- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I know it's not the actual naming etymology, but I enjoy thinking that the sharingan is just the Japanese language trying to label the thing "shenanigans." It makes a lot of sense, as long as you don't speak a lick of Japanese.
Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
- Thread starter CmptrWz
- Start date
- Crossover
-
- Tags
- mgln naruto naruto uzumaki complete
Chapter 20 - God Tree, Guardians, Archive, Reunion
The rest of Naruto's afternoon had been spent on the running track, though most of his attention was in discussion with his parents and Kurama in the Tome. They'd come to a basic consensus on a list of options by dinner, and Naruto and Kurama were both unhappy with the details there. It seemed that it would take a couple of months, easily, to come up with a way to 'lock down' an existing jinchuriki seal safely. That left 'remove the tailed beast and bind its power to someone else' as the only option remaining, because the Tome had no clue how to seal a tailed beast at all without killing Naruto. And that method no longer worked anyway.
Which meant 'grab and hold the tailed beast in the Tome, then kill it while binding the remnants of it to someone like what had been done with Kurama and Naruto' in practice. Meaning that it was likely that going back to talk to Old Man Hokage about things and explain that they'd need to wait for Jiraiya would need to be done tomorrow, if only so that plans could be made for that.
Naruto was preparing to start having clones dispel after dinner when he was interrupted by a pull from the toads trying to summon him. Curious, he allowed them to do so and found himself standing next to Shima.
"My apologies for the abrupt summoning," Shima said, gesturing towards the large building they were in front of. "But the Great Sage felt that speaking to you was urgent before you made a decision on a subject he refused to elaborate on." She looked at the building, then back to Naruto. "He also insisted on meeting with you alone. Do not be afraid to remind him that you're there, or that he asked to speak to you."
"Me?" Naruto asked.
"Yes, you. He referred to you as Jiraiya's student, the fox-boy, and the one who could doom us all to convince me to summon you without warning. I think he was joking about the latter, but I can't be certain and decided to not take the chance."
"Ah."
"Go on, I'll wait here so that I can send you back home."
Naruto nodded and entered the building, following his senses to Gamamaru, the current oldest living toad. Giant scrolls surrounded the room that the toad was in, with a large basin holding the Great Sage.
The very attentive Great Sage, who used chakra to close and lock the doors behind Naruto as soon as he'd stepped into the room.
"You are a very interesting child," the Great Sage said. "But you are one of two that I must speak with, so we must begin with teaching you something that you might never have learned."
Naruto blinked. "What?"
The toad looked at Naruto, then nodded, the intense look on his face softening. "Sorry, I appear to have looked beyond the point where I explain some things to you. Long ago a parasite was dropped onto this planet, though it was not obviously a parasite at first. But in my youth I discovered the truth and sought a way to keep it from destroying the planet. A combination of its nature and the nature of those who sent it blinded me to the truth of what was actually done, up until a fateful night years ago when an impossible book in a cave came to life. That book did something horrible yet wondrous, and I have spent the years since divining the repercussions of that night. I know that your parents and Kurama live on in a fashion inside of the Tome of the Orange Sky, and it is Kurama that I must speak with."
"Oh. Er, I was told that only I can speak with them, though?"
"I believe that it's true that only you can enter the world inside the Tome, but there is another way. To start with, you will need three paperwork clones, each taking the form of one of the three in the Tome. Do keep Kurama's down to a reasonable size for interacting with humans though."
Naruto raised an eyebrow, but made three paperwork clones anyway. They transformed as requested before he looked up at the Great Sage. "Okay. What now?"
"Now feed them to the Tome."
"...what?"
"The Tome knows what these clones are and how you make them, but has not actually absorbed the ability. In doing so it should gain the ability to manifest the personalities stored within it externally so that we can talk."
Naruto blinked and looked at the clones. They shrugged, and it felt like it was worth a shot, so he brought the Tome out and opened it. He wasn't sure how to 'feed' the clones to the Tome, and his clones obviously weren't either, but the one that looked like his father came over and placed its hand on the open Tome. A moment later it vanished, Naruto not getting the memories from it. Since that looked like it might have worked the other two clones also came over and touched the pages of the book, each vanishing as well.
"Ooooh," his father said inside of the Tome. "That makes far too much sense now that we've seen it."
"Naruto still has to trigger things for now though," his mother continued. "Which shouldn't be difficult. Apply some chakra to the Tome while pushing the paperwork clone jutsu through it?"
"Yeah, that should be enough, but he'll always get all three of us. We'll need to work on a way to trigger it without him in case he needs help."
It didn't take long to convince Naruto to make an attempt, but it did take four attempts to get 'push the jutsu through the Tome' working correctly. Once he'd done so he was grabbed by the clone of his mother and pulled into a hug.
He didn't mind having a hug like that in the real world, but would've appreciated it being somewhere other than in front of the Great Sage.
"Kurama," the Great Sage said. "I wish we'd met more often before this all happened."
"Likewise," Kurama replied, walking forward and sitting down in front of the toad. "But I don't know why you wanted to talk to me."
"I'm hoping that by getting you to realize what you once were that you'll help convince the boy to do the right thing."
"I was a supposedly-immortal chakra construct."
"You were, and your siblings remain, part of the God Tree. Split into pieces, perhaps, but still part of it."
Kurama tilted his head, ears and tails twitching. "I suppose that's true, but I don't see why that matters."
"Tell me child, what is the primary function of the God Tree, and how do you think that impacted your own existence?"
The fox sat there for a couple of minutes while Naruto dealt with being fussed over by his mother, his father watching the proceedings with interest. Eventually Kurama shuddered. "We didn't keep growing stronger because we were growing up, but because we were still absorbing the planet's life."
"Exactly. Your 'death' returned much of what had been taken from the planet back to it. I have also foreseen that you and Shukaku in particular became 'anchors', keeping the God Tree alive despite being broken into pieces. Things are unstable with your removal, but the God Tree could still recover in time. Without both of you the tree will unravel entirely."
"Father couldn't see this for the same reason you couldn't?"
"He, his mother, his brother, and his sons were all bound more tightly to the tree than any of us realized. There are also a number of techniques that only work due to the way the tree has influenced the world that should never have been possible."
"Is he saying that we have to kill Shukaku at a minimum?" Naruto asked.
"I believe so," his mother answered. "At which point including Matatabi is probably just going to speed up what needs to happen."
"You will only need to take those two," the Great Sage confirmed. "Within a decade the damage will spread, and within three the process will be completed. Also, of the two, you can only bind Shukaku's remains to yourself. I have seen that Matatabi's remnants would destabilize you, though I couldn't tell if that was with or without Shukaku's bound beforehand."
"I don't think we'd even considered that Naruto was an option," Kurama commented. "We'd thought about his teammates and sensei, but not him."
They'd stay for another hour, the Great Sage going off on more frequent tangents as he spoke to each of them, before Naruto's other clones started dispelling on their own. He ended up half-asleep on his feet, and his father insisted that it was time for him to head home. His mother helped him most of the way out of the building once the door had been unlocked before she dispelled, Shima seemingly not having noticed the clone before sending him back to the apartment.
The next morning started off with a team meeting, though one that had been planned before the previous day's revelations. Hoshi was back for it, though sitting off to the side with his leg wrapped up. He'd be fine in a couple of days, but his leg's chakra network had to recover from what he'd screwed up.
"So," Anko-sensei said. "We had an...odd chat with Hokage-sama yesterday afternoon and thanks to it a few things have come up."
"Most of which we aren't supposed to tell you any details about," Kurenai-sensei added. "As none of you are cleared for the information involved."
"No, Naruto is probably cleared for all of it, which is why we were only asked to not tell him, though I'm not sure why only he'd be cleared."
"Oh. Right, that distinction slipped my mind entirely."
Naruto was aware that this tied into the invasion, both because he'd already been told and because his clones had caught meetings with all available and trusted special jounin and up happening. Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei were in the groups tasked with preparing some specific anti-Orochimaru items.
"Regardless," Anko-sensei continued. "This means we're going to be a little more hands-off than we were originally planning on being this month due to having other things to handle. But I also finished talking with the snakes, and while they won't help me ambush Orochimaru they did help me copy down all the jutsu that Hinata needs to start working on learning." A scroll was pulled out of a pocket and tossed to the girl. "Learning the appropriate taijutsu style is going to be optional, but I was asked to pass along that the snakes have sages that can make contract scrolls."
Hinata's eyes went wide at that. "I hadn't even thought about that!"
"Which is probably why I was asked to mention it."
"I also found a few things for Tenten," Kurenai-sensei continued, producing a scroll of her own and tossing it over. "Weapons-based jutsu for somewhat more obscure weapons. Finding things suitable for Naruto's fighting style has been a problem...mostly because we still haven't pinned down what his style is."
"Anything goes so long as it works," Naruto replied. "With a preference for leaving people confused as to what I actually did, if I can manage it, perhaps?"
"That sounds about right, yes. We still didn't find anything for you, but we got permission for you to browse the Uchiha jutsu library. Shisui claims there are some Uzumaki jutsu documented in there and Itachi said that while you're unlikely to go up against his little brother, showing new skills is needed to 'keep the clan on their toes'."
"At least he's stopped needing to pay out for daily D-rank babysitting gigs," Anko-sensei noted. "Since the youngest brats have finally reached academy age."
"True, but there are still only five people with working sharingan remaining in the village, and one of them only counts on a technicality."
"Six, actually."
"...what?"
"Kaede unlocked her eyes a couple days ago when her pet died. Gossip at the bar says that Itachi thought it was a far healthier method for doing so than expected and is considering mandating all Uchiha have personal pets as children as a result."
Kurenai-sensei didn't look like she knew what to think about that, just nodding after a moment and turning back to Naruto. "Okay. Regardless, you can check with Itachi, Izumi, or Shisui for access to the archive."
A buzzing from Anko-sensei's gear resulted in a watch being pulled out of her pouch. "Shit, time to go. Good luck, we'll try to check in some more later."
That left the three genin and Hoshi sitting there.
"So today's a training day for me," Tenten said. "Is there anything else we want to go over before getting to that?"
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "I, er, have one thing."
"Oh?"
"Well, at this point I've told you both about how I ended up with the fox features."
Hinata nodded. "The Tome merged in part of the nine-tailed fox with your own chakra."
"Yep. I, er, might need a volunteer or two for doing that with Shukaku and Matatabi, the one-tail and two-tails?"
"...why?"
Naruto sighed. "There are a number of reasons, but the official one is that they're a threat to the village and the only sealmaster that could possibly do anything about them is both too connected to the village for political reasons and not available for a couple of weeks. Old Man Hokage still thinks that I have access to a sealmaster that can handle things, and I should probably tell him more at some point, but there are...other concerns as well that I don't think I want to go into right now either."
"Um," Tenten said, fidgeting. "Would that involve ending up with tails of our own on a permanent basis?"
"Most likely? Along with a boost to your chakra."
"Can I opt-out on the basis of having done too much weapon training without a tail? The one time I shapeshifted one to practice I accidentally cut the thing off, and that hurt. I know you have to run every weapon kata I've taught you with your tail out to learn to avoid it..."
Okay, that definitely sounded like it would suck, and she had done far too much training without a tail. Of course, more chakra would let her use paperwork clones to 'catch up'...but unlearning things was a problem and there were things that he couldn't do with his tail out just because the moves couldn't be adapted.
Hinata, on the other hand, looked a little giddy.
Naruto nodded to Tenten's question. "I was told that I should be suitable for Shukaku's side of things, so I really only need a place to put what's grabbed from Matatabi. There was a concern that we might be too old, so there was a backup plan of using Hanabi since taking a tailed beast from Kumo to give some of its power to a Hyuga in general felt justified, but some discussion led to deciding that Hinata should be fine." He turned to Hinata. "Though it would likely be cat ears and tail instead of fox for you."
"That's okay," Hinata said, blushing a little. "If you end up with some of Shukaku added in then you'll probably be less fox-like anyway, right?"
"Er...maybe? We aren't fully sure what will happen there, though if my ears and tail do change then it'll be a good thing that I hadn't publicly revealed them yet..."
"When are you doing this?" Tenten asked. "And will you need our help?"
"It'll be a few days at least, since I need to be sure that I can suppress chakra with my chains, and I don't think I'll need either of your help there." Not now that he could get the Tome to make clones of his parents, anyway. "But if Hinata is getting one of the two bound to her then she's probably going to need to be ready to spend a day or two here instead of home."
"I doubt that anyone will complain so long as I let them know that not being home is planned," Hinata said. "I think Neji is camping in a training ground at this point? If we don't know exactly when though then it might be best if I tell my father that you might summon me for training..."
Danzo was finding more and more roadblocks to his ability to function as the true power behind Konoha's strength. He still couldn't find the real weapon, someone had identified his primary operating accounts in the bank, Kabuto had ended up killed in the preliminaries due to a poor match-up against Suna's weapon, and now Hiruzen had somehow found out about the impending invasion with the better part of a month to prepare for it. Far more time than expected instead of the mere two to three days notice that had been originally intended to force a rush retrieval of the weapon to defend against opposing tailed beasts.
Now there was plenty of time for the weapon to be snuck into the village instead, which would make identification harder. The chaos of the invasion itself wouldn't allow for trivial identification either, though the aftermath might. Ensuring that suitable agents were everywhere during clean-up was going to be needed in case they could spot the weapon recovering from the fight, which meant restructuring quite a bit. Doubly so since Kabuto couldn't be used to obtain information from the hospital that might have helped reveal things.
Jiraiya having time to potentially deal with the two tailed beasts before the invasion could be launched was luckily easy enough to prevent. He always stopped in one of three villages nearby on his way back to Konoha, and ensuring that something came up when he did so would be trivial. The baseless rumors of a reborn Uzushio and a supposed Uzumaki sealmaster were easily discarded in the face of evidence that the young Uzumaki was self-taught, leaving Jiraiya as the only possible way to avoid the need for Konoha's weapon to be brought back to the village. Killing the two visiting weapons ahead of time would be political suicide.
Luckily this was all simple enough to manage. Funding issues due to the discovered accounts, recruitment issues due to changes in village security, and the loss of several out-of-village operations due to pure idiocy on the part of the involved civilians had created massive issues for Root in general. It was as though the universe itself had aligned against Danzo. Except that he was well aware that it was just a downturn, given that even Orochimaru had resorted to some desperation moves lately while looking for the weapon at the behest of others.
The invasion was too well-planned on several fronts to not reveal both the weapon's identity and that Hiruzen was no longer fit to be Hokage though, so things would begin to improve after it.
A couple of days later Naruto had finally taken the time to hunt down one of the three oldest adult Uchiha, which had turned out to be harder than expected due to village-wide preparations for the invasion that were disguised as general prep for the third stage of the exams. Which from what little Naruto knew about things was also technically accurate, actually...
Regardless, it had taken some actual effort to find one of the three, and that had ended up being a clone spotting Itachi eating lunch in time for the real Naruto to catch up to him as he left the restaurant.
"Good afternoon," Itachi greeted, then paused. "Right, I agreed that you could look for jutsu in our archive, and then everyone with access to the keys for you all but vanished into other tasks."
"It's understandable," Naruto admitted.
"Well, yes, but it was also a bit rude."
"I didn't even come looking before today and I fully understand being a little busy. Old Man Hokage asked me to take care of an item or two if I can in the next week or two, beyond my own training for the finals."
The man raised an eyebrow. "That's...intriguing, but likely not something to discuss in public and beyond the point you likely sought me out for. I have time to show you the archive, assuming you need me to do so. I'm under the impression that your team has likely not raided it already out of common courtesy."
"It would be rude to raid an allied clan's archive without their permission, even if most of them have no security to speak of."
"True, but...no security to speak of? Really?"
Naruto shrugged. "You've got the main archive hall with minimal security seals and nothing preventing someone from picking the lock without chakra or any real protections on the three tunnels into the basement. Then there are the vaults under the head's house and the shrine, which at least require a jutsu to open the main doors of but don't have any protection on the tunnels leading to them either. The Hyuga, Nara, and Yamanaka clans have passable security on their primary vaults. The Uzumaki and Namikaze estates are the most secure I know of in the village, doubly so since I was able to start maintaining the seals on the Uzumaki properties."
Itachi's left eye was twitching. "What was that about tunnels?"
"...we live in a village with an entire clan of people who can see through solid objects and only five places in the village have any protection from their eyes. Why doesn't anyone hire them to look for tunnels?"
"Because we're morons, obviously. Five places?"
"In general, at least. Their own compound, Uzumaki properties, the Namikaze estate, Anbu and Hokage eyes only storage, and the hot springs."
"I see. I'm still giving you an actual copy of the key to the archive hall, and I'll expect you to return it...let's say by the end of next June. Then I'm going to reschedule the rest of my day."
Half an hour later Naruto was in the archive, but instead of looking for specific jutsu he was attempting something new. He'd sat down in the middle of the building with the Tome out and was casting the one spell that they were fairly confident he couldn't handle on his own for a number of reasons. Luckily it also wasn't much of a 'combat' spell, though it could probably be used to find an enemy if needed.
It came in normal, wide, and ultra-wide variants, but for now he was focused on the normal version. "Area search!"
A collection of orange eye-like balls were created by the spell, filtered through the Tome to prevent sensory overload for Naruto. Or in this case, so that the Tome could record everything. They spread out and roamed the archive, building up a copy of the entire building. Every so often there would be an exception that Naruto had to go interact with directly, generally when a storage scroll was found or a security seal prevented direct scanning, but only a dozen or so in total.
Two hours later Naruto locked the building back up and headed home, reviewing several jutsu in the Tome's world with his parents and idly wondering if Itachi would've thought differently about granting access if he'd known about that trick. Then again, granting access until next June was more than enough time to copy it all anyway, so perhaps it wouldn't have changed anything.
Naruto hadn't expected his parents to want to talk to several others now that they could manifest outside of the Tome, but he really shouldn't have been surprised either. It was more that he'd barely considered the implications after years of them being restricted to the Tome itself. At the same time, they'd seemed to be waiting for a specific time to 'gather people', possibly wanting to do some of the reveal only once.
When they first brought it up he'd expected it to be a 'go out and talk to people without him being around' thing, but instead he got to watch them perform a complicated-looking jutsu, with hand signs despite their normal 'learn everything without them if possible' teachings. Ten minutes later Old Man Hokage and one Anbu in a dog mask arrived at the compound. Both with weapons out and looking ready to fight.
Kurama had dismissed himself 'to prevent the overgrown monkeys from panicking', but Naruto watched as his parents met with the two.
"Four steps to cross sixteen blades," his father said.
Old Man Hokage blinked before his eyes narrowed and his hands shifted a little. "Nine shuriken to cut seven ropes."
"Thirty jounin to delay one chunin."
"A warrior fallen and forgotten."
"But forever remembered by the Leaf."
"How are you alive and where have you been?"
Naruto grinned as his father chuckled. "I'm at best a shadow clone of a memory." Old Man Hokage's eyes narrowed. "And before you accuse me of dumping the paperwork back on you, I don't have any blood now. Can't touch any of the high security stuff."
Old Man Hokage blinked, then dropped out of his alert stance into more of a depressed one. "Dammit. That's a requirement and means I can't accuse you of foisting things on me."
"We've also only been able to return in this way at all for a few days, thanks to some information from the toads, but it means that we can help Naruto out with the task you gave him."
"Wait, does that mean that you've been the ones teaching him?"
"Yep."
"So no secret Uzumaki sealmaster?"
"Isn't mom an Uzumaki sealmaster?" Naruto asked, pointing at his mother.
"Er, no," his mother admitted, blushing. "Technically I stopped studying before I reached the master point...mostly because all my teachers were dead and I wasn't interested enough to self-study beyond where I already was."
"Oh."
"That brings up the question of what the plan is," Old Man Hokage asked, looking between the two adult clones. "Since the situation is...far different than I expected."
Naruto glanced at his parents, and his father grinned. "We've got it covered, but the Great Sage advised us to keep the details away from you until everything is taken care of." He then turned to the Anbu. "And is your brain done rebooting yet?"
There was no response, and Naruto moved over to the man to poke him. That didn't even result in a flinch. "Maybe he needs to be hit with a water jutsu?"
His mother grinned instead, before focusing a little, likely to get the tone of her voice right. "Kakashi-kun, I'm out of pads."
"SAVE ME," the Anbu screamed, suddenly cowering behind Naruto. Who noticed that his father and Old Man Hokage had also jumped and put distance between themselves and the clone of his mother.
"I guess that worked," Naruto said, turning to look at the Anbu. "I assume that you're the Kakashi my father has told me a bit about?"
"Um," the Anbu said, before sighing and pulling off his mask to reveal his white hair and a forehead protector pulled down over his left eye. "Yes."
"Er. You might still need saving, because I don't think my parents are happy that you've never approached me before now."
"It was for your own protection. Too many people watching me, trying to find any remaining connections to sensei."
Naruto nodded, as that did make sense. "That probably isn't going to fly now."
"Doubly so since you can always meet up with Naruto here in the compound safely," his father commented. "But we're not going to blame you for avoiding dragging my enemies to Naruto's doorstep."
Kakashi visibly relaxed at that. "Thanks. Er, how did you survive enough to be here now?"
"Stuck part of myself in Naruto's seal."
"...the decoy one?"
"Apparently your brain hasn't finished rebooting. Have you even noticed that he's got fox ears and a tail?"
Kakashi looked at Naruto, single eye blinking, before he pulled up his forehead protector to reveal a sharingan behind it. More blinking followed, before the forehead protector was pulled back down. "This had better be one hell of a story."
Minato was pleased with the way things had eventually gone with Hiruzen and Kakashi, the latter of which would be making time to help train Naruto a bit now. Both men had also been informed of the Uchiha that had attacked, which they currently assumed was the same one that had interrupted the clan meeting. Madara, or at least someone pretending to be the man, seemed to be the most likely option there.
They'd also taken other information about the Tome well enough, even if the search capability was less useful because it was too easily spotted, as well as the differences between jutsu and spells. Through that explanation they'd reached the point of testing chidori against Knight Armor, on a clone, and found that the jutsu was able to obliterate several layers of shields without much problem.
"I don't think this is going to help keep him away from the memorial stone," Kushina noted, well aware of the man's habits thanks to Naruto's monitoring of the village with clones. Not that they'd drawn attention to him, but the description of him outside of his Anbu gear was hard to miss.
"It'll help," Minato countered. "Just not as much as we'd like it to. Having something else to do between missions will hopefully start dragging him out of his funk, and I can't see him not trying to learn how to fly after seeing Naruto do so."
"That would take up some of his time, yes, and finally having someone with armor-piercing jutsu available for testing defenses is going to be invaluable. Even if Naruto has the sword that was used against him in the forest now, it can't be the only weapon out there that could cause problems."
"I can think of at least four legendary weapons that likely qualify myself, one of which we know was stolen from Konoha. Still, we should probably get back to working on the Hyuga's seal."
Kushina nodded. "Definitely. I think I've even figured out a couple of things that were bothering me, thanks to being reminded about my lessons, and it would help explain the seal that we know some of the Hyuga elders have."
Which meant 'grab and hold the tailed beast in the Tome, then kill it while binding the remnants of it to someone like what had been done with Kurama and Naruto' in practice. Meaning that it was likely that going back to talk to Old Man Hokage about things and explain that they'd need to wait for Jiraiya would need to be done tomorrow, if only so that plans could be made for that.
Naruto was preparing to start having clones dispel after dinner when he was interrupted by a pull from the toads trying to summon him. Curious, he allowed them to do so and found himself standing next to Shima.
"My apologies for the abrupt summoning," Shima said, gesturing towards the large building they were in front of. "But the Great Sage felt that speaking to you was urgent before you made a decision on a subject he refused to elaborate on." She looked at the building, then back to Naruto. "He also insisted on meeting with you alone. Do not be afraid to remind him that you're there, or that he asked to speak to you."
"Me?" Naruto asked.
"Yes, you. He referred to you as Jiraiya's student, the fox-boy, and the one who could doom us all to convince me to summon you without warning. I think he was joking about the latter, but I can't be certain and decided to not take the chance."
"Ah."
"Go on, I'll wait here so that I can send you back home."
Naruto nodded and entered the building, following his senses to Gamamaru, the current oldest living toad. Giant scrolls surrounded the room that the toad was in, with a large basin holding the Great Sage.
The very attentive Great Sage, who used chakra to close and lock the doors behind Naruto as soon as he'd stepped into the room.
"You are a very interesting child," the Great Sage said. "But you are one of two that I must speak with, so we must begin with teaching you something that you might never have learned."
Naruto blinked. "What?"
The toad looked at Naruto, then nodded, the intense look on his face softening. "Sorry, I appear to have looked beyond the point where I explain some things to you. Long ago a parasite was dropped onto this planet, though it was not obviously a parasite at first. But in my youth I discovered the truth and sought a way to keep it from destroying the planet. A combination of its nature and the nature of those who sent it blinded me to the truth of what was actually done, up until a fateful night years ago when an impossible book in a cave came to life. That book did something horrible yet wondrous, and I have spent the years since divining the repercussions of that night. I know that your parents and Kurama live on in a fashion inside of the Tome of the Orange Sky, and it is Kurama that I must speak with."
"Oh. Er, I was told that only I can speak with them, though?"
"I believe that it's true that only you can enter the world inside the Tome, but there is another way. To start with, you will need three paperwork clones, each taking the form of one of the three in the Tome. Do keep Kurama's down to a reasonable size for interacting with humans though."
Naruto raised an eyebrow, but made three paperwork clones anyway. They transformed as requested before he looked up at the Great Sage. "Okay. What now?"
"Now feed them to the Tome."
"...what?"
"The Tome knows what these clones are and how you make them, but has not actually absorbed the ability. In doing so it should gain the ability to manifest the personalities stored within it externally so that we can talk."
Naruto blinked and looked at the clones. They shrugged, and it felt like it was worth a shot, so he brought the Tome out and opened it. He wasn't sure how to 'feed' the clones to the Tome, and his clones obviously weren't either, but the one that looked like his father came over and placed its hand on the open Tome. A moment later it vanished, Naruto not getting the memories from it. Since that looked like it might have worked the other two clones also came over and touched the pages of the book, each vanishing as well.
"Ooooh," his father said inside of the Tome. "That makes far too much sense now that we've seen it."
"Naruto still has to trigger things for now though," his mother continued. "Which shouldn't be difficult. Apply some chakra to the Tome while pushing the paperwork clone jutsu through it?"
"Yeah, that should be enough, but he'll always get all three of us. We'll need to work on a way to trigger it without him in case he needs help."
It didn't take long to convince Naruto to make an attempt, but it did take four attempts to get 'push the jutsu through the Tome' working correctly. Once he'd done so he was grabbed by the clone of his mother and pulled into a hug.
He didn't mind having a hug like that in the real world, but would've appreciated it being somewhere other than in front of the Great Sage.
"Kurama," the Great Sage said. "I wish we'd met more often before this all happened."
"Likewise," Kurama replied, walking forward and sitting down in front of the toad. "But I don't know why you wanted to talk to me."
"I'm hoping that by getting you to realize what you once were that you'll help convince the boy to do the right thing."
"I was a supposedly-immortal chakra construct."
"You were, and your siblings remain, part of the God Tree. Split into pieces, perhaps, but still part of it."
Kurama tilted his head, ears and tails twitching. "I suppose that's true, but I don't see why that matters."
"Tell me child, what is the primary function of the God Tree, and how do you think that impacted your own existence?"
The fox sat there for a couple of minutes while Naruto dealt with being fussed over by his mother, his father watching the proceedings with interest. Eventually Kurama shuddered. "We didn't keep growing stronger because we were growing up, but because we were still absorbing the planet's life."
"Exactly. Your 'death' returned much of what had been taken from the planet back to it. I have also foreseen that you and Shukaku in particular became 'anchors', keeping the God Tree alive despite being broken into pieces. Things are unstable with your removal, but the God Tree could still recover in time. Without both of you the tree will unravel entirely."
"Father couldn't see this for the same reason you couldn't?"
"He, his mother, his brother, and his sons were all bound more tightly to the tree than any of us realized. There are also a number of techniques that only work due to the way the tree has influenced the world that should never have been possible."
"Is he saying that we have to kill Shukaku at a minimum?" Naruto asked.
"I believe so," his mother answered. "At which point including Matatabi is probably just going to speed up what needs to happen."
"You will only need to take those two," the Great Sage confirmed. "Within a decade the damage will spread, and within three the process will be completed. Also, of the two, you can only bind Shukaku's remains to yourself. I have seen that Matatabi's remnants would destabilize you, though I couldn't tell if that was with or without Shukaku's bound beforehand."
"I don't think we'd even considered that Naruto was an option," Kurama commented. "We'd thought about his teammates and sensei, but not him."
They'd stay for another hour, the Great Sage going off on more frequent tangents as he spoke to each of them, before Naruto's other clones started dispelling on their own. He ended up half-asleep on his feet, and his father insisted that it was time for him to head home. His mother helped him most of the way out of the building once the door had been unlocked before she dispelled, Shima seemingly not having noticed the clone before sending him back to the apartment.
The next morning started off with a team meeting, though one that had been planned before the previous day's revelations. Hoshi was back for it, though sitting off to the side with his leg wrapped up. He'd be fine in a couple of days, but his leg's chakra network had to recover from what he'd screwed up.
"So," Anko-sensei said. "We had an...odd chat with Hokage-sama yesterday afternoon and thanks to it a few things have come up."
"Most of which we aren't supposed to tell you any details about," Kurenai-sensei added. "As none of you are cleared for the information involved."
"No, Naruto is probably cleared for all of it, which is why we were only asked to not tell him, though I'm not sure why only he'd be cleared."
"Oh. Right, that distinction slipped my mind entirely."
Naruto was aware that this tied into the invasion, both because he'd already been told and because his clones had caught meetings with all available and trusted special jounin and up happening. Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei were in the groups tasked with preparing some specific anti-Orochimaru items.
"Regardless," Anko-sensei continued. "This means we're going to be a little more hands-off than we were originally planning on being this month due to having other things to handle. But I also finished talking with the snakes, and while they won't help me ambush Orochimaru they did help me copy down all the jutsu that Hinata needs to start working on learning." A scroll was pulled out of a pocket and tossed to the girl. "Learning the appropriate taijutsu style is going to be optional, but I was asked to pass along that the snakes have sages that can make contract scrolls."
Hinata's eyes went wide at that. "I hadn't even thought about that!"
"Which is probably why I was asked to mention it."
"I also found a few things for Tenten," Kurenai-sensei continued, producing a scroll of her own and tossing it over. "Weapons-based jutsu for somewhat more obscure weapons. Finding things suitable for Naruto's fighting style has been a problem...mostly because we still haven't pinned down what his style is."
"Anything goes so long as it works," Naruto replied. "With a preference for leaving people confused as to what I actually did, if I can manage it, perhaps?"
"That sounds about right, yes. We still didn't find anything for you, but we got permission for you to browse the Uchiha jutsu library. Shisui claims there are some Uzumaki jutsu documented in there and Itachi said that while you're unlikely to go up against his little brother, showing new skills is needed to 'keep the clan on their toes'."
"At least he's stopped needing to pay out for daily D-rank babysitting gigs," Anko-sensei noted. "Since the youngest brats have finally reached academy age."
"True, but there are still only five people with working sharingan remaining in the village, and one of them only counts on a technicality."
"Six, actually."
"...what?"
"Kaede unlocked her eyes a couple days ago when her pet died. Gossip at the bar says that Itachi thought it was a far healthier method for doing so than expected and is considering mandating all Uchiha have personal pets as children as a result."
Kurenai-sensei didn't look like she knew what to think about that, just nodding after a moment and turning back to Naruto. "Okay. Regardless, you can check with Itachi, Izumi, or Shisui for access to the archive."
A buzzing from Anko-sensei's gear resulted in a watch being pulled out of her pouch. "Shit, time to go. Good luck, we'll try to check in some more later."
That left the three genin and Hoshi sitting there.
"So today's a training day for me," Tenten said. "Is there anything else we want to go over before getting to that?"
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "I, er, have one thing."
"Oh?"
"Well, at this point I've told you both about how I ended up with the fox features."
Hinata nodded. "The Tome merged in part of the nine-tailed fox with your own chakra."
"Yep. I, er, might need a volunteer or two for doing that with Shukaku and Matatabi, the one-tail and two-tails?"
"...why?"
Naruto sighed. "There are a number of reasons, but the official one is that they're a threat to the village and the only sealmaster that could possibly do anything about them is both too connected to the village for political reasons and not available for a couple of weeks. Old Man Hokage still thinks that I have access to a sealmaster that can handle things, and I should probably tell him more at some point, but there are...other concerns as well that I don't think I want to go into right now either."
"Um," Tenten said, fidgeting. "Would that involve ending up with tails of our own on a permanent basis?"
"Most likely? Along with a boost to your chakra."
"Can I opt-out on the basis of having done too much weapon training without a tail? The one time I shapeshifted one to practice I accidentally cut the thing off, and that hurt. I know you have to run every weapon kata I've taught you with your tail out to learn to avoid it..."
Okay, that definitely sounded like it would suck, and she had done far too much training without a tail. Of course, more chakra would let her use paperwork clones to 'catch up'...but unlearning things was a problem and there were things that he couldn't do with his tail out just because the moves couldn't be adapted.
Hinata, on the other hand, looked a little giddy.
Naruto nodded to Tenten's question. "I was told that I should be suitable for Shukaku's side of things, so I really only need a place to put what's grabbed from Matatabi. There was a concern that we might be too old, so there was a backup plan of using Hanabi since taking a tailed beast from Kumo to give some of its power to a Hyuga in general felt justified, but some discussion led to deciding that Hinata should be fine." He turned to Hinata. "Though it would likely be cat ears and tail instead of fox for you."
"That's okay," Hinata said, blushing a little. "If you end up with some of Shukaku added in then you'll probably be less fox-like anyway, right?"
"Er...maybe? We aren't fully sure what will happen there, though if my ears and tail do change then it'll be a good thing that I hadn't publicly revealed them yet..."
"When are you doing this?" Tenten asked. "And will you need our help?"
"It'll be a few days at least, since I need to be sure that I can suppress chakra with my chains, and I don't think I'll need either of your help there." Not now that he could get the Tome to make clones of his parents, anyway. "But if Hinata is getting one of the two bound to her then she's probably going to need to be ready to spend a day or two here instead of home."
"I doubt that anyone will complain so long as I let them know that not being home is planned," Hinata said. "I think Neji is camping in a training ground at this point? If we don't know exactly when though then it might be best if I tell my father that you might summon me for training..."
Danzo was finding more and more roadblocks to his ability to function as the true power behind Konoha's strength. He still couldn't find the real weapon, someone had identified his primary operating accounts in the bank, Kabuto had ended up killed in the preliminaries due to a poor match-up against Suna's weapon, and now Hiruzen had somehow found out about the impending invasion with the better part of a month to prepare for it. Far more time than expected instead of the mere two to three days notice that had been originally intended to force a rush retrieval of the weapon to defend against opposing tailed beasts.
Now there was plenty of time for the weapon to be snuck into the village instead, which would make identification harder. The chaos of the invasion itself wouldn't allow for trivial identification either, though the aftermath might. Ensuring that suitable agents were everywhere during clean-up was going to be needed in case they could spot the weapon recovering from the fight, which meant restructuring quite a bit. Doubly so since Kabuto couldn't be used to obtain information from the hospital that might have helped reveal things.
Jiraiya having time to potentially deal with the two tailed beasts before the invasion could be launched was luckily easy enough to prevent. He always stopped in one of three villages nearby on his way back to Konoha, and ensuring that something came up when he did so would be trivial. The baseless rumors of a reborn Uzushio and a supposed Uzumaki sealmaster were easily discarded in the face of evidence that the young Uzumaki was self-taught, leaving Jiraiya as the only possible way to avoid the need for Konoha's weapon to be brought back to the village. Killing the two visiting weapons ahead of time would be political suicide.
Luckily this was all simple enough to manage. Funding issues due to the discovered accounts, recruitment issues due to changes in village security, and the loss of several out-of-village operations due to pure idiocy on the part of the involved civilians had created massive issues for Root in general. It was as though the universe itself had aligned against Danzo. Except that he was well aware that it was just a downturn, given that even Orochimaru had resorted to some desperation moves lately while looking for the weapon at the behest of others.
The invasion was too well-planned on several fronts to not reveal both the weapon's identity and that Hiruzen was no longer fit to be Hokage though, so things would begin to improve after it.
A couple of days later Naruto had finally taken the time to hunt down one of the three oldest adult Uchiha, which had turned out to be harder than expected due to village-wide preparations for the invasion that were disguised as general prep for the third stage of the exams. Which from what little Naruto knew about things was also technically accurate, actually...
Regardless, it had taken some actual effort to find one of the three, and that had ended up being a clone spotting Itachi eating lunch in time for the real Naruto to catch up to him as he left the restaurant.
"Good afternoon," Itachi greeted, then paused. "Right, I agreed that you could look for jutsu in our archive, and then everyone with access to the keys for you all but vanished into other tasks."
"It's understandable," Naruto admitted.
"Well, yes, but it was also a bit rude."
"I didn't even come looking before today and I fully understand being a little busy. Old Man Hokage asked me to take care of an item or two if I can in the next week or two, beyond my own training for the finals."
The man raised an eyebrow. "That's...intriguing, but likely not something to discuss in public and beyond the point you likely sought me out for. I have time to show you the archive, assuming you need me to do so. I'm under the impression that your team has likely not raided it already out of common courtesy."
"It would be rude to raid an allied clan's archive without their permission, even if most of them have no security to speak of."
"True, but...no security to speak of? Really?"
Naruto shrugged. "You've got the main archive hall with minimal security seals and nothing preventing someone from picking the lock without chakra or any real protections on the three tunnels into the basement. Then there are the vaults under the head's house and the shrine, which at least require a jutsu to open the main doors of but don't have any protection on the tunnels leading to them either. The Hyuga, Nara, and Yamanaka clans have passable security on their primary vaults. The Uzumaki and Namikaze estates are the most secure I know of in the village, doubly so since I was able to start maintaining the seals on the Uzumaki properties."
Itachi's left eye was twitching. "What was that about tunnels?"
"...we live in a village with an entire clan of people who can see through solid objects and only five places in the village have any protection from their eyes. Why doesn't anyone hire them to look for tunnels?"
"Because we're morons, obviously. Five places?"
"In general, at least. Their own compound, Uzumaki properties, the Namikaze estate, Anbu and Hokage eyes only storage, and the hot springs."
"I see. I'm still giving you an actual copy of the key to the archive hall, and I'll expect you to return it...let's say by the end of next June. Then I'm going to reschedule the rest of my day."
Half an hour later Naruto was in the archive, but instead of looking for specific jutsu he was attempting something new. He'd sat down in the middle of the building with the Tome out and was casting the one spell that they were fairly confident he couldn't handle on his own for a number of reasons. Luckily it also wasn't much of a 'combat' spell, though it could probably be used to find an enemy if needed.
It came in normal, wide, and ultra-wide variants, but for now he was focused on the normal version. "Area search!"
A collection of orange eye-like balls were created by the spell, filtered through the Tome to prevent sensory overload for Naruto. Or in this case, so that the Tome could record everything. They spread out and roamed the archive, building up a copy of the entire building. Every so often there would be an exception that Naruto had to go interact with directly, generally when a storage scroll was found or a security seal prevented direct scanning, but only a dozen or so in total.
Two hours later Naruto locked the building back up and headed home, reviewing several jutsu in the Tome's world with his parents and idly wondering if Itachi would've thought differently about granting access if he'd known about that trick. Then again, granting access until next June was more than enough time to copy it all anyway, so perhaps it wouldn't have changed anything.
Naruto hadn't expected his parents to want to talk to several others now that they could manifest outside of the Tome, but he really shouldn't have been surprised either. It was more that he'd barely considered the implications after years of them being restricted to the Tome itself. At the same time, they'd seemed to be waiting for a specific time to 'gather people', possibly wanting to do some of the reveal only once.
When they first brought it up he'd expected it to be a 'go out and talk to people without him being around' thing, but instead he got to watch them perform a complicated-looking jutsu, with hand signs despite their normal 'learn everything without them if possible' teachings. Ten minutes later Old Man Hokage and one Anbu in a dog mask arrived at the compound. Both with weapons out and looking ready to fight.
Kurama had dismissed himself 'to prevent the overgrown monkeys from panicking', but Naruto watched as his parents met with the two.
"Four steps to cross sixteen blades," his father said.
Old Man Hokage blinked before his eyes narrowed and his hands shifted a little. "Nine shuriken to cut seven ropes."
"Thirty jounin to delay one chunin."
"A warrior fallen and forgotten."
"But forever remembered by the Leaf."
"How are you alive and where have you been?"
Naruto grinned as his father chuckled. "I'm at best a shadow clone of a memory." Old Man Hokage's eyes narrowed. "And before you accuse me of dumping the paperwork back on you, I don't have any blood now. Can't touch any of the high security stuff."
Old Man Hokage blinked, then dropped out of his alert stance into more of a depressed one. "Dammit. That's a requirement and means I can't accuse you of foisting things on me."
"We've also only been able to return in this way at all for a few days, thanks to some information from the toads, but it means that we can help Naruto out with the task you gave him."
"Wait, does that mean that you've been the ones teaching him?"
"Yep."
"So no secret Uzumaki sealmaster?"
"Isn't mom an Uzumaki sealmaster?" Naruto asked, pointing at his mother.
"Er, no," his mother admitted, blushing. "Technically I stopped studying before I reached the master point...mostly because all my teachers were dead and I wasn't interested enough to self-study beyond where I already was."
"Oh."
"That brings up the question of what the plan is," Old Man Hokage asked, looking between the two adult clones. "Since the situation is...far different than I expected."
Naruto glanced at his parents, and his father grinned. "We've got it covered, but the Great Sage advised us to keep the details away from you until everything is taken care of." He then turned to the Anbu. "And is your brain done rebooting yet?"
There was no response, and Naruto moved over to the man to poke him. That didn't even result in a flinch. "Maybe he needs to be hit with a water jutsu?"
His mother grinned instead, before focusing a little, likely to get the tone of her voice right. "Kakashi-kun, I'm out of pads."
"SAVE ME," the Anbu screamed, suddenly cowering behind Naruto. Who noticed that his father and Old Man Hokage had also jumped and put distance between themselves and the clone of his mother.
"I guess that worked," Naruto said, turning to look at the Anbu. "I assume that you're the Kakashi my father has told me a bit about?"
"Um," the Anbu said, before sighing and pulling off his mask to reveal his white hair and a forehead protector pulled down over his left eye. "Yes."
"Er. You might still need saving, because I don't think my parents are happy that you've never approached me before now."
"It was for your own protection. Too many people watching me, trying to find any remaining connections to sensei."
Naruto nodded, as that did make sense. "That probably isn't going to fly now."
"Doubly so since you can always meet up with Naruto here in the compound safely," his father commented. "But we're not going to blame you for avoiding dragging my enemies to Naruto's doorstep."
Kakashi visibly relaxed at that. "Thanks. Er, how did you survive enough to be here now?"
"Stuck part of myself in Naruto's seal."
"...the decoy one?"
"Apparently your brain hasn't finished rebooting. Have you even noticed that he's got fox ears and a tail?"
Kakashi looked at Naruto, single eye blinking, before he pulled up his forehead protector to reveal a sharingan behind it. More blinking followed, before the forehead protector was pulled back down. "This had better be one hell of a story."
Minato was pleased with the way things had eventually gone with Hiruzen and Kakashi, the latter of which would be making time to help train Naruto a bit now. Both men had also been informed of the Uchiha that had attacked, which they currently assumed was the same one that had interrupted the clan meeting. Madara, or at least someone pretending to be the man, seemed to be the most likely option there.
They'd also taken other information about the Tome well enough, even if the search capability was less useful because it was too easily spotted, as well as the differences between jutsu and spells. Through that explanation they'd reached the point of testing chidori against Knight Armor, on a clone, and found that the jutsu was able to obliterate several layers of shields without much problem.
"I don't think this is going to help keep him away from the memorial stone," Kushina noted, well aware of the man's habits thanks to Naruto's monitoring of the village with clones. Not that they'd drawn attention to him, but the description of him outside of his Anbu gear was hard to miss.
"It'll help," Minato countered. "Just not as much as we'd like it to. Having something else to do between missions will hopefully start dragging him out of his funk, and I can't see him not trying to learn how to fly after seeing Naruto do so."
"That would take up some of his time, yes, and finally having someone with armor-piercing jutsu available for testing defenses is going to be invaluable. Even if Naruto has the sword that was used against him in the forest now, it can't be the only weapon out there that could cause problems."
"I can think of at least four legendary weapons that likely qualify myself, one of which we know was stolen from Konoha. Still, we should probably get back to working on the Hyuga's seal."
Kushina nodded. "Definitely. I think I've even figured out a couple of things that were bothering me, thanks to being reminded about my lessons, and it would help explain the seal that we know some of the Hyuga elders have."
Chapter 20 - Bad Ideas... (CmptrWz)
"I guess that worked," Naruto said, turning to look at the Anbu. "I assume that you're the Kakashi my father has told me a bit about?"
"Um," the Anbu said, before sighing and pulling off his mask to reveal his white hair and a forehead protector pulled down over his left eye. "Yes." He looked between Naruto and the clones, before grabbing Naruto's shoulders. "I want to be absolutely, positively clear on a couple of items."
Naruto blinked. "Er, okay..."
"If that really is your mother, and she ever tells you that she has a 'great idea for getting extra years of training in'? Run for the hills and don't look back. Never, ever attempt the idea, for along that path lies ruin and madness as you try and fail to correct mistakes until eventually you give up and settle for the best of horrible choices."
"Er..."
"I still think it was a great idea and just wish I could've tried it myself," his mother whined. "You had to have done something wrong to need the seal broken in the first place."
His father rolled his eyes. "We went over this when Kakashi was...twelve, was it? And you agreed to never attempt that kind of thing, ever."
"And I still don't know why not! He just gets that far-off-haunted look and babbles about things mortal men were never meant to know, not knowing how to be a four year old, and occasionally bringing up 'rivers of blood'."
Kakashi's single eye stared off into an unseeable distance. "Run for the hills. Trust me, the price you could end up paying otherwise isn't worth it."
"Um," the Anbu said, before sighing and pulling off his mask to reveal his white hair and a forehead protector pulled down over his left eye. "Yes." He looked between Naruto and the clones, before grabbing Naruto's shoulders. "I want to be absolutely, positively clear on a couple of items."
Naruto blinked. "Er, okay..."
"If that really is your mother, and she ever tells you that she has a 'great idea for getting extra years of training in'? Run for the hills and don't look back. Never, ever attempt the idea, for along that path lies ruin and madness as you try and fail to correct mistakes until eventually you give up and settle for the best of horrible choices."
"Er..."
"I still think it was a great idea and just wish I could've tried it myself," his mother whined. "You had to have done something wrong to need the seal broken in the first place."
His father rolled his eyes. "We went over this when Kakashi was...twelve, was it? And you agreed to never attempt that kind of thing, ever."
"And I still don't know why not! He just gets that far-off-haunted look and babbles about things mortal men were never meant to know, not knowing how to be a four year old, and occasionally bringing up 'rivers of blood'."
Kakashi's single eye stared off into an unseeable distance. "Run for the hills. Trust me, the price you could end up paying otherwise isn't worth it."
Well, guess Hinata's going to become a catgirl.
Also, Naruto has learned one of his father's signature jutsu. But will he learn the one that got Minato known as the Yellow Flash?
Delusional Danzo has no idea how far the scenario has deviated from his plans.
Omake: Let me show you how it's done.
Blinking at Edo Tensei failing, Orochimaru said, "That wasn't supposed to happen."
Chuckling, Hiruzen said, "With how much you have experimented on yourself, I'm not surprised that you're having performance issues, my wayward pupil."
Just then, a yellow flash entered the barrier before turning into Naruto. "Hey Old Man. What's the situation."
"Orochimaru just attempted the forbidden jutsu Edo Tensei. I suspect he was trying to summon my teachers and Minato-Kun," answered the Third Hokage.
This got a laugh from Naruto. "And he couldn't summon my old man? Even I can pull that off!" Forming a Ram seal, Naruto sent a paperwork clone into the Tome, and in a puff of smoke, Minato Namikaze appeared.
Frothing at the mouth, Orochimaru said, "How?!"
Also, Naruto has learned one of his father's signature jutsu. But will he learn the one that got Minato known as the Yellow Flash?
Delusional Danzo has no idea how far the scenario has deviated from his plans.
Omake: Let me show you how it's done.
Blinking at Edo Tensei failing, Orochimaru said, "That wasn't supposed to happen."
Chuckling, Hiruzen said, "With how much you have experimented on yourself, I'm not surprised that you're having performance issues, my wayward pupil."
Just then, a yellow flash entered the barrier before turning into Naruto. "Hey Old Man. What's the situation."
"Orochimaru just attempted the forbidden jutsu Edo Tensei. I suspect he was trying to summon my teachers and Minato-Kun," answered the Third Hokage.
This got a laugh from Naruto. "And he couldn't summon my old man? Even I can pull that off!" Forming a Ram seal, Naruto sent a paperwork clone into the Tome, and in a puff of smoke, Minato Namikaze appeared.
Frothing at the mouth, Orochimaru said, "How?!"
- Location
- Wales
Did kushina accidentally-on-purpose send kakashi back in time to birth.
From the "try and fail to correct mistakes until eventually you give up and settle for the best of horrible choices.", I think she 'Groundhog-Day'ed him.
Well, 'Groundhog-Decade'd him.
I thought more along the lines of "Darkness beyond twilight, crimson beyond blood that flows..."
- Pronouns
- Mr
Sounds almost like Naruto is going to end up looking like Raphtalia, somewhat. I'm imagining Floofy round tipped tail, round ears... but with Fox colouration. Or, that's the first thing my brain went to. Not sure I can get unstuck from that mental image, now that I've had it.
- Location
- Earth
I realized today that I have no idea what happens in canon Naruto right after the Chunin Exams, because I stopped watching the anime at that point and most fics never make it past them. I've got broad strokes about Sasuke going missing nin and the recovery team for him, Akatsuki, stuff dealing with the moon, both the painting thereof with a big eye and the goddess on it but nothing linking it all together or anything else that goes on between the big events. Knowing CmptrWz we'll probably get to see some of that or a good bit of it will be headed off before it becomes a problem but either way I'm really looking forward to what happens after this arc because I know next to nothing about how it should have gone in canon.
As for the chapter itself nice to have the Old Man and Kakashi in on things.
Thanks for the chapter CmptrWz!
As for the chapter itself nice to have the Old Man and Kakashi in on things.
Thanks for the chapter CmptrWz!
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
Hanabi: Hinata-oneechan is so mean, not letting me become a catgirl...
If Kushina could throw a Dragon Slave, wouldn't she have thrown one at Kurama, given he was already wrecking the village?
The17thImmortal
Seeker of Sanity
That you say that, means you vastly underestimate the level of raw destruction that that spell is capable of.
- Location
- Sydney
So you might be able to create the Ten-tails as it is but by taking out the eight-tails you guarantee its impossible and will eventually kill it permanently. Also the idea they were still absorbing the planets lifeforce is curious and might explain why killing them is only temporary normally. The chakra is released but overtime the control node absorbs enough to recreate the body. I wonder how else this has effected the world? Its implied the rest of the planet is much worse off since the tree pulled the lifeforce towards it enriching the local area at the cost of other continents.
The idea of its being hidden from divination also makes sense considering its purpose.
More interestingly is the idea a number of techniques only work due to the tree. We have already learnt several ones work because of the masks and its destruction broke them but what techniques rely upon the tree? And will the elimination of these techniques be a good thing? Its probably not something fundamental like the chakra net or elemental natures. Maybe nature chakra? Or the ability to access the pure world?
EDIT
Didn't they mention the Sharingan is connected to an external power source? And its mention the Sages family was strongly connected to the tree? The Byakugan is apparently internal but we know the Rinnegan is linked to the Ten-tails therefore the tree as well. Will they stop working if the tree is permanently destroyed? What would everyone think if the Sharingan just stopped working or is the external connection only needed for the more ridiculous abilities so the basic ones would keep going?
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Kurama: "She tried that. It was tasty."
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
Isn't that pretty much what a Pretty Ball is, and hence what the Rasengan is trying to be without invoking a mazoku lord/drawing on a bijuu's chakra, and thereby being severely underpowered?
(and yes, I'm aware that they're properly called "bijuudama," not "bishoudama," but that fic where the kyuubi was the kitsune equivalent of a toddler who won an extra eight tails from Inari because he was drunk and a bigger sucker than Tsunade, then got distracted "chasin' mah tails" and "pwayin' with mah Pwetty Ball" and didn't realize how much damage she was doing until after being sealed was just too damn funny. Now if only I could remember some details that would actually let me search it up...)
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I believe the fic you're thinking of is Naruto Genkyouien. AKA what crack does Daneel Rush smoke to come up with this stuff?
Pretty sure it is Vulpine that you are thinking of.
Unless it was drawing upon the Power of Kurama to manifest it, in which case it would do nothing to him.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
That's the one! Thank you.
Huh, never read that one. Thank you as well.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
First of all, invisitext is annoying, even if it's only mostly invisible.
Second of all, I was about to ask for a link till I read this part, and realized you likely don't have a link.
You have great taste in anime.
- Location
- Georgia
Rule 6: Do not link to content containing the sexualisation of minors on Sufficient Velocity.
For an existing fanfic groundhog days story: LINK REMOVED BY MODERATOR Naruto loops back to the first day of the exam every time he doesn't get promoted to chunin, for whatever reason, and there are many.
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