47

It had taken four days for the Konoha contingent to depart, during which several smaller meetings had been held. Some with the sensei, some the sensei and new chunin, and one had happened with Team Tekuno. The main subject was ongoing team formations after promotions. Team Tekuno was switching to Team Shikamaru, and might pick up another genin after things had settled a bit. Team Yugao was breaking back up as Karin and Sakura were returning to work in the hospital, likely to end up as special jounin in the not too distant future as medic-nin. Tenten would continue to work with Hayate and Yugao.

Team Yurei was, as far as Naruto knew, the only team staying together as-is. Nothing specific had been mentioned while in a foreign village, but review of records had revealed just how few infiltration teams existed at all. The next-largest 'infiltration' team was three members strong...assuming you counted a kunoichi that occasionally joined them as a 'member'. Missions requiring larger numbers of infiltrators generally pulled on the pool of solo infiltration specialists, most of which didn't work well with others to begin with and had gone into infiltration to not need to work with others.

That didn't mean that they'd be operating as a 'full team' all the time though. Instead, they were being designated as 'Team Yurei Senior' and 'Team Yurei Junior' for the time being. Sometimes they'd have missions together, and at other times they'd be split up...with an implication that Naruto and Hinata had a number of jounin-only missions waiting for them back in Konoha. Of course, the other three had their own things waiting for them as well.

The trip back to Konoha had been done as a single large group, most of them running alongside the mobile house. Ami and Shino had ridden on the house due to being the slowest of the entire group, even if they had been working on their speed. Shikamaru had promised that they'd work more on their speed going forward as well. Which both had grimaced at, but said nothing about.

There had been a sizable 'combined' celebration for all the promotions when they'd returned. In that regard, Shikamaru was the 'odd one out'. Team Yurei and Team Yugao had significant crossover, in members and personal relationships. Yes, Ami had former teammates in the group, but she'd not tried to keep in touch with them in favor of her new team. Naruto had decided to ensure that Shikamaru got a gift of a pair of weapon storage plates, beyond what his parents had gotten him, and the gift was definitely appreciated. Most of the other gifts were parents to children, such as Hinata getting a new set of armored Hyuga-style robes or Kiba being given a business location to make jerky in by his mother, or silly things between teammates. Naruto was the obvious exception, being an orphan. Old Man Hiruzen had given him a set of 'God of Paperwork' kage-like robes and hat, Kakashi had several 'paperwork' forehead protectors made and registered as valid alternatives for Konoha shinobi like Jiraiya's 'oil' one was, Jiraiya had worked with the toads to make a book on toad-style techniques, and no name had been attached to a collection of armored formal wear that was constructed in the same basic style as the Hyuga's standard sets.

For 'Team Yurei Senior', they were summoned to the Hokage's office the next morning.

"Normally there's an entire collection of 'new jounin' missions that get picked from for newly-promoted jounin that aren't doing genin or academy training runs," Shisui explained. "A bit of hazing combined with a bit of evaluation, traditionally. You two are getting a pass on most of them for a number of reasons, including me wanting you to be more productive. But one mission that's required for all special jounin or higher is visiting all of our field bunkers. As it happens, they all could use some work like the tower in training ground forty-four did. I'd like you two to fix up or rebuild, secure, and map each bunker while you're visiting them anyway."

"What about the Anbu bunkers?" Naruto asked.

"Hinata isn't cleared for their locations, even if your honorary status means that you are, so you might be sent out to work on them later. Kakashi volunteered to play escort for you as is required for the mission, even if I assume you could handle the visits with only a basic map, and we're going to fudge the paperwork to say that Yoko is with you to cover her visit requirements."

That brought both of them up short. "Yoko?"

"We've officially made her a 'part-time' member of your team and given her a registration number. Publicly she's your sister and prefers to tend to the shrine, and 'tending to the Uzumaki shrine' is technically on the books as a long-term mission. Only the most secure paperwork brings up that she is you and we only marked her down as a regular jounin instead of as an elite jounin for the more accessible paperwork."

Naruto hadn't been expecting that.

Kiba had been pleasantly surprised with how easily he'd been able to start up making jerky in the new building. More surprising was the list of his fellow clan members willing to work in the place. Older members that didn't take many missions these days and needed something to do, plus two younger members who had lost their ninken and hadn't bonded with any others yet.

...the annoying part was that none of the eager helpers had any cooking skill. It was feeling like it was going to be a couple of weeks at the earliest before he could trust them to do things on their own. But they could easily handle the counter while he focused on getting the entire process streamlined to the point where they couldn't screw it up. Much.

Maybe he could find an Akimichi to help ensure that things weren't butchered too badly when he wasn't around? They were generally good with food prep, having been taught it growing up, and it wouldn't be too hard to interview a couple. Older ones that would be unwilling to take shit from his more brash clanmates, preferably...

Apparently when Kakashi volunteered for a mission he showed up on time, and he already had a prepared loop through the bunkers that should make hitting all of them reasonably efficient. The ones closest to Konoha were 'minor' ones, minimalist underground areas that were built like single-room apartments with some basic supplies in them. Or that had been built that way before Naruto and Hinata had gotten to them.

They were probably going to get a lot more use now that they had multiple rooms, a proper bathing area that wasn't just a 'not-quite-a-shower' in the corner, and had seals to maintain privacy and temperature. Not to mention at least two ways in and four out in case that you needed to slip past someone who saw you heading in.

"So you've been working on the Rasengan?" Kakashi asked as they left the last 'minor' bunker, heading for one of the larger ones further out.

"Failing to do so more than succeeding," Naruto admitted. "I've gotten a couple of medical chakra variants working, but all the other elements are proving to be a lot harder to make work."

"Feeding in elemental chakra can be annoying, yeah."

"...feeding in?"

"Are you saying that your medical chakra version is made entirely of medical chakra?"

"Yes."

Kakashi frowned, then snorted. "I suppose it is the only normal chakra type that responds to shaping at least as much as normal chakra. Elemental chakra, or at least the five basic elements, doesn't flow the right way to make the Rasengan. Worse, each element flows differently, so you need non-elemental chakra to form the base and direct the elemental chakra flows to maintain the sphere."

Naruto could tell that this hadn't occurred to his father, based on the groaning from everyone listening in along his connection to the Tome. "That does make some sense."

"I bet he has at least two variants working by the end of the week," Hoshi chimed in.

That had Kakashi blinking. "It's Friday. Do you mean in the next seven days or by the end of this week?"

"The latter."

"I wonder if we can get a bandit elimination mission on short notice?"

"We can have clones check the mission office," Hinata offered.

It turned out that Kakashi had been right and that adding elemental chakra into a Rasengan worked a lot better than making it out of each element. The normal or medical chakra directed the added chakra at a basic level, and the fact that medical chakra was at least partially a 'more accurately controllable' chakra made it a better base if you were willing to sacrifice the physical grinding that normal chakra provided. Conversely, if you wanted your Rasengan to be able to do anything against something that wasn't alive you had to avoid using medical chakra as the base entirely as it caused any Rasengan to just pass through nonliving items.

Notably, clothing and armor were nonliving, so if you weren't trying to bash down a door or wall using a medical chakra base was incredibly effective.

Only a day after Kakashi's revelation, Naruto had managed to make eight additional Rasengan variants. On the basic elements, adding fire caused burning, wind caused cutting, and lightning caused electrical shocks. Lightning also reduced the physical effects of the Rasengan on the air around it to the point where it vanished from normal sight. Earth and water caused the Rasengan to destabilize, either due to being incapable of flowing properly for earth or breaking the compression of the sphere for water.

Mixed elements only worked if both base elements did, but the effects varied a lot more with the base chakra. For normal chakra as a base the combination of fire and lightning made the Rasengan generate much milder burns and prevented it from setting fire to clothing. Conversely, fire and wind was a lot hotter and seemed to directly turn things to ashes instead of merely burning them. Lightning and wind caused the speed and compressibility of the Rasengan to increase dramatically, but the cutting power was all but negated.

Medical chakra being the base changed things further. Fire and lightning went from 'mild burns' to 'burn out nerves', fire and wind turned insides to ashes and seemed to set nearby flesh on fire, and wind and lightning made the damage far more contained while also making it far more complete. Ensuring that it was healing medical chakra instead of damaging limited all of the elemental effects to anything foreign in the body. Unfortunately for someone struck that way and unaware of the problem, your gut flora counted as 'foreign'.

Finally, Naruto had been curious about what happened if you added normal or medical chakra to a Rasengan. Adding normal chakra to a medical chakra based Rasengan had destabilized it entirely, but the other way around was interesting. Healing medical chakra added to a normal Rasengan essentially made it so that the Rasengan would only affect non-living things, but chakra scalpel medical chakra added into a normal Rasengan didn't seem to do much more than cause slightly more skin damage.

Demonstrating all of this on some bandits had both Hinata and Kakashi taking notes, with the latter grumbling that he'd probably been successful at adding lightning chakra but had assumed he'd screwed up when it became so much weaker. This was followed by both demanding that Tsunade had to be shown at least the 'instantly healthy' Rasengan, if only to see how much she ranted about it afterwards.

Yoko's day hadn't been all that pleasant so far. Karin had been sent to another village to help with a likely water supply contamination that was making everyone there sick, and due to needing clones elsewhere for training the Team Yurei chunin hadn't sent their clones to the shrine today. That left Yoko and her puppet dealing with a combination of the civilian girl 'helpers' and a group of very annoying and pushy visiting merchants.

Attacking the 'helpers' or the merchants would be highly improper, but Yoko kept considering doing so. It probably didn't help that Naruto was in the middle of rebuilding a bunker and not doing any fighting, so the urge to hit people wasn't easily offloaded onto him.

Rumor also had it that something had happened across the village, but to make it easier to react to news she shouldn't already know she'd not checked with the monitoring clones to find out what was going on elsewhere. None had informed her that something was important enough for her to intervene with, anyway, or that more clones were needed for any specific reasons.

"Excuse me," an Anbu said after using a body flicker to appear almost next to her, causing Yoko to frown. She'd seen him coming, but hadn't expected him to be coming to her. "Lady Tsunade has requested your help with the situation in the hospital."

That had her blinking. "My help in what way?"

"She specifically requested you as the only other 'chakra powerhouse' registered medic-nin currently in the village."

Now she checked with the monitoring clones, and found out that a number of academy students and three groups of genin had been seriously injured in a combination of demonstration and training accidents that had spilled over into each other. Mentally swearing, she nodded to the Anbu and jumped to a nearby rooftop. The clones continued to report that Tsunade was doing her best, but now that the clones were paying proper attention it was obvious that a few of the kids were on the edge of not making it.

Yoko could create a bunch of her own clones, openly showing that she could for the first time...or she could let out some frustration and see if something that the training clones had practiced worked and potentially deal with everything at once. The latter felt a lot less annoying, and if it didn't work she could fall back on the pile of clones option anyway, so she released the hold she had on her chakra and started forming a medical chakra Rasengan.

A very large Rasengan. They couldn't form one this large yet with normal chakra, but the only thing stopping a medical chakra Rasengan from being made larger seemed to be how much chakra you had to pump into it. And Yoko had far more chakra than the training clones were normally given.

Anbu, and likely anyone else in the village with even rudimentary chakra sensing skills, were obviously somewhat panicked about what she was doing. But nobody made it to her before she was in the air and coming down towards the roof of the hospital, the giant Rasengan beneath her. It impacted the building, completely ignoring the non-living aspects of it but destabilizing as it started to interact with the living people inside the structure. As she was landing on the roof, the sphere of chakra was exploding outward, flooding everyone in and around the hospital with medical chakra.

As far as she, or the monitoring clones, could tell the Rasengan had done what she'd wanted. Every single person in or remotely near the hospital was now perfectly healthy...and at least one limb had even been regrown on the spot. Nodding to herself, Yoko turned towards Ichiraku's, wanting to pick up some ramen after that chakra expenditure.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?" Tsunade screamed as she jumped up to the roof, having come out of a window a couple floors down.

"Massive Healing Rasengan," Yoko answered.

"That doesn't explain much of anything."

"We believe that anyone who can be bitten to heal people can safely make a medical chakra Rasengan and instant-heal anyone they hit with it. Scale that up and I hit the entire hospital at once."

"...what?"

"If I want to get back to the shrine before the civilian girls or the pushy visiting merchants cause problems then I need to go get something to eat now. Find me later if you want a better explanation."

Yoko was pleasantly surprised when Anbu showed up to pick up the tab for the ramen, and more surprised that the pushy merchants had been cleared out by some locals by the time she made it back to the shrine. On the other hand, word was quickly spreading that she'd just healed the entire hospital at once, which was either a sign that she was a deity herself or had the personal blessing of the gods.

...she'd wanted to be done with things quickly, not give people a reason to worship her!

Shisui had sealed the room for a private chat with his 'advisory council'. "So, everyone seems to be talking about Yoko these days."

"We've accidentally unleashed a monster," Tsunade said. "Not helped by oversights in paperwork and my own failure to duplicate what Yoko has been doing."

"...where did we miss something in the paperwork?"

"Yoko is a medic-nin without training records. That she refuses to heal anyone with any method other than 'healing Rasengan to the chest' has turned it into a healing blessing instead of healing skill. That I could duplicate the appearance of the Rasengan but nearly killed my test subject on the spot due to out of control cellular growth just reinforced that. Karin's duplication of the working version yesterday has just further demonstrated that it's a blessing to the masses, likely of Inari given that they're the two unique foxes in the village."

"Unique foxes?" Hiruzen asked.

"That's a fun one," Hiashi chimed in. "Those two are part summon fox, likely from interactions with Hoshi. Their ears, tails, and fur are noticeably different from the others who got fox features in the village. Coupled with being known to be of Uzumaki descent and tending the Uzumaki shrine together? The civilians have already decided that the two actually got their fox features from a blessing instead of the beast-man formula. I heard several discussing it on my way over today."

"Suzu's appearance when Yoko suddenly had fox features probably hasn't dissuaded anyone from that," Shisui added. "That all three happily accept offerings of fried rice, combined with that or offerings of ramen being the best way to keep Yoko from being subtly snippy with the attention of being 'worshiped', isn't exactly providing any reason for people to think otherwise."

"And if they ever see fit to use the deadly version on someone then that will probably make it worse," Tsunade said.

Shisui joined Hiashi and Hiruzen in blinking in confusion at that. "Deadly version?"

"Yoko made a point of warning about using the right kind of medical chakra, specifically not using scalpel style chakra. A couple of volunteers courtesy of Ibiki revealed why. No external injuries to speak of at all, but shredded internal organs."

Hiruzen frowned. "...which could be seen as the target not being worthy of healing according to Inari."

"Or the entire building if used that way."

Shisui couldn't be certain, but he would later hope that Hiashi and Hiruzen were as horrified at the potential brutal effectiveness of something like that as he was.

Returning to Konoha once all the jounin bunkers had been visited and rebuilt had been easy enough, though with a side trip to assassinate an asshole that was trying to start up a business grabbing and selling kids. Kakashi had been particularly impressed with the 'pair of lost little girls' that the asshole had been baited into grabbing before they tore him apart. In public, using toys.

It would hopefully serve as a warning to others.

Naruto and Hinata were getting a week or two off before going back out on missions, at least until the three chunin had returned from a mission they had gone out on and had their downtime. Shisui had a larger infiltration he wanted the whole team to do at that point, without providing details yet, which meant time that could be used for training in the meantime. And avoiding jounin that were very happy that the two existed, especially those who had stopped by any of the rebuilt bunkers already.

"You want me to do what?" Naruto asked his parents.

"Use the forbidden technique that Deidara gave you," his mother answered. "We're certain that only the final stage would have any visible effect on you, and that's technically an entirely different technique."

"We did a lot of examination of it after giving up on determining what was going on with the masks," his father added. "Not that we hadn't been examining it before then, of course, but only through someone performing it can we see exactly how it forms the expected chakra net nodes. You didn't hand the Tome to Deidara for a proper scan of his nodes, but we know that he had at least one we didn't recognize."

That made some sense, and digging out the scroll didn't take long. The point where it went from 'infuse chakra' to 'modify the body' was fairly obvious from a style point alone. Not in handwriting, as this was almost certainly a copy made by Deidara, but word choice and layout shifted noticeably.

"There are a number of indications that the chakra node side of things is Uzumaki in origin," his mother commented, pointing at a few places in sequence. "Specific code phrases hidden inside of the text to indicate that this is a legitimate technique instead of a fake intended to lure an enemy into killing themselves. I wasn't familiar with this specifically, but there were a couple of Uzumaki who could push their chakra into materials that I'd heard of even if I never met them."

"None of those phrases exist in the last section," his father pointed out. "For or against it being legitimate, making us think that it was from an entirely different source and not just a different Uzumaki or other Uzushio survivor."

Naruto nodded, and examined the portion they wanted him to go through. It was split into stages, each apparently building on the last, and there were warnings about letting your chakra levels recover between stages. He doubted that he was going to have any real trouble there. But each stage also had several dozen hand seals and instructions for how to focus your chakra during the process.

Several 'dry runs' without channeling chakra were done to ensure that the hand seals for the first stage were good. That was followed by a couple trying to maintain the chakra focus described in the scroll but not putting chakra into the hand seals with the Tome critiquing the attempt. Once all of that was being performed to the Tome's satisfaction he went for the real deal, channeling chakra into the hand seals as he went through the technique. He could feel it affecting his net...as could Yoko. Apparently their nets were more connected than expected.

"That's definitely the core of a new node," his father said once the technique was done. "And it barely used any of your chakra."

"Might as well move onto the next stage," his mother said. "Proper analysis isn't going to be possible until the entire node is constructed."

Naruto sighed and started going through the hand seals for the next stage.

"So the new node lets you fill materials with specific chakra?" Hinata asked.

"But only if I can 'work' the material in question," Naruto agreed. "Deidara does that by kneading clay and mixing in explosion release chakra, and chewing does seem to work exceptionally well. You don't need to do it inside your body though, and I'm betting that some of the Uzushio blacksmiths worked their chakra in while forging. Imbuing ingredients during food preparation was an unexpected application of things too."

"...food?"

In response, he pulled a cinnamon roll. She gave it a curious look, then took it from him and tasted it. He said nothing as her eyes went wide and she devoured it, moaning slightly as she did so.

"Different chakra generates different effects in the process," Naruto commented. "Beyond imparting different tastes, though I've not locked those down yet. Normal chakra mostly seems to make food act like chakra pills to varying degrees. Wood release chakra in anything with yeast makes dough rise faster and more evenly, water chakra seems to make things mix more readily when in a liquid state while earth chakra does the same for dry ingredients and thickens liquids nicely. So far ice chakra is great for making ice cream, but slows down anything being cooked. It isn't all good though. Fire chakra makes it difficult to freeze things and causes burning during cooking far too easily, unless you get the balance just right to make things cook themselves, and I've not seen much direct effect from lightning chakra at all."

"What did you do to make the cinnamon roll?" she asked.

"Earth chakra in the dry ingredients, water chakra in the wet ones, some wood release when adding the yeast, a hint of fire chakra when forming them into shape that I hope helped them cook more evenly, and a little earth chakra to thicken the glaze up more than it would've otherwise. I'm still working out other uses, and finally put some clones on learning blacksmithing with the toads."

"...are they being made to make hammers first?"

"No, they're being made to learn the basic theory first, and after that will be making basic forges. Then they'll likely be making hammers. That aside, do you want to give the new node a try? It's a weird one in that we're fairly certain it was designed to not pass down to children automatically like most of the rest of the net would."

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No. I don't think it would fit my preferred fighting style and you're the one doing most of the building things. But if the others are going to continue doing the traveling chef routine then it sounds like something they might like."

...that was honestly not a bad point, but would also probably work best if they gave the three the various elemental combination nodes as well.

Getting the three chunin set up with the new chakra net nodes had taken a few days, but luckily the paperwork side was able to be completed before they were even in the village to have work done on them. Basic training in their use was another matter, as they'd been called in by the Hokage immediately after all three had gotten their upgrades. To Naruto's surprise, Kakashi was also there.

"This is an odd mission request that's got multiple sources of funding," Shisui explained. "It started with Kakashi here saving a princess years ago. When the seal on Naruto was broken he did some introspection and convinced a Yamanaka to both provide additional protection for the princess and help her mentally recover from the incident."

"Leaving her mostly to her own devices was a mistake," Kakashi admitted. "I'd also intended to spend more time checking up on her, but being in Anbu made that impossible and she slipped my mind a mission or two later."

"Being dragged back to Konoha half-dead a mission or two later probably didn't help."

"...probably not, no. But the princess is ready to try to take back her country, and her uncle is ready to invade the Land of Fire to get her and the key she took with her when she escaped. Seems like a good time to finally accept the mission her chief bodyguard has been asking me to take for a few years now to get her back into the country and her uncle out of the picture."

"But he's insisted that he'll only do so with the full Team Yurei as backup."

"That seems a bit excessive," Naruto pointed out.

Kakashi snorted. "I want you to copy every scrap of research in the entire country if you can, among other things. They've got advanced chakra armor that can grant flight in specific configurations and provides a seemingly-impenetrable defense, airships, a working rail system with train-mounted weaponry, and we aren't actually sure what else."

"...still seems excessive to bring all five of us."

"All six of you," Shisui corrected. "They've heard of Yoko and want her to go along, but not for any combat purposes. She can heal people, lend authenticity to the film they're shooting, and they want to have a proper shrine maiden help with a shrine that's fallen into disrepair."

"I actually want it to look like I've only got genin with me at best," Kakashi added. "Yoko aside, but she isn't well-known as a potential combat threat. Having chunin playing genin and a couple of jounin pretending to be actors for the film would present a nice little surprise for the enemy when they eventually engage. Acting isn't really any different than maintaining a cover either, so that could count as training time as well."

"There's a fear that if Kakashi has too much obviously-competent backup then the enemy will vanish for a month or two and then reappear to assassinate the princess instead of attacking her immediately. Showing up with only what looks like a brand-new genin team and a shrine maiden for backup would make the princess look like she's easy picking, so they should show themselves basically as soon as they realize how little security there actually is. Distract me for a few minutes, bulldoze the genin with the armor, and grab the princess."

"Doto is already planning a small invasion to grab her due to being sick of waiting, so we don't see him not taking the bait."

"Why would you want to appear to have backup at all?" Ino asked. "Slap on a horrible disguise as though intending to slip through unnoticed while the rest of us look like we're only there for the movie side of things. Just good enough to get them to spend a few minutes scoffing that you thought that would fool them."

Shisui and Kakashi both blinked a couple of times at that suggestion, then looked at each other. Kakashi shrugged, as if to admit that he'd not considered going that route, and Shisui sighed. "That would reduce the amount of paperwork needed to fake a genin team, at least, but as I understand it they want legitimate 'shinobi tricks' instead of 'movie shinobi' ones."

Naruto frowned. "What do movie shinobi do that real shinobi don't?" Most of the room turned to stare at him. "I've only seen maybe two movies, and I don't think either had shinobi in them. Samurai in one of them, but not shinobi. My hearing has been good enough to be annoyed by the speakers and projector noises ever since they'd let me in."

"I think the most ridiculous thing I've seen in movies was exploding food without explosive tags," Kakashi offered.

"...I'd probably have considered that ridiculous a week ago, yeah."

Hinata groaned. "You used explosion release chakra when cooking?"

"The senbei are tasty and perfectly safe so long as you don't prime them to explode, and chewing them disrupts the explosive chakra so they don't explode in your mouth or stomach."

That had required a quick trip to a training ground for a demonstration.