81

Copies of Uzushio's new rank standards books had been sent off to all other hidden villages, major and minor, as well as to all other major settlements on the continent. The 'skill-based' ones in particular for everyone, and the full system for Konoha. Shisui had reviewed the summary of what had been done in Uzushio, groaned, and started working on implementing the split system as well as it made far too much sense not to. Unlike with Uzushio, it was going to be much more of an uphill battle to convince everyone involved that it was a good idea and/or not a repeated series of insults as permissions and trust levels were adjusted.

Both Iwa and Suna had sent apologies explaining that their planned exams likely wouldn't be meeting the standards provided. All indications were that Konoha was the only hidden village not going into a 'shit, we need to revamp our skill assessments' panic as well, now that a proverbial gauntlet had been thrown down. Sending out the standards to the potential clients was probably the most panic-inducing part for most of them though, given that they put forth a set of capabilities that almost certainly ranked most 'chunin' on the continent as genin and half the 'jounin' as chunin.

Naruto didn't really care.

The new 'light chakra' area of Bloodline Island had been put together, and an attempt at making a 'dark charka' node had been made. That just hadn't worked, at all. Drawing on, and even generating, 'dark chakra' didn't seem to need a chakra net node. Instead, it seemed to be more of a corruption of the sage process than anything else, drawing in already-tainted bits of natural energy. Pulling on it was less 'special ability' and more 'learned trick'...and the 'light chakra' effect was essentially purifying and releasing the corrupted natural energy.

Yoko had put the effort into figuring out how to make automatic 'draw in and purify' seals, when you stuck a light chakra node bead into them. She'd then started sticking medical chakra and bite-to-heal beads in too, feeding them with the purified chakra. The resulting seal was now being put into all Uzushio hot springs, drawing in what amounted to 'negative energies' and turning it into a general healing effect for anyone in the hot spring.

It was a much better use of the tainted natural energy than letting it build up and cause problems, and the seals generally kept the bunkers charged with enough ambient chakra to keep everything else powered and drastically increase recovery rates as a side effect.

Hinata winced as she looked through Naruto's latest...she wasn't sure what to call it. The code was impossibly elegant, implying that he'd done his 'rework it as seals' trick. The electronics were...passable, and possibly intentionally inefficient because she was reasonably certain that some of the newer and smaller components wouldn't work for the interface he'd built. She wasn't even going to try to figure out the physical stones involved, but there was a large 'primary' stone and then a smaller one for each 'satellite location'.

This entire thing was also very obviously designed to be a completely independent system that just happened to be able to be tied into the identification systems, but it was also the second true fusion of seals and technology that he'd produced. Similar to his 'go to any of the destination seals' trick for the departure seals, and a civilian-capable version for moving between dedicated points for travel to and from the mainland dock facility and trading post, but far more complicated.

"I'm hoping the technology side is easier to understand than the seals side is proving to be," Akira said from where he'd been working with a few of the Uzumaki and Miho to examine the stones.

"There's an access hierarchy with groups and flags," Hinata replied. "Blood and chakra signature matching of some kind, adding and removing people and shifting them around depending on their status in the main identification system. Static non-identity entries as well, though those seem to come exclusively from the stone's side of things and can just be assigned to buckets instead of being directly adjustable. I think it pulls team information from the main identification databases as well, but I've not fully figured out how that's used, and most of the hierarchy stuff comes from those databases as well."

"Ugh. And I thought his dial-a-destination trick was bad. At least he told us what that one did, instead of essentially daring us to figure this one out."

"Your team was the one that basically told him you could figure out any seal. That said, I can tell you that the smaller stones and interface units attached to them are registration systems. They seem entirely disconnected otherwise, just serving as an additional input instead of using the triple-circle there on the main stone."

"...wait, that's a registration point? How'd you figure that out?"

"There are visual guides for registering someone in here on both the main stone and the smaller ones."

"Oh. Wait, he included documentation in there and you haven't shared it?"

"Congratulations, you've just been told everything the documentation told me."

Akira and the other Uzumaki all flinched, but a couple of them moved to pay more attention to the registration point.

"We're missing something obvious," Miho said as she came over to look over Hinata's notes.

"You're still having problems because this mixes technology in," Hinata pointed out. "We all think that the Tome induces mental blocks there."

"I still think that we've overlooked something in the seals that would tell us exactly what we're looking at. But he's twisted them up so much with the technology link..."

"The Hiraishin seal connection at least just reconfigured a small piece of the seal in a reasonably simple manner. This is large-scale manipulation of the seals on the large stone."

"Yeah."

"And at this point he won't tell us what he's built until he's ready to 'unveil' it."

"Probably. Worse, this is only a 'prototype' and not the actual one he's installing."

"You've seen his 'final production' circuitry these days. Or rather, not seen it because ninety percent of it is impossible to see or access."

"True. That entire stone is essentially rigged to be able to be sealed almost entirely away too, he just didn't do it here."

Hinata sighed. "Of course it is. So that it can't be tampered with, most likely. Do you know if Futo or Odoroki have taken a look?"

Miho scoffed. "They actually filled out paperwork to reclassify themselves as seal novices and went to find something 'less insane' to work on. Especially since Naruto still doesn't think he properly understands the technology side of this monstrosity."

"Er, yeah. He actually showed me his 'graveyard'."

"...graveyard?"

"A small mountain of failed prototypes of the technology pieces that he's not gotten around to obliterating yet. All of them for just this project."

Miho flinched. "He's literally using repeated trial and error?"

"Apparently. Throw enough clones at it and he at least doesn't lack the manpower needed."

"Long story short," Nagato said to the assembled division leaders and seconds-in-command. They had more than he'd thought they had, but that was okay. "I'm basically positive at this point that my own rise to power was set up by an enemy to use me as a pawn towards their actual goals. Uzushio, directly or indirectly, has ended the enemy's plans and proven that they could take over the continent if they ever desired to. Luckily for the continent, they don't really want to take it over. I suspect almost entirely because the Uzukage thinks there would be too much paperwork, but I can't be certain."

"He's mastered paperwork in ways nobody else ever has," Konan noted. "Why would he be afraid of more?"

"Less fear, more practicality, I think. He isn't afraid of the paperwork, he just finds it too tedious." She nodded, so he continued. "The previous couple of wars ensured that there are no longer any civilian settlements within our borders, with shinobi even taking over the farms. As such, we are uniquely suited to request being folded into Uzushiogakure as a mainland settlement. I've cleared everything I believe can be safely cleared regarding our relations with other villages, primarily with Konohagakure and the Land of Fire. Akatsuki's members are the only exception, and at this point none of them are likely problems and should not have any impact on our relation with Konoha. All that remains is getting approval from the people before approaching the Uzukage."

"What benefits does this give us over finding someone who can fix our farms?" Okihaku questioned.

"Immediate access to their surplus food to start with, and the latest analysis of the farms themselves indicates that they might've been intentionally poisoned and are in need of complete replacement." He wasn't going to say it, but assumed that this was from things Zetsu had been doing to the farms and the results of those things breaking down since the...thing had vanished. "I also believe that Uzushio has far more effective ways to boost crop yields that are unlikely to be shared outside of their borders." There was nodding at that, and some grimacing. "Further, I suspect that their defensive lines would...very much discourage trying to pass through them in the name of fighting a war."

"And what of our forces?" Tatsuki asked. "We've seen the standards Uzushio put out, and we are...woefully inadequate by them as written."

"Presumably everyone would be tested, assigned admittedly lower Uzu ranks, and then gain access to training opportunities that should hopefully allow getting back up to where you thought you already were. Our medics would almost certainly immediately be offered a medical chakra bloodline and rumor is that they've standardized the testing for being granted other chakra-based bloodlines. They also have multiple ways to grant physical boosts, though they aren't experimenting with dojutsu like Konoha is rumored to be doing."

None of them wanted to be 'demoted', but that was a possibility even under the current system. Uzushio's reasoning for where they drew the chunin and jounin lines was honestly well-reasoned with very good arguments. At the same time it was obviously missing things...but those things were also details that clients wouldn't care about. Leadership skills and internal trust were far less important to a client, in addition to revealing those details about how Uzushio was run being far more of a security problem.

Really, it was far more likely that everyone would be brought in as genin and then made to test for higher ranks. That would nicely solve most of the issues with bringing people into a village from the new village's point of view. A bit of an insult to the incoming shinobi, perhaps, but so long as testing for promotions wasn't intentionally delayed then it should be manageable.

Musing about eventual ranks aside, Nagato allowed the group to discuss amongst themselves. He was reasonably certain that they would agree to bring it to the rest of the people as a good idea. They were already importing too much food due to their farming issues and the assassination missions that had been their primary source of income were currently in a serious lull for a complicated web of reasons. If this had been a request to petition to officially join one of the larger nations then it would never have been on the table at all, of course. There was too much animosity there. But Uzu had arguably suffered more than Ame had and bounced back far better as of late.

It took an hour, but there was eventually unanimous agreement to gently encourage the populace to agree. An actual vote would take a few weeks to set up and that work could be started immediately...but a message to Naruto was needed to warn him.

"I'm not sure why you've come to me about this," Shisui said after reading over the summary of the voting to happen in Amegakure in the coming days.

"Because the agreements with the Land of Fire require it," Naruto replied. When the man looked up in disbelief he continued. "This would change the borders between Uzushio and the Land of Fire because Ame's territory is on the western border of the Land of Fire. That it would also give access to the borders with the Land of Earth and the Land of Wind is a side bonus."

"Why would there be rules about the borders between the two nations when they don't currently share a border?"

"The expanse of water between the island and the mainland contains a defined border. Deciding to do something like crossing that with a bridge would be changing it."

"Oh. And the language is generic enough that 'acquiring' territory adjacent to the Land of Fire counts?"

"Yep. I have to meet with the Fire Daimyo about it too." Which was scheduled for tomorrow and was going to be annoying, but Shisui didn't need to worry about that part of things. "I need official sign-off from both of you to go ahead with the 'proposed changes' if the vote goes as expected. Oddly, not to build or rebuild border stations next to the border, but if we want to put in any new roads then that requires sign-off from both sides too."

"I'm reasonably certain that the agreements didn't consider Uzu getting anything on the mainland beyond the bit of land adjacent to the Land of Hot Water."

"That's kind of obvious."

"...and they're going to be annoyed if suddenly they aren't getting as much merchant traffic for trading because you've got access to set up prime trading route areas in the middle of the continent."

"Oh no, we'd have to set up much further west and a little further south to be in the middle of the continent. This is more 'in the middle of the Elemental Nations'. Which happen to be the bulk of the human-inhabited portions of the continent, as far as I've been able to tell. Most of the rest is controlled by summon clans right now."

"And you have bunkers that they may or may not know about spread throughout their lands too, I'm betting."

"I asked for permission because honestly there aren't many reasons to head out that way and they're less 'hidden bunkers' and more 'obvious small houses'. One each for the foxes, toads, bears, monkeys, and chameleons so far. Well, the monkeys have a large house with a sizable hot spring setup next to it, which is part of why the Sarutobi clan has been spending much more time 'reverse summoned for training' lately."

"Well, that's one mystery I hadn't expected to get an explanation for, at least."

The 'meeting' with the Fire Daimyo had taken far longer, a full three days because a proper daimyo had to go through a whole litany of niceties on arrival and before departing, but had otherwise not been a problem. Naruto hadn't been expecting to issue travel papers for Ame citizens or shinobi until running checks on everyone anyway and that was the only major concern the Fire Daimyo had to begin with. Minor concerns included a request for 'safer and better-maintained trade routes', assuming there were good routes that civilians could traverse through the area, but there wasn't any complaint about having a well-positioned ally on the border.

The actual vote by the Amegakure people had been almost unanimously in favor of Uzushio taking over Amegakure and, through it, the small country it ran. An official messenger had been sent to Uzushio, and Naruto had personally swung through for a mass clone rebuilding. He didn't aim to rebuild the entire village, but did replace the tower that Nagato had ruled from with an Uzushio-style one and put in a massive underground complex. From the main village the changes spread, an actual border wall with defenses and the removal of Konan's in-progress lake of explosive tags before cleaning up all the roads leading to the village and passing through the farming areas while heading for the country borders.

Completely removing the farming areas down to the bedrock had been needed to clear out the various pockets of honestly disgusting rot and decay that had ended up deep underground. Clones went three days following trails of the stuff through the country and even continued into the Land of Fire. That was going to take weeks to a couple of months to clean up properly, though how it had all ended up there wasn't clear.

Those larger issues aside, it took Naruto's clones a week to go through everything on a first pass. Properly building up border defenses, getting the shinobi checked and registered, updating the local policies and procedures, and fully establishing connections to the main island would take longer. Nagato and Konan were helping with a lot of the registration and policy work, though not in the testing of the shinobi to confirm their skill levels or determine their trust levels. That would come later.

As part of this, local teams were being sent out to specifically check Naruto's work and see if there were any missed problems as well as to check roads for safety. This had taken the teams by surprise, and a number of them saw it as a test and looked hard for the 'intentionally left' problems they felt had to be the point. Compared to being locals that could theoretically spot things that he'd missed because he wasn't as familiar with the area. That four teams had already found things going slightly wrong in places was a good sign for them taking things seriously.

But a bad sign in two of the four cases regarding the farmers being able to follow simple directions regarding the rebuilt farms and the use of their irrigation controls.

Onoki blinked a couple of times as he read a report from a border patrol group. "This says that Amegakure's forces have started wearing Uzushio forehead protectors."

"Skip the reports and check the diplomatic updates," Akatsuchi said.

"...that's ominous."

Dropping that report back on the stack, he did go ahead and move to the smaller diplomatic stack. It was generally much more annoying and had been filled with petty squabbling as of late. A trend that appeared to be continuing...until he got a third of the way through.

"Amegakure joined Uzushiogakure?" he read. "But...huh. And you knew already?"

"The mission desk has put out preliminary changes in orders while we wait for confirmation and decisions from, well, you."

"Ah. Good on them for being proactive, and of course there's likely a report that the intelligence division has already sent out requests for said confirmation. This does create the problem of drastically changing the threat profile on that border. Might as well drop all but the teams providing assistance to the samurai at the border stations, really."

"Er, but isn't Uzushio's threat level higher than Amegakure's was?"

"Significantly higher. If they want to attack then they'll either go right through anyone we've got at the border or ignore the border entirely. Possibly both at the same time. In either case, right now it makes no sense to waste teams on the bulk of that border. It'll make for a good spot to put genin learning to interact with civilians and samurai in the meantime, though perhaps it would also be a good place to run safe 'this is how you set up for and run border patrol' training too...will need to consider that further."

Akatsuchi was loyal and skilled, but obviously wasn't cut out to be a village leader. Then again, at least he'd not recommended the old stand-by when a neighboring 'small country' was suddenly under new management. Attempting to go in and drive out the new management to reinstate something at least similar to the old management would be incredibly unwise in this situation, even if this wasn't a 'small country bordering three of the Big Five' situation.

...and with any luck their idiot Daimyo won't suddenly decide that this is a good reason for them to swing through to take over the obviously-vulnerable country or something else stupid like that.

Gaara looked over the report on the update to Amegakure's status. Uzushio was...honestly far more trustworthy right now, so it was on the whole welcome news. At the very least the island nation was playing nice with borders, sending out messengers to get permission for border crossings or arrange for hand-offs when escort missions crossed national borders. Most of the smaller nations didn't bother, and Konoha was the only large nation that generally did so when not crossing into another one of the Big Five.

Uzushio was also claiming that within the month they'd have things in place such that they would know if anyone attempted to cross into their territory without getting permission, with an implication that you didn't want to do so. A list of designated contact points for approaching each of their mainland territories, as well as for arranging travel to their islands, had been sent out to facilitate getting permission to cross their territory. Most of those contact points were, fittingly, along the main roads.

"I think we're going to want to ensure that we're careful about antagonizing Uzushiogakure," Gaara finally said.

"No shit," Kankuro replied. "Have you gotten to the report of them putting up those crazy automated puppet systems along the former Amegakure border?"

"...I have not, but that would definitely aid them in securing it from most casual incursions. Any sign of zombies?"

"That should not be a valid question."

"Well it is. Do you know the answer?"

"No sign mentioned in the reports I saw, but that could be part of what they're still working on setting up. Or that they weren't seen because nobody on the border teams was stupid enough to cross the border to trigger them."

"I feel that the latter possibility is unfortunately likely."

"Yeah."

Naruto looked over the crowd that had formed, shaking his head as he did so. "I don't think this is that big of a deal."

"The Great Old Geezer said you'd broken everything," Fukasaku replied. "Again. Many of us want to see what it is you've done this time, and then you made us all wait because you were too busy rebuilding a small country's defenses to work on this project."

Naoko and Toyoko of the foxes were there with a nameless fox sage, the White Snake Sage was there with a couple of other snakes, Enma had come with Old Man Hiruzen, Jiraiya had come with Fukasaku and Shima, the entirety of the technology and seals divisions of Uzu, probably half of the heads of other areas of Uzu and Konoha...

He'd not expected a crowd this large.

"So what did you make?" Ino asked. "Because last I heard everyone was baffled."

"Yeah," Naruto said, scratching his head behind one of his ears as it twitched a little. "I'm kind of surprised that none of you seem to know what I've done, despite several earlier iterations being examined." He pulled a cloth off of a registration pad, the identification card and pin entry unit attached to a ring holding a stone with a handprint on it. The interconnections between things were hidden in the ring, when not hidden in seals entirely.

"...you prettied it up," Hinata admitted. "But what does it do?"

"It's a summoning contract."

"...what?"

"Shinobi can register themselves with the contract at these stations. Their access levels automatically determine who can summon them and who they can summon, which connected summoning stones they can access, which security areas they can summon within, and other such details. For example, teams can generally summon within their membership but genin otherwise can't normally be summoned unless you've got permission to summon all genin or they're part of specific internal divisions. Otherwise being in general summoning pools starts at chunin, such as checking in to be on duty to provide instant backup for missions that have gone wrong if team leaders decide they need help. When you retire you can even stay on the contract to be able to use the general-access summoning stones while being removed from most other access lists. Oh, and it fully registers you with the bunker access system at the same time, assuming that your system access says you should have bunker access at all anyway."

He looked over the crowd, wondering why they all looked like he'd done something insane. A normal contract wouldn't have been able to handle the sheer number of people needed to sign it just for accessing a single summoning stone, so he'd needed to come up with a more advanced system that could handle the churn of a hidden village and the changes as promotions and other factors started kicking in. Connecting it to the existing digital identification system had felt like a straightforward extension of that.

"Rumor has it you're horrible with technology," the fox sage finally said. "How in the world did you successfully integrate it with a summoning contract? Those things are fiddly as hell!"

"Lots of failures," Naruto replied. "Well, on the technology side. The contract side was reasonably simple, I only needed four iterations there and I'm reasonably certain that the first three worked. Just without the full connection to the technological side of things."

"It took me years to properly learn how to connect to the global summoning network at all!"

"...admittedly, I never did figure out what that was supposed to be. There's a network of 'find a summoning clan' stones spread over the Elemental Nations, for grabbing those who attempt to summon without a contract and directing them somewhere useful automatically, but as far as I can tell a properly-constructed contract infused with natural energy works out to a significant distance from the planet without any issues at all. Those 'find a summoning clan' stones do look like they'd be difficult to tie into after the fact, but I have no need to let others 'find' Uzushio because they attempted a summoning without a contract. That would be counterproductive for village security, though I suppose it could be useful for letting wandering Uzumaki get to Uzushio easily if I did things right. Assuming I had any way of letting them know about it, which I don't."

"But..."

"I don't think your 'two people sign a contract with each other' contracts bind to any global network either. Or at least my duplications of them didn't seem to need anything like that? Pitiful range if not infused with natural energy while 'setting' the contract into the scrolls, admittedly."

That was apparently enough to cause the fox sage to realize that they'd missed obvious things...but the White Snake Sage also looked like she was stunned. Fukasaku and Shima looked like this had made something they'd not properly understood before now finally make sense and Jiraiya was taking notes.

Really, the stones that brought you to them had been the hard part. It was almost like a combination of merging the stones with the contract and infusing the stone with a sense of self strong enough to 'bind' to the summoning contract, but not quite. The actual summoning side was simply a seal embedded in the stone that reversed the flow of the summon attempt. Naruto had even figured out that if you applied the seal to a person then attempting to summon them would bring you to them instead.

Though in examining things he'd also figured out that swapping the bird hand seal out for reversed ram and the ram hand seal out for bird in the basic summoning technique you could get the same effect with any target. He wasn't sure if he wanted to make that more generally known or not though as it tended to drop you literally on top of them with no ability to retarget. That was kind of a feature with the stones, but not so much when targeting a person.

"Okay," Hinata said, having pulled out notes and checked them. "You impossibly created a digitally-managed summoning contract. Why is there a 'crossover' contingency in the management code?"

"In case we end up sharing with Konoha," Naruto replied. "Then you wouldn't need to be registered with each contract individually, access on one automatically spreading to affiliated contracts as the shared access rules permit. Though having clan or family contracts interconnected was also something I considered as you might want the hierarchy on those to work entirely differently than the village's. We don't have 'clan compounds' to speak of right now, since way back the village was essentially the 'Uzumaki clan compound', but I could see that changing going forward."

He wasn't mentioning that this primary Uzushio contract was actually two contracts utilizing a hardware-level interconnection system. The one that these interfaces all showed, requiring permission from the one being summoned to be summoned, and then a secret one that didn't include the 'permission of the one being summoned' element. Anyone added was added to both, but removal didn't go through to the secret contract. Temporarily activating a retrieval team would permit them to summon traitors if the target had ever been added to the more public contract.

With any luck, Uzushio would never have to deal with being unable to find and deal with their traitors. Even better, the existence of the second contract was currently one of the most secure secrets in the village with the hardware link inside of a seal that was essentially impossible to open to examine. If someone defects with village secrets or after doing something horrible, even if they thought to remove themselves from the public summoning contract ahead of time, then they hopefully just quietly vanish without anyone knowing how they were found and dealt with.

Which didn't mean that they wouldn't have defectors that were allowed to leave. Most of those who defected from existing nations ended up serving nobles as personal guards anyway. Naruto didn't care about them in the long run, and it was honestly better to let people think they might have a chance of escaping without being caught. Anyone who was still running around after defecting would just help disguise those who defected and then vanished without a trace.La