"Is that a medical jutsu scroll?" Naruto asked Hoshi, who was in fox-boy form at the apartment's kitchen table a little before the sun was due to rise. His maid outfit was also gone, replaced with a basic t-shirt and shorts.
"Yes," Hoshi replied. "You're already too strong for me to get to 'can help you in combat without being in the way' at this point. I couldn't even follow your fight with Lee. But I can learn how to put you back together better than the basic field tricks I already know."
"Ah. What do you want for breakfast?"
"I grabbed breakfast while picking up the scroll from the elders. There's no way that I'm going to be able to handle human medic jutsu even if I can look like one."
Well, he was probably right about that. Summons accessed chakra differently than humans did in several ways and when they did use what amounted to hand seals their chakra moved differently than when a human did the same seals. This was probably in part because they didn't have a 'net' like humans did. Kurama claimed this was probably because humans were artificially able to use chakra on the whole while the summon clans were naturally able to use the energy.
Whatever the case, Naruto made breakfast and Hoshi declined to join him in checking on Karin. On his way to the compound through the shrine a new Yoko clone was made, one that should allow him to take a nap without dispelling her later if needed even if he tended to leave those active too long and get headaches when they dispelled, and then he slipped into the Uzumaki compound. There he found Karin butchering breakfast.
"Apparently I should've come and checked with you before making my own breakfast," Naruto commented, looking over the mess. "What were you trying to make?"
"I'd rather not say," Karin said, lifting a pot lid and then slamming it back down when fire started coming out. She then sighed and turned towards him, revealing that she was wearing a Konoha forehead protector.
"So you decided to join the ranks here?"
"Er, not entirely 'decided'? Hokage-sama was ready with additional plans and my former sensei was able to tell that I'd not died somehow. But there's an agreement between Konoha and Kusa that says that shinobi clan members can jump villages if their clan is 'more established' in the other village, and the Uzumaki clan has more history here than in Kusa. But I need to stay a shinobi for two years, and right now I'm technically in the 'reserves' waiting for a new team to be formed or an existing one to need another member."
"Ah." Naruto shifted the Tome to book form and lightly tossed it to Karin. "Hold onto that for a few while I clean up and make something for you."
"What's this?"
"Magic book."
Karin gave him a look. "Seriously, what is it?"
He turned off the heat under the pot with the fire in and used water manipulation to ensure that the fire in the pot was out. "I was being serious."
She flipped through the tome, paused, and went back to the beginning. That was followed by an attempt at a genjutsu release. "What the hell?"
"What are you showing her?" Naruto asked his parents in the book.
"Kurama decided to annoy her by dancing in the pages for her," his mother replied. "With a sign saying 'this is a magic bijuu-killing book, suck it up' floating around him, I believe."
"She's got a partial chakra chain node and two other nodes we've not examined in detail before," his father added. "They look easy enough to duplicate, and based on the connections we're fairly certain that one of them is where some of her healing comes from. Her medical chakra node looks like it has things yours doesn't too, which may be part of what helps her there. Reasonably complete earth and water nodes without the full set of interconnects too, easy enough to work with. But we think you should ask her before we change her net."
Naruto nodded and switched to speaking out loud. "So, you've got an incomplete ability to make chakra chains that can be fixed up and the book can improve your elemental control quite a bit too, if you'd like, but we're going to want to see if we can duplicate a couple of other things you've got into me at a minimum too."
Karin blinked, looked down at the book, flinched, and then returned her focus to Naruto. "Really? So, what, the 'bite me to heal' and my sensor nature?"
"Yes on the former, we're not sure on the latter."
"What kind of improvement in elemental control are we talking about?"
Grinning, Naruto formed an ice mirror hovering just over the counter and started using it as a cutting board. Based on Karin going wide-eyed and looking giddy he thought she'd essentially already agreed.
A couple hours later Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei showed up with Hinata, Tenten, and Jiraiya. The latter was a surprise as Naruto hadn't known that he was in the village at all.
"So," Kurenai-sensei said as they sat around the table in the house Karin wasn't staying in, though she was over in the shrine right now having decided that it was apparently tradition for Uzumaki to learn to be shrine maidens after finding out about Yoko following in the footsteps of Kushina and Mito. "We've talked with Hokage-sama about things, including training for the month. In theory, you're supposed to be largely on your own with Anko and I available to aid you if needed, with clan members frequently training heavily in a new clan technique or two."
"You three don't seem likely to decide to train apart just to surprise each other," Anko-sensei continued. "But then the pervert showed up to throw wrenches into the works."
"It's only partially my idea," Jiraiya argued. "Half of it came from the toads, and without that I'd have approached Naruto alone in a week or two instead of crashing a team meeting today."
"...what? You'd have gone around us to get him to sign a summoning contract?"
"I've known he'd eventually approach me about the toad contract for years," Naruto pointed out.
"So they finally told me," Jiraiya grumbled, before shaking his head. "No, the reason I approached the team is because the toads have been in touch with the snakes. A recent death means that we have time to pull one over on Orochimaru."
That had Anko-sensei's full attention. "Oh? Do tell."
"You're officially his only living apprentice with the snakes, and signed the snake contract as such. If an apprentice of your own signs it and passes their test then you become the 'current' master of the contract and can revoke his access to all but Manda."
"...because Manda requires a personal contract after you prove yourself to him, and revoking the main contract won't revoke the personal one. That makes sense, though he has at least two others that he signed personal contracts with. Possibly more, though I know who to ask about that if I need to know."
"But," Jiraiya continued with a frown. "The snakes won't currently accept a toad or fox summoner, even if their elders are willing to work with the toad elders on a number of things, so I think that leaves the two girls here as options unless Anko has an apprentice elsewhere I'm unaware of."
Anko-sensei nodded. "Then it would probably have to be Hinata. Tenten hasn't been building her chakra long enough and the snakes insist on taijutsu skills she doesn't have. They don't actually care about the style when you sign the contract, but Hinata has the snake style down fairly well at this point even if not to the level that Naruto does."
"I'm more interested in summoning weapons anyway," Tenten admitted.
"And should any other summon clan approach you then you're in good standing for not seeing summoned animals as weapons."
"I don't have time to train Naruto beyond the absolute basics," Jiraiya admitted. "But Fukasaku thinks that the big reason for him to sign the contract is a combination of passing things down as they should have been passed down coupled with sage training in a couple of years instead of anything more urgent." He paused, then gestured at Naruto. "For the record, since summoning toads is likely to force people to make the connection, Naruto is Minato's kid. Looks like a mini-Minato in many ways, and Fukasaku claims that the kid has known since before entering the academy. Which is why I plan on starting him on learning the Rasengan before I head off to do an emergency check of some contacts."
Naruto held his hand out and formed a standard Rasengan. "Already got that one down."
"Hold up," Anko-sensei said, staring at the whirling ball of chakra. "Since when? And why don't you ever use it?"
"Using one of my father's two signature jutsu while looking like a mini-him, with a pile of enemies that would love to off his entire family still out there?"
Even Hinata, who'd already known these details, flinched at that.
Hiruzen read the letter from A, frowning as he did so. "Someone got access to the release technique for your seal and is using that as leverage against A."
Yugito nodded. "Yes."
"But A doesn't want to go along with Orochimaru's plan to destabilize the elemental nations by crushing Konoha and is hoping that we have a solution that will prevent the two-tails from being released from you."
"There are rumors that an old Uzumaki seal master is around that may be skilled enough to either disable the release mechanism of my seal or remove the two-tails from me without taking my life."
A was fairly protective of his family, nearly irrationally at times, and Yugito followed the trend of those close to a village's leaders being chosen to be jinchuriki. She wasn't part of A's immediate family, merely a cousin if Hiruzen remembered correctly, but still close to the leaders. Seeing losing the two-tails as 'suitable payment' for not losing her made sense in that context. That the letter blamed those rumors for creating 'panic' in Kumo about Konoha's strength also helped explain things. Not entirely though, as this was still somewhat out of character for A.
Hiruzen nodded anyway. "I haven't met them, but do have evidence they exist and a possible way to contact them. And if we can't neutralize the threat you pose while keeping you alive then you're to go to a temple designed to hold the two-tails before the invasion so that you can't be used against Konoha or Kumo."
"Yes."
"And what of the plot to grab an unsealed Hyuga that the letter mentions?"
Yugito frowned. "My team is on board with that being a stupid idea and was able to sabotage the other team during the first two stages of the exam. They were sent back to Kumo this morning, empty-handed, but they likely scoped out the clan's compound for another attempt during the invasion itself."
"I feel like there's still something missing from all of this that I'm not being told. I suspect that if push came to shove then A would have killed you himself instead of even pretending to go along with things."
The kunoichi sighed. "Most people don't realize that Kumo only has one seal that can create a jinchuriki."
That was the last piece of the puzzle, because that implied that the release technique was the same and thus that B was just as much at risk of being killed by the release of the eight-tails. "Which means that ideally our solution should be one that makes those behind this unwilling to risk an attempt to force A to send B instead of you."
"Yes."
Hiruzen hated when politics and village safety intersected in these ways. That the letter confirmed that Orochimaru was involved and that releasing the one-tail was also in the plans didn't help, nor did this all coming in after Jiraiya had taken Team Yurei out of the village for summoning tasks with the intent being that he'd then head straight to checking some of his spy network contacts.
Anko-sensei and Jiraiya had both summoned a contract-holder, with Anko-sensei being far less certain of success. But both had succeeded, Naruto signing the toad contract and Hinata signing the snake contract. Unlike contracts from the foxes, these required blood for the signing and summoning, which had given Naruto a little bit of trouble because of how fast he healed.
"Okay kid," Anko-sensei said once Hinata had signed the snake contract. "Until you pass the test the only snakes you'll be able to summon are the testers, no matter who you try for. They'll be larger than you and you'll need to wrestle one to submission, after which they'll approve you and you can start learning to summon specific snakes."
"We should watch this before you summon any toads," Jiraiya said, gesturing for Naruto and the others to back away.
Anko-sensei walked Hinata through her first summoning, and after two false starts a snake was successfully summoned. One that was...much smaller than implied would be the case.
"Did something go wrong?" Anko-sensei asked, looking at the snake that was only about Hinata's size. "Because when I was tested I went through three much larger snakes before I succeeded."
"Orochimaru has whittled down the testing pool considerably by treating us as disposable shields," the snake replied, before turning to Hinata. "You must overpower me without tools to pass the test to be accepted as a summoner of the snakes."
Hinata nodded, released her weights, and turned off the resistance belt just in case. Five minutes later she'd pinned the snake down.
"So I'm allowed to summon all the snakes now?" Hinata asked.
"All the apprentice approved members on the contract will respond to you once I report your success," the snake replied. "But Anko will be able to summon all the snakes that do not require a personal contract. I shall report your success, it should only be five minutes or so."
Anko-sensei blinked as the snake vanished, and a grin started to form on her face. But she said nothing for the moment.
"Okay kid," Jiraiya said, turning to Naruto. "That was less of a show than I was expecting. The toads work differently, having connected their entire species to the contract somehow, which ends up letting you summon anything from tadpoles up to the elders. Their deal is that you should learn to summon specific toads after getting to know them, with each toad having different measures of worthiness that you may have to overcome. Gamabunta, the current 'boss toad', generally includes sharing sake with him though, so you'll want to hold off on summoning him until you're older. So give it a try."
Naruto nodded, but the only toad other than the contract toad that he had any experience with was the small toad that looked like it had purple hair in rollers. Mentally shrugging, he went with it, but was surprised with how much chakra the summoning pulled from him. But he succeeded, and the little toad appeared in a sizable blast of chakra smoke.
"Shima?" Jiraiya said, sounding like he didn't believe what he was seeing.
"Hah!" the toad said. "And Fukasaku thought it would take little Naruto months to get around to summoning one of us."
"Er," Naruto said, scratching the back of his head. "You're the only toad other than the one with the contract that I've met."
Jiraiya stared at Naruto. "When did you meet her?"
"She's the one that told me I could still sign the toad contract if I signed the fox one."
"Indeed I did," Shima confirmed. "And we'd have been keeping that a secret still if not for the time constraint involved in keeping Orochimaru from having someone else sign the snake contract as an apprentice like the recently-deceased young man had. Naruto, summon Gamakichi later, he's far more manageable for someone your age. I'll make sure that he has the scroll with some stones tied to various contracts that we'd like you to set up in a public space in Konoha."
"Stones?" Jiraiya asked.
"We'll explain once they're in place, but you're going to like it. They came about because Naruto here asked the foxes a question that got one of their sages thinking. That said, I was in the middle of cooking, and nothing pressing appears to be happening here, so I need to head back home." With no complaints, she half-nodded and triggered her return.
"Most people don't summon a sage the first time they use a contract," Hoshi commented once Shima had vanished.
"I did what?" Naruto asked.
"Shima is one of the toads' sages. It took you so much chakra to summon her because you aren't a sage yourself."
"Oh."
They stood there in silence for a couple of minutes before Anko-sensei suddenly flipped through the summoning hand seals, but instead of the contract-holder she'd summoned a smaller snake.
"What do you want," the smaller snake asked just before Anko-sensei grabbed it, slapping a seal tag she'd pulled from somewhere on it.
"I want the sword," Anko-sensei replied.
"You can't have it."
"And you can't stop me from taking it, since I just blocked your access to all contracts. Thank the pervert for that one, by the way, but you're trapped with me for at least an hour and you aren't going to last that long."
The snake struggled a little, and looked panicked as nothing happened before Anko-sensei produced a kunai and sliced it open. Somehow this resulted in a katana falling out of the cut, the end sticking into the ground with the hilt sticking up. She looked down at it, frowned, and continued cutting until a second sword fell out similarly, this one looking far more familiar to Naruto.
"Didn't think the little prick had two," Anko-sensei said, before breaking into her grin again. "Sensei is going to be pissed when he finds out that I killed his personal summon and stole his swords though."
Jiraiya stared at Anko-sensei for a moment, before focusing on the swords. "You...just summoned his personal summon?"
She absently started skinning the snake as its chakra faded. "He has personal contracts with three snakes, or rather had personal contracts with three, but that was the only one of the three on the general contract as well. The little prick took a liking to Orochimaru and kept Kusanagi safe." She paused as her hand snapped out to grab Tenten's arm. "Buns, you don't have the chakra needed to even pick up Kusanagi. Naruto should, but you don't. The other sword has to be special too, but I don't know how dangerous it is to touch yet."
"That looks like the sword he occasionally used back in the war, actually. It has a chakra metal blade and a seal scroll can be concealed in the handle." Jiraiya picked the katana up, twisting it to open the handle and reveal that there was nothing inside. "Currently without anything stored within it." He snapped it back together and lightly tossed it at Tenten. "The brat can have that one as a consolation prize. Naruto, get over here and see if you can claim Kusanagi."
"Why me?" Naruto asked.
"Because I failed to gain its loyalty the first time I ran into it and I'm betting that Anko knows she can't either, leaving you as the only one left that might have enough chakra to hold the thing. No guarantee that it'll accept you, but you should at least be able to get it into a storage seal."
"I just spent a good portion of my reserves summoning a toad."
"You don't need to have the chakra now, it tests you to see if you have enough at full strength. Orochi was half-dead when he claimed the thing originally."
Grumbling, Naruto moved over to the sword anyway. Thinking about it, he grabbed the sword with his left hand and felt it connect to his chakra. Despite Jiraiya's claim, it pulled hard on his chakra, nearly draining him dry before there was suddenly a connection in his head and the pull stopped. He pulled the sword out of the ground, glared at it tiredly, and then stored it in his armband. Luckily he'd not been keeping one of the Uzu masks in there because he was out of weapon slots now.
"You're going to have to use that during the finals," Anko-sensei said with a grin. "You're up against one of Kumo's kenjutsu specialists in your second match, right? Actually, Buns should use the katana too, if only to piss off my former sensei."
"I don't think I'm due to hit anyone from Kumo unless Tenten loses against one of them," Naruto corrected. "Tenten should hit...Karui, I think it was, in her second match, but I've got Neji and then Gaara."
"Oh. Damn, I'd gotten the matches mixed up and neither of those sound like good points to bring out Kusanagi unless you want to look like a blatant show-off."
Jiraiya had opened up the large scroll he carried around, unsealing two small books from it. He threw one to Naruto, then the other to Tenten. "You said something about wanting to summon weapons, and that's got some basics. And Naruto now has a copy in case you need him to help you out with any of it."
Naruto wasn't sure if Tenten had even heard the end of that, given that she seemed to be trying to read the entire book at once right now. What he really needed was a nap. "So we're done here?"
"Well, Anko might want to remove Orochimaru from the snake contract, but otherwise we should be."
"I've got a couple of things I want to check on before I do that," Anko-sensei admitted, causing Naruto to join Jiraiya and Kurenai-sensei in staring at her. "For example, if the snakes will let me set up a trap to reverse-summon him into. If I kick him off the contract too soon then I won't have a chance to pull that off."
"Now that sounds amusing. I'll need to check with you when I'm back in town, if only to give you another contract-breaking seal. Those take time for me to put together properly as I have to work with the toads to get them right, and I have no clue how Minato pulled them off on the fly. That snake wasn't going to be returning without going the long way either, since for some reason the seals completely disconnect summon animals but only temporarily disconnect humans from signed contracts."
"...so I should aim to hit Manda with one to keep him from escaping?"
"Now there's an idea, and a reason for me to carry a few of my own."
Naruto had gotten clones to summon the team back before taking a nap, Jiraiya had gone off to check his spy network for something, and when Naruto woke up later Hoshi told him that Yoko had dropped the Tome off when it was done with Karin and Tenten had never actually gone home. Or eaten anything. Instead she'd set up in the training hall and seemed to be trying to lay out a summoning seal design of some kind.
Immediately heading down to check on that, Naruto frowned as he looked things over. "I think you need to take a break."
"If I get this right then I can tie it into literal racks of weapons in addition to my scrolls," Tenten retorted.
"And you've sketched out part of an explosive tag in at least one spot I can see."
She came to a halt, blinking, before looking over the seal. "Crap, that can't be right. Oh, and I shouldn't have storage linking in that area either. I must have missed completing patterns when things were similar to tags I already work with."
"I didn't think you were working much with explosive tags."
"Shibuki's scroll of tags isn't infinite so I need to be able to make replacements."
"...okay, that's a fair point, but you need to eat and pay more attention when planning this out."
Tenten pouted, but nodded and let him have a clone clean up the mess she'd made of the training hall while she finally left the compound to eat something. For his part, Naruto had headed off to have dinner with Hinata's family. Which had started off mostly normal, minus some grumbling from Satomi about Hanabi running around as a cat.
"Neji didn't even notice me," Hanabi declared in her defense, missing the point entirely as far as Naruto could tell. "Though I think it was mostly because he was too busy ranting to himself about the main branch getting everything handed to us?"
"There are definitely problems with the branch family system," Hiashi agreed. "But his hatred is misplaced and he isn't likely to believe the truth even if I told him right now. The elders definitely aren't helping the situation by denying use of a different seal."
"You have another version?" Naruto asked, curious.
"Three, and a desire to do away with forcing the seals on children and moving to a voluntary system instead. But some of the elders are basically holding the branch family itself hostage to prevent any changes from being implemented because it's the only way they hold power in the clan at all. I first encountered their attitudes when I was a teenager, with them threatening to use the punishment function of the current seal to kill off branch family members if any different seal is implemented that would prevent them from doing so."
"Huh. So why not apply a seal to stop that from working?"
"The current seal was a punishment seal, designed to be almost impossible to interfere with for a number of reasons, that was repurposed by an elder of the past to 'keep the branch family in line'. Destroying the functionality of the eyes when someone holding it dies is a side effect and nothing stops someone from removing eyes from a living member of the branch family. Jiraiya came up with a far more comprehensive and secure seal for the Uchiha that I'd like to be able to implement as an option for those who fear being targeted for their eyes, but dojutsu theft is nowhere near as prevalent as most people assume it would be."
"But Neji is unaware of most of the history," Satomi said with a shake of her head. "Worse, only the fact that he's currently got a lot of focus on him outside of the clan has kept him from being 'reined in' by the elders as well, and they'll only tolerate so much."
"Naruto is good with seals," Hinata said. "Maybe he can come up with a solution?"
Hiashi shrugged. "I can have Mio make a copy of the current seal for him to examine, but Jiraiya has already taken a look and come up with nothing of use. Of course, he and Mio also both claim that the design defies many analysis techniques and can't even state with certainty where the current 'control' elements are, so perhaps it just requires a different approach."
"I can certainly give it a look," Naruto said, but suspected that 'defies analysis' probably meant 'let the Tome scan the thing and figure out a solution', but Naruto would give it a try himself anyway. "If I figure something out maybe I can hit Neji with it in the exams."
"Such a public reveal of a solution to the problem would be...useful, because the elders would be unable to hide that there's a solution, yet disastrous at the same time as they'd be backed into a corner about it."
"Only if he doesn't hit the rest of the branch family before the reveal," Satomi noted. "And he'd have to call the elders out as being the problem, I think."
That caused Hiashi to blink, and then he took on a thoughtful expression. "I can see that working and demonstrating to the branch family exactly which elders were at fault based on their enraged reactions. Given how...uptight yet closed-lipped Neji's been lately I suspect that he plans on revealing the clan's dirty secret to the world when he has an audience that the elders can't silence."
"Should I know what his problem with the main branch actually is?" Naruto asked.
Hiashi sighed. "It started when his father, my brother, willingly gave his life to save mine and spite Kumo. He's harbored a hatred of the main branch since, but seems to have focused on Hinata in particular as of late. It became obvious when you two graduated a year earlier than would be normal in peacetime."
"He whines about Hinata having two sensei instead of one," Hanabi added. "And not being around whenever zombies attack, getting a bunch of easy missions to pad her record, being free to train outside of the compound more readily than him, and based on his recent ranting he really didn't like her getting a 'free pass' to the finals."
"Some of which is obviously incorrect and I can't see how her missions keeping her away from the zombies has anything to do with her main branch status. The free pass in the preliminaries is a bit of an oddity for other reasons though. He probably doesn't realize that Hanabi has told me about his work to reproduce multiple main branch moves on his own and that I've ensured that the elders haven't discovered it. Well, beyond my father, but he agreed with the argument that if the branch family is supposed to protect the main branch then they should have access to the tools and jutsu needed to do so effectively. The two are on my list of things to work with Hinata this month either way."
Naruto raised an eyebrow. "The sixty-four palms and revolving heaven jutsu?"
"...yes."
"Hinata's already got both of them down and is working on getting up to the hundred and twenty-eight palm level. Anyone with half a brain who watches you spar with a couple of the elders would be able to figure out the basics of how the more advanced palm levels work, especially as they're both just extensions of some of the basics you've got written down. The revolving heaven jutsu isn't that complicated either, once you see it in action."
"You're better at all of them than I am," Hinata said with a blush.
"And apparently I need to evaluate both of your skills," Hiashi said with a raised eyebrow. "Claiming that one without the clan's dojutsu is superior at performing the clan's techniques that require it is...surprising, at a minimum."
Well, that was going to be fun to explain.
