章 2682: 72
The second day of finals saw a significantly different crowd in the stands. Only around a quarter of the audience had returned for the second day, some of those being directly connected to the competing genin. As for the rest, around a third were those nobles that had allowed members of their traveling group to attend yesterday in their place and the remaining two-thirds were single-day tickets.
Unseen by most was the work done to the arena overnight and into the morning. Recharging seals, fixing some small issues that had come up in the repeated use of the environment-changing seals the day before, and placing barrier seals on the bottoms of four seats that would activate if those sitting in them tried molding a pile of chakra. Uzushio had a reputation to uphold and the early-morning planning to ruin said reputation wasn't going to get very far.
Setting up additional items for the end of the fights was another thing and Hinata had merely sighed at him doing it.
Standing up to welcome everyone to the day of fights, Naruto made it to saying 'Uzushiogakure' before pausing as each of the four barriers activated within a couple seconds of one another. Anbu-dressed clones of him and Hinata appeared next to each seat as each of the four people attempted to fire off their attacks. The barriers held without issue, and in three of the four cases the person harmed themselves due to the backlash of the attack being stopped right in front of their faces.
"My apologies," Naruto said, gesturing at the four seats. "But we're going to have a slight delay as individuals that wished to cause problems are removed from the audience."
Two larger screens were unsealed on either side of the arena, hooked into waiting power and video feeds, and then turned on to show a view of a small string of islands for the benefit of those in the arena. Why this was being done wasn't explained as the three injured individuals were healed up well enough to be stable and all four were bound before being brought to the roof of the Kage box. Naruto openly joined them up there as one of his disguised clones was setting up a whiteboard to keep track of scores on.
"Let's see," Naruto said as he looked at one of the screens. "That large tree on the furthest island, I think."
"Little ambitious," one of Hinata's clones said, either not knowing or not caring that he'd practiced before dawn that morning.
"I'm mostly concerned about the wind throwing my aim off."
"What are you talking about?" Onoki asked as he floated up.
"Asshole-launching. Dunno if the old Uzushio didn't have a leaderboard or it didn't survive, but we've got four assholes and a target area." One of his clones handed over a map, which Naruto threw to Onoki. "Feel free to check the map for the target area."
One of Hinata's Anbu-disguised clones went first, grabbing one of the four bound idiots and lightly tossing them into the air before dropping into a spin. Several revolutions to build up speed and chakra in her foot were followed by kicking the idiot before he could land from the toss, sending him flying off into the distance. A couple of minutes later the idiot's arrival near the closest of the islands was shown on the screens, him landing in the water. A distance was put down on the whiteboard, and then one of Naruto's Anbu-disguised clones stepped up. He picked another of the four up and spun around while holding the ropes binding the man, eventually releasing him to fly off into the distance. That took another couple of minutes for him to land only a couple meters off of the first landing point.
Anko-sensei appeared on the roof. "You're launching assholes and didn't invite me?"
"You don't have the kick needed to compete," Naruto replied, gesturing at the whiteboard.
She looked at the whiteboard, then did a double-take. "Whoa. Really?"
"Admittedly, we do still have two left, but I don't think you'll get close."
"Would you mind if I give it a try?" Nagato asked from behind them where he'd climbed up.
Naruto looked back at the man. "I know even less about your potential range."
"Trust me when I say that I've got plenty of range."
Shrugging, Naruto gestured for the man to pick one of the remaining two. A minute later a rinnegan-boosted kick launched Nagato's choice into the distance, and a couple minutes after that the idiot landed around in the middle of the target range...but obviously off to the side, showing that while he had range he didn't necessarily have aim. Then again, he didn't have clones at the far end to help his aim either.
With only one asshole left, Naruto grinned. He stood the asshole up, then activated his own rinnegan, adopted a tiger hand seal, and prepared his technique. "Uzushio Secret Taijutsu Technique: One Thousand Years of Humiliation."
Striking the man's ass while applying copious amounts of chakra and a gravity push effect from the rinnegan caused him to fly off at high speed. Naruto ignored the dumbfounded looks on the others on top of the Kage box and turned to watch the screens. After a minute a much faster moving body appeared and struck the large tree on the furthest island, with it hopefully obvious that the man could've gone much further if the aim had been higher.
"Showoff," Hinata's Anbu-disguised clone grumbled as the final score was added to the whiteboard with a note about hitting the target included. The feeds from the screens were cut shortly after, but in a likely too subtle for most move it was only after there was obvious movement from all four launched individuals having broken free of their bonds. Everything was disconnected and sealed up while Naruto, Nagato, and Onoki returned to the Kage box itself.
"Sorry again for the delay," Naruto said, before pausing again. "Hmmm. Don't recall where I was, so I guess I have to start over from the beginning."
Kakashi had a grin of pride that could be seen through his mask, and would probably be visible through his Anbu mask if he were wearing it. He'd never expected Naruto of all people to pull something like that, and doing so in front of the audience that the assholes had just tried to kill a number of had definitely won him added public relations points. If given the chance, Kakashi would've been willing to kill people to get a chance to build a positive reputation with a stunt like that.
Having his sensei's son pull it off was almost as good in some ways, and infinitely better in others due to the attention it would attract. Kakashi couldn't reasonably get away with that kind of reputation, but any Uzumaki could and having an Uzukage pulling that kind of thing was just going to sell the return of Uzushio even better than before. At least to their more direct neighbors, anyway, due to the known insanity of Uzumaki.
Watching the day's first set of eight fights was very much anticlimactic after the pre-show, though that wasn't to say it wasn't interesting. Naruto had somehow rigged things up so that there was a floating island in the middle of the arena being gradually spun by the movement of water from a waterfall on one side to the drain at the other. This created a constantly-shifting platform that was surprisingly stable while still obviously floating.
Ame's first contender of the day had been a decent shinobi that had scraped a win against one of Konoha's kunoichi, though the kunoichi had put on a good showing. Iwa and Suna had a pair of kunoichi in the following match, Iwa's pulling out a win and knocking Suna out of the rest of the finals due to elemental affinity advantage more than anything else. Uzushio then had a win from one of the youngest Team Yurei members taking out one of Orochimaru's kunoichi, though not without some difficulty, likewise removing Oto from the rest of the finals.
A conveniently-placed small break had happened after that due to wanting to clear out poison mists used by the Oto kunoichi in the fight before they drifted too high and possibly affected the audience.
When they resumed, the Akimichi boy that was about Naruto's age had won against one of Ame's older shinobi, a bullet tank flattening the young man, and then another of the youngest Team Yurei members had taken out one of Naruto's fangirls. Kumo then had a shinobi take out one of the Uzushio genin, immediately followed by the youngest Team Yurei kunoichi taking out a different Kumo shinobi.
That brought them to the halfway point in the day's matches, also conveniently the first 'place new bets after the round of matches' point for the day, and at a good point for lunch.
Sasuke sighed from where he was sitting between Karin and Sakura at the restaurant they'd popped over to for lunch.
"Why are you sighing?" Karin asked as she refilled her drink. "All three of your kids made it through another round."
"Because it looks like the only way they're getting eliminated is by going up against each other," Sasuke replied. "And Kyo is...a little too enthusiastic at times."
"He still has to make it through Choji," Sakura pointed out. "Who has proven to have quite a few tricks this year."
"True. And at this point it's likely that all three are getting promoted unless they make a major mistake. My concern is them doing so when up against each other. If they came up with a plan to show off..."
"Ah," Karin said, half-nodding. "You're afraid that they're going to go too far in all the wrong ways."
"Yeah."
"That's a pretty difficult thing to do," Sakura pointed out. "They're Uzushio genin now. Crazy is kind of expected."
Karin rolled her eyes. "Now you're attributing insanity to the village and not just the Uzumaki clan?"
"Blank paperwork literally grows on trees here."
"So?"
"And the deadly training ground on the island is considered to be one of the safest."
"...your point?"
"Is probably that you're an Uzumaki and can't be trusted to know what 'reasonable' actually is."
Sasuke nodded. "Didn't Hinata have to step in to put some sanity into plans for Orochimaru?"
Sakura groaned. "Yes, and when I found out I had to drag Tsunade in to help. We still think it's going too far, but ran out of arguments against it."
"You're just overly cautious when dealing with a known traitor of Konoha," Karin retorted.
"Tsunade said your plans were going too far while admitting to wanting to kill the man outright."
"Meh."
The longer they spent in Uzushio the more generally nervous Kimimaro got. Not because he expected an attack against Lord Orochimaru...but more because he expected Lord Orochimaru to forget where he was and do something stupid. Especially after the demonstration that there was basically no hope of actual victory in a fight a couple of days ago. But if brought up, the response would likely be that it only mattered if they were caught and it wasn't like they knew where anything truly significant was actually kept here.
It still felt wrong to antagonize the locals by going after even minor items.
Focusing on the matches probably wouldn't help as much as he'd like either. Oto no longer had any genin remaining in the fights, and it was possible that the only reason genin that weren't from Konoha and Uzushio were going to make it into the next round was because the first match in this round was Ame against Iwa. The environments were interesting though, the next four matches apparently to take place in what looked like a recreation of a campsite next to a road. Complete with a couple of wagons and a lit campfire in a proper fire pit.
Curious, and since the guards had been encouraged to participate in discussions, he decided to speak up. "Is there a preference for them to ignore the wagons or to take advantage of them?"
"That is a good question," Lord Orochimaru agreed. "Ideally, they'd subconsciously avoid damage to civilian wagons they aren't tasked with destroying. On the other hand, they know these ones are fake, so deliberate use of them is just as valid. Quite the little conundrum in evaluating them."
"My intent was that we would judge them on how they use them," Naruto replied. "If their strategy has no need for the wagons then they'll likely ignore them. A deliberate strategy using the wagons, especially if taking advantage of their opponent treating them as something to avoid, would be worth more. Attacking them for the sake of attacking them would be worth less."
The other leaders visibly considered that before nodding their agreement, but the next match was beginning.
Obito scowled as he kicked at the ruins of a vast estate. He'd chased a lead from a 'daring merchant' that traveled further than most would and had seen what he'd described as 'mobile houses' on a landmass to the south. Getting close enough to pop over at a line of cliffs and get ahead of the merchant had saved two additional weeks of sailing, but on the surface this appeared to be wrong. Smaller animal-pulled houses instead of self-propelled ones, people that had the same darker skin but didn't quite look right based on the pictures he'd seen of the nobles, fashion that was suitably light and airy but didn't match the pictures either, and the local writing didn't look even close to the samples seen.
At least until a helpful local had recommended not poking around the ruins, even if it had been a year since the 'crazies' were attacked when their 'protectors' had left for a month. A fight had been fought right down to the local dock, where the protectors had arrived just in time for the family to escape onto their ship...and wiped out the attackers entirely. You could even see where that had happened around the oddly intact dock...but it didn't look like chakra had been used. Then again, it had also been a year since the incident.
The whole thing felt suitably like 'Uzumaki refugees influenced the local nobles in ways the other locals were increasingly distrustful of' to be plausible despite the discrepancies, and the presence of the Uzumaki could explain the discrepancies.
Too much evidence stacked against it, too plausible to be ignored...but it was increasingly feeling like if this wasn't the origin point of the nobles then something further south was. Far too far away to properly track at that point, and with teleportation on the table it was increasingly unlikely that ships were moving back and forth now. In fact, there was a good chance that the nobles had very likely been on the last ship, sent to set up the teleportation endpoints.
All of this meant that the only likely good option for finding the assholes was infiltrating the rebuilt Uzushiogakure and finding a teleport seal that led to them...and Obito had already discovered that something prevented kamui from working for him before he even reached the island. Including being unable to go intangible, which was a major defensive problem and made it unacceptably difficult to move around undetected.
...this was going to take far too much planning and skills Obito didn't have, but he really should be a little more diligent in searching first. The merchant had mentioned stopping at five locations, and he'd only made it to the third of them. Continuing down the coast to the last two to double-check them was still needed, even if the other two were even less likely to be correct from the descriptions given by the merchant.
Onoki was proud that Kukito had made it through to the semifinals, but didn't think she was making it to the final round. Not when up against an Akimichi that was part of the latest weirdly-effective 'Team Yurei', now of Uzushio. That young man's kunoichi teammate was the other of two Uzushio genin participating in the semifinals, against an older and still-Konoha-aligned Akimichi that had defeated the third of the three Team Yurei genin.
But the performances so far did reveal a change from previous generations of Team Yurei, and as they sat down for the semifinals Onoki placed himself next to Naruto. Of course, there was the whole setup for the two matches that had to happen, including activating the next environment. This time the choice was a floating iceberg, just large enough for the arena but obviously not anchored based on the way it was bobbing.
"Seems odd that you didn't show any of these off yesterday," Onoki commented as Naruto sat down.
"Nobody in the 'less likely to be promoted' set picked them," Naruto corrected. "The only one that I've kept a secret is the one for the final round."
"Huh."
"I doubt you made a point of sitting next to me for that though. Did you have something else you wanted to discuss?"
Onoki bit back a snort, because he had been a little obvious there. "Yeah, is there a reason that the newest Team Yurei seems to be the first to not be throwing around elemental bloodline techniques?"
"There is. We're still debating when to grant those, at least when individuals aren't born with them. The new head of our academy is pushing for an early introduction, but there's also merit to setting up a bloodline island for those who wish to obtain them to prove themselves on. I did end up agreeing to setting up seals that will ensure that all of our forces can at least use the basic elements with equal proficiency, though not everyone transferring from Konoha has taken advantage of them."
"We're a little jealous," Shisui added. "Because he didn't agree to set any of those up in Konoha, beyond the medical chakra one."
"You've got a larger quantity of numbers, so we've got to compensate with greater quality of forces, and if we build the island then we'd almost certainly let allies use it."
As if they weren't scarily effective enough as it was without granting all their forces elemental bloodlines, though some of that might be bias introduced through Naruto's personal performance a couple days ago. Unfortunately, it was unlikely that the Land of Earth in general was going to be able to secure an alliance anytime soon. Both with the idiot Daimyo in charge and because Naruto was far more politically savvy than expected.
Hinata looked over the compiled list, then back at the collection of summons. "So we've got requests for the owl and sparrow contracts, both wanting to go to villages operating on the mainland. Nobody else?"
"I was only happy with one of the Amegakure genin," the lead salamander said. "And we're still not willing to work with them while Nagato's group is in charge there."
"We're honestly more interested in your little brother," one of the three smaller cats noted. "He's got strong chakra and proper feline features, and there are a couple of other kittens we're looking at as alternatives that aren't in this group."
"Nobody here is suitable for us," one of the larger cats said, shaking her head.
The eight different ninken and the three pigeons present all remained silent, so Hinata nodded. "Okay then. I'll let Naruto know so he can retrieve the two contracts."
Nodding happened, and then all of the summons vanished. Naruto likely felt the provisional contracts he'd used to summon them being canceled too, but she wouldn't be able to tell that personally. Instead, she folded her note and reached out with the communication technique to let him know that he'd need to retrieve the two contracts before the promotion announcements.
Kiba sighed as Emi's victory cemented an Emi versus Michi final match. "Well, that's probably better than Kyo making it to either of the other two."
"I'd say so," Sasuke agreed. "Though Choji kind of got the shaft with the environment. Too much slip, not enough grip."
"Which would be a great argument if Michi didn't have that problem with many of the same techniques."
"Because he's got a decent water nature affinity, which is a bit unusual in his clan. Probably got a better grip on the ice than he normally gets on dirt because of it, but it would've worked the opposite way for Choji."
"Oh, right. I'd forgotten about that. But it doesn't stop Choji from looking less skilled than his younger cousin because of it."
"Sadly true, I suppose, but the entry forms did ask about elemental affinities. I'd hope they're actually taken into account by those doing the judging."
"Only if Choji put anything down as that was optional, presumably because most genin might not really know. Do you think Michi will be able to bring himself to seriously attack Emi?"
Sasuke snorted. "If she wants a challenge she'll insult his weight like she usually does when sparring. Otherwise she'll probably go for the easier win."
"Yeah, we had it comparatively easy, neither of us finding any of our teammates attractive. Even if you had two girls on your first team."
"Yamanaka eyes freak me out a little, possibly due to the likelihood of not working well if interacting with the sharingan, and Ami felt more like a sister than anything else for some reason. I would've thought you'd have perved on Sakura a bit though."
"Her hair is too pink, like it's a warning sign from a poisonous animal or something, and whatever causes the pink hair seems to give her and her father a weird scent. Not off putting, exactly, but...not to be chased, perhaps? Besides, I've got the clan 'problem' with my peers."
Sasuke turned to look at him. "Problem?"
"Thinking of them as 'pack' first due to spending too much time around them. Leads to us teasing them, supporting them, and trying to ensure that we know where we 'rank' in the pack. By the time we get out of the academy our classmates are all but off-limits mentally, and ninety percent of the clan marries someone several years older or younger to get past that. Those that do marry someone within a year or two of their own age generally end up with a civilian or someone who wasn't raised in Konoha. Having a branch of the clan here in Uzu actually opens up more future options for marrying other Inuzuka, though nobody is currently expecting to push that way."
"Huh. That's kind of the opposite of the 'Uchiha way' of the past. Before the elders all died both Itachi and I would've been all but forced into marrying another Uchiha to 'preserve the sharingan'. That didn't turn out to be a problem for him, but there aren't any girls my age in the clan. The Hyuga clan used to be run in the same way."
Kiba snorted. "Good thing that changed, then, because Hinata wouldn't have allowed it to get in her way."
Naruto dialed the arena control like a combination lock. Back and forth to align the dials hidden behind the control face until all the notches lined up and he could pull the dial out through them. The arena illusion shut down as he spun the removed dial halfway around to point down instead of up, reinserting it upside-down so that the seal traces on it would now connect to an entirely different set of environments. Spinning it back around, he brought it back up to the 'plain dirt' setting, the only constant in the entire array, to turn the system back on before turning the dial to the right in order to reach the first of three environments on this set.
The appearance of the new environment as he pushed the control in to 'make it real' caused gasps of shock, from the audience and the others in the Kage box. Nine different platforms floated in the air without any obvious support, one sitting by the entrance the genin used and the other eight moving around in a fixed pattern. Harder to see was that anything large enough that fell into the area under the platforms would be launched back upwards to land on the 'entrance' platform...though if Michi grew to be too large with his clan's techniques then he'd probably not be able to be thrown back up.
Each platform had a theme. For the static entrance platform, the smallest of them, the theme was a wooden dock. The larger floating platforms were intended for actual fighting and were generally distributed with three on a top layer above the entrance platform, three on a bottom layer below the entrance platform, and two on the layer with the entrance platform. All three layers spun around at their own rates, with platforms moving up and down in the stack following each other so they cycled through the three layers.
In the order they were traveling the themes were dirt, water, rock, snow, a grassy field, a street with a couple of small houses, a copse of trees, and a desert. They also individually spun as they moved around, helpfully ensuring that the waterfall flowing off of the water platform never landed on another one on its own. Those fighting could change that, of course, if they had the ability to properly manipulate the water's path.
"How in the world did you manage that?" Jiraiya asked, staring at the floating platforms. Not that anyone else seemed any less shocked. Hoshi and those connected to the Tome were the only other ones that had seen any of the three extra environments in action.
"It's an illusion made temporarily real," Naruto replied.
"But...how?"
"...it really isn't that complicated."
"I have to admit that I'd not considered the implications of how this functions," Nagato said. "But it makes sense."
"No it doesn't," Konan retorted. "If the illusion is being made real then it needs to follow physical rules and things don't just float like that without something holding them up!"
Naruto personally suspected that it was a good thing the genin had already proven themselves, given that it seemed all the focus during their match was going to be on the supposed impossibility of the environment.
Sakura stared at the impossibly floating platforms that the two genin were fighting on. "How the fuck did Naruto pull that off?"
"Seals inside of the platforms?" Tsunade guessed.
"One of his clones claims that it's just an 'illusion made real'," Karin pointed out. "Which makes sense to me."
"...that does sound reasonable, doesn't it."
"No it doesn't," Sakura retorted, even as she recalled that Tsunade's grandmother was an Uzumaki. Dammit, she was surrounded by people who didn't think like normal people at all. "It should follow the laws of physics once it's 'real'."
"I don't see why," Karin replied, looking oddly at Sakura. "It's still an illusion, right?"
"If it was an illusion then you couldn't interact with it. Once it 'becomes real' it stops being an illusion!"
"But it isn't really there. When you disconnect the chakra feeding the illusion it vanishes. It's just more solid now."
"If it wasn't real then you couldn't interact with it. A solid illusion would be static and unchanging."
"I think you're overcomplicating things."
Sakura gestured at the fight. "They can knock things off of the platforms and they actually fall. The entire platform should fall as soon as it's 'real', or barring that as soon as they interact with it and push it out of position."
"They probably just have a solid primary core that they're sitting on," Tsunade corrected.
Okay, that wasn't a horrible point, at least until you noted that the 'solid core' was still violating the laws of physics. But it was also blatantly obvious that this discussion wasn't going to get anywhere useful at this point too.
The final match had been the longest as the two genin had needed to adapt significantly to the constantly-shifting battlefield. They'd spent a good portion of it on different platforms, shifting between them to try and get advantage, and this had hurt Michi more than Emi as the Akimichi clan ran more of a 'get up close' skillset. Which wasn't to say that the boy had done poorly.
A break for medical checkups and to gather all the genin had occurred, during which final deliberation on promotions happened. Another of the new environments was then revealed, a tiered version of the 'fancy courtyard' that included actual seats for the genin. All of the genin that made it through the second stage were brought in, even those who had been kept out of the finals themselves.
"Congratulations for making it through the exams," Naruto said to the assembled genin. "Each of you made it through the genin pretest to ensure that you had minimum skills, experiences, and could follow orders as provided. You then started to show leadership skills as you formed teams, or acknowledged that existing teams were suitable, and made it through the skill tests to demonstrate that your teams were skilled enough to handle varied missions. While not all of you made it through the Forest of Inconvenience in fighting condition, you did make it through, proving that you could handle a reasonably dangerous courier mission. Not all of you made it to the finals, but those that did got an extra chance to show their skills. Many of you will receive promotions, and some of those that didn't make it through the second stage due to bad luck may also receive promotions in the coming weeks if their village leaders agree with the assessments of the judging jounin. However, before we get to telling you who has earned their promotions and who hasn't, I've decided to give out some congratulatory gifts for all of you here."
Flashes of light deposited a set of metal tags and a scroll onto each genin's lap, startling most of them. The other leaders were also a bit surprised, as this hadn't been mentioned to them. Ensuring that rings of Hiraishin seals were in the arena walls so that all of the genin could be suitably targeted by clones had been slightly tricky, but secretly adding several others underneath the seating area after it was manifested had covered a couple of small gaps.
"I personally made the sealing tags you now hold," Naruto continued. "As well as all of their contents. The scroll details how they work, but the two storage ones are food-grade tags. One of each set of tags holds a chakra blade, customized with your names etched into the blade itself. The other storage tag in each set holds ten exploding kunai, able to be primed like an explosive tag. Lastly, the final tag in each set is one of my basic instant field showers."
You could tell who had heard of his work by the look of shock and delight on their faces. After that they went through the tedious process of informing each genin if they had earned promotion or not, going by village. Around a third of all of them had earned their promotions, including some that had been eliminated on medical grounds before the finals.
"This is normally where I'd dismiss you," Naruto said at the end. "However, there's one additional item left to cover. Junao of Amegakure and Kukito of Iwagakure, please come forward." The two newly-promoted chunin did so, Nagato and Onoki looking on curiously. Two of Naruto's clones dressed as Uzu Anbu appeared in front of the chunin a moment later, each holding a large scroll. "During the finals there were additional observers, not to evaluate the participants for promotion, but instead as potential summoners for contracts that Uzushio had acquired but whose clans do not currently wish to work with us for various reasons. Junao, you were deemed worthy by the owls, who wish to be based further inland. Kukito, you were deemed worthy by the sparrows, formerly associated with Iwagakure but lost when their previous summoner defected."
If someone had dropped a senbon then it was likely that everyone would've heard it, but the two clones placed the scrolls down a moment later and opened them for the chunin to see. Each, befitting having earned their promotions, read the contract and checked for genjutsu before signing their names and placing their fingerprints in their own blood. They each then went through the hand seals, successfully summoning a bird from their contract. Both of whom told them to summon someone later, when they were in a position for a 'proper test', before vanishing with the contracts themselves.
"This is unusually generous of you," Onoki said. "Nobody just hands out summoning contracts. What's the catch?"
"A summoning contract for a clan that does not wish to work with your village is worthless," Naruto retorted. "For example, returning the salamander contract to Amegakure would be meaningless as the salamanders do not wish to work with the village that turned its back on Hanzo. All I've done is respect the wishes of the summon clans, allowing them to choose their own summoners."
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