Chapitre 2647: 37
Naruto thought he knew most of how the spiral armbands worked, but Hinata claimed that the one on the arm that the Raikage had torn off had apparently vanished within a second of the limb no longer being attached. That was weird enough, but sometime in the five minutes after he'd regrown the arm the armband had reappeared on it. Exactly when was unclear because he'd only noticed well after it had happened. That was something he didn't think his recreations would be able to do...and implied that they'd missed major aspects of how the things worked.
It was, however, possible that it was related to how the armbands connected to the chakra network, and his recreations did so in the same way. In that case it was possible that they would vanish and reappear when limbs were regrown and the chakra network reformed in them. But he wasn't about to mention that because then someone might decide to cut off a hand to find out. They'd almost certainly reappear near the corpse of someone who had them though...three to four days after death, when the chakra network finished collapsing entirely.
Armband mysteries aside, the entire team had been invited to dinner with the Raikage, with a comment about proper apologies being needed, but Naruto had spent most of the time leading up to dinner being examined by Hinata. Having two gates stuck open was unheard of and she wanted to be as sure as she could be that he wasn't being harmed...but he didn't think he had to worry too much. He felt fine, and hadn't actually suffered any of the physical effects that opening the third gate was supposed to cause either.
"My apologies," the Raikage said as soon as they'd arrived for dinner. "But it appears that the Uzumaki-marked scrolls that used to be in one of our storage rooms were removed without permission years ago and nobody noticed until someone was sent to fetch them. Presumably someone thought that they could get them open safely and very likely destroyed them in the process of attempting it." He sighed. "We also don't know where Hizashi Hyuga's body ended up. The only three people who knew all died before it was realized that only they knew where the secure storage safe they used was hidden."
A box was brought in and placed on the table between Naruto and Hinata, and the Raikage gestured to it. "As such, I had to settle for an alternative and had copies of a dozen of our techniques made for you, as well as a couple of my family's own training routines for speed and strength."
"And I personally added a dozen of my spare swords," B added. "Six for each of you. They're most effective when used with lightning chakra, designed to vibrate and cut better than even wind chakra enhancement normally manages, but can channel all chakra natures depending on the need."
"Our shinobi covet the ones that B allows others to use, since the process used to make them is incredibly chakra intensive and he's been personally involved in creating each of them. I'm personally amazed that he's willing to part with a dozen at a time."
"Based on the changes I've already gone through I'm going to want longer blades when everything has settled. I'll be distributing more of my collection to our forces over the coming couple of weeks as well."
"...oh."
They'd departed from Kumo the next morning, not showing off their ability to just vanish. Naruto and Hinata had both left a bunch of clones behind to watch the expected reshuffling of defenses though.
Heading back to Konoha was being done with a slightly longer route than strictly necessary, stopping at a village along the way for a quick additional mission. It wasn't every day that a mission from the Daimyo to openly demolish someone's house in retaliation for subverting a portion of the Daimyo's forces came along, and Naruto had been lucky enough to have a clone in the mission office when it came in. Looting it beforehand was 'optional' because the goal was to remove the seat of power of the noble quickly and efficiently without needing to fight through the subverted forces.
Despite the mission calling for the house to be knocked down in an incredibly flashy manner to send a message, they still landed a short distance from the village and slipped in without looking like they were shinobi. There were a number of reasons for this, and training for the genin was very far down the list. Scouting out what was going on, doing the optional looting because 'optional' meant 'you get to keep anything you do loot' to shinobi, getting past the various guards stationed around the village to prevent attacks. Sure, they could've blitzed in and likely taken out most of the guards in the process of forcing a path to their target, but why bother when it was a better show to suddenly be there with no warning?
Scouting in advance turned out to be a good thing, because the 'house' was closer to a 'small fortress' and there were newly-placed reinforcement seals on the structure. Plus a team of missing-nin inside of it adding more seals. None of the missing-nin were all that important according to bounty listings, but they did complicate things slightly. On the other hand, they weren't doing a great job with the seals, and clones had been able to subtly alter them to overload and explode when force was applied to the building.
As for the looting, Hinata had taken the lead on that and decided to go as far as she could get away with. The noble and two loyal servants were monitoring the missing-nin, likely to ensure that they didn't steal anything, and the noble's family were shopping elsewhere in the village. This meant that there was basically no reason to not grab basically everything not in the areas the missing-nin were working in.
Then, to go the extra mile in ensuring that the noble wouldn't be rebuilding anytime soon, Naruto and Hinata worked together using earth and water manipulation to prepare a sinkhole for the rubble to collapse into.
"So," Naruto sent to the various members of the team with the communication technique once the looting and preparation were done. "There are six people in the target building. Three of them are missing-nin, one's the owner, and the last two are loyal servants. Each missing-nin has one minder and none of the three are likely to be a major threat."
"We've been asked to make this blatantly obviously handled by Konoha," Hinata continued. "So Naruto is going to summon a giant toad as part of things. Do any of you want to participate?"
All three genin, plus Akamaru and Hoshi, had gotten a look at things. It was obvious that none of them thought that they had any hope of causing significant damage to the target house.
"Can we draw out the missing-nin?" Ino asked. "Bounties are easier to get if you don't have to pull bodies out of rubble."
"I could set fire to the building to get their attention," Sasuke added. "They'll likely come out to stop us, especially if they only see two or three of us instead of the full team."
"Plus they'll probably declare Ino and Sasuke to be freaks and go after them," Kiba contributed. "It seems like everyone that isn't allied with Konoha has that reaction to the animal features, on top of underestimating us because of it."
That was, admittedly, a thing. Civilians were a bit more variable on that front, but for some reason shinobi tended towards more extreme reactions.
"The problem is that they know I'm here," Naruto sent. "I've not gotten my control to the point where I can hide my chakra well enough to go unnoticed, even if my clones aren't having difficulties there."
It was obvious that the others hadn't considered that fully, but after another ten minutes of planning they decided to see if they could flush people out of the building anyway. Ino was right about the bounties being easier without the bodies being trapped in the rubble.
Ino had held back while Sasuke lobbed fireballs at the house. They weren't actually expecting this to work, but to her surprise a kunoichi jumped out of an upper window and turned to attempt to either attack Sasuke or put out the fire. A mind-body switch to her back had been enough to get her away, though being tied up in the kunoichi's body was annoying. That hadn't taken long though.
The other two had been smart enough to come out together, but Hinata-sensei had warned them that it was going to happen. Kiba and Akamaru had done their beast clone trick, and then used fang-passing-fang to drive the two away from the building. There had been a moment of shock with the two when they saw Sasuke's family crest, and Ino had taken over the weaker of the two. Hinata-sensei had then snuck up behind the other, knocking them out with a single strike.
Getting tied up again was just as annoying, and then Naruto-sensei's clone sealed all three missing-nin into prisoner transport scrolls before vanishing to turn them in. The noble and his two servants were just inside, panicking but obviously unsure what to do.
"Are we allowed to take them out?" Kiba asked.
"If you can get in and do so before Naruto starts summoning," Hinata-sensei answered.
Ino decided to stay outside for now as Kiba, Akamaru, and Sasuke jumped into the house to take out the three left in it. That barely took them twenty seconds, most of that due to deciding not to kill them. They weren't being paid to do so specifically and civilians were...not much of a challenge. Though perhaps the challenge in this case was getting them out safely? Sasuke had dropped back out one of the windows to catch each of the three as Kiba threw them out the window.
"So now what?" Sasuke asked once they'd dragged the three civilians away from the building.
"Now the real show begins," Hinata-sensei answered, and Ino felt Naruto-sensei's position shift rapidly.
A moment later there was a surge of chakra, and several giant toads appeared. Screaming happened in the area, and apparently the fire hadn't been enough to get the attention of the samurai but the giant toads definitely had.
"What happened to summoning a giant toad?" Kiba asked as the group of toads spread out around the house.
"Apparently they couldn't decide who should show off," Hinata-sensei answered. "So they decided to come as a group."
Each of the toads launched a different very large attack at the house, essentially obliterating it. The explosions from the failed seals caused fire to spew up...and down as the ground under the house fell away. A moment later there was a giant hole instead of a house, and the toads bickered a little before dismissing themselves.
"Time to vanish," Naruto-sensei said, suddenly in their midst. "We don't have any good reason to fight the samurai."
"Especially since we picked all their pockets," Hinata-sensei commented.
"Well, yes, and the noble's family is going to be annoyed when they find out that they're broke too. But we're also being paid to vanish immediately after doing the destruction."
"Oh, right."
A moment later Ino felt the tug of summoning, and allowed it. Appearing in the Uzumaki compound back in Konoha was something she was definitely used to, but she turned to the two sensei. "So what now?"
One of Hinata-sensei's clones grinned. "Now you get an unofficial secondary mission."
"...why don't I like the sound of that?" Sasuke asked.
"You get to help sort and decide what to do with the bonus loot," Hoshi answered. "Which includes a bunch of noble clothing."
Ino was suddenly very interested in the loot. Expensive clothing for free? YES!
Naruto mentally grumbled a bit as he was examined by Tsunade. Reports had been turned in, the whole deal with being unable to close two of the eight gates had come up, and it seemed like a third of the medic-nin and half of the jounin wanted to know what was going on with that. But Tsunade had basically told the rest of the medic-nin other than Hinata to go do something more productive and Gai was the only jounin considered an expert on the gates, so the room wasn't crowded.
"This is definitely weird," Tsunade finally said as she pulled her hand away from Naruto's head and moved her technique down to his spinal cord. "I honestly don't know how I'd normally describe the limiting aspects of the gates, but they're obviously no longer present in the first two in you at all and the rest of your chakra network seems to have adapted to a new higher level of chakra flow as a default. I'm seeing signs of changes in the third gate as well, but beyond the higher flow adaptations and some signs that it has opened the fourth gate is otherwise normal."
"I'm concerned about the implications of this expression of youth," Gai said with a frown. "Nothing I was taught by my father or mentioned in his notes even hints at this being possible, and despite somewhat regular use of the first few gates it hasn't happened to me."
"Tailed beasts don't have gates," Naruto stated, having been assured that repeatedly by the Tome. "So this is almost certainly a side effect of being bound to the remains of one."
"...that would explain a lot," Tsunade said with a nod, but frowning as she did so. "And now I'm wondering what other changes we can expect in you and Hinata here. There are already indications that there are other changes going on in your cellular makeup, with you being far ahead of her in that department, but the final target state is impossible to identify at this stage. But with resting chakra levels like this, assuming the puberty-induced chakra boost kicks in as normal for you, you're going to be frankly terrifying in a few years."
And that made Naruto think that he needed to double or triple his normal contingent of chakra control clones to get ahead of things...and possibly figure out some more control exercises. Maybe build a few hundred training puppets and see how many he could get a single clone to be able to control to any level at all?
A frowned as he looked over the message from Konohagakure. "That's just being cheeky."
"What is?" C asked.
"The new Hokage heard that we were unable to find things in our own village, and this claims that their spies found our maps to be 'lacking'. So as a 'sign of good faith' between the villages he had a copy made of their maps of Kumo for us so that we might have a better clue as to where we're keeping things."
"...that has to be a joke."
"We still need to see how accurate their maps actually are, if only to know how much their spies actually know about us. Getting information on them is a horrible pain despite civilians being allowed to wander in and out of their village, but knowing how accurate their maps are might also point at where to look for their spies."
"True. Want me to run the maps down to the analysts?"
"No, I'll do it myself to make it clear that this isn't a joke on our side."
Ino had been delighted with all the things that had been grabbed from the noble's house and had ensured that they all had suitable items from the clothing collection, in addition to some of the furniture being spread out among various houses. What they didn't think they could use had been sold and all of the money had been split up...somewhat evenly. Naruto and Hinata had claimed a larger share each than the genin got, but Akamaru and Hoshi got their own shares as well.
Unfortunately, they were put on 'in and around the village only' duties for a bit while far more detailed examinations and testing of Naruto were conducted. This did give him plenty of time to train up his chakra control again though, and to take care of some other items on his todo list. Such as getting a couple of training grounds set up with the first attempt at a full training zombie seal.
...Kurenai's choice to have her team camp out in the middle of one of the training grounds, with the seal active in 'provide a crowd' mode but no weapons for her team, was definitely an interesting one though. Apparently as part of getting Sachie to stop going into automatic anti-zombie berserker mode, but Choji was also spending a lot of time examining the few visible portions of the seal used to change the operating mode and range settings.
Naruto and the Tome also finally figured out the last of the changes needed to fully stabilize the 'paperwork clone controlling a puppet from inside of it' seals and had added them to both the fox puppet and Hanabi's cat puppet. Modifying the human-like puppet to look more like an Uzumaki was also being done, a little at a time as they learned more about the craft in general with an ultimate goal of figuring out 'make new combat-grade puppets'. He'd thrown a request in for a mission to Suna for a chance to raid their puppetry archives as well, but didn't expect it to be granted anytime soon.
If only the changes to his chakra hadn't completely screwed up the work so far on creating a personal Hiraishin targeting seal. That process had been restarted from scratch with very little of the original work being usable beyond as experience for what not to do on the next attempt, and it was possible that he'd need to do it all again after he went through puberty if his chakra changed enough then. His father wished they could ask Tobirama questions at this point.
Seemingly linked to the changes in Naruto's chakra was another mystery. For some reason, Naruto was finding it harder to dispel the daily Yoko clone from day to day while also becoming...more aware of it, perhaps? And the Yoko clone was more aware of what the real him was doing at the same time, without them actually attempting to communicate with one another. It wasn't affecting either of their behavior, as suddenly knowing things as clones dispelled was far more jarring, but it was definitely weird. But that was also the only alternate-personality clone he ensured was created daily, so perhaps it was just a side effect?
As far as the Tome knew, nobody had ever used paperwork clones the way he was. But he'd already been having problems with people wanting to know where Yoko lived, since the shrine didn't have living areas, so he'd gotten her an apartment in the apartment building and made a point of having her visibly move into it. Managing to get one of the other apartments connected to the secret ways in and out had been the hardest part as they'd all been occupied at the time, but a faked problem with plumbing had gotten one person to move to another unit. Without complaint, as the unit they were moved to was a little larger.
Sasuke's time at the shrine as Mariko had, to his surprise, severely blunted his attraction to Yoko. If anything, she was starting to feel more like a sister than a love interest...though more Mariko's sister than his, admittedly. Karin, on the other hand, seemed to be doing her best to ensure that he didn't see her that way. And was doing a good job of it. His fangirls were also in a bit of a panic over his relationships, though Sakura's attitude had changed since she'd been accidentally exposed to the beast-man formula.
The change made her significantly less annoying, and his wolf side seemed to like her wolf side. But Karin's fox side wasn't exactly off-putting either, and she seemed to have no problem with him regardless of if he was himself or Mariko. It was all very confusing to him, and Karin seemed to not care about his conflicting feelings...and had even taken to dragging Mariko to the hot springs while Sakura was there just to see his reaction.
...he was occasionally wondering if Karin's machinations were part of why his crush on Yoko was diminishing, if only because on some level he instinctively understood that it was better to focus on those that were interested in him instead of pining for someone who wasn't.
"You made a basic puppet for me?" Hinata asked as she looked over the cat puppet Naruto had given her for her birthday.
"It should be on the same level as Hanabi's," Naruto replied. "Maybe a little stronger, since I haven't properly tested the effectiveness of my wood-release materials compared to those Suna has been using. But it has all the same mechanisms and seals now."
"Which means that I should probably join your training sessions with her."
Naruto shrugged. He knew that Hinata wasn't as interested in puppetry as Hanabi was but also wanted to be able to work with him on things. So his training to use puppets, if only for chakra control reasons, had spurred her desire to learn to use them in at least a basic sense. "Only if you want to, but you have been borrowing my fox puppet for practice at least weekly while we've been stuck in the village."
She blushed and nodded. "Do you think that we'll be permitted to go on out-of-village missions again now that you can hide your chakra reliably again?"
"We're going to be given one tomorrow morning."
"...when did you spot that, and where?"
"Old Man Hiruzen told me this morning. They put it off a few days so that you'd be in the village for your birthday, but there's an Uzumaki outpost that needs examination in the Land of Hot Water. Karin could've gone to take a look, but expressed no interest in doing so, and Tsunade is more focused on preparations for running a loop through several villages soon to get non-shinobi healing practice in for her students."
She nodded, since they'd been warned about that trip.
Yugito knew that over the course of around a month the maps that Konoha had sent had been found to be absurdly accurate. They included every hidden area known to exist, a number that hadn't been known to exist, and detailed inventories of everything had been included. Inventories that had been accurate down to the number of kunai in several storage rooms as of at least a few days before Team Yurei had visited.
More concerning was that she'd seen the maps while helping deal with some things, and every single lock in the village had the needed information for opening it. Combinations, sketches of keys, tricks needed to disable or bypass alarms or more subtle 'someone entered here' precautions, and markings for which simple exploits could get you in without needing to worry about the key or combination where applicable.
A had, when learning about this, declared that this had gone far beyond being 'cheeky' and straight into 'showing off'. Along with assuming that a few missing items had been claimed by Konoha years ago, and that anything the other village had put into place in Kumo was deliberately not on the maps.
"The worst part of all of this is that it hasn't helped find a single Konoha spy," A grumbled as they looked over a list of spies that had been found. "Every village we might care about other than Konoha, but not them, because you'd have to have infiltrated the village to an extreme degree to get into all of these locations to map and inventory them."
"They'd have needed an entire team of spies to collect this information," C agreed. "Possibly starting with Hyuga volunteers, initially to recover Hizashi's corpse and then they just kept going? Then they'd bring in those that could blend in more easily, Yamanaka to temporarily take over key individuals to not be noticed going places they shouldn't be, possibly Uchiha to use some of the sharingan abilities to help read documents or manipulate memories?"
"Yes, the analysts are in a panic over how many unknowing Konoha agents we have no way to detect because they were loyal until they were mind-whammied."
"Perhaps we should just be glad that we're forging formal alliances," Yugito offered. "If they're this good at infiltrating us then we certainly don't want to be their enemy if another war breaks out."
A and C both shivered at that thought.
"I don't think anyone actually told us what happened to you," Naruto commented, looking at Tenten while they waited for Hayate and Yugao. "You very much didn't want to be exposed to anything that could give you a tail, and yet you appear to be part panda now anyway."
Tenten scowled. "There have been a dozen accidents with that stupid formula as spies try to steal it and I helped hunt down one that got out of the village only for the container to explode. I'm just lucky that panda tails are both short and instinctively held close to the body. Hayate-sensei's rabbit tail is a little better at staying out of the way of kenjutsu, but Yugao-sensei's dog tail has been driving her nuts."
"I'm more annoyed that I had to take a leave of absence from Anbu," Yugao said as she dropped down next to the group. "Very few people have the tricks needed to hide animal features and they aren't common enough to be unremarkable."
That was a good point, and the only additional person the shapeshifting seal had been applied to recently was Karin, who had been quite embarrassed to spend most of her acclimation period looking like various crosses between herself, Sasuke, and Sakura. Naruto had done his best to not think too much about that, figuring that it was her own business. Applying the seal to her had also only really been permitted because she was an Uzumaki, with the village wanting to keep it far more restricted for now.
Then her first use of the thing after the acclimation period had been to drag Mariko out on a date.
"So your genin look like they've been doing a lot of training while you've been kept around the village," Yugao commented, her tail showing more of her curiosity than her tone of voice did.
"They're quite dedicated," Hinata replied. "And took the view that even days off can be used for training if done right. Admittedly, not all teams can manage that as well as an infiltration team can."
"Tenten here is pretty good at that, yeah, but they had to have been doing constant chakra-building exercises and getting more out of them than usual for the boost in their resting chakra levels."
"That's more due to them being test subjects," Naruto admitted. "Tsunade only approved things for wider distribution a couple days ago, but I came up with a seal for chakra capacity training. I should have a bunch ready when we get back and was planning on giving Tenten one then, but they're far less effective on adults and there's a definite diminishing returns aspect."
"Every chakra building exercise has diminishing returns. What's special about the seal?"
"It's automatic. Charges with your chakra during the day, safely pushes it back into you while you sleep to force you to hold more chakra. The more chakra you have the less of a boost you get over time because there's only so much you can push back into someone safely. Shisui has mandated that they're not allowed to leave the village right now unless they're blood-locked to the user though, given the massive boost in capability they represent for our forces. He actually wants a bunch that auto-return to storage if worn out of the village limits for use by the academy and genin and by the end of the week I expect every major clan in the village to be asking about ordering them too."
Not said was that the Hyuga already had some. Hanabi and Neji were in the test subject pool with blood-locked versions, as were a small number of academy students. Like Old Man Hiruzen's grandson and a couple of the boy's friends. This was also a rare seal that Naruto couldn't actually test himself, and Hinata couldn't either. Their chakra capacity was already too high for the seals to improve, and if his experience with the stuck-open gates was any indication his regeneration was far too high as well.
"Why wasn't I offered one for testing?" Tenten asked.
"All of the test subjects were stuck in the village for other reasons already," Hinata answered. "When the list was drafted you weren't even here. My cousin only got on the list because his sensei and teammate were exposed to the beast man formula and Tsunade put them on lockdown while they tried to figure out where the tortoise elements came from when there wasn't any turtle-like genetic source."
"Turns out the formula can latch onto other samples you were recently exposed to," Naruto explained when a collection of looks were sent their way. "And they'd both been heavily exposed to summon tortoises during training that morning. Of course, they're also still trying to recover their speed. They're a lot harder to hurt, but don't like that their lap times more than doubled overnight."
"...that would explain their extra dedication to running laps lately," Yugao said. "But I suppose I never paid them much attention if I didn't notice that they'd slowed down."
"They're also less flexible due to growing shells, but already favored a taijutsu style that didn't rely on flexibility."
"Huh. How did I miss that they grew shells?"
"Well, it doesn't look like a tortoise shell as it's basically following their existing back and spine."
"Oh."
"I feel like I missed something," Hayate said as he strolled up.
"Just some gossip," Yugao said, giving him a quick kiss that got a drooping rabbit ear to perk up for a moment. "But I suppose if you're here then we can get going with the kids."
"Don't know why we were tapped for this. Last I heard, playing jounin for them was supposed to be Anko's job."
"She's stuck in the middle of some infiltration classes and asked me nicely. If this is a trap like the analysts think it is then three extra bodies is going to be better than one anyway."
"See, it would've been nice if someone had warned me that there's a chance this mission is a trap."
"It was in the documentation we got," Ino pointed out.
"...who the hell reads that on what sounds like a simple mission?"
"Anyone who wants to be sure that it is a simple mission," Kiba retorted.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone