Chapter 11 - Road to Wave, Kekkei What?
The first day of the trip to Wave passed without any incidents, but due to needing to keep to Tazuna's pace they were only able to make it to the edge of the well-patrolled area around Konoha. Along the way Naruto was grilled a little by Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei about his clothing through the communication jutsu, leaving Tazuna to comment that they were unusually quiet when they stopped for lunch. Anko-sensei had simply commented that a loud shinobi was either very strong, very stupid, or soon to be very dead.
There were several well-maintained campsites just outside of the well-patrolled area, and they had stopped at one for the night. Tazuna had been surprised at multiple sizable tents being set up out of nowhere, as well as the selection that Naruto had been carrying for cooking. And, for that matter, that Naruto was in charge of the cooking to begin with. Not that the old man complained after tasting what was prepared.
Day two was similar, but they had to be more on alert as they weren't in well-patrolled areas anymore.
"It hasn't rained recently at all," Hinata complained to the rest of the team via the communication jutsu. "What are those idiots thinking?"
"That a civilian would never notice," Anko-sensei replied. "Assuming that you've spotted someone hiding in a fake puddle or something?"
"The demon brothers, it looks like, just over the next rise."
"Chunin at best, nothing we have to worry about. Which of you wants to get things started?"
"I'll take them alone," Naruto offered.
"...you probably can, yes," Kurenai-sensei replied, sounding exasperated. "And that would let us see how they react to you advertising that you're an Uzumaki. Slip behind us as they'll want to attempt to surprise us from a blind spot."
Nothing was said to Tazuna as they approached and passed the false puddle with the two shinobi inside of it, but Naruto had dropped to behind the group in the process as well as made several paperwork clones. One of those had switched with him, just in case. Hoshi was playing up on them not noticing anything by sniffing around in front of them, ignoring the puddle entirely. The two men silently lifted out of the puddle once they thought they were in the clear and charged at the group, only to falter for a moment upon paying enough attention to the clone's back.
The clone turned around and looked at the two at that point. "Seriously?" He then tapped his foot, and stone fists slammed into the crotches of the two attacking shinobi from below them. Their puddle then flowed up behind them, splitting into two before slipping under their clothing and latching onto their underwear. Chakra let the water firmly grab the fabric despite remaining a liquid, then pulled up hard as two spikes of stone grew upwards. The backs of their underwear were pulled free of their pants and hooked over the spikes, and then the clone body-flickered forward and hit both men with a lightning-charged fist to knock them unconscious.
Three minutes later the two had been stripped down to their underwear and forehead protectors. Tenten had claimed the gauntlets while musing that she was going to have her work cut out for her in figuring out how to use the linked chain on her own and the rest had been sealed away. Anko-sensei had then taken over, waking the pair up and interrogating them.
"You're a bit...ugh," Tazuna said as he turned away from Anko-sensei.
"She works with our interrogation department on a regular basis," Kurenai-sensei said. "Still, the fact that shinobi were after you does mean that this mission is no longer a C-rank. Even if these two were no match for one genin."
"...how do you know they weren't after you?"
"The picture of you with payout amounts for dead and alive written on the back of it."
Tazuna flinched at that, and what followed was forty-five minutes of sob-story about the condition of Wave and negotiations that ended with agreements for a payment plan on the additional cost of the mission if it remained B-rank or an agreement for Konoha to collect tolls on traffic crossing the bridge being built if they ran into any shinobi or group thereof that would raise the mission to an A-rank. This was written up, signed, and handed to Naruto...along with two scrolls that Anko-sensei provided containing the demon brothers.
"Those two go straight to T&I," Anko-sensei said. "Then you can run the updated mission agreement scroll to the tower."
Naruto nodded, created a new clone to take the three scrolls, and then watched as it vanished. Twenty minutes later he'd get the memories from it having dismissed itself after completing delivery of all three scrolls.
"So did you learn anything interesting?" Kurenai-sensei asked after a quick clean-up of the area.
"They thought they were lucky that Naruto merely humiliated and stripped them," Anko-sensei answered. "Other than that, not much. They were hired by Gato, but either weren't sure who else might be around or weren't willing to say with the techniques I can manage in the field."
"Pity. Oh well. We should get moving again."
The following day was foggy as they reached the shore, a lone and pitiful-looking dock sitting there. Tazuna signaled a man operating a boat, who looked fearful. It wasn't until the boat had pulled up to the dock that an obvious problem was spotted.
"I don't know if I can make two trips," the man in the boat said, looking at the group. "Getting around Gato's blockades isn't easy."
Hoshi hopped up onto Naruto, who grinned. "I'll walk."
"And I'll join him," Anko-sensei added. "One of us on each side."
"...walk?" the man in the boat said, obviously not believing them.
"They're shinobi," Tazuna answered. "With what little I've seen already? At this point they could tell me they could fly and I'd believe them."
"That's a much rarer skill," Tenten quipped. "Why, there might only be a dozen people on the continent that can pull it off in general, and half of them need to be riding something."
"Any competent shinobi with access to a body of water for training can walk on water," Anko-sensei added. "Hmmm. We do need to get some desert-style sand-walking in at some point though. Beach sand just doesn't work the same way."
A few minutes later they were moving across the water, Naruto and Hoshi to one side of the boat and Anko to the other side. Hoshi had even dropped down and was focusing on walking on the water himself. The man operating the boat had stared for a few minutes before focusing on getting them past the 'blockade'...which didn't appear to be anywhere near them. There were also no real signs of anything to worry about as they came into view of the...sizable bridge in progress. It looked like you could trivially have full-sized carriages going in both directions at the same time when completed, but for now it wasn't exactly usable.
Naruto did wonder if the paperwork for connecting it on the Land of Fire side of the shore had been filed properly though.
Reaching the far shore left them with the boat hurriedly leaving them behind and Tazuna needing to take the lead a bit more to lead them to his house. Both Naruto and Hinata also noticed that they were being watched, though the young man in the trees likely wasn't aware of that fact. Nor that he was still in their range when he met up with an older, larger, and obviously more powerful shinobi. The young man stayed behind as the other shinobi first moved closer, and then threw a very large sword at them.
"DOWN!" Hinata yelled, pulling Tazuna down. Tenten, Kurenai-sensei, and Anko-sensei dropped down as well.
Naruto bucked trends by diving forward into a roll past Hoshi, heading in the same direction that the sword was going in. The sword itself flew over him, and he was back on his feet and body-flickering over to it as it struck a tree. He grabbed the handle with his right hand, but didn't hold out any hope of actually using the sword right then.
So he triggered the spiral armband that had an open slot and stored the sword in it, causing it to vanish in a puff of chakra smoke. A split-second later the larger shinobi appeared in the air just over where the sword had been, obviously surprised that he didn't have a place to land. He recovered quickly, but as soon as he'd touched down he spun around to glare at Naruto. The bandages covering the lower part of the man's face ruined the effect slightly, at least in Naruto's opinion, but he was focused on other things instead.
Specifically, pulling out some paper and ink, using chakra to spread the ink onto the paper at the direction of his mother in the Tome. Creating two copies of a filled-out form with authentication and tracking seals hidden in the Uzumaki and Uzushio symbols in the corners.
"Give me back my sword," the man, Zabuza if Naruto's recollection of the Kiri bingo book was accurate, demanded.
"That was Kubikiribocho, right?" Naruto asked instead.
"...yes."
Naruto nodded, rolled up one copy of the form and dropped it into a seal, and then held the other copy out to the man. "Here's your copy of the receipt of reclamation."
The man blinked, taking the paper and staring at it for a moment. "...what?"
"Kubikiribocho was one of two swords given to Kiri by Uzu as part of an agreement to never directly attack one another. It was forfeit and reverted to Uzu ownership as soon as Kiri joined in the destruction of Uzu, but was unable to be reclaimed before now. That's a confirmation that an Uzumaki has taken possession of the sword. Now I just have to find and reclaim Nuibari, assuming no other Uzumaki has done so yet. I'd personally have thought that Shibuki would've come from Uzu, given the explosive tags, but apparently that was too indiscriminate for my ancestors to consider making."
Zabuza stared at the form, then took a closer look at Naruto. His eyes noticeably lingered on the Uzushio forehead protector, but his eyes had started widening as soon as he'd started recognizing the entire outfit Naruto was wearing. But then they narrowed again as he likely realized that Naruto had blond hair instead of red hair. "Are you sure you're an Uzumaki?"
"Yep."
"You don't have their red hair."
"I'm told my father was blond."
"...still not sure I believe that you're actually an Uzumaki. There aren't many left."
"My mother died shortly after I was born."
"Really?"
"Took a giant fox claw through the gut, I believe."
"Giant..." the man started, before his eyes went wide again. They flicked up to the Konoha forehead protector before he gulped lightly. "Kushina?"
"Oh, did you know her?"
"I've...heard of her, but don't think we ever met."
Naruto frowned. "Ah. And your friend looks too young to have met her either."
Zabuza blinked. "My...friend?"
"The young man in the trees that was following us from shortly after we came ashore and has moved to continue following my team. Oh well. Do try to get that to Kiri, I don't know how long it will be before I'll be able to get the other copy to a post office."
Naruto then body-flickered away to rejoin the others, not wanting to test his ability to take down a jounin-class opponent right now. Though 'rejoin' was more of a 'regroup where Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei had whipped up a quick fortified position' thing.
"...you aren't in the middle of a fight?" Kurenai-sensei asked as Naruto appeared.
"No," he replied. "I distracted him with paperwork and being an Uzumaki."
"Hell of a bluff," Anko-sensei said with a grin. "Claiming that you were taking an Uzu sword back."
"I'm sure Kiri has copies of the original agreement."
"Wait, it wasn't a bluff?"
"Nope."
"Naruto," Tenten said, suddenly next to him. "Where is the legendary sword?"
Sighing, he turned to look at her. She was attempting to give him a 'hell will freeze over before I back down from getting my hands on the legendary sword' look. "Outside of Zabuza's reach. There's no way that I'm pulling it out with him regrouping with his friend and getting ready to attack."
Her mood deflated at hearing that. "Dammit."
"They're approaching," Hinata warned. "And Zabuza has a smaller sword."
"Hinata and Tenten," Kurenai-sensei said. "You two are with me to guard Tazuna. I think Hoshi should stick with us as well."
"Naruto is with me," Anko-sensei continued, before flipping over to the communication jutsu. "Don't whine, he can flood the area with clones if needed. Oh, and everyone turn off your belts."
The girls nodded, though with slight frowns, and Hinata closed up the earth dome covering their position after Hoshi had slipped in. A moment later a genjutsu covered it to hide it better as Naruto and Anko-sensei toggled their resistance belts off and he made some clones that vanished into the surroundings before the two of them took off to intercept the two approaching Shinobi.
"Take the younger one," Anko sent as she moved to take on Zabuza.
Naruto's only response was to move to reach the younger man, and nearly got a face full of senbon in response. But he was a lot faster without his resistance belt active and was able to dodge them, unsealing a tanto from his armband in the process. The man had a hunter-nin style mask on, but likely wasn't actually one. They clashed, tanto blocked by senbon, before the man performed some single-handed hand seals and spat an ice spike.
That was luckily easily dodged with a head tilt, and Naruto responded by causing his hair to grow and grab at the man's arms. At the same time a rock fist came up to strike between the man's legs and an earth wall came up behind him to limit his retreat options. Wind chakra suddenly coating the senbon let the young man slice through the hair even as he jumped to the side, though he tripped over the rock fist as it missed its mark.
"Ice?" Naruto asked his parents in the Tome as he moved away from the young man, both sizing the other up.
"Wind and water combined," his father replied.
"Cool." Naruto grinned and mixed the two together, the elemental ball jutsu were all similar enough to make mixing up the elements trivial if you weren't using hand seals.
"It isn't that easy," Kurama started to say with a tone that said that Naruto was an idiot. "It requires..."
Whatever it supposedly required wasn't mentioned as Naruto's ice ball fired from his mouth, apparently taking the three in the Tome and his opponent by surprise. The surprise was significant enough for the young man to take the ice ball to his gut, but he recovered quickly.
"...are you a Yuki?" the young man asked, sounding uncertain as one hand held his stomach and the other brandished senbon again.
"Not that I know of," Naruto admitted.
"But you used hyoton?"
"I did what?"
"The ability to make ice is a kekkei genkai thought to only be found in the Yuki clan."
Naruto blinked, because it hadn't been that hard to combine the two elements. "Really?"
"Yes."
Shrugging, he fired another ice ball, and then mixed fire and wind chakra to spit out a...hmmm. He wasn't sure what the ball was, but it was far hotter than fire would normally be. The young man had dodged the second ice ball, and then thrown an ice wall up in panic. That had been barely enough to stop the hotter than usual ball, but had given Naruto enough time to attempt mixing water and fire. That came out as a ball of what looked like steam, which the young man dodged instead of trying to block. When the ball hit a tree it looked like it was acidic on top of being hot.
By that point the young man was looking panicked...and Naruto thought that the Tome might have a problem as it seemed to have stopped responding. He didn't know why, but also wasn't sure how to best 'fire' an elemental ball including earth or lightning. You usually fired the earth ball from the ground and the lightning ball from your hands, compared to the other three all working best from the mouth.
"ZABUZA!" the young man finally screamed.
"WHAT!?" the older shinobi asked as he dodged a snake that Anko-sensei had summoned.
"SHE'S GOT THREE KEKKEI GENKAI!"
Naruto took a moment to double-check that he hadn't mistakenly shapeshifted into a she even as Zabuza executed a complicated-looking spin to disengage from Anko-sensei and the snake. A moment later he was next to the young man. "What are you talking about?"
"She fired ice, what I think was scorch, and boil release balls."
"I'm a guy," Naruto grumbled. "And I don't know what the big deal is. I just mixed chakra."
"What's all the yapping about?" Anko-sensei asked, obviously still on guard but just as obviously curious about what was going on.
"I mixed water and wind to get an ice ball, and then fire and wind to get what I think the guy called scorch? Fire and water I was expecting to be steam, but boil sounds close enough, except that it looked like it was superheated acid when it struck the tree."
"...what."
Naruto proceeded to demonstrate all three again, to the widening eyes of both Anko-sensei and Zabuza. He then decided to mix earth and fire, launching the ball like he would an earth ball, and got what looked like it might be lava, which was awesome. Mixing earth and water just got mud though. Earth and wind was weird because it had looked normal but seemed like it pulled on some of the metal. Then he figured he might as well try adding in lightning to the earth ball, and the ball exploded when it hit.
He was thinking about how to add lightning with the other three elemental natures when Zabuza threw the young man over his shoulder. "Fuck it. We're not being paid enough to deal with an Uzumaki with six or more kekkei genkai."
A moment later it appeared that Zabuza had body flickered them away, and a few seconds later they were out of range of Naruto's byakugan.
Turning to Anko-sensei, he found her largely unresponsive. "Anko-sensei? Hello?"
It turned out that mixing chakra natures like that was either essentially impossible or required decades of work for most people and shouldn't be able to be done on the fly just because you'd found out that someone with a kekkei genkai could do it. Mixing a set two was rare enough, usually fizzling out or exploding in your chakra coils if attempted unless you had the right heritage, but just grabbing any two you pleased and having them combine without training was seen as crazy talk. And Naruto had proven he could combine all ten pairs by testing the remaining lightning combinations. With water he'd gotten lightning that flowed like water, wind had created an extremely fast ball, and with fire he'd somehow ended up with what looked like a perfect sphere of energy that had dissipated into the surroundings on hit.
Tenten had then complained that mud wasn't what you got with earth and water, because that's what mokuton was supposed to be. Naruto had shrugged and admitted that he might be doing things wrong before Kurenai-sensei had gotten them moving again. They'd made it to Tazuna's house, met his daughter Tsunami and stupidly set in his ways grandson Inari, and had been offered use of two rooms in the house to sleep in. Being the only guy, Naruto had volunteered to pop a tent outside instead of sharing a room with any of the others, though had stated that he should really trim his hair back as it was sloppily cut and a little past his shoulders now. Hinata had insisted on helping him trim it to a proper shoulder length instead of back to the shorter style he normally used.
Tsunami, upon finding out that he wasn't a she, had apologized and insisted on him at least using the couch instead of a tent, which they'd decided to go along with so that she wouldn't freak out over the girls sharing a room with Naruto instead of Anko-sensei's original plan of telling Naruto to share the room like they had on infiltration missions already. This was followed by Tsunami obviously being torn when Naruto had looked at what was available for food in the kitchen before unsealing supplies. Then affronted when he'd taken over the kitchen to cook, at least until she'd tasted the meal.
"Okay," Kurenai-sensei said as they gathered outside. Naruto needed to drop a summoning stone next to the house anyway. "We're going to run a rotation with a single guard active here at the house at all times, plus whoever is with Tazuna during the day. I assume that either Zabuza will return after being offered more money to deal with Naruto or that Gato will hire someone else."
"Or that they'll come to the conclusion that what Naruto did was more trick than reality," Anko-sensei added. "Which is what my assumption would be after thinking about it for a bit. A few seals that make it look like you can use a bunch of kekkei genkai instead of actually being able to do so."
"Hey Hinata," Naruto suddenly said, having been chatting with his finally-recovered parents in the Tome. "I bet you can combine things too."
Hinata gave Naruto a look that said he was an idiot. "You were just told how dangerous it can be."
"And you can use all the elements just as easily as I can."
She blinked a couple of times, then tilted her head. "Huh. So you think..." She then turned towards the water behind the house, and a moment later launched an ice ball.
"...bullshit," Anko-sensei said. "There's no fucking way that both of you can do that."
"Hold onto this for a bit and ignore the itching," Naruto said as he handed the Tome to Tenten.
"What?" Tenten asked.
"Trust me."
"...why?"
"Because if I'm right you'll be more awesome?"
She frowned, then opened the Tome to find that the pages were blank. "You want me to hold onto a blank book?"
"Only I can read it."
"Oh."
Zabuza had lucked out and found a courier-nin passing through the area and sent the receipt of reclamation to Kiri, in part because he suspected it might have some form of tracking seal and in part because he wanted the act of challenging that claim to be someone else's problem. Given the nature of the receipt he'd even been able to charge the delivery to Kiri instead of having to pay for it himself, which was an added bonus and had simplified the interaction with the courier-nin.
With that accomplished he'd met back up with Haku before they'd gone to speak with Gato. There they explained that the bridge builder had found an Uzumaki that was far more troublesome on his own than the existing contract for taking out the bridge builder covered, also explaining just how Gozu and Meizu had been taken out without the group looking like they'd so much as gotten a scratch on them. The little tyrant promised quadruple pay, and even provided half of their original sum up front, so long as the Uzumaki was also killed along with the rest of the team. Doing so would give Zabuza plenty of time to search for where the Uzumaki had hidden Kubikiribocho as well, which was an added bonus.
All of this was before sitting down with Haku to discuss things in more detail and realizing that the Uzumaki was probably a sensor. Or then finding out that the team had included a Hyuga. Spying on sensors was hard enough, but doing so with Hyuga was an exercise in hoping you had any accurate clue about their visual range. Sadly, the girl hadn't interacted with the short-lived battle much at all, so they had no clue what her range might be beyond knowing that younger Hyuga tended to have much smaller ranges. The combination of the two made silent killing...tricky at best, and potentially impossible to pull off properly. Especially as further reflection revealed that both the Uzumaki and the woman with the snake summons hadn't been making any noise as they moved. In fact, the bridge builder was the only one that Zabuza could recall hearing the footsteps of at all, potentially meaning that bringing in dense mist would be useless for fighting the shinobi.
...this was going to be an annoying few days to a week, but all they needed to do was figure out how to best launch a surprise attack. Without even knowing what the capabilities of the rest of the team actually were because only two of them had engaged at all.
Fuck. They should've told Gato to find someone else to do his dirty work. But it was one thing to back out when unexpected opposition showed up and another entirely to do so after renegotiating in light of said opposition. Nobody else would be willing to hire them if word got out that they were that unreliable.
The following morning had started with Naruto personally heading back to Konoha to make his normal set of clones there instead of having them summon themselves back. This was so that he could transfer Kubikiribocho to a storage seal in the shrine's storage room for the time being, as well as do some quick shopping. If he or Tenten had any hope of using that sword then they'd need better strength training for their arms, so a pile of chakra weights was essentially a requirement.
Dropping the receipt of reclamation for Kiri off at the post office and checking on triangulation of the tracking seals on the copy given to Zabuza had also been done, and it looked like a courier-nin, messenger bird, or summons would be reaching Kiri in the afternoon with Zabuza's copy. Creating a few extra clones to attempt a secondary project there was easy enough, but he had no clue if they'd be able to travel the distance needed in only a day.
He'd made it back to Wave in time for breakfast, which Tsunami had insisted on cooking, and during breakfast plans were being discussed. Silently, because this was part of the mission Tazuna hadn't hired them for.
"Anko and I discussed things and we'd like Naruto to create a bunch of clones," Kurenai-sensei sent via the communication jutsu. "Ideally locating and mapping out all of Gato's holdings on the island in the next two days."
"Using clones means they can all vanish without leaving a trace if needed," Anko-sensei added. "But the goal is to know how to hit everything we want to at once. Money and records are the primary goal, but other valuables are fair game as well. Anything that would be seen as illegal to ship in the Land of Fire should be noted if possible so that we can decide what to do with it."
"We'd join in, but for the next couple of days Anko and I need to be at full strength while protecting Tazuna and Naruto has perfected disguising his chakra to a degree that most never bother with."
"I can make a clone too," Hinata offered.
"We're aware and actually want you to leave your one clone here at the house until we know more about what plans may be in motion," Anko-sensei explained. "You'll be able to spot threats coming a lot more easily than the rest of us and grabbing the family of a target is a common tactic. Mostly because it works more often than not."
Hinata half-nodded while eating, not that it was likely noticed by the three civilians at the table. Especially as Tazuna was too busy telling Inari that the group of shinobi was 'more awesome than he could have dreamed'.
After breakfast they vocally decided on several things, but didn't include key details. Like the fact that Naruto would be dropping the other portable summoning stone near but not at the bridge for quick movement between there and the house. What the civilians didn't know couldn't be leaked by them, and not speaking things aloud made it much harder for enemies to listen in. But never talking about their mission would be suspicious on its own, hence almost conspicuously talking about the mission Tazuna had hired them for.
Playing mind games with enemies that might never be in a position to notice them was annoying, but good practice because sometimes you may not be in a position to notice your enemies as well. Building good habits now helped keep mistakes from being made later.
Naruto had been sent to 'scout ahead in case traps had been laid' as an excuse for making his clones, and also because they honestly didn't know if any traps had been put down. That he found two incredibly poorly constructed ones that a four year old would probably have found suspicious and that didn't even work properly was interesting though. Attempts to adapt basic traps for small game to human-scale without taking into account that the materials used couldn't handle the loads needed and that most humans were intelligent enough to see the trap. Or simply able to untie the knots.
Partially because he'd not been getting in any training, partially to hide that he'd used a pile of chakra to make paperwork clones, and partially because he was bored out of his mind, Naruto had ended up helping with the bridge construction. This had the extra benefits of having him get more familiar with the crew for dealing with infiltrators and allowing him easy access to look over the entire bridge for potential sabotage.
The complete lack of sabotage, combined with what was being learned about Gato throughout the day as clones reported back, had Naruto forming a very low opinion of the tyrant. Letting the bridge be completed and then stationing guards and toll collectors on it would have made a lot more sense than trying to stop the construction entirely. Admittedly, bridge traffic would be easier to inspect for the Land of Fire than the ship-based traffic, likely leading to a lot of things that Gato shouldn't have been shipping being discovered, but nobody said the illegal stuff had to travel over the bridge in the first place.
Still, some of the man's lack of intelligence was to their benefit. It appeared that he kept ninety percent of his money and records in his personal office, split between two safes. The 'legal' money and records in the obvious safe and the 'illegal' money and records in a larger hidden safe. This was also in the largest and 'most prosperous' settlement on the island and happened to be the primary legal shipping point, so visitors wouldn't be likely to realize anything was wrong. Two smaller settlements near that one handled illegal shipping, one focused on drugs and the other focused on other contraband. Such as literal crates full of poorly-made explosive tags.
Hitting those three settlements would be all they needed to do in order to cripple the Gato company, as far as Naruto could tell. The only question was when to do so, which would need to be discussed with the others. None of the man's thugs would pose a challenge to a third-year academy student from Konoha, but Zabuza and the young man who was apparently named Haku were still around and planning on how to spy on Team Eighteen. Possibly how to launch a surprise attack as well.
As a side bonus, Haku had pulled out and was going over a written copy of one of his ice jutsu, looking for tricks or insight he might have forgotten with how he normally used the mirrors involved. Which let Naruto's clones copy down the information, though the hand seal was odd and practicing with the jutsu was probably going to have to be done by clones in Konoha to avoid being spotted.
There were several well-maintained campsites just outside of the well-patrolled area, and they had stopped at one for the night. Tazuna had been surprised at multiple sizable tents being set up out of nowhere, as well as the selection that Naruto had been carrying for cooking. And, for that matter, that Naruto was in charge of the cooking to begin with. Not that the old man complained after tasting what was prepared.
Day two was similar, but they had to be more on alert as they weren't in well-patrolled areas anymore.
"It hasn't rained recently at all," Hinata complained to the rest of the team via the communication jutsu. "What are those idiots thinking?"
"That a civilian would never notice," Anko-sensei replied. "Assuming that you've spotted someone hiding in a fake puddle or something?"
"The demon brothers, it looks like, just over the next rise."
"Chunin at best, nothing we have to worry about. Which of you wants to get things started?"
"I'll take them alone," Naruto offered.
"...you probably can, yes," Kurenai-sensei replied, sounding exasperated. "And that would let us see how they react to you advertising that you're an Uzumaki. Slip behind us as they'll want to attempt to surprise us from a blind spot."
Nothing was said to Tazuna as they approached and passed the false puddle with the two shinobi inside of it, but Naruto had dropped to behind the group in the process as well as made several paperwork clones. One of those had switched with him, just in case. Hoshi was playing up on them not noticing anything by sniffing around in front of them, ignoring the puddle entirely. The two men silently lifted out of the puddle once they thought they were in the clear and charged at the group, only to falter for a moment upon paying enough attention to the clone's back.
The clone turned around and looked at the two at that point. "Seriously?" He then tapped his foot, and stone fists slammed into the crotches of the two attacking shinobi from below them. Their puddle then flowed up behind them, splitting into two before slipping under their clothing and latching onto their underwear. Chakra let the water firmly grab the fabric despite remaining a liquid, then pulled up hard as two spikes of stone grew upwards. The backs of their underwear were pulled free of their pants and hooked over the spikes, and then the clone body-flickered forward and hit both men with a lightning-charged fist to knock them unconscious.
Three minutes later the two had been stripped down to their underwear and forehead protectors. Tenten had claimed the gauntlets while musing that she was going to have her work cut out for her in figuring out how to use the linked chain on her own and the rest had been sealed away. Anko-sensei had then taken over, waking the pair up and interrogating them.
"You're a bit...ugh," Tazuna said as he turned away from Anko-sensei.
"She works with our interrogation department on a regular basis," Kurenai-sensei said. "Still, the fact that shinobi were after you does mean that this mission is no longer a C-rank. Even if these two were no match for one genin."
"...how do you know they weren't after you?"
"The picture of you with payout amounts for dead and alive written on the back of it."
Tazuna flinched at that, and what followed was forty-five minutes of sob-story about the condition of Wave and negotiations that ended with agreements for a payment plan on the additional cost of the mission if it remained B-rank or an agreement for Konoha to collect tolls on traffic crossing the bridge being built if they ran into any shinobi or group thereof that would raise the mission to an A-rank. This was written up, signed, and handed to Naruto...along with two scrolls that Anko-sensei provided containing the demon brothers.
"Those two go straight to T&I," Anko-sensei said. "Then you can run the updated mission agreement scroll to the tower."
Naruto nodded, created a new clone to take the three scrolls, and then watched as it vanished. Twenty minutes later he'd get the memories from it having dismissed itself after completing delivery of all three scrolls.
"So did you learn anything interesting?" Kurenai-sensei asked after a quick clean-up of the area.
"They thought they were lucky that Naruto merely humiliated and stripped them," Anko-sensei answered. "Other than that, not much. They were hired by Gato, but either weren't sure who else might be around or weren't willing to say with the techniques I can manage in the field."
"Pity. Oh well. We should get moving again."
The following day was foggy as they reached the shore, a lone and pitiful-looking dock sitting there. Tazuna signaled a man operating a boat, who looked fearful. It wasn't until the boat had pulled up to the dock that an obvious problem was spotted.
"I don't know if I can make two trips," the man in the boat said, looking at the group. "Getting around Gato's blockades isn't easy."
Hoshi hopped up onto Naruto, who grinned. "I'll walk."
"And I'll join him," Anko-sensei added. "One of us on each side."
"...walk?" the man in the boat said, obviously not believing them.
"They're shinobi," Tazuna answered. "With what little I've seen already? At this point they could tell me they could fly and I'd believe them."
"That's a much rarer skill," Tenten quipped. "Why, there might only be a dozen people on the continent that can pull it off in general, and half of them need to be riding something."
"Any competent shinobi with access to a body of water for training can walk on water," Anko-sensei added. "Hmmm. We do need to get some desert-style sand-walking in at some point though. Beach sand just doesn't work the same way."
A few minutes later they were moving across the water, Naruto and Hoshi to one side of the boat and Anko to the other side. Hoshi had even dropped down and was focusing on walking on the water himself. The man operating the boat had stared for a few minutes before focusing on getting them past the 'blockade'...which didn't appear to be anywhere near them. There were also no real signs of anything to worry about as they came into view of the...sizable bridge in progress. It looked like you could trivially have full-sized carriages going in both directions at the same time when completed, but for now it wasn't exactly usable.
Naruto did wonder if the paperwork for connecting it on the Land of Fire side of the shore had been filed properly though.
Reaching the far shore left them with the boat hurriedly leaving them behind and Tazuna needing to take the lead a bit more to lead them to his house. Both Naruto and Hinata also noticed that they were being watched, though the young man in the trees likely wasn't aware of that fact. Nor that he was still in their range when he met up with an older, larger, and obviously more powerful shinobi. The young man stayed behind as the other shinobi first moved closer, and then threw a very large sword at them.
"DOWN!" Hinata yelled, pulling Tazuna down. Tenten, Kurenai-sensei, and Anko-sensei dropped down as well.
Naruto bucked trends by diving forward into a roll past Hoshi, heading in the same direction that the sword was going in. The sword itself flew over him, and he was back on his feet and body-flickering over to it as it struck a tree. He grabbed the handle with his right hand, but didn't hold out any hope of actually using the sword right then.
So he triggered the spiral armband that had an open slot and stored the sword in it, causing it to vanish in a puff of chakra smoke. A split-second later the larger shinobi appeared in the air just over where the sword had been, obviously surprised that he didn't have a place to land. He recovered quickly, but as soon as he'd touched down he spun around to glare at Naruto. The bandages covering the lower part of the man's face ruined the effect slightly, at least in Naruto's opinion, but he was focused on other things instead.
Specifically, pulling out some paper and ink, using chakra to spread the ink onto the paper at the direction of his mother in the Tome. Creating two copies of a filled-out form with authentication and tracking seals hidden in the Uzumaki and Uzushio symbols in the corners.
"Give me back my sword," the man, Zabuza if Naruto's recollection of the Kiri bingo book was accurate, demanded.
"That was Kubikiribocho, right?" Naruto asked instead.
"...yes."
Naruto nodded, rolled up one copy of the form and dropped it into a seal, and then held the other copy out to the man. "Here's your copy of the receipt of reclamation."
The man blinked, taking the paper and staring at it for a moment. "...what?"
"Kubikiribocho was one of two swords given to Kiri by Uzu as part of an agreement to never directly attack one another. It was forfeit and reverted to Uzu ownership as soon as Kiri joined in the destruction of Uzu, but was unable to be reclaimed before now. That's a confirmation that an Uzumaki has taken possession of the sword. Now I just have to find and reclaim Nuibari, assuming no other Uzumaki has done so yet. I'd personally have thought that Shibuki would've come from Uzu, given the explosive tags, but apparently that was too indiscriminate for my ancestors to consider making."
Zabuza stared at the form, then took a closer look at Naruto. His eyes noticeably lingered on the Uzushio forehead protector, but his eyes had started widening as soon as he'd started recognizing the entire outfit Naruto was wearing. But then they narrowed again as he likely realized that Naruto had blond hair instead of red hair. "Are you sure you're an Uzumaki?"
"Yep."
"You don't have their red hair."
"I'm told my father was blond."
"...still not sure I believe that you're actually an Uzumaki. There aren't many left."
"My mother died shortly after I was born."
"Really?"
"Took a giant fox claw through the gut, I believe."
"Giant..." the man started, before his eyes went wide again. They flicked up to the Konoha forehead protector before he gulped lightly. "Kushina?"
"Oh, did you know her?"
"I've...heard of her, but don't think we ever met."
Naruto frowned. "Ah. And your friend looks too young to have met her either."
Zabuza blinked. "My...friend?"
"The young man in the trees that was following us from shortly after we came ashore and has moved to continue following my team. Oh well. Do try to get that to Kiri, I don't know how long it will be before I'll be able to get the other copy to a post office."
Naruto then body-flickered away to rejoin the others, not wanting to test his ability to take down a jounin-class opponent right now. Though 'rejoin' was more of a 'regroup where Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei had whipped up a quick fortified position' thing.
"...you aren't in the middle of a fight?" Kurenai-sensei asked as Naruto appeared.
"No," he replied. "I distracted him with paperwork and being an Uzumaki."
"Hell of a bluff," Anko-sensei said with a grin. "Claiming that you were taking an Uzu sword back."
"I'm sure Kiri has copies of the original agreement."
"Wait, it wasn't a bluff?"
"Nope."
"Naruto," Tenten said, suddenly next to him. "Where is the legendary sword?"
Sighing, he turned to look at her. She was attempting to give him a 'hell will freeze over before I back down from getting my hands on the legendary sword' look. "Outside of Zabuza's reach. There's no way that I'm pulling it out with him regrouping with his friend and getting ready to attack."
Her mood deflated at hearing that. "Dammit."
"They're approaching," Hinata warned. "And Zabuza has a smaller sword."
"Hinata and Tenten," Kurenai-sensei said. "You two are with me to guard Tazuna. I think Hoshi should stick with us as well."
"Naruto is with me," Anko-sensei continued, before flipping over to the communication jutsu. "Don't whine, he can flood the area with clones if needed. Oh, and everyone turn off your belts."
The girls nodded, though with slight frowns, and Hinata closed up the earth dome covering their position after Hoshi had slipped in. A moment later a genjutsu covered it to hide it better as Naruto and Anko-sensei toggled their resistance belts off and he made some clones that vanished into the surroundings before the two of them took off to intercept the two approaching Shinobi.
"Take the younger one," Anko sent as she moved to take on Zabuza.
Naruto's only response was to move to reach the younger man, and nearly got a face full of senbon in response. But he was a lot faster without his resistance belt active and was able to dodge them, unsealing a tanto from his armband in the process. The man had a hunter-nin style mask on, but likely wasn't actually one. They clashed, tanto blocked by senbon, before the man performed some single-handed hand seals and spat an ice spike.
That was luckily easily dodged with a head tilt, and Naruto responded by causing his hair to grow and grab at the man's arms. At the same time a rock fist came up to strike between the man's legs and an earth wall came up behind him to limit his retreat options. Wind chakra suddenly coating the senbon let the young man slice through the hair even as he jumped to the side, though he tripped over the rock fist as it missed its mark.
"Ice?" Naruto asked his parents in the Tome as he moved away from the young man, both sizing the other up.
"Wind and water combined," his father replied.
"Cool." Naruto grinned and mixed the two together, the elemental ball jutsu were all similar enough to make mixing up the elements trivial if you weren't using hand seals.
"It isn't that easy," Kurama started to say with a tone that said that Naruto was an idiot. "It requires..."
Whatever it supposedly required wasn't mentioned as Naruto's ice ball fired from his mouth, apparently taking the three in the Tome and his opponent by surprise. The surprise was significant enough for the young man to take the ice ball to his gut, but he recovered quickly.
"...are you a Yuki?" the young man asked, sounding uncertain as one hand held his stomach and the other brandished senbon again.
"Not that I know of," Naruto admitted.
"But you used hyoton?"
"I did what?"
"The ability to make ice is a kekkei genkai thought to only be found in the Yuki clan."
Naruto blinked, because it hadn't been that hard to combine the two elements. "Really?"
"Yes."
Shrugging, he fired another ice ball, and then mixed fire and wind chakra to spit out a...hmmm. He wasn't sure what the ball was, but it was far hotter than fire would normally be. The young man had dodged the second ice ball, and then thrown an ice wall up in panic. That had been barely enough to stop the hotter than usual ball, but had given Naruto enough time to attempt mixing water and fire. That came out as a ball of what looked like steam, which the young man dodged instead of trying to block. When the ball hit a tree it looked like it was acidic on top of being hot.
By that point the young man was looking panicked...and Naruto thought that the Tome might have a problem as it seemed to have stopped responding. He didn't know why, but also wasn't sure how to best 'fire' an elemental ball including earth or lightning. You usually fired the earth ball from the ground and the lightning ball from your hands, compared to the other three all working best from the mouth.
"ZABUZA!" the young man finally screamed.
"WHAT!?" the older shinobi asked as he dodged a snake that Anko-sensei had summoned.
"SHE'S GOT THREE KEKKEI GENKAI!"
Naruto took a moment to double-check that he hadn't mistakenly shapeshifted into a she even as Zabuza executed a complicated-looking spin to disengage from Anko-sensei and the snake. A moment later he was next to the young man. "What are you talking about?"
"She fired ice, what I think was scorch, and boil release balls."
"I'm a guy," Naruto grumbled. "And I don't know what the big deal is. I just mixed chakra."
"What's all the yapping about?" Anko-sensei asked, obviously still on guard but just as obviously curious about what was going on.
"I mixed water and wind to get an ice ball, and then fire and wind to get what I think the guy called scorch? Fire and water I was expecting to be steam, but boil sounds close enough, except that it looked like it was superheated acid when it struck the tree."
"...what."
Naruto proceeded to demonstrate all three again, to the widening eyes of both Anko-sensei and Zabuza. He then decided to mix earth and fire, launching the ball like he would an earth ball, and got what looked like it might be lava, which was awesome. Mixing earth and water just got mud though. Earth and wind was weird because it had looked normal but seemed like it pulled on some of the metal. Then he figured he might as well try adding in lightning to the earth ball, and the ball exploded when it hit.
He was thinking about how to add lightning with the other three elemental natures when Zabuza threw the young man over his shoulder. "Fuck it. We're not being paid enough to deal with an Uzumaki with six or more kekkei genkai."
A moment later it appeared that Zabuza had body flickered them away, and a few seconds later they were out of range of Naruto's byakugan.
Turning to Anko-sensei, he found her largely unresponsive. "Anko-sensei? Hello?"
It turned out that mixing chakra natures like that was either essentially impossible or required decades of work for most people and shouldn't be able to be done on the fly just because you'd found out that someone with a kekkei genkai could do it. Mixing a set two was rare enough, usually fizzling out or exploding in your chakra coils if attempted unless you had the right heritage, but just grabbing any two you pleased and having them combine without training was seen as crazy talk. And Naruto had proven he could combine all ten pairs by testing the remaining lightning combinations. With water he'd gotten lightning that flowed like water, wind had created an extremely fast ball, and with fire he'd somehow ended up with what looked like a perfect sphere of energy that had dissipated into the surroundings on hit.
Tenten had then complained that mud wasn't what you got with earth and water, because that's what mokuton was supposed to be. Naruto had shrugged and admitted that he might be doing things wrong before Kurenai-sensei had gotten them moving again. They'd made it to Tazuna's house, met his daughter Tsunami and stupidly set in his ways grandson Inari, and had been offered use of two rooms in the house to sleep in. Being the only guy, Naruto had volunteered to pop a tent outside instead of sharing a room with any of the others, though had stated that he should really trim his hair back as it was sloppily cut and a little past his shoulders now. Hinata had insisted on helping him trim it to a proper shoulder length instead of back to the shorter style he normally used.
Tsunami, upon finding out that he wasn't a she, had apologized and insisted on him at least using the couch instead of a tent, which they'd decided to go along with so that she wouldn't freak out over the girls sharing a room with Naruto instead of Anko-sensei's original plan of telling Naruto to share the room like they had on infiltration missions already. This was followed by Tsunami obviously being torn when Naruto had looked at what was available for food in the kitchen before unsealing supplies. Then affronted when he'd taken over the kitchen to cook, at least until she'd tasted the meal.
"Okay," Kurenai-sensei said as they gathered outside. Naruto needed to drop a summoning stone next to the house anyway. "We're going to run a rotation with a single guard active here at the house at all times, plus whoever is with Tazuna during the day. I assume that either Zabuza will return after being offered more money to deal with Naruto or that Gato will hire someone else."
"Or that they'll come to the conclusion that what Naruto did was more trick than reality," Anko-sensei added. "Which is what my assumption would be after thinking about it for a bit. A few seals that make it look like you can use a bunch of kekkei genkai instead of actually being able to do so."
"Hey Hinata," Naruto suddenly said, having been chatting with his finally-recovered parents in the Tome. "I bet you can combine things too."
Hinata gave Naruto a look that said he was an idiot. "You were just told how dangerous it can be."
"And you can use all the elements just as easily as I can."
She blinked a couple of times, then tilted her head. "Huh. So you think..." She then turned towards the water behind the house, and a moment later launched an ice ball.
"...bullshit," Anko-sensei said. "There's no fucking way that both of you can do that."
"Hold onto this for a bit and ignore the itching," Naruto said as he handed the Tome to Tenten.
"What?" Tenten asked.
"Trust me."
"...why?"
"Because if I'm right you'll be more awesome?"
She frowned, then opened the Tome to find that the pages were blank. "You want me to hold onto a blank book?"
"Only I can read it."
"Oh."
Zabuza had lucked out and found a courier-nin passing through the area and sent the receipt of reclamation to Kiri, in part because he suspected it might have some form of tracking seal and in part because he wanted the act of challenging that claim to be someone else's problem. Given the nature of the receipt he'd even been able to charge the delivery to Kiri instead of having to pay for it himself, which was an added bonus and had simplified the interaction with the courier-nin.
With that accomplished he'd met back up with Haku before they'd gone to speak with Gato. There they explained that the bridge builder had found an Uzumaki that was far more troublesome on his own than the existing contract for taking out the bridge builder covered, also explaining just how Gozu and Meizu had been taken out without the group looking like they'd so much as gotten a scratch on them. The little tyrant promised quadruple pay, and even provided half of their original sum up front, so long as the Uzumaki was also killed along with the rest of the team. Doing so would give Zabuza plenty of time to search for where the Uzumaki had hidden Kubikiribocho as well, which was an added bonus.
All of this was before sitting down with Haku to discuss things in more detail and realizing that the Uzumaki was probably a sensor. Or then finding out that the team had included a Hyuga. Spying on sensors was hard enough, but doing so with Hyuga was an exercise in hoping you had any accurate clue about their visual range. Sadly, the girl hadn't interacted with the short-lived battle much at all, so they had no clue what her range might be beyond knowing that younger Hyuga tended to have much smaller ranges. The combination of the two made silent killing...tricky at best, and potentially impossible to pull off properly. Especially as further reflection revealed that both the Uzumaki and the woman with the snake summons hadn't been making any noise as they moved. In fact, the bridge builder was the only one that Zabuza could recall hearing the footsteps of at all, potentially meaning that bringing in dense mist would be useless for fighting the shinobi.
...this was going to be an annoying few days to a week, but all they needed to do was figure out how to best launch a surprise attack. Without even knowing what the capabilities of the rest of the team actually were because only two of them had engaged at all.
Fuck. They should've told Gato to find someone else to do his dirty work. But it was one thing to back out when unexpected opposition showed up and another entirely to do so after renegotiating in light of said opposition. Nobody else would be willing to hire them if word got out that they were that unreliable.
The following morning had started with Naruto personally heading back to Konoha to make his normal set of clones there instead of having them summon themselves back. This was so that he could transfer Kubikiribocho to a storage seal in the shrine's storage room for the time being, as well as do some quick shopping. If he or Tenten had any hope of using that sword then they'd need better strength training for their arms, so a pile of chakra weights was essentially a requirement.
Dropping the receipt of reclamation for Kiri off at the post office and checking on triangulation of the tracking seals on the copy given to Zabuza had also been done, and it looked like a courier-nin, messenger bird, or summons would be reaching Kiri in the afternoon with Zabuza's copy. Creating a few extra clones to attempt a secondary project there was easy enough, but he had no clue if they'd be able to travel the distance needed in only a day.
He'd made it back to Wave in time for breakfast, which Tsunami had insisted on cooking, and during breakfast plans were being discussed. Silently, because this was part of the mission Tazuna hadn't hired them for.
"Anko and I discussed things and we'd like Naruto to create a bunch of clones," Kurenai-sensei sent via the communication jutsu. "Ideally locating and mapping out all of Gato's holdings on the island in the next two days."
"Using clones means they can all vanish without leaving a trace if needed," Anko-sensei added. "But the goal is to know how to hit everything we want to at once. Money and records are the primary goal, but other valuables are fair game as well. Anything that would be seen as illegal to ship in the Land of Fire should be noted if possible so that we can decide what to do with it."
"We'd join in, but for the next couple of days Anko and I need to be at full strength while protecting Tazuna and Naruto has perfected disguising his chakra to a degree that most never bother with."
"I can make a clone too," Hinata offered.
"We're aware and actually want you to leave your one clone here at the house until we know more about what plans may be in motion," Anko-sensei explained. "You'll be able to spot threats coming a lot more easily than the rest of us and grabbing the family of a target is a common tactic. Mostly because it works more often than not."
Hinata half-nodded while eating, not that it was likely noticed by the three civilians at the table. Especially as Tazuna was too busy telling Inari that the group of shinobi was 'more awesome than he could have dreamed'.
After breakfast they vocally decided on several things, but didn't include key details. Like the fact that Naruto would be dropping the other portable summoning stone near but not at the bridge for quick movement between there and the house. What the civilians didn't know couldn't be leaked by them, and not speaking things aloud made it much harder for enemies to listen in. But never talking about their mission would be suspicious on its own, hence almost conspicuously talking about the mission Tazuna had hired them for.
Playing mind games with enemies that might never be in a position to notice them was annoying, but good practice because sometimes you may not be in a position to notice your enemies as well. Building good habits now helped keep mistakes from being made later.
Naruto had been sent to 'scout ahead in case traps had been laid' as an excuse for making his clones, and also because they honestly didn't know if any traps had been put down. That he found two incredibly poorly constructed ones that a four year old would probably have found suspicious and that didn't even work properly was interesting though. Attempts to adapt basic traps for small game to human-scale without taking into account that the materials used couldn't handle the loads needed and that most humans were intelligent enough to see the trap. Or simply able to untie the knots.
Partially because he'd not been getting in any training, partially to hide that he'd used a pile of chakra to make paperwork clones, and partially because he was bored out of his mind, Naruto had ended up helping with the bridge construction. This had the extra benefits of having him get more familiar with the crew for dealing with infiltrators and allowing him easy access to look over the entire bridge for potential sabotage.
The complete lack of sabotage, combined with what was being learned about Gato throughout the day as clones reported back, had Naruto forming a very low opinion of the tyrant. Letting the bridge be completed and then stationing guards and toll collectors on it would have made a lot more sense than trying to stop the construction entirely. Admittedly, bridge traffic would be easier to inspect for the Land of Fire than the ship-based traffic, likely leading to a lot of things that Gato shouldn't have been shipping being discovered, but nobody said the illegal stuff had to travel over the bridge in the first place.
Still, some of the man's lack of intelligence was to their benefit. It appeared that he kept ninety percent of his money and records in his personal office, split between two safes. The 'legal' money and records in the obvious safe and the 'illegal' money and records in a larger hidden safe. This was also in the largest and 'most prosperous' settlement on the island and happened to be the primary legal shipping point, so visitors wouldn't be likely to realize anything was wrong. Two smaller settlements near that one handled illegal shipping, one focused on drugs and the other focused on other contraband. Such as literal crates full of poorly-made explosive tags.
Hitting those three settlements would be all they needed to do in order to cripple the Gato company, as far as Naruto could tell. The only question was when to do so, which would need to be discussed with the others. None of the man's thugs would pose a challenge to a third-year academy student from Konoha, but Zabuza and the young man who was apparently named Haku were still around and planning on how to spy on Team Eighteen. Possibly how to launch a surprise attack as well.
As a side bonus, Haku had pulled out and was going over a written copy of one of his ice jutsu, looking for tricks or insight he might have forgotten with how he normally used the mirrors involved. Which let Naruto's clones copy down the information, though the hand seal was odd and practicing with the jutsu was probably going to have to be done by clones in Konoha to avoid being spotted.
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