo's 'new allies' having a particularly strong showing during this exam in the process. Then Mio from Kumo and Yuko from Kiri stayed as the rest of the genin headed up to their observation area. Yuko created a sword out of ice as Mio drew a katana and the battle was on, the wind in the ice counteracting the lightning Mio was flowing into her sword.
Over the course of twenty minutes the two cycled through kenjutsu, some genjutsu, and occasional direct elemental attacks. Unfortunately for Yuko, coating the ground in ice hadn't slowed Mio down at all, nor had it stopped the Kumo kunoichi from preparing a trap using subtle earth manipulation. Yuko lost her footing at a key point and found a katana at her throat, Yugito declaring Mio the winner a moment later.
Sakura was up next, against L from Kumo. He had a supervibrato sword, but kept it sheathed to start with, instead going for lightning release techniques. She countered with wind, then added in a small fireball to detonate the wind wall she'd created. That was a distraction to hide that she'd made a paperwork clone to take her place before dropping into the earth herself. L grabbed his sword and channeled lightning into it after that, darting in as the flames died off in an attempt to catch her by surprise. The clone produced a tanto and coated it in wind to block the lightning, but was obviously not ready for a kenjutsu match.
L wasn't ready for another wind wall to be followed by the ground suddenly erupting into a large stone wolf's head, mouth snapping shut around him and the clone. The real Sakura appeared from the ground a moment later, tanto out as though the clone had been her actual self. A moment later the rock receded, showing an unconscious L who had failed to cut through the wind and rock before being struck hard in the back of the head.
Kiba against Hashige from Kiri followed, the kunoichi giving him and Akamaru an odd look. Then again, nobody had actually seen Kiba fighting alongside Akamaru in the exams yet due to his chef dance that had now been discarded. The four legs technique and the beast human clone followed, but Hashige was confident in her defense as the fang passing fang started up. She even commented on how she'd ensured that she knew how to handle all the Inuzuka clan's normal genin and chunin level collaboration techniques.
At first it seemed like Hashige had a chance, using water techniques that slowed Kiba and Akamaru down. But she wasn't prepared for Kiba to start lobbing fireballs at her in the middle of the fang passing fang technique and took one to the face, severely burning her eyes. Hinata ended up offering to heal her up after Yugito called the match in Kiba's favor.
"This is either going to be brutally short or a long one," Naruto commented as Shikamaru and Kei from Kumo took the field.
"Wouldn't expect any less of a match involving a Nara," Mei agreed. "My understanding is that Kei is skilled with lightning?"
"He is," the Raikage agreed. "But he's been favorably compared to the Nara as well, often thinking several moves ahead of opponents."
The battle started with Kei on the edge of the shadows of the arena walls and some obvious probing attacks by Shikamaru. Kei seemed to know to not get too close to a Nara and their ability to manipulate shadows and instead focused on longer-range options. None of them were hitting home, nor were Shikamaru's kunai hitting their marks. Except that Naruto could easily spot that the kunai, all of which had 'loose' bits of wrapping on their handles increasing their shadows, were forming a pattern. But Kei's kunai, all with wire wrappings on their handles, were forming their own pattern.
Shikamaru seemed to be well aware of the latter, at least by Naruto's estimation.
Unlike Kei's pattern, Shikamaru's was being added to underground, small tunnels being formed with earth manipulation around his feet. Being able to see the above-ground and below-ground portions at the same time made the entire thing far more obvious, and Naruto was able to start predicting where kunai were going to strike based on the overall pattern. He wasn't disappointed, and it was obvious that Shikamaru had trained his accuracy to a far greater degree than his 'misses' would otherwise indicate.
Kei was most on-guard as Shikamaru circled into the shadow of the arena walls, but no obvious move was made to use that to advantage. Instead, he continued to circle out of it without giving any indication that he'd cared about the potential advantage for a Nara operating with existing shadows. Likely unnoticed by most, the manipulation of the ground there had left several open holes into the small network of tunnels, hidden by the shadows.
Eventually Kei swung back around to being the one in the shadows of the arena wall, at the same time both genin seemed to have completed their kunai patterns. Kei quickly performed a series of hand seals, launching a lightning wave that started connecting his various kunai...and caused the earth to crumble around them, breaking the pattern they'd formed as they fell into some of Shikamaru's tunnels. This caused the attack to fizzle out before it reached Shikamaru, who lashed out with a line of shadows bouncing between his various kunai on the surface. Kei quickly targeted the kunai in the middle of the chains, stopping them from providing shadows for the attack to continue through...
And then he was suddenly stationary, and Shikamaru was grinning, the line of shadows through the tunnels and connecting to Kei's shadow from behind having struck true. "Gotcha." Having his opponent grab a kunai from a pouch, Shikamaru's only containing a wooden prop, and both of them holding theirs up to their necks was enough to have Yugito call the match in Shikamaru's favor.
"I think I missed three quarters of that match due to it being played in their heads," Mei commented with a frown.
"Half of the important bits being underground couldn't have helped," Jiraiya commented.
"...he made tunnels for his shadow to reach the larger shadow of the arena wall?"
"That's my guess. I'm pretty good with earth techniques and think that there's now a network of small tunnels around the perimeter of the arena."
"Clever," the Raikage noted with an approving nod. "Ones barely held together in spots by earth chakra, which the lightning release across the prepared kunai overwhelmed. But Kei's loss does prove the strength of Konoha's genin so far."
"Only if they don't let success go to their heads," Shisui noted. "Though they're definitely looking good currently."
A small break for another round of betting was held, with Kiba's jerky being brought out by the Raikage. All three Kage and the guards obviously liked it...except for Naruto, who was allowing the others to have their fill instead. But eventually the next match came up, Mio against Tenten. As the match started they both drew swords, Mio's katana against what had been Orochimaru's katana. Lightning channeled down one, wind down the other.
...Tenten's wind had been significantly stronger, through a blade better designed for channeling chakra, and sliced clean through Mio's katana. To her credit, Mio didn't panic, but simply immediately backed off and produced another katana from a scroll, discarding the damaged one to the side. Tenten's reaction had been to catch the cut-off section of the sword and give it a quick examination.
"You need a better source of swords," she finally said, throwing the piece to the side. "Channeling lightning down that one might've de-tempered it entirely."
"That's an unfortunate problem with fire and lightning channeling," Mio admitted. "But I've not proven myself worthy of being gifted a supervibrato sword and can't yet afford one, so must make due with a supply of fresh, cheaper blades produced by my family."
Tenten nodded, and when the two blades met the fresh katana blocked instead of being cut through immediately. With the more solid blade Mio's skill was more on display, but the subtle earth manipulations that had been used against Yuko were being countered by Tenten's own manipulations. Unlike Yuko, Tenten had non-ice options available as well, and switched to flowing magnet release down her katana to lock up the two blades as she created a stone fist to punch Mio from below. Mio successfully dodged the fist, but was now dangerously out of form and Tenten took advantage, overpowering her opponent and pinning the girl.
"I think I should dig out a couple more swords," B noted as Yugito called the match.
"So that Mio doesn't embarrass us further with losing swords to lightning channeling?" C asked.
"Both of them could be said to deserve one, as Tenten very obviously avoided using what could be called a handicap against Mio after learning of it, pulling the power of her own chakra back. That's honorable, and I've confirmed that I need longer swords."
"And A approved of Konoha having access to the swords if you made the decision, so it won't be a problem."
"Yeah."
There had been some quick checking of the arena for any stray bits of sword before Ino and Sakura came out. The first pair of genin from the same village, and Naruto wasn't sure what they'd planned for showing off. Some of it was almost immediately obvious, long-range varying-element techniques with short-range defensive counters of the appropriate opposing element. Each of the two used at least two techniques of each element in attacking and defending contexts, each also deploying a clone under the cover of a defended-against technique, before Ino then started on faking combined-element techniques by using one element and then immediately applying another.
Sakura's counter was strength-based techniques, blocking an earth-formed fire-heated 'lava' ball by punching the ground to bring up a slab of dirt to intercept it and then kicking the lifted slab to launch it at Ino. This also intercepted and shattered an incoming spray of water-formed wind-cooled ice senbon, but Ino jumped over the slab while throwing a ball of dirt wrapped around some explosive tags back Sakura's way. That exploded when an earth wall was thrown up to intercept it, but Sakura had already dropped underground before the spalling would've hit her.
Ino landed and immediately started moving, proving to be a good thing when hands tried to grab her from underground. In retaliation, she flowed lightning around her fist, looking like she was tracking Sakura's movements. A solid punch to the ground with the chakra-covered fist had Sakura coming up, shaking a little from the lightning, and Ino was suddenly holding two chef's knives that she quickly crossed at Sakura's neck. But Sakura just smirked, the ground shifting into the wolf head as she vanished in a puff of smoke...and before the strike landed Ino vanished in her own puff of smoke.
There was obvious confusion from the audience as to what had just happened, but a moment later Sakura burst from the ground as though struck. Ino followed with two tantos out, pinning Sakura against the wall with the blades crossed at her neck.
"I thought I had you," Sakura grumbled after Ino was declared the victor.
"You had some good tricks," Ino conceded. "But you've spent too much time in the hospital and not enough time in the field."
"I know."
Kiba and Sasuke were next, and Naruto was fairly certain that they'd both planned something and that Kiba expected to lose. Kiba's opening moves were similar to the previous match, but what set this one apart was Sasuke forming a clone, then performing the four legs technique and copying the fang passing fang with his clone. Kiba and Akamaru had overpowered the copy though, showing that they were better skilled with the technique, and then switched to combining with one another into a large double-headed wolf.
Sasuke did not appear to be expecting that, but rolled with it anyway. Earth and water walls, an attempt at a lightning technique, a large fireball, and finally wind to form a bit of a dirt vortex were used and all failed to significantly slow his opponent. Body-flickering behind the combined pair and throwing a kunai with an explosive note attached at their back was another matter. They dodged it by separating, allowing the kunai to pass between them before it exploded. Kiba managed an earth wall to protect Akamaru from a follow-up water whip launched by Sasuke, but had missed Sasuke making a second clone that came up from behind with a lightning-enhanced strike to the back of Kiba's neck for the win.
Sasuke healed up the damage personally and the two were ribbing each other as they left the field, Karin and Shikamaru coming down for their match. To the surprise of everyone, the first thing they did was collaborate to build a giant shogi board and pieces out of stone in the middle of the arena. They then started playing by using different techniques to move the pieces, seemingly having given themselves only a few seconds to decide on a move each time. It made for a very interesting match, especially when it became obvious that genjutsu was involved in an attempt to make it seem like the board was in different states than it actually was.
Notably, Shikamaru seemed to be ignoring the deceptions against him, and in fact had his eyes closed more often than open, implying that he was keeping track of the board in his head and not by the actual appearance of the board. But the deceptions he used did seem to affect Karin's decision making, at least slowing her down. Most notable in the tactics at play though was probably Shikamaru placing a genjutsu of a piece's current appearance down, and then changing the surface with earth manipulation to change it to a different piece. When Karin finally noticed the genjutsu she dispelled it, to reveal a piece that wasn't what had been there. The corresponding genjutsu and manipulation of the other piece had her scowling, obviously not quite having noticed what was going on.
Unfortunately, Shikamaru ran into a different problem. His reserves just weren't large enough for this, which meant that despite seeming to do far better at the shogi side of things than Karin he was noticeably slowing down in moving pieces. This was giving her far more time to think about her moves while he was focused on dredging up more chakra, and they started to stalemate a bit more...up until Shikamaru admitted defeat due to being out of chakra to continue moving pieces.
It had still been an incredible match to watch, and there was a disappointed groan from the audience at the shogi match itself going unfinished.
"You are far better a shogi than you led me to believe," Shikamaru grumbled as he forced himself up the stairs to the observation area.
"I read the rules two days ago and played against my own clone for a day with another couple of clones watching for mistakes," Karin retorted. "Ninety percent of my moves were random flailing with barely any understanding of larger tactics."
"...so either you're a savant or just incredibly lucky?"
"Being of Uzumaki descent, I'd guess the latter."
"That, sadly, doesn't actually surprise me."
"Your little 'fake me out with the wrong appearance on the pieces' trick was annoying though."
"The genjutsu was the right appearance, I'd swapped out the surfaces after placing it."
"...that's...so you essentially tricked me into swapping the pieces?"
"Yep."
She was obviously quite annoyed at that, but he didn't care. He'd take a nap in the stairwell if not for knowing that the chairs in the observation room were more comfortable and that they had good snacks available.
Watching Ino and Tenten take the field was interesting. They had very different strengths and weaknesses and Naruto wasn't even sure which one of them he wanted to win. He was fairly certain that both had their promotions in the bag already anyway.
Tenten opened up with a spray of spell-kunai that exploded when hitting the ground around Ino, throwing up quite a dust cloud. Ino used that as cover for making a single clone that moved to the wall as it went invisible, but Naruto could still track it as it moved around the outer perimeter of the arena. The real Ino then used a water technique to knock the dust cloud down and create a field of mud that she then used to launch mud balls at Tenten. Those were trivially dodged, and non-faked lava and ice balls sent back. Ino then produced a tanto and moved in for closer-range, Tenten going for a pair of them instead. They clashed in the middle of the arena, Ino proving to be quite good at dodging and blocking Tenten's strikes, but not so good at getting strikes of her own in.
...but it seemed that was intentional, as she used being 'driven back' to lure Tenten towards the hidden clone. Hinata was probably the only other one that realized that though, and Tenten seemed to have no clue that she was falling into a trap. When they were close enough, Ino suddenly pushed harder and went for a high-power strike at Tenten's head, which was blocked with crossed blades. Crucially, this also pinned Tenten down...for the couple of moments the clone needed for a mind-body switch to hit her.
It was an incredibly straightforward and somewhat obvious way to overcome one of the limitations of the mind-body switch.
"I give up," Tenten's body said, taking most by surprise.
"Only because I'm in control of her," Ino admitted with a grin.
The string of swears Tenten let out when the control was released was, admittedly, quite amusing, but she didn't argue the loss. Ino did get dropped into a headlock in the stairwell though, Karin and Sasuke dodging but otherwise ignoring the scuffle as they came down.
A couple minutes later the two were faced off against each other, the match began, and Sasuke very obviously activated his sharingan. Naruto wasn't all that used to seeing him do so, as he'd taken Itachi's attitude of learning things without it and it really didn't come up often in infiltration missions.
Using a very recognizable and rare ability was generally frowned upon when you didn't want to be recognized.
It was incredibly likely that Sasuke had just cast a genjutsu, because Karin suddenly didn't seem to be able to see him. He grinned and moved in, only for her to close her eyes. As soon as he was in range she lashed out with a kick, catching him in the chest and launching him back. Naruto suspected that the genjutsu wasn't affecting her mind's eye sensing ability at all, and it wouldn't matter what Sasuke did with his chakra signature when there were only two people physically in the arena at all.
Longer-range attacks were attempted, with chakra as well as kunai and shuriken, and she dodged or blocked them all. In the case of tricks like wire between kunai, even when in a larger spread, she either produced her own kunai to cut the wire or blocked with a chakra chain that the wire then caught on before things could reach her. What she didn't do was try to attack him at range, which Naruto believed was because she could only do so much without breaking the sensory technique.
After ten minutes of this it looked to Naruto like the genjutsu had been broken or worn off, it was honestly hard to tell which. Karin seemed to notice as well, and suddenly created a couple dozen paperwork clones, all of them with their eyes still closed. But with that many, and them spreading out, it was now going to be close to impossible for Sasuke to catch all of them with a genjutsu at the same time and communication between them would allow them to coordinate some attacking while others maintained the sensory technique.
This was demonstrated when suddenly six of the clones started launching various elemental techniques at Sasuke. He did a good job of dodging, his sharingan likely helping him keep track of everything above the ground. What he definitely wasn't keeping track of were the chains from six other clones spreading under the ground. The dodging and blocking of elemental techniques was set up specifically to get him into position for the chains, and after a minute he landed just as chains burst from the ground and grabbed him. A couple even wrapped around his head to cover his eyes.
"I do believe that I win," Karin said, the real her, as she moved over to him. "Nice try though."
"I have to admit that I'm impressed," Shisui said as the betting opened for the final match, running scenarios through his head. He wasn't coming up with much that made sense though. "I'm fairly certain that I know exactly what he did, but have no clue how she overcame it so well."
"Uzumaki sensor ability," Naruto answered. "Can't tell you exactly how it works, but I'd bet the genjutsu couldn't hide him from it. As soon as she used it she probably confirmed that she was under a genjutsu, but I don't know if that would've helped her break it."
"Interesting. Do you know this from personal experience?"
"She inherited that one, not me."
Shisui both felt that was the truth and that something important wasn't being said. He just didn't know what that something was, and this wasn't the place to bring it up either way, so he nodded. "Good to know. Both of them put on a good show."
"Definitely," A said. "I wasn't sure about her after the shogi match, but this combined with her performance in the first two stages shows that she doesn't just have a gimmick."
Short of one of the two kunoichi doing something incredibly wrong in the final bout, it was looking like all seven Konoha genin were set to become chunin. Which largely validated the decision to send them out. The question was going to be exactly how to handle a few details. Team Yugao was a temporary team to begin with, so would be breaking up again, but Team Tekuno could switch to being led by Shikamaru for a bit or swap Shikamaru out for another genin and Team Yurei...
There were honestly a lot of suggestions for them, some that completely missed their actual strengths because those making the suggestions weren't infiltration-cleared, but Shisui was honestly inclined to keep the current group together in a general sense unless they chose to take different paths.
Naruto had snorted at the end of the match between Ino and Karin. It lasted a mere thirty seconds, ending with Ino slumping and admitting that she had no hope of defeating Karin with her current skill set, the limitations of fighting in an open arena, and their relative chakra levels.
The Raikage had silenced most of the complaints from the audience by pointing out that sometimes a battle can't be won in the current circumstances, and that recognizing when that has happened is a skill that many shinobi of any rank never develop. But then he asked first Ino, and then Karin, to launch the most powerful attack they felt they had into the air. Ino managed a very decent fireball that she'd been taught by Sasuke, pumping far more chakra into it than normal and creating a sizable explosion in the air high over the village.
Karin's response to that was to supercharge a water ball, turning it into a sphere that was a significant percentage of the arena's available volume, and fire it into the air. She'd filled it with enough chakra to cause it to explode into a torrential downpour when it reached high enough.
"...I'm hoping that display is enough to show that the young Yamanaka was right to back down," the Raikage said a couple of minutes later, after the water stopped falling.
"We've collected the various reports on the contestants," the Raikage said after a break for both cleaning up some of the water and ensuring that all the opinions were in order. "And find ourselves in agreement with their recommendations. We shall handle the announcements by village."
Mei stepped forward as the Raikage stepped back. "Yuko, despite losing your match you've still proven yourself to be worthy of promotion. Hashige, you have not earned your promotion as you've shown yourself to be detrimentally overconfident in your skills."
The two Kiri kunoichi bowed, Hashige looking annoyed, as Mei stepped back. The Raikage then stepped forward again. "L, you have not earned your promotion as you've shown your skills to not be wide enough throughout the exam. While being able to rely on teammates is admirable, chunin should be able to handle some basics that you seem to lack. Kei, your loss against a Nara is no slight on your own skills, and against any other opponent your strategy would likely have allowed you to at least get a strike in. You have earned your promotion. And Mio, you have done well with the resources available to you, proven yourself worthy of promotion."
One again, the Raikage stepped back, and Shisui stepped forward. "And that leaves the Konoha group. All seven of you showed a variety of skills and suitable judgment throughout the exams. I could go through each of you and be highly repetitive, but I think it's easier to just state that all of you have earned your promotions."
The seven Konoha shinobi bowed, but as Shisui stepped back the Raikage simply looked up. B landed on the Kage box a moment later, obviously expected, though for many in the audience his further-transformed appearance wasn't. He didn't seem to care at this point, looking down at the group. "Mio, you have shown great skill with a sword, and in honor of your promotion I've decided that you deserve a quality blade." A sword in a scabbard was pulled from his back and tossed down to the kunoichi, and she seemed to be in a state of awe as she caught it. But before she could say anything B turned slightly. "Tenten of Konoha, you've also shown skill with a sword, as well as knowledge and honor after examining Mio's first blade in your match. I've heard that you collect weapons, and feel that you could use another one for your collection." A second sword in a scabbard was pulled from his back and tossed to Tenten, who seemed more excited about it than Mio.
B then bowed to the group before jumping away, and the Raikage stepped forward again. "With that, I officially declare this round of exams completed. Participants can expect summaries of their results in the next day or two, as we haven't gotten things up to Konoha's speed in the paperwork side of things."
"Yes," Shisui said. "That you're surprised just means that your in-Konoha spy network is properly ignoring things it should be ignoring, in my opinion, but it was decided that you and Hinata would be promoted regardless of what happens with your genin."
"Doubly so after I weighed in on the value of your maps," Jiraiya added. He'd made a special trip back to Konoha to play second guard for Shisui. "Why didn't you tell anyone that you'd been mapping every single settlement you visited, or just happened to pass near in some cases?"
Naruto gave him a look. "Why wouldn't I be? The academy handbooks say that all shinobi should be keeping maps of areas they pass through for reference purposes, if only to be able to spot significant changes from year to year."
"That is something added after the last war," Shisui agreed. "The real surprise is the quality of your maps. You do realize that the ones you provided with the mobile house are at least three times better than those previously on file in the village?"
"He honestly doesn't see his maps as exceptional," Hinata noted as she opened and flipped through her packet. "We skipped special jounin and went straight to jounin?"
"You skipped special jounin," Jiraiya corrected. "Naruto skipped straight to elite jounin."
"And he's the third person in Konoha history to be declared an honorary member of Anbu," Shisui added. "In addition to being at the top of the lists for becoming the sixth Hokage, next jounin commander, or next Anbu commander for his paperwork skills alone."
"I'd be more useful focusing on infiltration," Naruto pointed out.
"That's almost certain to remain your focus for a number of years yet, and you're well aware that being on the lists doesn't mean you have to take the jobs."
Naruto found it interesting that he was being better-treated by the other guards in the Kage Box than Jiraiya was. Actually, all three Kages and the other guards were treating him well, though likely for widely different reasons.
"I hear that the betting indicates that the only reason Konoha won't be the only one left with genin after the first set of matches is because there's a Kiri vs Kumo match included," Mei commented.
"That is indeed the case," the Raikage agreed. "It was expected on our end though, as our most promising candidates didn't end up participating for unavoidable reasons."
"We understand that the survivors got field promotions," Shisui added.
"...yes, though I'm not sure how you learned that."
"Kakuzu was hunting one of our jounin for a bounty placed by Iwa at the time of the encounter, who identified the two surviving genin from a previous message-delivery run. They were then noted to be chunin on wall duty here in Kumo during the last couple of weeks before the exams began."
The Raikage seemed to be appeased by that, though Naruto suspected this was partially a cover for Konoha's intelligence department having copies of all the new paperwork since the visit for sparring.
Some more back and forth followed before Yugito did standard introductions of the Kage and the genin. She even drew attention to Kumo's 'new allies' having a particularly strong showing during this exam in the process. Then Mio from Kumo and Yuko from Kiri stayed as the rest of the genin headed up to their observation area. Yuko created a sword out of ice as Mio drew a katana and the battle was on, the wind in the ice counteracting the lightning Mio was flowing into her sword.
Over the course of twenty minutes the two cycled through kenjutsu, some genjutsu, and occasional direct elemental attacks. Unfortunately for Yuko, coating the ground in ice hadn't slowed Mio down at all, nor had it stopped the Kumo kunoichi from preparing a trap using subtle earth manipulation. Yuko lost her footing at a key point and found a katana at her throat, Yugito declaring Mio the winner a moment later.
Sakura was up next, against L from Kumo. He had a supervibrato sword, but kept it sheathed to start with, instead going for lightning release techniques. She countered with wind, then added in a small fireball to detonate the wind wall she'd created. That was a distraction to hide that she'd made a paperwork clone to take her place before dropping into the earth herself. L grabbed his sword and channeled lightning into it after that, darting in as the flames died off in an attempt to catch her by surprise. The clone produced a tanto and coated it in wind to block the lightning, but was obviously not ready for a kenjutsu match.
L wasn't ready for another wind wall to be followed by the ground suddenly erupting into a large stone wolf's head, mouth snapping shut around him and the clone. The real Sakura appeared from the ground a moment later, tanto out as though the clone had been her actual self. A moment later the rock receded, showing an unconscious L who had failed to cut through the wind and rock before being struck hard in the back of the head.
Kiba against Hashige from Kiri followed, the kunoichi giving him and Akamaru an odd look. Then again, nobody had actually seen Kiba fighting alongside Akamaru in the exams yet due to his chef dance that had now been discarded. The four legs technique and the beast human clone followed, but Hashige was confident in her defense as the fang passing fang started up. She even commented on how she'd ensured that she knew how to handle all the Inuzuka clan's normal genin and chunin level collaboration techniques.
At first it seemed like Hashige had a chance, using water techniques that slowed Kiba and Akamaru down. But she wasn't prepared for Kiba to start lobbing fireballs at her in the middle of the fang passing fang technique and took one to the face, severely burning her eyes. Hinata ended up offering to heal her up after Yugito called the match in Kiba's favor.
"This is either going to be brutally short or a long one," Naruto commented as Shikamaru and Kei from Kumo took the field.
"Wouldn't expect any less of a match involving a Nara," Mei agreed. "My understanding is that Kei is skilled with lightning?"
"He is," the Raikage agreed. "But he's been favorably compared to the Nara as well, often thinking several moves ahead of opponents."
The battle started with Kei on the edge of the shadows of the arena walls and some obvious probing attacks by Shikamaru. Kei seemed to know to not get too close to a Nara and their ability to manipulate shadows and instead focused on longer-range options. None of them were hitting home, nor were Shikamaru's kunai hitting their marks. Except that Naruto could easily spot that the kunai, all of which had 'loose' bits of wrapping on their handles increasing their shadows, were forming a pattern. But Kei's kunai, all with wire wrappings on their handles, were forming their own pattern.
Shikamaru seemed to be well aware of the latter, at least by Naruto's estimation.
Unlike Kei's pattern, Shikamaru's was being added to underground, small tunnels being formed with earth manipulation around his feet. Being able to see the above-ground and below-ground portions at the same time made the entire thing far more obvious, and Naruto was able to start predicting where kunai were going to strike based on the overall pattern. He wasn't disappointed, and it was obvious that Shikamaru had trained his accuracy to a far greater degree than his 'misses' would otherwise indicate.
Kei was most on-guard as Shikamaru circled into the shadow of the arena walls, but no obvious move was made to use that to advantage. Instead, he continued to circle out of it without giving any indication that he'd cared about the potential advantage for a Nara operating with existing shadows. Likely unnoticed by most, the manipulation of the ground there had left several open holes into the small network of tunnels, hidden by the shadows.
Eventually Kei swung back around to being the one in the shadows of the arena wall, at the same time both genin seemed to have completed their kunai patterns. Kei quickly performed a series of hand seals, launching a lightning wave that started connecting his various kunai...and caused the earth to crumble around them, breaking the pattern they'd formed as they fell into some of Shikamaru's tunnels. This caused the attack to fizzle out before it reached Shikamaru, who lashed out with a line of shadows bouncing between his various kunai on the surface. Kei quickly targeted the kunai in the middle of the chains, stopping them from providing shadows for the attack to continue through...
And then he was suddenly stationary, and Shikamaru was grinning, the line of shadows through the tunnels and connecting to Kei's shadow from behind having struck true. "Gotcha." Having his opponent grab a kunai from a pouch, Shikamaru's only containing a wooden prop, and both of them holding theirs up to their necks was enough to have Yugito call the match in Shikamaru's favor.
"I think I missed three quarters of that match due to it being played in their heads," Mei commented with a frown.
"Half of the important bits being underground couldn't have helped," Jiraiya commented.
"...he made tunnels for his shadow to reach the larger shadow of the arena wall?"
"That's my guess. I'm pretty good with earth techniques and think that there's now a network of small tunnels around the perimeter of the arena."
"Clever," the Raikage noted with an approving nod. "Ones barely held together in spots by earth chakra, which the lightning release across the prepared kunai overwhelmed. But Kei's loss does prove the strength of Konoha's genin so far."
"Only if they don't let success go to their heads," Shisui noted. "Though they're definitely looking good currently."
A small break for another round of betting was held, with Kiba's jerky being brought out by the Raikage. All three Kage and the guards obviously liked it...except for Naruto, who was allowing the others to have their fill instead. But eventually the next match came up, Mio against Tenten. As the match started they both drew swords, Mio's katana against what had been Orochimaru's katana. Lightning channeled down one, wind down the other.
...Tenten's wind had been significantly stronger, through a blade better designed for channeling chakra, and sliced clean through Mio's katana. To her credit, Mio didn't panic, but simply immediately backed off and produced another katana from a scroll, discarding the damaged one to the side. Tenten's reaction had been to catch the cut-off section of the sword and give it a quick examination.
"You need a better source of swords," she finally said, throwing the piece to the side. "Channeling lightning down that one might've de-tempered it entirely."
"That's an unfortunate problem with fire and lightning channeling," Mio admitted. "But I've not proven myself worthy of being gifted a supervibrato sword and can't yet afford one, so must make due with a supply of fresh, cheaper blades produced by my family."
Tenten nodded, and when the two blades met the fresh katana blocked instead of being cut through immediately. With the more solid blade Mio's skill was more on display, but the subtle earth manipulations that had been used against Yuko were being countered by Tenten's own manipulations. Unlike Yuko, Tenten had non-ice options available as well, and switched to flowing magnet release down her katana to lock up the two blades as she created a stone fist to punch Mio from below. Mio successfully dodged the fist, but was now dangerously out of form and Tenten took advantage, overpowering her opponent and pinning the girl.
"I think I should dig out a couple more swords," B noted as Yugito called the match.
"So that Mio doesn't embarrass us further with losing swords to lightning channeling?" C asked.
"Both of them could be said to deserve one, as Tenten very obviously avoided using what could be called a handicap against Mio after learning of it, pulling the power of her own chakra back. That's honorable, and I've confirmed that I need longer swords."
"And A approved of Konoha having access to the swords if you made the decision, so it won't be a problem."
"Yeah."
There had been some quick checking of the arena for any stray bits of sword before Ino and Sakura came out. The first pair of genin from the same village, and Naruto wasn't sure what they'd planned for showing off. Some of it was almost immediately obvious, long-range varying-element techniques with short-range defensive counters of the appropriate opposing element. Each of the two used at least two techniques of each element in attacking and defending contexts, each also deploying a clone under the cover of a defended-against technique, before Ino then started on faking combined-element techniques by using one element and then immediately applying another.
Sakura's counter was strength-based techniques, blocking an earth-formed fire-heated 'lava' ball by punching the ground to bring up a slab of dirt to intercept it and then kicking the lifted slab to launch it at Ino. This also intercepted and shattered an incoming spray of water-formed wind-cooled ice senbon, but Ino jumped over the slab while throwing a ball of dirt wrapped around some explosive tags back Sakura's way. That exploded when an earth wall was thrown up to intercept it, but Sakura had already dropped underground before the spalling would've hit her.
Ino landed and immediately started moving, proving to be a good thing when hands tried to grab her from underground. In retaliation, she flowed lightning around her fist, looking like she was tracking Sakura's movements. A solid punch to the ground with the chakra-covered fist had Sakura coming up, shaking a little from the lightning, and Ino was suddenly holding two chef's knives that she quickly crossed at Sakura's neck. But Sakura just smirked, the ground shifting into the wolf head as she vanished in a puff of smoke...and before the strike landed Ino vanished in her own puff of smoke.
There was obvious confusion from the audience as to what had just happened, but a moment later Sakura burst from the ground as though struck. Ino followed with two tantos out, pinning Sakura against the wall with the blades crossed at her neck.
"I thought I had you," Sakura grumbled after Ino was declared the victor.
"You had some good tricks," Ino conceded. "But you've spent too much time in the hospital and not enough time in the field."
"I know."
Kiba and Sasuke were next, and Naruto was fairly certain that they'd both planned something and that Kiba expected to lose. Kiba's opening moves were similar to the previous match, but what set this one apart was Sasuke forming a clone, then performing the four legs technique and copying the fang passing fang with his clone. Kiba and Akamaru had overpowered the copy though, showing that they were better skilled with the technique, and then switched to combining with one another into a large double-headed wolf.
Sasuke did not appear to be expecting that, but rolled with it anyway. Earth and water walls, an attempt at a lightning technique, a large fireball, and finally wind to form a bit of a dirt vortex were used and all failed to significantly slow his opponent. Body-flickering behind the combined pair and throwing a kunai with an explosive note attached at their back was another matter. They dodged it by separating, allowing the kunai to pass between them before it exploded. Kiba managed an earth wall to protect Akamaru from a follow-up water whip launched by Sasuke, but had missed Sasuke making a second clone that came up from behind with a lightning-enhanced strike to the back of Kiba's neck for the win.
Sasuke healed up the damage personally and the two were ribbing each other as they left the field, Karin and Shikamaru coming down for their match. To the surprise of everyone, the first thing they did was collaborate to build a giant shogi board and pieces out of stone in the middle of the arena. They then started playing by using different techniques to move the pieces, seemingly having given themselves only a few seconds to decide on a move each time. It made for a very interesting match, especially when it became obvious that genjutsu was involved in an attempt to make it seem like the board was in different states than it actually was.
Notably, Shikamaru seemed to be ignoring the deceptions against him, and in fact had his eyes closed more often than open, implying that he was keeping track of the board in his head and not by the actual appearance of the board. But the deceptions he used did seem to affect Karin's decision making, at least slowing her down. Most notable in the tactics at play though was probably Shikamaru placing a genjutsu of a piece's current appearance down, and then changing the surface with earth manipulation to change it to a different piece. When Karin finally noticed the genjutsu she dispelled it, to reveal a piece that wasn't what had been there. The corresponding genjutsu and manipulation of the other piece had her scowling, obviously not quite having noticed what was going on.
Unfortunately, Shikamaru ran into a different problem. His reserves just weren't large enough for this, which meant that despite seeming to do far better at the shogi side of things than Karin he was noticeably slowing down in moving pieces. This was giving her far more time to think about her moves while he was focused on dredging up more chakra, and they started to stalemate a bit more...up until Shikamaru admitted defeat due to being out of chakra to continue moving pieces.
It had still been an incredible match to watch, and there was a disappointed groan from the audience at the shogi match itself going unfinished.
"You are far better a shogi than you led me to believe," Shikamaru grumbled as he forced himself up the stairs to the observation area.
"I read the rules two days ago and played against my own clone for a day with another couple of clones watching for mistakes," Karin retorted. "Ninety percent of my moves were random flailing with barely any understanding of larger tactics."
"...so either you're a savant or just incredibly lucky?"
"Being of Uzumaki descent, I'd guess the latter."
"That, sadly, doesn't actually surprise me."
"Your little 'fake me out with the wrong appearance on the pieces' trick was annoying though."
"The genjutsu was the right appearance, I'd swapped out the surfaces after placing it."
"...that's...so you essentially tricked me into swapping the pieces?"
"Yep."
She was obviously quite annoyed at that, but he didn't care. He'd take a nap in the stairwell if not for knowing that the chairs in the observation room were more comfortable and that they had good snacks available.
Watching Ino and Tenten take the field was interesting. They had very different strengths and weaknesses and Naruto wasn't even sure which one of them he wanted to win. He was fairly certain that both had their promotions in the bag already anyway.
Tenten opened up with a spray of spell-kunai that exploded when hitting the ground around Ino, throwing up quite a dust cloud. Ino used that as cover for making a single clone that moved to the wall as it went invisible, but Naruto could still track it as it moved around the outer perimeter of the arena. The real Ino then used a water technique to knock the dust cloud down and create a field of mud that she then used to launch mud balls at Tenten. Those were trivially dodged, and non-faked lava and ice balls sent back. Ino then produced a tanto and moved in for closer-range, Tenten going for a pair of them instead. They clashed in the middle of the arena, Ino proving to be quite good at dodging and blocking Tenten's strikes, but not so good at getting strikes of her own in.
...but it seemed that was intentional, as she used being 'driven back' to lure Tenten towards the hidden clone. Hinata was probably the only other one that realized that though, and Tenten seemed to have no clue that she was falling into a trap. When they were close enough, Ino suddenly pushed harder and went for a high-power strike at Tenten's head, which was blocked with crossed blades. Crucially, this also pinned Tenten down...for the couple of moments the clone needed for a mind-body switch to hit her.
It was an incredibly straightforward and somewhat obvious way to overcome one of the limitations of the mind-body switch.
"I give up," Tenten's body said, taking most by surprise.
"Only because I'm in control of her," Ino admitted with a grin.
The string of swears Tenten let out when the control was released was, admittedly, quite amusing, but she didn't argue the loss. Ino did get dropped into a headlock in the stairwell though, Karin and Sasuke dodging but otherwise ignoring the scuffle as they came down.
A couple minutes later the two were faced off against each other, the match began, and Sasuke very obviously activated his sharingan. Naruto wasn't all that used to seeing him do so, as he'd taken Itachi's attitude of learning things without it and it really didn't come up often in infiltration missions.
Using a very recognizable and rare ability was generally frowned upon when you didn't want to be recognized.
It was incredibly likely that Sasuke had just cast a genjutsu, because Karin suddenly didn't seem to be able to see him. He grinned and moved in, only for her to close her eyes. As soon as he was in range she lashed out with a kick, catching him in the chest and launching him back. Naruto suspected that the genjutsu wasn't affecting her mind's eye sensing ability at all, and it wouldn't matter what Sasuke did with his chakra signature when there were only two people physically in the arena at all.
Longer-range attacks were attempted, with chakra as well as kunai and shuriken, and she dodged or blocked them all. In the case of tricks like wire between kunai, even when in a larger spread, she either produced her own kunai to cut the wire or blocked with a chakra chain that the wire then caught on before things could reach her. What she didn't do was try to attack him at range, which Naruto believed was because she could only do so much without breaking the sensory technique.
After ten minutes of this it looked to Naruto like the genjutsu had been broken or worn off, it was honestly hard to tell which. Karin seemed to notice as well, and suddenly created a couple dozen paperwork clones, all of them with their eyes still closed. But with that many, and them spreading out, it was now going to be close to impossible for Sasuke to catch all of them with a genjutsu at the same time and communication between them would allow them to coordinate some attacking while others maintained the sensory technique.
This was demonstrated when suddenly six of the clones started launching various elemental techniques at Sasuke. He did a good job of dodging, his sharingan likely helping him keep track of everything above the ground. What he definitely wasn't keeping track of were the chains from six other clones spreading under the ground. The dodging and blocking of elemental techniques was set up specifically to get him into position for the chains, and after a minute he landed just as chains burst from the ground and grabbed him. A couple even wrapped around his head to cover his eyes.
"I do believe that I win," Karin said, the real her, as she moved over to him. "Nice try though."
"I have to admit that I'm impressed," Shisui said as the betting opened for the final match, running scenarios through his head. He wasn't coming up with much that made sense though. "I'm fairly certain that I know exactly what he did, but have no clue how she overcame it so well."
"Uzumaki sensor ability," Naruto answered. "Can't tell you exactly how it works, but I'd bet the genjutsu couldn't hide him from it. As soon as she used it she probably confirmed that she was under a genjutsu, but I don't know if that would've helped her break it."
"Interesting. Do you know this from personal experience?"
"She inherited that one, not me."
Shisui both felt that was the truth and that something important wasn't being said. He just didn't know what that something was, and this wasn't the place to bring it up either way, so he nodded. "Good to know. Both of them put on a good show."
"Definitely," A said. "I wasn't sure about her after the shogi match, but this combined with her performance in the first two stages shows that she doesn't just have a gimmick."
Short of one of the two kunoichi doing something incredibly wrong in the final bout, it was looking like all seven Konoha genin were set to become chunin. Which largely validated the decision to send them out. The question was going to be exactly how to handle a few details. Team Yugao was a temporary team to begin with, so would be breaking up again, but Team Tekuno could switch to being led by Shikamaru for a bit or swap Shikamaru out for another genin and Team Yurei...
There were honestly a lot of suggestions for them, some that completely missed their actual strengths because those making the suggestions weren't infiltration-cleared, but Shisui was honestly inclined to keep the current group together in a general sense unless they chose to take different paths.
Naruto had snorted at the end of the match between Ino and Karin. It lasted a mere thirty seconds, ending with Ino slumping and admitting that she had no hope of defeating Karin with her current skill set, the limitations of fighting in an open arena, and their relative chakra levels.
The Raikage had silenced most of the complaints from the audience by pointing out that sometimes a battle can't be won in the current circumstances, and that recognizing when that has happened is a skill that many shinobi of any rank never develop. But then he asked first Ino, and then Karin, to launch the most powerful attack they felt they had into the air. Ino managed a very decent fireball that she'd been taught by Sasuke, pumping far more chakra into it than normal and creating a sizable explosion in the air high over the village.
Karin's response to that was to supercharge a water ball, turning it into a sphere that was a significant percentage of the arena's available volume, and fire it into the air. She'd filled it with enough chakra to cause it to explode into a torrential downpour when it reached high enough.
"...I'm hoping that display is enough to show that the young Yamanaka was right to back down," the Raikage said a couple of minutes later, after the water stopped falling.
"We've collected the various reports on the contestants," the Raikage said after a break for both cleaning up some of the water and ensuring that all the opinions were in order. "And find ourselves in agreement with their recommendations. We shall handle the announcements by village."
Mei stepped forward as the Raikage stepped back. "Yuko, despite losing your match you've still proven yourself to be worthy of promotion. Hashige, you have not earned your promotion as you've shown yourself to be detrimentally overconfident in your skills."
The two Kiri kunoichi bowed, Hashige looking annoyed, as Mei stepped back. The Raikage then stepped forward again. "L, you have not earned your promotion as you've shown your skills to not be wide enough throughout the exam. While being able to rely on teammates is admirable, chunin should be able to handle some basics that you seem to lack. Kei, your loss against a Nara is no slight on your own skills, and against any other opponent your strategy would likely have allowed you to at least get a strike in. You have earned your promotion. And Mio, you have done well with the resources available to you, proven yourself worthy of promotion."
One again, the Raikage stepped back, and Shisui stepped forward. "And that leaves the Konoha group. All seven of you showed a variety of skills and suitable judgment throughout the exams. I could go through each of you and be highly repetitive, but I think it's easier to just state that all of you have earned your promotions."
The seven Konoha shinobi bowed, but as Shisui stepped back the Raikage simply looked up. B landed on the Kage box a moment later, obviously expected, though for many in the audience his further-transformed appearance wasn't. He didn't seem to care at this point, looking down at the group. "Mio, you have shown great skill with a sword, and in honor of your promotion I've decided that you deserve a quality blade." A sword in a scabbard was pulled from his back and tossed down to the kunoichi, and she seemed to be in a state of awe as she caught it. But before she could say anything B turned slightly. "Tenten of Konoha, you've also shown skill with a sword, as well as knowledge and honor after examining Mio's first blade in your match. I've heard that you collect weapons, and feel that you could use another one for your collection." A second sword in a scabbard was pulled from his back and tossed to Tenten, who seemed more excited about it than Mio.
B then bowed to the group before jumping away, and the Raikage stepped forward again. "With that, I officially declare this round of exams completed. Participants can expect summaries of their results in the next day or two, as we haven't gotten things up to Konoha's speed in the paperwork side of things."
- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
They are going to be some serious facepalmings going on whenever the other villages finally discover the nature of the famed paperwork juitsu.
Somebody's jealous they are still stuck behind a desk while the Hokage has enough spare time to take a field trip.
- Location
- none of your business
And chances are that Naruto will have pictures of said facepalmings?
yup
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
The question is not when will the other Villages realize the secret, but if they will ever realize the lost Paperwork Jutsu's secret.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
What do you mean "If" there was social media in the setting? It's clear the spy networks are a social media network. Or at least, they are in the mind of a certain spy master.
SiiracaiSupernal
(Verified Canadian) (Unverified Shapeshifter)
- Location
- Canada
This was brilliant, especially since the Infiltrators are succeeding to a ridiculous degree at making themselves out as combat specialists still. And the Shogi match was brilliant!
Side note, can anyone recommend some good Naruto fics for me? I am starting to have a hard time finding good ones that aren't old and on hiatus or crossovers with things I don't recognize.
Side note, can anyone recommend some good Naruto fics for me? I am starting to have a hard time finding good ones that aren't old and on hiatus or crossovers with things I don't recognize.
- Location
- Tuskuru
For me too please. Can't seem to find anymore decent Naruto Fanfics.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
The fandom seems to be in a slump when it comes to new good fanfics. Bad ones are a dime a dozen, but good ones are indeed harder to find.
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
My opinion?
Fandom burnout from both the end stages of the main manga, and even worse burnout from the sequel.
- Location
- AK
how about Karmic Acumens current fic, it just updated yesterday. Edit: its also on qq if you want to read audience explanations about parts that confused you to much, I'm a fan of his style but sometimes I need a summary on some of the more complicated bits.
Last edited:
SiiracaiSupernal
(Verified Canadian) (Unverified Shapeshifter)
- Location
- Canada
Thanks, I'll give it a try. I hadn't realized they were still an active author. I've read a couple of their stories before and their style is great, especially Deus Ex Machina and Master of Wood, Water And Hill.
... If you care, that's being rewritten, also on QQ.
Chapter 47 - Post-Promotion Tasks, Incidental Lessons, New Tricks
It had taken four days for the Konoha contingent to depart, during which several smaller meetings had been held. Some with the sensei, some the sensei and new chunin, and one had happened with Team Tekuno. The main subject was ongoing team formations after promotions. Team Tekuno was switching to Team Shikamaru, and might pick up another genin after things had settled a bit. Team Yugao was breaking back up as Karin and Sakura were returning to work in the hospital, likely to end up as special jounin in the not too distant future as medic-nin. Tenten would continue to work with Hayate and Yugao.
Team Yurei was, as far as Naruto knew, the only team staying together as-is. Nothing specific had been mentioned while in a foreign village, but review of records had revealed just how few infiltration teams existed at all. The next-largest 'infiltration' team was three members strong...assuming you counted a kunoichi that occasionally joined them as a 'member'. Missions requiring larger numbers of infiltrators generally pulled on the pool of solo infiltration specialists, most of which didn't work well with others to begin with and had gone into infiltration to not need to work with others.
That didn't mean that they'd be operating as a 'full team' all the time though. Instead, they were being designated as 'Team Yurei Senior' and 'Team Yurei Junior' for the time being. Sometimes they'd have missions together, and at other times they'd be split up...with an implication that Naruto and Hinata had a number of jounin-only missions waiting for them back in Konoha. Of course, the other three had their own things waiting for them as well.
The trip back to Konoha had been done as a single large group, most of them running alongside the mobile house. Ami and Shino had ridden on the house due to being the slowest of the entire group, even if they had been working on their speed. Shikamaru had promised that they'd work more on their speed going forward as well. Which both had grimaced at, but said nothing about.
There had been a sizable 'combined' celebration for all the promotions when they'd returned. In that regard, Shikamaru was the 'odd one out'. Team Yurei and Team Yugao had significant crossover, in members and personal relationships. Yes, Ami had former teammates in the group, but she'd not tried to keep in touch with them in favor of her new team. Naruto had decided to ensure that Shikamaru got a gift of a pair of weapon storage plates, beyond what his parents had gotten him, and the gift was definitely appreciated. Most of the other gifts were parents to children, such as Hinata getting a new set of armored Hyuga-style robes or Kiba being given a business location to make jerky in by his mother, or silly things between teammates. Naruto was the obvious exception, being an orphan. Old Man Hiruzen had given him a set of 'God of Paperwork' kage-like robes and hat, Kakashi had several 'paperwork' forehead protectors made and registered as valid alternatives for Konoha shinobi like Jiraiya's 'oil' one was, Jiraiya had worked with the toads to make a book on toad-style techniques, and no name had been attached to a collection of armored formal wear that was constructed in the same basic style as the Hyuga's standard sets.
For 'Team Yurei Senior', they were summoned to the Hokage's office the next morning.
"Normally there's an entire collection of 'new jounin' missions that get picked from for newly-promoted jounin that aren't doing genin or academy training runs," Shisui explained. "A bit of hazing combined with a bit of evaluation, traditionally. You two are getting a pass on most of them for a number of reasons, including me wanting you to be more productive. But one mission that's required for all special jounin or higher is visiting all of our field bunkers. As it happens, they all could use some work like the tower in training ground forty-four did. I'd like you two to fix up or rebuild, secure, and map each bunker while you're visiting them anyway."
"What about the Anbu bunkers?" Naruto asked.
"Hinata isn't cleared for their locations, even if your honorary status means that you are, so you might be sent out to work on them later. Kakashi volunteered to play escort for you as is required for the mission, even if I assume you could handle the visits with only a basic map, and we're going to fudge the paperwork to say that Yoko is with you to cover her visit requirements."
That brought both of them up short. "Yoko?"
"We've officially made her a 'part-time' member of your team and given her a registration number. Publicly she's your sister and prefers to tend to the shrine, and 'tending to the Uzumaki shrine' is technically on the books as a long-term mission. Only the most secure paperwork brings up that she is you and we only marked her down as a regular jounin instead of as an elite jounin for the more accessible paperwork."
Naruto hadn't been expecting that.
Kiba had been pleasantly surprised with how easily he'd been able to start up making jerky in the new building. More surprising was the list of his fellow clan members willing to work in the place. Older members that didn't take many missions these days and needed something to do, plus two younger members who had lost their ninken and hadn't bonded with any others yet.
...the annoying part was that none of the eager helpers had any cooking skill. It was feeling like it was going to be a couple of weeks at the earliest before he could trust them to do things on their own. But they could easily handle the counter while he focused on getting the entire process streamlined to the point where they couldn't screw it up. Much.
Maybe he could find an Akimichi to help ensure that things weren't butchered too badly when he wasn't around? They were generally good with food prep, having been taught it growing up, and it wouldn't be too hard to interview a couple. Older ones that would be unwilling to take shit from his more brash clanmates, preferably...
Apparently when Kakashi volunteered for a mission he showed up on time, and he already had a prepared loop through the bunkers that should make hitting all of them reasonably efficient. The ones closest to Konoha were 'minor' ones, minimalist underground areas that were built like single-room apartments with some basic supplies in them. Or that had been built that way before Naruto and Hinata had gotten to them.
They were probably going to get a lot more use now that they had multiple rooms, a proper bathing area that wasn't just a 'not-quite-a-shower' in the corner, and had seals to maintain privacy and temperature. Not to mention at least two ways in and four out in case that you needed to slip past someone who saw you heading in.
"So you've been working on the Rasengan?" Kakashi asked as they left the last 'minor' bunker, heading for one of the larger ones further out.
"Failing to do so more than succeeding," Naruto admitted. "I've gotten a couple of medical chakra variants working, but all the other elements are proving to be a lot harder to make work."
"Feeding in elemental chakra can be annoying, yeah."
"...feeding in?"
"Are you saying that your medical chakra version is made entirely of medical chakra?"
"Yes."
Kakashi frowned, then snorted. "I suppose it is the only normal chakra type that responds to shaping at least as much as normal chakra. Elemental chakra, or at least the five basic elements, doesn't flow the right way to make the Rasengan. Worse, each element flows differently, so you need non-elemental chakra to form the base and direct the elemental chakra flows to maintain the sphere."
Naruto could tell that this hadn't occurred to his father, based on the groaning from everyone listening in along his connection to the Tome. "That does make some sense."
"I bet he has at least two variants working by the end of the week," Hoshi chimed in.
That had Kakashi blinking. "It's Friday. Do you mean in the next seven days or by the end of this week?"
"The latter."
"I wonder if we can get a bandit elimination mission on short notice?"
"We can have clones check the mission office," Hinata offered.
It turned out that Kakashi had been right and that adding elemental chakra into a Rasengan worked a lot better than making it out of each element. The normal or medical chakra directed the added chakra at a basic level, and the fact that medical chakra was at least partially a 'more accurately controllable' chakra made it a better base if you were willing to sacrifice the physical grinding that normal chakra provided. Conversely, if you wanted your Rasengan to be able to do anything against something that wasn't alive you had to avoid using medical chakra as the base entirely as it caused any Rasengan to just pass through nonliving items.
Notably, clothing and armor were nonliving, so if you weren't trying to bash down a door or wall using a medical chakra base was incredibly effective.
Only a day after Kakashi's revelation, Naruto had managed to make eight additional Rasengan variants. On the basic elements, adding fire caused burning, wind caused cutting, and lightning caused electrical shocks. Lightning also reduced the physical effects of the Rasengan on the air around it to the point where it vanished from normal sight. Earth and water caused the Rasengan to destabilize, either due to being incapable of flowing properly for earth or breaking the compression of the sphere for water.
Mixed elements only worked if both base elements did, but the effects varied a lot more with the base chakra. For normal chakra as a base the combination of fire and lightning made the Rasengan generate much milder burns and prevented it from setting fire to clothing. Conversely, fire and wind was a lot hotter and seemed to directly turn things to ashes instead of merely burning them. Lightning and wind caused the speed and compressibility of the Rasengan to increase dramatically, but the cutting power was all but negated.
Medical chakra being the base changed things further. Fire and lightning went from 'mild burns' to 'burn out nerves', fire and wind turned insides to ashes and seemed to set nearby flesh on fire, and wind and lightning made the damage far more contained while also making it far more complete. Ensuring that it was healing medical chakra instead of damaging limited all of the elemental effects to anything foreign in the body. Unfortunately for someone struck that way and unaware of the problem, your gut flora counted as 'foreign'.
Finally, Naruto had been curious about what happened if you added normal or medical chakra to a Rasengan. Adding normal chakra to a medical chakra based Rasengan had destabilized it entirely, but the other way around was interesting. Healing medical chakra added to a normal Rasengan essentially made it so that the Rasengan would only affect non-living things, but chakra scalpel medical chakra added into a normal Rasengan didn't seem to do much more than cause slightly more skin damage.
Demonstrating all of this on some bandits had both Hinata and Kakashi taking notes, with the latter grumbling that he'd probably been successful at adding lightning chakra but had assumed he'd screwed up when it became so much weaker. This was followed by both demanding that Tsunade had to be shown at least the 'instantly healthy' Rasengan, if only to see how much she ranted about it afterwards.
Yoko's day hadn't been all that pleasant so far. Karin had been sent to another village to help with a likely water supply contamination that was making everyone there sick, and due to needing clones elsewhere for training the Team Yurei chunin hadn't sent their clones to the shrine today. That left Yoko and her puppet dealing with a combination of the civilian girl 'helpers' and a group of very annoying and pushy visiting merchants.
Attacking the 'helpers' or the merchants would be highly improper, but Yoko kept considering doing so. It probably didn't help that Naruto was in the middle of rebuilding a bunker and not doing any fighting, so the urge to hit people wasn't easily offloaded onto him.
Rumor also had it that something had happened across the village, but to make it easier to react to news she shouldn't already know she'd not checked with the monitoring clones to find out what was going on elsewhere. None had informed her that something was important enough for her to intervene with, anyway, or that more clones were needed for any specific reasons.
"Excuse me," an Anbu said after using a body flicker to appear almost next to her, causing Yoko to frown. She'd seen him coming, but hadn't expected him to be coming to her. "Lady Tsunade has requested your help with the situation in the hospital."
That had her blinking. "My help in what way?"
"She specifically requested you as the only other 'chakra powerhouse' registered medic-nin currently in the village."
Now she checked with the monitoring clones, and found out that a number of academy students and three groups of genin had been seriously injured in a combination of demonstration and training accidents that had spilled over into each other. Mentally swearing, she nodded to the Anbu and jumped to a nearby rooftop. The clones continued to report that Tsunade was doing her best, but now that the clones were paying proper attention it was obvious that a few of the kids were on the edge of not making it.
Yoko could create a bunch of her own clones, openly showing that she could for the first time...or she could let out some frustration and see if something that the training clones had practiced worked and potentially deal with everything at once. The latter felt a lot less annoying, and if it didn't work she could fall back on the pile of clones option anyway, so she released the hold she had on her chakra and started forming a medical chakra Rasengan.
A very large Rasengan. They couldn't form one this large yet with normal chakra, but the only thing stopping a medical chakra Rasengan from being made larger seemed to be how much chakra you had to pump into it. And Yoko had far more chakra than the training clones were normally given.
Anbu, and likely anyone else in the village with even rudimentary chakra sensing skills, were obviously somewhat panicked about what she was doing. But nobody made it to her before she was in the air and coming down towards the roof of the hospital, the giant Rasengan beneath her. It impacted the building, completely ignoring the non-living aspects of it but destabilizing as it started to interact with the living people inside the structure. As she was landing on the roof, the sphere of chakra was exploding outward, flooding everyone in and around the hospital with medical chakra.
As far as she, or the monitoring clones, could tell the Rasengan had done what she'd wanted. Every single person in or remotely near the hospital was now perfectly healthy...and at least one limb had even been regrown on the spot. Nodding to herself, Yoko turned towards Ichiraku's, wanting to pick up some ramen after that chakra expenditure.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?" Tsunade screamed as she jumped up to the roof, having come out of a window a couple floors down.
"Massive Healing Rasengan," Yoko answered.
"That doesn't explain much of anything."
"We believe that anyone who can be bitten to heal people can safely make a medical chakra Rasengan and instant-heal anyone they hit with it. Scale that up and I hit the entire hospital at once."
"...what?"
"If I want to get back to the shrine before the civilian girls or the pushy visiting merchants cause problems then I need to go get something to eat now. Find me later if you want a better explanation."
Yoko was pleasantly surprised when Anbu showed up to pick up the tab for the ramen, and more surprised that the pushy merchants had been cleared out by some locals by the time she made it back to the shrine. On the other hand, word was quickly spreading that she'd just healed the entire hospital at once, which was either a sign that she was a deity herself or had the personal blessing of the gods.
...she'd wanted to be done with things quickly, not give people a reason to worship her!
Shisui had sealed the room for a private chat with his 'advisory council'. "So, everyone seems to be talking about Yoko these days."
"We've accidentally unleashed a monster," Tsunade said. "Not helped by oversights in paperwork and my own failure to duplicate what Yoko has been doing."
"...where did we miss something in the paperwork?"
"Yoko is a medic-nin without training records. That she refuses to heal anyone with any method other than 'healing Rasengan to the chest' has turned it into a healing blessing instead of healing skill. That I could duplicate the appearance of the Rasengan but nearly killed my test subject on the spot due to out of control cellular growth just reinforced that. Karin's duplication of the working version yesterday has just further demonstrated that it's a blessing to the masses, likely of Inari given that they're the two unique foxes in the village."
"Unique foxes?" Hiruzen asked.
"That's a fun one," Hiashi chimed in. "Those two are part summon fox, likely from interactions with Hoshi. Their ears, tails, and fur are noticeably different from the others who got fox features in the village. Coupled with being known to be of Uzumaki descent and tending the Uzumaki shrine together? The civilians have already decided that the two actually got their fox features from a blessing instead of the beast-man formula. I heard several discussing it on my way over today."
"Suzu's appearance when Yoko suddenly had fox features probably hasn't dissuaded anyone from that," Shisui added. "That all three happily accept offerings of fried rice, combined with that or offerings of ramen being the best way to keep Yoko from being subtly snippy with the attention of being 'worshiped', isn't exactly providing any reason for people to think otherwise."
"And if they ever see fit to use the deadly version on someone then that will probably make it worse," Tsunade said.
Shisui joined Hiashi and Hiruzen in blinking in confusion at that. "Deadly version?"
"Yoko made a point of warning about using the right kind of medical chakra, specifically not using scalpel style chakra. A couple of volunteers courtesy of Ibiki revealed why. No external injuries to speak of at all, but shredded internal organs."
Hiruzen frowned. "...which could be seen as the target not being worthy of healing according to Inari."
"Or the entire building if used that way."
Shisui couldn't be certain, but he would later hope that Hiashi and Hiruzen were as horrified at the potential brutal effectiveness of something like that as he was.
Returning to Konoha once all the jounin bunkers had been visited and rebuilt had been easy enough, though with a side trip to assassinate an asshole that was trying to start up a business grabbing and selling kids. Kakashi had been particularly impressed with the 'pair of lost little girls' that the asshole had been baited into grabbing before they tore him apart. In public, using toys.
It would hopefully serve as a warning to others.
Naruto and Hinata were getting a week or two off before going back out on missions, at least until the three chunin had returned from a mission they had gone out on and had their downtime. Shisui had a larger infiltration he wanted the whole team to do at that point, without providing details yet, which meant time that could be used for training in the meantime. And avoiding jounin that were very happy that the two existed, especially those who had stopped by any of the rebuilt bunkers already.
"You want me to do what?" Naruto asked his parents.
"Use the forbidden technique that Deidara gave you," his mother answered. "We're certain that only the final stage would have any visible effect on you, and that's technically an entirely different technique."
"We did a lot of examination of it after giving up on determining what was going on with the masks," his father added. "Not that we hadn't been examining it before then, of course, but only through someone performing it can we see exactly how it forms the expected chakra net nodes. You didn't hand the Tome to Deidara for a proper scan of his nodes, but we know that he had at least one we didn't recognize."
That made some sense, and digging out the scroll didn't take long. The point where it went from 'infuse chakra' to 'modify the body' was fairly obvious from a style point alone. Not in handwriting, as this was almost certainly a copy made by Deidara, but word choice and layout shifted noticeably.
"There are a number of indications that the chakra node side of things is Uzumaki in origin," his mother commented, pointing at a few places in sequence. "Specific code phrases hidden inside of the text to indicate that this is a legitimate technique instead of a fake intended to lure an enemy into killing themselves. I wasn't familiar with this specifically, but there were a couple of Uzumaki who could push their chakra into materials that I'd heard of even if I never met them."
"None of those phrases exist in the last section," his father pointed out. "For or against it being legitimate, making us think that it was from an entirely different source and not just a different Uzumaki or other Uzushio survivor."
Naruto nodded, and examined the portion they wanted him to go through. It was split into stages, each apparently building on the last, and there were warnings about letting your chakra levels recover between stages. He doubted that he was going to have any real trouble there. But each stage also had several dozen hand seals and instructions for how to focus your chakra during the process.
Several 'dry runs' without channeling chakra were done to ensure that the hand seals for the first stage were good. That was followed by a couple trying to maintain the chakra focus described in the scroll but not putting chakra into the hand seals with the Tome critiquing the attempt. Once all of that was being performed to the Tome's satisfaction he went for the real deal, channeling chakra into the hand seals as he went through the technique. He could feel it affecting his net...as could Yoko. Apparently their nets were more connected than expected.
"That's definitely the core of a new node," his father said once the technique was done. "And it barely used any of your chakra."
"Might as well move onto the next stage," his mother said. "Proper analysis isn't going to be possible until the entire node is constructed."
Naruto sighed and started going through the hand seals for the next stage.
"So the new node lets you fill materials with specific chakra?" Hinata asked.
"But only if I can 'work' the material in question," Naruto agreed. "Deidara does that by kneading clay and mixing in explosion release chakra, and chewing does seem to work exceptionally well. You don't need to do it inside your body though, and I'm betting that some of the Uzushio blacksmiths worked their chakra in while forging. Imbuing ingredients during food preparation was an unexpected application of things too."
"...food?"
In response, he pulled a cinnamon roll. She gave it a curious look, then took it from him and tasted it. He said nothing as her eyes went wide and she devoured it, moaning slightly as she did so.
"Different chakra generates different effects in the process," Naruto commented. "Beyond imparting different tastes, though I've not locked those down yet. Normal chakra mostly seems to make food act like chakra pills to varying degrees. Wood release chakra in anything with yeast makes dough rise faster and more evenly, water chakra seems to make things mix more readily when in a liquid state while earth chakra does the same for dry ingredients and thickens liquids nicely. So far ice chakra is great for making ice cream, but slows down anything being cooked. It isn't all good though. Fire chakra makes it difficult to freeze things and causes burning during cooking far too easily, unless you get the balance just right to make things cook themselves, and I've not seen much direct effect from lightning chakra at all."
"What did you do to make the cinnamon roll?" she asked.
"Earth chakra in the dry ingredients, water chakra in the wet ones, some wood release when adding the yeast, a hint of fire chakra when forming them into shape that I hope helped them cook more evenly, and a little earth chakra to thicken the glaze up more than it would've otherwise. I'm still working out other uses, and finally put some clones on learning blacksmithing with the toads."
"...are they being made to make hammers first?"
"No, they're being made to learn the basic theory first, and after that will be making basic forges. Then they'll likely be making hammers. That aside, do you want to give the new node a try? It's a weird one in that we're fairly certain it was designed to not pass down to children automatically like most of the rest of the net would."
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No. I don't think it would fit my preferred fighting style and you're the one doing most of the building things. But if the others are going to continue doing the traveling chef routine then it sounds like something they might like."
...that was honestly not a bad point, but would also probably work best if they gave the three the various elemental combination nodes as well.
Getting the three chunin set up with the new chakra net nodes had taken a few days, but luckily the paperwork side was able to be completed before they were even in the village to have work done on them. Basic training in their use was another matter, as they'd been called in by the Hokage immediately after all three had gotten their upgrades. To Naruto's surprise, Kakashi was also there.
"This is an odd mission request that's got multiple sources of funding," Shisui explained. "It started with Kakashi here saving a princess years ago. When the seal on Naruto was broken he did some introspection and convinced a Yamanaka to both provide additional protection for the princess and help her mentally recover from the incident."
"Leaving her mostly to her own devices was a mistake," Kakashi admitted. "I'd also intended to spend more time checking up on her, but being in Anbu made that impossible and she slipped my mind a mission or two later."
"Being dragged back to Konoha half-dead a mission or two later probably didn't help."
"...probably not, no. But the princess is ready to try to take back her country, and her uncle is ready to invade the Land of Fire to get her and the key she took with her when she escaped. Seems like a good time to finally accept the mission her chief bodyguard has been asking me to take for a few years now to get her back into the country and her uncle out of the picture."
"But he's insisted that he'll only do so with the full Team Yurei as backup."
"That seems a bit excessive," Naruto pointed out.
Kakashi snorted. "I want you to copy every scrap of research in the entire country if you can, among other things. They've got advanced chakra armor that can grant flight in specific configurations and provides a seemingly-impenetrable defense, airships, a working rail system with train-mounted weaponry, and we aren't actually sure what else."
"...still seems excessive to bring all five of us."
"All six of you," Shisui corrected. "They've heard of Yoko and want her to go along, but not for any combat purposes. She can heal people, lend authenticity to the film they're shooting, and they want to have a proper shrine maiden help with a shrine that's fallen into disrepair."
"I actually want it to look like I've only got genin with me at best," Kakashi added. "Yoko aside, but she isn't well-known as a potential combat threat. Having chunin playing genin and a couple of jounin pretending to be actors for the film would present a nice little surprise for the enemy when they eventually engage. Acting isn't really any different than maintaining a cover either, so that could count as training time as well."
"There's a fear that if Kakashi has too much obviously-competent backup then the enemy will vanish for a month or two and then reappear to assassinate the princess instead of attacking her immediately. Showing up with only what looks like a brand-new genin team and a shrine maiden for backup would make the princess look like she's easy picking, so they should show themselves basically as soon as they realize how little security there actually is. Distract me for a few minutes, bulldoze the genin with the armor, and grab the princess."
"Doto is already planning a small invasion to grab her due to being sick of waiting, so we don't see him not taking the bait."
"Why would you want to appear to have backup at all?" Ino asked. "Slap on a horrible disguise as though intending to slip through unnoticed while the rest of us look like we're only there for the movie side of things. Just good enough to get them to spend a few minutes scoffing that you thought that would fool them."
Shisui and Kakashi both blinked a couple of times at that suggestion, then looked at each other. Kakashi shrugged, as if to admit that he'd not considered going that route, and Shisui sighed. "That would reduce the amount of paperwork needed to fake a genin team, at least, but as I understand it they want legitimate 'shinobi tricks' instead of 'movie shinobi' ones."
Naruto frowned. "What do movie shinobi do that real shinobi don't?" Most of the room turned to stare at him. "I've only seen maybe two movies, and I don't think either had shinobi in them. Samurai in one of them, but not shinobi. My hearing has been good enough to be annoyed by the speakers and projector noises ever since they'd let me in."
"I think the most ridiculous thing I've seen in movies was exploding food without explosive tags," Kakashi offered.
"...I'd probably have considered that ridiculous a week ago, yeah."
Hinata groaned. "You used explosion release chakra when cooking?"
"The senbei are tasty and perfectly safe so long as you don't prime them to explode, and chewing them disrupts the explosive chakra so they don't explode in your mouth or stomach."
That had required a quick trip to a training ground for a demonstration.
Team Yurei was, as far as Naruto knew, the only team staying together as-is. Nothing specific had been mentioned while in a foreign village, but review of records had revealed just how few infiltration teams existed at all. The next-largest 'infiltration' team was three members strong...assuming you counted a kunoichi that occasionally joined them as a 'member'. Missions requiring larger numbers of infiltrators generally pulled on the pool of solo infiltration specialists, most of which didn't work well with others to begin with and had gone into infiltration to not need to work with others.
That didn't mean that they'd be operating as a 'full team' all the time though. Instead, they were being designated as 'Team Yurei Senior' and 'Team Yurei Junior' for the time being. Sometimes they'd have missions together, and at other times they'd be split up...with an implication that Naruto and Hinata had a number of jounin-only missions waiting for them back in Konoha. Of course, the other three had their own things waiting for them as well.
The trip back to Konoha had been done as a single large group, most of them running alongside the mobile house. Ami and Shino had ridden on the house due to being the slowest of the entire group, even if they had been working on their speed. Shikamaru had promised that they'd work more on their speed going forward as well. Which both had grimaced at, but said nothing about.
There had been a sizable 'combined' celebration for all the promotions when they'd returned. In that regard, Shikamaru was the 'odd one out'. Team Yurei and Team Yugao had significant crossover, in members and personal relationships. Yes, Ami had former teammates in the group, but she'd not tried to keep in touch with them in favor of her new team. Naruto had decided to ensure that Shikamaru got a gift of a pair of weapon storage plates, beyond what his parents had gotten him, and the gift was definitely appreciated. Most of the other gifts were parents to children, such as Hinata getting a new set of armored Hyuga-style robes or Kiba being given a business location to make jerky in by his mother, or silly things between teammates. Naruto was the obvious exception, being an orphan. Old Man Hiruzen had given him a set of 'God of Paperwork' kage-like robes and hat, Kakashi had several 'paperwork' forehead protectors made and registered as valid alternatives for Konoha shinobi like Jiraiya's 'oil' one was, Jiraiya had worked with the toads to make a book on toad-style techniques, and no name had been attached to a collection of armored formal wear that was constructed in the same basic style as the Hyuga's standard sets.
For 'Team Yurei Senior', they were summoned to the Hokage's office the next morning.
"Normally there's an entire collection of 'new jounin' missions that get picked from for newly-promoted jounin that aren't doing genin or academy training runs," Shisui explained. "A bit of hazing combined with a bit of evaluation, traditionally. You two are getting a pass on most of them for a number of reasons, including me wanting you to be more productive. But one mission that's required for all special jounin or higher is visiting all of our field bunkers. As it happens, they all could use some work like the tower in training ground forty-four did. I'd like you two to fix up or rebuild, secure, and map each bunker while you're visiting them anyway."
"What about the Anbu bunkers?" Naruto asked.
"Hinata isn't cleared for their locations, even if your honorary status means that you are, so you might be sent out to work on them later. Kakashi volunteered to play escort for you as is required for the mission, even if I assume you could handle the visits with only a basic map, and we're going to fudge the paperwork to say that Yoko is with you to cover her visit requirements."
That brought both of them up short. "Yoko?"
"We've officially made her a 'part-time' member of your team and given her a registration number. Publicly she's your sister and prefers to tend to the shrine, and 'tending to the Uzumaki shrine' is technically on the books as a long-term mission. Only the most secure paperwork brings up that she is you and we only marked her down as a regular jounin instead of as an elite jounin for the more accessible paperwork."
Naruto hadn't been expecting that.
Kiba had been pleasantly surprised with how easily he'd been able to start up making jerky in the new building. More surprising was the list of his fellow clan members willing to work in the place. Older members that didn't take many missions these days and needed something to do, plus two younger members who had lost their ninken and hadn't bonded with any others yet.
...the annoying part was that none of the eager helpers had any cooking skill. It was feeling like it was going to be a couple of weeks at the earliest before he could trust them to do things on their own. But they could easily handle the counter while he focused on getting the entire process streamlined to the point where they couldn't screw it up. Much.
Maybe he could find an Akimichi to help ensure that things weren't butchered too badly when he wasn't around? They were generally good with food prep, having been taught it growing up, and it wouldn't be too hard to interview a couple. Older ones that would be unwilling to take shit from his more brash clanmates, preferably...
Apparently when Kakashi volunteered for a mission he showed up on time, and he already had a prepared loop through the bunkers that should make hitting all of them reasonably efficient. The ones closest to Konoha were 'minor' ones, minimalist underground areas that were built like single-room apartments with some basic supplies in them. Or that had been built that way before Naruto and Hinata had gotten to them.
They were probably going to get a lot more use now that they had multiple rooms, a proper bathing area that wasn't just a 'not-quite-a-shower' in the corner, and had seals to maintain privacy and temperature. Not to mention at least two ways in and four out in case that you needed to slip past someone who saw you heading in.
"So you've been working on the Rasengan?" Kakashi asked as they left the last 'minor' bunker, heading for one of the larger ones further out.
"Failing to do so more than succeeding," Naruto admitted. "I've gotten a couple of medical chakra variants working, but all the other elements are proving to be a lot harder to make work."
"Feeding in elemental chakra can be annoying, yeah."
"...feeding in?"
"Are you saying that your medical chakra version is made entirely of medical chakra?"
"Yes."
Kakashi frowned, then snorted. "I suppose it is the only normal chakra type that responds to shaping at least as much as normal chakra. Elemental chakra, or at least the five basic elements, doesn't flow the right way to make the Rasengan. Worse, each element flows differently, so you need non-elemental chakra to form the base and direct the elemental chakra flows to maintain the sphere."
Naruto could tell that this hadn't occurred to his father, based on the groaning from everyone listening in along his connection to the Tome. "That does make some sense."
"I bet he has at least two variants working by the end of the week," Hoshi chimed in.
That had Kakashi blinking. "It's Friday. Do you mean in the next seven days or by the end of this week?"
"The latter."
"I wonder if we can get a bandit elimination mission on short notice?"
"We can have clones check the mission office," Hinata offered.
It turned out that Kakashi had been right and that adding elemental chakra into a Rasengan worked a lot better than making it out of each element. The normal or medical chakra directed the added chakra at a basic level, and the fact that medical chakra was at least partially a 'more accurately controllable' chakra made it a better base if you were willing to sacrifice the physical grinding that normal chakra provided. Conversely, if you wanted your Rasengan to be able to do anything against something that wasn't alive you had to avoid using medical chakra as the base entirely as it caused any Rasengan to just pass through nonliving items.
Notably, clothing and armor were nonliving, so if you weren't trying to bash down a door or wall using a medical chakra base was incredibly effective.
Only a day after Kakashi's revelation, Naruto had managed to make eight additional Rasengan variants. On the basic elements, adding fire caused burning, wind caused cutting, and lightning caused electrical shocks. Lightning also reduced the physical effects of the Rasengan on the air around it to the point where it vanished from normal sight. Earth and water caused the Rasengan to destabilize, either due to being incapable of flowing properly for earth or breaking the compression of the sphere for water.
Mixed elements only worked if both base elements did, but the effects varied a lot more with the base chakra. For normal chakra as a base the combination of fire and lightning made the Rasengan generate much milder burns and prevented it from setting fire to clothing. Conversely, fire and wind was a lot hotter and seemed to directly turn things to ashes instead of merely burning them. Lightning and wind caused the speed and compressibility of the Rasengan to increase dramatically, but the cutting power was all but negated.
Medical chakra being the base changed things further. Fire and lightning went from 'mild burns' to 'burn out nerves', fire and wind turned insides to ashes and seemed to set nearby flesh on fire, and wind and lightning made the damage far more contained while also making it far more complete. Ensuring that it was healing medical chakra instead of damaging limited all of the elemental effects to anything foreign in the body. Unfortunately for someone struck that way and unaware of the problem, your gut flora counted as 'foreign'.
Finally, Naruto had been curious about what happened if you added normal or medical chakra to a Rasengan. Adding normal chakra to a medical chakra based Rasengan had destabilized it entirely, but the other way around was interesting. Healing medical chakra added to a normal Rasengan essentially made it so that the Rasengan would only affect non-living things, but chakra scalpel medical chakra added into a normal Rasengan didn't seem to do much more than cause slightly more skin damage.
Demonstrating all of this on some bandits had both Hinata and Kakashi taking notes, with the latter grumbling that he'd probably been successful at adding lightning chakra but had assumed he'd screwed up when it became so much weaker. This was followed by both demanding that Tsunade had to be shown at least the 'instantly healthy' Rasengan, if only to see how much she ranted about it afterwards.
Yoko's day hadn't been all that pleasant so far. Karin had been sent to another village to help with a likely water supply contamination that was making everyone there sick, and due to needing clones elsewhere for training the Team Yurei chunin hadn't sent their clones to the shrine today. That left Yoko and her puppet dealing with a combination of the civilian girl 'helpers' and a group of very annoying and pushy visiting merchants.
Attacking the 'helpers' or the merchants would be highly improper, but Yoko kept considering doing so. It probably didn't help that Naruto was in the middle of rebuilding a bunker and not doing any fighting, so the urge to hit people wasn't easily offloaded onto him.
Rumor also had it that something had happened across the village, but to make it easier to react to news she shouldn't already know she'd not checked with the monitoring clones to find out what was going on elsewhere. None had informed her that something was important enough for her to intervene with, anyway, or that more clones were needed for any specific reasons.
"Excuse me," an Anbu said after using a body flicker to appear almost next to her, causing Yoko to frown. She'd seen him coming, but hadn't expected him to be coming to her. "Lady Tsunade has requested your help with the situation in the hospital."
That had her blinking. "My help in what way?"
"She specifically requested you as the only other 'chakra powerhouse' registered medic-nin currently in the village."
Now she checked with the monitoring clones, and found out that a number of academy students and three groups of genin had been seriously injured in a combination of demonstration and training accidents that had spilled over into each other. Mentally swearing, she nodded to the Anbu and jumped to a nearby rooftop. The clones continued to report that Tsunade was doing her best, but now that the clones were paying proper attention it was obvious that a few of the kids were on the edge of not making it.
Yoko could create a bunch of her own clones, openly showing that she could for the first time...or she could let out some frustration and see if something that the training clones had practiced worked and potentially deal with everything at once. The latter felt a lot less annoying, and if it didn't work she could fall back on the pile of clones option anyway, so she released the hold she had on her chakra and started forming a medical chakra Rasengan.
A very large Rasengan. They couldn't form one this large yet with normal chakra, but the only thing stopping a medical chakra Rasengan from being made larger seemed to be how much chakra you had to pump into it. And Yoko had far more chakra than the training clones were normally given.
Anbu, and likely anyone else in the village with even rudimentary chakra sensing skills, were obviously somewhat panicked about what she was doing. But nobody made it to her before she was in the air and coming down towards the roof of the hospital, the giant Rasengan beneath her. It impacted the building, completely ignoring the non-living aspects of it but destabilizing as it started to interact with the living people inside the structure. As she was landing on the roof, the sphere of chakra was exploding outward, flooding everyone in and around the hospital with medical chakra.
As far as she, or the monitoring clones, could tell the Rasengan had done what she'd wanted. Every single person in or remotely near the hospital was now perfectly healthy...and at least one limb had even been regrown on the spot. Nodding to herself, Yoko turned towards Ichiraku's, wanting to pick up some ramen after that chakra expenditure.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?" Tsunade screamed as she jumped up to the roof, having come out of a window a couple floors down.
"Massive Healing Rasengan," Yoko answered.
"That doesn't explain much of anything."
"We believe that anyone who can be bitten to heal people can safely make a medical chakra Rasengan and instant-heal anyone they hit with it. Scale that up and I hit the entire hospital at once."
"...what?"
"If I want to get back to the shrine before the civilian girls or the pushy visiting merchants cause problems then I need to go get something to eat now. Find me later if you want a better explanation."
Yoko was pleasantly surprised when Anbu showed up to pick up the tab for the ramen, and more surprised that the pushy merchants had been cleared out by some locals by the time she made it back to the shrine. On the other hand, word was quickly spreading that she'd just healed the entire hospital at once, which was either a sign that she was a deity herself or had the personal blessing of the gods.
...she'd wanted to be done with things quickly, not give people a reason to worship her!
Shisui had sealed the room for a private chat with his 'advisory council'. "So, everyone seems to be talking about Yoko these days."
"We've accidentally unleashed a monster," Tsunade said. "Not helped by oversights in paperwork and my own failure to duplicate what Yoko has been doing."
"...where did we miss something in the paperwork?"
"Yoko is a medic-nin without training records. That she refuses to heal anyone with any method other than 'healing Rasengan to the chest' has turned it into a healing blessing instead of healing skill. That I could duplicate the appearance of the Rasengan but nearly killed my test subject on the spot due to out of control cellular growth just reinforced that. Karin's duplication of the working version yesterday has just further demonstrated that it's a blessing to the masses, likely of Inari given that they're the two unique foxes in the village."
"Unique foxes?" Hiruzen asked.
"That's a fun one," Hiashi chimed in. "Those two are part summon fox, likely from interactions with Hoshi. Their ears, tails, and fur are noticeably different from the others who got fox features in the village. Coupled with being known to be of Uzumaki descent and tending the Uzumaki shrine together? The civilians have already decided that the two actually got their fox features from a blessing instead of the beast-man formula. I heard several discussing it on my way over today."
"Suzu's appearance when Yoko suddenly had fox features probably hasn't dissuaded anyone from that," Shisui added. "That all three happily accept offerings of fried rice, combined with that or offerings of ramen being the best way to keep Yoko from being subtly snippy with the attention of being 'worshiped', isn't exactly providing any reason for people to think otherwise."
"And if they ever see fit to use the deadly version on someone then that will probably make it worse," Tsunade said.
Shisui joined Hiashi and Hiruzen in blinking in confusion at that. "Deadly version?"
"Yoko made a point of warning about using the right kind of medical chakra, specifically not using scalpel style chakra. A couple of volunteers courtesy of Ibiki revealed why. No external injuries to speak of at all, but shredded internal organs."
Hiruzen frowned. "...which could be seen as the target not being worthy of healing according to Inari."
"Or the entire building if used that way."
Shisui couldn't be certain, but he would later hope that Hiashi and Hiruzen were as horrified at the potential brutal effectiveness of something like that as he was.
Returning to Konoha once all the jounin bunkers had been visited and rebuilt had been easy enough, though with a side trip to assassinate an asshole that was trying to start up a business grabbing and selling kids. Kakashi had been particularly impressed with the 'pair of lost little girls' that the asshole had been baited into grabbing before they tore him apart. In public, using toys.
It would hopefully serve as a warning to others.
Naruto and Hinata were getting a week or two off before going back out on missions, at least until the three chunin had returned from a mission they had gone out on and had their downtime. Shisui had a larger infiltration he wanted the whole team to do at that point, without providing details yet, which meant time that could be used for training in the meantime. And avoiding jounin that were very happy that the two existed, especially those who had stopped by any of the rebuilt bunkers already.
"You want me to do what?" Naruto asked his parents.
"Use the forbidden technique that Deidara gave you," his mother answered. "We're certain that only the final stage would have any visible effect on you, and that's technically an entirely different technique."
"We did a lot of examination of it after giving up on determining what was going on with the masks," his father added. "Not that we hadn't been examining it before then, of course, but only through someone performing it can we see exactly how it forms the expected chakra net nodes. You didn't hand the Tome to Deidara for a proper scan of his nodes, but we know that he had at least one we didn't recognize."
That made some sense, and digging out the scroll didn't take long. The point where it went from 'infuse chakra' to 'modify the body' was fairly obvious from a style point alone. Not in handwriting, as this was almost certainly a copy made by Deidara, but word choice and layout shifted noticeably.
"There are a number of indications that the chakra node side of things is Uzumaki in origin," his mother commented, pointing at a few places in sequence. "Specific code phrases hidden inside of the text to indicate that this is a legitimate technique instead of a fake intended to lure an enemy into killing themselves. I wasn't familiar with this specifically, but there were a couple of Uzumaki who could push their chakra into materials that I'd heard of even if I never met them."
"None of those phrases exist in the last section," his father pointed out. "For or against it being legitimate, making us think that it was from an entirely different source and not just a different Uzumaki or other Uzushio survivor."
Naruto nodded, and examined the portion they wanted him to go through. It was split into stages, each apparently building on the last, and there were warnings about letting your chakra levels recover between stages. He doubted that he was going to have any real trouble there. But each stage also had several dozen hand seals and instructions for how to focus your chakra during the process.
Several 'dry runs' without channeling chakra were done to ensure that the hand seals for the first stage were good. That was followed by a couple trying to maintain the chakra focus described in the scroll but not putting chakra into the hand seals with the Tome critiquing the attempt. Once all of that was being performed to the Tome's satisfaction he went for the real deal, channeling chakra into the hand seals as he went through the technique. He could feel it affecting his net...as could Yoko. Apparently their nets were more connected than expected.
"That's definitely the core of a new node," his father said once the technique was done. "And it barely used any of your chakra."
"Might as well move onto the next stage," his mother said. "Proper analysis isn't going to be possible until the entire node is constructed."
Naruto sighed and started going through the hand seals for the next stage.
"So the new node lets you fill materials with specific chakra?" Hinata asked.
"But only if I can 'work' the material in question," Naruto agreed. "Deidara does that by kneading clay and mixing in explosion release chakra, and chewing does seem to work exceptionally well. You don't need to do it inside your body though, and I'm betting that some of the Uzushio blacksmiths worked their chakra in while forging. Imbuing ingredients during food preparation was an unexpected application of things too."
"...food?"
In response, he pulled a cinnamon roll. She gave it a curious look, then took it from him and tasted it. He said nothing as her eyes went wide and she devoured it, moaning slightly as she did so.
"Different chakra generates different effects in the process," Naruto commented. "Beyond imparting different tastes, though I've not locked those down yet. Normal chakra mostly seems to make food act like chakra pills to varying degrees. Wood release chakra in anything with yeast makes dough rise faster and more evenly, water chakra seems to make things mix more readily when in a liquid state while earth chakra does the same for dry ingredients and thickens liquids nicely. So far ice chakra is great for making ice cream, but slows down anything being cooked. It isn't all good though. Fire chakra makes it difficult to freeze things and causes burning during cooking far too easily, unless you get the balance just right to make things cook themselves, and I've not seen much direct effect from lightning chakra at all."
"What did you do to make the cinnamon roll?" she asked.
"Earth chakra in the dry ingredients, water chakra in the wet ones, some wood release when adding the yeast, a hint of fire chakra when forming them into shape that I hope helped them cook more evenly, and a little earth chakra to thicken the glaze up more than it would've otherwise. I'm still working out other uses, and finally put some clones on learning blacksmithing with the toads."
"...are they being made to make hammers first?"
"No, they're being made to learn the basic theory first, and after that will be making basic forges. Then they'll likely be making hammers. That aside, do you want to give the new node a try? It's a weird one in that we're fairly certain it was designed to not pass down to children automatically like most of the rest of the net would."
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No. I don't think it would fit my preferred fighting style and you're the one doing most of the building things. But if the others are going to continue doing the traveling chef routine then it sounds like something they might like."
...that was honestly not a bad point, but would also probably work best if they gave the three the various elemental combination nodes as well.
Getting the three chunin set up with the new chakra net nodes had taken a few days, but luckily the paperwork side was able to be completed before they were even in the village to have work done on them. Basic training in their use was another matter, as they'd been called in by the Hokage immediately after all three had gotten their upgrades. To Naruto's surprise, Kakashi was also there.
"This is an odd mission request that's got multiple sources of funding," Shisui explained. "It started with Kakashi here saving a princess years ago. When the seal on Naruto was broken he did some introspection and convinced a Yamanaka to both provide additional protection for the princess and help her mentally recover from the incident."
"Leaving her mostly to her own devices was a mistake," Kakashi admitted. "I'd also intended to spend more time checking up on her, but being in Anbu made that impossible and she slipped my mind a mission or two later."
"Being dragged back to Konoha half-dead a mission or two later probably didn't help."
"...probably not, no. But the princess is ready to try to take back her country, and her uncle is ready to invade the Land of Fire to get her and the key she took with her when she escaped. Seems like a good time to finally accept the mission her chief bodyguard has been asking me to take for a few years now to get her back into the country and her uncle out of the picture."
"But he's insisted that he'll only do so with the full Team Yurei as backup."
"That seems a bit excessive," Naruto pointed out.
Kakashi snorted. "I want you to copy every scrap of research in the entire country if you can, among other things. They've got advanced chakra armor that can grant flight in specific configurations and provides a seemingly-impenetrable defense, airships, a working rail system with train-mounted weaponry, and we aren't actually sure what else."
"...still seems excessive to bring all five of us."
"All six of you," Shisui corrected. "They've heard of Yoko and want her to go along, but not for any combat purposes. She can heal people, lend authenticity to the film they're shooting, and they want to have a proper shrine maiden help with a shrine that's fallen into disrepair."
"I actually want it to look like I've only got genin with me at best," Kakashi added. "Yoko aside, but she isn't well-known as a potential combat threat. Having chunin playing genin and a couple of jounin pretending to be actors for the film would present a nice little surprise for the enemy when they eventually engage. Acting isn't really any different than maintaining a cover either, so that could count as training time as well."
"There's a fear that if Kakashi has too much obviously-competent backup then the enemy will vanish for a month or two and then reappear to assassinate the princess instead of attacking her immediately. Showing up with only what looks like a brand-new genin team and a shrine maiden for backup would make the princess look like she's easy picking, so they should show themselves basically as soon as they realize how little security there actually is. Distract me for a few minutes, bulldoze the genin with the armor, and grab the princess."
"Doto is already planning a small invasion to grab her due to being sick of waiting, so we don't see him not taking the bait."
"Why would you want to appear to have backup at all?" Ino asked. "Slap on a horrible disguise as though intending to slip through unnoticed while the rest of us look like we're only there for the movie side of things. Just good enough to get them to spend a few minutes scoffing that you thought that would fool them."
Shisui and Kakashi both blinked a couple of times at that suggestion, then looked at each other. Kakashi shrugged, as if to admit that he'd not considered going that route, and Shisui sighed. "That would reduce the amount of paperwork needed to fake a genin team, at least, but as I understand it they want legitimate 'shinobi tricks' instead of 'movie shinobi' ones."
Naruto frowned. "What do movie shinobi do that real shinobi don't?" Most of the room turned to stare at him. "I've only seen maybe two movies, and I don't think either had shinobi in them. Samurai in one of them, but not shinobi. My hearing has been good enough to be annoyed by the speakers and projector noises ever since they'd let me in."
"I think the most ridiculous thing I've seen in movies was exploding food without explosive tags," Kakashi offered.
"...I'd probably have considered that ridiculous a week ago, yeah."
Hinata groaned. "You used explosion release chakra when cooking?"
"The senbei are tasty and perfectly safe so long as you don't prime them to explode, and chewing them disrupts the explosive chakra so they don't explode in your mouth or stomach."
That had required a quick trip to a training ground for a demonstration.
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- Location
- united states
HAHAHAHAHA LOL. It just keeps getting more ridiculous as time passes and yet less surprisng. The funny sticks around though. That is all that really matters in keeping me interest.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
This reminds me of Brockton Bay's Celestial Forge with its "three day old technology".
MaimakteriAnn
(Verified Sleepy)
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Dr
Honestly, at this point, I'm more interested in what the Belkan systems would do with a rasengan. I assume minato's clone in the tome has already been working on it for years too.
It's been a long time since the premise of the story was relevant to the story at all, actually.
See Naruto, its the casually eating bombs that convinces people you aren't playing with the same deck of cards everybody else is.