35

"Hello kids," Anko-sensei greeted as they met up at the village gates. "Apparently you need an escort for this trip."

"So we were warned," Naruto replied. "Presumably because while we have better relations with Kumo that doesn't mean we actually trust them."

"Yeah, politics is like that. I'm surprised you and Hinata agreed to go, or that she ever got permission to do so from her clan."

"We've both got reasons to want to demonstrate to them that we're not pushovers."

"Father also feels that our ability to escape back to the village at any time is enough protection," Hinata added. "It's highly unlikely that anyone else has anti-summoning seals in place, especially as I was told that other villages including Kumo have asked about them."

"We're going to Kumo?" Ino asked.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. A never got a 'proper spar' after the lackluster invasion and wants to see how Hinata and I hold up. The old man convinced Shisui to allow it and it plays into having people assume we aren't infiltrators. Of course, we've been asked to write up reports on their village as well, so keep that in mind and come up with your own ideas for how to collect information while we're there."

"And just this morning we were asked to do something else," Hinata said, grinning. Well, several other things, technically, but only one that affected the genin.

Anko-sensei nodded. "Yeah, though it's partially giving Iwa an insult."

"...how is whatever you're talking about going to give Iwa an insult while we're going to Kumo?" Kiba asked, Ino and Sasuke nodding their agreement with the question.

"Iwa is proud of the fact that they have a family line that's able to use earth-natured chakra to fly. The news that Konoha was able to have an entire team fly to Kumo will reach them."

"And it solves some of the 'where do we train you to fly' problems," Naruto added. "With any luck, nobody will see your mistakes and you'll not embarrass yourselves when landing at Kumo."

The three genin didn't look happy, though Akamaru was relieved when Naruto offered to carry him. Hoshi would rejoin them via summoning when they reached Kumo.

To disguise that they didn't need the glowy bits, Team Yurei had used the more visible flight spells to reach Kumo in a fraction of the time they'd have needed on foot. Flying clear past the Land of Hot Water, over the small bit of ocean, and to the Land of Lightning had sped things up considerably. How flying over intervening nations would be seen diplomatically wasn't quite known. Supposedly those around the Land of Earth tolerated it because of the limited number of shinobi that had the skill, but if the numbers escalated...

Regardless, the group managed to land a short way from Kumo's gates, the village itself trivial to spot from the air because the clouds were actually mostly below the tallest buildings of the village today. Finding the path to the village so that they could land on it had been the harder task. They landed close enough to be seen doing so, but not close enough to be seen as likely attacking the village.

Akamaru was happy to be on the ground but asked if next time he could be summoned like Hoshi was when they landed. Kiba promised to think about it.

To their surprise, the Raikage was waiting at the gate for them, a look of astonishment on his face. Another man was standing next to him, with darker skin and a sword on his back, who looked like he was trying to look perfectly calm and failing.

Naruto pulled their papers out as the group approached the gate. Despite being the ranking member of the group, Anko-sensei had insisted that she was merely an escort...which was probably a test to see how he and Hinata handled things. "Good afternoon, Raikage-sama. I have our mission and visiting paperwork here."

"Nobody told us that you'd be flying in," the Raikage replied.

"Our genin only just mastered the ability well enough to use it for traveling."

"I see. My discussions with the Fifth Hokage indicate that you're nearing, if not past, Tsunade's level in healing."

"...possibly? She's still far better at diagnosis due to her lifetime of experience. Hinata and I are more...brute force by comparison."

"That may be, but I was also told that she isn't willing to visit to see a patient. Our medic-nin are baffled by my brother's condition and any assistance in figuring out what's happening to him would be appreciated."

"And here I was told that the first thing I should expect upon arrival was a request to spar."

"The health of my family comes first, and I was...convinced to allow Darui here to spar you first, in order to see if your skills are worth my own time."

"Ah." Naruto paused for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Your brother is the jinchuriki of Gyuki, isn't he?"

The Raikage nodded. "Yes."

"So he's probably growing an octopus-tentacle tail, becoming more generally durable, and finding it easier to make ink?"

"...possibly on the last one. How did you know that?"

Naruto shrugged. "The tailed beasts are all connected. Kill a couple and the rest start to fade away, and those sealed inside of a human start having their remains bind to the human in a slower process than the forced binding Hinata and I had performed on us. Eventually there won't be any tailed beasts remaining, anywhere."

Zetsu was, for the first time in its existence, genuinely scared for its life, and what that meant for mother's life. First the nine-tails had vanished years ago, Asura's latest reincarnation no longer holding the beast. Every trace of the nine-tails chakra just disappeared, unable to be found anywhere. Even when a tailed beast dispersed their chakra was usually able to be felt. It shouldn't be possible to kill a tailed beast permanently, so it was a small setback. Eventually a replacement would appear.

Except that there was still no sign of a replacement. The nine-tails was in the list of tailed beasts that had never dispersed before and the amount of time needed for it to reform was unknown because of that, but even the worst estimates would have had some sign of the chakra starting to gather by now. Which meant that it wasn't dispersed, but probably sealed away where it couldn't be sensed. Something that Zetsu would've called impossible...

...at least until the more annoying branch of Asura's descendants seemed to make a resurgence, appearing again around a year ago after they should've been destroyed. Something else that Zetsu had no inkling was coming, and it had been unable to locate their hiding place. They'd had ways to work around its ability to sense things before, and that was part of why it'd subtly ensured that Madara orchestrated their demise. Except that it was now obvious that the plan to do so had failed.

Now three of the tailed beasts were missing, vanished, and for the first time Zetsu thought that there might be truth to them being dead and gone...because its own power was fading. It was mother's will, and mother's life was bound to the God Tree, and the tailed beasts were the God Tree. Worse, everything else tied to the tree was also fading. The still sealed tailed beasts, the husk of the ten-tails, the various natural and artificially-induced sprouts of the tree, all of the people that had been bound to the tree as well. The latter was particularly annoying as bits attached to living people were fine, but the one that Zetsu had been joined to had started to rot away and left it with only its original abilities.

Asura and Indra having their presence seem to vanish from their latest reincarnations was another oddity, but Zetsu wasn't sure if that had actually happened or if its weakened state just couldn't discern their presence anymore.

Given the explanation about what was happening to B, they hadn't been brought to see him. Instead, the team was shown to the hotel rooms they'd be using for the next few days. Decent-quality rooms, and with only a couple of easily-disabled items designed to spy on the occupants per room. Temporary privacy and security seals were added as well, of course, because the vents and windows were also designed to be perfect for monitoring what happened in the rooms. Even if nobody appeared to be paying attention yet. Anko, Hinata, and Ino were in one set of rooms, leaving Naruto with Kiba and Sasuke in the other.

Naruto had chuckled at the sign on the balcony asking visiting shinobi to not come and go via that route. Not mentioned on the sign were the detection arrays that would fire off an alert if something did come or go...so long as it was large enough. A single animal-form clone running a transparency technique didn't cause it to twitch, and that clone was able to summon other clones to it to get the infiltration side of things started properly.

Next on their list of public things to do was a couple of medical-related offers. The genin were let loose to explore, with Hoshi being their only obvious minder, and then Naruto and Hinata split up. She had a single beast-man formula dose to offer to administer and he'd been asked to use a temporary seal placement to improve the medical chakra node of three different medic-nin. Tsunade felt that everyone having good medic-nin was important for peace and Shisui had agreed, plans apparently existing for other allies to send a few medic-nin to Konoha to use the seals there.

Having Naruto do things in Kumo was saving the medic-nin the trip to Konoha. Anko-sensei was, by prior agreement, going with Hinata to keep an eye on her just in case. They all felt that Naruto had the better options for getting himself out of trouble.

"This thing looks complicated," Darui said, looking over the seal. The man had volunteered to play escort to Naruto for this while A oversaw the beast man formula use.

"It is," Naruto agreed. "And dangerous if there are any mistakes."

"...how dangerous?"

"Never be a shinobi again dangerous."

"...are you sure you built this one correctly?"

"Yes, and I have ways to fix people even if I did screw it up."

"Sorry for doubting you."

Naruto shrugged. "Not a problem, but the way this is built I have to activate it in the next hour. Are the three in the next room the medic-nin volunteers?"

Darui raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. How'd you know they were there?"

"You need to be a bit of a sensor to get this level of seal correct."

"Huh. That's dull. Thought you were going to claim to have some kind of bloodline."

"Well, yes, I have a pile of those too, but I didn't need them."

The man obviously didn't know how to take that, and merely wandered over to the door and called the medic-nin in. One of the three looked like they didn't trust Naruto at all, the only female looked indifferent, and the last...looked a bit too eager, in Naruto's opinion.

"Can this really make us better medic-nin?" the eager-looking shinobi asked.

"Definitely," Naruto replied. "But it's one at a time."

"We'll wait while Amai goes first," the untrusting shinobi stated. The eager-looking shinobi was, apparently, Amai, and quickly got into position in the middle of the seal.

Naruto triggered the seal and waited while it modified the man's medical chakra node. It wasn't long before the process was completed, and Amai stepped out of the seal before looking like he was going to perform hand seals for the mystic palm technique...only for the technique to snap into place instead.

"Oh wow," Amai said, passing one hand over the opposite arm. "I've never had medical chakra respond so easily. Thank you for the opportunity to improve myself."

"I just saved you the trip to Konoha to do things there," Naruto replied.

"Sorry about him," Darui said. "He's just always looking for ways to improve."

Naruto suppressed the urge to roll his eyes as the female medic-nin stepped into the seal. She said nothing as he activated it, and he focused a bit on her while the seal worked. Only when it was almost done with her did he realize that she didn't seem to have vocal cords, which nicely explained her silence. There was also something weird in that area of her neck, a chakra construct that looked like it didn't belong there. That might be why they hadn't regenerated the vocal cords.

He said nothing as she stepped out of the seal and tested her own chakra, frowning slightly as she passed her mystic palm over her neck but nodding to the last medic-nin. A moment later she turned to Naruto and bowed.

"N had an enemy cut out her vocal cords as a child," Darui explained. "Using some technique that's prevented all attempts to heal it."

"I can tell that there's a chakra construct there," Naruto admitted. "Not sure how hard it would be to remove though."

The woman's eyes widened a little, but she glanced back at the last medic-nin. He'd just stepped into the seal, looking like it was the last thing he wanted to do. Naruto suppressed a sigh and activated the seal for the third and final time.

"Sorry about C too," Darui said. "He's had a couple of bad run-ins with Konoha teams and isn't happy about what happened to Yugito."

"Yeah, well," Naruto said. "Your village tried to kidnap both my current chunin partner and my mother in the past. Removing a single tailed beast without killing the jinchuriki seems like a fair trade, especially as I'm under the impression that we were asked to come up with a solution."

That got Darui to flinch, but it was also obvious that the last medic-nin, C apparently, had also heard the comment. Naruto ensured that the seal finished its job and that the self-erasure routine triggered properly, wiping all usable traces of it from the floor. The privacy seal elements placed first would also have made it impossible for the six cameras in the room to pick up any more than a general blur, though the visible cameras did have obvious lens caps on them.

C didn't need to leave the seal before calling on his medical chakra, seemingly surprised when it came forth so easily. He then turned to Naruto and bowed. "My apologies for making assumptions about you. I was told to undergo this procedure, but had not considered that there might be bad blood from both sides."

Naruto stood up and waved the man off. "Both of our villages have had issues, but the Raikage formally apologized for some of Kumo's actions in the past."

The man nodded, then gestured to N. "You said you can sense the construct preventing healing of N's vocal cords?"

"I can."

"Then I think I'd like to see how you handle trying to remove it, since we've had problems even identifying where it is."

"I'm willing to try, but we should head somewhere more suited to medical work."

C nodded, but Darui led the way.

Neji looked over the group of genin, most of which had graduated after his class. They'd just gone over a bunch of things about the beast-man formula. Some pros and cons, with healing being a major pro and the lack of idea of what animal you'd get being a massive potential con. Any active shinobi was now allowed to request exposure to the formula, with the notable exception of three clans, but their group of sensei had asked for them to chat about it before anyone else made a decision. "So, are there any questions?"

"Do you know why the Aburame, Inuzuka, and Uchiha clans aren't allowed access to the formula?" Sachie asked.

"The modifications made to our bodies by our partners are technically injuries," Shino answered before Neji could say anything. "This obviously creates problems for us when the accelerated healing from the formula tries to correct what the body sees as a problem."

"That's what I was told," Neji agreed. "There's also a transplant-connected requirement with the sharingan, and you can't transplant from those who've been exposed to the formula. While that's a boon for the Hyuga, it means that Sasuke will have problems if that's ever needed with him. I'm...unsure as to the problem with the Inuzuka."

"They've been conditioned to not find animal features attractive in romantic partners," Shikamaru answered. "Didn't stop an older member of the clan from serving as a test subject, and they're currently locked up for their own good while the Yamanaka try to get them to stop trying to cut their alterations off."

Sakura had brought Naruto's distant cousin along since the two were recent accidental exposure victims, and Karin frowned after hearing that. "I thought that the formula somehow made you unusually comfortable with the changes?"

"Two artificially-induced mental effects going in opposite directions. Individually they were fine, but when put in conflict it's a different story." That seemed to be enough of an explanation, several of them nodding to indicate that they understood, and Neji could see how that would cause problems for the clan.

"Does the formula really make it easier to build up chakra?" Choji asked.

"We've not had time to notice," Sakura admitted, which made sense. They'd barely had any time since their exposure...and were, as far as Neji knew, still working on getting their wardrobes adjusted.

"Hell yes it does," Kin said. "And muscle. I think I hit my easy strength limit already, but my chakra is already twice what it was before the exams."

"I didn't even realize that I'd become stronger until Shino asked how I was carrying a couple of full buckets instead of the empty ones on a mission," Ami added, before looking at Kin. "I think how quickly you build muscle and how much you build varies with the animal though."

"Where you build it as well," Neji agreed. "Everyone in the clan has ended up stronger and with more stamina in general, but the animal obviously influences things. Cat features tend to impart flexibility, rabbit features leg strength, I think the few individuals with mouse or rat features have found that they have stronger jaws? One was able to bite through rope with ease recently, anyway, and we suspect that it just hasn't been noticed with a couple of others."

"...I hadn't even thought about checking that," Kin admitted when several of them looked her way. "But I know that I startle a lot more easily and don't like making a lot of noise when I move now. Oh, and I also used to hate salads, but I'm much more likely to eat plants now."

"Ah, yeah," Neji said. "My preferences have moved away from meats in my meals too. Those in the clan with carnivore features have shown less desire for plants by comparison. Something that apparently didn't happen with Naruto and Hinata, or so I'm told."

Ami shrugged. "I know that I stopped being picky with my food. Pigs apparently eat anything, and I only noticed the change when my father commented on it. At the same time, I still don't like the looks many civilians give me, especially when on missions outside the village."

Neji and Kin both winced at that. The animal features weren't well known outside of the village and either made you a curiosity or a freak. It was too bad that Naruto's shapeshifting trick was being kept to a very restricted list of people. Namely, those on a team with him, plus Hanabi who had been given the seal before the village had decided that it needed to be a bigger secret than it already had been.

"You just cut her throat out and regrew it?" Hinata asked at dinner.

"Yeah," Naruto answered. "It was the easiest way to remove the chakra construct, but she's having trouble speaking after years without being able to."

"Well, yes, on top of the fact that she just had her throat cut out."

"You're welcome to look at their next medical curiosity."

"Oh no, I already got mine. After I gave Yugito the beast-man formula they had me help with a kid that had six kunai in his stomach."

"...really?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Did you get to see what Yugito ended up getting for features?"

"Cat, which wasn't a surprise."

Naruto nodded, glancing over at Anko-sensei and the genin. While taking a bite of his meal, he used the communication technique. "So, did you three learn anything of interest?"

"They limit visitors to a small area," Ino replied after a moment. "At least when not escorted."

"And that area is very obviously designed to be able to see little to nothing," Sasuke continued. "They don't even have training grounds available for our use, but it does include the arena they probably use for their chunin exams."

"Asked lots of questions about Akamaru and Hoshi though," Kiba added.

Naruto knew all of that, and that the genin had done a good job revealing nothing. He also had a reasonably complete map of the entire village, including tunnels, thanks to his clones. There wasn't even any concern over the map being seen because the clones doing the drawing were in Konoha. His observations on guard rotations and such were also included, but would be considered useless after they left.

"We were able to spot sixteen different watchers," Sasuke continued. "But based on their positions we assume we missed at least four and possibly up to nine."

"I personally think it was likely seven," Ino added. "And that they were positioned in specific buildings with added equipment."

"There are at least thirty watchers," Hinata corrected. "But most of them are in specially-positioned observation rooms, so it's understandable that you had a hard time spotting them."

"So," Naruto said out loud. "Tomorrow morning Hinata or I get to spar with Darui to see if we've got enough skills to spar with A."

"Unlike our expectation," Hinata continued. "It seems that we'll be escorted out to a larger training ground instead of using the arena."

"The arena is apparently 'too confined' for higher-level battles."

"You can't even pit a couple of special jounin against each other in a standard arena and hope that it survives," Anko-sensei said. "You two in the exams were playing nice, but couldn't really let loose due to the confined space."

Well, that was a good point.

After dinner Naruto had sent more clones out into the village to examine things as security lightened on the night shift. It was a problem all of the villages had, Konoha included, and taking advantage of it was the plan. Specifically, his clones would be going through records to make copies and storage areas to check on items that had looked interesting from outside of them during the day. Or in the case of one storage room, explicit looting.

One thing that he'd not expected was to find Hizashi's body, hidden inside of a scroll stored in a secret safe with security seals that had failed at least a year ago. Given that it was obviously not checked frequently, he'd emptied the rest of the safe that appeared to be things the village wanted to forget anyway. This was compared to the storage room with the seventeen scrolls with Uzumaki markings on them where the only alarm was on the door. That entire room looked like only three shelves were frequently interacted with, everything else being dust-covered. The Uzumaki-marked scrolls and a number of other things had all been removed and some careful manipulation of the dust had made it look like the shelves had been empty for quite a while instead. Half the items weren't even things Naruto thought were important, he just wanted a selection of things to be missing from throughout the little-used areas of the room to disguise the actual targeted items.

Making full copies of a lot of records for analysis back in Konoha was the hard part to set up for. Unlike the storage rooms where the only active cameras were in the hallways, there were cameras in the record rooms themselves. But the recorder for the cameras apparently only turned on when the door opened, easily confirmed by Naruto while disguised as a local, and a couple of attempts with a physical genjutsu that could be seen by the cameras got the monitors looking good enough for occasional glances while the team monitoring the cameras was focused on a couple of intentional distractions elsewhere.

Security seals did exist on a lot of records, but his clones had watched how several were opened and easily figured out how to get into three quarters of the recent records. The longer-term records were largely ignored due to the tamper-evident seals used on them, and no attempt was made to get at the Raikage's secure records because they were obviously blood-sealed. But the bulk of the Anbu records weren't that secure, so they were copied too.

Inviting an infiltration team into your village was just asking to have everything raided, though Kumo obviously didn't know that they'd done just that. All of the grabbed items and copies of paperwork were stored back in the Uzumaki compound before the clones dispelled, finally knocking Naruto unconscious for the night.

"What do you mean we missed them?" Deidara asked.

Sasori sighed, because he thought he'd been clear the first time. "My contacts say they have already reached Kumo. By flying."

"Konoha doesn't have anyone who can fly, hm."

"Apparently that's no longer true. Every member of the team except for the dog and fox were seen flying independently, so Uzushio has apparently shared that trick with Konoha. We'll need a different plan to ensure that we can interact with them."

"Ugh. Flying targets are annoying."

"Yes, they are. Both due to being less predictable and due to the difficulty of engaging in the air. We may need to manufacture a mission for them."

"...that's hard to get right, hm."

That was an understatement. The large villages charged an arm and a leg for specific teams unless you had a valid reason, and 'want to test them as a ruse to lure out Uzushiogakure' wasn't going to cut it. Instead you were better off crafting a mission such that only one team could do it reliably and hope that you hadn't missed some other team that could manage it in your intel.

This would not be helped by 'Team Yurei' not having a unique enough specialization that anyone knew about. They weren't premier trackers, genin precluded heavy assault missions even if they could fake one, and most of their missions were 'Kage eyes only' secured for some unknown reason. The latter was usually a sign of infiltration teams, but good luck infiltrating with that team. Not that crafting infiltration missions was all that doable either, mostly because those tended to be village-internal anyway.

"As much as I hate to say it," Sasori finally said. "I think we need to go with plan K."

"...plan K, hm?" Deidara replied. "I don't recall that one."

"Build a false Uzumaki outpost that needs investigation, which will be quite annoying."

"We could just use one of the ones in the Land of Hot Water, hm."

"...what?"

"Hidan mentioned a couple on the coast closest to where Uzushio used to be, from back when they held territory next to the Land of Fire. Hot Water expanded to take it over because the border is harder to cross from the Land of Fire there."

That was the kind of thing that would've been nice to know long before now. "How about we start by checking them out ourselves to see if Uzushio is looking to reclaim their former territory?"

Naruto had recovered his energy by breakfast and had gotten clones set up in Konoha and Kumo. The Konoha clones would be double-checking a few things and then turning in all of the gathered information so far, and possibly dropping off Hizashi's body. As for the Kumo clones, they were on the lookout for other interesting areas to slip into and watching for signs that the night's activities had been spotted.

"Good morning," C greeted them when they'd finished eating...and after he'd paid for their meal. "I apologize again for my rudeness yesterday and thank you for the efforts you've already gone to. Both N and Yugito are thankful for your team's contributions and I'm honestly astounded by how improved my control over medical chakra is."

"Any future kids might pick up some of that too," Naruto noted. "Not sure if that was mentioned before now."

"...your seal creates a medical chakra bloodline?"

"Something like that, yeah. Possibly most effective from mother to daughter, but that shouldn't be a requirement."

The man seemed to be in a state of mild shock for a moment, but recovered quickly enough. "I see. That's far more than we expected, but Darui awaits our arrival."

"All of us?" Anko-sensei asked.

"Of course. For a proper spar of this kind you need an audience to appreciate it. The Raikage may even bring his brother to watch, despite B being embarrassed about his condition."

Naruto pointed at his ears. "Hinata and I aren't exactly lacking in the final result of a similar one, and our team is no stranger to animal features in general."

"...I admittedly hadn't considered that, given that your genin have a different source of their features, coupled with Yugito's new ones."

The group ended up leaving the village through a secondary gate that had required using several bridges in a far less visitor-friendly area of the village. They then headed around the mountain peak and through a well-disguised cave to a flattened out area. Darui was waiting for them there, along with Yugito. In the seating area off to the side were the Raikage and B, the latter giving off an air of being embarrassed about his partial transformation. Or possibly that he was currently incredibly clumsy, nowhere near used to the constantly-changing 'tail'.

Naruto's morning clones had spotted the man falling flat on his face twice just getting to the secondary gate.

"Morning," Darui greeted, before using a thumb to point at Yugito. "She decided to crash the party. Seems she's feeling better than ever today."

"It felt like something other than the two-tails had been missing," Yugito added. "Maybe I was too much like a cat already? I wanted to thank you for bringing the formula sample out and wish you luck in your spars. I think you're going to need it, even after seeing what you could do in the finals."

Well, it was possible that being Matatabi's host for years had imparted cat-like traits onto Yugito. Hinata's exposure to the formula indicated that she'd have gone rabbit without Matatabi's remains forcing cat features, but Naruto had been exposed to Kurama's chakra for years, technically even before birth. That might explain why 'fox' latched onto him from the formula too.