บท 25: Overly Complicated Solutions
Hokage's Office (Minato's Point of View)
Minato was an interesting day to say the least. His son was starting to get on his nerves. Every day, he would pester him for a C-rank mission like his sister's. His son had been on D-ranks for the past two days and like all shinobi at this stage in their careers, he was already sick of them.
Passing the final genin exam had been relatively simple for their team. Well, it wasn't exactly fair. As snarky as Kakashi tends to be, he's a sucker for tradition and well, Kamui already covered what the traditional scenarios were with her brothers at the beginning of the last year. Just remembering that conversation rendered him helpless.
(Flashback)
Hokage's Office (Minato's Point of View)
Minato couldn't suppress his joy. He was so proud of them. Even if he had taught them most of the requirements to be successful shinobi; they still had to pass the bell test themselves. He had made sure never to mention the exact contents of the exam and informed his two wives to do the same. He had even made it a point to remove any mention of it in the records he kept at home.
Standing in front of him was the newly minted team 7 who had just reported their completion of the bell test.
Naruto had his arms behind his head with his trademark smile reminiscent of the sun. Sasuke stood next to him with his own cool smile; like all Uchiha, any joy he felt had to be filtered through his ego. Kakashi stood there without much care, reading Master Jiraiya's book. Sakura was the worrisome one; she was looking at Sasuke like he was a juicy snack. It was a little disturbing.
'Should I move her to a more fitting team? This is starting to look like a problem.' He thought to himself.
Sighing to himself, he looked at the four of them and started, "Congratulations you three. As of this moment I, Fourth Hokage Minato Namikaze, declare you ninjas of the hidden leaf village. While you were registered days ago, that record will now reflect your completion of your final requirement. "He stated with a burning pride that couldn't be concealed.
"Yahoo! We're finally ninjas!" Naruto jumped up with his right fist raised to the sky. Sakura didn't say anything, but her mood lifted at Naruto's words.
"Can it loser. Why're you celebrating over something so basic. We still have to catch up to our sister."
Sakura looked like she wanted to rebuke him as well to follow her crush's example, but her eyes subtly darted Sasuke's way every so often, probably afraid to annoy him instead.
"Oh, come on jerk! You gotta celebrate these things. I mean, this would've been a lot harder without Kamui's help." Naruto blurted out.
Sasuke's face scrunched up in frustration; it was rare for Naruto to one up him in a verbal argument.
"She helped you?" Kakashi asked as he looked toward his sensei.
"This is news to me too. What did she do?" Minato asked. Honestly, he would've preferred it if Naruto kept his mouth shut, but that's probably too much to ask for. He is his mother's son after all.
Naruto looked at Sasuke, who nodded; he would take the lead. It was always like this. Sasuke was better at explaining things than Naruto was. That didn't mean Naruto was stupid; he just had an instinctive creativity. It was like the universe was feeding ideas into his subconscious. If he didn't know any better, Minato would think him the reincarnation of some great figure. That's a bit ridiculous though.
Sasuke began explaining, "Well, a year ago Kamui came to us with the reality that we were likely to be tested outside of the academy. She even pointed out that all genin have to do it. The only ones who seemed to know about it are the clans." Sasuke paused. Before he could continue, Kakashi asked a question he and Minato both had.
"How did she find out then? It's supposed to be secret." He asked.
"I'm wondering the same. You may not realize it, but Kushina, Mikoto and I went through a lot of effort to keep that to ourselves." Minato added his two cents, his expression cool. He wasn't mad; they were shinobi. Getting information like this was their job. It was just his job as Hokage and a proud father to understand how.
"According to her, she trailed some of the graduated academy students during our 6th year. She attached her teleport markers along with a basic genjutsu seal to a few of your voice recording seal papers and slipped a few inside the head bands that the academy gave out; there's a small pocket between the metal and the band with enough space to slip it inside." Sasuke started.
The two adults were already getting a headache at how this was done without anyone noticing. How did he know that no one noticed? He was just learning about this now. If something suspicious was identified, he would have been told.
Kakashi, on the other hand, was mentally nodding his head in appreciation. Kamui might as well have been Itachi 2.0; this reminded him of his former comrade in terms of tactics, just a lot more inventive. Itachi may have been a better shinobi by that age, but he wasn't very creative; he was just highly proficient with what had been taught.
Sasuke continued, "She recorded everything from the graduation day, to the tests from the respective jonin senseis, and finally the feedback toward the end. After a couple of days, Kamui had shadow clones take the form of crows and monitored every genin till they were separated from anyone she felt could detect the next part. Once a person was in an ideal positon, she remotely invoked the genjutsu. The genjutsu was simple; it made their brains perceive through their eyes what they were already anticipating." Sasuke paused again, expecting the obvious question.
Sakura beat everyone to it. "What does that mean?" she asked. This was getting confusing. This sounded like a lot to do on their sixth year. She was honestly starting to feel like she was slacking off when hearing about the lengths her classmate went to gather this intel.
Sasuke shook his head at what he was about to say and started, "Based on what she said, the idea was based off how the sharingan perceives information; it predicts what's going to happen based off the information it's taking in and showing that to the user. It's where our 'future sight' comes from."
While he was explaining, Kakashi's eyes widened in realization. Knowing the sharingan as well as he did, he knew very well what Sasuke was talking about. 'That's cheating. That reduces the variables a genjutsu would need to account for by a lot! In theory, a genjutsu that simple could even be used by mid-level chunin. Even if the genjutsu stalled someone for a second or two, that could drive up the success rates on close-range assassinations significantly.' he thought frantically; he would need to talk to Kurenai about taking this further. Minato was of a similar opinion. He didn't need to have a sharingan to know what Sasuke was talking about.
"Well, non-Uchiha brains do that as well. The brain makes predictions for what it expects to happen in the coming moments. Kamui just capitalized on that and tricked the genins' eyes for a split second to allow the teleport to go off undetected. Really, it was an over complicated method to achieve a simple objective. According to Kamui though, 'it's simply a string of basic techniques strung together in a logical sequence. It just sounds complicated because you're hearing about them all at once. The exception would, of course, be the teleportation jutsu used to get the tags back.'"
"What….?" Sakura muttered.
"Don't worry Sakura. I didn't get it either." Naruto said cheerfully.
Kakashi was stumped. 'This girl is insane. She did all that, just to steal from some genin. It would have been easier and just as effective to just put them in a sharingan-based genjutsu when they're at home and take it that way.'
Smirking at their reactions, Sasuke came to the conclusion of his story, "From there it was simple. Kamui turned a page in our student workbook into info boards like the ones they use at the gate and passed the intelligence that way; she just made it so that the sentence was transmitted only in the form of a genjutsu; only the person who had the registered chakra signature would be put under the genjutsu's effects. To anyone else, it was an empty page. With that means of communication, she transmitted every tested scenario, how the genin performed, and the lessons learned. In the seventh year, she routinely used this method to quiz us on scenario-based questions. It was purely theoretical, but it made a lot of sense with the lessons Iruka taught us. It basically put those lessons into proper context."
Hearing that last explanation, Minato's expression went stern, stunning the genin. He pulled out a notebook out of one of the drawers of his desk and wrote the last part down. Once he was done, he faced back to the shocked genin.
Seeing their expressions, he embarrassedly explained, "Sorry about that. That last bit was important. It could change the way written messages are sent to shinobi in the field; we'd never thought of using genjutsu to obfuscate information like that; it's currently only used for combat and mental treatment purposes. It's similar to what happened with the info transfer boards. It all started as a way for Kamui to write to us during class in a race to alleviate her boredom. As you can see, I had to implement that officially in the village once its applications became clear."
"So, you're saying that her studying session just changed the way we send messages?" Sakura asked, astonishment radiating from her face.
Minato nodded. "I am. You can do stuff like this as well if you apply yourself. You were identified as one of the brightest students in the advanced class after all. Don't think lesser of yourself. After all isn't my presence here proof that civilians can succeed?" Sakura chuckled and nodded her head in agreement.
Minato continued, "I want you to understand something Sakura; the things we heard Sasuke describe were individually simple tasks. The parts that made them astonishing were how they were implemented and the possibilities we weren't exploring as a village. That's all that was.
"My daughter's biggest problem with the village is that she doesn't agree with how shinobi view the world. According to her, 'in trying to keep everything a secret, shinobi lost their creative spark. Shinobi have relied so heavily on a few sets of techniques being viable that they have forgotten how to create more'.
"I'm not going to provide my opinion on that in this setting, but I want you to keep it in mind. Don't limit yourself to the established norm. Experiment on the possibilities. Just make sure Kakashi is there with you when you do, for safety." He explained.
"Wow…" Sakura mumbled; she felt like she had entered a whole new world. To the side, Sasuke and Naruto smiled at their newly enlightened teammate.
"This was all an amazing story, but are you sure you should have explained that to us Sasuke?" Kakashi asked, his eyes squinting to denote a smile.
"Yes, she said I was good to spill the beans once we won, but not a second earlier." Sasuke replied with a smile, Naruto joining him.
"Very wise." Kakashi said, his expression unchanged.
Minato chuckled. "I think we have a lot to think about. Anyways, great job everyone. Make sure you take that as inspiration for your future training."
"Right!" the three of them said in unison.
"Alright, you're dismissed." Minato said.
(End of Flashback)
Soon after that discussion, he assigned Kurenai to aid Kushina and Mikoto in developing a seal to replicate the function Sasuke described. Between Mikoto and Kurenai, the genjutsu angle was covered. Kushina handled the seal portion. The objective was to simplify it as much as possible. Then, they would need to work on a chakra storage repository for all of his ninjas. It would allow him to code messages to their chakra when they're away on mission. Kamui's idea was a simple skeleton of the network they were about to build.
Suddenly, a knock at the door shook him out of his thoughts.
"Lord Fourth, Jonin Uzuki and Genin Uchiha are here to report the completion of our mission and other accompanying details." Yugao said from the other side of the door. With that, she flared her chakra in a pattern used by the Hokage's anbu guard. It conveyed that the intelligence was S-Rank.
Minato's face became stern as he realized that he potentially just sent his daughter on a very dangerous mission.
'What had to have happened for them obtain S-Rank intelligence during a bandit extermination?' he pondered, half panicking on Mikoto and Kushina's eventual reactions to the situation. 'Well, it's a one-time thing. It's not like it'll be a re-occurring event, right?' He would curse these thoughts for jinxing him a month later when he received word about a certain wave mission.
"Come in." He stated seriously. Giving a distinct signal, his office was cleared; S-Rank intelligence retrieved on a mission was to be shared with the Hokage exclusively when the situation allowed. While there are exceptions depending on the urgency of the intelligence and his availability, it was the norm. It allowed him to better control information that could prove catastrophic to the village's security.
As he watched the door open, Minato sighed.
'This is going to be a long day.'
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