Capítulo 2631: 19
That night the Tome had worked on Naruto's 'net', adding in the new nodes that had been copied from Karin's net and including the medical chakra node's additions that were apparently some kind of control helper and safety valve. In the morning he was itchy but found that he could work with medical chakra probably ten times more easily than he'd been able to before, with the other chakra types not appearing to be affected. He'd popped over to the compound to check on Karin and practiced using chakra scalpels to cut things up while making breakfast just because of how much easier it was now, almost like it was now impossible to overload the jutsu.
He'd overloaded it intentionally to prove that it wasn't impossible, but it was harder than it used to be to do so without intending to.
After breakfast he'd made his daily clones, and to his surprise Karin had made a single paperwork clone of her own to join Yoko in the shrine. She'd followed that with heading back into the house to study the various elemental ball jutsu as a starting point before getting into combined elemental jutsu. For his part, Naruto's plan was to summon Gamakichi before deciding what he was going to be training on for the finals, all of which was while waiting for Anko-sensei, Kurenai-sensei, and/or various Hyuga to show up in some fashion.
Hoshi was snickering off to the side as Naruto made his summoning attempts. First he ran into the problem of not getting enough blood when biting his fingers, the cuts healing before he could summon anything, leading to needing to make deeper cuts with a kunai. Then his first successful summon had been the wrong toad, instead getting a yellow toad that was apparently Gamatatsu. It didn't take long to discover that he was both snack-obsessed and Gamakichi's youngest brother. A seal full of snacks was handed to him before Naruto tried again, this time getting a reddish female toad named Gamatomo, who was apparently the middle child of the family. She didn't like being summoned, but also didn't want to leave Gamatatsu alone with Naruto, so had moved off to the side to watch her younger brother. Attempt number three led to the predominantly orange Gamakichi to finally make an appearance.
"Hey," Gamakichi greeted after getting an earful about the tasty snacks from Gamatatsu. "So, you're the new summoner?"
"Yep," Naruto replied.
He looked over at his siblings. "And you got everyone but me first?"
"Apparently. Summoning people you haven't met before is tricky."
"It can be, yeah." The toad pulled a scroll out of his jacket, from a pocket that didn't look like it should exist. "I was told to give you this when you summoned me. Toad, fox, snake, slug, and monkey summon stones. Large ones to be put into an arrival point together. Gramps approached three or four other clans working with Konoha, but they didn't have sages to make the stones."
Naruto blinked as he accepted the scroll. "Huh. I have no idea where something like that should be set up, but I bet Old Man Hokage would." He created a new paperwork clone and handed the scroll over, the clone saluting before heading out of the compound. Naruto then looked over the three toads. "So, yeah. Anything I should know about you three in particular or the toads in general?"
"I'm training to make weapons," Gamatoro answered. "Not to fight. I only answered the summon because I was watching over Tatsu."
"Someone needs to make the swords we use," Gamakichi agreed with a nod. "And Tatsu here cares more about snacks than much of anything else, but is also too curious for his own good, which is why Toro was watching him. Not sure he knows what fear is either after that time I hit him on the head a bit too hard..."
"You landed on his head when you jumped off the cliff."
"I didn't tell him to try to catch me."
Gamatoro sighed. "You did tell him to move out of the way."
"Right. Er, as for me, I'm still in training, so if you need muscle for a fight you're going to want to summon more experienced toads. We're split into three general types even though most people think of us as a single broad species. My siblings and I are part of the 'giant toads' branch and will grow a lot; you should see pops. Then there are the 'small toads' that don't get much larger than we are now, the Two Great Sage Toads are in that branch but don't underestimate them just because they're smaller. Finally there are the 'scroll toads' that're the only ones that aren't tied to the general contract for summoners. They're almost never fighters and their nature means that you have to contract with them individually. You'll probably want to summon some of the older small toads to learn our fighting style at some point and Fukasaku said that they expect you to do sage training in a couple of years."
Naruto nodded. "I think I've got some of the basics down and have no problem throwing clones at learning more."
"...your clones can learn?"
"Yep."
"How many can you make?"
"Hundreds, but if I have them do too much then I get a massive headache when they dispel so I keep it to a couple dozen for training and keep the large numbers for...special occasions."
All three toads looked curious about that, but Gamakichi just nodded. "Okay. Might mention that to the toads that normally get tapped for training. Hmmm. You should probably write down some trainer names, though I think you're supposed to be able to focus on wanting a trainer and get one? I'd need to check with my teachers, haven't gotten to full details on how our contract works yet."
"Did anyone tell you which trainers would be working with him?" Gamatoro asked.
"Er...no."
"So maybe he should summon you again in a couple of days so that you have time to find out."
"...yeah, that sounds reasonable."
"Might have to summon both of you," Naruto mused. "Don't know if Tenten would forgive me for not introducing her to someone learning to make giant swords."
"I'm not even making knives yet," Gamatoro said with what looked like a mild blush. "I keep failing to make a hammer that my sensei is happy with."
"Didn't your last one break after five strikes?" Gamakichi asked.
"No, that was two hammers ago." She slouched in defeat. "The last one broke during tempering."
"I have no clue what you're talking about," Naruto admitted, never having looked into metalworking. "But one of my clones just told me that visitors are on the way to test me, so unless you want to hang around and watch?"
"No," Gamakichi said. "We should get back before someone comes looking for us. Hanging out with the new summoner without a fight isn't a good excuse to miss lessons."
Gamatatsu flinched at that. "Yeah. Thanks for the snacks, bye!" He vanished in a puff of smoke, taking the seal tag with him. Gamatoro rolled her eyes, waved, and vanished in another puff of smoke. Gamakichi didn't bother with the waving, just vanishing.
Naruto sighed and decided to 'clean up' a sparring circle of sorts while Hoshi apparently decided that chairs were needed and fetched some.
Hiruzen looked at the scroll sitting on his desk, then carefully opened it to look at the symbols along it. "So this contains stones that, if a summoner tries to summon them, bring the summoner to the stone instead of the stone to the summoner?"
"Yep," Naruto's clone replied. "And they can be buried a little underground."
"Huh. So anyone with one of the relevant contracts could get into the area these are set up in from basically anywhere they happened to be, provided summoning isn't blocked where they are?"
"Well, that's how the ones I've been using work."
"Right, you didn't make these. Aha! There's a seal with instructions. Perhaps I should read those before asking you things you might not know."
Popping another scroll out of that seal only took a moment, and reading that provided a collection of useful information. It seemed that the stones needed to be placed in a fairly secure arrival area, largely because it was unlikely that the anti-summoning protections in place on the village would have any effect on an arrival. Or at least that was the case for the snake stone, because while allowing Anko to return to the village easily was useful it was also a risk to allow Orochimaru to do so.
"Four of these are easy enough for the time being," Hiruzen finally said. "But Anko might need to wait."
"Until she kicks Orochimaru off the snake contract?" the clone offered.
"That would be...wait. You said that as though you know that she can."
"Hinata signed it, passed the test to be Anko-sensei's apprentice, giving her 'master' access to the contract. But she wanted to check on some things before kicking Orochimaru off."
"Apparently I need to ensure that I speak with her about that, and update the list of known summoners in the village. I'll let you know when things are set up, and where the arrival point is, though I assume that you're going to continue to use the stone sitting in the Uzumaki compound."
"Probably, yeah. It's convenient for everything the boss needs to access normally, but the toads didn't provide any extras for there. Do you want to let the boss know anything else?"
"I've got people and a clone double-checking a couple of things and will likely be summoning him to ask for specific aid sometime tomorrow, so I'd appreciate it if he's available in the village."
The clone nodded and vanished before Hiruzen looked back at the scroll. It was too bad that so few shinobi had suitable contracts for something like this, given how useful it could be. As it was, with the selection of summon clans involved they currently had only twenty-four shinobi that could take advantage of the trick and they only had that many because the Sarutobi clan let all shinobi in the family sign the monkey contract as long as they wanted to.
Naruto had expected Hinata to show up with both of her parents and her sister. He hadn't expected Hanabi to be carrying a plush doll.
"What's with the doll?" he asked.
"She's trying to figure out how to use chakra strings to control it," Satomi said, patting her daughter's head. "With the hope that if she can manage that then she can do the same to herself while she's in the form of a doll."
"Huh. Might have to experiment with that myself."
"I can't keep the strings attached," Hanabi grumbled.
"Have you tried looping them around the limbs? I find it easier to control kunai, shuriken, and senbon if the chakra string wraps around them and connects back to itself and when I looked up how ninja puppets are made a couple years ago the only book I found mentioned loops like you might wrap actual wire around as part of the trigger mechanisms for 'easier to control' puppets retrieved from battlefields."
"...ninja puppets?"
"They're a specialty of Suna," Hiashi answered. "We might be able to get you a simple one. At the same time, you do retain chakra points when you turn into a doll, so may be able to connect your chakra strings to those. There are puppetry techniques that involve doing that to living and dead bodies to control them, and scrolls detailing how to spot and break the connections in the archives, though we don't know exactly how the techniques work. But your new hobby isn't why we're here."
"Come over here where we can watch," Satomi said, guiding Hanabi over to the side where Hoshi had laid down next to the chairs he'd brought out.
Hiashi nodded and turned to Naruto. "So, Hinata has made claims that are, on the surface, impossible. At the same time, the elders have officially recognized you as a special member of the main branch and as such you are entitled to learn and be proficient in the techniques. I've already tested Hinata and she proved to have the skills claimed, an impressive feat at her age, but now I need to test you."
Naruto nodded. "Do you want to test me with or without my weights?"
"With. The goal is to test your skills, not your speed or strength."
That made sense, and a minute later they had squared off against each other with Hinata standing nervously on the sidelines. Hanabi had even put her doll down to focus on watching from where she was sitting further back with her mother. Hiashi was obviously holding back as they engaged each other, staying at a level that Naruto could be expected to keep up with. Nothing anywhere near like he got to when sparring with a couple of the elders.
This was obviously starting with Gentle Fist basics, which was easy enough, gradually moving through the more advanced forms. Eventually Hiashi started on the eight trigrams thirty-two palms and Naruto dropped straight into the sixty-four palm version. One strike to block, one to attack, but the man was no slouch and immediately switched to the revolving heaven. Easily matched by Naruto, but some gardening jutsu were going to be needed to put the sparring circle to rights afterwards.
Hiashi backed off at that point. "Interesting. Very interesting. I will not ask how you were able to obtain the abilities of the byakugan in your eyes, but the chakra flows make it obvious that you have. Given that Hinata has elemental kekkei genkai that she didn't have before I think I'll treat this as a fair trade of abilities. So long, of course, as you do not share the byakugan with others, however you obtained it."
Naruto nodded. "I asked her before the attempt was made."
"Very good." A book was removed from a seal tag and handed to Naruto. "This is a copy of everything tied to the seal used on the branch family. If you can find a solution for the abuse of it by the elders to maintain control over the clan then I, at least, will be in your debt." He bowed slightly, then straightened back up. "That said, may I enquire about your training plans for the month?"
"Right now I'm thinking mostly speed and reflexes since I didn't like getting nearly cut in two in the forest and don't have any better ideas for avoiding that kind of thing again beyond not being in the way. But I also think that I want to improve combining yin and yang transformations with other elements since I think that'll help against Gaara."
"Ignoring that you sound like you have no expectation of losing against my nephew, why would that, specifically, help against Gaara?"
"Neji is a one and a half trick pony, and the half trick is only because he realized that having a ranged option or two was a good idea after the zombies. As for Gaara, if he starts pulling on the one-tail then I want to be able to suppress it, but the only way I know to do that requires yin and yang in the jutsu."
"Ah, trying to recreate the mokuton?"
"Er...what?"
Hiashi raised an eyebrow. "The Hyuga have believed that the mokuton is a combination of earth, water, yin, and yang chakra for generations, even before the village was founded. Proving this is difficult due to the rarity of being able to fully wield all four though."
"Oh." Naruto formed a short chain with his chakra. "I was actually referring to what I need to do to make my chains able to suppress a tailed beast, but that sounds interesting too." Focusing a little, he pushed all four elements into a ball jutsu, firing it like an earth ball. Things fought him a little bit, but after a moment he launched what looked like a ball of vines across the compound.
"...you're not supposed to recreate kekkei genkai instantly after hearing a vague assumption about how they might possibly work."
Naruto scratched the back of his head. "But that's how I figured out all the other elemental combinations? This one will take some practice though, it fought me a little...and I doubt that throwing balls of vines at a tailed beast is enough to do anything to them. Oh! There's that Anbu guy with a bunch of wood release technique scrolls. I wonder if he'll be annoyed if I make a copy while he's out of the village?"
"Are you somehow reading scrolls with your byakugan?"
"No, he stores them in a basic wooden chest with 'wood release' carved into it, next to the 'earth release' and 'water release' chests in his apartment. I first noticed them when setting up a water balloon to wake him up as a prank a few years back, after he'd rigged my smoke alarm to go off at four in the morning."
Hiashi blinked. "That sounds like...are you in a prank war with Anbu?"
"Only the four that figured out how to get into my apartment without my permission. I water their plants when they're out of the village too. Usually while setting up more complicated pranks for when they return, and they're not sure how I do so when they know I was out of the village."
While Hiashi tried to process that, Naruto decided that he could apologize to the Anbu later as he fired a communication jutsu message off to two of his active clones to ask them to make a copy of the man's jutsu scrolls, one heading to the apartment to write things down that the other relayed to it. A third clone was asked to double-check the village archives for anything that might have been left there as well, even though it was unlikely.
The rest of the day had been spent training, after Hiashi and Satomi had taken Hanabi home with them. Naruto ended up having clones working with Tenten on kenjutsu, specifically clones that were trying to mimic what Naruto knew of Karui's fighting style. Which wasn't much from observation, admittedly. Tenten wasn't concerned about Kin at all by comparison. Hinata was working with Naruto more directly, trying to figure out how to combine things to get wood release of her own with little to no luck. Apparently what had been a 'little fight' for him was 'feelings of warning pain from her chakra' for her. While working on that they were also brainstorming possible ways for her to train for or work around Temari's wind jutsu.
They were ignoring that Hinata's second match would hopefully be against Naruto after he won his first two.
That evening, after dinner, Naruto had found that Karin wasn't used to getting the exhaustion of paperwork clones when they dispelled, having fallen asleep at the table when her shrine maiden clone had dispelled. He got her settled into bed before returning to his apartment, finding that he'd not been clear enough with his clones earlier. They'd copied all the jutsu scrolls in the Anbu's apartment, not just the wood release ones. On the other hand, one of the earth release jutsu sounded incredibly useful as it was a modification to the shadow clone technique that could take damage and reform itself. Essentially making a mud-like clone instead of one that turned to stone when dispelled.
It was also incomplete, copied from elsewhere and missing several elements, meaning that experimentation would be needed to figure out how to perform it.
Knowing that he was likely to be summoned by Old Man Hokage at some point, the next day Naruto had decided to have his clones focus on training in various ways. Chakra chains and attempting to figure out the wood release jutsu with clones sent to the realm of the foxes, chakra control training groups as usual, and a minimal complement of clones going out into the village. The exception to the latter was a single clone sent to the Anbu's apartment to dismantle the prank that had previously been set up and leave a note with apology cookies in a seal tag.
The food-grade seal tag that could keep the cookies 'fresh out of the oven' for a month was probably going to be more appreciated than the cookies themselves.
Yoko was going to be working with Karin's clone and the civilian girls again, the latter jealous of the former's ability to open the administration building's doors. Adults in the area were just happy that the shrine currently had two proper shrine maidens, making it less likely that it would end up in disrepair and thus lose the favor of Suijin again. If only they knew how the honden really worked.
The Tome was working on the Hyuga's seal, Hinata was going to be looking for wind-specialist jounin to beg tips from, Tenten was on 'figuring out a summoning system' day in an 'alternate between that and training' plan, Hoshi was working with a couple of other foxes on putting his own leg back together after an accident that morning with medical chakra, and Naruto was planning on using the running track around the village to push himself physically until Old Man Hokage summoned him.
Unexpectedly, he ran into Gai and Lee on the running track.
"Shouldn't you two be training with Sachie or something?" Naruto was finally able to ask after four minutes of his youth being praised.
"Alas," Gai answered. "She was tapped to fill in on Team Seven today so that they can complete some missions while young Sasuke trains with his clan. With Neji doing his own 'secret training' we have been left to work on our own Youth!"
"Ah." With a mental smirk, Naruto decided to poke a little fun at them. And maybe get them to buy a couple of belts, because why not? "And yet you're only wearing leg weights?"
"...what?" Lee asked.
"I'm wearing leg weights, arm weights, and a resistance seal belt."
"I considered your Youthful belts for Lee," Gai said. "But he could not adjust the settings himself! May I ask why you use arm weights? Leg weights have always been enough for me."
In response, Naruto popped Kubikiribocho out of the armband it was stored in, then had to pause his running as the two face planted in shock. "They help with training up the ability to swing a proper Uzumaki-made sword."
It didn't take long for the two to get back on their feet, and Gai looked over the sword. "I see. Why not carry the sword itself?"
"I'm too short to strap it to my back and holding a sword longer than I am tall makes it awkward to do quite a bit during the day."
"...yes, that feels obvious now."
Naruto returned the sword to the armband, frowned because he'd been holding it too easily, and upped the chakra in his weights and the settings on the resistance seal. Feeling properly limited once more, he nodded and took off again, letting the other two catch up. Since he'd just upped everything they had no problem doing so.
"I'm a taijutsu specialist," Lee said once they'd matched speed with Naruto again. "Though more strength in my punches does sound beneficial."
"Anko-sensei claims that every chunin or better should be familiar with the basics of using some form of sword," Naruto retorted. "If only because kunai and fists are rarely good options when someone pulls a sword on you. Standard Anbu loadout includes a sword that they're highly recommended to carry for a reason, though she also admitted that most jounin that don't specialize in kenjutsu don't carry any form of sword even if they should."
"Most do have other options though," Gai said, sounding thoughtful. "Lee doesn't, and I'm familiar with the use of a number of weapons for when fists aren't enough. You never want to punch acid clones, and swords make deflecting incoming kunai and shuriken far easier. It would be far more effective if you could mold chakra properly, but there's plenty that can be done even without that."
Naruto frowned at that. "He can't mold chakra? The hand seals for adjusting the resistance belts aren't even complicated." When you needed them, of course.
"A Hyuga told me that my chakra doesn't react to hand seals at all," Lee explained. "They couldn't explain why not as I have plenty of it."
"Ooooh," Kushina called from the Tome. "A perfect test dummy for the net-replacing seal prototype! We've only got it to 'standard genin' but that should be plenty for someone with an obviously-broken net! Well, actually, his isn't even broken so much as mostly missing."
Naruto avoided flinching at the sudden mental interruption, and could tell that he was going to need to at least make the offer or hear nothing but whining for days from his mother. With a mental sigh, he looked over at Lee. "I might have a seal that can fix your ability to mold chakra into jutsu, but it's untested."
They stopped as Gai and Lee face planted again, but the two recovered much faster this time. But Gai also put himself between Naruto and Lee. "What are the risks of such a seal?"
"Well, if it doesn't work then the end result is likely a complete inability to properly mold chakra into jutsu until a proper version can be made, which makes finding test subjects difficult."
The man blinked a couple of times. "So...if it doesn't work then nothing changes, and if it does then Lee would gain the possibility of using normal jutsu?"
"Yep."
"How long would it take to apply this seal, and how obvious would it be once applied?"
"Um," Naruto started, before being fed information by the Tome. "Probably twenty minutes to draw the seal and ten for it to do its thing, and it's more something that gets applied to the ground and then Lee would stand in it while it worked."
The man blinked, as though in shock, before shaking himself out of it. "I see." He then attempted to turn around to talk to Lee, only to find that he'd darted around in the other direction.
"Please!" Lee begged from his knees. "While I strive to be the best taijutsu user there are far too many things that I cannot do without being able to mold chakra!"
Naruto sighed and looked around where they were on the track. "We need a flatter section of ground, preferably one that has a good stone layer under it to keep it more stable."
"I know just the place," Gai stated, turning back the way they'd come. "Though I do wonder what the normal utility of such a seal would be?"
"Well, if it works then it would strip elemental kekkei genkai from someone. Getting up to one that can grant them is more difficult."
Gai had watched as young Naruto had flattened the ground in the clearing without so much as a twitch of a hand seal, flowed ink over the area to form an incredibly complicated-looking seal using a chakra flow technique that also didn't involve any hand seals, and then had Lee stand in a clear spot in the middle before activating the seal. An Anbu had arrived with a summons for Naruto while the seal was doing its thing, but had waited patiently instead of interrupting a budding sealmaster with an active seal.
The seal itself had burned away when it completed its task, Naruto had declared it a success, and then he had left with the Anbu to see Hokage-sama. How the lad knew it was a success was unknown, but he'd sounded confident. This had led to walking Lee through a basic jutsu, specifically the academy clone because even on failure you could usually tell that it had been attempted.
It had worked...somewhat. The misshapen blobs were far more than anything Lee had been able to manage before that day and were proof that the seal worked in some capacity, though to what degree was yet to be seen.
"Lee!" Gai snapped, causing his apprentice to stop doing a happy dance and snap to attention. "We must take a Youthful stroll to the hospital to ensure that young Naruto didn't miss anything! Then, assuming they clear you, we shall need to find a way to thank him for this amazing gift!"
The boy nodded, then paused. "Gai-sensei, what do you do to thank someone for a gift of this magnitude?"
"I don't know! But we shall figure it out together!"
Naruto looked down at the scroll he'd been handed by Old Man Hokage. "I'm confused."
"Orochimaru was able to convince Kumo and Suna to participate in a joint attack on the village," the old man explained. "But the Raikage is being forced into it and would prefer not to participate and I suspect that there's deceit going on with Suna as well. The Raikage has given us permission to neutralize the threat the two-tails presents if we can do so without killing Yugito Nii and I've confirmed that Suna has violated our alliance with them by sending a jinchuriki to the exams without informing us."
"But why are you telling me instead of elite jounin or something?"
"Because Jiraiya went to figure out how his spy network missed several important details before I was informed of some of this and you obviously have access to a sealmaster. I'd also prefer if this does not look like Konoha did it, and if you end up directly involved then you have the ability to look like an Uzu Anbu. That isn't a requirement though, so long as the jinchuriki themselves survive and are unable to release the tailed beasts they hold as part of an attack on the village. If you can't manage it by the time Jiraiya returns in a couple of weeks then I'll get him involved as well."
"I think trying to go after a jounin jinchuriki would be...difficult at best?"
"And the only reason I considered this for you at all is that she's promised to be 'taken by surprise' and not put up a fight, so you and your sealmaster should be fine. By all accounts Gaara is a genin at best in skills, relying entirely on the beast contained within him for defense. Without that he may not even be able to stand up to an academy student, and your chains should be able to be used to suppress the one-tail's chakra before moving in to neutralize it."
Naruto nodded at that, since he was considering that as part of his potential strategy against the boy...just without expecting to need to use it before the finals.
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