Capítulo 2687: 77
The official birthday festivities had taken the bulk of the rest of the day, but had concluded without too much drama. Having a list of failure reasons from older advisors for the would-be suitors had negated almost all of the bad feelings towards Naruto himself, which was part of the original intention. Couldn't do anything about those who disapproved of a three-way relationship, and why a couple of the would-be suitors had agreed to come when they very obviously disliked his animal features was a bit of a mystery.
Well, it was possible that they thought they could convince him to have them removed or something. Not that they knew how to do so safely. The best he was going to manage was 'remove the extra bits and have pure summon fox features manifest instead', at least as far as he knew. Assuming they could remove those former tailed beast bits at all. He wasn't interested in trying, at least, and when the idea had been mentioned to Hinata she'd declined being a test subject as well.
During the festivities Naruto had made a point of speaking to each would-be suitor and their guards in private for at least a couple of minutes. Most at least started with congratulating him, even if several of them were obviously doing so out of obligation instead of meaning it, but the actual goal was to be able to talk to those who had 'problems' at home. But he'd approached all of them with a vague offer of assistance for any issues back home that he could reasonably assist with. One of the would-be suitors hadn't surprised him, two others had, another he'd thought would want help had declined, five total guards had expressed concerns of their own, and in the end he'd agreed to twelve new citizens for Uzushio. Eight present, plus four others that were being treated poorly and would be grabbed when belongings were being picked up.
That this would involve removing three prisoner seals was only partially unexpected as he'd already known about two of the three.
Four different nobles were going to wake up to a surprise in the morning as a result of this, though three of them would have a bigger one than the fourth. Those three the plan was to loot their estates as completely as possible overnight as they needed belongings grabbed from the main houses anyway and he wasn't in the mood to do a partial job of things with assholes. The last would only find that the captain of their guards was suddenly lacking in equipment and the ability to control chakra that had allowed someone who failed to become an Iwa shinobi to become captain of the noble's guards.
This all left one remaining problem though, and that was 'Madara'. But he'd stayed quiet during the discussions and Naruto hadn't made any indication that anything had changed with the man.
Shisui blinked a couple of times, then turned to Itachi. "I don't know if this is a village issue or a clan issue."
"Both," Itachi said, frowning. "Always was, this just changes things a little."
"With his sharingan largely unusable we can subdue him easily," Hinata said. "And from a combination of his own notes and the clan's notes we believe that removing and regrowing his eyes will force him back to a normal sharingan instead of a mangekyo. That would make it far easier to keep him contained here instead of on the island, though adding in chakra suppression seals might be needed as well."
"And what about the noble he decided to take over bodyguard duties for?" Shisui asked.
"Naruto has already paid for a mission to have a team escort her home."
"Huh. He didn't decide to do so himself?"
"It isn't something urgent or that requires skills most of the village lacks."
"I suppose."
Itachi sighed. "How hard would it be to return the eyes after replacing and regrowing them?"
Hinata shrugged. "That would be reasonably straightforward if we're careful with them, but Naruto has already said that he doesn't plan on bothering. There are other issues with the man that need to be taken care of as well, for that matter, though Naruto hasn't told me his plans for at least one of them beyond that it would be 'memorable' and promising that he'd catch it on camera."
"Removal and destruction of an Uchiha's eyes is a grave insult."
"He's currently effectively an enemy of both villages and when we're done he'll have both of his own eyes back. They won't be his originals, but they will be his. We could also expose him to the beast man formula to ensure that he'll regrow them if anyone else removes them again later too, for that matter."
Yeah, all of this was...completely outside of the normal considerations the clan normally had to worry about in the past. Itachi was very obviously torn, and Shisui sighed as he considered things. "Regardless of whether or not he was manipulated, he directly contributed to the death of the clan's elders. As I understand the clan's laws, that means that he isn't entitled to keep his eyes, so having them removed and regrown is justified. At the same time, destroying them feels like a waste."
Itachi nodded. "That is a good point."
Hinata shook her head. "Naruto claims that the clan law is very clear on his right to destroy the eyes."
"The clan's laws state that only the current head of the clan is permitted to make that call."
A scroll was pulled out of Hinata's pocket and placed on the table. "Naruto prepared these particular sections of the clan's laws for your review. You may be the clan head, but he says that the clan's laws establish that the head or the clan member in good standing with the highest level of the sharingan can make that call."
Shisui blinked, and thought back to what he knew of the clan's laws, rereading them in his mind thanks to a pass over them with his sharingan years ago even as Itachi opened the scroll and looked at it. That provision...was obscure, hadn't been used in generations due to a tendency for the clan head to hold a mangekyo and there being no distinction between different mangekyo in 'level'...but it was there and the rinnegan was arguably a higher level of the sharingan.
"I hadn't considered that I could be replaced as clan head at any time," Itachi noted. "Not that I expect Naruto or Yoko to want to take over, but this makes it very hard to argue that clan privilege requires that the eyes be preserved."
"It makes it impossible, you mean, unless we could somehow convince Yoko to challenge Naruto. The only other living holder of a rinnegan is both not a member of the clan and had the eyes implanted. But it seems that Naruto is willing to offer to leave interrogation and determination of other punishments to us due to no direct actions having been taken against Uzu yet."
"Yeah. Not that I'm sure where we'd even begin there, but we should probably take him up on the offer. But he also probably should've come to us in person."
"He's a bit busy this morning," Hinata explained.
"With what?"
"My apologies," Naruto said as three of his clones surrounded 'Madara'. "But I'm afraid that we have urgent business with your replacement bodyguard. I've arranged for a full team to escort you home instead."
"...what?" 'Madara' questioned, looking at the three in a panic.
Naruto turned the noble's daughter away, which served as a distraction as Kakashi put a chidori through the man's chest. Specifically, through his heart...and the weird living seal strapped around it. The clones surrounding the man used medical chakra to keep him alive as Kakashi removed his arm, closing up the wound and regrowing the heart even as the man's eyes were shredded and removed before they were similarly regrown.
Within a minute the only outwardly-obvious signs that anything had happened were the holes in the man's clothing, the blood on Kakashi's sleeve, and a few drops of blood on the ground. A chakra suppression seal was now present on the man's back though, under the remains of his shirt, and he still needed a pile of other work done.
Before anyone else in the area could react, the clones vanished with the man and Kakashi, even as the team that would be playing escort approached. Naruto would introduce them, then let the group decide when they'd depart.
"Don't think there's anything we can do," Toyokko said as he looked over the remains of the house. "You obviously pissed off shinobi."
"How?" Motorai asked, shivering a little. He'd woken up on a futon in the hole that used to be his family's home, even his sleepwear having been replaced with near-rags. The guest houses hadn't even had a shell left behind, a fully-grown tree sitting where the foundation of one of them had sat the day before, and the guard houses had been similarly emptied around the sleeping guards.
The only ones not stripped down to near-rags had been the overnight guards, but they were among his most trustworthy and he reluctantly believed them when they claimed to not have seen anything.
"I don't know," Toyokko answered. "For either how you pissed them off or how they managed this, but I can't see anyone else managing a feat like this. You might find out who it was and what their problem is if they try to ransom your wife, but given that they seem to have taken everything you own I don't think they're going to bother."
"They won't have emptied my accounts."
"...the ones that you need your missing hanko to access?"
"...fuck."
"One could possibly argue that you don't even own the land anymore."
That was...very much accurate, unfortunately, and he'd been largely responsible for the laws that made that the case. Not to mention used them repeatedly to expand his own holdings and fortune. Without his hanko and the dozens of property deeds in his office he wouldn't be considered to be the owner of any of what had been his properties...and without access to his money he couldn't even reliably bribe those that would need bribing to help him work around that.
Doubly so if whoever was responsible used his hanko to empty his accounts and transfer ownership of the properties before he could make the journey to the daimyo to attempt to recover from this.
"Good morning," Yoko said as she double-checked the healing done while ensuring that her chakra should keep emotions in check. Putting a chidori through someone's heart was physically taxing, but everything seemed to be good there. Regrowing the limbs that had been replaced with some other kind of flesh had ended up being harder and had taken Naruto a few hours, mostly purging the other flesh. "You're not a member in good standing of the Uchiha clan, and are obviously not Madara, so we're going to skip all that and just call you Obito for now."
"...what?" Obito asked.
"And you don't have to worry about that seal Madara put on your heart," Kakashi added. "Couldn't save Rin when she had one, but expert medics make having a heart violently removed survivable."
"But you no longer have your mangekyo sharingan," Yoko added. "Piercing your heart was also the last thing Kakashi did with the sharingan eye you gave him and he had us remove it while you were unconscious."
"Didn't think I deserved it anymore and activating the mangekyo ability took far too much of my chakra. Removing the same control seal that kept Rin from being able to return to Konoha was a fitting final task for it."
Obito blinked a couple of times. "Rin had one of those?"
"Yep. Set to ensure that she would release the three-tails if she returned to Konoha."
"...but, the only one...that bastard!"
"We think the entire clan was being manipulated," Yoko interrupted. "And as far as we know the culprit was likely killed when the moon was destroyed. That doesn't fully absolve you of the problems you caused and you're going to have to make a case for not being killed as a long-term traitor to the leaf."
Kakashi snorted. "That you haven't killed him is a pretty good justification all on its own."
"Of course, then there will also be not being killed by Amegakure, and that's before Kirigakure gets wind that the one behind what was done to Yagura has been captured."
Obito paled as some of that was brought up. "It might be less painful to be tortured and killed as a traitor to the leaf."
Kakashi rolled his eyes. "Amegakure is likely to be a problem, but for everyone else we can probably just say that 'Madara' was finally killed off for good. It's probably even accurate."
"Yeah, but Amegakure is the one I'm afraid of, especially without my mangekyo."
"Oh. Well, that is a problem, isn't it. Though I have to admit that you're not freaking out nearly as much as expected regarding your original sharingan being gone."
"You hit me with a chidori through the heart. Being alive at all is a bonus after that."
"I was assured that it was the safest way to remove the seal wrapped around said heart."
"Well, I can feel that it was successful. Though come to think of it, I am probably taking this too well."
Yoko resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She'd been ensuring that his emotions remained somewhat stable since waking him up. He didn't even seem to acknowledge that her hand had been in contact with him the entire time. Or have noticed the chakra suppression seal, though that would need daily reinforcement if they wanted it to last more than three days.
It had taken a week to process everything stolen from the nobles, most of that the transfer of ownership of properties that had been stolen from those using prisoner seals as part of keeping control of their own families. Only a quarter of the properties could be returned to those that had owned them before the nobles had effectively stolen them, with the rest being sold to various daimyo. Foreign daimyo, all eager to get their hands on land in neighboring countries as a means of exerting influence.
Half the proceeds of things went to the new citizens to help them get settled, the other half to Naruto's account that he used to pay for missions he requested.
Nagato had been contacted about Obito, specifically to inform him about the seal that had made the man an effective slave to Madara's plans and that significant manipulation had likely started before said seal had been placed, and Shisui had decided to put word out that Madara had been confirmed killed and the corpse had been fully destroyed this time.
"I thought you were building a tower for Bloodline Island," Ino commented as Naruto showed them a set of rooms off of the main bunker departure area. Which appeared to be smaller now.
"I figured out how to interface the seals with the computers," Naruto replied. "So instead of needing over twenty departure seals I only really need one or two, and can have the entire bunker network handled with a handful as well. Still need Hinata to clean things up though because I'm sure she'll look at my code and scream."
"...you tried to write code yourself?" Hinata questioned.
"Yes."
"I told you not to do that."
"And if it didn't work then I wouldn't have bothered you. With it working you have a barely-functional base to scream at me about before you rebuild it properly. Oh, and I'm working on replacing a bunch of stuff with more secure versions, including the phones in the bunkers as I work through replacing a bunch of the 'let any Uzumaki in' seals with ones that are more broadly configurable."
"...how many headaches have you created for me this time?"
"I just improved the connection linkages and overall security."
"...Naruto." He rolled his eyes and a moment later a clone appeared next to him with a table containing several circuit boards and one of the phone testing units. She visibly flinched at the circuit boards themselves. "You don't improve things by unnecessarily splitting them into pieces that attach at right angles!"
"Why not?" Before she could get into a rant he plugged the 'inner workings' card of a phone circuit into the 'outer components' card, then activated the seals in the latter. The surface of the card rippled for a moment before suddenly everything visible on that side of the card vanished into the card. A moment later the 'outer components' card was all that was left. "You did want to shrink things down to a minimum size, right? This even hides the connection seals in the middle layer of the circuit board instead of requiring hooking up to exposed pins." He snapped off the standard connector sticking off to one side of the board, then assembled the rest into a minimal phone casing before plugging the connector into the test unit and running through the test sequences for dialing and causing the phone to ring. Then he sealed the phone into a seal tag sitting on the table, counted to ten, unsealed it, and demonstrated that it still worked. "Hiding the connection seal portions inside of the main seal's folded space even solves the problem of them disconnecting if you seal part of the main seal away, though that was tricky to make work right."
"I think you broke her," Ino noted.
"She wanted to be able to minimize things and store them in seals. I needed to make slightly smaller and more secure identification card readers and keypads for the bunkers anyway, plus linkages to open the bunker doors, so coming up with a slightly more generic solution wasn't too horrible. The hardest part was going through one by one and testing which pieces had to be outside of the seal to keep chakra identification working."
"...it's a labeled component on the blueprints."
"I don't really understand the blueprints and she knows it."
Hinata twitched regularly through most of the quick walk-through of how he'd set up the departure seals to be able to be 'targeted' by the computers, though she did approve of the idea of each seal's 'controller' being individually registered with a list of destination seals it was allowed to be handed coordinates for. The girls also seemed to like that he'd made bloodline and training islands have one 'departure area' each with the various area departure seals all leading to that point on each island. That allowed for a simpler dedicated 'returning from Uzushio outlying island' tower instead of needing a tower per island.
"He just does these things without understanding the implications," Hinata said at dinner with her family a couple of days later, gesturing at the fully functional folding phone she'd pulled out of a seal. "The seals and technology teams can't figure out how he managed it at all, and once you break the connecting piece off it's impossible to nondestructively unseal the internal components. Right now he has to make the outer boards, though anyone can make the pieces that plug into them afterwards."
"I make things that solve problems you said existed and all you do is complain," Naruto quipped. "These can't be broken through a storage seal, can't have the connecting seal bits removed and swapped between units, and should be much harder for an enemy to even begin to examine the actual workings of even with a functional sample."
"But nobody else can understand how you did it! By all rights the seal in the middle of the circuit board should be impossible and half the components you 'hid away' generate too much heat to function continuously for more than a few hours without airflow!"
"Any excess heat energy is extracted to help keep the seal powered. I spent an hour on that part with both teams yesterday, how did you miss that?"
Hanabi sighed. "Have you put the connectors from a card reader and door servo unit into a door control board to permanently link the three?"
"I tested that, but decided that being able to swap out individual components without needing to rebuild the entire door of a bunker was a better idea. Having ports on the door control boards when slotting them into a communication rack in Uzushio isn't exactly a major security issue on its own anyway."
"Oh. Right. Because even 'local' hardware can be on the other side of the continent. I keep forgetting that."
"Because it's insane," Hinata noted. "But increases the relative security levels of things in significant ways at the same time and moving the communication pieces into the circuit board even negates someone trivially attaching a read and replay circuit."
"A what?" Naruto asked.
"...something that waits for someone to authenticate to the card reader, then records the signals sent so they can be sent again later."
"I thought you already had ways to stop that?"
"There are a handful of ways to mitigate that, most of which you've invalidated the need for."
"Huh."
"But our biggest problem is that we want things to be able to be reproduced without you having to build everything. When you keep doing things that even the other Uzumaki can't reproduce then you become a production bottleneck."
"I've documented everything."
"Everyone agrees that your documentation is better than most," Ino piped up. "It's just that implementing what you've documented requires an understanding most have no hope of achieving. The tech teams are also baffled as to how someone who can normally copy things at best managed to correctly adapt the circuits the way you did."
"Lots of trial and error, with around six thousand failures."
"...what?"
Naruto shrugged. "I failed six thousand times across all the circuits I was playing with."
Hinata sighed. "How many software revisions did you go through on your code before it worked?"
"Four."
That had Hinata blinking, though he wasn't sure why this time. "Naruto, your code was more secure than anyone was expecting. You obviously started with the door lock system code, but your changes were far better implemented than any of the tech team thought you were capable of and included useful tricks that are going to take weeks to months to get spread to other systems. How did it only take you four attempts?"
"Most of that was typos converting it back from seals."
"...converting it back from seals?"
"Yeah. I figured out that computer code can be represented as a subset of seal formulas, so I converted the door access code to seals, reworked it to do what I wanted with the departure seals, and then converted it back to computer code."
Hinata did not appear to appreciate that revelation, based on the pained groaning whine she let out. He quickly had some clones start properly documenting the conversion though, because he was positive that he'd be getting requests to look at it soon.
Jiraiya stumbled into the bar, dropping into the booth Orochi and Tsunade were already in. He was still amazed at how easy it was to slip the chipmunk woman into a different mental slot than 'Orochimaru'...though her being willing to answer to Orochi helped.
But in the light of what Naruto had been up to? The monster snakelike Orochimaru would've been just as welcome company.
"Naruto breaking brains again?" Tsunade guessed.
"Does he do that often?" Orochi asked.
"He and Yoko like to do so, yes. Generally because something annoyed them, so they came up with a way to make it go away faster. Though with it being Jiraiya, I'm guessing it's sage or seal related this time."
"Ah. I'm hoping that this body is compatible with sage training, but don't know where I'll be able to safely do so, and as much as I dislike admitting it I've never had a proper head for seals."
"Very few people do," Jiraiya agreed. "Doubly so when you realize just how far out there you have to be to reach the level of people like Naruto."
"Which probably means he did something impressive?"
"Oh, he's constantly doing impressive things. Frequently without realizing that they've got important use cases outside of his limited one, or completely overturn entire other fields."
"Like his seals that allow computers to communicate over seemingly any distance?"
"...yes."
"I do wish I could see a full set of those, but doubt that I'll get the chance anytime soon."
"Well, among other things apparently he figured out how to get around his complete inability to write proper code through converting existing code into a seal, reworking the seal to do what he wanted, and then converting it back into code. Plus a few new impossible innovations because of complaints Hinata had been making and wanting to get stuff into smaller spaces."
Orochi blinked, and looked like she didn't know how to respond to that, while Tsunade just snorted and refilled her glass. It wasn't long before Jiraiya was asked for his order, and even less time after that before he had his own bottle of sake.
"So Naruto has kept up his tendency to baffle and confuse while innovating," Tsunade said. "Presumably drastically improving security of something at the same time."
"Supposedly he came up with a more efficient and secure way of doing access checks," Jiraiya admitted. "Not that I understood what they were talking about, beyond that it makes it both faster and harder to mess with in the middle somehow. Personally, I was more interested in his insane method for saving space inside of technology."
Orochi blinked a couple of times. "...saving space? With seals, presumably?"
Tsunade shook her head. "Remember that this is the same kid that figured out how to seal a sword in its own tang, before even attaching a handle."
Jiraiya nodded his agreement. "Good point. Probably on the same level of insane here, honestly, because partially-sealed technology that functions as though it isn't sealed at all is definitely on that level."
"In its own tang?" Orochi asked, blinking. "But...how?"
"At least six groups of sealmasters have looked at that work and not been able to determine how he figured it out, but it works. Requires special forging methods that the toads taught the kid, plus he thinks that it's better to just seal the entire weapon away or make it able to be blown up like an explosive tag. Or any number of other effects. Neat trick, but not the best for an actual weapon."
"And he's responsible for the insane arenas and the duplicate of the Forest of Death too?"
"Oh, he's up to at least three duplicates of the latter in different ways. The one here on the island is the safest of them, and you should see his maps."
"That's reasonably well known. I'm reasonably certain he has better maps of my facilities than I do at this point in time."
"I mean world maps. He's got an insane range on them."
"...really?"
"Compliments of Uzushio," came a voice as a scroll was dropped on the table in front of Orochi. Jiraiya had joined the other two in jumping, but none of them seemed to be able to tell who the fuck had just gotten the drop on them.
...which meant it was probably a disguised Naruto. With stealth like that there were very few enemies that he needed to fight.
Once the three of them had recovered, as much as you could when you'd just gotten that kind of scare, Orochi opened the scroll and found that it contained a 'key' map and a set of seals.
"This goes...far beyond the elemental nations," Orochi finally said, just staring at the key map.
"Told you," Jiraiya replied.
"How did he even get information on things that far out?"
"Don't know, though I'm told that at least some of it only happened because he picked up a signal from something and headed in that general direction to investigate. So presumably the village investigated everything in the general direction in the process."
"...why is there a marker for the Land of the Sky on here?"
Jiraiya joined Tsunade in jerking their heads to stare at Orochi, only to focus on the key map. Orochi beat them to finding the correct seal number to pull a larger scroll out, which was quickly unrolled onto the table. It showed docks with large ships, a small village around the flying fortress, and indicated population numbers that were far larger than they should be.
"Is there a reason that nobody has done anything about this?" Tsunade asked.
"Naruto isn't aware of the likely threat they pose?" Jiraiya guessed. "Or doesn't think that they do pose a proper threat, perhaps. Uzushio has options for granting flight without machines and could trivially take the fight to the air, and if they haven't gotten their flying city working again then they're much less of a threat."
"There's information on docks for large ships in here," Orochi pointed out. "Ones that would probably give them much further reach than they had back then."
"...fuck."
"I wonder if I have enough spare funds to pay for a mission to ensure that they won't become a threat anytime soon?"
"I should bring it up with Shisui as well. The more funding sources for a problem like this the better. Assuming he doesn't send teams himself, of course, but most of the flight options are currently here in Uzu."
"I'll have to request more information before I depart in the morning. I've probably spent too long here, but I wanted to be around until the orphans were settled."
It was interesting thinking about the kinds of things that could bring a team back together. First the potential mind-control abuse of a young lady and now the potential resurgence of an enemy none of them wanted to see try to return to power.
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