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And Tobirama! *This point is disputed
Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
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And Tobirama! *This point is disputed
FaerieKnight79
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And he still makes things worse for his side.
Chapter 68 - Uzu Exam: Training Break
Naruto stood there, looking over the sizable group of genin, who were in turn looking at him oddly as though expecting someone else. He nodded, then pulled out his new 'Uzukage' hat and put it on to the obvious surprise of many of those assembled. "Good morning. I hope you had a good night's sleep. Traditionally, this is where I'd tell you a quick story about the exams being a proxy for wars. Personally, I think that's a load of bunk. We're advertising our strength to each other in an attempt to tell other nations that we aren't worth the trouble of fighting, and in some cases showing off for potential clients in the process. This is also traditionally where I'd say that forty-two of you is far too many and that we need to get you down to less than sixteen total genin for the single-combat stage, despite personally predicting that this would happen due to the quality of the candidates this year. I was a little off though, as I expected two more teams to pass instead of teams destroying spare scrolls immediately."
It was obvious that the teams were nervous about the expected rounds of combat, but after a moment Naruto continued. "Thing is, there's no actual agreement that specifies how many finalists we can have. Lots of claims about what nobles will and won't tolerate, but nothing in the international agreements. Based on knowing that nobles have been willing to spend an entire weekend watching illegal fights, I think we can go with reducing your number by a mere ten instead. But, of course, you're probably wondering how we're going to do that fairly." There was general murmuring about that. "As it happens, nine of you entered the tower with severe injuries that would likely have disqualified you had you needed to fight immediately. Our medics were able to get you back on your feet overnight, but we feel that it's suitable reasoning to not have you move on."
There was grumbling, but no arguments. Especially given that five of the nine had needed to have limbs regrown. It took a moment to get those nine to stand off to the side, leaving thirty-three genin left. "That leaves us needing to reduce your numbers by one more to get us down to thirty-two for a five-round bracket with no extra fights. I'd call it good enough and just have the one extra match, but the medics have ordered me to remove Kasumo Isetake on medical grounds and I'm not in the mood to argue with Tsunade and Karin about it."
The older kunoichi in question looked shocked. "What? I'm fine! I only had a couple of minor scratches when I came in!"
Her jounin sensei body-flickered next to her and whispered in her ear. Naruto didn't need to listen in to know when she'd been told that she'd been found to be pregnant when checked over after entering the tower, given the look on her face, but she allowed herself to be led off to the side without further argument.
"With that taken care of," Naruto continued a moment later. "Now we just need to figure out the bracket itself." A puff of smoke revealed a table holding a box of kunai, slips of paper, and writing implements. "Each of you will collect one kunai. You will write your name on a slip of paper, wrap it around the handle of the kunai with your name facing inwards, and then wait for everyone to be ready."
That took several minutes, and then the table vanished and the far end of the room had a large set of targets appear. Individually or otherwise they were tasked with throwing their labeled kunai at the targets, their choice of target. Once all the kunai were in targets a bar dropped, forcing all the kunai out of the targets and into a funnel that dropped them into a spinning barrel. The kunai then fell out of the barrel onto a small conveyor belt, creating a line of kunai that Anko-sensei then pulled the slips of paper off of to attach to the bracket in order.
Everyone got a good look at the bracket, and without preliminary rounds had little to no information on what their opponents could do from one. Sure, they'd know about some of them, but it was going to be far from all of them. Naruto then spent some time covering details, such as when the finals began, options for training locally or returning home for the bulk of the month, and pointing out that everyone should plan for the fights to be split into two days.
"By the standards of other villages," Naruto said. "We're essentially holding the 'preliminary elimination round' in public so that you can show off and have a better chance of earning your promotions. Half of you won't make it past that stage, so make what you show count."
"Eight different villages in the finals is highly unusual," Shisui said. "As is the decision to have thirty-two finalists, admittedly."
Naruto snorted. "Konoha and Uzushio almost count as one village, not two. As for the number of finalists, the international agreements specify that the actual finals themselves should take less than three days. That everyone has decided 'a full afternoon might be pushing it' is on them. I also stuck with single elimination instead of double elimination, as both are permitted, though if I'd been wrong and a small number of teams had passed I'd have gone for the double just to give them a better chance showing off."
"...I will admit to not having looked that deeply into things myself, but all you've really done is remove the 'private preliminaries' that have been standard for ages and made them public and thus subject to judging by the village leaders."
"I have to expand the stupid 'Kage box' for that too."
"You do?"
"I designed the current one around six leaders with guards at most and need to expand it a little to accommodate eight with guards. I'm probably going to make it large enough for ten as future-proofing, and I'm likely to fancy it up a bit more, plus I need a couple of Daimyo boxes that can't be a single large box for political reasons."
"I'd think that a couple of the other leaders wouldn't be showing up at all, even with finalists. The Tsuchikage is a bit busy, Orochimaru isn't going to want to be openly traveling through the Land of Fire, Hanzo never attends these..."
"Technically, you're the only one that hasn't already confirmed that you intend to show up."
Shisui blinked, half because he assumed that was automatic in his case but mostly because of what that implied. "...I am?"
"Yes. I've already submitted the travel clearance request for Orochimaru to pass through the Land of Fire to reach Uzushio and return, and now we have official confirmation that Hanzo is dead because Nagato had to admit it to indicate his desire to attend as Ame's leader."
"Wait, Hanzo is dead?"
"Jiraiya claims he suspected something along those lines for years, but could never find proof due to the difficulty of getting into Ame. I had trouble slipping in due to the interesting use of the rain as a detection method and interesting things done with the lake around the village, but I've managed to get a couple of bunkers in place now and know quite a bit about the village as a result. Possibly more than they do, but that's reasonably common when I get around to mapping places."
"And you didn't tell us?"
"Who asked that I keep Uzu's intelligence gathering distinct from Konoha's?"
...right. That request had been made, hadn't it.
Naruto unlocked the vault and led Ino into it, slightly amused at her reaction.
"You have a vault full of summoning contracts?" Ino asked, looking around.
"Needed somewhere to put all the things," he replied. "Contracts with active summoners aren't going to be in here, either kept by the summons or the responsibility of the summoner with a possible exception for messenger-focused summons, but any others I end up with are going to be kept here until then. Relaying messages through the foxes and toads has generally led to finding out that all of these contracts are tied to groups that would currently like to be the primary summons of their summoner instead of a secondary or tertiary."
"But...they're supposed to be incredibly rare, so where did you get them all?"
"All over the place." He looked at her, decided that she wasn't going to just accept that, and sighed. "The small cats contract was in a collapsed cave outside of an old city and the large cats contract was under the rubble of what might've been a temple on an island. A large cave held the bear contract, though that contract isn't here now. The chameleon contract was passed to me through the foxes after I proved my worth through stealthily releasing one of their summons from a personal contract. A hidden bunker I rebuilt and expanded under Amegakure held the salamander contract. The pigeon, owl, and sparrow contracts were in a long-abandoned temple my clones spotted on a mountaintop while looking for good bunker locations months ago. Three of the four ninken contracts were hidden in or near different long-destroyed villages and Kakashi handed me the fourth."
"He just handed you his summoning contract?"
"Nah, it's a secondary one kept by his family and last signed by his father. You can only sign a contract with one ninken pack at a time and he doesn't expect to have kids to pass it down to. The small cats contract might've been an Uchiha contract at one point too, but Itachi claimed that it wouldn't go over well with the cats raised in the city I found it near. For that matter, the salamander contract is in theory associated with Ame, but the toads relayed a message that indicated they wish to find a new summoner instead of remaining with the village run by the person who killed Hanzo."
"Huh. And you're offering me the chance to sign one of them?"
"The chameleon contract in particular, since they really seem to like the idea of working with someone else who can change form like they can and were apparently disappointed that I already had two other contracts. Admittedly, I gave Tenten first choice, but she decided to take the bear contract instead."
It didn't take long to pull the chameleon contract out of the security seals it had been stuck behind, but he brought Ino back outside and into the arena's exclusion zone before letting her sign it. She and the contract vanished shortly after she finished signing it, likely so that she could be tested. Naruto sighed, and in looking around decided that he should ensure that the entire group of Uzumaki examining the arena's seals ate something.
Being declared to be a 'proper leader' by most of the older Uzumaki that had come back to the island because of what he could do with seals hadn't been expected. That had generally come after they'd told some of their younger family members off for wanting to go against Konoha's decision regarding the clan head in the first place, of course.
"I'm not sure why I'm surprised you were able to find me," Orochimaru said as he accepted the delivery from the Uzu Anbu.
"You aren't exactly trying to hide," the Anbu replied.
"We're in a hidden base that's more bunker than anything else, behind three layers of privacy seals, with a stealth blood-locked security seal as part of the locking mechanism on the door. That you apparently didn't use to enter, despite it being the only way in, because none of the alerts for it opening or the lock disengaging went off."
"If you want to call those 'privacy seals' then that's your call and the seals on your door can be bypassed with a saline solution."
"...saline solution?"
"They look for the presence of genetic markers the 'key' source doesn't have. Proper saline solution looks enough like blood and then it doesn't find any genetic markers at all. No markers means no 'wrong' markers, so the seal releases without a fuss."
That...but...hmm. Yes, he could now see how that would work, and was kicking himself for missing it when he adapted the notes he'd found on it. Apparently it was normally combined with a positive match array for a reason, but fitting that in had been problematic. "I see."
"Do you have any questions relating to your travel papers or visit for the finals?"
Shaking out of his mental review of the security seal, but not missing that no claim of using the bypass had been made, he opened the package and double-checked everything. All of it appeared to be in order, but seeing the Uzukage signature had him frowning. "I probably can't claim justification to test him myself, but after getting a very young Kazekage I'm expecting the older Kages to take offense at a newcomer also claiming the title of Kage."
"...that has come up, yes. The Raikage and Tsuchikage expressed interest in testing him. I believe a pre-finals set of sparring matches is being considered. Do you have an interest in participating?"
"Yes, if it would be permitted given my status with Konoha."
"The worst that could happen would be an attempt to kill you."
"...true. And if you wanted me dead then you could've just attacked me before I knew you were here."
"I think I'd be more likely to manipulate your air care seals and then ensure that there was no quick way out of the bunker."
That was...ugh. Now he had to ensure that he actually understood those seals so that he could tell when they'd been tampered with and could fix them.
Naruto looked over the large 'sparring area' he was setting up outside of Uzushio proper. The finals would still be held inside of the arena inside of the village, but 'proving himself' to at least a couple of the other village leaders would need more space. Hence ensuring that a properly-secured area could be used, complete with some viewing platforms. The hard part was a combination of the cameras and the barrier seals, the former being handled more by Hinata than by him.
She was also handling most of the work other than the linking seals for 'each of the other villages can watch the finals from their local establishments', for that matter. This was made a little more complicated by each village having different standards for their cameras and monitors, but everything she was working with was higher quality so she'd just had his clones help her build new equipment for everyone 'as a show of good faith'.
"Don't think I'm getting this to the point where non-shinobi are being allowed to watch in person," Naruto muttered as he checked the line of barrier seals. "I can still think of nine ways to punch through this and I don't want to force people to support it to mitigate some of the vulnerabilities."
"How would that help?" Hinata asked from where she was checking the connections for the camera on the elevated stands at this point along the perimeter. Wires were being run to the ground to hopefully imply that they connected underground and thus the linking seals were harder to produce, but also to ensure that the connection array was better-protected.
"Different chakra signatures intermixing would negate anything that would slip through because I built the array and would also reinforce the whole thing in a general sense due to the differences in the various chakra sources helping to cover each other. Different harmonics and motion patterns in particular. But if enough hits the barrier and they don't disconnect in time then it could kill them by absorbing too much of their chakra."
"Ah, and you complained that you couldn't mitigate all of that with tweaks to the seals, right?"
"Several of the older Uzumaki are impressed that I mitigated as much as I have. The rest of the problems are more a matter of scale. This would be a lot harder to punch through if I were to apply it to a smaller area. I've actually implemented a smaller version for the exam arena to protect the audience and that should be plenty good enough there, but this is a much larger area so the unavoidable 'cracks' are larger."
She frowned, but this was getting into territory that she'd never really understood anyway. He'd probably add heavily-reinforced security glass to the stands to help cover some of the limitations of the barrier seals like he had in the exam arena as well. Having a wide-open path between the audience and the fighters felt like a recipe for disaster and he'd finally figured out how to stop the glass from going cloudy due to the effects of the reinforcing seals.
"Why did you do that?" Yoko asked, glaring at Naruto. It wasn't all that effective with their rinnegan active though, sharing their sight between them. Not to mention all the clones that were active with it now, though that was only the group Naruto had created with the rinnegan active. Clones that were out before activating the dojutsu couldn't properly activate the rinnegan, but could get up to the mangekyu sharingan on their own. In theory. They'd need to make a new batch of clones to test everything properly though.
"I was tired of waiting for the adapting period," Naruto replied. "As were you."
"So you fed yourself to the King of Hell?"
"Not sure we should call it that at this point, given what we know about its actual origins and capabilities, but yes. It can heal injuries to a ridiculous degree, specifically including those tied to the rinnegan and other abilities tied to the Ōtsutsuki."
"And it can consume souls."
"Which doesn't actually work on anyone with the rinnegan, and may not be actual souls. Didn't expect the feedback loop to hit you too though, I just wanted to be more ready for sparring against Kage. Including one that previously ripped my arm off."
"...I know, but you could've given the whole thing more than thirty seconds of thought before implementing it."
"If I'd given it more than thirty seconds of thought then I'd probably have convinced myself to not try it."
"I'm aware, and that's part of why I'm annoyed." She blinked a moment later. "Huh. The kamui dimension shows signs that someone else is using it."
He nodded. "Some of the stuff is very recent. Records from a few weeks ago."
"Looting time?"
"Yep. Especially that gunbai that changed appearance a bit when the clones touched it."
Ten minutes later there was nothing left in the dimension but the rectangular prisms, even the slight damage to the surfaces of the prisms cleaned up. Getting in and out with the Hiraishin was also tested and seemed to work, which made exploring some of the other dimensions they'd been told about safer.
Itachi blinked a couple of times as he looked over the list of items Naruto had brought to him, though he didn't unseal them from the tags they were stored in. "Where did you find an Uchiha relic and a dozen sharingan eyes?"
"Stole them from Madara, or at least the one pretending to be him," Naruto answered. "He was keeping a lot of stuff in the kamui dimension and we grabbed it all. Some of it was plans to attack Uzushio, or the Uzumaki in general, but most of it was weapons and other supplies. Plus things like this pile of preserved sharingan eyes and genetic samples from a few dozen others. I figured that returning the obviously-Uchiha stuff to the clan made sense."
"I see. This does bring up something else, actually."
"...it does?"
"You and Yoko were added to the Uchiha clan rolls, but have not yet passed your adulthood tests."
Naruto sighed. "Are you actually going to make us each launch a giant fireball?"
"Specifically using the great fireball technique."
Figuring it was better to get things over with, Yoko took a minute to swap out with a clone and met them at the small boat dock on the Naka river that was used as the traditional 'testing point' for the clan. Each of the two of them throwing a great fireball technique out over the water only took a minute.
Itachi nodded, then tossed the seal tag containing the gunbai to Naruto. "Congratulations."
"...there's no way that the gunbai is supposed to be an 'adulthood' reward," Naruto said.
"You need to read up on your clan laws. Or at least the Uchiha and Senju ones, I suppose, since I know you helped tear through the Hyuga ones and I'm fairly certain you've read the Uzumaki ones. There are rules about that gunbai, predating the clan itself. Passed down to a loyal member of the clan from the previous loyal wielder, but if recovered from a traitor without the previous loyal wielder still surviving then the one who recovered it receives it. Held by the clan for them if they weren't an adult when they recovered it, but you're now an adult."
"...what?"
"That and I don't want it anywhere near the bulk of the clan. You can probably handle a fight with Madara or the imposter pretending to be him, but I suspect none of the rest of the clan could. Especially given that he was the sole survivor of an 'everyone versus him' fight."
"Hold up," Yoko said. "What was that about the Senju laws?"
"You two are Uzumaki that have 'living things' wood release instead of only getting 'dead wood', so you're considered to be full members of the Senju clan. Without taking the Senju name you can't be considered to be continuing the clan, which still falls to Tsunade, but that's not your concern. I personally suspect that it was put into the laws as a bit of a joke, given how rare that level of wood release has been historically, but it's still there."
It probably said something about Naruto's thought processes that the first thing that came to mind from this was an idea for freaking out the Kage.
Nagato frowned as he looked over the proposed plans for visiting Uzushiogakure, a journey that would be made significantly easier thanks to his steadily-improving health. The rinnegan had never been able to heal him properly before, but shortly after the moon was destroyed he found that it was able to restore his body much more completely than it ever had before. He personally suspected that the loss of the statue was the real cause though, as in hindsight it seemed to consume him as much as he drew chakra from it.
He didn't think that the hot spring that Orochimaru had installed in the tower was helping, but it definitely wasn't hurting. Even if Konan was occasionally annoyed by how often he spent time in the thing, which he suspected was in part because she refused to join him and they'd not yet convinced Orochimaru to put in a second one.
Still, there was one notable problem with the proposed plans, and he flipped through them a second time to be sure he hadn't missed anything. "Who will be left in charge if you're joining me, as you seem to be insisting on doing?"
Konan simply smiled at first. She'd been doing that a lot more since he'd managed to heal himself with the rinnegan too, though some of that might be finding their current plans for something approaching peace to be more personally palatable. Only when he raised an eyebrow did she continue. "We've always maintained a full chain of command, even if you normally don't utilize it. I make heavy use of it and trust those that report to me to run things for up to two months without issue. Likely longer if nothing big comes up."
That...really should've occurred to him. Yes, she generally relayed his directives to the masses, so that he could largely focus on other matters, but they were both regularly out of the village for Akatsuki business and nothing had ever fallen apart. Granted, they tried to keep those trips shorter than the one to Uzushiogakure would be, a day or so with neither of them present if possible, but they still happened.
A moment later she froze up, expression hardening, and he quickly moved a couple of files into the drawer. Not that he'd had anything particularly problematic out, as 'Madara' hadn't been planning on being away for long. Shortly after that the man strode into the room, giving off an aura of suppressed utter panic?
"It appears that I've been robbed," 'Madara' said.
"...robbed?" Nagato asked.
"Yes, including basically all the copies of reports you've provided me that I had been keeping for purposes of cross-referencing. Based on where I was keeping things, I suspect that an Uchiha in Konoha acquired their mangekyo and happened to acquire a specific ability. Unfortunately, none of my tracking seals are functioning."
Well, that was interesting. Someone else had acquired the space/time trick and used it to access the previously-secure dimension that 'Madara' used as a refuge. That had to be concerning the man, given that it meant that it was no longer guaranteed safe for him to retreat there.
Konan's plans might need some adjustments in light of that.
Nagato did his best to keep those thoughts off of his face as he produced a shadow clone to start working on marking up the reports as compromised...and check to see if anything critical had been in them. "I see."
"While the timing of this is unfortunate," 'Madara' continued. "It doesn't negate the lead I have on one of Uzushio's potential remote locations, nor was information on said lead stored there."
"I'd think that you would simply visit the Land of Whirlpools at this point."
"Konoha is essentially running the island instead of the remnants returning, likely at the request of the remnants, down to the new 'Uzukage' being from Konoha. While there is undoubtedly a way to contact the remnants from the island, if not reach them with a well-secured teleportation seal or similar, I'd prefer to have more directly obtained information on where they've hidden things away. I've only got a little over twelve hours before I won't be able to follow up on things, so I'm grabbing some extra supplies and leaving this afternoon. You'll essentially be on your own in Uzushio, should things go wrong."
Nagato nodded, wondering if this meant that it would be safe to ask for assistance in dealing with 'Madara' from Uzushio and Konoha on the trip.
"It's kind of weird how the tablet works," Yoko commented as she stared at it. "The 'these abilities will only work every so often' information has changed at least three times for me."
"I noticed that 'every ten years per eye' changed to 'every five years per eye' for Kotoamatsukami after doing the eye-swap with Itachi," Shisui agreed. "And he commented about Tsukuyomi's recasting time being a week before said swap, with it now at a day. Are there others with similar restrictions?"
"Several, yes. A couple of space-time techniques, what I think is a 'give someone chakra' technique that isn't worded clearly, another that reads like a time travel technique..."
"Huh. I suppose that's more useful for you to know for now." He reached out and almost-touched one point. "My concern is what I see right here. Or rather, can almost see, but Itachi can't see at all."
Yoko looked at the point, shifting between sharingan, mangekyo, and rinnegan. "Ah, yes. That seems to be a warning about using Kotoamatsukami on the holder of your original eyes, but I think you're having trouble seeing it because you also have Tsukuyomi from Itachi." She pointed at another spot. "He probably has trouble seeing a similar warning about Tsukuyomi here, if the interaction flows work the way I think they do. Perhaps having both from opposite sides of the trade negates some of the interaction concerns?"
"Perhaps. Itachi was less concerned than I was about what I couldn't quite see and I highly doubt that we're going to be using either ability against each other at this stage. Thank you for your assistance."
"It isn't a problem, Hokage-sama."
"Just call me Shisui. I keep thinking the Third is behind me when people address me that way, and you're officially family anyway."
"Naruto is the less formal of the two of us."
"I'm well aware. Is he ready for his sparring matches with the Kage?"
Yoko smirked. "I think the real question is if the Kage are ready for their sparring matches with him."
"He's good, but I'm not sure if he's that good."
"Do you know how many hours Naruto and I spend training each week?"
That had Shisui blinking, but he gave it some thought. "I know you both do a bit of the 'get a little training into everything' attitude. Maybe a hundred-ish hours of light training and twenty-five-ish hours of heavy training a week?"
"Hokage-sama, Naruto and I collectively create over a thousand clones for training most days. Hinata runs at least four hundred a day and Ino is running around two hundred and working her way up. That's without the clones for monitoring Konoha and Uzushio and those created as part of tasks. Admittedly, it's true that all four of us only get at most a hundred and thirty hours of significant physical training in a week, but we train in a lot more than that." And that was 'mission days' instead of 'training days' where the numbers went up significantly, except for Ino who was still in her 'adjusting to having so much chakra' state, but mentioning that seemed like a bad idea.
The mere thought of that seemed to take the man by surprise, and an hour later he'd have a couple of paperwork clones helping him train while another handled the actual paperwork. Yoko hadn't even bothered to mention that while 'a thousand clones' was their normal, the two of them had been running an extra five hundred on using the sharingan each day since Naruto had stupidly fed himself to the King of Hell.
Of course, since getting a starter bunker into Ame they'd also managed to copy information on the 'Dance of the Shikigami' and Naruto had added clones to the daily training for figuring that out as well. Specifically because he'd decided that being the 'God of Paperwork' without being able to use the trick meant he wasn't able to live up to the name, but it helped that the 'turn into paper' ability worked in a manner different from the Hozuki clan's 'turn into water' trick. The latter appeared to be a chakra net node, at least from limited observation, and one that was likely incompatible with both turning into sand and the general shape shifting ability. The 'Dance of the Shikigami' was more tied into knowing what you wanted to be able to turn yourself into and manipulate...and wasn't limited to only paper.
Naruto had quickly managed the original paper, and figured out that the theory translated almost directly into a 'paper paperwork clone'. Expanding that to including ink on the paper hadn't taken long. He'd then discovered that it didn't work with the basic elements, but it could be used with wood and other plants as well as various foods. Which led to clones turning into ramen and ramen paperwork clones, and a quick prank against Anko with a clone turning into dango.
Yoko had eventually decided to play with it as well, figuring out how to essentially shift into being a puppet as well as make direct puppet paperwork clones. Then she'd decided that paper and paperwork implied that you could go straight for 'ink'.
All of it was more chakra intensive than shifting to and from sand was, but it would almost certainly make for a good show.
It was obvious that the teams were nervous about the expected rounds of combat, but after a moment Naruto continued. "Thing is, there's no actual agreement that specifies how many finalists we can have. Lots of claims about what nobles will and won't tolerate, but nothing in the international agreements. Based on knowing that nobles have been willing to spend an entire weekend watching illegal fights, I think we can go with reducing your number by a mere ten instead. But, of course, you're probably wondering how we're going to do that fairly." There was general murmuring about that. "As it happens, nine of you entered the tower with severe injuries that would likely have disqualified you had you needed to fight immediately. Our medics were able to get you back on your feet overnight, but we feel that it's suitable reasoning to not have you move on."
There was grumbling, but no arguments. Especially given that five of the nine had needed to have limbs regrown. It took a moment to get those nine to stand off to the side, leaving thirty-three genin left. "That leaves us needing to reduce your numbers by one more to get us down to thirty-two for a five-round bracket with no extra fights. I'd call it good enough and just have the one extra match, but the medics have ordered me to remove Kasumo Isetake on medical grounds and I'm not in the mood to argue with Tsunade and Karin about it."
The older kunoichi in question looked shocked. "What? I'm fine! I only had a couple of minor scratches when I came in!"
Her jounin sensei body-flickered next to her and whispered in her ear. Naruto didn't need to listen in to know when she'd been told that she'd been found to be pregnant when checked over after entering the tower, given the look on her face, but she allowed herself to be led off to the side without further argument.
"With that taken care of," Naruto continued a moment later. "Now we just need to figure out the bracket itself." A puff of smoke revealed a table holding a box of kunai, slips of paper, and writing implements. "Each of you will collect one kunai. You will write your name on a slip of paper, wrap it around the handle of the kunai with your name facing inwards, and then wait for everyone to be ready."
That took several minutes, and then the table vanished and the far end of the room had a large set of targets appear. Individually or otherwise they were tasked with throwing their labeled kunai at the targets, their choice of target. Once all the kunai were in targets a bar dropped, forcing all the kunai out of the targets and into a funnel that dropped them into a spinning barrel. The kunai then fell out of the barrel onto a small conveyor belt, creating a line of kunai that Anko-sensei then pulled the slips of paper off of to attach to the bracket in order.
Everyone got a good look at the bracket, and without preliminary rounds had little to no information on what their opponents could do from one. Sure, they'd know about some of them, but it was going to be far from all of them. Naruto then spent some time covering details, such as when the finals began, options for training locally or returning home for the bulk of the month, and pointing out that everyone should plan for the fights to be split into two days.
"By the standards of other villages," Naruto said. "We're essentially holding the 'preliminary elimination round' in public so that you can show off and have a better chance of earning your promotions. Half of you won't make it past that stage, so make what you show count."
"Eight different villages in the finals is highly unusual," Shisui said. "As is the decision to have thirty-two finalists, admittedly."
Naruto snorted. "Konoha and Uzushio almost count as one village, not two. As for the number of finalists, the international agreements specify that the actual finals themselves should take less than three days. That everyone has decided 'a full afternoon might be pushing it' is on them. I also stuck with single elimination instead of double elimination, as both are permitted, though if I'd been wrong and a small number of teams had passed I'd have gone for the double just to give them a better chance showing off."
"...I will admit to not having looked that deeply into things myself, but all you've really done is remove the 'private preliminaries' that have been standard for ages and made them public and thus subject to judging by the village leaders."
"I have to expand the stupid 'Kage box' for that too."
"You do?"
"I designed the current one around six leaders with guards at most and need to expand it a little to accommodate eight with guards. I'm probably going to make it large enough for ten as future-proofing, and I'm likely to fancy it up a bit more, plus I need a couple of Daimyo boxes that can't be a single large box for political reasons."
"I'd think that a couple of the other leaders wouldn't be showing up at all, even with finalists. The Tsuchikage is a bit busy, Orochimaru isn't going to want to be openly traveling through the Land of Fire, Hanzo never attends these..."
"Technically, you're the only one that hasn't already confirmed that you intend to show up."
Shisui blinked, half because he assumed that was automatic in his case but mostly because of what that implied. "...I am?"
"Yes. I've already submitted the travel clearance request for Orochimaru to pass through the Land of Fire to reach Uzushio and return, and now we have official confirmation that Hanzo is dead because Nagato had to admit it to indicate his desire to attend as Ame's leader."
"Wait, Hanzo is dead?"
"Jiraiya claims he suspected something along those lines for years, but could never find proof due to the difficulty of getting into Ame. I had trouble slipping in due to the interesting use of the rain as a detection method and interesting things done with the lake around the village, but I've managed to get a couple of bunkers in place now and know quite a bit about the village as a result. Possibly more than they do, but that's reasonably common when I get around to mapping places."
"And you didn't tell us?"
"Who asked that I keep Uzu's intelligence gathering distinct from Konoha's?"
...right. That request had been made, hadn't it.
Naruto unlocked the vault and led Ino into it, slightly amused at her reaction.
"You have a vault full of summoning contracts?" Ino asked, looking around.
"Needed somewhere to put all the things," he replied. "Contracts with active summoners aren't going to be in here, either kept by the summons or the responsibility of the summoner with a possible exception for messenger-focused summons, but any others I end up with are going to be kept here until then. Relaying messages through the foxes and toads has generally led to finding out that all of these contracts are tied to groups that would currently like to be the primary summons of their summoner instead of a secondary or tertiary."
"But...they're supposed to be incredibly rare, so where did you get them all?"
"All over the place." He looked at her, decided that she wasn't going to just accept that, and sighed. "The small cats contract was in a collapsed cave outside of an old city and the large cats contract was under the rubble of what might've been a temple on an island. A large cave held the bear contract, though that contract isn't here now. The chameleon contract was passed to me through the foxes after I proved my worth through stealthily releasing one of their summons from a personal contract. A hidden bunker I rebuilt and expanded under Amegakure held the salamander contract. The pigeon, owl, and sparrow contracts were in a long-abandoned temple my clones spotted on a mountaintop while looking for good bunker locations months ago. Three of the four ninken contracts were hidden in or near different long-destroyed villages and Kakashi handed me the fourth."
"He just handed you his summoning contract?"
"Nah, it's a secondary one kept by his family and last signed by his father. You can only sign a contract with one ninken pack at a time and he doesn't expect to have kids to pass it down to. The small cats contract might've been an Uchiha contract at one point too, but Itachi claimed that it wouldn't go over well with the cats raised in the city I found it near. For that matter, the salamander contract is in theory associated with Ame, but the toads relayed a message that indicated they wish to find a new summoner instead of remaining with the village run by the person who killed Hanzo."
"Huh. And you're offering me the chance to sign one of them?"
"The chameleon contract in particular, since they really seem to like the idea of working with someone else who can change form like they can and were apparently disappointed that I already had two other contracts. Admittedly, I gave Tenten first choice, but she decided to take the bear contract instead."
It didn't take long to pull the chameleon contract out of the security seals it had been stuck behind, but he brought Ino back outside and into the arena's exclusion zone before letting her sign it. She and the contract vanished shortly after she finished signing it, likely so that she could be tested. Naruto sighed, and in looking around decided that he should ensure that the entire group of Uzumaki examining the arena's seals ate something.
Being declared to be a 'proper leader' by most of the older Uzumaki that had come back to the island because of what he could do with seals hadn't been expected. That had generally come after they'd told some of their younger family members off for wanting to go against Konoha's decision regarding the clan head in the first place, of course.
"I'm not sure why I'm surprised you were able to find me," Orochimaru said as he accepted the delivery from the Uzu Anbu.
"You aren't exactly trying to hide," the Anbu replied.
"We're in a hidden base that's more bunker than anything else, behind three layers of privacy seals, with a stealth blood-locked security seal as part of the locking mechanism on the door. That you apparently didn't use to enter, despite it being the only way in, because none of the alerts for it opening or the lock disengaging went off."
"If you want to call those 'privacy seals' then that's your call and the seals on your door can be bypassed with a saline solution."
"...saline solution?"
"They look for the presence of genetic markers the 'key' source doesn't have. Proper saline solution looks enough like blood and then it doesn't find any genetic markers at all. No markers means no 'wrong' markers, so the seal releases without a fuss."
That...but...hmm. Yes, he could now see how that would work, and was kicking himself for missing it when he adapted the notes he'd found on it. Apparently it was normally combined with a positive match array for a reason, but fitting that in had been problematic. "I see."
"Do you have any questions relating to your travel papers or visit for the finals?"
Shaking out of his mental review of the security seal, but not missing that no claim of using the bypass had been made, he opened the package and double-checked everything. All of it appeared to be in order, but seeing the Uzukage signature had him frowning. "I probably can't claim justification to test him myself, but after getting a very young Kazekage I'm expecting the older Kages to take offense at a newcomer also claiming the title of Kage."
"...that has come up, yes. The Raikage and Tsuchikage expressed interest in testing him. I believe a pre-finals set of sparring matches is being considered. Do you have an interest in participating?"
"Yes, if it would be permitted given my status with Konoha."
"The worst that could happen would be an attempt to kill you."
"...true. And if you wanted me dead then you could've just attacked me before I knew you were here."
"I think I'd be more likely to manipulate your air care seals and then ensure that there was no quick way out of the bunker."
That was...ugh. Now he had to ensure that he actually understood those seals so that he could tell when they'd been tampered with and could fix them.
Naruto looked over the large 'sparring area' he was setting up outside of Uzushio proper. The finals would still be held inside of the arena inside of the village, but 'proving himself' to at least a couple of the other village leaders would need more space. Hence ensuring that a properly-secured area could be used, complete with some viewing platforms. The hard part was a combination of the cameras and the barrier seals, the former being handled more by Hinata than by him.
She was also handling most of the work other than the linking seals for 'each of the other villages can watch the finals from their local establishments', for that matter. This was made a little more complicated by each village having different standards for their cameras and monitors, but everything she was working with was higher quality so she'd just had his clones help her build new equipment for everyone 'as a show of good faith'.
"Don't think I'm getting this to the point where non-shinobi are being allowed to watch in person," Naruto muttered as he checked the line of barrier seals. "I can still think of nine ways to punch through this and I don't want to force people to support it to mitigate some of the vulnerabilities."
"How would that help?" Hinata asked from where she was checking the connections for the camera on the elevated stands at this point along the perimeter. Wires were being run to the ground to hopefully imply that they connected underground and thus the linking seals were harder to produce, but also to ensure that the connection array was better-protected.
"Different chakra signatures intermixing would negate anything that would slip through because I built the array and would also reinforce the whole thing in a general sense due to the differences in the various chakra sources helping to cover each other. Different harmonics and motion patterns in particular. But if enough hits the barrier and they don't disconnect in time then it could kill them by absorbing too much of their chakra."
"Ah, and you complained that you couldn't mitigate all of that with tweaks to the seals, right?"
"Several of the older Uzumaki are impressed that I mitigated as much as I have. The rest of the problems are more a matter of scale. This would be a lot harder to punch through if I were to apply it to a smaller area. I've actually implemented a smaller version for the exam arena to protect the audience and that should be plenty good enough there, but this is a much larger area so the unavoidable 'cracks' are larger."
She frowned, but this was getting into territory that she'd never really understood anyway. He'd probably add heavily-reinforced security glass to the stands to help cover some of the limitations of the barrier seals like he had in the exam arena as well. Having a wide-open path between the audience and the fighters felt like a recipe for disaster and he'd finally figured out how to stop the glass from going cloudy due to the effects of the reinforcing seals.
"Why did you do that?" Yoko asked, glaring at Naruto. It wasn't all that effective with their rinnegan active though, sharing their sight between them. Not to mention all the clones that were active with it now, though that was only the group Naruto had created with the rinnegan active. Clones that were out before activating the dojutsu couldn't properly activate the rinnegan, but could get up to the mangekyu sharingan on their own. In theory. They'd need to make a new batch of clones to test everything properly though.
"I was tired of waiting for the adapting period," Naruto replied. "As were you."
"So you fed yourself to the King of Hell?"
"Not sure we should call it that at this point, given what we know about its actual origins and capabilities, but yes. It can heal injuries to a ridiculous degree, specifically including those tied to the rinnegan and other abilities tied to the Ōtsutsuki."
"And it can consume souls."
"Which doesn't actually work on anyone with the rinnegan, and may not be actual souls. Didn't expect the feedback loop to hit you too though, I just wanted to be more ready for sparring against Kage. Including one that previously ripped my arm off."
"...I know, but you could've given the whole thing more than thirty seconds of thought before implementing it."
"If I'd given it more than thirty seconds of thought then I'd probably have convinced myself to not try it."
"I'm aware, and that's part of why I'm annoyed." She blinked a moment later. "Huh. The kamui dimension shows signs that someone else is using it."
He nodded. "Some of the stuff is very recent. Records from a few weeks ago."
"Looting time?"
"Yep. Especially that gunbai that changed appearance a bit when the clones touched it."
Ten minutes later there was nothing left in the dimension but the rectangular prisms, even the slight damage to the surfaces of the prisms cleaned up. Getting in and out with the Hiraishin was also tested and seemed to work, which made exploring some of the other dimensions they'd been told about safer.
Itachi blinked a couple of times as he looked over the list of items Naruto had brought to him, though he didn't unseal them from the tags they were stored in. "Where did you find an Uchiha relic and a dozen sharingan eyes?"
"Stole them from Madara, or at least the one pretending to be him," Naruto answered. "He was keeping a lot of stuff in the kamui dimension and we grabbed it all. Some of it was plans to attack Uzushio, or the Uzumaki in general, but most of it was weapons and other supplies. Plus things like this pile of preserved sharingan eyes and genetic samples from a few dozen others. I figured that returning the obviously-Uchiha stuff to the clan made sense."
"I see. This does bring up something else, actually."
"...it does?"
"You and Yoko were added to the Uchiha clan rolls, but have not yet passed your adulthood tests."
Naruto sighed. "Are you actually going to make us each launch a giant fireball?"
"Specifically using the great fireball technique."
Figuring it was better to get things over with, Yoko took a minute to swap out with a clone and met them at the small boat dock on the Naka river that was used as the traditional 'testing point' for the clan. Each of the two of them throwing a great fireball technique out over the water only took a minute.
Itachi nodded, then tossed the seal tag containing the gunbai to Naruto. "Congratulations."
"...there's no way that the gunbai is supposed to be an 'adulthood' reward," Naruto said.
"You need to read up on your clan laws. Or at least the Uchiha and Senju ones, I suppose, since I know you helped tear through the Hyuga ones and I'm fairly certain you've read the Uzumaki ones. There are rules about that gunbai, predating the clan itself. Passed down to a loyal member of the clan from the previous loyal wielder, but if recovered from a traitor without the previous loyal wielder still surviving then the one who recovered it receives it. Held by the clan for them if they weren't an adult when they recovered it, but you're now an adult."
"...what?"
"That and I don't want it anywhere near the bulk of the clan. You can probably handle a fight with Madara or the imposter pretending to be him, but I suspect none of the rest of the clan could. Especially given that he was the sole survivor of an 'everyone versus him' fight."
"Hold up," Yoko said. "What was that about the Senju laws?"
"You two are Uzumaki that have 'living things' wood release instead of only getting 'dead wood', so you're considered to be full members of the Senju clan. Without taking the Senju name you can't be considered to be continuing the clan, which still falls to Tsunade, but that's not your concern. I personally suspect that it was put into the laws as a bit of a joke, given how rare that level of wood release has been historically, but it's still there."
It probably said something about Naruto's thought processes that the first thing that came to mind from this was an idea for freaking out the Kage.
Nagato frowned as he looked over the proposed plans for visiting Uzushiogakure, a journey that would be made significantly easier thanks to his steadily-improving health. The rinnegan had never been able to heal him properly before, but shortly after the moon was destroyed he found that it was able to restore his body much more completely than it ever had before. He personally suspected that the loss of the statue was the real cause though, as in hindsight it seemed to consume him as much as he drew chakra from it.
He didn't think that the hot spring that Orochimaru had installed in the tower was helping, but it definitely wasn't hurting. Even if Konan was occasionally annoyed by how often he spent time in the thing, which he suspected was in part because she refused to join him and they'd not yet convinced Orochimaru to put in a second one.
Still, there was one notable problem with the proposed plans, and he flipped through them a second time to be sure he hadn't missed anything. "Who will be left in charge if you're joining me, as you seem to be insisting on doing?"
Konan simply smiled at first. She'd been doing that a lot more since he'd managed to heal himself with the rinnegan too, though some of that might be finding their current plans for something approaching peace to be more personally palatable. Only when he raised an eyebrow did she continue. "We've always maintained a full chain of command, even if you normally don't utilize it. I make heavy use of it and trust those that report to me to run things for up to two months without issue. Likely longer if nothing big comes up."
That...really should've occurred to him. Yes, she generally relayed his directives to the masses, so that he could largely focus on other matters, but they were both regularly out of the village for Akatsuki business and nothing had ever fallen apart. Granted, they tried to keep those trips shorter than the one to Uzushiogakure would be, a day or so with neither of them present if possible, but they still happened.
A moment later she froze up, expression hardening, and he quickly moved a couple of files into the drawer. Not that he'd had anything particularly problematic out, as 'Madara' hadn't been planning on being away for long. Shortly after that the man strode into the room, giving off an aura of suppressed utter panic?
"It appears that I've been robbed," 'Madara' said.
"...robbed?" Nagato asked.
"Yes, including basically all the copies of reports you've provided me that I had been keeping for purposes of cross-referencing. Based on where I was keeping things, I suspect that an Uchiha in Konoha acquired their mangekyo and happened to acquire a specific ability. Unfortunately, none of my tracking seals are functioning."
Well, that was interesting. Someone else had acquired the space/time trick and used it to access the previously-secure dimension that 'Madara' used as a refuge. That had to be concerning the man, given that it meant that it was no longer guaranteed safe for him to retreat there.
Konan's plans might need some adjustments in light of that.
Nagato did his best to keep those thoughts off of his face as he produced a shadow clone to start working on marking up the reports as compromised...and check to see if anything critical had been in them. "I see."
"While the timing of this is unfortunate," 'Madara' continued. "It doesn't negate the lead I have on one of Uzushio's potential remote locations, nor was information on said lead stored there."
"I'd think that you would simply visit the Land of Whirlpools at this point."
"Konoha is essentially running the island instead of the remnants returning, likely at the request of the remnants, down to the new 'Uzukage' being from Konoha. While there is undoubtedly a way to contact the remnants from the island, if not reach them with a well-secured teleportation seal or similar, I'd prefer to have more directly obtained information on where they've hidden things away. I've only got a little over twelve hours before I won't be able to follow up on things, so I'm grabbing some extra supplies and leaving this afternoon. You'll essentially be on your own in Uzushio, should things go wrong."
Nagato nodded, wondering if this meant that it would be safe to ask for assistance in dealing with 'Madara' from Uzushio and Konoha on the trip.
"It's kind of weird how the tablet works," Yoko commented as she stared at it. "The 'these abilities will only work every so often' information has changed at least three times for me."
"I noticed that 'every ten years per eye' changed to 'every five years per eye' for Kotoamatsukami after doing the eye-swap with Itachi," Shisui agreed. "And he commented about Tsukuyomi's recasting time being a week before said swap, with it now at a day. Are there others with similar restrictions?"
"Several, yes. A couple of space-time techniques, what I think is a 'give someone chakra' technique that isn't worded clearly, another that reads like a time travel technique..."
"Huh. I suppose that's more useful for you to know for now." He reached out and almost-touched one point. "My concern is what I see right here. Or rather, can almost see, but Itachi can't see at all."
Yoko looked at the point, shifting between sharingan, mangekyo, and rinnegan. "Ah, yes. That seems to be a warning about using Kotoamatsukami on the holder of your original eyes, but I think you're having trouble seeing it because you also have Tsukuyomi from Itachi." She pointed at another spot. "He probably has trouble seeing a similar warning about Tsukuyomi here, if the interaction flows work the way I think they do. Perhaps having both from opposite sides of the trade negates some of the interaction concerns?"
"Perhaps. Itachi was less concerned than I was about what I couldn't quite see and I highly doubt that we're going to be using either ability against each other at this stage. Thank you for your assistance."
"It isn't a problem, Hokage-sama."
"Just call me Shisui. I keep thinking the Third is behind me when people address me that way, and you're officially family anyway."
"Naruto is the less formal of the two of us."
"I'm well aware. Is he ready for his sparring matches with the Kage?"
Yoko smirked. "I think the real question is if the Kage are ready for their sparring matches with him."
"He's good, but I'm not sure if he's that good."
"Do you know how many hours Naruto and I spend training each week?"
That had Shisui blinking, but he gave it some thought. "I know you both do a bit of the 'get a little training into everything' attitude. Maybe a hundred-ish hours of light training and twenty-five-ish hours of heavy training a week?"
"Hokage-sama, Naruto and I collectively create over a thousand clones for training most days. Hinata runs at least four hundred a day and Ino is running around two hundred and working her way up. That's without the clones for monitoring Konoha and Uzushio and those created as part of tasks. Admittedly, it's true that all four of us only get at most a hundred and thirty hours of significant physical training in a week, but we train in a lot more than that." And that was 'mission days' instead of 'training days' where the numbers went up significantly, except for Ino who was still in her 'adjusting to having so much chakra' state, but mentioning that seemed like a bad idea.
The mere thought of that seemed to take the man by surprise, and an hour later he'd have a couple of paperwork clones helping him train while another handled the actual paperwork. Yoko hadn't even bothered to mention that while 'a thousand clones' was their normal, the two of them had been running an extra five hundred on using the sharingan each day since Naruto had stupidly fed himself to the King of Hell.
Of course, since getting a starter bunker into Ame they'd also managed to copy information on the 'Dance of the Shikigami' and Naruto had added clones to the daily training for figuring that out as well. Specifically because he'd decided that being the 'God of Paperwork' without being able to use the trick meant he wasn't able to live up to the name, but it helped that the 'turn into paper' ability worked in a manner different from the Hozuki clan's 'turn into water' trick. The latter appeared to be a chakra net node, at least from limited observation, and one that was likely incompatible with both turning into sand and the general shape shifting ability. The 'Dance of the Shikigami' was more tied into knowing what you wanted to be able to turn yourself into and manipulate...and wasn't limited to only paper.
Naruto had quickly managed the original paper, and figured out that the theory translated almost directly into a 'paper paperwork clone'. Expanding that to including ink on the paper hadn't taken long. He'd then discovered that it didn't work with the basic elements, but it could be used with wood and other plants as well as various foods. Which led to clones turning into ramen and ramen paperwork clones, and a quick prank against Anko with a clone turning into dango.
Yoko had eventually decided to play with it as well, figuring out how to essentially shift into being a puppet as well as make direct puppet paperwork clones. Then she'd decided that paper and paperwork implied that you could go straight for 'ink'.
All of it was more chakra intensive than shifting to and from sand was, but it would almost certainly make for a good show.
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… So, basically Tenten has a Panda summoning contract?
. . . Naruto is going to traumatize every shinobi and noble who have to deal with paperwork . . . isn't he?
Possibly even more so, if he implies that understanding the paperwork to a high level turns you into the paperwork.
Well, either that or imply that it's the next stage of the paperwork clone/the mastered form of it.
- Location
- USA
So Naruto's final form is...a (paper) form?
Or completely freak out, and we have a repeat of the running joke.
Or both.
Capitalization.
Naruto: "Hijutsu: Shorui Shigoto no Mai."
Kage: *panik*
- Location
- none of your business
I mean, if it's just bears in general, yes
Dreamlord
Norse Pettifogger
- Location
- Hogwarts
Between Ōnoki, A, and Shisui, that's three generations of Kage.
I kinda want Naruto to prove his chops by making "clones" of the other Kage to fight their originals/successors with him. Proving that he, Naruto, is a walking army of dead ninja rather puts the final nail in the moon's eye plan of summoning dead legends to stall the collective army
Also gives him a reason to claim to be in the Uchiha and Senju clans if he is walking around with instantly active clones of Hashirama and Madara
Also gives him a reason to claim to be in the Uchiha and Senju clans if he is walking around with instantly active clones of Hashirama and Madara
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Naruto: I've learned my lesson, never use my Paperwork Intent on a kage. It just leads to them trying to kill me in a blind panic."
Also Naruto: I'm going to turn into paperwork when sparring against kages.
Me: Naruto, you did not learn the right lesson here.
Also Naruto: I'm going to turn into paperwork when sparring against kages.
Me: Naruto, you did not learn the right lesson here.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
Konan could, as well. I've forgotten whether it's been established that she can or can't use Bureaucratic Intent, though.
Orochimaru noted that she A: definitely cannot because that requires someone to have absolutely no fear of paperwork and B: is actually more vulnerable to such things because in addition to the usual fear of paperwork she's also afraid of being turned into paperwork.
Hey, if the Kage get an opportunity to fight the paperwork, and kill the clones made of paperwork, then it might count as Therapy!
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Or as an act of war against their nations. Giving the Kage the idea that they might be able to violently kill paperwork might screw up their nations' normal bureaucratic processes if they internalize it enough to try it at home.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Worse yet, he was planning to personally become paperwork, I think. Not just clones. Kages have been demonstrated to have the response of a fear induced berserker state, with a (so far) 50/50 chance of them doing a insanely lethal attack using an Artifact then fleeing in a blind panic or going all out in a panic induced blackout state in an attempt to kill the source of their fear.
This has bad idea written all over it.
This has bad idea written all over it.
A bear summoning contract that happens to include pandas.
Thank you, fixed.
I don't think that was an inherent part of the plan, but instead just a convenient option that became available. The original plan was to have all the tailed beasts and not be fighting a war to get the last couple at all...
Naruto: When you've trained enough to handle the berserker rage, it goes from a downside to a benefit because getting your opponent to stop thinking means they've also stopped planning.
Also Naruto: ...but still only give them the opportunity to target clones when you do that, just in case.
- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
You know, when the other Uzumaki see the new level of shenanigans that Naruto has evolved, it's only going to prove beyond any doubt that he's got the chops to lead Uzushio. He's the once in a dozen generations prodigy that will be inspiring the rest of the clan in their own research projects for decades to come, leading to even more weirdnessimpressive achievements as further applications are derived from his work.
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
Ladies and Gentlemen, this version of Orochimaru, that continues to learn!
So TenTen could summon Po the Kung Fu Panda?