章 2650: 40
Naruto had ensured that the entire team was up and moving first thing in the morning to turn things in. This had included finding that Ino and Sasuke hadn't even bothered shifting back to normal overnight, something that had both of them slightly embarrassed when they noticed. Despite this attempt to get things turned in early they still found a line ahead of them.
They ended up waiting until mid-morning to finally see the Hokage.
"I wasn't aware that you'd made it back yet," Shisui commented as they entered.
"We had a sudden opportunity to finish up last night and took it," Naruto replied as the door shut behind them.
A pulse of chakra sealed the room. "To start with, do you have anything to report that your clones didn't bother to mention regarding the Daimyo's palace and security?"
"No, but I do have the final written version ready." It only took a moment to pull that scroll out of a seal.
That scroll was passed over, given a cursory check by Shisui, and then placed to the side. "Very good, and it does match what your clones passed along. Now then, the Daimyo's final message sent with your payment specifically asks about pricing information for mobile houses."
Naruto produced a set of five scrolls. "I stuck details on that into my full written report on mission execution." He tapped one of the five specifically. "This one, I believe."
All five scrolls were handed over, but none were examined immediately even if the one with the mobile house information was split off. "I keep forgetting that you're one of the few teams that actually does the paperwork properly. Thank you. The Daimyo otherwise seemed quite pleased with how you handled things and his letter insisted that had he not been informed otherwise he'd never have guessed that your ruse was a ruse."
"We screwed up at least a dozen times that I personally noticed," Hinata retorted.
"Yes, well, infiltration detection isn't quite ready for your particular brand of Uzumaki-originating insanity. You chose physical appearances that were consistent with one another and decidedly foreign to the Elemental Nations, traveled in a manner never before seen, had accents that nobody could place, showed a complete lack of familiarity with several customs and even our currency, and had a manual that appeared to be written in a completely foreign language with no basis in anything local."
"I completely forgot to show no understanding of our writing," Ino grumbled.
"None of our shinobi suspected your group at all, and their report on all of the visiting groups had six times more details put into your group than the rest of those present combined. Our analysts that don't know what I do have pegged three different groups as likely infiltration teams, but not your group, and they're trying to make sense of all the information you 'leaked' to put it into a coherent whole with the rest of what we 'know' about the resurgent Uzushiogakure."
"...shouldn't they be informed of some of this?" Naruto asked.
"The ones cleared for infiltration analysis are, and as I understand it are finding the whole thing hilarious." A couple of scrolls were pulled out of a drawer and thrown to Hinata. "Those are analysis records for your team from the infiltration-cleared analysts." Another scroll was then thrown to Naruto. "And that's your personal order for a comprehensive medical checkup with Tsunade. There are concerns that need to be looked into, but do read the details before reporting for it."
Despite direct orders to get a checkup, Tsunade had told Naruto to show up the next morning so that she had time to prepare. So instead he and Hinata had reviewed things with the genin, finding some of what the analysts had and hadn't picked up on interesting. Admittedly, they had to work with what the reporting shinobi had included, but one of the bigger items was that they'd only had the one book able to be found in the mobile house. Of course, the analysts not in the know had justified this as being because nobody knew how to access the bookshelves, and it made sense that the one book you don't hide away is the one that tells you how to access the stuff that's hidden away.
Not having any foreign currency was another item, though if you know that your money is worthless in a foreign land then it made sense to not bother to bring any. Less noticeable at a quick glance was that no obviously-foreign source of fabric or paper had been used, but had someone run off with even a single page they'd likely have noticed that it was local paper and local ink. And then there was the fact that Naruto had used standard spacing for the wheels on the mobile house. Elemental Nations standard, which wasn't necessarily going to match anywhere else.
The less-aware analysts had already come up with an answer for that too though. Obviously the seal masters had built that mobile home specifically for the roads in the Elemental Nations.
There wasn't a whole lot to be said about their acts. None of their own list of mistakes they knew they'd made had appeared in what they had access to, so it was likely that they'd gotten incredibly lucky. Or perhaps they were too critical of themselves. On the other hand, the analysts had spent an entire scroll praising the sheer balls of going for something that outlandish and then making it work. It was considered to be in the top three most impressive infiltrations the village had ever managed.
"...only the top three?" Sasuke said. "We invented an entire foreign land as backstory and even convinced our allies that it was legitimate!"
"A team of infiltration shinobi accidentally created two different hidden villages just before the second war," Hinata said. "The records we were able to find don't say which two, but they apparently survived the third war. We only created rumors of a fictional land, those teams created actual hidden villages that continue to be information sources for us to this day."
"There are a couple of things for us to consider in their notes though," Naruto continued. "The analysts think that we should get more practice with younger forms as having kids around diverts a lot of attention. They're notoriously hard to train for that kind of mission and incredibly easy to spot genjutsu programming in for those looking for signs of that kind of thing."
"Naruto is already quite good at various ages, but even I've not really practiced a wide range and this was really the first time any of you went more than an hour or two pretending to be younger."
There were nods from the three genin, and thoughtful looks. They'd spend some time discussing ideas and hashing out a plan for the next week or so, on the assumption that Naruto wasn't likely to be let out of the village by Tsunade for at least a week, as well as coming up with other things they might want to figure out how to do. One of those was figuring out if any of them could sing or play instruments to possibly play 'traveling performers', and the genin had decided that they wanted to figure out a 'gimmick' for their next attempt at the chunin exams as well. Not copying the maid thing, but something like that.
Having a female alter-ego in Mariko hadn't helped Sasuke understand girls any better. Karin seemed to be angling to be his girlfriend in a year or two...with occasional stints as Mariko's boyfriend 'to teach him how to treat girls properly'. But then she'd also convinced him to go on practice dates with Sakura, who was happily far more tolerable than she'd been in the academy. Something that could also be attributed to Karin talking to all the 'fangirls' in the medic-nin classes about how stupid they'd been acting, if Sakura was to be believed.
But now he'd found out that Karin and Sakura were also going on dates with each other, and had convinced him to join both of them this evening on their planned date. The most amusing part of it so far had been the non-medic-nin fan club members imploding at the sight of him doing date-like things with both girls, admittedly, but amusement didn't really help with the confusion aspect.
If you'd asked him yesterday, he'd have assumed that Karin expected Sakura to not have recovered enough from being an idiot fangirl and just provide him with more experience dating for taking her out on dates later. In fact, that would've been his assumption this morning. But he no longer knew what to think about the entire situation. Unlike Naruto-sensei, he wasn't blind to girls wanting to date him, except that going from 'horde of fangirls' to 'two girls that were tolerable or better and apparently interested in each other as well' did not add up.
...unfortunately, he was certain his brother wouldn't have any problems teasing him about it anyway.
"You sent your genin on a babysitting mission before coming in?" Tsunade asked the next morning when Naruto, Yoko, and Hinata had arrived at the hospital. Hinata had insisted on coming along out of concern for what was going on with Naruto, in addition to pointing out that she could see things that Tsunade couldn't.
"Yes," Naruto answered. "They asked for it and it's an in-village mission type that doesn't require sensei oversight. Lone genin sometimes take babysitting missions for extra money and they actually picked up four missions to take care of at the same time."
"What have you done to your poor genin that has them willingly taking multiple babysitting missions at the same time?"
"Inspired them to learn new skills," Hinata answered. "I've got a clone with them too, but they probably won't notice unless it has to step in."
"Huh." Tsunade shook off her surprise. "Well then, let's get started. I'm told that 'Yoko' here is supposed to be a clone, but that things have gotten weird and dispelling her has become essentially impossible."
"We gave it some more attention last night," Yoko said. "It feels like I'm not shapeshifted from Naruto's form, and I didn't even notice that I didn't have the scent-changing or chakra-manipulation techniques active anymore until I tried to stop them. I can still use them to change my scent or chakra, including back to matching Naruto's, but it seems like my default scent and chakra changed to match the disguised ones."
"...that's even less possible than a clone suddenly not being a clone, and sharing thoughts in real time even without a communication technique shouldn't happen either." A clap of the Sannin's hands brought up the mystic palm technique. "Which means this is even more of a mystery than it was before, so let's get started."
To start with, Tsunade gave them a very complete examination with the mystic palm technique. First individually, then doing direct comparisons between them. This very obviously confused her, as did her ability to take blood samples from both of them in the middle of things. She'd only decided to attempt to take the samples after examining Yoko the first time, and Shizune had been sent to do priority analysis on the two before Tsunade had continued with the 'examine both of them simultaneously' stage of things.
"If not for several people I trust swearing that this isn't likely to be a prank then I'd never have considered doing this examination," Tsunade said after she'd finally finished scanning both of them simultaneously. "But I can also feel my own chakra flowing through from one of you to the other, meaning that your chakra networks are connected at a very deep level. But I suppose we should run more tests to check how connected you two are."
"How do you test something like that?" Hinata asked.
"...by sending for a couple of trusted Yamanaka and then doing a more physical examination while waiting, I think. This is an unprecedented situation and until we have a better lead I'm honestly in information collection mode more than anything else."
"Oh. So you aren't sure what's going on?"
"There are oddities in Yoko that make me certain that she did start as a chakra construct, but she very obviously isn't one anymore at the same time. How it happened is hard to say, and my guesses are all honestly quite ridiculous sounding in my own head. I'd rather have more information before I decide which of them are even remotely likely."
Sending someone to fetch trusted Yamanaka took a few minutes, and then Tsunade got out more physical testing equipment. Blood pressure and heart rate readings, temperature, vision and hearing checks, skin sensitivity. Most of them she didn't react as though she'd expected results any different than the ones she got. At least until they got to reflex testing.
"What the," Tsunade said as she looked at Yoko. Who was blushing. "Please tell me that was a joke."
"...I didn't expect it to happen at all," Yoko replied.
Frowning, Tsunade started up the mystic palm in one hand and placed it on Yoko's leg, then struck the tendon on Naruto again. He didn't flinch, as expected from someone with sufficient shinobi training, but Yoko's leg once again kicked out as though she'd been struck directly. "If you weren't the same person then your chakra would be dangerously in-tune with one another. The strike on him echoed in your chakra due to proximity, and I bet years of training has allowed you to maintain non-shinobi reflexes as a default to maintain your cover better."
"Not acting like a shinobi was hard to get right at first, but it got easier over time, and is just kind of in the list of subconscious behavior sets for infiltration now."
"Can you try to switch to acting as a shinobi instead of as a civilian?"
Yoko nodded after a moment, and re-testing both of them had neither reacting to the strike. That was added to and underlined in Tsunade's notes before she went back and re-ran several of the other checks on Yoko while she wasn't in 'acting like a civilian' mode.
"Sorry for the delay," Inoichi said as he and an older clan member that Naruto wasn't personally familiar with entered while Naruto and Yoko were being made to test their reaction times on what had to be repurposed games. "Finding someone trustworthy enough on short notice was more difficult than expected. My normal go-to choices are unavailable or not cleared for infiltration specialists, but uncle Inoni happened to be available."
"Give them a minute to finish this up," Tsunade said, not having taken her eyes off of their progress. "Then we can get to your test."
Finishing actually took closer to three minutes, and then Naruto and Yoko were split up between two rooms. Inoichi took Naruto and Inoni took Yoko, each Yamanaka performing the same hand seals before placing their hands on their subject. That somehow led to being able to watch as the two 'fell' into the mindscape.
"Now where is the link to the other one," Inoichi asked.
"What link?" Yoko asked as a mental instance of her popped into existence next to Inoichi's projection.
"...the connection between you and Naruto, in theory. Frequently manifests as a bridge, tunnel through a mountain, or occasionally something like a forest path."
"Yeah, there isn't anything like that."
"You may not realize that there's one, but there's going to be one."
Yoko gestured behind Inoichi, to where Inoni and a mental instance of Naruto were approaching. "Ask them if they crossed anything like that."
"...I just realized that you're the wrong personality for where I entered."
"This is a bit freaky," Inoni said. "One mind, but I can tell that there are dozens of personalities in here. We passed the representation of the connection points to some of the active clones, but unless you crossed over a boundary there isn't one between these two."
Inoichi frowned at that. "It shouldn't be possible to have one mind expressing itself in two bodies like that."
"No, it shouldn't, but this wouldn't be the first time I've seen something like it. The other time involved chakra-receiving piercings stuck into a corpse though, which isn't the case here."
A moment later the two Yamanaka released their technique, snapping back to their physical selves. Inoichi shook his head, then turned to Tsunade. "There's only one mind expressing different personalities, which feels impossible. No detectable connection bridge between them."
"Which matches the flow of their chakra," Tsunade admitted. "I could feel my own chakra bleeding over across the connection, wherever it is, when examining them."
"Very unusual."
"Indeed, but there are still a couple more tests to run."
Inoichi looked over to where Hinata was keeping the literal stacks of notes in order as Inoni came in with Yoko. "More tests? It looks like you've put them through everything you can think of and then some already."
"They're almost registering as two different people, but not quite. There's a couple of things that should help show which way that falls, but they can't be done here in the hospital for several reasons."
"Oh. Oooh, yeah, that makes sense."
It didn't make sense to Naruto yet, but he thought he was missing a detail or ten right now that would be needed to make the connection.
Sasuke's clone grumbled as he helped take care of the small pile of children, which included his original. It had been a stroke of genius in several ways, getting experience from both the caretaker side and the child side. For a proper experience his original had to play the child as paperwork clones wouldn't necessarily do things like use diapers.
It would've been nice if they'd taken a couple less babysitting jobs to do at the same time and thus had a smaller group of hellions to take care of, because adding three original selves while the clones took care of the whole group made things a bit too hectic.
"They're fitting in a lot better already," Kiba's clone noted.
"Which has made them harder to watch," Ino's clone retorted. "They're doing a wonderful job of getting into everything with the rest of them." She then whipped her head around and darted over to where one of the kids had apparently found a kunai. It was one of the actual kids, and the weapon was rusted in a way that none of their active equipment would be, so it was almost certainly something that they'd actually found under something.
"At least I know why my clan has three books on how to prepare an area to watch children in," Sasuke's clone said with a sigh. "Books that are going to need to be read instead of looked at quizzically as though they have no reason to exist." He then paused. "Why are you using the mystic palm technique?"
"There's contact poison on the stupid kunai," Ino's clone answered. "And it needs to be flushed out of the kid's system unless we want to try to drag the lot to the hospital."
The three originals had all visibly flinched at that idea. Needing to bring anyone you were watching in for medical attention that could be blamed on you was a bad thing.
"This is bizarre," Tsunade said as she looked over the results of two hours of summoning tests in the forest of death. Naruto and Yoko had been made to summon each other, Hinata, foxes, toads, and attach to temporary contracts like those used in the chunin exams to be summoned that way. All of them had treated both equally. "The DNA tests show that Yoko doesn't have the same genetics, which is supposed to be part of both the toad contract and the temporary scrolls. Yet the differing genetics don't seem to matter."
"They are still the same person," Hinata pointed out. "Even if Yoko is no longer a clone as we know it."
"...I know that, but this still doesn't make sense." Shaking her head, the Sannin handed Hinata the results to add to the rest, then turned to Yoko. "I've run out of ideas, so let's fix the few things I know should be taken care of in your body. No need to head back to the hospital for a couple of minor items, and any of you probably would've fixed them by now if not for the 'is still a clone' mental block."
Naruto was fairly certain he knew what was being talked about, and honestly they would've gone after a couple of them when returning from their last mission if not for wondering if they would provide important information for what was going on. Watching Tsunade take care of the issues was reasonably dull, and at least one of the issues had Yoko giggling as nerves were stimulated in an unusual manner. Except that as the work was finishing up something felt very wrong. On his end, there was a sudden pressure in his chakra that Yoko wasn't feeling, but on her end her entire body started burning.
"That's one less mystery," Tsunade said as her hand passed over Yoko. "I'd wondered why the beast-man formula wasn't affecting you, but it's kicking in now. You've probably got half an hour or so before the fox features fully manifest unless you force a lot more chakra through your system than normal."
"Something's wrong with Naruto's chakra," Hinata said, moving over to him.
"Weird pressure," Naruto elaborated. "Almost feels like something is trying to move through my chakra?"
A sudden pulse of energy from the Tome around his neck revealed his parents and Kurama, to Tsunade's obvious shock. His father grabbed her and Kurama grabbed Hinata to pull them away from Naruto and Yoko and towards the door.
"What?" Tsunade said.
"No time to explain," Minato said. "But if what we think is about to happen is right you need to be outside of chakra surge range."
"What kind of chakra surge?"
Whatever was moving through Naruto's chakra took that moment to force open his third gate, causing his chakra to spike. That seemed to be enough to get Tsunade and Hinata to allow themselves to be pulled out of the room, and in fact clear to and out a window to get outside of the tower itself.
"You probably can't fight what's happening," Kushina explained to Naruto, and then turned to look at Yoko. "And there's a chance that you're next."
"What's happening?" Naruto asked, not being sure.
"You had two tailed beasts bound to you, and it was only when things started moving that we realized that a piece of each of them is identical. One of the two is pulling away through your chakra system, wrapped in a copy of the sand control and shapeshifting elements we've not figured out how to duplicate otherwise. Those are tied more to your chakra than to your body, unlike the fox and tanuki pieces that are more closely bound to your flesh."
The fourth gate was forced open a moment later, and Naruto groaned as the chakra hit him.
"So part of one of the tailed beasts is trying to migrate to me?" Yoko asked.
"Yes," Kushina answered. "We don't know why, but if there had been all three in one place then it's possible that this process could've been far more problematic. Our best guess is that this is the reason you started becoming more real, to allow this piece to be in a different body. Whether you two stay connected or not when it's done is a different question."
Whatever it was had accelerated, and forced its way through the fifth gate much more painfully. That didn't even seem to slow it down, the sixth gate being forced open a moment later, followed by the seventh and eighth close enough to almost feel like they were in unison. Naruto felt like he was burning up with all of the chakra, the force of it causing his mother's form to dispel as Yoko suddenly felt whatever it was slam into her network from the eighth gate. Her gates were forced open in reverse as whatever the thing was worked its way up her network, until it passed through the third gate and its progress was much harder to note thanks to both of them having the first two gates permanently open...at least until it landed in her.
Both of them let out a scream in unison as their chakra flared, seemingly from both directions.
Zetsu had lived a very, very long life compared to most. This meant that it had many experiences that most would not, and had seen some situations repeatedly. Its reduced capacity did not prevent it from detecting the utterly massive chakra release that could only come from Asura's descendants...and its experience allowed it to tell that this was two different chakra signatures. Two equally strong releases, from...Uzumaki or Senju. Possibly a descendant of both, as the Uzumaki side tended to wash out the Senju side fairly quickly when the branches of Asura's line joined.
Indra's line had traditionally been far less capable of such releases and tended to be far more influenced by hatred.
The problem was that Zetsu had 'inspired' the only releases of this magnitude it had ever experienced, and nearly died every single time one of them happened. Which meant that it instinctively fled the origin of the releases to save its own life, heedless of the fact that finding where they were might be a clue as to where the reborn Uzushiogakure was.
Knowing that wouldn't help if Zetsu was dead, torn apart by the enraged descendants of Asura.
Orochimaru would deny that he'd screamed like a little girl before diving into a secure bunker when he felt the pulse of obviously-Uzumaki chakra flow across the land. Partially because he could admit that to say that he'd screamed like a little girl would be an insult to little girls that would probably have had more decorum and far less of a panic attack.
But most little girls hadn't dealt with an Angry Kushina.
He was positive that he wasn't the one who provoked the chakra burst, but also knew that he wasn't going to be willing to risk leaving the bunker for several hours. That would give time for the Uzumaki to find any revenge target that might be the one responsible for triggering the chakra burst, and with any luck they wouldn't have come anywhere near this facility to do so.
Gamamaru's eyes had gone wide when the chakra had flowed over the land, having rarely felt such strong releases even over his long life. This time it wasn't one of anger though, but of transformation, young Naruto's clone completing the process of budding off into a distinct physical form. They would remain the same person, connected as the buds of the God Tree would have remained connected to one another so as to not compete for resources, but yet distinct just as budded instances of the tree would be physically independent in most ways so that destroying one wouldn't cause harm to another.
Unlike the God Tree, it was now obvious to Gamamaru that humans could only support one such 'budding', connected through what the humans would likely think of as the unknown to them ninth gate of their chakra networks. Having three of the collection nodes of a God Tree in a single person would cause the nodes to try to bud off multiple times instead of a single time, and there was just nowhere for the third connection to attach to. The human's chakra would tear itself apart instead, trying to form two connections where only one was possible.
Luckily, young Naruto had been warned and had not made an attempt at binding three of the collection nodes to himself. This would also likely ensure that should any other nodes need binding that they'd seek to do so with individuals that had no existing nodes. For some reason this felt both...inevitable, yet impossible at the same time. All the existing collection nodes were already bound to unique bodies now, so shouldn't need binding to another for quite some time, yet there was some chance that a choice of host would be needed in the coming years at the same time.
...the blasted Tree was still blinding the future in annoying ways.
Obito clutched at his chest in his personal kamui dimension, hoping that he wasn't about to have a heart attack. As far as he knew it took a truly enraged Uzumaki to generate that much chakra, and he was fairly certain that had been felt clear across the Elemental Nations.
Nobody who had ever been around an Angry Kushina would forget it, and Obito had the 'pleasure' of experiencing that twice.
Now, as far as he knew he'd not done anything directly to an Uzumaki. That kind of response was...rare, and generally required something incredibly personal. Not even going after Kushina when she was giving birth was enough to cause that kind of reaction. It was slightly easier to trigger when during a woman's time of the month, but not enough to make it common.
Only as he was calming down did he realize something about the situation. No normal Uzumaki could be felt that far away. Only a jinchuriki would have the chakra needed to be felt at any true distance, and the only Uzumaki known to have tailed beasts...were the hidden ones.
...he wasn't going to be able to convince himself to leave the kamui dimension in time to track them without risking giving himself a heart attack.
"Ugh," Naruto said as he woke up. "What happened?"
"You and Yoko finished becoming two bodies sharing a single mind," his father replied. "Your mother is delighted at having a proper daughter now, by the way, though I imagine you know that already if Yoko has woken up."
"...she hasn't."
"The chakra release was probably the single largest chakra event since the beginning of the hidden village system at a minimum as both of you had all of your gates forced open, but then they...mostly closed. You should be ready to do a lot of control training, because apparently both of you now have four permanently-open gates instead of the two you had this morning. Hinata seems to think that the third gate's limiters dissolved but the fourth gate's were shattered under the flow of chakra. Oh, and you and Yoko are now officially the only known individuals to have all eight gates opened and live to tell the tale."
"That...makes sense if the...whatever it was passed through them all, I guess?"
Yoko woke up about then, and was almost immediately smothered by his mother. Her mother? Their mother? That might get confusing, being permanently Naruto and Yoko. Shinobi and kunoichi shrine maiden, siblings-yet-not.
"Where are Hinata and Tsunade?" Naruto asked after realizing he wasn't seeing either nearby. Or any animals in the forest, which felt a bit weird unless they were scared of the amount of chakra being put out right now.
"Hospital," his father answered. "It's likely that a full two-thirds of the active shinobi in and around the village had medical issues of varying degrees when the chakra release happened and it turned into all capable hands on deck while your mother and I watched over you and Yoko here in the tower."
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