章 2667: 57
Naruto examined the large area he'd just carved out at the end of the tunnel his clones were currently placing seals along. A couple of clones had started pushing the second tunnel out of the area, but now it was time to convert this area into a bunker. The center 'column' would be turned into a spiraling staircase going up into the middle of Suna in the next day or so, coming up directly under their water reservoir, once they knew that they were clear to approach.
"I don't think anyone told me why we're approaching things this way," Ino said as she came down the tunnel from the bunker at the far end of it.
"We weren't invited into Suna," Naruto replied. "So we don't have a place to sleep while doing our thing. They don't let random civilians into the village, so we have no reason to be granted entry, and thus we need to slip in unnoticed. Secured bunkers a distance away from the village and directly under it provide us with a way in and out as well as a place to sleep."
"...but you're taking your time? I'm sure you could've managed most of this in a day instead of the three you've taken so far."
"For one, the illusion-to-reality trick is fine when within the Land of Fire, but it takes too much chakra and is too noticeable to sensors to use outside of it unless the locals know we're there and we're showing off. I shouldn't even use it close to the border, for that matter. But we're also waiting for Gaara, the Kazekage, to leave to visit the Wind Daimyo. I can't get too close to him or he'll feel that we're contesting control over sand."
"Oh. Huh. That makes Suna a worst case scenario for you infiltrating, doesn't it?"
"Yep. Don't think that was considered when we were given the missions either, but luckily Hinata's sand control is weaker and with a smaller range so she can still scout ahead for us and we have other intelligence telling us about the timeframe for the visit. Then I just need to punch up and around the water reservoir, sticking secret access points into the maintenance tunnels for the reinforcement seals that keep it from leaking. That should be enough for our purposes, but I might see if I can slip a proper entrance in further up as well. Haven't gotten a good enough look yet to be certain that there's a suitable spot though and Hinata isn't confident in her evaluation of the area."
"And you went this deep to get under their own tunnels, right?"
"Yeah. We're deep enough that most shinobi would see it as too deep. The tunnels back in Konoha have various ventilation systems in place to keep the air circulating, but for slipping in and out of a foreign village you normally can't rely on anything like that. But efficient seals to keep the air breathable and the temperature comfortable aren't that hard for me, with the privacy seals making it difficult for sensors to pick up on things."
"Okay. And the hot springs you put into the entrance bunker?"
"At this point I think that's my 'Naruto was here' calling card on bunker builds and you weren't complaining when you were able to use them."
"...you're going to put some in here too, aren't you."
"Yeah. Plenty of room and time to do so."
Anko looked over the class, judging their reactions to the three explanations they'd just gotten. Yoko was just sitting back down next to the elderly 'Takara', who was obviously being kept an eye on by Shizune. Except that there was no reason to do so and Shizune knew it, but that was part of the show. "Okay kids. We've heard from Yoko about her duties as a shrine maiden, Shizune about her duties as a medic-nin, and Takara about her work with the orphanage. Now I want you to rate the threat level of each of them, compared to how you'd rate me."
A prepared stack of papers was passed out for each of them to rate the four of them. That took about ten minutes, and then Anko collected the papers and looked them over. She then quickly summarized the responses on the board.
"So," she said. "You all seem to think that I'm the most dangerous, closely followed by Shizune, then Takara and Yoko as mostly harmless. Only a couple of you seem to think otherwise. As it happens, Shizune and I sparred yesterday and I did win, though it was very close and if she'd been able to use lethal blows I suspect that I'd have lost right at the start."
"Don't sell your own lethal options short," Shizune retorted. "Nor that they're ranged while mine generally aren't."
"...maybe. We'll never know though, will we? But let's move on. On the other end of the scale, we can look at how you all rated Takara. Based on your opinions of her, if she was an enemy then you'd all be dead."
'Takara' reached up and pulled her wig off, peeling things off of her face as well to reveal that she was one of Anko's clones. "Looking harmless is a great way to get close to your enemies."
That had the class looking wide-eyed between Anko and her clone, but they weren't done yet. "Of course, you were told that Takara was a retired kunoichi, which I imagine was why you ranked her as slightly more dangerous than Yoko on average. A mere shrine maiden, right? The few of you that disagreed and said she was dangerous likely heard that she was the primary defender of the shrine during the invasion. But let's look at this from the village's point of view. Yoko, what's your rank?"
"I'm a jounin," Yoko answered. "Paid a weekly wage for the mission of being the shrine's primary caretaker."
You could see some of the students having a complete mental shutdown at the revelation that Yoko was a kunoichi at all. Anko gave them a moment to recover before continuing. "What many shinobi don't learn until they're chunin is that the most dangerous person in the room is incredibly likely to be the one a civilian is least likely to expect to cause them harm. I personally suspect that Yoko could take the entire school, teachers and all, without much issue."
"Iruka would probably give me some trouble, and don't forget that you're currently a teacher."
"...he is decidedly under-ranked, isn't he? And I don't hold any illusions about my own chances. But the point is that one of a shinobi's greatest weapons against an opponent can be perception. If they underestimate you more than you underestimate them then you're almost guaranteed to at least get a good first strike in, if not take them entirely by surprise and achieve an easy victory. As we just mentioned with Iruka, low rank also isn't an indicator of low threat level. Not everyone wants to be promoted, or is kept back from it for reasons other than their skills. The village has a genin that has a bigger threat rating in other villages than most of our jounin do because they've refused every promotion offered to them despite being elite jounin in strength at this point."
They repeated this whole dance multiple times throughout the day for different classes, but sadly hadn't gotten approval for a 'demonstration match' between Yoko and the entire collection of teachers to drive the point home. Of course, that might've undermined the point as well, depending on how Yoko defeated them all...
It turned out that the access tunnels for the reinforcement seals on Suna's water reservoir were themselves sealed off and the seals were long overdue for maintenance. Naruto had been somewhat offended at the disrespect to the art of seals, rebuilt the entire seal array, and continued up to the shallower network of tunnels used by the Suna shinobi. Most of which were underground travel paths in general so that you didn't have to go out in the heat...or sandstorms. Which meant that they weren't really considered to be 'secure' and definitely weren't monitored closely.
Nine different entrances to the deep-underground bunker had been put into place during the mapping and information-gathering process. All of the village's records, even the Kazekage-only ones, were copied due to a really crappy set of security seals. Naruto had been able to key himself in as though he was authorized on the Kage records without needing to clear Gaara out. Or any of the other two dozen people in there, most of which had probably discovered the exact same problem with the array. Unlike them, he'd been intelligent enough to remove himself when he was done.
Unfortunately, copies of the puppeteer brigade records didn't reveal anything new on that front. Sasori had already provided information superior to what Suna had available, and they didn't seem to keep much beyond the basics written down at all. They got more wind techniques and information on weapon making than anything else, beyond the intelligence on the village itself. Aside from that, the entire exercise was a good way of training Ino in some of the infiltration tricks they used that hadn't come up when she was their genin.
After four days they determined that they weren't going to get any more useful information out of the village. The first three new bunkers now had completed tunnels between all three as well, and the centers of those tunnels connected to a closer-to-Suna fourth bunker in the middle of them all. It was honestly a bit overkill, but the security in Suna was lacking to the point that Naruto had been bored. They'd have probably been gone after a day if not working with Ino in a reasonably safe environment.
Departing included a better 'sealing' of the stairs up to the village, to hopefully make anyone who found the entrance points think that they were simply secret tunnels between the points in the village instead of an entry into the village, as well as better securing the tunnel entrances from the bunkers as well. The two furthest out bunkers would function as jounin bunkers with most hopefully completely unaware of the tunnels leading to Suna itself and the one closer bunker between the outer tunnels was set up as an Anbu bunker with all the security thereof.
Shisui sat down with the intelligence team that was going to be going over Team Yurei's information on Suna. "I shouldn't need to remind you that, as a nominal ally, we can't reveal to Suna that we've mapped out and copied their village's records."
"Of course not," Inoichi retorted. "But we know they've likely attempted the same thing to varying degrees of success with us anyway. Because we all work to gather information on each other, regardless of alliances."
"True. At the same time, my initial review of things revealed that Team Yurei has gone to...new extremes in a couple of cases."
"...what kind of extremes?" Ibiki asked.
Figuring that the area map was the best place to start, Shisui pulled it out of its seal and worked with a shadow clone to hang it on the wall. "To begin with, this is a map of the area to the Northeast of Sunagakure, showing the village itself, landmarks, and the locations of Konoha bunkers."
"...what bunkers?"
"The ones Team Yurei built while they were infiltrating, as far as I can tell. Three outside of Suna and one underneath their water reservoir. All connected by tunnels to one another with multiple access points on the surface for each. Now, it's technically possible that they legitimately found some of them and simply rebuilt them, but I suspect that a deeper reading of the reports than I've already done will reveal otherwise."
"Naruto got bored?" Anko asked.
"That seems likely, yes. And was insulted at the way seals were being treated in the village. He was able to key himself into the Kazekage-only records, alongside far too many others, and apparently they stopped maintaining the reinforcement seals that protect their reservoir. To the point of fully sealing the maintenance tunnels for them. He was kind enough to replace the reservoir seals, though I don't know where in the paperwork the details are. I'm only aware because that was part of his clone's direct ranting when dropping things off."
"In their defense," Shikaku said. "Sealing off those tunnels could have been enemy action. Something Sasori did on his way out, perhaps? If nobody left alive knew enough to know that they needed to go looking..."
Shisui nodded. "That's admittedly a good point, but I suspect that it was more an assumption that if the seals were left inaccessible then they'd last forever due to nobody messing with them. Something that even Uzumaki have been known to struggle with for larger projects. Naruto didn't complain that the seals weren't built to last, just that they weren't being checked and maintained and that they'd needed to connect further up due to the maintenance tunnels being sealed off."
They'd taken a break from infiltration after hitting Suna, stopping at a couple of the border outposts in the Land of Fire to do slower 'manual' rebuilds of them. Some of that was to let the analysts report back on what they'd already turned in, but most of it was waiting for Jiraiya's network to return information before they crossed into the Land of Earth. Unfortunately, his network was surprisingly silent on the state of things in Iwa, though he admitted that he rarely got useful information from the Land of Earth in general due to the mountain range that served as its border isolating it.
Having proper border outposts with underground bunkers was obviously appreciated by those assigned to patrol the borders, though more than half of border patrols intentionally shifted their 'base camp' locations to make it harder to slip past them. This meant that most of the fixed outposts were at the known border crossings and also served the Daimyo's samurai, and they were equally appreciative of the additional amenities Naruto was putting into all the underground bunkers. The Daimyo had even sent a bonus payment for the completed bunkers in thanks after hearing from the samurai.
A quick trip to the Daimyo's palace had followed so that Naruto could put 'secure hot springs' in for the Daimyo himself, and then they'd stopped in at Konoha for a couple of days for Hinata's birthday. That turned into a longer stop due to Council of Clans meetings and because Yoko had finally assembled all the display stands for the tested and confirmed working combined element beads. Having extra security while the measures on the displays were tested was a good idea.
Jiraiya had then shown up, examined a full string of the beads only to declare them to be impossible, and then gone over everything he had on Iwa from his network. Included was a list of his contacts, none of which had checked in for two or more months and that he wanted them to check in on while they were out there anyway.
Compared to Suna, Iwa was technically easier for Naruto to approach, yet much harder to get into. The mountains protecting the village were a formidable defense in that they were both difficult to tunnel through and already riddled with protections. At the same time, from what they could tell the defenses didn't seem to expect people to want to come in from directly below, assuming you got under their existing tunnels.
Even thinking about out-tunneling a nation of earth-element specialists was slightly daunting. But they were also far, far too vigilant on the surface, as though expecting war at any moment. They were even attacking unrecognized animals approaching, meeting merchants a distance from the village, and generally only using their own shinobi to bring things in and out. It was possible that the team could've flown in while invisible and not been spotted, but they didn't trust that it would work with the heightened security and that wouldn't give them a place to stay in the village. They'd be repeating that daily as a result, drastically increasing their chances of being caught doing so.
After a couple days of considering options the decision was made to attempt to go in from below like they had with Suna, starting from two points further out and carefully heading towards the village deep underground so as to hopefully not be picked up by anyone on the surface. Eventually the two tunnels met under the village, and a bunker was set up there, before even more carefully working upward. The same pattern of closing the third side of the triangle and then building inwards to a fourth bunker from the tunnels followed at the same time, more to provide a slight distraction from the task of carefully tunneling up into Iwa itself than because they thought it was needed.
Purely by luck, as they'd not been able to properly scout in advance and were far deeper under the village than they'd been in Suna, they came up almost directly under Iwa's water reservoir. The system here was more akin to Kumo's, in that they'd just made the rock denser around the reservoir instead of using reinforcement seals. Building tunnels around the reservoir with privacy and reinforcement seals let them slip up through a wide gap in the other tunnels, there likely being rules about tunneling too close to the reservoir, and then make it to the surface in the middle of the village.
Once in the village things were a lot easier. They connected to a couple of basements where possible, but the bulk of ways to move around were using bridges or tunnels instead of streets and the tunnels provided a good place to put entrances in. This also meant that the lower levels of most buildings were wide open for traveling through them to get between parts of the village as there weren't roads to travel along. With very few exceptions, nobody paid attention to people or animals moving around either, only more secure 'dead ends' in the network of bridges and tunnels being paid attention to.
At the same time, there was still a lot of tension in the village and they couldn't properly interact with people due to not having a good handle on what would get them discovered. Discussions they could overhear were...worrying in several ways, but inconclusive, and getting good observation and listening spots for the more secure buildings was troublesome due to them being protected even from unknown animals like the village itself currently was from the outside. It was admirable security...but problematic for infiltration.
They slept during the day and did the bulk of the proper infiltration work at night when the village was less active. Tricks such as using underground movement techniques to slip through the rock were unfortunately not really an option as earth-specialists were well aware of that threat, but getting clones into rooms through shapeshifting was still fully viable and there were plenty of air vents and small gaps to slip through.
It had taken two days to find records for all of Jiraiya's contacts, unfortunately in the morgue's records. The paperwork indicated that they'd been killed for being spies during a recent purge, alongside fourteen others, and autopsies performed hadn't revealed any village secrets unknown to Iwa. The corpses weren't available, but the next day they'd been able to find interrogation records as well and had identified six other members of Jiraiya's network that needed to be warned that Iwa knew about them.
Yoko hid a grin as she swept, finding the subtle manipulation of her shadow to make people nervous amusing. Most didn't even know why they were nervous, as far as she could tell, but accurately hiding her ears and tail from her shadow was good practice. Shikaku had even stopped by for other reasons a few days ago and congratulated her for the effect after he'd finally noticed it.
How manipulating your shadow like that worked at all was a bit of a mystery though. She knew that a shadow wasn't a physical object, but was instead the lack of light hitting a surface due to an obstruction from a light source. But the control of it did work, and going from 'control your own shadow' to 'manipulate shadows your shadow was touching' wasn't too difficult. So long as you could recognize that there was a shadow there to manipulate, anyway, which was weird itself, and while you were manipulating things you got an automatic background understanding of all the light sources affecting the shadows you were manipulating.
Manipulating others through their shadows was another matter entirely and they still had no clue how that worked. Presumably through some mechanism that wasn't included in the basic instruction.
She finished her day and was leaving the shrine, mentally debating her dinner options, when she noticed that she was being approached.
"Good evening," Shikamaru greeted.
"Good evening, Nara-san," Yoko replied. "I'm afraid that I'm departing for the evening."
"You don't need to be formal with me, and I'm actually hoping that you're willing to exchange notes."
"I'm not sure that we have anything to exchange notes on."
"In the short time you've had access to instructions on shadow manipulation you've managed to do things with it that my entire clan would likely find incredibly valuable. As clan heir, I'm permitted to trade additional details on how we do things in exchange for information on what you've managed."
"I don't believe that I've accomplished much that you'd find to be of use."
"My father has praised your subtle manipulation of your shadow, but I don't think he noticed you manipulating the shapes of other shadows. Nor do I believe he noticed you yesterday when you removed your own shadow entirely."
"...that doesn't seem impressive, based on what I know of the technique, and I've done very little beyond what the scroll said."
"Which is why I'm curious enough to be willing to trade more of the basics of how we do things in order to learn what you've likely stumbled upon. As it happens, my uncle agreed and is willing to pay for dinner for the three of us to sit down and discuss things."
"Avoiding being improper with me by having a chaperone?"
"Fairly certain you and Naruto are connected enough that you share preferences and will share partners. I figure that takes me out of the running entirely, even if you're otherwise intelligent enough to get my attention."
Yoko blinked a couple of times. "I wasn't even aware that you knew anything about our connection."
"I had my suspicions corrected by the Hokage when I came to a potentially disastrous incorrect conclusion. A couple of Yamanaka were pulled in for accidentally leaking some of the details during a clan gathering, but it wasn't important enough to inform you of as it doesn't change much."
Naruto had traveled back to Konoha in person after they'd finally gotten access to the last three secure areas last night, and had annoyed several people scheduled to meet with the Hokage by cutting in line without an appointment.
"Good morning Naruto," Shisui greeted as the door shut behind Naruto. "I could have sworn my day was supposed to start with Tsume this morning."
"I pulled rank and cited emergency provisions to get in front of her," Naruto answered. "Because last night we copied Iwa's plans for first-striking other villages in an attempt to ensure that we don't have time to 'stealthily build up enough power to crush them'. Their timeline has them ready to launch the attacks in three weeks, starting with us as the most likely major threat to them."
There was a moment of silence at that, the man's eyes slowly widening. "What?"
Summaries and the full copies of plans were pulled out of storage seals and handed over. Ten minutes later an emergency meeting had been called, the day's original schedule having been thrown out due to the revelations. Naruto was asked to make more copies of things, but he'd been ready with thirty of each and ended up simply arranging things on the meeting room's tables while waiting for everyone summoned to arrive. When the meeting room was filled with everyone summoned it was sealed, and Shisui directed everyone other than Naruto to review things.
"How sure are we that this is accurate?" Shikaku asked.
"I personally copied it from Iwa's secure records last night after watching their jounin commander put it into storage," Naruto replied. "They've retrieved the originals and are going over requirements for several aspects of the plan with others as we speak. I'm under the impression that they 'finalized' the base plans a week ago."
The man nodded, frowning as he looked over things, before pausing. "Last night, and you know they're reviewing things now?"
"My team and some of my clones are still in the bunker I built under Iwa."
"Now that changes things. We need to get the Tsuchikage a message he can't ignore. How easily can you get into his office overnight?"
"Getting things in won't be a problem, but if we want to read his records then I'm going to have to brute-force past the seals and make it obvious someone was in them."
"That would send a message, but perhaps we should start with simply leaving a message informing him that others are aware of his plans."
Inoichi shook his head. "No, someone inside the village dropping a message on his desk would probably be seen as an attempt to fake him out. If we want to go that route, we want an obvious messenger."
Shisui nodded. "Throwing them into disarray by sending them a message indicating that we've heard of their plans and are taking precautions to prevent them from working will at least give us more time. In fact, I'd like us to mark up a copy of the plans with blatant flaws we can spot but that won't actually help them and then have Naruto visibly fly from here to Iwa to deliver it. Remind them that they're not the only ones with the ability to fly and make them scramble to figure out how a traitor got the plans out of the village. Assuming that Naruto thinks that they've gotten everything they're going to as far as items from the village, given that there's a chance that their tunnel will be discovered and they'll need to evacuate."
"I think we've got everything we can," Naruto answered. "Again, short of the Kage records. Our entry point is also less likely to be spotted than the two tunnels in use by spies from other villages and a third that looks like it partially collapsed years ago. Ino has done a good job of cleaning that one up and making it appear that it's regularly used by several of Iwa's chunin, but she hasn't had a chance to get any of those present in the meetings to go over the verbal portions of the plans. I've also already emptied out three obviously-forgotten storage areas and two safes that had interesting techniques in them, so if not for finding out their plans we'd probably have been preparing to leave already."
"...interesting techniques?"
"One of the safes appears to have been the second Tsuchikage's personal vault. What's billed as a water technique for camouflaging yourself that's actually an ice technique, the earth release technique for flight with some notes on how to possibly invert it for weighing down opponents, a technique for splitting oneself into two that isn't a clone, and a stack of Uzushio-originating techniques. Most of those were sealed copies of the paperwork technique and notes on how not to open them, but a few others were apparently obtained unsealed and were being studied."
"Mu studying Uzushio techniques might help explain things," Tsume noted. "But were they anything of interest?"
"A technique for changing your gender that warns that it destroys your ability to use chakra in the process, two different varieties of short-term privacy protections as examples of turning simple seals into hand seals, an overly-complicated but likely still useful technique for taking care of failed projects without setting active seals off, a bartending blender technique I already know and two for cleaning dishes and tables that I'd not seen before, and waitress versions of the cleaning techniques plus taijutsu instructions for not letting people grope you without being obvious about it while waiting tables."
"Interesting," Itachi said, breaking the silence that he'd maintained until then. "And you'll likely have trained yourself in all of them by the end of the week."
"I don't see why I shouldn't for most, but I think I'll be skipping the gender changing one."
"Of course. At the same time, you've been silent on how you'd handle stopping Iwa, despite being able to be a heavy assault team dropped right in the middle of the village. If it comes to it, how would you deal with the problem?"
Naruto shrugged. "Stick a seal on the Tsuchikage's chair so that when he sits down in it he loses his ability to control chakra. Their plans rely on him using dust release against us in particular. If that didn't work then we could create massive problems for them by poisoning their water reservoir, or just causing enough damage to it to have them dealing with fixing it for months. Going for 'heavy assault' tactics would be forcing their hand in an obvious way, with the subtler options leaving the option of making them question who their enemy is. And they'd soften them up a bit in case we still need the more obvious tactics later."
That got obvious approval from the bulk of the room, even if they weren't going to be using those immediately.
Onoki scowled at his granddaughter. "What do you mean we have a problem?"
"Konohagakure sent a flying messenger," Kurotsuchi replied. "Naruto Uzumaki, son of the Yellow Flash, as far as we can tell. He ignored all attempts to shoot him out of the air, including taking at least two high-powered techniques to his body without being affected at all, and dropped a packet outside of the village gates before flying off again."
That...was indeed a problem, because that implied that Konoha had combat-capable fliers. Which meant that they might be able to intercept an attempt to obliterate the village from the air.
"Worse," she continued. "The packet contained a copy of our plans, with notes on obvious problems when it comes to attacking Konohagakure."
That had Onoki blinking. "...what?"
"I was told that a sweep of the outer walls and the area around the village to look for hidden passageways is in progress, but we can't discount a traitor with alternate ways to move copies of things out of the village."
Twenty minutes later he was in a secure meeting room, comparing what Konoha had sent to their actual plans...and finding that the only differences were the obviously-added notes covering missed details. Like Konoha having more flight-capable shinobi than Iwa was known to have, their airships being used for patrolling and thus also in a position to provide early warning or interception, dozens of other little things, and the most glaring oversight of all of them having copies of the plans weeks in advance of the intended attack and thus time to prepare.
"We need to figure out who had access to the plans and couldn't be trusted," Onoki finally said. "That's our top priority."
"Konoha has a clan that can use their enemy's bodies to get into places," Akatsuchi pointed out. "So there might not be such a person, but I think that anyone hit by that doesn't recall what they did so checking to confirm that nobody thinks they missed a meeting they actually attended?"
"Thank you for the reminder. If we can find where they could've been getting in and out of the village then we can spot them doing so as well. We've already had our greatest weapons taken from us, but with all the tailed beasts gone the other villages have nothing that can stand up to dust release. It's unfortunate that we've lost the element of surprise though."
They had no way of knowing where Han and Roshi had vanished to, the tracking seals tied into the ones holding their tailed beasts being destroyed as the beasts died, but the two were well-known enough to be predictable in key ways. Both had left the village to 'better control' their tailed beasts, but in reality to not be able to be forced to fight in war again. If they remained near people at all then it was going to be in small villages doing who knew what, away from shinobi. The other villages might as well be in the same position though, the former power of their jinchuriki being gone and only fractions of them remaining. Nothing even remotely able to stand up to dust release remained in any of them.
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