"Good morning!" Anko called as she looked over the gathered teams of genin. The ones that had already turned in their waivers at least, all others having been sent back to the main village. "And welcome to the Forest of Inconvenience, Uzushio's 'low threat' large training ground."
"The signs say extreme danger," one of the genin yelled.
"I didn't say no threat. You'd be lucky to be allowed to so much as look at the medium and high threat training grounds." She enjoyed the wary look the genin gave to the fences and walls covered with warnings, then pulled out four scrolls. "Now then, some of you may already be familiar with this system, though we're running it a little differently. Each team will get one delivery scroll, which must be delivered unopened to points in the forest. When delivered, it will be exchanged for one of the other three scrolls. You need one of each of those scrolls to enter the tower in the middle of the training grounds, all unopened. Those of you capable of doing math may have realized that this means that at most a third of you are moving on already, but there's an added complication to make that less likely."
She set the four scrolls she was holding on fire and discarded them to the side, then pulled out a map. "Each delivery scroll comes with a map showing the nine locations in the forest that will accept it. Different delivery scrolls will have different maps, but each will be able to be exchanged for all three potential scrolls at three locations each. Which you exchange it for is up to you. All delivery locations have enough scrolls, but once you exchange a delivery scroll for a given scroll type you can't exchange it for another. Thus, as an example, if too many of you get offense scrolls then there won't be enough defense and stealth scrolls for teams to pass. In theory, this means that none of you could pass if one or two scroll types are completely ignored."
It was obvious that they weren't sure what to think about that, but she didn't care as she made the map vanish again before pulling out a slip of paper. "Okay, let's see...told you the basics, warned you about that...ah. That's where I was. You've got one week from when we open the gates for you, watch out for other teams and the environment, the place is infested with zombies, and you won't be able to leave once you're let in. No pansy disqualification for leaving, a barrier is going up around the entire forest once you're inside."
That seemed to concern them, but she didn't care. Half an hour later all the teams had their delivery scrolls, maps, and gate assignments. Twenty minutes after that the gates opened, the gates closing and the barrier activating three seconds later with all the teams inside.
Tsushida brought his team to a halt in a tree. One that didn't immediately move to attack them and didn't appear to have anything waiting to ambush them.
This took four attempts to find.
"I think we need to go after other teams first," he said.
Hisahisa nodded. "Yeah. Either get three delivery scrolls, or at least know which kind of scrolls we don't need first."
"We also need to decide if we're going for as many scrolls as possible, or going straight for the tower when we have what we need."
Rinri shook her head. "No, we decide that based on how much time we have left after getting our scrolls, and how much trouble it was to get them. The longer we're out here the more chances we give others to target us."
"That's not a bad point either. If we can take care of things quickly then reducing the competition makes more sense, but if we struggle then we're going to want to get out of the line of fire as soon as possible and hope that others struggle more."
"Any idea where the zombies are?" Hisahisa asked, looking around. "Because I can't see them mentioning them only to forget."
Tsushida shivered. "Probably at all the delivery points and around the tower, if they aren't just more common as you go deeper into the forest in general. We're close enough to the gates that they might just be kept away from them too."
Ino looked at Hanabi, who was pouting. "What's wrong with you?"
"Neji doesn't want to be the heir," Hanabi answered.
"...really?"
"He got a glimpse of the paperwork Hiashi has to deal with and decided that being the head of the family was a wonderful thing to leave in the care of the 'primary line'," Ko clarified. "Which, for various reasons, places it back on Hanabi's shoulders."
"Ah. Makes me happy that the Yamanaka clan doesn't care as much about maintaining the leadership line."
"Yes, it's one of many clans that don't care as much about direct-line leadership, but not one of the few that only maintain an official head for paperwork and attending Council of Clan meetings. Luckily, Hanabi's recent shift has seemingly made it easier for him to use the Gentle Fist."
Ino rolled her eyes. "Because the earth-nature base was obviously designed with males in mind. I find it slightly easier when I take a male form unless I'm pretending to be a younger child where the skeletal changes haven't started yet."
"...what?"
"Naruto showed me some of the water-nature form variants hidden in your archives instead of the earth-nature ones normally taught and the variations in them work better for a female body type, but they're incomplete. Maybe ten percent coverage at best? The notes for adapting for fire, lightning, and wind are apparently entirely theoretical."
All of that was only true for their archives, since Naruto and Hinata had apparently worked all of this out already and had clones of their own working with some of Ino's on the various forms. Hinata in particular used the fire-nature variant they'd come up with now, even if she didn't use the Gentle Fist at all on most missions. Why they were keeping that secret was a bit of a mystery though.
"I bet some of that stems from the attitudes of the elders," Ko said after a moment of thought. "Reading through the histories makes it obvious that a tendency to see females as inherently inferior has run through the family. Forcing the use of taijutsu forms that are ill-suited for them would fit that quite well, and the problems would only start to fully manifest well past when the basics have been taught."
Hanabi frowned, ran through a quick kata, and then poofed into being female before running through the same kata. At the end her frown had turned into a scowl. "It's obvious when you can try them as a boy and as a girl."
"I'll need to take your word for it, but it does mean that we'll need to ask Hinata if she and Naruto would be willing to share their complete versions."
"...their complete versions?" Ino asked.
"We're well aware that they completed all the elemental variants, having seen them in use during sparring, but acquiring them wasn't seen as important due to the clan's traditional focus on the original earth-nature forms. Obtaining at least the water-natured forms for use by the females of the clan seems like it would be advantageous. But that's a discussion for another time, as you're here for additional training and Hanabi could use additional practice as well."
Yeah, no, the little hellion didn't need 'additional practice'. Ino's only saving grace was being faster, and that didn't help when she still had to concentrate on actually hitting the chakra points.
Kebaru gulped as he watched a giant insect fly past ahead of them, the thing having attacked a giant tiger-like creature. At least three trees had attacked them so far, and they didn't dare use any of the marked paths due to the likelihood of them being trapped. Or just used as convenient ambush spots. They'd also reached the outer edge of the zombies, but they didn't seem to be able to climb trees or care about anyone traveling through the trees.
"I think I've figured out a couple of the landmarks," Kawasho said, dropping down from the treetops and pulling out a notebook. "But I think I want to convert this map into something less readable to others."
"Good thinking," Kebaru said. "We're not planning on turning the scroll in for at least a couple of days, but if someone does get it from us then we don't want to make things easy on them."
Isokko took a look at the map, scowling. "Konoha started this whole 'stealth is just as important as offense and defense' bit and the rest of us are playing catch-up."
Kewasho snorted. "Because Uzushio demonstrated how important stealth can be, I bet."
"But I've checked various statistics. By the time you reach jounin you've got at most a one in ten chance of needing any serious stealth on most missions, with it being far less likely at lower ranks."
"I bet you've got it backwards," Kebaru said. "You think stealth isn't common because there isn't much call for it, but it's probably that it doesn't come up because it fell to the wayside in the last war and never really got picked up again. The smaller villages practice it more because during the war they had to hide from the bigger villages and thus never dropped it from their training."
"...huh. Didn't think of it that way, and that seems like more thinking than you usually do on this kind of thing."
"Well, I might've been within hearing range of family ranting about it a few times."
"Ah."
Futo adjusted a couple of markings based on test results, frowning as he did so. "This is so annoying."
"Not like we have much else to do for the next week," Miho commented. "Besides, as annoying as it is, it's also fascinating."
"...true."
"The actual underlying magic behind seals is important," Odoroki added. "Reversing the 'translation' that chakra does only helps us figure things out and make them more useful. Besides, if we're right then once the chakra layer is torn out we can convert things directly to spells."
Futo nodded. "Which would definitely be nice. I'm almost positive I've figured out where I was going wrong with my teleport spell with what Hamura left in the Tome, but can't use the chakra layer to manage the fixes. Done right, it should allow jumping across dimensional boundaries without something like the sharingan or rinnegan too. Of course, I think the Hiraishin already can jump across those boundaries if you're close enough and have markers on both sides..."
"Naruto and Yoko will test that when they can keep things active for at least an hour before pain sets in. Then they'll be able to trivially access that sharingan kamui dimension in theory, as well as a bunch of others Hagoromo told them how to access with the rinnegan, but I can't argue with them wanting to use clones just in case and those keep dispelling due to not being able to handle having the sharingan or rinnegan active during the transition period."
"Yeah, having the transition essentially be 'damage' as far as paperwork clones is concerned is annoying the pair of them."
"Though the fact that as they adjust they keep 'knowing' how to do more with the rinnegan is a little concerning. Having the eyes themselves download a user manual is convenient, but I worry that other changes might be included."
Miho snorted. "With how segmented their minds are? They're just dumping anything extra off to the side to reference."
"...that is admittedly a mitigating factor."
Arimatsu scowled at the empty field, at least if you discounted the zombies, before double-checking the map. They'd had trouble finding other teams for the past day and this morning had decided to go through things to see what it would take to trade in their scroll. Mostly so that they'd know how hard the delivery points were in a general sense, but they hadn't decided if they'd actually trade it in yet. "We probably have the landmarks wrong."
"Or the delivery point is underground," Tomaki retorted. "It's a stealth one, right? Not appearing to be here would make sense."
He didn't want to admit it, but she had a point. "If that's the case, how do we find a way in?"
"Carefully," Kosaru answered with a frown on his face. "We either have to clear the zombies out to search, or sneak around them without triggering them to attack."
Tomaki looked back and forth. "Perhaps we should do a quick check of the field perimeter first, see if there are any clues there? Arimatsu is otherwise the best of us with earth chakra and might be able to feel a void near the surface that indicates an entrance."
"If we don't find anything around the edge then an earth wave might reveal a point that's not normal ground too," Arimatsu decided. "Which might help clear the zombies out long enough to figure out how to open it too."
Nine loops around the field revealed nothing before they moved in closer. Arimatsu actually used underground movement to search instead of an earth wave because a sudden swarm of zombies seemed like it was going to be incredibly annoying and wanted to punch something in aggravation when he discovered that the entrance was in the exact center of the field. Luckily there were plenty of zombies and a need to clear them away from the entrance so they could figure out how to open it.
"FUCK!" Nagakasu yelled as he dodged a thrown kunai. From a fucking zombie. The stupid things hadn't been this persistent at first, perfectly fine to leave them alone for the first two days as they collected another delivery scroll from one team and then turned it in for a 'stealth' scroll. That had seemingly triggered the damned zombies to pay them a lot more attention, making moving through the forest harder. Last night they'd ambushed a team that looked like they hadn't slept well for a couple of days and gotten a 'defense' scroll from them though, and since then they'd been hunted by dedicated teams of zombies. Separate from the roaming ones that still needed to be snuck past.
They still needed to get an 'offense' scroll, but what changes to the dangers of the forest that would result in was honestly a bit worrisome to consider. Okahito had, after he'd connected the changes in the zombies to the scrolls, wondered if the zombies would become physically tougher or something. Merumi on the other hand felt that they'd be more likely to have zombies trying to keep them from passing by them instead, and her logic was hard to refute. The stealth scroll forced them to move more stealthily to avoid the zombies and the defense scroll was forcing them to repeatedly defend themselves.
If they were lucky, having all three scrolls would instead cause the zombies to somewhat leave them alone. None of them expected them to be that lucky.
Hopefully Merumi would finish securing the hole she'd dug under one of the trees soon so that he could stop being the primary distraction and they could maybe get some actual rest for the night.
"The zombies have already evacuated almost two-thirds of the teams," Anko said as she checked over the lists. "Most after they got their first non-delivery scroll, admittedly."
"Did Naruto tell anyone that he was rigging the things to challenge people who had scrolls?" Ibiki questioned.
"I wasn't informed until after the teams were in the forest, but I can't argue with the results. He obviously didn't want to rely on other teams to provide the 'enemies trying to get your intel' threat this time. Or maybe it's 'to recover the intel you stole'? Doesn't really matter, just that all the teams have to worry about things instead of just the unlucky ones that are spotted by another team."
"And he figured out how to make the 'zombie replacements' act a bit more like functional teams to defend the scrolls they're carrying, on top of the coordinated teams hindering those with specific scroll types."
"...yes, including at least one that apparently defeated another team and took their scrolls."
"Really?"
"Yep. Didn't knock them out though, so the defeated team was able to hunker down and get a good night's sleep. In the morning they hunted down the zombie team and got their scrolls back plus the scroll that had been carried by the team that the zombie team was based on."
"Huh. Who saw that happen?"
"I'm reading between the lines on the automatic outputs."
Ibiki coughed. "Naruto rigged up automatic outputs?"
Anko nodded and passed them over for him to look through. She suspected that the system had been keyed on chakra with the armbands from the previous stage for identification of teams. Each time a scroll changed hands, or a delivery scroll was turned in, it was recorded. Fights were noted, but not necessarily results, and having the zombie copy of a team leave the fight with all of the scrolls the living team held before that point was an obvious victory for the zombies.
"This isn't quite enough to do a full evaluation with," Ibiki finally said. "But it definitely adds to the overall picture for evaluating each team."
"Yeah," Anko agreed. "Including who decided to destroy any scrolls that they don't need to reduce the number of potential passing teams instead of holding onto them for potential bartering."
"True. I can see the ones that got all three scroll types destroying their spares due to not seeing a need to barter, but the ones that simply got a duplicate immediately destroying the extra aren't thinking things through. What's with the scrolls changing hands without a fight being detected?"
"There are at least two teams that are good enough to steal scrolls without being caught, which would be where it was an unbalanced change of hands. Other teams have been willing to trade spare scrolls of one type for spare scrolls of another of course, but that's generally going to be a balanced example of scrolls changing hands. I bet there are a few 'bluffed that this was our only scroll when confronted' situations too."
Ibiki nodded. "All of those make sense, and I can see how educated guesses are needed to differentiate. Ah, and there's a death instead of a knockout at the end here. We don't usually get to find out who teams were fighting when they were killed unless we get lucky and it happened in front of a camera."
Anko snorted. "That one did happen in front of a camera, and was stupid."
"Stupid how?"
"One of the Oto genin used a poison gas bomb on Ame genin wearing full respirators while downwind of the Ame team. Turns out that they weren't ready to deal with their own poison."
"...seriously?"
"You can check the archive for yourself if you want. There's a slight mitigating 'think they had a concussion' based on the way they were acting, but it was still stupid. Their teammates were shocked and unhappy, but couldn't get out of the cloud of poison in time."
Michi worked on cooking a quick meal, trusting that the work done to make the chimney in their quickly-assembled bunker would keep the limited smoke from becoming a problem. That was a combination of where it came out, in the middle of the remains of a fireball attack, and the work done to divert things four ways to further reduce the visible smoke in one spot.
Sasuke-sensei had grumbled about needing to rely on the 'basic tricks' instead of his sensei's 'instant self-contained bunkers, complete with hot springs'. Which sounded ridiculous, until you looked at some of the other things that Naruto had been known to build.
"We've got a couple of hours before we can expect another bunker-buster team," Emi said as she looked over her notes. "But otherwise the reinforcement and basic privacy tricks should be enough to keep us safe."
"I think we should call what we've done to thin things out 'good enough'," Kyo said. "We had to destroy the extra defense scrolls we collected just to get a break from being attacked, so the potential additional teams is already lower."
"True, though I wonder how many of the teams we nicked scrolls from even noticed that they'd been robbed."
"Most teams obviously aren't ready to go up against infiltration teams. We didn't even need to turn our delivery scroll in."
"Kiba-sensei put a lot of emphasis on us looking like an assault team," Michi noted. "So that nobody would think that we were properly sneaky. Though I'm kind of glad we didn't go with a limiting 'theme' like the previous iterations of the team did."
"Only because we couldn't decide on one," Emi said, shaking her head before flipping through her notes again. "I vote we be prepared to leave before sunrise in the morning. That won't give us any help with the zombies, but it seems like most of the other teams are trying to keep to using daylight visibility to help them spot the zombies. We haven't had as much issue with that."
Naruto had adopted a generic male Uzumaki Anbu look to check out a group that had triggered an alert at the mainland dock facility the day before the end of the second stage. The security system had indicated that people not in the identification database had entered the perimeter, though he'd largely reset said database so it didn't mean much on the 'not identified' side of things. As indicated by the remote checks, the group was an old man, a young woman, and a three or four year old boy. All three appeared to be Uzumaki, both from a 'the defenses trust them enough to not attack them' point of view and the 'feels like distant family with the sensory ability obtained from Karin' side of things, but they'd shown up out of nowhere. The names on their paperwork were relayed to clones back in Uzushio to check the records there, with only the old man likely to come up and being the only one of the three holding the Uzumaki name, before Naruto landed on the path in front of them. "What brings you here?"
The older two were slightly startled, but the old man recovered quickly. Akira, according to his paperwork. "Heard that Uzushio was back. Wanted to see for myself if it's pretenders or not."
"And how do you plan on determining that?"
"...well, the fact that you noticed our approach and the defenses here aren't attacking you is a good sign, but in my personal opinion you can't rebuild Uzushio without a sealmaster. Of course, the tech-obsessed side would insist that you need to be near the pinnacle of technology too, but they were a minority in the family."
"I see. And how do we know that you can be trusted?"
Akira blinked, then looked downright angry. "How dare you question an Uzumaki! What possible reason could you have to not trust me?"
"Recently finding an Uzumaki in the leadership of a shinobi slavery setup in the now-former Coliseum, for one."
That took a moment to sink in before the bulk of the man's anger abated, a little bit remaining but no longer feeling focused on Naruto. "I hope the traitor to the family's broader ideals is dead."
"He found that he wasn't ready to deal with a former jinchuriki and one of the seven swordsmen hitting him in a surprise pincer maneuver."
"...huh. Why were they handling him and not other Uzumaki?"
"The attack on the leaders was the primary distraction while the slaves were being evacuated and the two had shown up independently to take the Coliseum down. Seemed like a good use of resources to let them handle that part."
The man nodded, obviously approving of that detail. "Well, it sounds like you might at least follow the right ideals. Still want to ensure that there's a proper use of seals in the village, and given the idiot I suppose that I do need to prove myself. Have others come, and if so how have they proved themselves?"
"So far all Uzumaki descendants showing up have proven themselves to Konoha first or had letters from trusted Daimyo or Kage, with one notable pair carrying a letter from the Land of Iron's general. All letters were, of course, verified with the ones who had written them before being accepted."
"Sadly, I'm lucky to be able to get travel papers at all."
"The Land of Frost isn't currently exceptionally trusted, and your papers indicate that you're merely from an affiliate island."
That had the man blinking. "You never asked to see our papers."
"Didn't need to."
"...well, you've definitely got the 'creepy special forces' vibe down too. Always hated that being pulled, even if normally kept to outsiders. Probably would've been harder if we didn't have the paperwork unsealed so that retrieving it wouldn't be seen as a potential threat, of course. But...hmmm. I can prove that I'm a sealmaster? My granddaughter here never really cared to learn the art, but I've kept up my practice and can demonstrate any number of advanced seals."
"Sadly, being a sealmaster doesn't prove that you're trustworthy. Dedicated, perhaps, but not trustworthy."
"Fair point. Not even sure if you could understand what I'd show you anyway."
"I dabble myself, but standards may have shifted."
"Oh, they almost certainly have. Constantly did back in the day, can't see why that would change now."
A clone appeared a moment later with a scroll, handing it to Naruto before vanishing again as other clones relayed information on what it was. "I'm told that this scroll recovered from the ruins is sealed such that only one of three trusted sealmasters can open it, and that if you are who your papers claim you to be then you should be one of them. That your chakra signature seems to match one of the three in the seal lends additional credence, but there's also a passcode you would need to prove you know that was not available in the records."
That had the man blinking before he obviously recognized the scroll. "Huh. Haven't seen that in a very long time, and it isn't exactly something to be trifling with. We sealed it for a good reason; playing with death is never a good idea."
"The techniques supposedly contained inside of it are both available in Konoha's scroll of forbidden techniques and useless due to the breaking of the shinigami contract and connected mask. If you can demonstrate the ability to open the scroll then you can either immediately re-seal it or destroy it as you wish. The other two connected to it are confirmed to be deceased and as such we won't need to use it to identify them."
It didn't take long for Akira to open the scroll, then burn it. Naruto then led him to the dock and the bunker added underneath it, Akira approving of the security and privacy seals before almost getting lost in examining the Hiraishin seal. He obviously approved when they appeared outside of the village proper and needed to head in from the arrival tower as well, though seemed conflicted about the village now being a proper 'hidden village'.
Johide swore as he saw a team land at one of the tower doors as his team was out of position to stop them. A minute later they were inside, removing at least one full set of scrolls. Sunset was fast approaching, with the end of the stage being tomorrow morning. Each team that made it through was a reduction in the chances that his team got the last scroll they needed.
He dodged one of the blasted zombies swinging a broadsword of all things, Jasuke moving in and slicing the stupid thing's arm off a moment later. Akahito was working on taking out another genin that they knew had scrolls of some kind on them, but there was no way of knowing if they had the final scroll needed to enter the tower.
Darting in behind Jasuke, Johide took the head off of another zombie. This one looked like it might've been part of a knocked-out team, so he removed its arms and patted it down. Sadly, it didn't appear to have a scroll, so he kicked it off into a more generic zombie. Akahito hadn't defeated his opponent, and in fact had needed to abort when teammates had shown up, but it seemed that the team didn't have all three scrolls yet either as they regrouped and moved away.
"I get the feeling that a number of these teams don't have any scrolls," Akahito said as he moved in to help Johide clear the area around them. "And...maybe two zombies have one?"
"...why do you think the latter?" Johide asked.
"The longer I spend carrying our two the more familiar I get with the chakra in them. Made a bit harder by the same chakra flooding the forest, admittedly."
"Lead me to the zombies with scrolls."
Akahito nodded, and Jasuke was smart enough to move with them. Sadly, while they were able to get scrolls off of a couple of zombies, they were both 'defense' scrolls. Which they already had one of, and carrying more was asking for more zombies to specifically target them. Akahito caused screaming from a couple of other teams when he burned both scrolls right there before they moved towards one of the teams he claimed had two scrolls.
Hinata triple-checked numbers, checked with her clones, then nodded. "That team that just came in brought the last two 'stealth' scrolls with them. There are no longer enough scrolls remaining outside of the tower for any additional teams to pass."
Anko-sensei blinked. "Really?"
"Yep."
"Huh. And I thought that Naruto was being silly when he predicted that the stage would end before nightfall today instead of continuing until tomorrow morning." Anko-sensei dug a paper out of a seal, looked over it, and one of her eyes started twitching. "In fact, we're in the thirty-minute window he said was most likely to be when the last passing team would enter the tower."
A few minutes later alarms sounded from the tower as the zombies were flipped to 'escort' mode. Speakers then kicked in, and would repeat their message until all genin were accounted for. Living or dead, though they should have a complete list of the confirmed-dead genin already due to Naruto's monitoring tricks.
"ATTENTION! THE SECOND STAGE IS NOW OVER DUE TO INSUFFICIENT SCROLLS REMAINING TO PASS ADDITIONAL TEAMS. ZOMBIES HAVE BEEN SWITCHED TO ESCORT MODE, ALL GENIN SHOULD REPORT TO THE TOWER. ATTENTION! THE SECOND STAGE IS NOW OVER..."
