It's the titular MacGuffin from Naruto the Movie: Legend of the Stone of Gelel.
Literally took five seconds using Google to get that.
Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
Literally took five seconds using Google to get that.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
Well, yes, because you did look. As I said, I kept forgetting to even do that much (though after following the link, it seems familiar).
- Location
- Here
That's what the box says. I watched it back in the day. Said description is almost but not quite completely inaccurate. The girl only thought she was a robot, it supposedly took the psychic energy of 1000 "friends" to overcome the mental blocks that made her think that, and in fact she was herself a powerful telekinetic in her own right. The antagonists figured out by studying her mother how to condense psychic energy into a gel like substance, which they then used for nefarious goals.
Over all, it was a head trip. Not really to my tastes, but part of the rotation a few friends of mine and I were watching as it came out...
- Location
- Michigan
Alternatively, Naruto pulls off the fake village for the next chunnin exam and pretends that a group of clones weren't actually him so that even Konoha thinks that there are actual Uzu remnants wandering around.
- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
Well, it would give another reason for the defensive whirlpool network to exist. For the first ever hosted chunin exam, Uzu switches the Whirlpools to high mode, revealing the hidden testing grounds normally reserved for their own shinobi exams. Testing includes traversing sections of high-speed river equivalents, navigating a water-filled cave network, and of course the new zombie avoidance hazards. And naturally, every obstacle requires the necessary form to be located for the exam archive and correctly filled out before an entrant can proceed to the test zone.
Let me have my dream dang it. I mean Obito is obviously going the way for us. If there's some he'll find them (Tongue in cheek)
- Location
- Scotland
I'd say he'd find them in the afterlife but knowing the Uzumaki they're such a PITA that both Heaven and Hell have washed their hands of the entire clan and just given the entire clan their own little space and asked them to pretty please not bother everyone else 
.
.
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
I'd say he'd find them in the afterlife but knowing the Uzumaki they're such a PITA that both Heaven and Hell have washed their hands of the entire clan and just given the entire clan their own little space and asked them to pretty please not bother everyone else
Or they are using what Naruto is doing to prepare a mass resurrection of Uzumakis to free themselves of them.
- Location
- none of your business
Okay, but would the sudden influx of Naruto's relatives on his mom's side be additive or multiplicative to the insanity? I mean, I've seen the latter term used for calculating Kurama and his siblings' power levels so......
The term you are looking for is "exponential". Yes, they are that bad.
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
Afterlife Bureucrats: We do not care, this way they will be Not Our Problem Anymore for some time!
...going to be honest, I see "Shadow Clones are Anti-Paperwork" as a direct extrapolation from canon.
They make a copy of you out of chakra that returns memories to you. The only reason to not use them for paperwork is if you can't convince yourself to actually do the paperwork to begin with!
Nah, Heaven and Hell obviously dump Uzumaki directly into reincarnation.I'd say he'd find them in the afterlife but knowing the Uzumaki they're such a PITA that both Heaven and Hell have washed their hands of the entire clan and just given the entire clan their own little space and asked them to pretty please not bother everyone else
They get split up a bit for safety reasons, but they end up being things such as Sparks...
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
They get split up a bit for safety reasons, but they end up being things such as Sparks...
So Agatha Heterodyne was an Uzumaki in a previous life? Why this does not surprise me?
And then the Uzumaki return to the afterlife on a regular basis, just to hang out.
- Location
- Michigan
And most of the time they aren't even dead, that they keep finding new ways to break in to the afterlife really annoys the ones that have to keep adding to the security procedures every time.And then the Uzumaki return to the afterlife on a regular basis, just to hang out.
- Location
- I am located here.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
If I could make a shadow clone to do paperwork, he and I would shout "not it!", to decide which one of us could avoid doing it.
I wonder if canon Naruto ever argue with his clones about who would do what. It seems like the type of thing he'd do, but whether I'm confusing canon with fanon, I'm not sure.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
If I could make a shadow clone to do paperwork, he and I would shout "not it!", to decide which one of us could avoid doing it.
I wonder if canon Naruto ever argue with his clones about who would do what. It seems like the type of thing he'd do, but whether I'm confusing canon with fanon, I'm not sure.
Considering in canon Naruto primarily uses shadow clones in combat or combat adjacent activities (such as doing the nature chakra gathering meditation), it took him having it pointed out by the toads (I think) before he ever noticed the memory transfer. I believe that in Boruto Naruto does use shadow clones to do paperwork since he's the hokage at that point in time. But before then, the only times he had ever used shadow clones was during life or death battles. And during those situations, why would they argue with Naruto? They know just as much of the situation as he does after all.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
IIRC, when he first learns it, he cleans his apartment with a small army.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
I don't recall that, but it might be a 'happened in one version and not another' thing, since the manga and anime do differ a bit in places, beyond the filler in the anime.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
It might also be attributing something commonly done in fanfiction to canon as well. While it's been a while, I don't recall Naruto using shadow clones for cleaning his apartment early on. Or him actually cleaning the apartment for that matter.
celdak
[Maniacal laughter]
- Location
- Behind you.
It happened before that, during elemental training that resulted in Rasenshuriken, and it was Kakashi who showed him that memory transfer happens.
Chapter 60 - Infiltrating Earth, Seal Mistakes
Despite near-insistence that 'Uzushiogakure' would be hosting chunin exams next summer, Naruto didn't immediately get assigned any missions relating to that. His first mission was actually to go help Hinata and Ino with an infiltration that they were having trouble with. That turned out to be infiltrating the Earth Daimyo's palace and figuring out what the hell the man was thinking. Apparently the Tsuchikage reported that his Daimyo wanted the called-off invasions to happen anyway, at least against specific targets.
The others in the 'big five' weren't on the Daimyo's list, technically, but countries allied with them were and that would essentially spark war as it was. None directly allied with Konoha or the Land of Fire though, which the analysts felt was a move on the Earth Daimyo's part to 'keep Uzushio out of the equation' on the assumption that only threats to Konoha and the Land of Fire were likely to rile them up. Extending from that, no other member of the 'big five' could stand up to the Tsuchikage and thus they were guaranteed victory.
But that was all educated guesses and didn't include any motivation beyond 'warmongering for the sake of warmongering'. Hinata and Ino had been sent to try and find out what the actual underlying motives were and hadn't been having much luck. The situation was also bad enough that the Tsuchikage had asked Konoha to 'talk sense into his Daimyo' and the Fire Daimyo wasn't having any luck either.
Naruto suspected that this was going to end up with another 'Uzu appearance'.
Heading out to the Land of Earth was easy enough as he could just jump to one of the bunkers near Iwagakure and continue from there. Reaching the capital didn't take long, and he easily found the small bunker that Hinata and Ino had constructed as their base of operations. Neither was there when he found it, and instead of going looking for them he just expanded it into a proper bunker. That didn't take long, and on a lark he had his clones start tunneling under the capital.
Orochimaru looked over the seal array he'd painstakingly assembled over the past two weeks. All of this had started with one of his men spotting Uzushiogakure Anbu entering a hidden bunker, only to be unable to enter the bunker themselves afterwards. He'd gone out in person, located the bunker but not any of the entrances, and had decided to take advantage of a nearby Konoha jounin bunker for the night as a more secure option than camping outside.
He'd not expected said bunker to have been completely rebuilt, nor to have to spend time figuring out how to get in. Once he did, he was astounded, and 'figure out the Uzushio bunker' had turned into 'figure out the Konoha bunker he could actually get into'. A complete, and secure, bathroom, air quality maintained automatically, sleeping areas with basic soundproofing, and an integrated hot spring were all far beyond what he'd been expecting to find.
Very carefully examining the bunker had netted books full of notes, and he'd started with the seals he could get a basic grasp on first. That had ended up being the seals providing clean water for the bathroom and sink, which seemed to be based on a far older style of seals that he had studied extensively. The additional elements to control temperature were actually harder due to being a mixture of styles, but he'd gotten his own working seal-based shower out of it.
The air care seals had followed, mostly because of...problems with the diets of a few of his people cropping up. They'd been dealt with, but it made him want better options for underground bases. Those seals had been tricky to figure out at first, but he eventually figured out where the tuning points were and duplicated them exactly otherwise. Even better, they were still simple enough that he could have a couple of particularly gifted individuals in his forces duplicate them exactly into other bases.
But the seal master who came up with this array had gone above and beyond, creating a thing of beauty that was also nearly impossible to decipher. Definitely an Uzumaki creation, and eventually he'd determined that the only way he was going to be able to duplicate it was to do so exactly. That had required revisiting the bunker several times to double-check things, made harder by not being able to turn the seal off to better examine it, but he was almost positive that he'd gotten it right.
...seventy or so percent, at least.
Once he was as sure as he could be that everything was correct he made a shadow clone and headed for the nearby observation bunker. Settling in there, he waited for his clone to activate the seal and observe what happened. Mud clones were better in combat for a number of reasons, but this kind of 'do something incredibly dangerous' activity was one of the places that shadow clones shined.
He could do without the waiting.
An hour later his clone dispelled, and he reviewed what it had observed before crawling out of the observation bunker and carefully approaching the main one. Entering it, there was no sign of things having gone horribly wrong, and that continued as he approached the chamber he'd built the seal in. Finally he made it to the room and looked over the results.
"I'm going to need to make more of these," he mused as he checked the water. "And not fully understanding how it works is going to drive me nuts, but having access to private hot springs in the bases and bunkers I use most frequently is going to be a nice consolation prize."
"So you think the reasoning was determined before you showed up and nobody sees fit to mention it now," Naruto said, frowning. "That's...annoying."
"Very much so," Ino agreed. "It doesn't seem to be written down anywhere either."
"There are some disagreements over food prices with neighboring lands," Hinata added. "But the worst of those aren't on the list of countries to target. Nor are the lands not buying minerals. Our best guess is that the Daimyo just has disagreements with the leaders of the other countries and figures that taking them over is the easy solution, but also knows that his samurai aren't up to the task of handling the shinobi allies that would come to the aid of the defenders."
Naruto frowned. "So...warmongering out of likely-petty disagreements?"
"...yes?"
"That's annoying and isn't much better than what the analysts back in Konoha had come up with."
Hinata shrugged. "If you want to go through the archives here yourself then you can feel free. It's always possible that you'll spot something we missed, and I'm nowhere near as practiced at your 'copy everything while quickly glancing through it' trick."
"But you should probably look over our notes on their guard rotations," Ino added. "They've got a couple of weird things they do overnight in particular."
Naruto nodded, then pulled out a couple of books. "While I'm taking a look, I'm curious what you two think of this."
"...what is it?" Hinata asked, taking a copy.
"My attempt at simplifying the Hiraishin instructions. I dropped a copy off with Tenten too, since she's reasonably good with space-time seals, but Odoroki claims that it's still incomprehensible and Miho gave up halfway through due to being better with the 'physical world' instead of the 'conceptual world'. Not that I understand how she manages things like making the space between two buildings all but vanish without displacing it somewhere...but yeah. I don't think either of you are going to understand even these because I suspect you need particular ways of looking at the world to get it down, but I'm curious enough to see what you think."
"Is this going to give me a headache?" Ino asked.
"...probably, but it doesn't even include the advanced stuff."
"There's advanced stuff?"
"Well, a couple hours ago one of my clones figured out how to use our awareness bubble to concentrate enough chakra in points nearby to jump to. It's a bit too slow to use in combat unless you have a clone doing the chakra concentrating for you though, and it's honestly easier to just target the clones if you've seeded the area with them anyway. Or kunai, of course. I've got clones working on batches for Yoko and I."
"And training with three-bladed kunai is in your future," Hinata said with a sigh.
"...I've done some of that already, but I don't think it fits my fighting style. The three-bladed kunai were used by my father before he perfected the Hiraishin in the first place as a way of bridging 'kunai' and 'sword'. I carry actual swords and they're honestly better for countering sword users."
Four days of basically re-doing everything Hinata and Ino had already done had told Naruto more than it had told them, but only because he'd gotten lucky and the Earth Daimyo had accessed a hidden set of shelves with a clever privacy seal while one of Naruto's clones had been in the room. Those privacy seals hid the entire thing from those watching from outside, which is likely how Hinata in particular was observing things. As such, he'd been able to access the hidden shelves and the journals stored on them, though he'd been disappointed to find out that he already had information on the seals involved as they were Uzumaki in origin.
"You think that the Earth Daimyo is pissed off because he no longer gets the first pick of his favorite alcohol?" Inoichi said, looking between the written report and Naruto.
"That seems to be one of the most likely original causes," Naruto agreed. "There are others of course, but his personal journals have two years of plans to 'correct the injustice'. One of his favorite snack foods no longer being available as of last year seems to have made things worse, but there he's unsure if the bandits that killed off the family producing it were hired to do so specifically to spite him or not. Even after hiring Iwa to hunt said bandits down and bring back any evidence either way."
"I think we were hired by a couple of groups ourselves and determined that it was mistaken identity," Shisui commented.
"And Iwa's records agreed with that assessment. But after the Tsuchikage told him 'no' he seems to have decided to double-down on things. To him, the shinobi in his country are supposed to be under his ultimate command and subject to his treaties, agreements, and dictates above their own. This is decidedly different from how the Land of Fire has structured things, but as I understand it we're the exception to the general rule. Now it's less about his original goals and more about forcing the Tsuchikage to bend to his will."
"The Land of Earth is actually the most restrictive," Shikaku said. "Iwagakure does not enter into direct treaties without their Daimyo's approval. The Land of Fire shares power in a mostly-unique relationship, with everyone else tending to lean more towards financial controls instead. At the same time, the Earth Daimyos have usually been much more willing to work with Iwa and trust their military judgment. This indicates a bit of a falling out of that relationship, possibly due to understanding just how much no longer having tailed beasts has changed things."
"And if this has become a matter of pride then it won't be easily resolved," Hiashi added, frowning. "There are...very few things we can even consider doing to influence the situation. This isn't threatening us, or any of our allies. Short of convincing the targeted nations to ally with us, which would come out of the blue and be a blatant move against the Land of Earth. I can't see any reason why Uzushio would step in as they've never been 'protectors of the peace' in a general sense and we'd need to step up constant surveillance of the continent to impossible to maintain levels to portray them as such."
"Not without the Tsuchikage asking us to reach out to arrange a demonstration," Shisui said, sighing. "I'll pass what we now know onto him and our Daimyo, in case they can come up with something, but otherwise I think there's not much left for us to do."
It was mildly annoying to pull out of the Land of Earth without actually resolving anything, but it was true that there was only so much they could reasonably do.
Nagato carefully approached the location that Uzushiogakure Anbu had been seen at, and double-checked the map he had for the indicators for where they'd vanished into the ground. It was possible that they knew they'd been spotted and had already removed all traces of their existence, but they might have also decided that it wasn't important because their security was good enough to keep others out. He highly doubted that the oaf who had spotted them hadn't been seen, but also couldn't disregard the group as having been distracted by other matters.
He'd already sent a Path out, only to find nothing, but had decided that when dealing with Uzumaki it made sense to send an Uzumaki. He didn't carry the name, but he did descend from them. As such, it was possible that he'd be able to gain entrance, so he'd made the effort of personally traveling to the location. Coming to the correct point, he carefully reached out with his chakra...and felt a latch. Carefully triggering it, he was ready for a trap...only for a cleverly-hidden hatch to open.
Descending into the bunker revealed what amounted to a full apartment with multiple bedrooms and a small hot spring...plus a room with a stone embedded in the floor in one spot and a stone on the wall in another. The one embedded in the floor was ringed by a repeating script, 'Arrival - Do Not Stand'...and the one on the wall had a small sign reading 'Departure to Whirlpools - Tower 9'.
...Uzushiogakure appeared to have teleport seals, which would help explain why tracking them was so difficult. There might be a range limit, which could explain why they still traveled by ship every so often, or this might be something new they'd only started deploying recently. Coupled with this hidden bunker obviously being one of many and they could likely appear and vanish from who knew how many places around the continent without being seen traveling.
He almost tried to trigger the seal in the stone on the wall, but felt that was even more dangerous than just entering the hidden bunker. Defenses at the other end would be much harder to dodge when arriving and there was a chance that this didn't actually go where he thought it did. If he ended up out of range of being able to control the Animal Path to summon him...
Better to leave this for now and consider how to use this information.
...and maybe check out the hot spring in more detail before he headed back.
"So what do you three think?" Naruto asked, having managed to get Hinata, Ino, and Tenten together to talk about his Hiraishin book a few days after officially returning from the Land of Earth. Most of that had, of course, been arranging for Tenten to have time to join them.
"I think just the seals are a work of art beyond most mortal comprehension," Tenten replied, tossing the book to him. "Sadly, I'm in the 'most mortals' category here. The other portion of things is worse."
"I couldn't even begin to parse the seals," Hinata said, shaking her head as she passed the copy he'd given her back to him. "And needing to form your chakra into a four-dimensional toroid that you then turn inside out halfway through the process feels impossible."
Naruto nodded. "That part is tricky, and I think that's the easiest to understand and picture of the four ways I know of to describe it.
Ino blushed. "I got fed up and burned the demon book when my headache got too bad."
"These copies were made to burn reasonably safely in case of something like that after Odoroki had a similar reaction."
"So how well can you use it?" Tenten asked.
"You'd think that the sudden shifts in location would be a problem, but when you trigger things for yourself it's weird. What happens in an instant from the outside seems to take several seconds, giving plenty of time to shift stances and prepare for your next move. But then if I have one clone send another to a specific location then the one being sent doesn't experience that, regardless if the clone triggering things goes along for the trip. To be most effective you have to use that time both to prepare for your arrival point and connect to your next destination, but the extra few seconds of perception prevents it from being too jarring."
Not mentioned was that it was a lot more difficult to use effectively if you didn't have endpoints that provided an image of their surroundings to you. Tobirama's original seal without that likely limited his effectiveness significantly, which might be part of why he wasn't known for using it against larger numbers of opponents. He'd need to determine what he was going to be doing before triggering the transit, which admittedly made his use more impressive in the skill it showed.
They ended up going to a training ground so that Naruto could demonstrate against a group of zombies. He threw a few of his new kunai into the group, removed a tanto from his armband, and then flashed between the kunai repeatedly to deliver strikes to the zombies. This felt like several minutes of combat to him, but he knew that it was at most a few seconds in reality. When he was done he stored the tanto before flashing to each kunai to retrieve it and then appear next to Hinata.
All three girls took a few seconds to recover, but Hinata frowned as she turned to him. "Naruto, you appeared in more locations than you threw kunai to."
He snorted. "With the right anchoring it's trivial to appear anywhere within a short distance of the seal. I think the original version would let you do that as well, just with a lot less precision. For some reason it works even better if you ring the target area with seals, the gap in the middle filling in reasonably well if the circle is no larger than three times the radius on the individual anchor seals."
"Where are the seals?" Tenten asked, gesturing to the last kunai that he was still holding. "I've seen one of your father's kunai and it had a special handle."
"I used a method the toads taught me to embed the seal inside of the metal, and kneaded in explosion release chakra while I was at it so they can all be primed to explode. With metal that tends to result in shrapnel, but I don't see that as a problem."
"...how long have you been able to make exploding metal kunai?"
"With or without the hardening process causing them to explode? Because that only stopped happening about three months ago."
Hinata looked between him and Tenten. "I think you need to make some for her before she has a meltdown."
"If her sensei hasn't handed over the seal tag full of exploding kunai and shuriken then she probably isn't ready for them."
Tenten looked betrayed, but also slumped in defeat. He was at least nice enough to wait until she'd left to give Hinata and Ino their sets.
It didn't come as too much of a surprise when the Land of Earth did end up attacking one of the countries on the Daimyo's list, but the Tsuchikage was reportedly 'too busy with paperwork' to directly participate in the fighting. This made the entire affair far more costly for the Daimyo than it might've been otherwise, and as far as Konoha could tell both sides of things were essentially playing it up instead of truly fighting seriously. Treating it as a giant visibility exercise instead of an actual war, with just enough actual fighting to make it look good to the Daimyo.
Naruto didn't get to see much of this himself, as he was busy running around doing prepwork for a potential chunin exam that might not happen. Luckily, most of said prepwork served other purposes, such as getting points for airships to land constructed. Those were mostly being constructed as towers just outside of larger towns, such that an airship could land on top of the tower instead of one on each side of the tower like could be done in Uzushio. He also got tapped to help implement and improve the first passenger airship design, mostly by using wood release and reinforcement seals to make the whole thing stronger and lighter than it might have otherwise been.
They only built space for five of the new ones, plus the original three that were still being used for aerial border patrols, but once the first few towers were built there was rarely more than one of the passenger models still in Konoha during the day. Other nations were also interested in the things but were finding it difficult to convince Konoha to make any to sell them. The Land of Snow had reportedly said that they couldn't build them anymore as well, apparently due to the scientists that had built the original ones not knowing how Doto had finished the process to make the final product viable.
The toads and foxes were also helping Naruto identify locations for more Uzushio bunkers, spreading the network from the Land of Fire in basically all directions. That was most difficult with the Land of Water, admittedly, but once the first couple were in place the island-hopping was reasonably simple.
Yoko cradled Tora as she walked along, knowing that Madam Shijimi had already requested that the cat be fetched a couple days ago. No team had taken the mission yet though, those best at it not currently in the village, but that was okay. This was a...different route to getting the woman to treat the poor cat properly, not the one they'd anticipated, but it had the potential to work better than the original plan. Besides, they'd not been able to find a kitten willing to risk the original plan.
"Good afternoon," Iruka greeted upon seeing Yoko. "...and I didn't think you were taking D-Rank missions."
"I'm not," Yoko replied. "But I do need to have a chat with Madam Shijimi about Tora here."
"...most genin teams turn the cat over and vanish, but she does usually ask to be able to thank them for bringing Tora back."
Ten minutes later Madam Shijimi entered the room that Yoko had sat in to wait, immediately moving to grab Tora. What she obviously hadn't expected was to suddenly find chains blocking her path.
"How dare you!" Madam Shijimi yelled.
Yoko glared at the woman, who suddenly backed away and gulped. "I dare because I won't see your exuberance cause harm. You will listen to me very carefully, and promise to treat Tora far more gently, or I promise that I will take Tora back to the Uzumaki compound for the next few months."
The woman gulped, but as the declaration seeped in seemed to draw upon a reserve of anger to push through the fear Yoko was inspiring. "You have no right to deny me my precious Tora for months!"
"I have every right to ensure that Tora does not lose her litter because you're unwilling to treat your pets with the care they deserve. No shinobi of this village will dare remove her from my care if I deem it necessary, and very few even have access to the Uzumaki compound to attempt it."
Twenty minutes later Yoko had a new reputation as Madam Shijimi had called for a basket to carry Tora in instead of carrying the cat herself. Nobody asked what had been said or done to accomplish this impossible change in attitude though. Genin probably could've been made to start sweating nervously and put more focus on their training to hopefully reach chunin before Tora's kittens needed to be hunted down though.
"...this was supposed to be a reasonably safe area until the zombie seals were turned on," Naruto said, looking over the 'training ground' he'd set up near the rebuilt Uzu. A little larger than training ground forty-four in Konoha, with its own central tower. Instead of a fence it had a wall, with smaller towers every so often around it, and putting in a 'river' had required creating one with water-summoning seals higher on the mountain.
When he'd first finished building it, and the network of tunnels under it, the area had been reasonably safe. But apparently that 'detection array' he'd copied from training ground forty-four was a lot more than just that, because over two weeks everything inside of the walls had grown noticeably larger and seemingly more dangerous. Supercharging the array by connecting it to a massive chakra storage array for powering the zombies probably sped things up as well. The most likely cause was the 'connecting to the plants, animals, and insects in the field' effect to use them as part of the detection effect...though this did help explain how it simultaneously skipped those with significant chakra yet had no problems with the plants and wildlife back in Konoha.
Using clones to examine things underground led to grimacing, because he was fairly certain that he'd have to disable the collection arrays and drain the giant storage array to even attempt to correct things...and that might not be enough. There was backfeed of some kind, as though the supercharged life in the affected area was generating more chakra than it was being fed and pushing it back through. Which nicely explained how the original version was powered with its much smaller storage capacity, and he was almost positive that feedback loop was what was causing the changes. Now that he'd spotted it he could even see where the problem in the original seal's design was.
He was able to tweak the effect radius though, to shrink it a bit and hopefully keep the insane growth away from the walls. Tapping into the chakra storage for other purposes was also a definite item on his list, beyond having already done so for the central tower. Maybe build a series of lesser training grounds around this one and tap into the existing storage for zombie seals and other items? Oh, and there was that chakra-hungry array for helping food crops grow that he'd not implemented, but setting up a connecting tunnel to power the farming areas might not be a horrible idea.
As for the training area itself, he'd need to document what had gone wrong and he probably needed warning signs. Possibly give the place a proper name...and add more barriers to keep the wildlife from escaping. Maybe a fence outside of the wall in case any of the trees got 'attack people walking by' tricks? And by the time the potential exams happened the place would probably be properly deadly even without the zombies turned on.
Anko had been convinced to take a look at the 'rebuilt Uzushiogakure' to provide her evaluation of its suitability for hosting chunin exams and was honestly quite impressed with the village itself. Plenty of housing and hotel spaces, lots of places you could set up shops in, a very nice exam stadium, incredibly intimidating defenses. She'd even tried summoning and found that she couldn't, meaning that he'd put up proper protections there as well. But there was also a distinct lack of training grounds within the village itself. Some of that was offset by underground training areas, except that Naruto had claimed those wouldn't be open to visiting teams.
"So you put all the above-ground training grounds outside of the main village?" she said as he led her out one of the gates to head deeper into the island. The towers outside of the main walls were interesting, too far out to be easily used as an additional defensive position and not looking designed for it. But she wasn't sure what they'd be for otherwise.
"Originally I didn't have above-ground training areas at all," he admitted. "Might convert a couple of the farms inside the walls to training areas, but the original plan was that the area right outside of the walls could be used. Then I was essentially told that I should build a large area and fill it with zombies for an elimination round and...accidentally went a bit further than needed."
"...further than needed?"
"You'll see, but I've since started expanding on the whole area."
The first thing she saw was the top of another large tower in the middle of a forest. Likely the area he'd built. Surrounding it at a distance was a fortress-like wall, and surrounding the wall were more normal-looking training areas. There were signs that he was building a smaller wall around those, and farms and buildings around that wall? And then maybe another larger wall that was just barely marked out. "Are you building a mini-village?"
"Not a full one. Farming and training area, mainly, and the farming is so that I can easily bleed chakra out of the central training area. Some medical facilities and places to sleep if you don't want to travel all the way back to the main village, or plan on sticking team leaders in them during exams."
"Why would you need to bleed chakra out?"
"Because I overbuilt it to a ludicrous degree thanks to not understanding a mistake made in a seal I duplicated."
Now she was curious about what kind of mistake would lead to that, thinking about it as they moved past clones doing construction that was honestly far more solid than most shinobi could manage. There were a couple of Anbu that came close though, and she knew that other villages had their own examples of similar talents. Just rarely combined with 'can make enough clones to spam it' chakra levels. And 'all the elemental bloodlines' allowing them to produce more varied materials on demand.
She'd not noticed that there was a fence around the inner wall until they got close, and it had familiar-looking warning signs on it. The wording was different, but signs on the wall itself matched. Come to think of it, the area beyond the wall felt similar too. "How in the world did you make another Forest of Death?"
"By not realizing that I was copying someone else's mistake," Naruto answered. "Though I didn't expect you to figure it out before seeing inside."
"This has the same comforting feeling of the original."
"You know, there are amazingly few people who would see this kind of place as 'comforting'."
"Says one of the few people who can take a casual stroll through without being attacked by anything."
"Not sure why the animals in this one leave me alone. Konoha's has the 'scared them' excuse, but I suppose it could be that my chakra was used to charge things originally. A few days ago they were willing to attack Hinata when she wasn't with me."
If Anko was being honest, the 'quick tour' of the facilities had her jealous. The central tower was even better than the rebuilt one in Konoha, the obstacles he'd built into this one were more varied, and she could feel that in a few months the wildlife was likely going to be a little more dangerous than Konoha's even before you added in active zombies.
"You set up anti-summoning seals here too?" she asked after attempting to summon a snake to get its opinion.
"...I've torn down and rebuilt the entire array set five times now. The latest version covers the entire island and a good portion of the sea around it with varying permission sets. They should also cover more than summoning, but I can't reliably test that. Unlike the system in Konoha, a barrier trick prevents unauthorized chakra from reaching in to summon something as well unless the target item or person is in an exclusion zone too, but I had to take down all the defenses for three days to manage that. That was part of what I was testing with Hinata earlier, she can't summon me or her clones that are here with the full protections up unless her key-in is active but with it active can summon in both directions without issue. That also prevents you from summoning yourself to contract-linked stones if you're not on the approved list, but I wasn't able to stop the Hiraishin from getting through. Other space-time techniques are thus going to be a bit of a crapshoot."
She frowned at that, before looking out to where his clones were working on an outer wall. "You're not building the wall around this little 'outpost' to keep people out, are you?"
He grinned. "Not really, no. There are only going to be two full exclusion zones when I'm done, with the exam stadium being an unfortunate required one. Should've built that out here too, but it really wouldn't work as well with visiting civilians if I had. Otherwise you're going to have to be on at least one of the permitted lists. Of course, in addition to keeping unexpected summoned problems inside, it'll also serve as added protection in case the forest gets a little too dangerous. The plants and animals are speeding along towards being more and more deadly."
The others in the 'big five' weren't on the Daimyo's list, technically, but countries allied with them were and that would essentially spark war as it was. None directly allied with Konoha or the Land of Fire though, which the analysts felt was a move on the Earth Daimyo's part to 'keep Uzushio out of the equation' on the assumption that only threats to Konoha and the Land of Fire were likely to rile them up. Extending from that, no other member of the 'big five' could stand up to the Tsuchikage and thus they were guaranteed victory.
But that was all educated guesses and didn't include any motivation beyond 'warmongering for the sake of warmongering'. Hinata and Ino had been sent to try and find out what the actual underlying motives were and hadn't been having much luck. The situation was also bad enough that the Tsuchikage had asked Konoha to 'talk sense into his Daimyo' and the Fire Daimyo wasn't having any luck either.
Naruto suspected that this was going to end up with another 'Uzu appearance'.
Heading out to the Land of Earth was easy enough as he could just jump to one of the bunkers near Iwagakure and continue from there. Reaching the capital didn't take long, and he easily found the small bunker that Hinata and Ino had constructed as their base of operations. Neither was there when he found it, and instead of going looking for them he just expanded it into a proper bunker. That didn't take long, and on a lark he had his clones start tunneling under the capital.
Orochimaru looked over the seal array he'd painstakingly assembled over the past two weeks. All of this had started with one of his men spotting Uzushiogakure Anbu entering a hidden bunker, only to be unable to enter the bunker themselves afterwards. He'd gone out in person, located the bunker but not any of the entrances, and had decided to take advantage of a nearby Konoha jounin bunker for the night as a more secure option than camping outside.
He'd not expected said bunker to have been completely rebuilt, nor to have to spend time figuring out how to get in. Once he did, he was astounded, and 'figure out the Uzushio bunker' had turned into 'figure out the Konoha bunker he could actually get into'. A complete, and secure, bathroom, air quality maintained automatically, sleeping areas with basic soundproofing, and an integrated hot spring were all far beyond what he'd been expecting to find.
Very carefully examining the bunker had netted books full of notes, and he'd started with the seals he could get a basic grasp on first. That had ended up being the seals providing clean water for the bathroom and sink, which seemed to be based on a far older style of seals that he had studied extensively. The additional elements to control temperature were actually harder due to being a mixture of styles, but he'd gotten his own working seal-based shower out of it.
The air care seals had followed, mostly because of...problems with the diets of a few of his people cropping up. They'd been dealt with, but it made him want better options for underground bases. Those seals had been tricky to figure out at first, but he eventually figured out where the tuning points were and duplicated them exactly otherwise. Even better, they were still simple enough that he could have a couple of particularly gifted individuals in his forces duplicate them exactly into other bases.
But the seal master who came up with this array had gone above and beyond, creating a thing of beauty that was also nearly impossible to decipher. Definitely an Uzumaki creation, and eventually he'd determined that the only way he was going to be able to duplicate it was to do so exactly. That had required revisiting the bunker several times to double-check things, made harder by not being able to turn the seal off to better examine it, but he was almost positive that he'd gotten it right.
...seventy or so percent, at least.
Once he was as sure as he could be that everything was correct he made a shadow clone and headed for the nearby observation bunker. Settling in there, he waited for his clone to activate the seal and observe what happened. Mud clones were better in combat for a number of reasons, but this kind of 'do something incredibly dangerous' activity was one of the places that shadow clones shined.
He could do without the waiting.
An hour later his clone dispelled, and he reviewed what it had observed before crawling out of the observation bunker and carefully approaching the main one. Entering it, there was no sign of things having gone horribly wrong, and that continued as he approached the chamber he'd built the seal in. Finally he made it to the room and looked over the results.
"I'm going to need to make more of these," he mused as he checked the water. "And not fully understanding how it works is going to drive me nuts, but having access to private hot springs in the bases and bunkers I use most frequently is going to be a nice consolation prize."
"So you think the reasoning was determined before you showed up and nobody sees fit to mention it now," Naruto said, frowning. "That's...annoying."
"Very much so," Ino agreed. "It doesn't seem to be written down anywhere either."
"There are some disagreements over food prices with neighboring lands," Hinata added. "But the worst of those aren't on the list of countries to target. Nor are the lands not buying minerals. Our best guess is that the Daimyo just has disagreements with the leaders of the other countries and figures that taking them over is the easy solution, but also knows that his samurai aren't up to the task of handling the shinobi allies that would come to the aid of the defenders."
Naruto frowned. "So...warmongering out of likely-petty disagreements?"
"...yes?"
"That's annoying and isn't much better than what the analysts back in Konoha had come up with."
Hinata shrugged. "If you want to go through the archives here yourself then you can feel free. It's always possible that you'll spot something we missed, and I'm nowhere near as practiced at your 'copy everything while quickly glancing through it' trick."
"But you should probably look over our notes on their guard rotations," Ino added. "They've got a couple of weird things they do overnight in particular."
Naruto nodded, then pulled out a couple of books. "While I'm taking a look, I'm curious what you two think of this."
"...what is it?" Hinata asked, taking a copy.
"My attempt at simplifying the Hiraishin instructions. I dropped a copy off with Tenten too, since she's reasonably good with space-time seals, but Odoroki claims that it's still incomprehensible and Miho gave up halfway through due to being better with the 'physical world' instead of the 'conceptual world'. Not that I understand how she manages things like making the space between two buildings all but vanish without displacing it somewhere...but yeah. I don't think either of you are going to understand even these because I suspect you need particular ways of looking at the world to get it down, but I'm curious enough to see what you think."
"Is this going to give me a headache?" Ino asked.
"...probably, but it doesn't even include the advanced stuff."
"There's advanced stuff?"
"Well, a couple hours ago one of my clones figured out how to use our awareness bubble to concentrate enough chakra in points nearby to jump to. It's a bit too slow to use in combat unless you have a clone doing the chakra concentrating for you though, and it's honestly easier to just target the clones if you've seeded the area with them anyway. Or kunai, of course. I've got clones working on batches for Yoko and I."
"And training with three-bladed kunai is in your future," Hinata said with a sigh.
"...I've done some of that already, but I don't think it fits my fighting style. The three-bladed kunai were used by my father before he perfected the Hiraishin in the first place as a way of bridging 'kunai' and 'sword'. I carry actual swords and they're honestly better for countering sword users."
Four days of basically re-doing everything Hinata and Ino had already done had told Naruto more than it had told them, but only because he'd gotten lucky and the Earth Daimyo had accessed a hidden set of shelves with a clever privacy seal while one of Naruto's clones had been in the room. Those privacy seals hid the entire thing from those watching from outside, which is likely how Hinata in particular was observing things. As such, he'd been able to access the hidden shelves and the journals stored on them, though he'd been disappointed to find out that he already had information on the seals involved as they were Uzumaki in origin.
"You think that the Earth Daimyo is pissed off because he no longer gets the first pick of his favorite alcohol?" Inoichi said, looking between the written report and Naruto.
"That seems to be one of the most likely original causes," Naruto agreed. "There are others of course, but his personal journals have two years of plans to 'correct the injustice'. One of his favorite snack foods no longer being available as of last year seems to have made things worse, but there he's unsure if the bandits that killed off the family producing it were hired to do so specifically to spite him or not. Even after hiring Iwa to hunt said bandits down and bring back any evidence either way."
"I think we were hired by a couple of groups ourselves and determined that it was mistaken identity," Shisui commented.
"And Iwa's records agreed with that assessment. But after the Tsuchikage told him 'no' he seems to have decided to double-down on things. To him, the shinobi in his country are supposed to be under his ultimate command and subject to his treaties, agreements, and dictates above their own. This is decidedly different from how the Land of Fire has structured things, but as I understand it we're the exception to the general rule. Now it's less about his original goals and more about forcing the Tsuchikage to bend to his will."
"The Land of Earth is actually the most restrictive," Shikaku said. "Iwagakure does not enter into direct treaties without their Daimyo's approval. The Land of Fire shares power in a mostly-unique relationship, with everyone else tending to lean more towards financial controls instead. At the same time, the Earth Daimyos have usually been much more willing to work with Iwa and trust their military judgment. This indicates a bit of a falling out of that relationship, possibly due to understanding just how much no longer having tailed beasts has changed things."
"And if this has become a matter of pride then it won't be easily resolved," Hiashi added, frowning. "There are...very few things we can even consider doing to influence the situation. This isn't threatening us, or any of our allies. Short of convincing the targeted nations to ally with us, which would come out of the blue and be a blatant move against the Land of Earth. I can't see any reason why Uzushio would step in as they've never been 'protectors of the peace' in a general sense and we'd need to step up constant surveillance of the continent to impossible to maintain levels to portray them as such."
"Not without the Tsuchikage asking us to reach out to arrange a demonstration," Shisui said, sighing. "I'll pass what we now know onto him and our Daimyo, in case they can come up with something, but otherwise I think there's not much left for us to do."
It was mildly annoying to pull out of the Land of Earth without actually resolving anything, but it was true that there was only so much they could reasonably do.
Nagato carefully approached the location that Uzushiogakure Anbu had been seen at, and double-checked the map he had for the indicators for where they'd vanished into the ground. It was possible that they knew they'd been spotted and had already removed all traces of their existence, but they might have also decided that it wasn't important because their security was good enough to keep others out. He highly doubted that the oaf who had spotted them hadn't been seen, but also couldn't disregard the group as having been distracted by other matters.
He'd already sent a Path out, only to find nothing, but had decided that when dealing with Uzumaki it made sense to send an Uzumaki. He didn't carry the name, but he did descend from them. As such, it was possible that he'd be able to gain entrance, so he'd made the effort of personally traveling to the location. Coming to the correct point, he carefully reached out with his chakra...and felt a latch. Carefully triggering it, he was ready for a trap...only for a cleverly-hidden hatch to open.
Descending into the bunker revealed what amounted to a full apartment with multiple bedrooms and a small hot spring...plus a room with a stone embedded in the floor in one spot and a stone on the wall in another. The one embedded in the floor was ringed by a repeating script, 'Arrival - Do Not Stand'...and the one on the wall had a small sign reading 'Departure to Whirlpools - Tower 9'.
...Uzushiogakure appeared to have teleport seals, which would help explain why tracking them was so difficult. There might be a range limit, which could explain why they still traveled by ship every so often, or this might be something new they'd only started deploying recently. Coupled with this hidden bunker obviously being one of many and they could likely appear and vanish from who knew how many places around the continent without being seen traveling.
He almost tried to trigger the seal in the stone on the wall, but felt that was even more dangerous than just entering the hidden bunker. Defenses at the other end would be much harder to dodge when arriving and there was a chance that this didn't actually go where he thought it did. If he ended up out of range of being able to control the Animal Path to summon him...
Better to leave this for now and consider how to use this information.
...and maybe check out the hot spring in more detail before he headed back.
"So what do you three think?" Naruto asked, having managed to get Hinata, Ino, and Tenten together to talk about his Hiraishin book a few days after officially returning from the Land of Earth. Most of that had, of course, been arranging for Tenten to have time to join them.
"I think just the seals are a work of art beyond most mortal comprehension," Tenten replied, tossing the book to him. "Sadly, I'm in the 'most mortals' category here. The other portion of things is worse."
"I couldn't even begin to parse the seals," Hinata said, shaking her head as she passed the copy he'd given her back to him. "And needing to form your chakra into a four-dimensional toroid that you then turn inside out halfway through the process feels impossible."
Naruto nodded. "That part is tricky, and I think that's the easiest to understand and picture of the four ways I know of to describe it.
Ino blushed. "I got fed up and burned the demon book when my headache got too bad."
"These copies were made to burn reasonably safely in case of something like that after Odoroki had a similar reaction."
"So how well can you use it?" Tenten asked.
"You'd think that the sudden shifts in location would be a problem, but when you trigger things for yourself it's weird. What happens in an instant from the outside seems to take several seconds, giving plenty of time to shift stances and prepare for your next move. But then if I have one clone send another to a specific location then the one being sent doesn't experience that, regardless if the clone triggering things goes along for the trip. To be most effective you have to use that time both to prepare for your arrival point and connect to your next destination, but the extra few seconds of perception prevents it from being too jarring."
Not mentioned was that it was a lot more difficult to use effectively if you didn't have endpoints that provided an image of their surroundings to you. Tobirama's original seal without that likely limited his effectiveness significantly, which might be part of why he wasn't known for using it against larger numbers of opponents. He'd need to determine what he was going to be doing before triggering the transit, which admittedly made his use more impressive in the skill it showed.
They ended up going to a training ground so that Naruto could demonstrate against a group of zombies. He threw a few of his new kunai into the group, removed a tanto from his armband, and then flashed between the kunai repeatedly to deliver strikes to the zombies. This felt like several minutes of combat to him, but he knew that it was at most a few seconds in reality. When he was done he stored the tanto before flashing to each kunai to retrieve it and then appear next to Hinata.
All three girls took a few seconds to recover, but Hinata frowned as she turned to him. "Naruto, you appeared in more locations than you threw kunai to."
He snorted. "With the right anchoring it's trivial to appear anywhere within a short distance of the seal. I think the original version would let you do that as well, just with a lot less precision. For some reason it works even better if you ring the target area with seals, the gap in the middle filling in reasonably well if the circle is no larger than three times the radius on the individual anchor seals."
"Where are the seals?" Tenten asked, gesturing to the last kunai that he was still holding. "I've seen one of your father's kunai and it had a special handle."
"I used a method the toads taught me to embed the seal inside of the metal, and kneaded in explosion release chakra while I was at it so they can all be primed to explode. With metal that tends to result in shrapnel, but I don't see that as a problem."
"...how long have you been able to make exploding metal kunai?"
"With or without the hardening process causing them to explode? Because that only stopped happening about three months ago."
Hinata looked between him and Tenten. "I think you need to make some for her before she has a meltdown."
"If her sensei hasn't handed over the seal tag full of exploding kunai and shuriken then she probably isn't ready for them."
Tenten looked betrayed, but also slumped in defeat. He was at least nice enough to wait until she'd left to give Hinata and Ino their sets.
It didn't come as too much of a surprise when the Land of Earth did end up attacking one of the countries on the Daimyo's list, but the Tsuchikage was reportedly 'too busy with paperwork' to directly participate in the fighting. This made the entire affair far more costly for the Daimyo than it might've been otherwise, and as far as Konoha could tell both sides of things were essentially playing it up instead of truly fighting seriously. Treating it as a giant visibility exercise instead of an actual war, with just enough actual fighting to make it look good to the Daimyo.
Naruto didn't get to see much of this himself, as he was busy running around doing prepwork for a potential chunin exam that might not happen. Luckily, most of said prepwork served other purposes, such as getting points for airships to land constructed. Those were mostly being constructed as towers just outside of larger towns, such that an airship could land on top of the tower instead of one on each side of the tower like could be done in Uzushio. He also got tapped to help implement and improve the first passenger airship design, mostly by using wood release and reinforcement seals to make the whole thing stronger and lighter than it might have otherwise been.
They only built space for five of the new ones, plus the original three that were still being used for aerial border patrols, but once the first few towers were built there was rarely more than one of the passenger models still in Konoha during the day. Other nations were also interested in the things but were finding it difficult to convince Konoha to make any to sell them. The Land of Snow had reportedly said that they couldn't build them anymore as well, apparently due to the scientists that had built the original ones not knowing how Doto had finished the process to make the final product viable.
The toads and foxes were also helping Naruto identify locations for more Uzushio bunkers, spreading the network from the Land of Fire in basically all directions. That was most difficult with the Land of Water, admittedly, but once the first couple were in place the island-hopping was reasonably simple.
Yoko cradled Tora as she walked along, knowing that Madam Shijimi had already requested that the cat be fetched a couple days ago. No team had taken the mission yet though, those best at it not currently in the village, but that was okay. This was a...different route to getting the woman to treat the poor cat properly, not the one they'd anticipated, but it had the potential to work better than the original plan. Besides, they'd not been able to find a kitten willing to risk the original plan.
"Good afternoon," Iruka greeted upon seeing Yoko. "...and I didn't think you were taking D-Rank missions."
"I'm not," Yoko replied. "But I do need to have a chat with Madam Shijimi about Tora here."
"...most genin teams turn the cat over and vanish, but she does usually ask to be able to thank them for bringing Tora back."
Ten minutes later Madam Shijimi entered the room that Yoko had sat in to wait, immediately moving to grab Tora. What she obviously hadn't expected was to suddenly find chains blocking her path.
"How dare you!" Madam Shijimi yelled.
Yoko glared at the woman, who suddenly backed away and gulped. "I dare because I won't see your exuberance cause harm. You will listen to me very carefully, and promise to treat Tora far more gently, or I promise that I will take Tora back to the Uzumaki compound for the next few months."
The woman gulped, but as the declaration seeped in seemed to draw upon a reserve of anger to push through the fear Yoko was inspiring. "You have no right to deny me my precious Tora for months!"
"I have every right to ensure that Tora does not lose her litter because you're unwilling to treat your pets with the care they deserve. No shinobi of this village will dare remove her from my care if I deem it necessary, and very few even have access to the Uzumaki compound to attempt it."
Twenty minutes later Yoko had a new reputation as Madam Shijimi had called for a basket to carry Tora in instead of carrying the cat herself. Nobody asked what had been said or done to accomplish this impossible change in attitude though. Genin probably could've been made to start sweating nervously and put more focus on their training to hopefully reach chunin before Tora's kittens needed to be hunted down though.
"...this was supposed to be a reasonably safe area until the zombie seals were turned on," Naruto said, looking over the 'training ground' he'd set up near the rebuilt Uzu. A little larger than training ground forty-four in Konoha, with its own central tower. Instead of a fence it had a wall, with smaller towers every so often around it, and putting in a 'river' had required creating one with water-summoning seals higher on the mountain.
When he'd first finished building it, and the network of tunnels under it, the area had been reasonably safe. But apparently that 'detection array' he'd copied from training ground forty-four was a lot more than just that, because over two weeks everything inside of the walls had grown noticeably larger and seemingly more dangerous. Supercharging the array by connecting it to a massive chakra storage array for powering the zombies probably sped things up as well. The most likely cause was the 'connecting to the plants, animals, and insects in the field' effect to use them as part of the detection effect...though this did help explain how it simultaneously skipped those with significant chakra yet had no problems with the plants and wildlife back in Konoha.
Using clones to examine things underground led to grimacing, because he was fairly certain that he'd have to disable the collection arrays and drain the giant storage array to even attempt to correct things...and that might not be enough. There was backfeed of some kind, as though the supercharged life in the affected area was generating more chakra than it was being fed and pushing it back through. Which nicely explained how the original version was powered with its much smaller storage capacity, and he was almost positive that feedback loop was what was causing the changes. Now that he'd spotted it he could even see where the problem in the original seal's design was.
He was able to tweak the effect radius though, to shrink it a bit and hopefully keep the insane growth away from the walls. Tapping into the chakra storage for other purposes was also a definite item on his list, beyond having already done so for the central tower. Maybe build a series of lesser training grounds around this one and tap into the existing storage for zombie seals and other items? Oh, and there was that chakra-hungry array for helping food crops grow that he'd not implemented, but setting up a connecting tunnel to power the farming areas might not be a horrible idea.
As for the training area itself, he'd need to document what had gone wrong and he probably needed warning signs. Possibly give the place a proper name...and add more barriers to keep the wildlife from escaping. Maybe a fence outside of the wall in case any of the trees got 'attack people walking by' tricks? And by the time the potential exams happened the place would probably be properly deadly even without the zombies turned on.
Anko had been convinced to take a look at the 'rebuilt Uzushiogakure' to provide her evaluation of its suitability for hosting chunin exams and was honestly quite impressed with the village itself. Plenty of housing and hotel spaces, lots of places you could set up shops in, a very nice exam stadium, incredibly intimidating defenses. She'd even tried summoning and found that she couldn't, meaning that he'd put up proper protections there as well. But there was also a distinct lack of training grounds within the village itself. Some of that was offset by underground training areas, except that Naruto had claimed those wouldn't be open to visiting teams.
"So you put all the above-ground training grounds outside of the main village?" she said as he led her out one of the gates to head deeper into the island. The towers outside of the main walls were interesting, too far out to be easily used as an additional defensive position and not looking designed for it. But she wasn't sure what they'd be for otherwise.
"Originally I didn't have above-ground training areas at all," he admitted. "Might convert a couple of the farms inside the walls to training areas, but the original plan was that the area right outside of the walls could be used. Then I was essentially told that I should build a large area and fill it with zombies for an elimination round and...accidentally went a bit further than needed."
"...further than needed?"
"You'll see, but I've since started expanding on the whole area."
The first thing she saw was the top of another large tower in the middle of a forest. Likely the area he'd built. Surrounding it at a distance was a fortress-like wall, and surrounding the wall were more normal-looking training areas. There were signs that he was building a smaller wall around those, and farms and buildings around that wall? And then maybe another larger wall that was just barely marked out. "Are you building a mini-village?"
"Not a full one. Farming and training area, mainly, and the farming is so that I can easily bleed chakra out of the central training area. Some medical facilities and places to sleep if you don't want to travel all the way back to the main village, or plan on sticking team leaders in them during exams."
"Why would you need to bleed chakra out?"
"Because I overbuilt it to a ludicrous degree thanks to not understanding a mistake made in a seal I duplicated."
Now she was curious about what kind of mistake would lead to that, thinking about it as they moved past clones doing construction that was honestly far more solid than most shinobi could manage. There were a couple of Anbu that came close though, and she knew that other villages had their own examples of similar talents. Just rarely combined with 'can make enough clones to spam it' chakra levels. And 'all the elemental bloodlines' allowing them to produce more varied materials on demand.
She'd not noticed that there was a fence around the inner wall until they got close, and it had familiar-looking warning signs on it. The wording was different, but signs on the wall itself matched. Come to think of it, the area beyond the wall felt similar too. "How in the world did you make another Forest of Death?"
"By not realizing that I was copying someone else's mistake," Naruto answered. "Though I didn't expect you to figure it out before seeing inside."
"This has the same comforting feeling of the original."
"You know, there are amazingly few people who would see this kind of place as 'comforting'."
"Says one of the few people who can take a casual stroll through without being attacked by anything."
"Not sure why the animals in this one leave me alone. Konoha's has the 'scared them' excuse, but I suppose it could be that my chakra was used to charge things originally. A few days ago they were willing to attack Hinata when she wasn't with me."
If Anko was being honest, the 'quick tour' of the facilities had her jealous. The central tower was even better than the rebuilt one in Konoha, the obstacles he'd built into this one were more varied, and she could feel that in a few months the wildlife was likely going to be a little more dangerous than Konoha's even before you added in active zombies.
"You set up anti-summoning seals here too?" she asked after attempting to summon a snake to get its opinion.
"...I've torn down and rebuilt the entire array set five times now. The latest version covers the entire island and a good portion of the sea around it with varying permission sets. They should also cover more than summoning, but I can't reliably test that. Unlike the system in Konoha, a barrier trick prevents unauthorized chakra from reaching in to summon something as well unless the target item or person is in an exclusion zone too, but I had to take down all the defenses for three days to manage that. That was part of what I was testing with Hinata earlier, she can't summon me or her clones that are here with the full protections up unless her key-in is active but with it active can summon in both directions without issue. That also prevents you from summoning yourself to contract-linked stones if you're not on the approved list, but I wasn't able to stop the Hiraishin from getting through. Other space-time techniques are thus going to be a bit of a crapshoot."
She frowned at that, before looking out to where his clones were working on an outer wall. "You're not building the wall around this little 'outpost' to keep people out, are you?"
He grinned. "Not really, no. There are only going to be two full exclusion zones when I'm done, with the exam stadium being an unfortunate required one. Should've built that out here too, but it really wouldn't work as well with visiting civilians if I had. Otherwise you're going to have to be on at least one of the permitted lists. Of course, in addition to keeping unexpected summoned problems inside, it'll also serve as added protection in case the forest gets a little too dangerous. The plants and animals are speeding along towards being more and more deadly."
You say that like she hasn't already picked out a room in the new tower he built.
- Location
- Scotland
I'm honestly a little more impressed with the Hot Spring Bunker running gag finally gaining traction since Orochimaru now knows how to make them and as soon as Nagato finds out I can't see him not wanting them for all of Ame's bunkers . Soon the other members of the big 5 will find out and likely discreetly try and copy it for themselves because, well, why not right?
. Soon the other members of the big 5 will find out and likely discreetly try and copy it for themselves because, well, why not right?