76

Naruto had brought Hinata and Ino to the top of the tower in the center of bloodline island first, where the observation and monitoring areas were. They arrived on the roof, where a platform you could look out over everything sat with stairs leading down from it. Underneath them were several lounge areas with monitors to watch things unfolding on the various cameras, a central control area, and an arrival/departure area that was currently lacking in arrival and departure seals because the corresponding tower near Uzushio hadn't been constructed yet.

"There's a ring of forest?" Ino asked, looking around. "I thought you weren't making things forested."

"With cliffs on both sides," Naruto elaborated. "On the outside they actually lean out slightly, to make climbing them harder, with no obvious caves available. Anyone trying to slip through underwater will find that the only openings down there have very solid grates with seals to reinforce them and keep them clear. The forest itself is working its way towards being properly dangerous and has a bunch of defenses hidden in it on top of that. That ring should serve as defenses, anchors for things like the summoning protections, and a power source for the internals. Normal access won't pass through it anyway."

"Oh. That makes a lot of sense."

"It isn't visible from inside, but from the outside the whole place looks like a volcanic island as well. We're standing in the illusionary crater, right at the illusionary lava's surface, and there's no real sign of the inner cliffs until you make it inside the illusion."

"Really? Oh...I think I can tell where the illusion layer is, now that I'm looking for it."

"It's actually a little more visible to the sharingan and rinnegan from inside." He gestured back out away from the tower. "Next in from the forest and cliffs is the 'elemental' ring with three main layers. Water, earth, and mud at the bottom with an isolated area inside the mud portion of the ring for wood. Boil, lava, explosion, and storm above that where things connect between layers, with fire, lightning, and what Hinata insists be called microwave at the top. Then there's a full circle inside of all of that for wind, with ice, magnet, scorch, and swift where it contacts the other basic elements."

"Not much to see from here on any of that," Hinata noted.

"They're reasonably self-contained, which is why the viewing lounges exist so you can get at the cameras. Inside the wind portion of the elemental ring is a gap, then you hit the tower and inner ring. Yin, yang, the combination thereof, medical, and the access point for the special routes for the sensory node and chakra chain nodes. I expect that the medical path will only ever get used by those wanting to pick up the bite-to-heal node as it's a lot easier to just visit the hospital and pass the much easier tests there."

"So how hard did you make the tests here?"

Naruto grinned, then connected his chakra to them and brought them to the water entry point. They arrived in a room with a full-wall window looking out towards the cliffs to provide natural light, points for arrival and departure seals that weren't filled yet, and a well-secured metal door with a card reader system next to it. A smaller door next to the window led to a small restroom. Sensors beeped and a couple of basic lights turned on while one of the cameras focused on them. "This is the water entry point." He formed his chakra into an identification card and swiped it through the reader, causing the door to open.

"Did you just make an identification card with pure chakra?"

"Yes."

Hinata glared at him. "How?"

"Practice?"

"They should be cryptographically secure!" She pulled a handheld reader out of a pouch, turned it on, and held it out to him. "You probably screwed up the readers, so let's see what happens when you use a working one."

He rolled his eyes, recreated the card, and swiped it through the reader. It beeped, and brought his information up. She turned it around and stared at it. Grinning, he tweaked the chakra card and swiped it through while she was staring at the screen, causing Ino's information to come up.

Hinata looked like she was torn between ranting and having a mental breakdown over this, but he turned to look at Ino, who was staring out the open door now instead. "Like it?"

"You used your bullshit 'illusion made real' trick on the entire island," Ino said. "That's the only explanation I can think of for the water test course seemingly being made out of water."

"Yep. Couldn't quite manage that for fire, lightning, and wind though. Had to put in actual platforms for them."

"...if anyone from other nations sees this...I...don't even know what they'll think. It's too insane."

"We should head towards the boundary to reach one of the combined-element areas so you can see the elementals get formed."

"Elementals?"

"Enemies formed of each element or combination thereof. Bit of an inspired adjustment to the zombie seals."

"NARUTO!" Hinata screamed. "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU INVALIDATE ALL THE SECURITY?"

Naruto blinked a couple of times and turned back to her. "They're just identification cards."

She glared at him. "With magnetic stripes and internal short-range communication chips, the latter of which do a cryptographic handshake to validate themselves as part of things. Any one piece of them being wrong should cause the system to throw errors!"

"...huh. I guess that's part of why I had trouble faking things when only using magnet release to fake the strip passing by the reader and had to figure out how to make a fake physical card..."

"...you don't even know how the internals of the cards work, do you?"

"I know how they're built and how the identification data is written to them."

She paused, and blinked. "You...just looked up the identification data and built a complete card from scratch using it? So you can't fake any card, just those you looked up?"

"Um, no? I just focus on whose name in the system I want and let my chakra handle the finicky details."

Great. Now even Ino was looking at him like he was crazy.

Obito had been very careful to not draw attention when arranging to get into Uzushiogakure. He found a noble's daughter who was already going to be coming and ensured that she thought he was supposed to be her bodyguard instead of the idiot that had been assigned to her. That had proved to be more annoying than the 'make her and her bodyguard think she had two bodyguards' plan so that he could wander a bit more freely, but her original bodyguard had fallen to a trio of bandits before he arrived.

But now that he was here he was a bit surprised at how comprehensive the security was. Physical keys only existed when paired with seals to prevent copies from being trivially made, not that he'd seen any seals on the keys he'd been able to spot being used, and those were probably the lowest-security items that he'd spotted. Magnetic stripe card readers paired with door codes and chakra readers, cameras and alarms everywhere, and enough seals of varying kinds on everything to make the place a veritable fortress.

Being inside the village made the outer layers of security look like they weren't trying, and he'd not been able to get a handle on the outer layers at all. There was no way for him to find anything they considered even remotely secure. You could probably have a small army working at accessing the low-security areas and not get anywhere due to how overdone the security was. Something very likely intentional, because they were probably still upset about the combined army that had destroyed the place the first time.

Unfortunately, that made finding anything of use impossible and the whole trip a waste of time. Having more freedom to move around instead of protecting the noble's daughter would very obviously not advance things much, so he'd just play bodyguard and watch the festivities. Maybe yell at her father later for being an idiot regarding his choice of bodyguards?

"Excuse me," a familiar-sounding voice came from behind him, and he turned to look. Half-freezing upon recognizing Jiraiya, but recovering quickly enough. Hopefully.

"Did you need something?" Obito asked. His temporary charge was in the hot springs, so at least a fight wouldn't cause her problems?

"We hear that you're here under false pretenses involving mind manipulations," a female voice said. Obito turned to see...an animal-woman? In what looked like it was supposed to be the clothing preferred by Orochimaru's people...

...fuck. That was Orochimaru.

"That isn't something we're in the mood to just let go," a third voice said, and it wasn't really surprising to see Tsunade in the door of the hot springs.

"It isn't false pretenses," Obito challenged.

"Oh?" Orochimaru questioned. "And why not?"

"I got her permission after her original bodyguard was too weak to handle a few bandits."

"A likely story," Jiraiya said.

"I even put a trigger on it. Ask her what happened to Tokio's sword and it should release just fine, but be ready for her to be a little panicked when she can remember seeing his head chopped off in front of her."

That obviously took the Sannin by surprise. Tsunade gave the other two a look, then vanished into the hot springs. He was reasonably certain that she made a couple of shadow clones, and a few minutes later one of them came back out.

"It seems he's telling the truth," the clone said. "The small amount of his chakra in her brain released in its entirety after asking the question."

Jiraiya looked slightly apologetic. "I see. Really didn't expect that to be the case."

"No need to be a monster," Obito replied. "Though now she's not going to be in any state to impress the Uzukage tomorrow."

"I doubt she would've managed it anyway," Orochimaru said. "But still, sorry for making assumptions about your actions."

Tsunade's clone dispelled a moment before Jiraiya vanished, followed by Orochimaru heading into the hot springs himself. Herself? Whatever. Obito was going to need a few minutes to get his heart rate down because without being able to use his mangekyo he wasn't really in a position to win a fight against the three Sannin.

It hadn't really been anticipated, but the bulk of the day had turned into 'figure out how Naruto duplicates identification cards with chakra' with a side of 'get all the truth-seeking balls sealed into their backs instead of offloaded to clones to keep them out of the way'. On the identification cards, any card created in the main systems he could duplicate immediately, but Hinata grumbling and creating six cards in all six of her workshop systems gave them a clue. Four cards he could duplicate, but two he hadn't been able to. They'd then made a quick trip to the mainland dock facility and a local card was created there. He couldn't duplicate it until an early backup was triggered. That copied it back to Uzushio's systems and suddenly he could duplicate it.

Heading back to Hinata's workshop, he'd walked her through what he was doing. She struggled to do so as he described as she understood why it shouldn't work, but eventually managed it...so long as she was duplicating cards that were in the two systems he couldn't duplicate cards from. Ino, despite following all the same instructions, couldn't duplicate any cards, not even her own.

"This is going to sound crazy," Hinata said. "But I think the problem is that you used chakra to build the computers."

"...of course I did," Naruto said.

"But your chakra is still in them, so when you need to know something stored in the computers your chakra essentially already knows it and can just grab the information. The two workstations that I can duplicate cards from are the ones I built with my own chakra while you were teaching me how you did that."

"Does that mean that Naruto can pull digital reports right out of the computers?" Ino asked.

"He might be able to, but I doubt it. While he could fake the cards, he doesn't seem to know anyone's personal codes unless he's watched them enter them and those are in the system too."

"Oh, right. Forgot about that."

"And the most secure areas require the card, code, and chakra to all match...or Naruto to just bypass the doors with any of his teleporting tricks, which would set alarms off if the system wasn't configured to trust him showing up in places randomly."

"Plus blood for the more secure seals," Naruto added.

"Right."

Ino nodded. "So when are we offering to sell full computer systems to other nations so that Naruto can take advantage of having created them to abuse the hell out of untraceable secret access?"

Naruto scoffed at that. "They'd immediately assume anything we sold wasn't able to be trusted as-is. At best they'd use any purchased examples as tear-down units to either try to figure out how to compromise our computers here or build their own, if not both."

"Oh. Right."

"It does seem that I have to slightly adjust a few plans for tomorrow though. 'Madara' didn't actually offend sensibilities in the way I thought he had, a couple of other bodyguards were a bit more blatant than anticipated in their attempts to spy, and I've been advised to make blatant showings of finding certain behavior disrespectful."

Hinata blinked a couple of times. "That implies that you didn't actually know what 'Madara' did to the girl."

He rolled his eyes. "Even I'm not crazy enough to try to monitor the entire continent at all times. I knew his chakra was in the girl's brain and she was treating him like someone he wasn't, but I didn't exactly see him applying the effect."

"...I'd kind of assumed you'd taken 'keep an eye on places' to a ridiculous extreme with how often you know things you shouldn't when speaking with people."

"I abuse having seeded the continent with bunkers to send clones to check on things when I know I'll be interacting with specific people. That lets me pull the 'I know everything' Uzukage act with minimal trouble, and honestly I don't normally need to know all that much in the details from any given area. Otherwise I'm running a 'double-check problem spots monthly, do deeper sweeps of idle areas every few months' pattern, usually avoiding slipping into hidden villages unless I'm going to be dealing with their leaders. Except here and Konoha, anyway, and Konoha is more to keep an eye on things that Yoko might need to worry about than anything else these days."

He wasn't entirely sure how the two had come to the conclusion that he was monitoring everywhere all the time when they'd gotten most of the same lessons he had.

Naruto's birthday started with Ino and Hinata working together to make him and Yoko a large breakfast. Yoko then teasingly wished him luck before using Hiraishin to return to Konoha and set up for the day there. Despite it being kept far less public there, enough people had figured out when her birthday was to make her expect a few birthday gifts of her own today. They might even be reasonably useful, compared to the posturing that was going to be involved with the bulk of Naruto's gifts.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the day was going to be quite annoying for him, even if he was going to be getting some amusement of his own in. A standard comfortable combat-grade outfit was donned before he made his daily clones, plus extras for the day's events, before he cast Knight Armor with the reasonably-fancy template designed specifically for today. Anyone expecting him to be less protected in 'Whirlpool Daimyo' style outfits would be sadly disappointed as he intended to never own real outfits like that. The extra fabric just made it easier to hide more protections in the Knight Armor, so he should be harder to harm.

Ino and Hinata did their own version of the same routine, with their own suitably fancy outfits for the event, and then they all headed out in their own ways. Each of them had different roles for the start of things, with the girls needing to 'arrive' with their families. Something that most of the potential suitors couldn't do because their families subscribed to the 'initial meetings should be alone, without parents creating additional tension' way of doing things between nobles. Of course, because the Fire Daimyo had come it fell to Naruto to fetch him and bring him to the event.

Odoroki found the day's more formal wear annoying, but it was needed for the functions she was performing. Helping prove that the bulk of the would-be suitors weren't suitable in ways that they couldn't argue had been quite amusing in its own way but today the reveal of various things was going to happen. Which meant gathering the various girls so they could be put into a suitable order for being officially introduced, among other things, and she had a third of them on her personal list.

...though she wasn't actually informed as to why Naruto had shifted a few things. The girls weren't aware of the original introduction and seating orders, and thus wouldn't know that anything had changed, but he had changed them. Admittedly, there were known changes, such as the girl who had allowed herself to see her replacement bodyguard as though he were the original until said bodyguard was confronted about it, but the shifts seemed more significant than that would account for.

Whatever the case, the show was likely to be amusing...and Hinata had arranged to live-broadcast things to all over the Elemental Nations while they were at it so that a couple of points could be made to a much wider audience. Without warning the would-be suitors or their families ahead of time, of course. Whether the change in plans would change that too was another question though.

Lots of unknowns that nobody had kept her in the loop on...and she wasn't sure she wanted to be in the loop. Seeing what the kids came up with at the same time everyone else did could be very amusing, after all.

Ino had stood with her parents throughout the bulk of the welcoming and introduction dance, having her own introduction right near the start of things. There were also a dozen disguised clones of her in the area helping keep an eye on things, with more throughout the village itself, but basically all the action was here right now.

"Before we continue," Naruto said. "There are some matters to take care of. First, I'm afraid that several of those that came today engaged in unacceptable behavior, threatening others with various forms of injury or retaliation if they did not voluntarily withdraw." Several of his clones in Anbu attire appeared behind five of the would-be suitors, with bags. "That is not only an immediate disqualification, it's ejection-worthy. I don't even want to know what gifts you've brought in an attempt to convince me to accept you, but instead of launching you into the ocean we're going to be nice and merely drop you off at one of the airship stations on the mainland."

A Hiraishin flash had those would-be suitors, their guards, the bags, and the clones all vanishing from the room. There were gasps from a number of others, and a few relieved looks.

"Second," Naruto continued as more clones appeared behind seven more would-be suitors, with bags. "We have those that came under entirely false pretenses, never intending to follow through even if they were selected. Their goals appear to have been to enter the village to search for its secrets. For most hidden villages this is worthy of being captured, interrogated, and possibly executed." More gasps could be heard at that, before books were pulled out of pockets of the clones and handed to a guard for each would-be suitor. "But they sucked so badly at finding information that I feel sorry for them, so they at least get a basic security primer and delivery to an airship station reasonably close to home."

Those groups then vanished, and a couple of other clones brought in a large board with names. All of the potential suitors were listed on the board, including the twelve that had been removed, with a series of labeled cards under them. Once the board was in place in front of a camera the first card under each name flipped over, labeled 'trust', to reveal a 'pass' or 'fail' for each would-be suitor.

"So as to not unduly offend anyone," Naruto continued. "We're revealing details about the evaluations of all potential suitors. You will note that the twelve removed would-be suitors all received a fail on being able to be trusted. Those of you still here need not worry about being ejected at your first revealed failure as that's the only failure that results in ejection from the village."

Ino enjoyed the looks of concern on a lot of the faces in the room. There were a number of cards on the board, after all, and some of them very likely connected some of them to subtle questions they'd received since their arrival.

Naruto had accepted a series of gifts. Some were understated, simple things, such as from the Fire Daimyo and Orochimaru. Others were far more extravagant and useless, such as from most of the visiting suitors. Two exceptions existed in the latter though, one admitting that they did not know what to obtain for a shinobi leader and providing a stack of money instead while the other gifted him a sword from an Uzumaki that had served their family several generations back.

He'd then flipped the 'gift' cards over on the board, to reveal that most of them said 'not applicable'. The sole exception was the suitor that had presented him with the Uzumaki sword, who had a 'bonus' marking. This very obviously pleased her, and it was just as obvious that most of the rest were jealous that something like that had been available for her to return to the Uzumaki.

Then, surprising the group, Naruto stepped back, allowing a group of others to step forward. Odoroki was first, and bowed to the group. "While Naruto made the ultimate decision, as is his right, we served as evaluators and advisors regarding his heritage. Most of us looked at Uzumaki heritage items, but he is also a Hyuga, Senju, and Uchiha and those needed evaluation as well. For my part, I evaluated you all on Konoha Uzumaki traditions, as Naruto hails from that branch of the family. One key tradition of that branch is that all females must be able and willing to serve as a shrine maiden in any of the clan's shrines." The next card on each suitor flipped, to show that most of them had a 'fail' here. "I found those of you decrying the continued existence of such shrines to be particularly offensive."

She stepped back, and Yameki stepped forward. "A broader tradition is that the Uzumaki do not normally rely on servants to the degree that most nobles do, but when we do have servants we treat them well. Someone marrying into the clan would be expected to work, at keeping the household or holding down a proper job." The 'servant' cards flipped over, showing that most of them had failed this. "Only two of you failed the 'treat well' evaluations, admittedly, but none of you seem like you're capable of fending for yourselves without servants."

Futo then stepped forward. "My evaluation was far simpler. Every one of you was offered a bowl of ramen." The cards labeled 'ramen' flipped over, showing that just over half of them passed. "Ramen is essentially the preferred food of the clan. Those unwilling to eat it could very well not survive with how often it gets consumed."

Tsunade was next. "I evaluated Senju items, though also checked on the few relevant Hyuga and Uchiha items due to my familiarity with both clans. On the Senju front, all members of the clan were at least expected to be able and willing to dress wounds. Not become a medic, but at least improve the chances of a wound staying uninfected until it can be looked at by someone properly skilled." 'Bandages' cards flipped over, with a three-way split between 'pass', 'fail', and 'willing'. "Some of you were obviously willing to learn, which I didn't count as a failure against you. But moving on, the other requirement I evaluated for the Senju clan is also the only really relevant requirement for the Hyuga and Uchiha clans." 'Pain' cards flipped, with most of them showing a fail. "Enough pain tolerance to handle at least minor accidents, though admittedly we didn't test this directly for most of you and relied on statements from others."

She stepped back and Akira stepped forward. "Given the losses the Uzumaki clan has faced, any wife of the leader will need to be able to have children." 'Fertility' cards flipped over, most blank but three indicating a failure. "This is far from conclusive, as we did not do full medical checkups on most of you, but three of you are obviously incapable of carrying children due to prior injuries. But this leads to a related, but no less important issue. That of durability." The final 'durability' cards flipped over, showing that most of them had failed. In fact, Ino and Hinata were the only two who hadn't failed, and in fact had no failures at all. "Unfortunately, a shinobi of Naruto's strength is a potential hazard to those who are not individually durable enough. If he loses control of himself during an intimate moment then severe injury could result. It would take far too long for most of you to be ready to attempt to have his children."

The wary looks given to Naruto at that declaration, and Jiraiya's wince from where he thought he was well-hidden in the corner, were definitely amusing. With that part of things done, Naruto stepped forwards again and signaled for Hinata and Ino to come forward. He gave each of them a kiss, then looked over the rest of the room. A number of the would-be suitors looked annoyed, and in some cases that turned to disgust as Hinata and Ino then kissed each other.

All of this had taken long enough to reach time for lunch, and he led the way into the prepared dining area. Hinata's disguised clones took the lead in seating everyone here, but before the food was brought out Naruto clapped his hands and caused boxes to appear in front of the visiting suitors and their guards. One box per suitor for them and one box for each set of guards.

"To show that there's no bad feelings for those not chosen," Naruto said. "I personally prepared these gifts for you."

The would-be suitors carefully opened their boxes, but it wasn't long before each held a necklace. There were similarities in all of them, a metal chain connecting to intricately designed embellishments containing gemstones. Between those was a larger pendant containing six beads. Five along the outside, representing the five basic elements in the traditional order of fire, wind, lightning, earth, and water. These were rotated to put the most prominent element from the individual's region at the top. Then one more in the center, a combined-element bead that mixed the top element with one of the others, though not always based on prominence in their areas. Each would-be suitor had a tag indicating the name of the center bead, but that didn't explain that the metal was all chakra metal.

Then their guards opened their boxes, revealing a copy of the basic security book and an intricate chakra metal kunai with an embedded set of beads in the same basic patterns as the pendants. Those from the same place as their charge had identical layouts, while those hired from elsewhere instead had things based on their points of origin. Also, instead of a tag for the center bead the name was engraved into the kunai itself, alongside the names for the other five element beads.

"We're going to be selling our basic security textbook across the continent," Naruto continued as the gifts were examined. "But the jewelry and weapons are far more unique."

A couple of the shinobi guards had obviously figured things out already, at least regarding the kunai. Probably because they could feel their chakra interacting with the metal and beads. The would-be suitors were also quite impressed, though in his opinion for all the wrong reasons, all of them putting their necklaces on after they'd finished examining them. The leftover packaging was cleared away before the meal was brought in. There was a significant spread, but one of the things included was ramen and you could see the determination on the faces of a couple of the would-be suitors as they accepted some despite having failed that test previously.

The broadcast stopped as lunch continued, and Naruto had a number of things to discuss with individuals this afternoon. At least one of the would-be suitors was known to be dreading returning home while a couple of the guards had issues of their own that should really be dealt with now that the major event had been taken care of. Offer to let people move into Uzu, or help them get set up in Konoha instead if they'd prefer to not be on an island, in order to get them out of bad situations that they seemed to want to escape.

...though there was also 'Madara' and a few details that had come up this morning and should really be dealt with as well.