บท 2713: 103
Konan looked over the group of genin. "You have all proven that you have the basic skills to be genin, and now that you each have skills worthy of a chunin. Now you must prove that you can survive as chunin in the field instead of in the relative safety of a village. For likely the first time ever in a multi-village examination, your teamwork has already been tested, so from this point you stand alone. This is a full combat round, but not a team combat one. You will head into the dome and your mission is to not be eliminated by others for a week. The only safe place inside of the dome is in the central tower, and the doors will only open for you if you've defeated five others before reaching them."
Right on cue, the warnings for the dome flipping sounded. A moment later the dome flipped. She looked behind herself to see that it was the desert environment. "Apparently the randomizer decided to stick you in the desert, so I hope you have plans for water. You will have until noon to enter the dome, after which anyone still outside will be disqualified."
Two minutes later there wasn't a genin in sight. She made her way to the monitoring station, idly wondering how many of the non-Suna genin had paid any attention to where to purchase ways to carry large amounts of water. In theory the Uzushio genin should already have two weeks worth of food and water on them, but in practice they'd probably gone through half or more of that in the past week and the monitoring teams should've noticed if they'd thought to resupply themselves in preparation for not having access to shops for a week.
"Anything of immediate note?" she asked as she entered the room.
"Two of Suna's group are heading straight for the dome," came from across the room.
"There's an impromptu cross-village meeting at one of the water-filling stations," another person commented. "Started out with an Oto genin approaching an Uzushio one, but Konoha and Iwa quickly joined in and they seem to be sending runners to gather others."
"Damn," Konan said. "I appear to have lost the bet."
"Bet?" Nagato asked from where he'd been playing primary oversight.
"I thought that non-Ame Uzushio genin would start things. There were those thinking that Konoha genin would instead, but he's the only one that bet on an Oto genin. Not that I can say he cheated, because he let everyone else pick first and then rolled dice to decide which of the remaining options he'd put his money on."
"Ah. And his luck worked against the rest of you."
"Apparently."
Mei was annoyed at having put her own genin at a significant disadvantage, even if it had been unintentional on her part. Each leader that had wanted to participate in choosing the environment for the stage had rolled a set of dice representing the various stages and she'd been the only one to come up with a majority of 'desert', followed by the spinner picking her out of the eight of them. A surprisingly small number, if she was being honest, given how easy it was to make it to the island.
Doing all of that while the genin had been gathering made it less likely that anyone had been warned ahead of time. Not impossible though, because there was a slim chance that the entire dance had been a show and things had been manipulated without anyone present noticing. If anyone other than Uzushio was running this exam then she'd assume that the leaders present would've noticed, of course, but the sneakiest bastards on the continent were running things.
"So," she said as the clock ticked over past noon. "I don't think anyone has said what the expected pass rate on this stage is."
"That's going to vary heavily," Naruto admitted. She joined the others in giving him a look, and he shrugged. "It could go anywhere from eliminating everyone to everyone passing. My personal guess is around half making it through and preliminaries being needed."
"I can understand eliminating everyone due to the environment," Gaara said. "But everyone passing seems a bit difficult."
"There's a chance that everyone will fall into 'hide' and 'work together' groups, no fighting will happen, and nobody will be eliminated due to fighting. If they all come together they'd likely survive with little to no issue and nobody would be eliminated. I doubt that'll be the case due to the more violently-tempered participants, of course. Oh, and while we said that the doors won't open for them until they defeat five others, there's always the chance that they find a way into the tower anyway."
That was an incredible example of making the genin look for the real solution under the stated objectives, though with the chance of completely accidental mass passing due to never seeking anyone else out to defeat.
Yoko examined the table-sized map of the Elemental Nations that she'd created on Shrine Island, and the smaller paper map she'd connected to it. Representations of individual honden sat on the larger map where each shrine sat, with a larger representation of Shrine Island itself sitting in the ocean, but she'd also placed a couple of simple discs on the map. Placing her hand on the smaller map, she pushed light chakra into it. The purple effect flowed over the map, then coalesced into shapes representing what was sitting on the larger map.
Anyone who could generate sufficient light chakra could use the smaller map, and with any luck the daimyo would accept the claim that applying a blessing to the map showed where the gods wanted the next shrines to be.
Once she'd tested this first one at various points across the continent then she should produce a bunch more. She thought that they'd make for nice demonstration pieces for each shrine, in addition to allowing those running the shrines to provide a way for those wishing to visit a specific god's shrine to see them on a continuously-updating map. The stack of honden tokens and discs with specific gods or combinations thereof marked on them off to the side would hopefully last them a few years as well, but she should make sure she noted how the tokens were produced as those would gradually be used up.
Whether or not she'd eventually be making maps of other areas for the same thing was another question entirely. Word would likely eventually spread, so she probably would if they spread beyond the one shrine outside of the Elemental Nations. And of course, she'd not figured out how to best represent the shrines on flying islands. Or that were flying islands, really. Constantly updating the map to show where they were was probably not needed, but she wasn't sure what to tell anyone asking about that detail...beyond a comment that those islands weren't on the ground and the map was showing the ground, anyway.
...and then of course there was the potential for shrines on the moon she and Naruto were constructing, which was going to be an entirely different thing if it happened.
Mikasato carefully shaped her part of the false sand dune the group of them were constructing. This stage's rules actually gave an incentive to work together if you spotted it, and working together to survive for a week was preferable to fighting one another in the desert. It was a little weird working across four villages, admittedly. Uzushio was formally allied with Konoha and Iwa, but Oto was kind of an outlier there. Not that they'd gotten everyone from the four villages to join in on the idea, but the twenty-five of them were probably going to have a much easier time than those insisting on doing things alone.
Being able to have guard shifts alone was going to be a major benefit.
Nodding at her work, she slipped back underground through the hidden entrance they'd constructed. It wasn't all that impressive, but they didn't have anyone in the group that was good at building bunkers. At the same time, they probably didn't need anything too impressive for a week, and they had enough of the Uzumaki-grade toilets and showers among the group to not have to worry about a number of things. Food was the only potential concern as a result, and as far as they could tell they'd all ensured that they had a couple weeks of rations available.
Though they had needed to point out to Shishi that his portable shower provided drinkable water. All of those in the group without one of the things were going to be looking into buying one because of that, and if Suna's shinobi weren't buying them in bulk then they were crazy. Or overlooking the water benefits of the things? But the latest models had a 'fill water bottle' tap on the cold water side and everything.
Kankuro looked over the boxes, ensuring that the counts looked close to correct. Eight water bottles per box, and there were thirty-two boxes...which would be two hundred and fifty six bottles instead of the two hundred and fifty ordered, but the packing sheet indicated that they were throwing the six extras in for free this time due to a production mistake of some kind. The lines of metal tags holding the sealed-away portable showers were harder to quickly estimate, but counting one showed it was twenty-five tags long and there were ten lines so that should be all two hundred and fifty of those.
Ironically, on average three out of four of the 'portable' showers were almost certainly going to be permanently installed in homes throughout Suna. You could only run them for around two hours a day each, but right now bathing with water at all was still a bit of a luxury.
"Would be nice if you were willing to sell village-scale water systems," Kankuro noted. "But it looks like everything is here."
"Even Uzushio doesn't have village-scale systems," the merchant noted. "That would be a single point of failure anyway. A couple dozen smaller systems that can be turned on as needed is far more sensible."
That did make some sense, and he felt stupid for ignoring it. "I see. Do you have any pricing information for said smaller systems?"
"Not really, no. I'm not involved in making any of it and just handle selling to those visiting the island. Contact information for those involved back in Uzushio should be on the top of the sheet though."
A quick check showed that there was an Uzushio address and one of their telephone numbers listed. "I see. Thank you."
"No problem. Want any help carrying things out?"
"I conscripted our failed genin already, which is why I declined the offer to store the boxes in seals. They should be here in the next five minutes."
"Ah. Good plan there."
Orochimaru bit back several rude remarks as Tsunade tore a mechanism clear out of the wall. It wasn't a cheap one, and had been a pain to get working mostly-right, but it had also just nearly stabbed the woman in the side.
"This is unacceptable," Tsunade said after ensuring that the remains of the device were unlikely to harm anyone else. "I'm surprised that Ruri doesn't severely harm herself daily and you think you're going to be able to raise a child from infancy here?"
"It isn't that bad," Orochimaru replied.
"Ruri has gotten lots of practice putting herself back together," Guren challenged. "And learned to avoid the most dangerous stuff, of course."
"You're supposed to be on my side."
"Did you think that I might be tired of random things making me need medical attention? Your bases are death traps waiting to happen even when you aren't intentionally making them death traps."
"They are all intentionally death traps. I just don't share the information on all the systems for that with you."
Tsunade glared at her. "And none of them are suitable for you to raise any child in, even only part-time, let alone my child. I'm not even happy with the idea of you remaining in them while carrying said child."
"I'm the leader of the hidden village."
"You being the leader makes it worse. If one of your incompetent lackeys was running things then I'd expect things to be this casually deadly, but you should be far smarter than that!"
Arguing that the entire aesthetic behind the design of the bases was them being death traps didn't feel like it was going to help here, not that she'd been as into that as much since settling into this body. Even before that she'd at least tried to ensure that the death traps were where they should be and not literally everywhere. There had been...issues with some of those responsible for checking on various things in the past, but generally the areas that should be safe were kept safe.
...there just weren't many areas normally kept safe, even after removing the few things that had severely injured Ruri multiple times.
Tsunade sighed. "I'm tempted to drag you to Konoha, make you sign marriage papers, and then lock you in the Senju compound until you've given birth."
"The idiots would blow up half the bases within three months," Orochimaru retorted.
"But not with you and the child you're carrying in them. Really, with the state of things we'd be better off absorbing your shinobi into Konoha's forces and collapsing all of these 'bases' in on themselves."
"I doubt that the local daimyo would be happy with that plan."
"The local daimyo has been dead for three weeks after one of his retainers found out that their extended family was dead due to his actions. Nobody wants to step up and take responsibility for the atrocities he paid for, so the country is currently leaderless anyway. The Fire Daimyo has been in discussions with the Land of Iron and the Land of Hot Water regarding whether to install a new daimyo or just split the territory up, not that there's much left here other than Oto."
That...honestly wasn't all that surprising, though it felt quite likely that the retainer had been used as a patsy. For who was likely impossible to answer at this point, and that the news was coming to her from Tsunade of all people was telling in other ways. But nobody stepping in was easy enough to answer. "I might have threatened to kill off anyone who tried to take over the country without my personal permission, which is probably why nobody else has tried to claim the position."
"Meaning that you are, in essence, the effective leader of the country. That just makes the paperwork easier."
...the worst part of this was that it would probably be positively relaxing for the next nine months to three years of dealing with just one or two kids instead of all of the idiots in the ranks that were worse than bickering children most days.
"You want Uzushio to what?" Naruto asked, blinking. He'd expected to need to run preliminaries in a couple of days, but hadn't seen this coming.
"Take over the Land of Sound's territory," Shisui repeated. "The former Land of Rice Fields."
"Why?"
"Because there isn't a civilian population anymore after the combination of Orochimaru and the now-deceased daimyo's policies, Tsunade thinks the entire Oto base network needs to be dismantled on general safety grounds, and there are concerns about expanding borders between the existing nations bordering the area. You'd get access to the northern ocean more easily than going through Taki or the Land of Earth as a side benefit, but would probably have to dismantle or rebuild Oto's various bases."
"This stemmed from that one retainer killing the daimyo off, didn't it."
"Yes, though the decision to reach out to you about taking over only happened because Orochimaru insisted that you're the only one she'll sign things over to."
"...fun. Do I want to know why that came up?"
"She's moving into the Senju compound, as a guest or Tsunade's spouse has yet to be determined, and won't be able to keep her idiots from killing themselves. Konoha is going to absorb the shinobi in the couple of months after the exams are over, so you don't have to worry about them."
"Seriously?"
"Feel free to check with Tsunade personally. I'm just playing messenger about the territory issue, mostly to find out if the Fire Daimyo should bother arranging to visit you personally as part of things."
"At this rate we're going to be the largest country in the Elemental Nations by virtue of having territory everywhere."
"And everyone currently feels that you could take over the continent anytime you wanted, with the saving grace being that you don't want to. The latter makes you the safe option at this point, since nobody is under any illusions that you don't have the ability to attack any given country from basically all angles already anyway."
Naruto sighed. "First Amegakure, now the Land of Sound. What's going to be next?"
Ino looked over the group of genin that had been fetched from the desert. There were three obvious groups. The twenty-five that had worked together the entire week and were reasonably well-rested, the two teams of three from Suna that had decided to work together despite being told it wasn't a team stage, and the four genin that had survived the rest of the free-for-all. Zero genin had managed five defeats before an attempt at making it to the tower, though six of the twenty-five actually had enough victories to count due to bad luck when on guard duty.
"There are thirty-five of you," Naruto said after the traditional speech about what the exams meant. "Which is honestly far fewer than I expected. I'd like to get you down to thirty-two, but there aren't enough of you to justify preliminary rounds. Does anyone wish to bow out of the exams at this stage?"
Surprisingly, two genin both stepped forwards. The first was an Iwa kunoichi, who bowed to the assembled village leaders. "I discovered that I know far too little about maintaining a proper camp and had to rely too much on others for the week. I do not feel I deserve promotion at this time." Naruto nodded, though Onoki was harder to get a read off of.
The other genin was the only remaining Kiri shinobi, and one of the four genin that had participated in the free-for-all fighting. He didn't bow, though some of that might be related to not having had time to see a medic about his injuries. "I'm in no shape to fight, and honestly wouldn't have survived another day out there. If you were to hold preliminaries then I'd be out anyway."
Mei nodded before Naruto could, and Ino suspected the woman was just happy to be done with this year's exam even if her village had made a poor showing in this stage.
"Anyone else?" Naruto asked, looking over the group of genin. There was a moment of silence before he shrugged. "Worth a shot. In one month's time you will return to the island for two days of fighting. You will not be told the match-ups ahead of time, but will have access to the island's training areas if you'd like to take advantage of them. Feel free to check with the information offices if you'd like specific kinds of training areas to be available and can't find anything suitable, and of course you are free to travel back to your villages and train there instead if you'd like to."
Five minutes later the genin had departed with their sensei and most of the village leaders had left. Ino made her way over to Naruto at that point. "You eliminated all but six villages this time."
He shrugged. "Wasn't the intent. Suna's two teams were smart, but not as smart as the twenty-five from the four villages. That Kiri's only surviving genin bowed out left the two from Kumo and one from Uzushio that were running things solo."
"Is the latter getting marked down for not being a team player?"
"Nobody approached him about joining in on the larger gathering and he knows he has a temper. He mostly spent the week trying to stay hidden in his own little bunker but didn't know how to handle the sand well enough to stay hidden, so he's not getting marked down too much compared to the others."
"Didn't know that, but I wasn't on monitoring duty. The three teams I assigned to look through all the paperwork the various sensei brought with them managed to not get caught by any of them though, which I'm definitely pleased about. Even though they knew none of them would bring anything sensitive."
"Still a good training exercise in a reasonably safe environment."
"Of course."
"I see Hinata got lost in my latest blueprint dump."
"As did the rest of the technology division and two thirds of the seals division, yeah."
"Then I think we should go fetch her for dinner."
Ruri didn't know what to think about moving to Konoha. She was going to have a new mama, maybe officially? That had been a little confusing, but even if that didn't happen she had to get used to calling Orochimaru-mama Orochi-mama instead. It had been a while since she'd done that, after some of the shinobi told her that shortening the name was disrespectful, but now it was going to be mama's actual name. Supposedly because it would make Tsunade-mama happier?
Adults were confusing at the best of times, in her opinion.
The problem was that Konoha did things very differently. She wasn't going to be able to use the idiots trying to grab her in experiments, and in fact wasn't likely to be able to do most of her experiments at all. That was going to be annoying. But Tsunade-mama had pointed out that she wouldn't need to worry about healing herself from half-functional traps and devices in the walls going off and cutting into her side or face, which would be really nice. And Konoha had easier access to her friends in Uzushio, so she'd be able to see them more often, plus Tsunade-mama had promised more training in medicine.
Packing her things was easy enough, as she already kept everything ready to move anyway. She had six different bedrooms in different Oto facilities and regularly moved between them as Orochi-mama checked on the 'various idiots'. Sealing everything up and slipping the tags and scrolls into her travel bag was quick and simple, though she was going to have to wash things pretty much right away as she hadn't had time over the past couple of days.
Pulling her bag tight, she mentally drew in the thread that let her shrink before darting up the wall and through the old vent. That let her get to the entrance a lot faster than the more roundabout route you'd normally need to take, and Orochi-mama had only put some seals in that made it so that only they could pass through safely instead of closing them off when putting the new vents in. Except that the seals might be broken at this point, as they felt like they'd stopped working?
That didn't matter if they weren't coming back, though Orochi-mama was going to take a lot longer to gather everything she wanted from here.
Exiting the old vents into a closet, she allowed herself to grow back to full size so that she could open the door. Tsunade-mama was standing nearby, blinking. "That was quick."
"Orochi-mama moves between bases a lot," Ruri replied.
"All of us can basically pack and leave within a few minutes," Guren added as she came down the hall. "Though not all of us can move through the facilities quite as quickly as Ruri can."
"I was warned that she cheats and uses vents that no human should be able to fit through," Tsunade-mama said. "She'll find that harder in Konoha."
"I will?" Ruri questioned.
"Yep. Not to mention Uzushio, because between the two villages that's a fairly common trick in various forms."
"Oh."
Hinata sighed as she leaned into Naruto. "Your blueprints are insane, and the missing pieces are worse."
"What missing pieces?" he asked.
"The ones you keep out of them for security reasons? At least a third of the moon project blueprints seem to be missing."
"No, I'm reasonably certain that they're all there."
"...that implies that you've intentionally left giant holes all over the surface."
"Well, yes. I need places to put the plants."
"Hold up," Ino said as she dropped onto his other side. "You're putting in plants? On the moon?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Why not? They'll require less direct maintenance for power than the generators will."
"Oh. Energy and maintenance efficiency does sound like a good reason."
That was a very good point, but Hinata mentally reviewed the blueprints. "You're planning on most of the surface being forest?"
He nodded. "Yeah."
"Huh. I suppose that explains some of the water lines, though you're far too used to putting towers in the middle of forests if that's what you're doing."
"Don't see why I shouldn't."
"Can't a forest just be a forest?"
"Well, yes."
"It sounds like I'm still missing something."
He just grinned, which annoyed her. She was probably just not putting specific pieces together, and while pretending to be him worked for things like seals it didn't help with figuring out his other plans.
"So," Ino said. "How much longer before you and Yoko start final construction?"
"We're going to wait until we're done meeting with daimyo," he answered with a sigh. "Which means that it could be next week or after the finals, depending on how many additional meetings the next couple spawn."
"Ah. And when you're done then hopefully all the big projects will be done."
"Well, and dealing with Oto's bases. I thought I could let them sit for a bit, but at least two are already looking like they're ready to cause major problems for the environment around them. One due to obvious sabotage, the other due to problems in initial construction not being mitigated by giant pieces of equipment holding walls up now that they've been emptied. It'll take less time to handle things if I do so before things get worse, even if that's before officially taking ownership of the country."
Hinata groaned. "Why does nobody else build things properly?"
"In fairness, most people can't use the materials or seals that I do and the only 'building underground' books I've ever found only really describe smaller bunkers instead of full-on complexes. It's probably a miracle that Konoha hasn't collapsed into a crater multiple times with how many different people tunneled under it, but it made for a great set of lessons in what does and doesn't work at the same time."
Yeah, that was an unfortunately good point, but Shisui had teams working basically all the time at improving that mess. Naruto and Yoko helped out every so often as well.
Obito sighed as he worked his way through marking students on his latest examination. This group was...particularly simple-minded, in his opinion, though it was also almost entirely civilian-born. They'd improve quickly or drop out of the program soon enough. He did wonder when Kakashi was going to drag him on another mission, having a trusted minder being one of the only times he normally left the village for anything of importance.
"Yo," Kakashi called from the window, as though thinking about him had summoned him. "Fair warning, I've been asked to stick around in case there are problems with the Sannin."
"...they're going to all be here?" Obito questioned, wondering if he had enough bolt holes to handle that.
"Orochimaru is moving into the village, her daughter is actually already here but hasn't completed various evaluations, and Jiraiya is swinging through to talk with the other two soon. Rumor has it that something major might be decided, though nobody has figured out what that might be yet."
"I at least had the excuse of being mind controlled. Orochimaru didn't, did he?"
"It seems that she is being treated almost like his daughter, and unfortunately for the village we have a pile of records of now-deceased individuals pulling far too many strings back then. The whole situation is an annoying mess, but Tsunade has basically put her own political weight behind things so we're running with it for now. Oto's forces are condensing down to only a few of their facilities for evaluation as well...at least those that haven't abandoned the village and run for it already. Just over two thirds decided to take that route, or so I was told this morning."
Obito blinked. "Evaluation for what?"
"Being folded into Konoha after the chunin exams end."
"Why are they being folded into Konoha?"
"I honestly don't know, beyond it being connected to Orochimaru moving back here. Lots of rumors, very little in credible sources. Most common one is that Orochimaru is the father of Tsunade's kid, but the medics are adamant that Tsunade isn't pregnant so I don't know why that one has so much traction."
That sounded about right for the rumor mill, but meant that there was going to be a lot of shifting soon. At the same time, it also sounded like the position of 'least trusted person in the village, outside of those in holding cells' was going to be taken up by others in the near future, which was personally nice. "Any other warnings I should be aware of, or recently-revealed information I might've missed?"
"Don't think so. Haven't heard back on whether I can drag you to watch the chunin exam finals yet, especially as there's a chance I won't be able to go myself if things go wrong enough with the Sannin."
"Isn't Orochimaru attending due to having genin participating?"
"In theory. Doesn't help with anything going on between Jiraiya and Tsunade."
Right. Those two could be a handful all on their own.
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