48

To Naruto's annoyance, he'd been dragged to see several movies with shinobi for better experience with what was done by filmmakers on that end. Hinata had joined him, and was just as annoyed with her first post-Matatabi movie experience. The two of them had then taken a couple of days to duplicate every single trick the films showed, including the exploding food. Granted, several of the tricks were impossible without true shapeshifting, paperwork clones, chakra strings guiding thrown weapons, and being able to literally see through walls. Getting the strings down to threads so they wouldn't be able to be seen by most people was especially hard for the two of them.

Kakashi had actually looked offended that they'd made all the 'movie shinobi' tricks work in real life, presumably because the stunts pulled in the films should be disinformation on what to expect from shinobi. Hinata's response had basically been that everyone likely knew that, so pulling it off for real was the actual surprise.

They'd had time for this because they were waiting for the film crew to arrive with the princess and her bodyguards...who were apparently also the bulk of the film crew itself. Ino, Kiba, and Sasuke reworked their chef bit to allow them to cover 'galley work' as well, after they'd found out that nobody had been hired for that yet. Much easier to slip the chunin into the mix that way, with Naruto and Hinata being the two that would be spending the bulk of their time 'on film'. That the three chunin didn't really want to be in the movie while disguised as someone else was probably part of why they'd made the suggestion. They'd still likely end up as background 'extras' as they prepared food though.

Yoko was probably the single most 'panicked' of them during the preparation for the crew arriving, spending most of her time trying to come up with ways to 'civilian-proof' the shrine after being convinced to go along with the whole thing. This included ensuring that Karin wouldn't be leaving the shrine to the civilian girls, no matter how much improvement there had been in them.

...needing to literally put out two different fires unfortunately did not help her opinion of some of the civilians. The third fire hadn't helped in a different way though, because that had been from a drunken shinobi and resulted in Yoko's puppet chasing the perpetrator throughout the village for six hours.

"Why didn't anyone tell me that you had shinobi that were so cute?" Koyuki Kazahana asked after introductions were given, looking over Naruto's animal features. He and Kakashi were the only ones on the mission team present, and she wasn't being told that Naruto would be on the team going with her. "I saw others with animal features, and any of you could be excellent additions to the film."

"Most civilians outside of the village seem to think we're just weird," Naruto commented. "Unfortunately, it also makes us stand out a bit too much."

"...oh."

"I've asked Naruto to help you with something else today," Kakashi explained. "When I got word that you had a small amount of usable chakra I realized that it could be used to our advantage when returning to your homeland."

Sandayu, the chief bodyguard and manager, frowned at that. "I know that the Yamanaka you sent to join us as an added guard and therapist also worked with her extensively on being able to activate a scroll of some kind, but I have no clue why that would be of benefit."

"Kakashi paid for one of these," Naruto explained, pulling out one of the three-slot in-hand plates. "Being able to use a storage scroll means that you can use it. Shinobi of the village use them to hold weapons where they can't be confiscated, but technically anything you hold in your hand can be placed in them. He ensured that storing a necklace would be possible before making the payment."

It took half an hour to get the woman able to store and retrieve the necklace. They also had her store a decent quality dagger with a guard and a short club. In theory both were for her protection, but she doubted her ability to use either effectively.

"Thank you for assistance," Kakashi said to Naruto when they were done.

"I just wish you could join us," Koyuki said with a sigh. "But you do stand out too much. Bringing Miss Yoko along is going to draw far too much attention as it is."

"Don't worry, we've got a few others to join the group that stand out significantly less."

"But they won't be as cute."

Luckily, Naruto had plenty of experience in keeping his expressions under control.

Departing a couple of days later was interesting. The three chunin had disguised themselves as cooks that had the potential to be shinobi, but supposedly not the training. Akamaru was simply acting as a loyal pet in that context, as he was going to be Kiba's biggest 'tell' in the future when it came to infiltration if he kept up with it. Hoshi was staying behind in Konoha with Suzu, mostly for Yoko's peace of mind in having extra eyes on the shrine. As if she wasn't going to be sending clones to subtly keep an eye on things every day alongside the rest of the 'while away' clones.

As for Naruto and Hinata, they were known to be shinobi of some kind, but were pretending to be sisters with more of a passion for acting than for training. This made it much easier to explain Reiko and Riko being around Koyuki in a general sense, as well as presenting them as less of a potential threat should Doto find out about them. Ideally, the only one he'd definitely identify as a threat would be the poorly-disguised Kakashi. All he'd done was use some cheap hair dye. Badly, though he claimed that was from inexperience instead of intentional.

The trip to the ship that would be taking them to the Land of Snow included multiple stops for filming scenes along the way, starting in Konoha with Yoko collecting the representation of Suijin that would be making the journey to the shrine that was to be fixed up. Even boarding the ship itself included a couple of scenes being filmed. Koyuki and the bulk of the group were familiar with this whole dance, but the shinobi found it to be more annoying than anything else. But they didn't show it, despite griping about it amongst themselves.

Karin was running a clone at the shrine while the real her was helping in the hospital, though very few people were likely aware that she was in two places at once. She did it often enough when in the village and almost nobody outside of a few jounin had ever commented on it. Luckily, the shrine was reasonably quiet, Yoko having ensured that nobody dared be the one responsible for a problem.

...Hoshi helping out by dressing somewhat like a little priest was another matter entirely.

"Even with Naruto's notes the element-sensing is incredibly difficult," Tenten grumbled on the examination table.

"You never sat down for another session with the magic book," Karin pointed out. "Of course, they also severely downplay the amount of chakra the technique requires."

"...how much chakra does it take you to keep it running?"

"I can cover a chunin exam arena sized area for an hour or so for the chakra cost of a dozen paperwork clones. Naruto and Yoko can't really turn it off and are covering significantly larger areas as it's another outlet for their insane chakra regeneration. Hinata has an easier time holding it back to a 'more reasonable' area, but as far as I know she hasn't been able to turn it off either since she got it working."

"Huh."

"Of course, there's also something weird about their use of it. I can tell from a significant distance when anyone else is using the technique, or any single-element component of it, but it doesn't feel like they're using it at all. Which is crazy since they're obviously putting a lot more power into it, and the more power someone like Hatake puts into it the easier it is to spot him doing so. They seem to think that it's probably a side effect of masking their chakra, but I'm not really sure."

"Somehow that doesn't actually surprise me."

Karin shrugged. "It's a mystery that may never be properly solved because it could also be any number of things that make them unique. That said, while your injury looks fine now, you're not doing any training outside of the hospital today. Either go join today's session with Lady Tsunade or take the rest of the day off. Mostly book work and chakra exercises today, according to her schedule, so you won't be putting stress on the bone you cracked."

Tenten nodded, though what kind of training exercise had resulted in cracking the bone without other injuries was a bit of a mystery. Unless the wait before being seen coupled with the beast man formula healing factor had already dealt with the rest? Hard to say, really, and not important enough to ask about with a waiting list of patients to look at.

It was obvious to the shinobi that they'd been spotted reaching the Land of Snow. All of them having some sensor training meant that it was hard for them to miss someone flying in and putting a basic tracking tag on the very top of the mast in the middle of the night. The armor being worn to make that possible stood out significantly to anyone with any sensor abilities at all, obviously distinct from the wearer, and it didn't feel like any attempt was being made to mask the user's chakra. At the same time, the person wearing it didn't seem to be ready for any kind of combat at all, and didn't move like someone expecting a fight. Or someone used to fighting, or training for fighting.

Unfortunately, following the kunoichi who had placed the tag back to the base she'd operated out of had only revealed a small outpost with no real useful information. There wasn't even a code book to be found, and the only 'signal' that something had been tagged was the fact that it would be moving from the known storage position. From what else was there she wasn't even considered a 'combatant'. Just a lookout...with some hidden scrolls for combat techniques that appeared to be intentionally incomplete, as though someone wanted her to fail to learn to fight.

Kakashi had taken possession of the tracking tag, and a couple of days later a couple more flying individuals showed up in the middle of the night. These ones also didn't seem to be combat-ready, but had brought cameras to document what they could about the ship, and Yoko's round of guarding clones followed them back to Yukigakure this time. A portable summoning stone was stuck outside of the village, in a quickly-manipulated cave, and proper infiltration of the village began. Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that the production of the 'chakra armor' wasn't handled in the village. A bunch of notes on using it, things not to do, and some poorly-documented spare parts. More interestingly, most users of it weren't considered combat shinobi. Scouts and messengers, the armor taking those that wouldn't have been worth keeping as shinobi and making them 'useful'.

The spare parts were poorly enough documented that they were already short about ten percent of what they should have, so grabbing a few things for study was trivial. Extra 'power crystals', which both provided shielding and apparently did not interact nicely with one another while active, were the easiest to grab. They were also the least likely to be noticed, as the three the clones grabbed had fallen behind shelves long enough ago to be half-buried and covered in dirt. All three were handed to the Tome for analysis, on top of getting it into the village to scan several complete armors. A few other items were also collected from the armory to be examined, including 'ice bombs' and 'deicers'.

"Probably a day or so before we're attacked," Naruto, as 'Reiko', communicated over dinner a couple of days later. "It seems that our arrival was timed with Doto having been out of the country on a diplomatic visit, so he couldn't get word that we'd arrived until yesterday, or perhaps first thing this morning. Information on Kakashi is being distributed as well, after he was recognized in the pictures taken during that iceberg filming session."

"Do you have any idea where they're going to attack?" Kakashi asked.

"They know we need to dock and unload to continue over land. I think the current plan is to ambush us then."

"Okay. Anything else we need to know about?"

Yoko snickered, getting the attention of others before she waved it off as having remembered something funny. "The Tome figured out the three primary weaknesses of the chakra armor."

"...why is that snickering-worthy?"

"Because the Land of Snow's 'impenetrable' chakra armor is weak to ice release."

"Well," Naruto sent. "Technically all combined-element attacks, but getting the outside too cold has the likely added side effect of the armor overcompensating and cooking the person inside."

"Or you just beat the person at close range. Ranged attacks are deflected, but fists and held weapons are unlikely to be stopped if you don't use chakra flow techniques. Explosive tags detonated closer than a couple of feet too, for that matter, and they do have a time limit before the power crystals need to be recharged or replaced."

"Most of the suits are rigged for flight to negate that weakness, except that the bulk of them are used by non-combat messengers due to most of the 'combat-grade' shinobi not finding that the armor works for them. They have maybe eight total armor-equipped fighters, if the records in Yukigakure are correct, and only two of them have the flight module. Additional experimental items, in a couple of cases, but those weren't elaborated on beyond identification codes that weren't documented in the village."

"The last weakness is interactions with the shields across users, making 'teamwork' a problem when multiple armor users are together. Throwing two users of the armor into each other is the trivial way to use that against them, which is apparently another part of why they haven't deployed the system more widely."

Kakashi nodded slightly. "I'll pass the relevant information around, without revealing how I learned it."

"We hoped that you'd make the movie more authentic with genuine tricks," one of the special effects staff grumbled. "But no, you have to turn around and duplicate the movie tricks we painstakingly figured out how to pull off for the camera, except you're doing it for real."

"Does that not mean that the previous films were already more authentic than we expected?" Koyuki asked.

"I've never heard of a real use of edible exploding food. We came up with it as something that no individual or clan was likely to care about us 'revealing' because it was ridiculous to even consider! Kazuo researched ways to curve shuriken around obstacles to perfectly hit things you had no way of seeing and the closest he could find was either a very gradual curve over a long distance or bouncing one weapon off of another to have them strike from unexpected angles! Accurately hitting small targets with senbon through multiple rice paper screens while looking the other way shouldn't be 'trivial' either! Absolutely nobody would believe that their 'read what someone is writing in another room' trick isn't faked by telling them what would be written ahead of time either."

"Most of that isn't really useful on missions," Kakashi commented. "Some of it is good for training exercises though. Of course, Reiko and Riko have a unique set of skills as well, for what it's worth, and a movie set is very much the definition of 'controlled conditions'." He paused. "Though the 'read what someone is writing in another room' trick is actually more common than you'd think. I'm not as good at it, but I can generally manage it too. Helps a lot on many missions."

"Okay people," the director said as he came over. "We can't really get a good shot of the ship pulling into the port when we arrive, but we can get disembarking and unloading scenes and should consider moving things into better positions for that ahead of time where we can." The man then turned to Kakashi. "Unless you're expecting an immediate ambush, anyway?"

"I'm always expecting an ambush, but I don't think we'll have any problems until we're ready to leave the port at the earliest. Unless you want an ambush, of course. We can hold off from stopping the bulk of those waiting to jump us as soon as the ship is tied down if you'd prefer to film things from the deck?"

Sandayu had been following the director and frowned at that. "What are you talking about?"

"Currently the plan is to drug all the potential attackers as we're getting close to knock them out safely, avoiding killing them as that would be provocation we don't need at this stage. But we can skip the drugging if you'd rather film a shinobi battle as soon as the ship is tied down. Personally, I'd rather keep some of our skills under wraps instead of revealing them this soon, but if you prefer otherwise..."

"Your entire team is currently on the ship."

"That is technically correct."

"Are you expecting to launch some kind of superdrug at the port to knock people out that way?"

"Oh no. That wouldn't be anywhere near safe for the innocent civilians, and arriving at a port devoid of working civilians would look far too odd on film. Having a bunch of civilians knocked out or dead in the streets would probably be worse though...and of course, any would-be attackers that are outside when we drug them will need to be dragged out of sight and disarmed, just in case they would otherwise show up on the takes. Maybe we can set one up so that it looks like they're watching us from a window? Much better to have it look like we managed to sneak in, only noticed after coming off the ship instead of having been spotted and tagged while still on the water."

"How can you possibly think you can manage any of this?"

"A proper team of real shinobi can do things that movie shinobi can only dream of. The only problem is that doing things the right way makes it impossible to prove that shinobi were involved at all. Oh, and you should probably have everyone and everything in position for an 'arrival' shot of the ship anyway."

Sandayu and the director looked at Kakashi like he was crazy, but decided to run with it. Possibly as a test to see how serious he was being. But they also didn't ask for the potential battle to happen, partially because they didn't want to risk damaging the ship itself but mostly because Koyuki had insisted that it was a stupid risk to take.

"What do you mean, the tracks are damaged?" Doto asked.

"Snowpack probably shifted," the reporting shinobi snapped out. "Possibly due to animal movement, but it resulted in that unstable temporary shoring in tunnel six finally giving way under the changed weight distribution. All of that rock shifting destabilized the ground under the tracks as well."

"...tunnel six is the one the engineers have been asking for funding to fix properly for the last year."

"It is, sir."

Dammit. He wanted to scream at the shinobi, or the engineers, but he'd personally examined the tunnel and decided it wasn't worth the expense to fix 'properly' as it seemed stable enough to survive the next couple of years and the far side wasn't that important. Even though the earth-specialist shinobi and the engineers had agreed that it was going to collapse sooner than later without being redone properly. But screaming at others for his own mistake would be foolish, so he bit back on the impulse. "Do we have time to get a message to the three ports to warn them that I won't be able to arrive?"

"No, sir."

"...why not?"

"The message I got only indicated that the next relay station wasn't responding. My guess is that the tracks are physically broken and because of that they can't establish a connection to the relay station on the far side of the tunnel. There are no other routes currently available as that line doesn't interconnect with any others on the far side of the collapsed tunnel."

That...was unfortunate, and meant that the much slower messengers would need to be used between those relay stations until the damage was dealt with. Actually, that would also explain why someone was checking the tunnel at all. Communication halting between relay stations would have triggered an immediate investigation from both ends, so if it had just been a collapse with the tracks remaining intact then they'd not have known about the tunnel collapsing until crashing into it.

Realizing that the only thing that had prevented them from running straight into a massive accident in their rush to reach the ports was a literal lucky break in the tracks was incredibly annoying. Also a little humbling, given how much maintenance he'd personally shot down. Getting an inspection schedule going for the less frequently used sections of track was going to need to be a priority, and he was going to have to give in and authorize some long-overdue maintenance.

"Well," Doto finally said. "Perhaps we'll get lucky and hear that they captured my wayward niece despite my absence."

The messenger half-nodded before continuing. "The last message from the tracking team indicated that it was likely the ship was going to use the closest port to here, bypassing the easier to reach ones in order to reduce their travel time over land. Within a day's travel along the roads they'll have passed tunnel six and we'll be able to reach them by rail, and we can get a messenger to the port in order to verify if they were captured or not within an hour of our arrival by train."

"Thank you for the foresight in checking that." That gave plenty of time to adjust plans. The scouting reports indicated that Hatake was the only combat shinobi on the ship, though underestimating the two unknown kunoichi playing actresses would be a mistake. At the same time, they weren't important enough to have made any of the international information books, so they were unlikely to be used to using their skills in combat. Assuming they could, as they weren't wearing forehead protectors and might have dropped out of their home village's academy instead of joining the ranks.

That didn't make them safe to ignore, admittedly. An expert fears a novice precisely because you can't guess what the novice is going to do, and he didn't even have proof that they were novices.

"What do you mean, you found camera five?" the director asked.

"It was sitting on a crate on the dock with a sealed film canister," the man said, holding out the canister and a sheet of paper. "With a description of shots taken, and an apology if the filming was screwed up as the one taking them isn't a professional camera operator."

Reiko bit back a snicker, and Hinata as 'Riko' obviously suppressed a sigh at the antics. One of Naruto's clones had slipped away with one of the cameras to get the 'arriving at the port shot' for them, and even captured an enemy shinobi spotting the ship and darting inside to 'sound the alarm'. Before being knocked out by another clone and stripped of all of his equipment like every other shinobi in the town had been. Putting him 'to bed' in civilian clothing was just being nice, given that leaving them naked would've likely caused them to freeze to death before the knockout drugs wore off.

They'd be unable to do much when they woke up without their equipment either way, even before the week or so of the drugs screwing with them before fully passing out of their systems. A medic-nin could speed that up, of course, and if the civilians realized what had been done and decided that they wanted the shinobi dead then oh well. That would be on them and Naruto could truthfully tell Koyuki that they'd not killed anyone and thus weren't provoking Doto more seriously yet. Or tell Kakashi to tell Koyuki, really. Playing Reiko whose only official duties were being an actress and 'kunoichi' bodyguard to Koyuki drastically reduced the 'interacting with clients about the mission' duties.

Unloading just enough to get proper footage of post-arrive items, such as disembarking and unloading specific things that were being featured in the film, had taken a reasonably short amount of time. Half an hour of filming first Koyuki and Yoko disembarking, guarded by Reiko and Riko, and then just ensuring that they got some shots of the other items being unloaded that had been positioned for the first shots. One suggestion of 'put a cart back on the ship to get a different take' had been made and rejected. All of that footage eventually went into the cart that was being used for on-site development and review of the film. Knowing if some scenes weren't usable while still in the field was apparently incredibly useful and this particular company traveled enough to ensure that they could handle the basics.

"We'll finish reviewing the new footage tonight while they fix some of the damage a couple of the carriages took on the journey," the director said after checking with the crew. "Then we can do the 'leaving the port town' scenes and get on the road in the morning."

"Great," Sandayu said, before turning to Kakashi. "I'd like to talk about a few things, if you don't mind?"

"Alone?" Kakashi asked.

"Koyuki should be involved, and your people guarding her can join us."

That seemed to be what Kakashi had expected, and he led the group of Sandayu, Koyuki, Reiko, and Riko into a building that had been commandeered for the night. In theory it was used by the local shinobi, but the group from this building were all unconscious in a single barracks room next door right now. A couple of meaningless hand signals were used alongside the communication technique to ask for privacy seals, and Reiko and Riko quickly worked together to place them.

"Reiko and Riko are more skilled than you let on," Sandayu noted.

"I don't recall saying anything about their skills at all," Kakashi pointed out.

"...you may not have. You certainly said nothing about having enough backup sent ahead to be able to drug all of the opposition here in the port."

"While that would be nice, it would be impossible to keep under wraps on such short notice and you'd never have been able to afford it. We're restricted to what the team we brought with us can do. Luckily for us, they're very good at their jobs."

"Your 'team' is yourself, two kunoichi playing personal guards for Koyuki, and three decent field cooks that we were assured are excellent at poison detection and related tasks. One of which uses a puppy to help them sniff out poisons, or so I assume, and none of which would appear to have the skills needed to pre-clear an entire port town before our ship had sight of it." The lack of Yoko being mentioned was hopefully largely because she wasn't officially on the 'mission team', instead being down as one of those to be guarded.

"Two of the 'cooks' took out bandits back in the Land of Fire," Koyuki retorted. "I don't know if they allowed me to notice because of who I am or if it was coincidental, but they are far more than mere 'cooks'. Similarly, Reiko and Riko like to play up being focused on the filming, but have regularly revealed to me that they're far more skilled than they appear to be in order to keep me safe. I swear they can stop thrown objects with just a gesture and Riko took out several bandits that I doubt she had any way to see."

"Perhaps I should clear up some misconceptions," Kakashi said, his face shifting to a much more serious expression. "You are familiar with the movie version of shinobi, and to a degree the public perception of them. The latter focuses on raw strength and in many ways intentionally paints shinobi as samurai with a different skill set, something that many shinobi embrace to varying degrees. Unlike samurai, shinobi are also comfortable working in the shadows, and that is the type of team I brought. My 'team' does not exist and will vanish when the mission is over, using me as a distraction to make themselves more effective. Under other circumstances it could be impossible to tell what they've done compared to natural occurrences, but here they get a rare chance to 'show off'."

"...is this why I was asked about how public we wanted Doto's death to be?" Sandayu asked.

"Yes. Your request for a public death costs more because it's harder to arrange with a skilled shinobi as the opponent. Adding in his chakra armor and hoping to film his demise just added to the cost. Unless he sleeps in the armor it would likely be reasonably trivial by comparison to just kill him then. This is obviously unlike a normal noble, where the effort needed to slip in without being noticed is far beyond just hitting them with a kunai before their guards can react and the cost of being unnoticed goes up as a result."

They took a moment to process that, before Koyuki spoke up. "As much as it would cheapen the film, I don't think that I'd mind if we can take my uncle out in a less confrontational manner. It isn't like he engaged my father in anything remotely like a fair fight."

Kakashi nodded. "I fully understand that. If you'd like, I can see if we can arrange for an early demise for him. We didn't plan for it though, and it's possible that it's already too late to arrange one now that he knows that we're here. He's a shinobi himself, and will be much more on guard now that he knows the enemy is present in the country at all."

There was nodding, but as Naruto sat there he was thinking that there was going to be at least one round of combat before any such plan could be attempted. He and Hinata had clones following two different communication routes, but neither had found Doto's primary base of operations yet. Not being able to trace messengers due to using a communication relay system across the network of rail lines was slowing things down significantly.