4

Hinata had pouted when told about Naruto's new summoning contract, until he told her how much chakra it had taken to sign it. At that point she'd just redoubled her efforts to increase her own chakra capacity, in case she ran into any more reasonable summoning clans. Naruto himself had, as promised, been brought back to look over the 'kits', despite them calling him a kit as well, and had learned some more.

The large gray fox was Naoko, and the brown one was Toyoko. They were the current elders of the clan, far less long-lived than other summons could manage but still far older than a wild fox would ever manage. More confusing was that only a handful of the foxes had names at all. Currently that was the two elders and the messengers, all of which took names to interact with outsiders. Otherwise the foxes identified each other by scents.

Naruto had ended up connecting with a male red fox that had a star-like pattern of yellow fur on his forehead, and had dubbed him Hoshi. They'd returned to Konoha, Hinata had cooed over the kit, and then Naruto had made his way to the Hokage's tower. Quite a few villagers had seen Hoshi, and a couple had scowled, but the majority had seemed entirely indifferent to it. True to the toad's word, Old Man Hokage had been ready for Naruto to show up with Hoshi and had even arranged for permission to have a 'pet' in the academy.

Kiba had been...far less pleased, though Akamaru and Hoshi seemed to get along well enough. Apparently Naruto already smelled too much like a fox, having an actual fox in the room with him was seemingly pushing it. Kiba's mother Tsume was nice enough though, and had insisted on Naruto bringing Hoshi by their compound to ensure that the clan's dogs would recognize the kit's scent as an ally, along with comments that perhaps meeting Naruto in person would help as well. Kiba's sister Hana was also nice and was helping Naruto learn basic healing in ways that the foxes couldn't teach him.

Training with the foxes themselves was reasonably straightforward for the time being as well. They'd pull Naruto and Hoshi back to their home for hunting training as Naruto wasn't able to easily slip out of the village safely right now otherwise, but everything else taught was summoning foxes to the Uzumaki compound to get lessons there. Most of which were for Hoshi, with only some of the fox side of field medic stuff for Naruto. The actual summoning, and getting the intended foxes, was the single biggest part of Naruto's training for now.

"I swear they're trying to bury us in homework to ensure we have no free time at all," Kiba whined as he looked over the list of things due next week on the way out of the academy. A third of it was just keeping up with exercise and jutsu practice though.

"If anyone should be complaining it's Naruto," Choji said. "I hear he spends every other afternoon learning medic-nin stuff from your sister."

"I don't know how he handles that either, because I know she keeps giving him homework too!"

"Mom's going to watch me do all this," Shikamaru said from behind Choji, before giving Naruto a look. "Actually, everyone else has complained about homework, even Hinata, but I don't think I've ever heard Naruto complain."

Naruto rolled his eyes when they turned to look at him, presumably to have him complain. "Homework is easy, finding time to get all my training in is what's annoying."

"And needing to sit down to do the homework would eat into that time."

"Nah. I know the paperwork jutsu."

The others might have said something in response to that, but Naruto suddenly found himself hoisted up by his jacket by Old Man Hokage in a manner that his father thought was reminiscent of the Hiraishin, Hoshi falling off of Naruto's head and landing on the ground next to them. "TELL ME YOUR SECRETS!"

It took a minute to recover from the shock, but Naruto shook his head. They'd planned for this...in general. This exact situation wasn't what they'd expected. "What secrets?"

"The fabled paperwork jutsu! Thought lost with the fall of Uzu!"

"Oh. The scroll said it was an Uzumaki secret that I shouldn't share with anyone, with the potential to kill any non-Uzumaki who used it carelessly."

For some reason his parents found the old man's dejected horror face amusing.

"It takes a lot of chakra," Hinata confirmed.

Old Man Hokage turned to Hinata. "You've...seen him use the paperwork jutsu? And it isn't something anyone could handle?"

She blushed, but nodded. "Yes."

His mood obviously plummeted as he put Naruto down. "I see. My apologies for interrupting." A moment later he'd vanished again, though this time Naruto could keep track of his movements as he left the area.

"Is this paperwork jutsu really that powerful?" Shikamaru asked.

"If you can use it properly," Naruto said, waving the assignment list even as he crouched down to let Hoshi hop back up onto him. "I'll have all this written work done by dinner."

"...are you sure it isn't safe for non-Uzumaki?"

Everyone in the area seemed to be interested in that. Sasuke had even stopped to listen while trying to look like he didn't actually care. Hinata was the one that spoke up though. "It uses enough chakra to likely kill any of us other than Naruto through chakra exhaustion."

Okay, the dejected looks on their classmates' faces were amusing, so perhaps he could see why his parents were amused by Old Man Hokage's.

Summer break brought new surprises. Jiraiya had shown up, freaked out about Naruto having fox summons, did his best to hide said freaking out, and then tripled-down on sealing lessons...for two days before he had to leave again. But they'd been semi-productive days and had netted Naruto six new books, one of which covered things his parents hadn't been entirely clear on.

Short visit from his godfather aside, Naruto and Hinata also started learning both the flight spell and the Rasengan. They were both awesome in their own ways, but to really test the flight spell Hinata was going to have to find a way outside of the village. Naruto figured that he'd just cheat and test it while visiting the foxes, to Hinata's annoyance as she didn't expect to be able to join him. He was waiting until they had the spell working to tell her about the 'personal summoning contract' he'd gotten from the foxes that would allow the pair of them to summon each other once they both signed it. Incredibly rare because a sage had to connect the contract to the 'summoning network', whatever that was, in order to have any range at all. Except that the foxes had a former sage that had decided to just make stacks of them that were sitting around doing nothing.

The Anbu commander had bought a stack of the things and Naruto had spent a couple of days ferrying purchased supplies back to the foxes.

Most important was Naruto having brand-new seals to practice drawing. He didn't fully understand them, but you didn't need to understand a seal to draw it and copying existing designs was part of the early lessons. For one set, the plan was to get them to the point where others could draw them and then pretend that they'd been found in some hidden cache of his father's. They were keyed summoning blockers, intended to generally prevent summoning in an area unless you were on the approved list of summoners, along with ways to allow temporary or permanent 'holes' in the protections for specific purposes. His father wanted them to cover the entire village as a default so that enemies couldn't sneak in and then summon piles of reinforcements right past the outer defenses.

On a personal front, Naruto cared more about the single seal that he'd need to draw himself for it to be effective. If he got it down well enough then when he activated it his ability to shapeshift should be granted to the person he'd drawn it on, and he was hoping to share that with Hinata. That one was also the most complicated seal he'd ever seen and he probably only had one chance to get it right on her.

"Why am I filling this mess out?" Anko grumbled as she looked over the paperwork. Applying for potentially becoming a jounin sensei for a group of brats wasn't her thing, though admittedly she'd not realized that being a special jounin was enough to apply until a couple weeks ago.

"Because you were pushing me to and I made you promise to do so as well," Kurenai replied.

"But you're the one interested in teaching brats."

"And every third time we go drinking together you complain that nobody even thinks about teaching infiltration properly until chunin."

"...well, it's true! For as much as anybody teaches infiltration properly at all, anyway."

Kurenai rolled her eyes. "I'm most interested in working with a dojutsu user as part of a team and am hoping to get one of the various Hyuga in particular as they don't need to awaken their eyes like Uchiha do. You're right about the lack of infiltration thoughts until chunin, so what are the chances that there'll be an infiltration-focused academy graduate in the next five years? But if there is, do you really want to miss your chance to get your hooks into one that early?"

And there was the completely valid argument that was keeping Anko from tearing the annoying forms up. There were far too few infiltration-types in the ranks in general. She wanted to be one, enjoying the thrill of slipping in right under the enemy's noses to get whatever the job was done without them ever knowing that she was there, but the fucking cursed hickey screwed with her chakra often enough to make it impossible to do well unless dealing with civilian-grade pissants.

There was no thrill in fooling people that weren't even a potential threat to her in the first place.

"Why does this only ask about one genin?" Anko asked a few minutes later, flipping through the pages. "Shouldn't it care more about the whole team?"

"Only if you want one of the defined team roles," Kurenai answered. "Page six has checkboxes for tracking, scouting, fortification, and heavy assault teams, but otherwise the idea is that they try to give you a team containing at least one genin that matches your criteria."

"Oh. Wait, infiltration isn't a defined team role?"

"How often do you send a team to infiltrate?"

"Not often enough. Things are a hell of a lot easier if you at least have a partner there with you, and having an evac team nearby is always a good idea. One that almost never happens for stupid reasons, admittedly."

"Seriously?"

Anko nodded. "It seems like most people in charge of infiltration teams are terrible at planning. Long-term infiltration with single operatives that are easily subverted, by those they're infiltrating or otherwise. Short-term infiltration with no plans for support or aid if things go wrong beyond what the infiltrator themselves can come up with. We even have records of 'place six year old infiltrators into the orphanage of the village' being attempted a couple dozen times here alone, as if growing up in the village and being treated well wasn't going to ruin the chances of getting reliable information out of the infiltrator by the time they could actually learn anything of importance. Not that we don't have a bunch of idiotic things like that on our own records too."

Naruto grinned as Hinata giggled while they flew over the land claimed by the fox summons. She'd been completely shocked when he'd brought out the contract that let them summon each other, though she didn't actually have enough chakra to summon him (or anything else) yet. But the point was that he could summon her to him, including when he was with the foxes and thus in a location where they could practice with flying and chakra chains.

Granted, the smaller contract didn't support 'send the person back to where they originally were' like the larger contracts did, but that just meant he had to summon her a second time when he was returned to Konoha. He'd asked if there was any way, without sending a fox to Konoha somehow, to be sent back there even if that wasn't where he'd arrived from and caused one of the sages to wander off with an odd look. There wasn't currently otherwise, but the toads were allowing use of their travel well now that Naruto had signed the fox contract.

So long as Jiraiya wasn't told until Naruto had signed with the toads as well, anyway. And the toads were 'considering' allowing Hinata to sign as well when that time came, if she'd built her chakra high enough to manage summoning reliably by then.

"You know that you're supposed to get gifts for your birthday," Hinata said as she caught up to him. "Not give them!"

"It took us both longer than we thought to get flying down," Naruto said. They'd both had the Rasengan down for over a month, flying didn't seem like it should've been as hard as it was. "And enjoying this with you is a gift on its own anyway."

That had her giggling again, and they had to swing around to not fly out of the area over the forest the foxes claimed.

"So," he said. "I think we might want to tell your father about the summoning contract."

She...well, stumbled wasn't quite right while flying, but he wasn't sure how else to describe it. "What? Why?"

"The foxes gave me more to do with as I want, more than happy with what they already got in supplies for the first stack they gave me. If someone tried to abduct you again, or they grabbed Hanabi after she'd signed a contract?"

"Oh. OH!" She tackle-glomped him in mid-air. It took a few minutes for her curiosity to overcome her excitement, and she carefully turned to look at him. "Wait, first stack?"

"I sold a stack to the Anbu after asking about ways to summon you out here, then bought a bunch of things the foxes have trouble getting their paws on normally with the money. More than they expected me to be able to get."

"...how many 'stacks' do they have?"

"I don't know. Plenty, supposedly. A few weeks ago one of the foxes admitted that the sage that made them had a bad hit of some kind of relaxation drug and just went into a loop making them for a few months. They don't want to just hand them all over at once, but a few for your clan is easy enough to handle from what they already gave me. I'm thinking about holding onto enough to let our eventual genin team sign ones for each other for emergency use too."

She frowned at that. "There's no guarantee that we'll be together."

"We can hope, but if I keep enough for two teams then I could summon your whole team for backup if a mission goes wrong."

That had her smiling again.

Naruto had figured that the handful of contracts he'd given to Hiashi would be appreciated, but he'd underestimated how much they'd be appreciated. Demonstrating the summoning ability with Hinata had been included to show that it worked, and the man had asked that the contract allowing the demonstration be kept secret for the time being. She and Hanabi had signed a contract each with Hiashi immediately, Naruto walking the man through testing for both girls, before the rest were presented to the elders. Apparently each girl had also signed a contract with a trusted elder of their choice as a backup before the remaining unsigned ones were locked away in a secure vault for the time being.

An hour later Naruto had been brought before the elders and he thought that they'd essentially declared him to be a trusted member of the family, or something close to it without needing actual adoption. He was permitted full access to the compound befitting a member of the main branch in particular, meaning that he no longer had to get permission ahead of time to visit Hinata or Hanabi.

This resulted in eating dinner with the Hyuga two to three times a week and regular lessons in how one acted as and around nobles. If not for paperwork clones and the false world inside of the Tome he'd probably feel like he had no time to work on anything of his own.

Unfortunately, the practice with the shapeshifting seal hadn't gotten to the point of being perfect by Hinata's birthday. Naruto was able to attend the celebration this year though, so that was nice. The collection of seals for blocking summoning into the village was ready though, placed onto a suitable scroll with instructions dictated by his father and supposedly appearing to be close enough to his father's handwriting.

Penmanship lessons had included duplicating the writing of others for more than just practicing in getting details correct, including being able to change the appearance of your own writing when infiltrating. Naruto felt stupid for missing that before he'd had it explained to him.

To sell the deception even more, Naruto had been told how to 'accidentally' enter the locked-down Namikaze household. There was very little of interest actually there, beyond well-hidden instructions on performing the Rasengan and a few hidden notes on the Hiraishin. But very few people had any way of knowing that and Jiraiya wouldn't have left those when he cleaned the house out if he had known, so coming out with a scroll on planned improvements to village security was unlikely to be questioned. Or at least not by Old Man Hokage.

Naruto was mostly disappointed in the lack of pictures in the house once he'd made it in.

After over an hour of double-checking for pictures his parents said didn't exist he'd left carrying the scroll, to find Old Man Hokage waiting for him. Lots of questions were asked, the scroll was examined, and then more questions were asked. That several Hyuga would probably need to be in the list of 'known summoners' had been a surprise when Naruto had brought it up, but only until the reasoning had been explained. The contract between Naruto and Hinata hadn't needed to be mentioned at that point either.

In thanks for finding the scroll, and because he couldn't be paid for the information itself as it wasn't his, he'd instead been offered jutsu scrolls to work on at his own pace. Old Man Hokage had provided a set of camping jutsu, the Anbu commander had provided transparency and scent-changing jutsu, and the barrier maintenance team had thrown in a medium-range communication jutsu.

Two weeks later Naruto was 'tied into' the barely-started seal arrays. Three times, because they had key-in seals for the Anbu, general Shinobi, and a Hokage's personal list. Naruto would have to be removed from all three to have his summoning blocked when the seals were fully activated. He later found out from Hinata that the relevant Hyuga were only told about one seal, with no implication that the other two existed at all.

"Smell wrong," Hoshi whined, causing Naruto to blink.

"It's about time you started talking," Naruto said, shaking his head. "And I know I smell wrong. I'm trying to figure out how I want Yoko to smell now that I've finally got the scent-changing jutsu working."

Supposedly the jutsu wasn't that hard to master, but it was likely that most users didn't have an enhanced sense of smell compared to normal humans. Which was probably why it also wasn't considered useful for preventing tracking as most people wouldn't be able to tell that they'd not changed aspects of their scent that canines could easily pick up on. Naruto didn't have those problems, and had confused Kiba in class by spending an entire day smelling like Hinata.

In Hoshi's defense, the current application of the technique was a horrible mixture of scent elements. Yoko needed a primary 'human female', and he was considering a slight ocean-like component. Which he could only describe now because he'd visited a beach with the foxes a few weeks ago, though he'd smelled it on some merchants on a regular basis for years and there were a couple of people in the village that just had a similar scent to them despite not leaving on trips at all.

Hinata didn't like that she couldn't even figure out how to shift her scent to the point where Kiba couldn't tell it was her, though she had managed to confuse him and had him wondering if she'd changed her soap or shampoo a couple of times. Unfortunately for her, the jutsu was limited to things that the user could consciously perceive in scents and she didn't have as much 'range' there.

"Since you're speaking a bit now," Naruto continued. "I don't suppose you have any ideas for what to get Hanabi for her birthday?" The girl's birthday was...somewhere in the last week of March. He had the exact date written down somewhere.

Hoshi shook his head, which wasn't much of a surprise. Naruto had considered things that might help the girl when she started training more seriously to eventually enter the academy, but didn't have a clue what would help there that wasn't already part of the supplies the Hyuga already provided. Hinata had suggested possibly fixing Hanabi's 'net', but that would probably require sharing secrets with Hanabi and their parents that he hadn't shared with anyone else.

Oh well, he still had a couple weeks to figure something out.

An hour later he'd had to pause his attempts to figure out Yoko's new scent because Jiraiya had finally shown up. Three hours late, though the man hadn't been peeping in the hot springs like the last time he'd been running late. A clone had been sent to check.

"Sorry I'm late," Jiraiya said as he entered the apartment, which was odd on its own. The man was usually shameless about details like that. "I had to get Sensei's permission for a couple of things, but first..."

Twenty minutes later the privacy aspects of the apartment had been reinforced, and a few seals that hadn't been keeping the pranking Anbu or Ushi out had been repaired. They'd be broken again in a week because they spread over hidden doors Jiraiya didn't know about but that Naruto used regularly.

"So," Jiraiya said. "Sensei sent me on a couple of trips on a whim, and in the process I found a couple of things. In talking with him about them, I managed to convince him to let me tell you one of the high-level secrets being kept for your own protection. Specifically, that your status as an Uzumaki was never in doubt, but your mother had personal enemies that would hunt down her child." He then pulled out a scroll and unrolled it on the table. "Her name was Kushina, and while the Uzumaki didn't have noble families like Konoha does, she was still from a prominent line." An application of chakra released a stack of scrolls and two boxes from the storage scroll. "I visited Uzushio's ruins recently in search of things and stumbled upon these. I can't open any of the scrolls or the sealed box." He then popped open the other box. "But this contains some basic chakra blades that I found in an old storeroom. Ones that I think fell behind the shelves in the rush to defend the island."

Naruto looked into that box and found that there were five knives and a scroll inside of it. Two of the knives looked to be daggers, another struck him as being designed to be held backwards, and the last two looked like one of his kitchen knives. "What's in the scroll?"

"I wrote down some chakra flow basics for you, so that you'd be able to take advantage of the special qualities of the blades. But you can look through all of this more later, I have to be back on the road soon so let's take a look at what you've accomplished with the explosive tag arrays I showed you last time I stopped by."

It turned out that every last scroll Jiraiya had found was a copy of the paperwork clone jutsu once unsealed with a drop of Uzumaki blood. Half labeled as that, the other half labeled as the shadow clone. Naruto had dumped them all into the training hall with the copy that had already been there. The sealed box had been far more interesting, containing a pair of metal spirals to be worn on the forearms and minimalistic instructions in their use. Wear them loosely, channel chakra into them to trigger them resizing to fit, and then you could store and retrieve weapons. Each one could hold up to five weapons that would just appear in your hand when retrieved.

Not mentioned in the instructions was that there was no way to remove them once you put them on as they seemingly integrated into his chakra somehow. Something he'd only discovered after checking out the two tantos sealed within them, one for each arm. Both had chakra blades, but after returning them to storage he'd been unable to find any way to release the spirals from his skin. Knight Armor treated them like part of him, shapeshifting could hide them but not cause them to fall off even if he made his arms vanish, and he wasn't crazy enough to cut his own arms off to remove the things.

Well, not so long as they weren't dangerous to him, anyway, and his parents seemed to think they were fine. He ended up shapeshifting them into being invisible, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that they still worked. Followed by sticking a dagger and kitchen knife from the box Jiraiya had brought into each as well.

Hinata had been jealous upon finding out, given that chakra blades were expensive. Followed by refusing to carry even one of the seven Naruto had. Mostly because she didn't want to blatantly violate the general creed of the Hyuga not needing weapons beyond their bodies and the occasional kunai or set of shuriken.

"He knew who his mother was before I said anything," Jiraiya reported. "Probably knows who his father is too, though I didn't bring that up. He didn't express any interest in finding out if I knew, at least."

Hiruzen sighed. "I've recently become aware that he's got access to the hidden Uzumaki compound, though he isn't using the known entrances. In a couple of months I should have the normal entrances cleared of the obstructions put in place and the traps and observers monitoring them cleared out. At which point I plan on showing him how to get in 'officially' so that he doesn't have to hide as much."

Ah, that would save Jiraiya the trouble. "Thank you. There was nothing of use left in there, right?"

"Nothing I could find, but that doesn't mean much as I wasn't privy to all the secrets of the compound. I won't even be able to show Naruto how to let others in without physically pulling them through the barrier seals."

"What about Danzo? I'm under the impression that he's one of the ones watching those."

"I officially disbanded Root months ago, but I suspect he's still running it in secret. Far too little of the resources it should have had access to were returned to the village. He's also obviously looking for the container of the nine-tails and was noticeably shaken up when the Uchiha lost most of their adults to that attack. I think he's been running a collection of plans and is on the back foot as they all go wrong."

"Sounds about right for him. Do you need me to check on any more of the anti-summoning seals?"

"Not yet. We should have them all in place before our next turn to host the chunin exams."

Jiraiya blinked a couple of times at that. "Wasn't the original plan going to be done in just over two months from now? The seals aren't that complicated at this stage."

"It was, but the barrier team requested that we set up multiple layers. One just inside the walls, one on the walls, another just outside of the walls, and two more layers further out. We've tested and shouldn't need to adjust the exclusion zones, but one of them questioned what would happen if someone summoned a giant summon just outside the walls and forced their way through. Since Minato designed the seals to be trivially monitored we can get early warning even if someone figures out that they exist, and the plan is for knowledge of all but the 'in the walls' layer and one of the two further out ones to be kept to only those that need to know for security reasons. You'll be spot-checking seals once we have a full map ready."

"I'll check the entire thing if I need to. The entire idea makes far too much sense from a security standpoint, though it does add steps to having someone sign a contract."

Hiruzen nodded. "Yes, it does, and that came up in arguments from those with existing contracts being tied in ahead of time."

"Oh? You hadn't mentioned that anyone put up a fight over it."

"I simply pointed out that both times the nine-tailed fox was used against the village it was summoned to inside of it."

Okay, yes, that would definitely shut up the nay-sayers. In fact, Jiraiya had already fully agreed with the whole setup and found himself even less opposed to it now than he had been a couple minutes ago. "How hard do you think it would be to add another layer or two inside the village, around key places that are only tied into the Anbu and Hokage-approval lists instead of including the general one?"

"Already done for the tower and a couple of Anbu areas, with plans for a few more. I just wish we had a better way to turn the main system on in stages, but the monitoring component needs to tie into all of it at once to properly highlight exception zones that pop up inside of the perimeter."