5

It was the first day of the summer break, and Naruto was walking down the street with Old Man Hokage.

"So what do you have to show me?" Naruto asked the old man, despite having a decent idea. Having clones training all day, including occasional pranks and general wandering, had made the clearing of the known entrances to the Uzumaki compound and removal of a number of other things in the vicinity fairly obvious. Even without being able to see boards and crates moved out of the way from inside the compound.

"A legacy of your family's," the man answered. "One that I'm fairly confident you already know about, given how often you use it, even if I don't know how you found it with what others had done to the entrances or how you keep getting in and out. Regardless, the official entrances are now open."

They soon came to a stone arch between two buildings with the Uzumaki crest at the top of it. To Naruto there was an illusion of a closed gate in the arch, that he knew would allow him and those keyed in to just walk in. From the inside there was a lever that would 'open' the gates to let anyone in, assuming you knew where the little door was to reveal it. A week ago the crest on this arch and the other one like it were both painted over with different crests to further disguise them, but a genin team had cleaned both up a couple days ago.

Knowing that 'D-ranks' were glorified chores intended to help establish initial teamwork and show the civilians that shinobi generally weren't monsters was both nice and annoying. Nice to know what was coming instead of ending up on the 'wall of shame' when you had an incredibly shocked expression, annoying because knowing it was coming didn't make it sound any less boring.

"While I'm already keyed in," Old Man Hokage said as they passed through the 'gate', "you likely already know that you have to let others in more manually."

"Nah," Naruto said. "I found the instructions for keying them in."

"...where, if you're willing to share?"

"In the training hall, with the jutsu scrolls."

"I see. Would the scrolls only be accessible to you and not to others you bring in?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. Some kind of weird thing where they don't seem to exist to others, but if someone else puts a scroll there it takes a few days before it vanishes."

"Ah. Is something like that how you've been getting in before now?"

"There's a way in through the shrine near the apartment building."

The old man looked down at Naruto. "I wasn't aware that you were on good terms with Yoko. You're never seen with her, at least."

That stunned Naruto, and his parents for that matter. "What?"

"Surely you're aware of the shrine maiden looking after the shrine?"

Naruto blinked a couple of times, trying to decide how to respond to that.

"I think we owe you an apology or two," his mother said from inside of the Tome. "We thought you'd screwed up with Yoko enough that the shinobi of the village were generally aware of who Yoko was..."

"But I don't think Hiruzen is playing dumb," his father continued. "He somehow never connected the two identities."

"Have you been sneaking into the shrine without even noticing the girl?" Old Man Hokage asked.

"Yoko isn't real," Naruto finally said, only for it to be obvious that the old man was going to disagree. "She's just a clone."

Hoshi found the old man's expression to be funny enough to fall off of Naruto's head while laughing, but the old man recovered quickly enough. "I see. That does bring two other things up. First, I was...very much surprised to find out that you have fox ears and a tail that you normally keep hidden. I'd likely have panicked if not for finding out from the monkeys, and I fully understand why you would want to keep those features hidden. While foxes are only somewhat disliked in general, seeing you with the features would probably cause panic."

"You knew that but hadn't figured out Yoko?"

"Yes. In all fairness, the vast majority of the civilians pass beneath my notice simply because I don't have time to notice them. I only became aware of Yoko because of how long she's lasted acting as a shrine maiden in that particular shrine, and even then only because it came up as a side discussion after a Council of Clans meeting. There has been some debate over providing more direct monetary support to Yoko in maintaining the shrine." He paused and shook his head. "That aside, for your own safety I've had to inform the Anbu commander and a couple of others connected to village security about the physical changes."

Well, that did make sense, and those people were likely very trusted. "Okay."

"The other thing I need to talk to you about is the shadow clone jutsu. I can only assume that you found a scroll on it in the training hall, but it's a dangerous technique that your classmates won't be able to handle."

"The what jutsu?" Naruto asked, doing his best to sound confused.

"The solid clones you've been using," Old Man Hokage said, demonstrating by making one. "It's a dangerous jutsu."

"Oh! You know it too? Then why did you ask me to teach you it?"

"I what?"

"The scroll I found it on called it the paperwork jutsu."

Naruto had to promise his parents to never utter even half of what the old man or his clone had said in the following five minutes. On the other hand, he didn't have to worry about buying ramen every day for months if he wanted to after being paid for a very long-standing mission to rediscover Uzu's paperwork jutsu for use by non-Uzumaki.

Or maybe he'd put it towards getting Hinata a chakra blade that would be suitable for her? He'd learned that there were things that could only be reliably cut with one, and she didn't want one of the Uzumaki blades...

A couple of days after being 'officially' shown the Uzumaki compound, Naruto and Hinata met in it. Hoshi had darted off to a spot he liked to nap in, but Naruto was obviously nervous, and Hinata just as obviously wasn't sure why.

"Is something wrong?" Hinata asked, before looking around. "You don't even have your clones active."

"My parents came up with a seal," Naruto admitted. "It took me a while to be able to draw correctly, but I've finally got it down."

"Okay..."

"They say that if I draw it and activate it on you then you'll be able to shapeshift like I can. Well, I ended up having to learn an alternate way to 'draw' it because using a brush just wasn't working, but that just makes it faster."

Hinata blinked a couple of times, staring at him. "Really?"

"I mean, we haven't actually been able to test it..."

He might have continued if she hadn't glomped him in a hug, and ten minutes later they were inside the training hall. She'd had to expose her back to him as the safest place to place the seal, and he didn't mention ahead of time that to connect to his abilities better and make it easier to form the seal was going to be 'drawn' with his own blood. A quick cut of his palm was needed before he placed his hand on her back and used his chakra to spread his blood out into the seal's pattern. It expanded across her back, covering most of it, before he switched from 'forming the seal' to 'activating the seal'. His chakra was already there in the seal, so this was more of a mental switch than anything else, and the seal glowed brightly.

Hinata screamed in pain as the seal latched onto her chakra network, something that they'd hoped wouldn't be a problem but that Naruto had also forgotten to warn her might happen. But at this point Naruto knew he had to push through, and two minutes later the seal had finished forming and connecting to her. The original pattern had gradually shrunk, eventually ending up as a small spiral discoloration of her skin directly under his palm. At least to normal sight.

To a byakugan it stuck out quite a bit, which was something that hadn't been considered, and the Tome could tell it was there too. More importantly, he got a confirmation that the seal had formed correctly, so once she'd recovered they could test it.

Or, with a pulse of chakra, she could activate the ability while still half out of it, taking on a kitsune-like form with blue fur matching her hair on her ears and tail. Well, either that or there was a problem with the seal and she'd just been turned into one for real...but her scent hadn't changed, so he didn't think that was the case. Her chakra definitely had, taking on a little bit of the appearance his chakra had, but her scent seemed to be the same as it had been before they'd started.

It took her another half an hour to recover, at which point she seemed delighted with the ears and tail. At least until she realized that her normal choice of clothing didn't work well with the tail at all, which had her pouting and finally listening to the explanation of how to control things. Reverting to her normal appearance had been simple enough, and they'd quickly discovered that she couldn't shift her clothing like he could if he wanted. But then twenty minutes later she'd shifted into Hikari, apparently without intending to, which had Naruto panicking a little about having screwed something up.

"This should just be an adaptation period," his father assured him. "It should last...um...no more than four days or so?"

"Probably only two to three," his mother added. "But if it was going to take more than five then the seal would've unraveled already."

"You placed an experimental seal on my daughter," Hiashi said, looking between Naruto and Hinata, the latter having manifested fox ears again a couple minutes prior. Before yawning cutely, as each shift to something other than her actual base form was eating a chunk of her chakra and she was starting to get low. "One that lets her actually change her physical form."

"Yes," Naruto admitted.

"One that only works because it's granting her a copy of your ability to do the same."

"Also yes."

"And that appears to have a bias towards fox features, of all things?"

"Er," Naruto said, scratching the back of his head. "Those are easier for her to get right because of the seal, but I think they keep coming up because she likes them."

"So," Hinata's mother Satomi said. "Can we assume that it makes them easier because you're using your own ability to hide your own fox features?"

Gulping a little, he nodded.

"Would you be willing to show us?" Hiashi asked.

Sighing, Naruto shifted his pants a little so his tail wouldn't be caught before releasing his own shapeshift. Hiashi raised an eyebrow, Satomi squealed lightly...

...and Hanabi gave up all pretense of being a serious little girl observing all of this and glomped his tail, prompting a glare of death from Hinata that went ignored.

"What are the restrictions for applying this seal?" Hiashi asked while Naruto was trying to figure out what to do about Hanabi...without hurting her, anyway.

"Um," Naruto said as Hinata started helping remove Hanabi from his tail. "It only works if I place it, though if someone with a different special ability applied it then it might copy theirs instead. Applying it to someone who doesn't have enough chakra to water-walk for a couple of hours is probably a bad idea as well, based on how much is taken out of Hinata whenever she shifts."

"Would you mind inking it onto normal paper for one of our sealmasters to look at?"

"Sure?"

Twenty minutes later a large sheet of paper and a bottle of ink had been provided. Applying the seal with ink instead of blood was harder, but only took a few extra minutes. Hiashi and Satomi were both very surprised when Naruto hadn't used a brush though. That was followed by ensuring that Naruto and Hinata both looked normal before summoning the most trusted sealmaster in the clan, a woman named Mio, who stared at the seal for several minutes before even asking what it was supposed to be for.

"Most of this looks to be complete nonsense," Mio said as she turned around. "Yet the active elements look like they'd be excellent for use by the clan, once simplified down a bit."

Hiashi raised an eyebrow. "And what do you think the active elements do?"

"There's a ring to disguise it as a simple birthmark of some kind around the outside, but the primary function looks like it would negate the need for increased blood flow to the eyes when activating the byakugan."

"That's a useful side effect of protecting the eyes," Naruto corrected, as that was one of the few parts of the seal he actually understood somewhat. "But isn't the intent of the seal at all." Of course, his parents had just shared with him a...much simpler version that just did that, and would take on the appearance of the clan's symbol when applied instead of the spiral. "But if you want one that does that?"

"I'd appreciate seeing that before we break Mio's brain," Hiashi said, grabbing another sheet of paper for Naruto. "If you don't mind?"

Mio's eyes had gone wide, and she'd activated her byakugan, as Naruto placed the new seal onto the sheet of paper. That had also noticeably caused her to spot the seal on Hinata's back, but no questions were asked initially. Instead, she looked over the new seal when he was done, nodding. "Yes, this is much more reasonable, and we may wish to apply it to all members of the clan going out into the field, assuming that we can come to an agreement for purchasing it." She then turned and looked more closely at the larger seal. "But then what does that monstrosity do?"

With a pulse of chakra, Hinata hiccuped and imploded in her clothing, suddenly looking like a blond-haired Hanabi with dark blue fox ears and tail. Mio had jumped and spun to stare at her, and was visibly shocked.

"It currently grants my daughter the ability to change her shape," Hiashi answered. "Including, as you can see, changing her chakra points when appropriate. We've been assured that she'll gain proper control over it in the coming days, and I suspect that adding mass is more chakra intensive than removing it."

"There's no way that seal is responsible for this alone," Mio said.

"Not alone, no. Only when applied by the correct individual."

"But that..." she started, turning back to look at the seal. "No, but...hmmm. So...yes, there...still don't see what...oh...hmmm..." This continued for a couple of minutes, the woman reaching out to almost touch the seal in several places as she tried to trace elements, before she sighed and turned around. "This is a masterwork that defies conventional examination, but it does make it obvious that Uzumaki here can also use the ability. I'd like to see how that differs in appearance, if it does at all, from Hinata's use."

Naruto shrugged and shifted to look like Hinata normally did, and as standard when disguising himself as a specific person he almost-unconsciously adjusted his chakra and scent to match. The only thing he didn't do was include his clothing in the change, which left him a bit uncomfortable.

"You...but..." Mio said, eyes going wider and flicking between him and Hinata. "If I had not seen it I would think that you were Hinata right now!"

Hiashi, Satomi, and Hanabi all activated their own byakugan to look, and all seemed just as shocked.

"Er," Naruto said, realizing what they were seeing and not trying to mimic Hinata as he scratched the back of his head. "I learned how to mimic chakra from the Anbu? So it isn't part of the ability."

"I see," Hiashi said even as Hanabi got over her shock and moved to check out Hinata's tail. "I suppose we need to move on to important discussions."

By the end of the week Hinata had gotten control over her shapeshifting, only triggering it when she intended to. The Hyuga clan had officially purchased the seal that made using the byakugan less obvious, insisting on paying for it instead of accepting it as payment for being 'foolhardy' with an experimental seal once Hinata had gained the promised control. Instead, Hanabi had somehow convinced her father to have her getting the seal be payment for experimenting on Hinata.

Until getting control over things, Hanabi bounced between adding cat ears and a tail and inanimate objects. For the latter, a basic pillow and a couple of styles of plush toy were the most common, and had required the byakugan to find her several times. She stated a desire to keep the cat ears and tail all the time once she'd gotten control, but had promised to look normal outside of the house for now.

Hinata was experienced enough to know that running around with fox features would be a bad idea, but had been intrigued by the idea of shapeshifting into inanimate objects. Naruto had known he could, doing so for pranks every so often, but hadn't explored the wider implications. Such as throwing a transformed clone as a kunai or shuriken for surprise attacks. The only problem there was that 'change back' for the clone ended up being to Naruto's default form, fox ears and tail included. For Hinata and Hanabi the problem would be that they couldn't include their clothing in the shapeshifting.

Their training had started including Hinata taking on someone else's appearance while sparring though, borrowing clothing from Naruto's now-sizable collection when needed. It was something Naruto had been doing with his clones a lot already both so that he'd be comfortable fighting while disguised and to get a much more varied set of body types to practice against. This now included him taking her appearance and trying to mimic her behavior well enough to fool others...as well as her attempting to do the opposite.

He was having far more success. It was much easier to pretend to be shy than to overcome being shy to pretend to be outgoing.

Hiashi thought back over the past couple of weeks as the Council of Clans waited for the Hokage to arrive. The elders had warmed up even more to young Naruto with a new seal that made the clan even more effective, especially when paired with the solid disguise technique, and had somehow missed that Hinata and Hanabi had picked up an entirely different seal. Which was good, because Mio had admitted after Hanabi had gotten her seal that anyone with the shapeshifting seal could no longer get the so-called Caged Bird seal.

The woman had obviously expected to be punished for not mentioning it before then, but he'd been delighted that neither of his daughters could be subject to that monstrosity anymore. It took quite a bit of pressure off of him and meant he could fully stop playing some of the elders off of each other on that subject in particular. Most of them had already been on board with being unable to mark either girl because it would be an insult for Hinata to marry Naruto if sealed and she couldn't be the Hyuga clan head if Naruto was to be the Uzumaki clan head.

Luckily, Hanabi hadn't latched onto an important member of another clan yet. It was an odd side effect of the byakugan, three out of five Hyuga became infatuated with someone at a young age from the look of their chakra alone. That had obviously happened with Hinata and subtle encouragement of the friendship with Naruto had paid off significantly. Something that wouldn't have happened had that 'decoy seal' not been broken...though it was feeling more like a botched extraction had actually killed the fox and Naruto had inherited some traits as a side effect.

Voicing those thoughts out loud was tantamount to inviting war though, so they were going to stay internal musings.

Hiruzen's arrival broke Hiashi's train of thought. No advisors today, which was fairly common.

"Good morning," Hiruzen said once he'd taken his seat. "I have several items for the end of the meeting, if there's anything else to bring up today?"

Itachi indicated a desire to speak, and was waved to do so. "I have two items. First, clearing of several border areas of the Uchiha compound to create academy student friendly training areas for the village is nearly completed. There were foundation issues with the border walls put up as well, which I attribute to those from the clan who did that impromptu work being unfamiliar with construction in general. The entire wall will be torn down in the coming months and final evaluation of the clan's residential holdings will be made available for review by the end of the year."

"That wall was up for far too long," Tsume all but spat, and it was hard to argue.

"Having proof of a rogue Uchiha working against the interests of the clan has removed the need for it, though finding out the way we did was unfortunate." There was a round of nods at that, Hiashi included. "I'd also like to thank those clans whose members joined the police force and am hoping to make it through the backlog of paperwork sometime this decade to identify what rules and policies need to be officially changed."

He bowed and sat back down, and Hiruzen nodded. "Unless anyone else has something to bring up, that actually leads into one of my own topics." Saying that was enough to get their attention, so he continued. "I'm sure that you have all heard the rumors that the fabled paperwork jutsu has been rediscovered, which I can confirm. I am, in fact, using it as we speak."

Even Shikaku shifted to looking wide awake at hearing that.

Hiruzen frowned as he continued. "The jutsu was lost due to...misunderstandings, miscommunications, and evaluations that looked at the 'underneath' of things to find things that were not there. At the same time, it was never lost, the original having been a gift that Konoha gave Uzushio as part of the alliance when the village was formed. I have since discovered that many likely even realized that we still had it, though I can only confirm that Chunin Iruka Umino figured it out. He thought that our search for it was a joke or misdirection instead of an oversight. In response to this, I will be putting out new forms that all shinobi will be encouraged to fill out to confirm that either they have spotted something intentional or that they have identified something overlooked."

"You make it sound like we've had the jutsu for years," Inoichi noted.

"When they were given the jutsu, the Uzumaki noted that it shared a name with several other techniques. They immediately spotted an important implication though, and dubbed it the paperwork jutsu instead of inviting confusion in their own ranks." He paused, and looked over them. "Every single person in this room is capable of, and already trained in, the use of the fabled paperwork jutsu. Including Kuromaru, though most of you rarely use it."

The clan heads all shared a look, and Hiashi had a bad feeling that they were about to feel like complete idiots.

"No guesses?" Hiruzen asked, and they all shook their heads. "This morning I personally updated the central archives to add the additional name of the jutsu. It can now be found under both the name Uzushio gave it, the paperwork jutsu, as well as the name Tobirama Senju gave it, the shadow clone jutsu."

Yep. Complete and total morons, the lot of them, because now that it had been said aloud the implications for being able to get through paperwork were obvious.

"We're down to the last year and a half for you," Iruka-sensei said after taking attendance. For some reason this year all the 'clan kids' were now in a single class with the best-performing of the civilian-born. "Not all of you are going to graduate to become genin, and we'll be running what amounts to a full graduation exam every six months so that you can see where you need to work on things. A bad enough failure on those exams may also get you removed from the program early. The first of these we'll be doing over the next three days, explaining the what and why as we go along, but this one won't be graded as the actual exam is only a day long. Your first real run will be in January."

"This is different from what you may have heard the exam was just last year," Mizuki-sensei continued. "Some recent changes were pushed through by the Uchiha to ensure that there's a minimum physical capability to graduate after concerns about the amount of dieting and other such nonsense going on were brought up. For those aspiring kunoichi that are dieting to impress a boy in particular, everyone gets only two chances to pass the physical component of the single-day exam. If you fail it twice then you will be ejected from the program, even if you're a member of a clan, so you have at most twelve months to shape up."

Several of the civilian-born girls had looked shocked at that, but Ino looked terrified. Naruto knew that he and Sasuke were targets for a number of the girls and that many were dieting out of some twisted desire to look attractive by being unhealthily skinny and useless in a fight...while trying to get the attraction of aspiring shinobi. Which didn't paint a good picture of their intelligence. Naruto was also...less visible, you could say, spending very little time 'as himself' in the village, leading to most of the girls focusing on Sasuke.

Most, but not all. Sakura seemed to flip back and forth, usually mirroring Ino doing the same to avoid both targeting the same boy at the same time, with Ino currently being the one targeting Naruto. Actually, she'd been the one targeting him for six months or so, which might mean that she and Sakura had settled on individual targets? Rio had figured out that Naruto was a fan of orange and started including a lot of it in her wardrobe without considering that 'likes wearing' and 'likes seeing others wearing' were two different things. And Yumi...didn't seem to know what she wanted, honestly, bouncing between all the male 'clan kids' seemingly at random. While creeping most of the class out in the process.

"We'll be starting with the physical requirements today," Iruka-sensei said. "The minimum stamina, strength, and pain tolerance requirements in particular. Better accuracy with thrown weapons reduces, but does not eliminate, the strength requirement so long as you get sufficient depth of impact at the same time. If you can dodge the things we're throwing at you as part of testing your pain tolerance then you also get a pass there."

"The actual exam will have everything tested essentially at once," Mizuki-sensei explained with an evil grin. "Meaning running with weights while dodging or taking hits without stopping due to the pain and throwing weapons at targets. You'll be able to choose your weights, but lower amounts of weight will mean needing higher accuracy scores on the thrown weapons."

Okay, this was probably going to suck, and Naruto apparently needed to look into better training weights. Or making some with seals?

Hinata had been the only girl in the class to not fall over halfway through the 'stamina' portion of things that day, and her lunch probably contained more calories than any three of the other girls were trying to eat in a day combined. In fact, her lunch had grown in size regularly over the past few years as she worked to build her chakra reserves and she currently held third place for 'most bowls of ramen eaten in one sitting' at Ichiraku's. Naruto was only ten bowls behind his mother's record and figured that he'd have it beaten by the end of the year, though she claimed that he had his work cut out for him because her record had been set while pregnant with him.

He'd beaten her non-pregnant record earlier in the year.

"How do you do it?" Sakura asked Hinata at the end of the day.

"Do what?" Hinata asked.

"Survive the entire day without falling over sleeping," Ami clarified.

"I eat enough."

"...what?"

Naruto chuckled. "She once told her sister that she hoped to one day be exercising enough to eat as much as I do without getting fat."

Hinata blushed, but nodded. "All of us should aspire to be able to eat anything we want and not care because we get too much exercise to put on excess weight. Akimichi clan techniques aside."

"Akimichi have to eat anything we want in triple portions," Choji clarified from behind them, startling some of the girls who hadn't noticed him following the group. "Because otherwise we don't keep enough weight on for our higher-level techniques."

Most of the girls looked like this was an affront to their sensibilities, but Hinata pulling a package of cinnamon rolls out of a storage seal on a metal tag clipped to her belt and starting to eat one threw them for a loop.

"Oooooh," Choji said, suddenly in front of the group. "Is that a food-safe storage seal?"

Hinata blinked, but nodded. "Yeah."

"Where did you get it? Our previous supplier of small ones passed away last year so we're stuck with full scrolls only."

"...they're hard to find?" She turned to Naruto. "You didn't tell me there was any problem with making them."

Naruto shrugged. "Everyone I've talked to about basic storage seals has told me that you've not properly learned to make them until they can store food for at least six months, if not a couple of years. Anything before that point is technically faulty."

Choji blinked and stared at Naruto. "Wait, that implies that you made that seal."

"Well, yeah, but the Hyuga sealmasters make something similar for the clan's camping supplies. Hinata's is a single-bucket version, they make a four-bucket version that I haven't figured out yet."

"Huh. I'll have to let dad know, but the Hyuga aren't in the habit of selling their seals at all and we only had...you called Hinata's a 'single bucket' seal?"

"Yeah. One storage bucket, ten slots, first in first out style so that the oldest cinnamon rolls come out first."

"Huh. That actually sounds more useful than the one I have since I can only fit three in and the most recently stored one comes out first. Definitely going to tell dad, both about the Hyuga and you."