章 2638: 28
Four stops in villages had finally gotten them a lead on where the wayward Senju was actually heading. It also got the three genin a number of important lessons in teamwork. Most importantly, they'd successfully come up with a leadership cycle of sorts based on mission type for the time being. Tracking-like missions had Kiba taking charge and teaching the other two about what they could smell, missions where their primary task involved interacting with civilians had Ino taking charge because she was able to at least act the friendliest, and if the primary goal was to take an individual or group out then Sasuke took the lead.
Kiba had objected to that until Sasuke had shown that he was a better strategist.
"You're slacking a bit compared to your teammates," Naruto said to Kiba as they stopped for lunch.
"They have bullshit healing," Kiba retorted. "Akamaru and I don't."
"He's just shitting you," Jiraiya said. "But only because it's obvious that your puppy is taking the training a bit more seriously than you are. Regardless, we're either going to find our target in the next village or will likely catch up in the following one."
Not telling the genin that they were looking for Tsunade, mostly to avoid getting hopes up for a couple of reasons, made for some annoying discussions with the group.
"Do we get to find out why we're out here when we find them?" Ino asked.
Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "You're here because I wanted one of your sensei along for the trip and my former sensei insisted that I had to take the whole team. I've enjoyed watching them train you though, much better than I probably would've managed in several ways. Hoshi even helped Akamaru get the communication jutsu down well enough, even if only three of you can understand him."
"I don't know how Naruto understands him better than I do," Kiba grumbled. "Hoshi? Sure. But why do I have more trouble?"
"Naruto spends more time as a dog," Hinata answered. "...he's also better at understanding cats than I am, and I'm part cat now."
"I still have trouble with birds though," Naruto added.
"Since when are you trying to figure out birds?"
"I've been working on it for a couple of weeks now."
He found Hinata's annoyed look amusing, since she'd apparently missed him starting on that.
"I think we might've gone a bit too hard on you for the untriggered tags," Yugao-sensei said as she handed over Shibuki's roll of explosive tags. "The ones you'd been adding to the back end of the roll were far higher quality than most of the ones that were obviously there when you got the sword, and I can't blame you for not having been able to replace the entire set."
Tenten nodded, taking a look at the scroll to find that it appeared to have her replacement tags first now. "Did you roll it up the other way around?"
"No, we randomly sampled tags from the first five feet and found that they were inconsistent as hell despite all looking good. Some of them might've even been made to intentionally look good while being made wrong to catch an unwary wielder, but we can't actually prove that. A couple of the Anbu that dabble in seals claim that it mostly looks like they were made by someone copying existing tags in the field and not realizing that they had shit materials."
"I knew they weren't the best tags, and they were haphazardly slapped together into the roll, but I didn't realize they were that bad. Maybe I should've asked Naruto to make replacements for me."
"There was a chance you'd end up going against him in the finals, and going up against the one who made all your explosive tags would've been a bad idea. The replacements should be a lot more reliable, and likely have more kick."
Tenten nodded, retrieving Shibuki and opening it up to place the scroll into it. She'd been surprised when her new sensei had let her hold onto the sword before they thought she was ready for it.
"Now then," Yugao-sensei continued. "You have chakra-building exercises to do, and then I want you to turn up your weights and resistance seal a bit before running the outer track. When Hayate returns tomorrow we'll be subjecting you to another round of defending against both of us so you'll be skipping the morning session to be properly rested for that."
"I think we're too late," Naruto said when they arrived in the next village that evening.
"We just got here," Kiba grumbled.
"He's not been wrong yet," Jiraiya said. "And I was expecting that because of the age of the last lead. But it'll take me a day to figure out which of the three routes from here we need to take, so you get to do another mission or two if your sensei can grab any."
"There aren't any here," Hinata replied. "Three other teams passing through in the past week grabbed the couple that were sitting around."
"...when did you have time to check on that?"
"I checked at lunchtime in case there was anything that could be taken care of tonight," Naruto answered.
"Of course you did. Well, you've got a day to work on training your team tomorrow then. I hope you have some ideas."
"We've not sat down and tested their taijutsu yet, and there are three good clearings nearby. Plus Tenten claimed that Ino was doing 'decently' in learning the basics of the defensive tanto she picked up, and Sasuke has some practice with his own, but I don't think Kiba carries anything suitable yet and I brought a couple seals full of options to test all three of them with."
"And you haven't done any of this at our previous stops?"
Hinata smirked. "We were testing their teamwork and a number of their other skills. The past couple of villages included putting unexpected obstacles in their paths while they worked on the missions we gave them. Direct combat doesn't come up often on infiltration style missions and we needed to see if they could handle things."
"I'll probably see if I can use alternate skills to find our target too," Naruto added with a grin.
Jiraiya snorted at that one.
Karin hadn't expected to end up with a whole class of medic-nin hopefuls joining her, but didn't really mind it either. The gossip was at least amusing, such as learning that Naruto and Sasuke each had an organized fan club. Each of which was panicking for different reasons. On the Naruto side, they'd finally noticed that he and Hinata were likely a 'thing', something that the Sasuke fan club had apparently noticed back in the academy. Then on the Sasuke side, they were panicking over the date with Yoko, unsure how to take it.
While Sasuke was cute, Karin was currently more amused by the fact that after the date he was obviously still crushing on Yoko. Perhaps more than he'd been before, despite knowing the truth about Naruto's clone, based on his reactions the day before leaving the village on a mission. His fan club had noticed and gone into a bit deeper of a panic as a result.
At some point someone would need to provide an outlet for Sasuke that had more chance of happening, at least romantically. Assuming that a month out of the village hadn't been enough for the boy to come to terms with it and move on already, anyway. Karin was half-considering making a move in that direction when the team returned. His chakra felt nice enough, and he was always polite at the shrine when he stopped by. Plus 'Yoko' had shown the pictures of him in a kunoichi outfit and getting him into one in person would be fun too.
"You're the weakest of your teammates in taijutsu," Hinata's clone said to Ino at lunchtime after a morning of testing the three genin. "But the strongest in kenjutsu currently."
"My clan training never really focused on the physical side of things," Ino admitted. "Even after the academy rules changed. We're generally more of an information gathering and coordination component of our teams."
"You aren't doing horrible, but your teammates obviously had more focus on combat."
"All of you need some jutsu training too," Naruto's clone added. "But we're holding off on the majority of that until we have the go-ahead on a couple of other items. You've basically got the academy three and a couple of clan jutsu each, plus the basic set of utility techniques we handed you to cover as many hand seals as possible while you learn to do things without them."
"...what's wrong with clan jutsu?" Ino asked.
"They're predictable and generally well-known. Having other options can get you out of a tight situation, if only because your enemies don't expect them. In your case, it would also expand your options when you take over someone else's body."
It was obvious that she hadn't considered that aspect, just as it was obvious that she was crushing on him. Well, that was obvious after Hinata had pointed it out to him, but he saw the signs now. Ino was also less embarrassed about her dog features now that he'd started showing his non-human ears and tail, while also being unsure about where she stood in relation to Hinata.
In another clearing another pair of clones were talking with Sasuke.
"You're obviously trying to mimic things you saw others do," Naruto's clone commented. "But you've got the wrong body type for the moves, even before taking your tail into account."
"I figured that out," Sasuke grumbled, rubbing one of the points that'd been healed up after being cut.
"Learning the basics before trying to copy others is the best route for the sharingan," Hinata's clone said. "Or at least that's what the information from your clan's archives says."
"How is it that you have more access to my clan's archives than I do, anyway?"
"Your brother wanted to let me search for Uzumaki jutsu in it," Naruto's clone replied. "Instead of doing so himself and then handing scrolls over after I'd helped out in a few ways."
"...and you looked up information on the sharingan while you were in there?"
"I should really return the key, I don't need it after copying the whole archive, but your collection of utility jutsu that use a variety of hand seals mostly came from the archive. There are only a few that I couldn't find an example of in a simple jutsu between it and the village archives."
"Huh."
"I've got experience with working around tails, so it shouldn't be hard to get you trained to work around yours, and I think you'll like where we eventually go with teaching you all elemental jutsu. Should that get approved, anyway."
A third clearing held another pair of clones, plus Kiba and Akamaru.
"You're far too direct when you're attacking," Hinata's clone commented. "Any decent deception at all in your opponent and your strategy falls apart."
"I know," Kiba groaned. "It came up multiple times under Asuma-sensei too, but that's how my clan trains."
"Did you know that you're one of three members of your clan using weights or resistance seals to train?"
"...what?"
"Your mother has weights and you've got a cousin using a resistance seal, but as far as we can tell that's it."
"But...no, she...and...huh...Hiro could probably count as using weights, but only sometimes..."
"Akamaru is the only nin-dog with anything we've seen yet," Naruto's clone added. "Though admittedly some of that is probably because I've not shared the stuff that we've figured out for Hoshi with your clan."
"But you do need to focus on your other skills," Hinata's clone continued. "While we figure out how to get you to be a little less direct in battle. Supporting infiltration attempts works out better if you aren't rushing into the situation."
Kiba nodded. "Yeah, after some of what I learned with Asuma-sensei I realized that I wanted to be a bit more sneaky than my clan usually goes, even if I'd never be able to be a proper infiltrator with Akamaru here."
As for the real Naruto and Hinata, they were keeping an eye on Jiraiya.
"How did you end up with two of the three genin interested in you?" Hinata asked as they walked through the trees near the brothel Jiraiya was 'meeting contacts' in.
"...what?" Naruto asked.
"There's Ino, who was part of your fan club in the academy and has become more accepting of her changes now that she knows that you have animal traits too. Then there's Sasuke, who's obviously still attracted to Yoko despite knowing the truth."
"...I don't know if that counts."
"I think it does."
Naruto honestly wasn't sure what to think about that, nor the teasing comments from his parents in the Tome that Kiba and Akamaru were the only ones on the team that didn't seem interested in him romantically in some fashion.
"So the best I was able to get today is eliminating one of the three routes," Jiraiya said. "The other two end up reasonably close to each other though, so I think we're best off heading to the closer one and then moving over to the further one if needed."
"We want the longer route or the shortcut," Naruto interjected.
"...what are you talking about?"
"Our target stopped at a common camping site along the longer of the two routes and will reach the further village tomorrow around noon."
"How the hell can you know that?"
"I cheat."
"...and the 'shortcut'?"
"Summoning to be there ahead of our target, making it seem less like we were following them. I might have to summon a toad to summon you since you haven't signed a contract with me, but that's about it."
Jiraiya looked annoyed, but Naruto thought that he'd figured out that clones had been sent down all three routes. An extra clone had been created and given one of the summoning stones to drop just outside of the village Tsunade was heading to as well.
An hour later Jiraiya had signed contracts with Naruto and Hinata, but none of the others, and the entire group had been summoned to the next village.
"So tomorrow you three have two missions to complete," Hinata told their three genin as they prepared to settle in for the night. "I'd recommend trying to get them done in the morning, just in case things go wrong when our target arrives."
"They're both minor and low priority," Naruto added. "The six or so higher priority missions available are sadly far more involved than we can take currently."
The three genin nodded, and the three missions that weren't acceptable for the genin due to their infiltration aspects that should be able to be finished by noon the next day weren't mentioned either. Naruto and Hinata had made clones to work on two of them already, slipping into buildings to copy records in one case and swapping the real ryo in a safe for counterfeit ryo in another. As for the third, it appeared to be from Old Man Hokage himself and was more of a prank on Jiraiya than a proper mission.
"...I'm baffled," Naruto admitted as he watched Jiraiya flirt with busty triplets.
"That he fell for the ruse so quickly?" Hinata asked.
"No, that he found actual busty triplets before my clones showed up."
"...those aren't your clones?"
"Nope. I was in the middle of setting up when I spotted him running into these three."
"Huh."
"I wonder if he knows that they're Kumo spies?"
"...how do you know that?"
"Well, my clones needed something to do, so I had them search their room."
"Oh."
"I wonder if the old man will accept 'failed due to real triplets, but I got copies of Kumo code books'?"
Naruto and Hinata monitored Jiraiya and the three genin, and Naruto had clones keeping an eye on Tsunade and Shizune as they approached. By chance or otherwise, Jiraiya was still with the triplets when Tsunade showed up at the same bar.
"Jiraiya," Tsunade said, glaring at the man. "Are you leading those girls on?"
The man jumped a little, then relaxed. "Ah, it's just you princess. And of course I'm leading them on, but Kumo's upped their game from twins to triplets so it was only fair to entertain them."
"You knew we were spies?" one of the triplets asked.
"I've known about you three for over a year and my network has been running you in circles for two months. Good job on copying body language, but it wasn't good enough for me to miss that two of you are retired shinobi that used a body-duplication jutsu." He gestured at the triplet currently in the middle. "You're giving off a whole book of tells that scream that you weren't even female before undergoing the procedure."
All three pouted in different ways, two of them having their body language change entirely. The one whose body language hadn't changed stayed sitting next to Jiraiya while the other two got up and stormed off.
"Aren't you going to join them?" Tsunade asked the remaining girl.
"I didn't think it was going to work at all," the girl replied with a shrug. "And rumor has it that he's still a good lay."
"...scram so that I don't have to punch you out of the building to have a chat with him."
"Who are you to tell me to scram?"
"Well," Jiraiya said, pushing the girl away gently. "If you can't even recognize Tsunade then it really was never going to work."
The girl's eyes went wide and a moment later she was running up the stairs to her room.
"Probably isn't her fault," Tsunade said as she sat down. "I could tell just by looking at her eyes that she's half-blind. But what brings you here?"
"Looking for you," Jiraiya admitted. "But we can get into details when the others arrive. Actually, I'm somewhat surprised they didn't follow you in."
"Who isn't here already?" Naruto asked as he popped up behind Jiraiya, holding his hand out and summoning Hinata to him a moment later instead of having her body-flicker across the room. It had been easy enough for him to shapeshift into a rodent and slip through some holes in the floor to get into position, but Hinata couldn't do that without losing her clothing.
"If we want to bring the genin over then that might take a bit," Hinata added. "They're running a bit behind on a mission across town."
"Shizune is just down the street with...Tonton, was it? Assuming we're waiting for her."
Jiraiya looked completely shocked that they were there, and Tsunade didn't look much better. But he was the first to scowl. "You shouldn't sneak up on me like that!"
"Not my fault you're letting up on your training."
"Why are you pretending to have animal ears and tails?" Tsunade finally snapped out.
"I wish," Jiraiya said with a snort. "But nope. The ears and tails are real, but not quite the same as a couple of their genin. Doubt you can do anything about these two, but I think sensei is hoping you can help with the others."
"...their genin?"
"Sensei made them joint chunin-sensei to a group of genin their age that graduated a year after them. Restructured a few teams in the process, or so I'm told, and one of their two special jounin sensei was promoted to full jounin and given a full team of their own in the process."
"These two are chunin? At their age? It's been a while since the last war."
"We're more impressive than we look," Hinata replied with a grin.
Eye twitching, Tsunade got up and stepped over to them. A medical scanning technique was triggered with half a hand seal and she passed it over Naruto's ears, eyes going wide as she did so. Shifting over to Hinata likely got a similar result on the technique. "They're...real, but wrong at the same time?"
"You'd probably find our genin to be more to your expectations," Naruto commented. "They got their animal features from accidental exposure to one of Orochimaru's experiments. My understanding is that their features are more grounded in biology than ours are."
"And you didn't, which doesn't explain much about how you got them."
"We're part tailed beast," Hinata said, lighting her ears and tail on fire and causing Tsunade to back away in shock. "And not in the jinchuriki way."
"But...how?"
"That's a long story with far fewer details than I'd like," Jiraiya answered, even as he produced a scroll from a pocket. "Regardless, sensei wanted you to see at least one of these two before I handed this over. He also indicated a preference for you to see it before you see their two interesting genin."
Tsunade gave Jiraiya a glare, but accepted and opened the scroll anyway. Several emotions passed over her face as she read it, before returning to a much stronger glare. "He expects me to return to the village?"
"That's my understanding of the situation, yes. Whole pile of reasons, including that he's just plain old. I think he'd appreciate help with some research relating to 'Rochi's experiment, but I know he's attempting to get a medic-nin program going again too."
"I see. And what law is this referencing?"
Jiraiya looked confused for a moment, but Naruto started speaking just as the man's confusion flipped to realization. "I think he found the old law that says that after ten years of unexplained absence you can be stripped of your clan status for not living in the village, removing you from all clan rolls and stripping your access to clan properties and accounts based in Konoha. There are exceptions for a bunch of things that basically makes them 'explained', but none of them likely apply to your self-induced exile."
"...he wouldn't dare invoke that. I'm the last of the Senju clan, it would be declaring it dead."
"Are you sure? We're closely related enough for me to make a decent claim on the clan's holdings."
Tsunade narrowed her eyes. "Who are you, again?"
"Naruto Uzumaki, or Uzumaki-Namikaze if you prefer."
"That doesn't make you a Senju."
"But you're definitely an Uzumaki, so if you're the last one removed from the clan rolls I can likely step in and take over."
"...can't actually argue that. But I still don't think that sensei would do it."
"Your problem is the opposite," Jiraiya said. "You've not set foot in Konoha for long enough that sensei has likely had to start blocking the law, even with the uncertainty of what happened around the second war."
Naruto and Hinata both blinked, but she beat him to asking the obvious question. "What uncertainty?"
Jiraiya sighed and turned towards them. "Nobody knows who, assuming they survived the attempt, but someone tried to reverse the second war with a giant space-time jutsu, though we don't actually know when they tried. Whatever they did, it just fucked everything up. Every participating nation thinks the war started and ended on different dates, some of the dates not overlapping with other countries at all. Nobody's sure where the truth actually sits, and those of us who lived through it have horribly conflicting memories that we only notice if we think about it too hard."
Tsunade nodded, grimacing. "I have memories of raising Shizune on the road from when she was an infant, training her, and having her tested at a branch mission office for genin. But I also remember picking her up after she'd already made genin at age nine back in Konoha and needing to retrain her in several ways. At least the chunin exam she participated in is after things settled down. Then there's the fact that I barely participated in the war and heavily participated at the same time, though a few details are more consistent..."
"And our entire team regularly felt like it was two different wars that happened in sequence instead of one screwed-up one, down to sometimes thinking that some events happened during a phantom third war. Theories abound, but nobody wants to go anywhere near attempting to figure it out for fear of making it worse." He turned back to Tsunade. "But despite that, you've been absent without anything approaching a proper mission for far too long. I know that Shizune is in better standing than you are because she has taken a few small missions every year to build up spending money while you've been gambling."
There was some grumbling from inside the Tome, his parents and the three tailed beasts all agreeing that the second war had been a horrible mess, none of their memories agreeing about what had or hadn't happened during it.
"I have no desire to do normal missions and you know it," Tsunade said after a moment.
"I told you that sensei is trying to start up another attempt at training medic-nin, this time from genin level," Jiraiya replied. "I think he wants you to take students in the village instead of going on missions outside of it."
"...that's never worked out before, and I don't know why he expects me to stay in the village either."
"It may have failed before, but a lot of things have failed multiple times before someone figured out a combination that worked and you're probably the best choice for starting up a proper medic-nin program. As for staying in the village, I think in part he just wants someone around in his old age."
"Sadly," Naruto interrupted with a frown. "Our genin appear to have just pissed off a couple of spies, so we should go check in on them."
Jiraiya nodded, but then frowned. "Can't you just have your clones stop hiding?"
"One of the attacks wiped out two clones," Hinata replied. "So it's better to appear in person."
A moment later the two vanished from their seats, appearing across town where the clones had summoned them to. Two individuals with a variant of Orochimaru's cursed seal had been pissed off by Kiba...and started bickering about which of them was in charge?
"I don't think a hickey remover is going to work on them," Naruto noted.
"Far too much use of the seal," Hinata agreed. "Have you gotten any of the gates working yet?"
"...only the first three, and I've not practiced much with them."
"You've been doing that with the foxes, right?"
"Yep."
"Well, I'd like to see it for myself, and we have a couple of suitable targets."
Sighing, Naruto nodded. Just in case, he threw up the Knight Armor spell, then body-flickered down to the street between the genin and the Oto shinobi, which had been about to attack again. "I'd appreciate it if you two would leave my genin in peace."
The one on the left scoffed, his seal seemingly giving him a horn for some reason. "Fat chance, blondie."
"He's another freak with animal parts," the bald man on the right said with obvious disdain, flexing his clawed hands.
Naruto shook his head and concentrated enough to open the first two gates. Keeping just the first gate open without popping open the second was almost impossible for him, and possibly in general if Lee opening both subconsciously was any indication, but opening the first three seemed like overkill here. His chakra flared despite how much he normally suppressed it, likely noticed by everyone for quite a distance, and obviously took the two Oto shinobi by surprise. He then formed two Rasengans, one in each hand, and darted forward. One Rasengan went into the bald idiot's stomach, but the other man had crouched and took the jutsu to the face. Both were launched backwards a moment later, into an earth wall that shot up out of the ground to keep them from being thrown into the buildings behind them.
Anko-sensei and Kurenai-sensei were both big on keeping collateral damage down...unless the mission called for it, of course.
That wasn't enough to keep them down, their cursed seals causing them to heal the damage far faster than they had any right to. Which didn't make the horn guy any happier with his face having been shredded, but bald-with-claws darted forward first. Naruto met him halfway, deciding to use Kubikiribocho. The large blade appeared in his hand and he coated the edge with wind chakra, slicing clear through his opponent's waist.
The worrisome part of that was that it didn't look like it was going to stop the man, just slow him down. But Naruto continued forward, slamming the blade into the second man. He had enough sense to try to jump out of the way and only lost his legs. Baldy had, somehow, pulled his lower half back on by then and came charging at Naruto's back. Ignoring him, Naruto instead moved behind the legless shinobi and struck the cursed seal with the Gentle Fist, closing three chakra points in it. That seemed to force it to shut down, and knocked the man out.
Baldy reached him then, and seemed ready to slice his partner in two in order to claw Naruto's stomach out. Kubikiribocho was enough to block his first attempt, and leaving the sword stuck in the ground while body-flickering behind him made it easy to strike the five chakra points in his cursed seal. Three times, because they forced each other back open until he struck all five at once with one per finger.
With them now knocked out, he sealed Kubikiribocho away and produced two prisoner transport scrolls. Hinata appeared next to the two a moment later and helped check that they'd live long enough to get back to Konoha. They were just sealing up the two when Jiraiya and Tsunade appeared from one street and Shizune appeared with Tonton from another.
"What the hell was that?" Tsunade asked, even as Naruto made a clone to take the scrolls back to Konoha.
"I asked Naruto to demonstrate opening a couple of the gates," Hinata answered. "But I think it might have been overkill for these two, despite Orochimaru's seals on them."
"Orochimaru's seals?" Jiraiya asked.
"A different version than the ones he put on Anko and Team Seven, two of which are now our genin," Naruto replied. "I don't think my hickey removers would work as they obviously used the seals regularly."
"...hickey removers?" Tsunade asked.
"He can make seals that pull 'Rochi's off of people that don't use them often," Jiraiya answered. "Need to ask for a couple to examine at some point."
Naruto pulled a stack out of a seal. "Here, I made a couple hundred after finding out that he was still applying the things to people."
Jiraiya's half-glare as he accepted the stack of seal tags was amusing.
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