Capítulo 2706: 96
Naruto looked up at the exam island, more monitoring through messages from his clones than anything else but pretending to do otherwise. The last group of civilians were being sent through the transport pads now, not that they needed to evacuate immediately.
"Seems odd that you're pulling everyone out despite still needing to fly it back for repairs," A commented. He and Mei had decided to stick around long enough to observe this with Naruto and Onoki.
"I underestimated the resourcefulness of idiots," Naruto replied. "And didn't adequately protect a couple of critical energy transfer points. Only discovered that when someone trying for a last grabbing of info before running off from Iwa made it into an area they shouldn't have been able to access, but it gives me a good reason to rebuild and revamp a couple of things."
"That said a lot of nothing," Mei pointed out.
"It said he expects things to be bad enough to warrant rebuilding," A corrected.
Naruto nodded. "Do you have any idea how much power it takes to keep something that large floating in the air?"
Mei shook her head. "Nowhere near as much as I thought, because I'd have called it impossible."
"I'm going to assume you don't realize just how much power the island generates then, but you're going to get a taste of it when the containment system fails."
"Fails?" Onoki asked, suddenly sounding incredibly worried. Well, they were standing in the Land of Earth.
"We've got somewhere between thirty seconds and eighteen minutes now, but it'll show off the final emergency measure I ensured the island has."
Everyone around him looked worried and curious about that, but a little over a minute later the damaged containment system failed. Massive amounts of energy suddenly gained access to paths that weren't supposed to be taken and exploded out of the top of the island, sending a massive beam of energy into the air. Naruto nodded at that, hiding his grin as the impromptu energy cannon fired exactly where he'd predicted after turning the island a few degrees. Eighteen seconds of energy release was followed by a complete shutdown of the island's systems, and then a pulse of light covered the island as the evacuation teleportation spell completed.
The sudden lack of island caused some wind as air rushed to fill the void, and attention naturally shifted to the beam of energy itself. It had struck the incredibly damaged remains of the moon basically dead-on, and as a side bonus to this whole problem should be pushing the remains away from the planet instead keeping them in a gradual decaying orbit that could cause a pile of problems in a few decades.
"Well," Naruto said after a couple minutes of silence. "Now I just have to decide on how to handle a few of the details on the replacement. No way I'm going to be able to trust the structural integrity of that one after who knows how much energy just flowed through it and overheated components."
Kakuzu looked up at the remains of the moon as the single largest release of chakra he'd ever felt took several seconds to obliterate portions of the remains and push them out of their former orbit. Blinking, he evaluated the angles involved and his best guess for where the chakra had come from was the Land of Earth. Northern though, along where he believed there was some coastline...and without having had a camera to do better measurements he probably couldn't rule out the Land of Iron. All of that also assumed that he was right about where he was, of course.
He was confident enough in the latter to say that had definitely come from the general area of the Elemental Nations in some fashion. Perhaps he wouldn't be heading back that way after Jashin was confirmed dead after all, because it seemed like things might have escalated just a little more than he was comfortable wading back into after a few decades. Though come to think of it, that could be a very early test of some things Sasori said Kumo had been thinking of too, assuming the reports of 'in early planning' were wrong. But that would imply that he was personally much further east than he thought he was.
...it probably wasn't important who had caused it, just that it had been caused and even at this distance obviously hadn't felt even remotely like a tailed beast.
Nodding to himself, he turned back to constructing the 'shrine' perimeter fence around the former mountain. Convincing anyone who did wander out this way that it was a holy place that shouldn't be intruded upon should hopefully keep down the number of people that might interfere with the killing of the idiot buried under the rubble.
Ino looked over the group of chunin, several of them just-promoted. Luckily the seal to grant direct shapeshifting instead of through a connection to Naruto didn't have some of the same problems with a period of lack of control, but at the same time the new one required more training if you had no experience. "It seems that all of you have successfully gone through the first stages of things and now need to learn how to use what you can now do."
Hanabi looked smug, as he had experience with the 'connected to Naruto' version of the seal, but likely didn't realize that there was a learning curve for changing between them. Learning how to include and exclude clothing, for example. There was a good chance the boy would end up unintentionally naked in transformation a few times before figuring it out. Himeki next to him just looked excited, having been denied access until reaching chunin after determinations that 'super infiltrators' were really a bad fit for those starting out.
There was a variant of things for those who were genin, primarily infiltrating civilian targets with little to no expectation of shinobi-related problems, but they also didn't get the shapeshifting ability.
"For those who haven't noticed," Ino continued. "This is a joint Uzushio and Konoha program. While each village has their own bunkers for various purposes, and maintains individual intelligence departments, to reduce discoverability we have an agreement to share infiltration bunkers and access points to areas. It helps that Uzushio has, essentially, installed ninety percent of them at this point in time and is gradually replacing the rest with improved versions."
"This means that you get to go through her exercises and mine," Anko said as she caused the entire group other than Hanabi and Himeki to jump. "Damn. I'm losing my touch."
"Because you couldn't catch Hinata's brother and his girlfriend by surprise?"
"...that would be a mitigating factor. Hmmm. I've also got some experience with them, so I guess they're more used to my antics than the bulk of them."
"Half of the room has experience with you," Himeki offered. "But only three of us can see through the backs of our heads and pushing for unconscious chakra sensing is rare."
Anko blinked, and looked between Ino and Himeki. "Wasn't she the shy one?"
"You cut my ear off last month. I'm allowed to be a little annoyed that you're here."
"Ah," Anko said, flinching. "Right. Forgot about that."
Ino nodded. "You're a fan of object lessons in dodging." She then slapped the table in front of her, unsealing the stacks of books that had been sealed into it. "Before Anko gets to throw things at you, all of you need to read up on a few things. Exercises for your new ability, scent masking and changing, chakra sensing and masking, and some tricks we've come up with for getting alternate personalities working faster. Do pay attention to the 'even while sleeping' elements where present. We'd like you to not be found out because someone looked in on you while you were sleeping."
"Do be aware that you aren't leaving this facility until you're cleared or can sneak out yourselves," Anko added. "You can't summon or be summoned here without being tied into a secondary access list."
"We warned them about that before they signed up."
"Nobody said we could try to sneak out ourselves," Okari pointed out.
"Nobody said you couldn't, but if you can fool everything to get out without being caught then you've probably earned a promotion."
Yoko had taken over a week to examine things around the various shrines to see why some things were happening. Some of it was a bit hard to figure out reliably, so she had 'best guesses'. Like the chain reaction of small shifts and collapses in a mine causing runoff from the mine to shift around twenty meters and no longer hit the well it used to run into, seemingly caused by the rising of the water table due to the Suijin shrine runoff coupled with a strong rainstorm overnight one night.
She'd have struggled to figure out how to manage that with so little effort, let alone actually accomplishing it without possibly causing a dozen other issues. In fairness though, she'd probably not have considered 'make that one well safe' either as the poisoned water was still there and traveling along. It just wasn't hitting that well anymore.
The crops were a lot harder to figure out in the area as even going out in person didn't give her a good picture. She couldn't feel the effects of the Inari honden spreading to where it shouldn't, but could definitely tell that it was when she examined the crops themselves. Though the omamori were a potential wildcard, if the farmers were carrying some around while working after a quick trip to the shrine? That had become a near-ritual for most of them.
Then there was the 'wells no longer holding saltwater' thing, which appeared to be another 'shift in groundwater patterns caused a precise collapse and redirected the problem water' situation. That had at least caused a sinkhole nearby that nobody had noticed and had required some work to clean up before it could become a larger problem. Not much work, but some, and her clones had been in the area anyway.
Of course, then there was the Land of Fire's capital. She'd not realized it at first, but there was weirdness there too. The Omoikane shrine's honden seemed even better at putting people into a calm and less-emotional state than expected, on top of being attributed as the source of ideas coming out of nowhere for those near it. She'd expected a significantly reduced bandit level in the area as well, but not for spies from other countries to be revealed in ways that were being attributed to the Amaterasu portion of the shrine by many in the capital.
Having several reports from entirely different people all describe it as 'light shone on the deceptions of the spies' was a little weird though, as none of them described that as literally happening.
Sighing, she put all of her notes on that to the side and prepared for a meeting with Shion. The priestess had traveled back from the Land of Demons in order to reach one of the shrines for a meeting and got to see the transport pads in action.
"Good morning," Shion greeted as she entered the room, offering a polite bow.
"Good morning," Yoko replied, gesturing to the other seat in the office. "Please, sit down."
"Thank you." It took a moment for her to sit down and get comfortable while wearing her priestess outfit, and then she looked back up at Yoko. "I'm hoping that you can help with improvements to the shrine network that I'm in charge of."
"Surely you have local groups that handle construction? Your shrines have much more local styles and concerns than ours."
"Your shrines are obviously much more spiritually-aligned than those I tend to, even before considering your ability to train up others to be priestesses instead of that being tied to a dwindling number of blessed family lines."
Ah. Yes. The problem with doing a job too well. Which either meant continuing to bluff about things that could have an actual effect on shrines with a known reason to exist or coming clean. It didn't help that the remains of Miroku bouncing around in her head didn't really want to lie to her daughter.
Sighing, Yoko grabbed a couple of the sheets from her stack and a few others from a drawer. "I'm going to be honest with you. Everything we've set up, right down to the original shrine in Konoha, is essentially shinobi trickery. Seals and chakra used to make it look like the shrines are real, started through a challenge to make a hidden seal that could provide water to Konoha if the village needed a reliable source of clean water. Seals like that for various things handle everything, right down to the sparkling of the torii gates when we walk through them. We have seals that grant the ability to generate the chakra needed to trigger all of that too."
Shion blinked at that as the sheets were pushed over to her, some reports of the status of the seals at one of the shrines and some basics on the process new recruits went through to get light chakra nodes. After a moment she picked the sheets up to review them, and a few minutes of contemplation followed before she nodded and placed them back down. "I don't think this changes much. You were just as effective, if not more so, against Mōryō than I believe I would've been. What you are doing very obviously works, regardless of how authentic you believe it to be, and I do not believe any of the changes would negatively impact the other reasons the shrines exist. In fact, several of the areas the shrines sit in could use some of the other effects your shrines can provide, such as clean water."
Damn. Revealing the truth was supposed to discourage the girl and convince her to go away, not convince her and add to workloads.
Shion was honestly surprised that she'd not started hyperventilating while talking with Yoko. Originally an expectedly ungifted shrine maiden, quickly going from 'ungifted' to 'has the divine gift that priestesses need'...except it was now obvious that wasn't what had happened. No, if the young woman had merely been given the divine touch that her own ancestors had received then she would at most be able to be a proper priestess and spawn a new family of those with the gift.
Being one that was willing to go to the effort of 'faking' shrines and their beneficial effects in the names of the gods, doing all of the work but taking none of the credit, had very likely gotten the attention of the gods...and they'd likely played a bit of a 'prank' of their own in elevating Yoko to minor goddess herself. How else could she casually grant divine blessings for those she worked with, set up proper divine shrines, and throw together divine miracles?
It also helped explain how Yoko had been able to slap down Mōryō with such ease. A demon against a priestess was one thing, but pitting one against an unknowingly-elevated goddess was another.
Having a set of exercises that needed to be worked on to be a 'proper priestess' of the Land Hidden in the Shrines had been expected, but it was the new revelations that made living up to the provided expectations so much more important. There were physical and chakra requirements, on top of eventually getting a divine healing gift that would be invaluable for helping her people in the future.
Getting reprimanded again for burying her emotions had also brought up the memory that Yoko had, impossibly, had contact with her mother. Just another sign that the young woman was far more than she appeared to be, and likely didn't realize it...
Odoroki shook her head as another group took pot-shots at the island. So far they'd only had the one impact to the shields, and thus the one set of retaliation, but the level of the terrain below the island was rising more than falling at this point. It likely wouldn't be long before they reached a point where the ground was high enough for the weapons being used to impact the shields.
"I just got an alert from the computers," Matatabi sent out from the Tome. "We're going to be stopping for at least two hours 'for scanning', but we'll apparently be just over the hill from a slave labor camp. Naruto left a message saying that if you three want to then you could fly down and dismantle that."
"When did he start thinking six or seven steps ahead of us?" Futo asked.
"He likely hit two or three steps ahead of us around age eleven," Odoroki answered. "He just did a much better job of hiding it before now, but this will solve Ren's boredom problem nicely and we're not fans of slave labor."
"Which he likely knew and ensured that we'd pass by this point for that reason."
"Duh. Shall we go see how much information he left on the camp so that we know what we're getting into?"
Futo pointed at a computer terminal in the observation room that was blinking. "I think he anticipated us being in this room, because the terminal there seems to be showing information for us."
"The island is keeping track of movements inside of it," Matatabi interjected. "Powering down areas nobody is in and watching for unexpected movements that could indicate infiltrators. Presumably that allows 'show things on a nearby terminal'."
"Thank god," Odoroki said. "If he was able to predict that we'd be in this particular observation room for this then I'd be a lot more concerned about how much we'd been led around lately."
A quick review of the provided information on the camp had them agreeing that it needed to be shut down and the mine it was attached to should probably be collapsed. Maybe after sending all those running the camp into it, as there was no good way to imprison them. Nor a desire to, given how they apparently treated the slaves. There was even a suggestion for what to do with said slaves as taking them up to the island wasn't an option, directing them to a well-marked yet well-disguised path through the mountain to the next country over.
...that path was likely put in by Naruto just for this purpose. Cheeky, but it was hard to argue effective preparations.
Iruka looked over the notes on the likely-to-graduate academy students. They had a few that had filled out the forms for shifting to shrine training, two that wanted to go straight into non-combat culinary pursuits, and a group of four that had requested a new option. The problem was that he couldn't do anything to approve such an option, so had to talk to Naruto about it, and there was a line.
...he kind of wished he hadn't been in the group that had pushed for Naruto not using clones to attend a dozen meetings at once to 'get things over with faster'. Doing so would set a bad precedent for future holders of the Uzukage position though, as it was unlikely that the next one would have quite so much chakra.
Eventually the others that had been ahead of him in line were done and Iruka was able to enter.
"Special requests from students?" Naruto questioned.
"...yes," Iruka admitted with a shrug. "Figured you'd already know."
"I've not been keeping a close eye on things, but you are holding a set of forms for those requests."
"Fair point. We have a group of students that want to form a traveling musical act. They'd originally decided to see about using instruments as weapons and are decent at weaving genjutsu into their playing, but I think they honestly prefer the performance side of things more than the idea of fighting."
Naruto nodded. "I can see how that would be the case, though I'm not sure why that requires special permission."
"They seem to think it would be a good infiltration cover, and they are scoring well in the infiltration classes, but they want to treat the infiltration as the 'secondary' aspect instead of the primary."
"Well, they'd kind of need to in order to not be obvious about it. Performing groups in general would present a more opportunistic infiltration profile, slipping into places where they're booked to perform instead of targeting specific areas in a general sense. They wouldn't even necessarily need to be the infiltrators, their stage hands and such able to perform that role...but to sell it they'd probably need to figure out who would play 'manager' for them. Do they have any suggestions?"
Iruka blinked, then flipped through the forms. "No, it doesn't look like they even considered that."
Naruto popped open a drawer and pulled out some blank forms, passing them across the desk. "Send the forms back and tell them to fill out these 'long-term infiltration-adjacent position' forms, because that's basically what they're looking for. The specifics would fall under the infiltration department to work out with them either way."
"I hadn't considered the adjacent positions, though I think that's in part because we don't normally describe that side of things."
"You don't, because those not interested enough in infiltration duties really shouldn't be considering that we might have groups of non-infiltration people that are doing things entirely to provide cover for infiltrators in some other fashion."
"True. This just means that I have to consider when to direct students that way instead."
Akira stared at the contraption in front of him, slated to be added to the list of 'ways to mass-produce seals'. A talented seal master with the ability to make paperwork clones was the highest quality option. The Uzukage's insane trees and bushes that could grow working seals were stupidly reliable, though slow. Screen printing was an abomination that sadly still worked incredibly well for a large number of seals, so long as you didn't need to have 'this stroke passed over that stroke' level detailing.
...Hinata's new 'seal printer' was another matter entirely.
"You made a printer that prints, dries, and properly sets seals," Akira finally said, watching as the brush in the contraption expertly laid out a storage seal.
"Yes," Hinata replied. "Using the input patterns from the seal analysis system."
"People have tried this before. Uzumaki have tried this before. It never works properly."
"I don't understand how the seals work, but I understand how the technology and chakra flows work. Can't get it working on metals yet, but paper and ink turned out to be surprisingly easy once I thought of it."
The contraption sent the 'drying pulse' of chakra over the storage seal it had been printing, then ejected the sheet and loaded another one to repeat the process. He picked up the sheet and examined it, finding that it appeared to be perfect at an initial glance. Half the speed of a proper seal master's output, in his opinion, and nowhere near as fast as the 'screen printer' method could be done, but it appeared to be correct.
Pushing chakra into the correct point to 'activate' the seal caused it to pulse, twist, and settle into the 'empty' state. Ready to have items sealed into it. Even the screen printing only worked because the person running the machine had their own chakra. This machine was somehow replicating even that.
"Does it work if nobody with chakra is nearby?" he asked, wondering if their presence was making it work.
"Yes," Hinata answered, grinning. "I've tested it in nineteen places with varying levels of chakra saturation."
"Has the rest of the technology division looked at this thing yet?"
"I figured that I'd drag both sides in together, given what it does. Oh, and this is in 'slow' mode." She reached over, then paused. As the current seal completed and was ejected she flipped a switch and the contraption went from 'a bit slow' to 'far too fast'. "It's just hard to see what's going on when you have it turned up to full speed. I figured that those checking to ensure it's drawing the seals correctly would like to be able to examine the movements more carefully."
He had no clue what to think about a contraption that could spit out perfect seals at speed like this. It was obviously 'drawing' them properly, meaning that you got over and under and other such distinctions that the screen printing method couldn't handle, but it also removed the artistry and practice needed to ink proper seals at all. On the flip side, it would mean that they'd no longer need to spend a week a month inking seals...
Shino looked at the paperwork his grandfather had gathered. One pile appeared to be for his own transfer to Takigakure, while the other was for Fu's transfer to Konohagakure. "I find myself...confused."
"You're a bit too much like me," his grandfather replied. "And I'm tired of watching you and Fu dance around each other. The only reason she hasn't 'shared your bed' is because when she visits you both sleep out in the hives instead. Shibuki and Shisui have ensured that all the hurdles are cleared so that you can go to Taki to set up an Aburame branch with her there or she can officially join Konoha. As it stands, we expect her to arrive in the next hour after Shibuki has a similar talk with her, and you will discuss things with her."
That...was not what had been expected from things, and implied...hmmm. It could very well be that he and Fu were similarly outside of the 'norm' for romantic expressions and simply hadn't associated their actions with one another in that context, but in hindsight it was reasonably obvious that there might be something there...assuming it wasn't a mental fabrication to make this make sense. It would require discussion with her though...and possibly a quick trip to ensure that he had a proper pair of sunglasses for her.
It was also likely that if they went through with things that Fu would transfer to Konoha, as she repeatedly expressed concerns about how those in Taki treated her insect features. Obtaining some items for her 'home' in the hives to start to expand it into a proper living space might not be a bad idea either...
Wame grinned as she compared her notes on modifying spells to the Uzukage's. She'd not expected to find that she'd done her changes in an entirely different manner to his versions, though supposed that it made sense to replace the explosive component instead of adding to it. Though her 'put the explosion in the middle of the sphere of water' version was apparently a great way to spread water for putting out fires.
She'd gotten the alternate spells working for herself, and he'd personally escorted her through to the bloodline island seals for enhanced healing ability so that she could work on making a healing bullet...or any kind of healing spell at all. He wasn't feeling picky there, but felt that a bullet might be easier than most options once she had the healing ability. She just had to watch out for people biting her as that would rapidly drain her chakra to heal them.
...why that had been desired enough for someone to make it in the past was a bit of a mystery. Surely you'd want it to be triggered by the person instead of automatic 'you bit me'?
Whatever the case, she had much more information than she'd originally been given and had ideas for bullets that could seek out specific things in a general sense. Being able to throw out a group of bullets that sought out injured people would be neat, but it was probably more useful to be able to blind-fire spell bullets that sought out open flames to put them out with water.
Perhaps she could become the head of a new spells division when she had enough notes on creating and modifying them?
Ino looked over the request for potential graduating academy students to shift towards becoming a music group that could be a cover for infiltrators. It was an interesting idea...with the catch that there was no guarantee that they'd be popular enough for it to be worth it. A proper manager would be needed, and it would be a few years before the group was likely to be old enough to be taken seriously.
But a few years would also give them time to have a proper understanding of their instruments, prepare songs, and learn to work with their future 'manager'. Whoever that ended up being, they'd likely be the official contact with the infiltration department when away from Uzushio itself. Having the performers handle the infiltration work itself would be a poor choice when blaming it on them being 'hoodwinked' by the support staff would be better in case of discovery, so the bulk of their training would be in not giving away that they knew infiltration was probably going to happen at times.
Unfortunately, while they had plenty of direct infiltration training, the only 'direct training for infiltration-adjacent roles' option they'd intentionally set up so far was the shrine network. Everything else was 'someone with useful skills happens to provide a cover', so setting up for a variety of options for deliberate training to allow for those who would only facilitate infiltration was going to be needed. Not that it was a complete surprise, as it was on the long-term goals for when their shinobi numbers were high enough, but they'd not actually started on it yet.
By the numbers, they should be starting on that in two years. But you didn't wait for the numbers when people started showing an interest, which meant starting on...
Pausing, Ino sighed and grabbed the phone on her desk. Punching the single-button dial option for Naruto only took a moment, though she had no clue whether he or a clone somewhere would answer.
"What do you need?" Naruto asked.
"I'm betting that if I go through the headache of setting up infiltration-adjacent training plans that you'll then hand over better ones," Ino replied. "Can we skip that and just have you hand over what you already have?"
"The basic plans have been in cabinet nineteen for over a year now."
She bit back a sigh as she made a couple of clones to go look. "...of course they have."
"Cabinets twenty through sixty-two are specific job thoughts. There's an index in the top front of cabinet twenty. Hinata wrote a third of them as she ended up learning professions while researching things, I've got half, and the remaining are random contributions from others."
At least she'd saved herself days of effort through realizing that she had nothing on her spouses when it came to overachieving. But she also probably needed to have a few clones go through the entire infiltration records room so that she didn't get blindsided with things like this again.
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