74

Iruka stared at the settlement that Naruto had built in a couple of days. Overbuilt to the man's specifications, really, but there hadn't been any reason to hold back. "You certainly don't do things by half, do you?"

"If you're going to do something then you should do it right," Naruto replied. "I also put in underground training grounds like the ones back in the main village, configured in similar ways, and there's a proper school building here along with the barracks. Dragging students out for a week or two away from home should be a decent way to start getting them used to traveling without their families, and you should be able to run them through reasonably safe camping exercises in the forest area."

"This is significantly more than I was expecting."

"Academy students are the future of the village. Why would I stick to the minimum?"

"...because you're not trying to get financial approval from a bunch of tightwads, I assume. Far too many other priorities for limited funding."

"The nation may never need to turn a profit at all from an outside point of view, even without all the money already banked, but we're likely to start doing so in the next four to five months anyway. Still, as of right now most of the island's funds are in an account I personally control because of how they were obtained, so I'm not justifying anything to anyone else. Well, that and all this really cost to build was some of my time."

"Surely you needed to procure a bunch of the materials used?"

"Would you expect an earth-specialist jounin to need to procure rock to make a rock wall?"

Based on the look on the man's face, he'd figured things out. "No..."

"Chakra is, in many ways, complete bullshit, and that's before knowing how to convert illusions into real structures."

Naruto had welcomed the first group of students to the new academy, assisted with some of the initial prepwork, and then began the test of how the island handled not having the Uzukage around by heading off to train with the foxes and toads. Hinata was doing the same with the snakes, Anko joining her, and Ino was even joining the chameleons in a coordinated attempt by their summons to train them all at the same time.

"Didn't you say that sage training normally happened later in life?" Naruto asked once he was brought to the sacred oil fountain, idly wondering if the fox's current sage hiding behind one of the rocks was there to help or was secretly observing.

"We've got nine total data points across six clans for younger sages," Fukasaku replied. "None of them 'normal'. Ninety-plus percent of the point of waiting is also to ensure that the one to be trained has access to enough chakra. Besides, we think that your circumstances are quite different."

"Oh?"

"We'll get to that. Before we begin there's some general details you need to know. You already know that using natural energy enhances your body and chakra. This results in being stronger and faster, generally having improved senses, as well as more durable and less liable to tire. Overall, techniques become more powerful, and in general easier to maintain, including allowing the user to do things that would normally seem to be impossible with chakra alone. Solid materials can flow more readily, liquids and gasses can be more solid than they should be, that kind of thing."

"That was all in the basics."

"Indeed. But the Honorable Geezer thinks you should get a more complete lesson. Over the years it was determined that each species has a 'specialty', and one of the reasons the summon clans seek out summoners is because it lets us 'borrow' your specialty. Doesn't work with any other species that we know of, and trust me we've tried establishing contracts between each other in a myriad of combinations to test. It just so happens that the effects of your specialty are considered quite useful, though as a side effect humans get to borrow our specialities as well."

"So once I learn to use natural energy I can borrow toad and fox specialties?"

"Yes, though you're likely unconsciously using at least some minor expressions without noticing as some of the benefits come through even without sage training."

"Huh. So what's the 'human' specialty that you get access to?"

"Transformation, both temporary and long-term. Natural energy seems to naturally physically transform humans who don't have proper control over it, and connections to a summon clan tend to provide a template for those changes. Using that ability in combat is nice, but taxing. Most clans with long-running connections to human summoners actually prefer to use it to direct their evolution in useful ways. The foxes have been a bit of a joke among us because they've not been able to use a connection to a summoner to help extend their lifespans, just as one example."

That...did sound useful. "And as a side effect of you getting access to that we get access to some of what you can do?"

"Yep. Toad sages tend to get more powerful physical boosts and a linked ability to wrap themselves in excess natural energy in a way that only another sage can detect. That allows extending reach in physical combat in various ways on top of putting significantly more power into physical attacks. You've already got basically all of the stances down and will just need to practice them with natural energy. Snake sages breathe life into the nonliving environment, turning the ground around them into a weapon. They like to claim it stems from controlling their shed skins, but they can't actually do that without filling them with something like rock. Slug sages are good at splitting and recombining while remaining a single self, though we aren't sure if that actually manifests in their summoners. We haven't observed or been told about the specialities of most of the other clans though."

"Foxes are stealthy trackers," the hiding fox sage said from behind Fukasaku, stepping out from behind the rock as he did so. "Only another sage is able to detect us when we want to be hidden, and even then many miss us. Though we're also usually good with seals and don't know if that's connected. Chameleons can be stealthier than us, but only so long as they're stationary as they 'become one with the environment' to a degree that even other sages have trouble spotting them when looking. They can also sustain themselves off of natural energy in the process, allowing them to hide for decades without much trouble, but they get really annoyed if I track them down anyway."

"How long have you been here?"

"He was here before you brought me over," Naruto noted, to the apparent shock of the fox sage.

"I can see that this is going to go much differently than my own training," the fox sage said, shaking his head.

Fukasaku nodded. "Definitely." He then swung at Naruto.

Naruto ducked under the attempt to knock him into the fountain. "What the hell? Everyone has told me to never immerse myself in the fountain."

"You're very obviously a special case, as evidenced by dodging my swing, but I guess you're going to need to see for yourself."

A minute later a bit of the oil was placed on Naruto, who felt energy flowing into him from where the oil was on him...and it just kind of integrated into his whole? Actually, now that he could feel it, he was reasonably certain that he was subconsciously pulling in small amounts of the same energy on his own.

"...the tailed beasts were automatic sages?" the fox sage questioned.

"They were gathering nodes for collecting the planet's energy," Fukasaku corrected. "Any excess energy likely just gets filtered through the collection node, probably negating basically all the downsides of gathering energy more purposefully."

"Now that's just cheating."

"...you're just going to bite us and inject natural energy?" Hinata asked.

"You'll be fine," the white snake sage said. "Completely ignored my illusions, which is no trivial feat. Your sensei probably has more to fear, but likely not much more as she managed the physical tasks well enough."

Anko-sensei looked less than convinced, but the snake sage lashed out and bit her before she could react. This was quickly followed by attempting to bite Hinata, who instinctively dodged. The ground suddenly leapt up and grabbed her though, allowing the snake sage to bite her and inject energy.

Strangely, the energy injected didn't really seem to be a problem for Hinata, even if it was obvious that Anko-sensei was struggling a bit. In fact, with a concentrated sample it was somewhat obvious that the energy was something already being collected in much smaller amounts, and pulling on the energy around her was easy enough to do.

"Yep," the snake sage said, shaking her head. "You're never going to have a problem with natural energy and just need to learn to use it. Your sensei already has some experience due to Rochi's seal and just needs to apply the lessons without the crutch of the seal keeping her from pulling too much energy at once."

"...you knew this was going to happen, didn't you?" Hinata accused.

"Knew? No. Merely suspected, along with the other clans. All this means is that we get to skip the bulk of the more annoying lessons and skip straight to the more useful ones."

"You cook with natural energy?" Ino asked as she looked at the normal-looking cookies. They were obviously not normal to her senses though.

"...very few notice that detail when offered a cookie," the chameleon sage replied.

"I cook with chakra. It wasn't that hard to make the leap."

"Interesting. Well, we test our potential sages by having them eat a couple of cookies and see what happens. One cookie at a time until there are problems or you've finished the entire plate. Keeps you from going too far if there's a problem."

"Isn't sage training supposed to be done when you're older?"

"It's more a level of chakra thing and most people don't have enough until they're older, but we've used the cookies with children before."

Ino wasn't entirely convinced, but ate a cookie anyway. She felt the energy in the cookie, and the concentrated form made her think that she'd felt something similar already? A second cookie made her more certain, and the third was when she realized she was already absorbing the same kind of energy from the environment. Just...not nearly as much? But it wasn't hard to pull on more either.

She'd idly eaten the entire plate of cookies before she knew it, probably intentionally pulling in three times as much energy as the cookies had contained in the process.

"Seems that the toads were right about you," the sage said. "Though how well you'll take to our training methods is another question. Boosting your abilities is one thing, but we frequently have trouble with the boredom of remaining in one place for long periods of time."

Obito had failed to find any more credible evidence of where the wandering nobles had come from, but had lucked out in traveling back to the Elemental Nations. He could've just passed through the kamui dimension to get back in an instant, but had decided to investigate island chains along the route instead. The last one he'd visited had seemed to hold nothing...until he activated his mangekyo in preparing to leave. Then he spotted a slight waver of chakra in the air, that looked like it might be a genjutsu.

He'd been right about that, and found that it hid a stationary puppet like the ones in the Land of Hot Water. Disabling it hadn't been trivial when it decided to attack him, but he knew that it would have a connection to a computer somewhere. Following that connection had brought him to a very well-hidden but long-abandoned bunker and had let him identify six other of the stationary puppets that he hadn't spotted...and one location that should have had one if not for lava having destroyed it.

Notably, the bunker seemed to be designed around being built under a no-longer-there village with lots of places to access it from structures above. Some of the exits were even still labeled with names, presumably those connecting to homes or businesses. He couldn't get the computers to let him in and wasn't good enough with technology to force the issue, but suspected that the Uzushio survivors had settled here for a bit before moving on. Possibly because of the volcano on the island being a bit more active than they'd hoped? Eruption flows had passed dangerously close to the bunker at some point in the past few decades, at least based on the flow that had taken out one of the puppets.

Most of this was, admittedly, conjecture. This might've been an old research outpost or something too. The security on it certainly wasn't up to the levels on the rebuilt Uzushio though, which could either be because they tore most of it down to make the island less interesting or because some of the measures hadn't been developed yet. Unfortunately, it also didn't provide any leads for where they'd gone next, and there weren't any more good island chains nearby to explore further.

Yoko sighed as she examined the 'truth-seeking balls' that had formed around her once Naruto's training in using natural energy had hit a critical point. Nine for her, nine for Naruto, and after some checking they'd found out that Hinata had also manifested nine and Ino had taken an extra few days to manifest three. Based on that, their assumption was that 'direct descendants' got a larger number for some reason.

The annoying part was that they wouldn't go away. It seemed like to get rid of them you'd need to purge your system of natural energy entirely and the collection nodes made that impossible for them. You couldn't even destroy them because they'd done that to three and found that they would gradually reform and then appear again due to the constant influx of natural energy. Or when you applied yin-yang release properly, which Naruto had found let him temporarily create an extra three of the things while clones had control over some of his originals.

"You are annoying," she said to the orb she'd been examining. "We don't want to have to deal with you floating behind us at all times."

"So split them up between clones," Hoshi commented from where he was preparing a quick meal for himself and Suzu. "Have them form the ball you give each of them into something useful to disguise them and get them away from you."

"They're active weapons of mass destruction. We don't want to be wandering around with that kind of thing active when we don't need them, and I basically never need them. I'd pass them off to Naruto if either of us could reliably have more than nine at a time, but they're also horrible for infiltration."

"Unique features generally are, yeah. Does the Tome have anything from Hamura on dealing with them?"

"Just tips for setting their 'standby pattern' when you aren't using them."

"Hmmm. Stick them in a seal?"

"Stick them in a seal? They're a manifestation of personal understanding of natural energy boosted by likely unearthly heritage. Maybe if you could stick a seal on a tai...oh. Hmmm."

Hoshi looked over at her. "Figure something out?"

"I was thinking that the outflow currents from such a seal would need to be kept in check, and that only a tailed beast could do so, but I'm reasonably certain that the collection node is what would handle the outflow currents and I have one. That means that it should work...but we'd each need our own seal, and we're going to need to do some checks to see how many can be safely stored in a single seal."

"At least you're working on it now instead of just grumbling."

Orochimaru stretched as she stood up after dinner. She still hadn't replaced her immortality, chipmunks not having anywhere near the same qualities that snakes did in that regard, but had made strides to properly rebuilding her chakra and weeding out the idiots that refused to be led by a woman. Next she was probably going to have to do something about those all too happy to be led by a woman for all the wrong reasons.

Even if her long-discarded sex drive decided to reassert itself, she wasn't about to allow someone to bed her and step into a leadership role by pushing her aside during a pregnancy. She was also reasonably sure that she wouldn't be interested in that particular way, given that his original preferences and this body's original preferences were both largely aimed at females. Of course, that wasn't a guarantee either way, but she'd only found herself eyeing the kunoichi...which could just be showing appreciation towards working brains.

"I still need to visit Jugo," Orochimaru mused. "See if the latest attempt to calm his rage is working, and check compatibility of the various enzymes with this body. I was using the ones that seemed to cause his rage in my previous seals, but I suspect those won't be as compatible with my new self..."

"I took the liberty of sending a messenger to check on him," Guren piped up. "The message I sent included a warning about your changes, but the messenger hasn't returned."

"Ah. Well, things should be stable enough here to allow for a quick trip either way, and Tsunade was kind enough to provide me with a couple of additional ideas."

"Do you still wish to arrange for the transport of some of the orphans to Uzu?"

"Reportedly, Naruto is out on a training trip, so I figured that sending a message out could wait until he had returned. Might want to test them to see if any feel suitable for personal training too, for that matter."

"Maternal instincts kicking in, looking to raise a kid or two?"

"...possibly."

Naruto blinked, chopsticks halfway to his mouth, as Odoroki appeared in front of him in a burst of light. "Er, that wasn't the Hiraishin."

"No it wasn't," Odoroki said, scowling. "That was Futo and Miho using me to test things."

"...you're further away from the Tome than usual?"

"We've not actually been unable to get further away. It just gets uncomfortable."

"Oh." He looked down at the food he was still eating, shrugged, and worked on finishing his meal.

"Aren't you going to ask what Futo and Miho were testing?"

He rolled his eyes and swallowed the portion he'd been chewing. "Teleportation, obviously."

"...okay, that's fair. Er, what are those things floating behind you?"

"Truth-seeking balls."

"...Matatabi said something about those, and Yoko checking on information about them. Ren's contribution was close to you having to 'deal with them', but I didn't push for details."

"Side effect of proper understanding of natural energy and mixing it with chakra. Ino only got three, but none of us can dismiss them. Several sages are going over my notes on possibly sealing them into our backs though, and so far they've not told us we're crazy."

"Okay."

"So are you hanging out here because you want to, or because you don't actually know how to get back?"

She blushed. "No clue where we are, let alone how to get back. They hit me with the spell without telling me the final pieces they figured out for it."

"Ah." A few minutes later he finished his meal and grabbed her so they could head back to Uzushio with a Hiraishin. They landed near the Tome's storage location and it didn't take long to find Futo and Miho.

Odoroki immediately started pummeling both for not giving her enough information to get back on her own.

"So you came up with a teleportation spell?" Naruto said once she'd calmed down.

"Yep," Futo said. "Bit slower than the Hiraishin, but also doesn't require special eyes or a physical connection between the two points. Kind of like a Hiraishin that doesn't require your chakra at the other end, I suppose? We had to make two versions though, one for 'same dimension' and another for 'cross to another dimension', the latter being harder to cast by a significant margin. Might be able to make the latter 'loop back' like the Hiraishin does, but for some reason it didn't want to come together that way."

"Oh. So you didn't send Odoroki to me because you followed my chakra?"

"Sent her approximately where I figured you'd be doing sage training based on my own attempts and hoped that you'd be in the immediate area."

"You got lucky and I landed right in front of him," Odoroki noted.

"Well, I did try to hit where I remembered the normal 'lunch' spot was."

"And what if I'd ended up who knew where?"

"Track you with the Tome or have Matatabi forcibly reconstitute you here?"

"Compared to sending one of Naruto's clones?"

"...he wasn't here!"

Naruto scoffed. "Do you really think that Yoko and I haven't been keeping both villages seeded with clones while I've been training with the toads and foxes?"

That led to some blinking from all three, and a facepalm from Miho.

Tsukao looked around the table at the small group of older Uzumaki. "So, we've technically already said that young Naruto has earned the title of Uzukage. But we've not really decided if the island still deserves to be called Uzushio."

"They rebuilt the place better than the original," Akira retorted. "Seals and technology, defenses that should ensure nobody can do what was done to the place before, and quite frankly I think I'm feeling insulted by the idea that anyone thinks the legacy isn't being upheld."

Hotose snorted, gesturing around them with her small fan. "Naruto even went to the effort of preserving as much of the city plan as he could, without having any reason to. Means that I don't even get lost. Sure, the walls are a bit unfortunate, but I don't think any of us are against the place having actual defenses after escaping during the siege."

Yameki nodded her agreement. "And the combination of seals and technology that Naruto and Hinata have pioneered spits in the face of the limitations of both, as far as we can tell. I would've preferred if he was more likely to marry an Uzumaki, but at the same time there just aren't enough of us for that right now and trying to force that kind of thing has never been appreciated by anyone."

"Anyone subjected to it, anyway. The elders doing the forcing always appreciated it."

"Until they took a sword to the face when someone inevitably disagreed with the policy."

"Admittedly true."

"So," Okachu said, interrupting the two women as he looked around. "It sounds like we don't have any problems with allowing Uzushiogakure to remain named Uzushiogakure."

"Not like we could actually stop the use of the name," Akira pointed out.

Tsukao shook his head. "The five of us, identities confirmed, have just enough power in the treaty between Uzushio and the Land of Fire to make a declaration in either direction. Since we seem to be in agreement, I want to get that declaration in place before others that could screw it up show up."

The group blinked a couple of times, and a couple of them scowled at the idea. It only took five minutes to draft up a suitable declaration, and they found a special forces member standing there offering to deliver it when they walked out of the room.

...he'd have sworn that those were Naruto's clones, but Naruto was off training with the toads, so perhaps there was an actual force instead of a pretend one?

Naruto made a point of their official return from training being a bit more obvious than their departure had been, by virtue of appearing with a flash of light thanks to the new teleportation spell. Hinata and Ino had a harder time with it than he did, but were still able to cast it, making all of them much more mobile. Technically. The Hiraishin was still far better for most purposes he needed, and the rinnegan methods were easier to target...

...having more options was nice, perhaps?

All three of them had new seals on their backs. Ino had one, Naruto and Hinata joined Yoko in having three. You could get three truth-seeking balls into one seal without issues, though projections indicated that any left in there for more than three months would dissolve and the reforming process would start again.

Three months of not needing to worry about them if you didn't need them was plenty, even if the seals stood out to certain kinds of sensors. Shapeshifting hid the seals well enough if they needed to be hidden.

"Thank god you've returned!" Karin said as soon as she saw them.

"We're well aware that the village hasn't gone to shit while we were away," Naruto retorted.

"...I'm more concerned with the sixteen messengers from various rulers waiting for you."

"There are only fourteen. Two of them just have an aide traveling with them, and they get to wait at least another couple of days for me to officially make it through my paperwork backlog. And why are you telling me this instead of any of those nominally left in charge while I was away?"

"Because several of them have been making daily visits to the hospital insisting that someone go out to their countries to heal someone."

"Oh. They've been bothering you personally. Hmmm. Might have to make a point of that not being appreciated. Doubly so since one of the kids they want looked at is only sick because they keep insisting on eating food they're allergic to and they know it."

"And none of them bothered to take an airship to get here."

"Those messengers are from particularly annoying countries," Hinata said, shaking her head. "But we aren't planning on dealing with politics today unless there's something that needs blowing up."

"I think our plans included checking in on the academy?" Ino offered. "I wasn't originally planning to, but Naruto got me curious how Iruka is handling things."

Karin scowled, but didn't argue the point. And then joined them to check on the academy.

"Odd," Naruto said, looking over reports in person because this was the 'might need to interact with blood seals' collection.

"What?" Hinata asked, looking up from where she'd been manipulating one of her truth-seeking balls to try and make it emulate some bit of technology. A monitor, perhaps? He wasn't sure.

"My clones didn't notice that the computer system picked up an 'under attack' message from an unknown outpost. One the mainland facility didn't have the identifier stored for? Though you claim the signals can't travel that far."

"Certain kinds of low-bandwidth signals could travel further and the 'under attack' broadcasts do tend to travel further. They just wouldn't be usable for large-scale transfers. Did all three facilities pick up the signal?"

"No, just this one."

"Then we're probably on the edge of the signal's range. South or south-west origin?"

"Oh, I've got approximate coordinates as those were included in the message. Based on those I'm going to need to spread the bunker network further south to reach them, but I'm more interested in the fact that the digital chakra signature output is an almost identical match to someone who probed defenses here a couple of times. It's a bit far out for most people to be traveling, which makes me think it's not-really-Madara looking for Uzushio survivors. Might be able to get pictures from the computers if they let me in, or I can dismantle them and bring them back for you to take a look at. Whoever it is didn't get close enough to here for the cameras to pick them up."

Hinata lightly slapped him off the back of the head. "You'll bring me to where they are first and only dismantle them if I tell you to."

He sighed and moved through more of the paperwork. A couple of sheets later he sighed. "I think this brings it up to four of the messengers wanting to pass along a request for marriage to form a long-term alliance between their country and Uzu."

That had Hinata scowling, and Ino would likely do so too if she'd been in the room and not in a Yamanaka clan meeting back in Konoha. "You do intend to start a formal relationship now that we've completed our basic sage training, right?"

"We just discussed that this morning, and none of those sending messengers would be aware of it even if an announcement had already been made."

"Well, we need to get an announcement out soon to stop this kind of idiocy."

"...I don't think that's how it works. They'll just try to tempt me away with promises of political power or something like that."

"But with an announcement those can be properly responded to with amounts of violence proportional to the level of stupidity the offers present."

He looked up at her, and raised an eyebrow. She wasn't usually quite this territorial when it came to him. "So what happened to waiting until my birthday to announce things?"

She frowned at that, apparently having forgotten about that part of things. "Why did we decide that again?"

"Because three-quarters of the continent discourages orphaned nobles from entering into relationships their parents didn't already agree to before they turn sixteen. All of the requests specifically mention sending the potential suitor here for my expected birthday celebrations."

"...it would be nice if we could side-step things by revealing that your parents do approve."

"Oh, there are at least six ways to get around that with historical validity due to being done for previous orphaned nobles, two of them even specifically connected to Uzushio."

That had her blinking. "Why aren't we using any of those?"

"Mostly because I don't want to give the impression that the Fire Daimyo, any of the councils here in Uzu, or any of the councils in Konoha have any say over my love life. The only one that doesn't do that involves making the declaration myself in my official capacity as the Uzukage and Whirlpool Daimyo, but such declarations have been considered invalid in the past when the ruler isn't sixteen yet anyway."

She winced at that. "Right, no giving old farts any idea that they have more say than they should."

"Besides, if we deal with it too soon then we can't justify pranking all of those involved. Even better, it's even traditional to do certain things so long as certain formalities are respected."

That had her interested, but he'd wait until that evening to go over some of it.