21

Kakashi had shown up every morning for the next few days to at a minimum leave a clone, both to tell Naruto stories that embarrassed his parents and to help him train. Naruto hadn't minded either, nor that his parents insisted on the man's net being fixed. They claimed that the Tome had done nothing intentional to cause the sharingan implanted in him to turn off unless he pushed chakra into it though, but suspected that it had been stuck active because it had been 'augmenting' his net. With the net no longer needing augmentation the eye had been able to turn off.

Compared to that, suddenly being able to use chakra bloodlines, wood release, and chakra chains apparently wasn't worth getting excited about. He was far more interested in the Knight Armor and flight spells anyway, with the various bullet variants coming in fourth or fifth. But he hadn't made much progress on those before needing to go on a longer out-of-village mission.

Hinata and Tenten had stayed away from the compound, but occasionally asked for a clone or two to help with things and Naruto was still eating dinner with Hinata's family every two to three days.

Afternoons had been spent on figuring out what was needed to deal with Gaara and Yugito Nii, while also keeping clones watching them in some fashion as often as possible. From this they learned that Gaara didn't sleep and wandered the village a little after sunset. His path wandered a bit and avoided anywhere 'sensitive', presumably after having been warned away from them early on, but he always stopped for a bit on the Kikyo Castle roof around the same time early in the evening and just outside of training ground forty-four sometime early in the morning.

Yugito Nii, on the other hand, waited until everyone else in the Kumo delegation was asleep before slipping out to wander the training grounds. She seemed to be intentionally avoiding areas where she would be seen by others, as though inviting an ambush. Which might be exactly what she was doing, if she had been truthful about not resisting having her tailed beast made a non-issue for the planned invasion.

For both of them, Naruto had been working on water jutsu. Waterspout and water vortex jutsu that could then be transitioned to a chakra-draining water prison in particular, with the hope that Kurama was right that both tailed beasts were weak to water. For Shukaku it made sand harder to control and washed it away and for Matatabi it made flames harder to manifest or put them out. In both cases they hopefully only needed it to work for a couple of seconds before wrapping chakra chains and wood release techniques around the water prison.

The hard part was making the water prison breathable so that the person contained within it didn't drown. Getting that down had been tricky, and as a useful side effect it could be used on a smaller and easier to handle scale to breathe underwater or underground. Or to protect yourself from poisons or drugs in the air, for that matter, which had Naruto deciding to train himself to run it all the time. Eventually. That wasn't a priority for the moment.

After most of a week preparing, Naruto and his parents were ready to make their move. They'd originally intended to warn Karin about things, but someone else at the hospital wanted a roommate and she was spending a few days with them to see if they could survive sharing living space 'instead of imposing on Naruto'. Not that he saw it as an imposition, since the clan compound was the clan's and not his.

Even if he used it more than most members of the clan ever had, apparently, and he personally suspected that Old Man Hokage had influenced things a little.

Hinata had arranged to stay in the Uzumaki compound for a couple of days so that the Tome didn't have to try and hold onto parts of a tailed beast for any length of time, even if they were confident that it could hold both Shukaku and Matatabi for at least two days and either one of them for at least five. That might be on the low end too, as it was based on the strain Kurama had put on the Tome originally and relative power levels were difficult to determine, but they didn't want to risk things and hoped to finish with both within a day.

Naruto had napped most of the afternoon and then left the compound just after dark with a dozen normal clones, plus clones of his parents. All with Knight Armor up in the 'Uzu Anbu' pattern and wearing the Uzu masks. Hoshi had stayed behind, knowing that he wouldn't be of much help and would be too obvious in other ways for a mission that they were trying to keep from being linked to Konoha itself.

As it turned out, Yugito Nii hadn't left for her unattended stroll yet, so they prepared to ambush Gaara instead. Beating him to Kikyo Castle and setting up some seals where he normally sat, then hiding themselves. They'd managed to do so with ten minutes to spare, and he didn't seem to suspect anything as he landed on the roof. But unlike most nights, his jounin-sensei was out and watching. Which wasn't enough to not make their move, but it did mean a shift to ensure that he was defended against interfering.

The trap seals attempted to paralyze Gaara as four clones all launched water jutsu at him to strip away his sand. Shukaku's chakra quickly started to overpower the trap seals, but the water was working to pull the sand away. Two more clones body-flickered in and pulled the water into a water prison, agitating the water to push sand away from Gaara even as they worked to pull chakra out of him. Naruto and another clone wrapped chakra chains around the water prison, and two other clones added in wooden pillars that also started suppressing Shukaku's chakra.

Then his father slid the Tome under the water prison, and it opened and latched onto the boy.

Baki didn't expect their contact in the village to meet with him tonight, but was out and in position for the meeting anyway. That this gave him the opportunity to keep an eye on Gaara was a side benefit, really. One that became his primary concern when a group of shinobi appeared out of hiding and attacked the boy...using his weakness to water against him first, and then following it up with fucking chakra chains and wood release.

It was only when one of them turned his way that Baki realized something else. He recognized those masks, but it couldn't be possible. Uzushiogakure was gone, destroyed at the start of the last war. But there should also be no more Uzumaki capable of using those chains, wood release should also be essentially impossible these days, and...something had been slid under Gaara that was doing something to him.

There had been a momentary consideration of interfering, but Baki thought of himself as at least somewhat of a realist. He could see eleven shinobi, all likely far too high-level for him to take on individually, using multiple bloodline traits and restraining a jinchuriki without much problem.

Also, two of the ones he could see were flying instead of standing on the ground.

"You might want to walk away," a female-sounding voice said from behind him, causing him to freeze. He turned, slowly, to find a twelfth shinobi behind him. Flying as well, with no real distinguishing features visible. Couldn't even trust the brown hair.

"That is one of my students," he offered.

The shinobi tilted their head before nodding. "While that may be true, their status as a jinchuriki was undeclared. A clear violation of the alliance between Konohagakure and Sunagakure, but that particular problem is easily solved and your student will not be harmed."

Double fuck, because that probably meant that whatever they were doing was going to seal the one-tail more thoroughly than it currently was. If Gaara couldn't release it during the invasion...

They stood there in a silent stand-off for three quarters of an hour, before suddenly whatever was being done to Gaara was apparently completed. The chains and wood release were removed, the water prison technique was released, and Gaara was left unconscious on the roof. Eleven of the twelve shinobi vanished in the night, the twelfth staying next to Baki to keep him from trying to follow.

"Go," they said. "Take your student."

"What have you done to him?"

"He is no longer in violation of the alliance between the two villages, for he is no longer a jinchuriki."

Baki's eyes went wide, and in panic he lashed out at the shinobi. A wind blade should have speared them, but it hit some kind of armor jutsu and did absolutely nothing before the shinobi faded from view and likely flew off to join the others. Mentally swearing, he darted over to Gaara and checked him over, finding that the seal that had held the one-tail was still visible.

It was also very obviously broken into pieces instead of still intact, and Gaara's chakra felt incredibly weak even before taking into account that the sands weren't coming to defend him anymore. Whether that was permanent or just because he had no chakra to spare for the sands was unknown.

Uzushiogakure had likely just stolen the one-tail, except that accusing a dead village of stealing something that officially wasn't in Konohagakure to steal would make Suna look like complete fools.

Naruto had been honestly surprised at how easily Gaara had gone down, but supposed that having the element of surprise and knowledge of Shukaku's weaknesses probably helped. Of course, he'd also missed that the sand had started moving to attack them before the Tome had been slipped into place and started working, only finding out when his father had commented on it being lucky that they'd not needed to fight sand during the process.

Grabbing Shukaku had also taken less time than expected, apparently in part due to a 'shit seal that had no business being on anyone'. At the same time, they'd discovered that the Tome wasn't going to be able to grab Matatabi before processing Shukaku because the tailed beast was putting up far more of a fight inside of it than expected, so they'd returned to the Uzumaki compound to process and bind it to Naruto immediately.

Hinata and Hoshi had both been worried, but did what they were told to help smooth the process over. Naruto had been unconscious for the bulk of the process, and felt like he had woken from sleeping for a few days when they were done.

"Your ears and tail changed," Hinata said, sounding slightly disappointed. "They look more...sand-like? And you seem to have dark rings around your eyes now."

Naruto blinked, and made a paperwork clone. It spun around to show the changes, and while it was doing so he became aware that sand was moving around him a bit. And that he was generally aware of where all the sand around him was, for that matter. "Huh. I can still see the fox influence, but there's now some tanuki in there too. I smell like both now too, don't I?"

"Yes," Hoshi agreed. "But you still smell enough like yourself for it to not be a problem, but your chakra changed enough that you should test to see if you can still summon foxes."

That was a good point, and it only took a moment to summon a messenger. He ended up getting Ushi, who looked around. "Bit of a late night for you, isn't it?"

"Can't be helped that nighttime is sometimes the best time to accomplish a mission," Naruto responded.

"True. What do you need?"

"I was mostly ensuring that my chakra hadn't changed to the point where I couldn't summon foxes anymore, but figured that a messenger was suitable for letting everyone know that I've changed a bit after taking on some of Shukaku."

Ushi focused on Naruto, and took a couple of deeper sniffs. "Huh. So you have. I'll spread the word. But you should probably summon a toad too."

"Ah, right." Getting blood for the summoning proved to be slightly more difficult than usual, sand streaming in almost on instinct to stem the bleeding. But he was able to get enough and summon Kosuke, who looked up at him.

"The Great Sage said you'd be a bit different," Kosuke said. "But I don't think you look any weirder."

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Suddenly having more of a sand appearance to my ears and tail isn't 'weirder'?"

"...didn't even notice. Humans are just weird in general, nothing like proper toads. Were you just ensuring that you could still summon us despite your changes?"

"Yes."

"The Great Sage said you'd do that too."

The Great Sage knew way too much, in Naruto's opinion.

Yugito felt a little bit silly about wandering around in the middle of the night, just waiting to be ambushed, but she'd discovered a few very useful things while doing so. One of those was that Konoha had some way of preventing summoning throughout most of the village, because she'd not been able to summon a messenger squirrel in their assigned apartments. But the Hokage, when asked about her sending messages with summons, had given her a list of places where it was currently allowed. Which amounted to the training grounds that visiting shinobi were invited to use and the arena for the finals.

Come the day of the finals she was certain that only the arena would be permitted, and that at the first sign of the invasion even that would be blocked.

Of course, it was also near the full moon, and that always made her restless. She wasn't a fan of taking sleeping pills in a foreign village either, so she was far more likely to nap during the day. She blamed the influence of the two-tails for her ability to 'cat nap' effectively, but didn't mind the ability. But it was well after midnight now, and the beast inside her was...far more agitated than usual for it being around the full moon, actually. She wondered if it knew something she didn't?

That train of thought got significantly more traction in her mind as a group of shinobi appeared around her. Their blue masks confused her at first, until she remembered seeing pictures of them in the collection of Anbu masks from each village. But that should be impossible, because Uzushio didn't exist anymore. Her shock lasted long enough for several of them to fire water jutsu at her, and she instinctively tried to jump out of the way. But she'd missed vines wrapping around her legs, and they seemed to pull the chakra out of her body before she could use it to break free. The water then flowed around her, surrounding her as two of the shinobi body-flickered forward to maintain the obvious water prison, the vines releasing her to allow her to float in the middle of it with no hope of getting purchase to escape.

Wooden pillars and chains made out of chakra surrounded the prison a moment later, completely blocking out her access to the two-tails before she'd even attempted to pull on it. Something she couldn't get a good look at was slid beneath the water prison after that, and it was only as she was blacking out that she both realized that she wasn't drowning and remembered that Uzushio were Konoha's allies. Perhaps she might not have anything to worry about after all.

Naruto had been amazed that Yugito had, even with her guard seemingly down, completely ignored three different seal traps and dispelled two genjutsu without even seeming to notice that she'd done so. Only her missing the vines used to grab her legs in her surprise at their arrival had made it easy to grab her, though he suspected that her promise to not fight back was part of it.

It had also taken longer than they'd hoped to pull Matatabi out of her, the Tome finding it almost like the two-tails had bonded more deeply than expected to the woman. But the extraction had been completed and they'd ensured that she wouldn't come to harm before she woke up again. This time they were fairly certain that only ones that might have noticed something were a pair of Anbu that had passed by, and only if one of them was a Hyuga.

Returning to the compound afterwards had them met by Hinata and Hoshi again, though both had fallen into a light slumber this time. It took nothing at all to wake them up, and Hinata insisted on them beginning the process with her immediately. That had taken until mid-morning to complete, and they were glad that they weren't going to need to do this again as Hinata had nearly died. They thought that it might be because she was far older than Naruto had been when the fox was bound to him, or because she wasn't an Uzumaki, but couldn't be certain.

Either way, it had taken two foxes and Naruto working with two clones healing her alongside the Tome to pull her through, and Naruto's side of things had significant chakra control problems due to not having gotten used to his newly-larger reserves. They'd also shattered the shapeshifting seal, and it was probably going to be a week before he could get his chakra control back to the point where it was safe to replace it. Which was possibly a problem, because Hinata now had blue-furred cat ears, a matching tail, and whiskers.

And she stretched far more fluidly when she woke up.

"I feel sore," Hinata complained.

"There were complications," Naruto admitted. "My parents are recovering in the Tome, but we think that you're nearly too old to have a tailed beast bound to you. Or maybe you are too old, but we were able to pull you through anyway?"

"Oh." She blinked a couple of times, then turned and looked behind her. "I...have a cat's tail?"

"Yep. And ears, and now that I'm paying attention to your face I can see that your teeth are a little different too."

She frowned, and he suspected that she'd attempted to make a single clone. But instead she got eight, which took her by surprise. "Oh my. That took almost no effort at all."

Naruto grinned. "Yeah, you've got a bit more chakra than you had before. I probably need a week to get my control back up, but you're likely going to need the rest of the month or more."

Hinata groaned at that, but then had one of the clones spin around to get a good look at herself. She also fidgeted a bit, grumbling. "Tails don't work well with normal pants." A pulse of chakra followed, though nothing happened, and her eyes went wide. "I can't hide it?"

"Er...the shapeshifting seal broke, and it's fiddly enough that I need to get my chakra control back up before I can put it on you again."

"...you just said that could take a week."

"Yes."

"I'm only expected to not be home for a couple of days tops, not an entire week."

"I know, but they took the reveal of the shapeshifting seal well enough."

"...that wasn't a permanent change to my normal body."

Shihiki scowled as alarms went off again. This had been happening more and more frequently as of late, making him think that they'd spread themselves a little too thin. Grumbling, he jumped to the core anchor and started looking for the new problem, tracing the alerts to the extension of the clan's net tied to where Kaguya was supposed to be operating. Not that she'd reported in at all recently, and it was getting close to time to send someone to check on things to see what was going on there. They actually should've sent someone...er...huh. Three or four times by now, actually, but it was a low-priority area and other locations had taken up their time.

They were definitely spread too thin.

Silencing the alarms, Shihiki checked what was wrong this time, finding that there were curvature issues in some of Kaguya's worlds. Which could mean she was dead, had betrayed the clan, or was incompetent and hadn't noticed. The latter was probably the most likely, since she'd originally been the sacrifice choice for that particular God Tree before something had gone wrong and she'd ended up taking over as the monitor. But that wasn't the cause of the alerts, even if it was concerning and if not dealt with would trigger more in a few years, so he moved on.

Next he checked the power nodes in the area, finding that they were fairly active. Which probably meant that there was resistance from the population. Annoying, and Kaguya was probably using more energy than she needed to in order to manage things due to a lack of proper training in the power node usage, but still well within expected levels. Though thinking about it, he wondered where she'd gotten the energy needed to connect at all.

After a moment he decided that wasn't important right now as the alerts hadn't come from there. Moving on, he checked the reincarnation net and nearly had a heart attack when he found that it was unraveling. Scrambling, he checked everything he could and found that someone had attached a dozen odd non-Kama nodes to the thing quite a while back, and three of them had recently torn apart the net and started the unraveling.

Forget the power nodes, as hard as they were to produce. The disconnection process to prevent the unraveling of things from reaching the core of the net and dooming the entire clan needed to start immediately, no matter how slow things looked now. Besides, sending anyone into an area that had something capable of attaching to and damaging the net itself without trying to blow up a star to do so was incredibly unwise even if the net was healthy. Doubly so when it was probably in a likely-successful attempt to eventually take out Kaguya herself.

Something there was likely causing Kaguya massive problems, and if she hadn't called for help long before now then she was either unable to or an idiot. Either way, if she won then she had other ways to reconnect with the clan, otherwise she and that particular God Tree were going to be a write-off. When they achieved true godhood they'd consider coming back to avenge her.

Maybe. Idiots didn't deserve to be remembered, after all...

"My daughter is now part-cat and you won't be able to restore her ability to at least look normal for a week or longer," Hiashi said.

"Yes," Naruto admitted.

"Coupled with a massive boost to her chakra, and you've since discovered that she's now essentially fireproof."

"...yes."

"All because you took the two-tails from Kumo and bound the remains of its power to her?"

"...yes."

They sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, Hiashi staring them down, before the man snorted, which led to a chuckle and then outright laughter. This lasted for several minutes before he recovered, a wide grin on his face. "We must inform the elders of this wonderful revenge on Kumo. Why, they might even insist on Hinata showing off her new features, just to drive the point home."

That...wasn't what Naruto or Hinata had been expecting, and Hiashi first got Satomi and Hanabi to tell them the good news and then left to call an emergency meeting of the elders.

"I want to be part-cat for real," Hanabi whined as she looked over Hinata's new features.

"We only had enough tailed beast bits for one person," Naruto apologized, not that he actually meant it. Also, technically they'd had enough for two, because they'd bound Shukaku's remains to him, but bringing that up wasn't happening either. It was too late to attempt anything with Hanabi either way anyway.

"One of you needs to be able to look the part of a proper heiress," Satomi added. "Or heir if you want, since I know that you've gone out as a boy several times." Hanabi blushed at that, but her mother just shook her head. "The clan won't complain if you find a wife instead of a husband so long as you're able to produce children of your own. It'll be a couple of years before we can test you properly for that, of course."

It only took a few minutes for Hiashi to return to bring Hinata and Naruto to meet with the elders...though after ensuring that Naruto had his own tail and ears showing. The elders looked very confused as the three entered and sat down.

"Why are the children sporting animal ears and tails?" Hinata's grandfather asked.

"Because thanks to an Uzumaki secret technique these are now their normal bodies," Hiashi answered, still grinning.

"...and yet you seem happy about this?"

"I am, yes."

"Why?"

"Because of what the technique did." The elders all looked at Hiashi curiously, so he continued. "With use of the technique, the one-tail was first taken from Suna's jinchuriki to prevent it from being used against Konoha, the beast killed, and its remains bound to Naruto. Then the two-tails was taken from one of Kumo's jinchuriki for the same reason, also killed, and its remains bound to Hinata."

Halfway through that it was obvious that half of the elders had figured out the rest, but by the end they were all staring in shock. One of the females in the group frowned though, and spoke up first. "Both villages are going to be out for blood after their jinchuriki were killed."

"Nah," Naruto interjected. "They're fine. Weaker and without tailed beasts sealed in them, but fine. Gaara is catching up on years of lost sleep and Yugito Nii was up and moving around the training grounds again by lunchtime."

"...well, that explains where the nine-tails went then, as we were positive that it was impossible to create a 'decoy jinchuriki' as was claimed."

"We should keep this secret until the finals," another elder chimed in. "As the impact will be better if the news gets out then. But we should also ensure that both of the children have clothing properly tailored to take into account their altered features. It wouldn't do for them to look improperly outfitted in front of the crowds."

Over the next half hour the changes to Hinata were declared to be a clan secret until the finals, with plans for her to move between the Hyuga and Uzumaki compounds only through use of summoning. Trusted tailors would be brought in on the secret to ensure that both of them had full wardrobes that could accommodate their tails in particular as well, with Naruto being given his as part of the Hyuga thanking the Uzumaki for the 'perfect revenge' against Kumo.

A grumbled as he worked through paperwork, the bane of all Kage. Being forced to participate in the invasion of Konoha was making it all worse, if only to keep appearances up and prevent the idiots from trying to release the tailed beasts from their two jinchuriki.

Hopefully Sarutobi had some way of stopping that idiocy without needing to kill people.

Whatever the situation ended up being, it didn't stop the flow of paperwork regarding supplies, movements of teams, and other logistical headaches needed to plan an invasion. At least the idiots were also willing to put money where their mouths were to fund the invasion, though likely with the expectation that once Konoha was sacked that they'd make it all back tenfold. The worst part was that if they did succeed then it was probably true, but A had no expectation that the invasion would actually succeed.

An unannounced opening of his office door had him mentally groaning, doubly so when he realized that it was B. He didn't need distractions right now. Except that looking at B's face made him pause. "You look far more worried than usual."

B's frown deepened. "Gyuki says that One, Two, and Nine are dead."

The tone, look on his brother's face, and lack of rapping said that this was incredibly serious. But One, Two, and Nine? Right, he referred to other jinchuriki by the number of tails their beasts had. Fuck. "That's going to be unfortunate when they reform, especially if they all do so and are thus recaptured in Konoha. I'd hoped that Konoha wouldn't need to kill Yugito either."

"Not the containers, the tailed beasts. Dead. Gone. Never to return. Nine was taken years ago, but the rest didn't want to believe it. One and Two were taken last night and Gyuki feels that something else is wrong now."

"...what?" If that was true, then...Konoha had a way to permanently kill tailed beasts. And had started with their own, or perhaps accidentally discovered it with their own...

Further discussion was halted by a messenger squirrel tapping on the window. A flicked open the access hatch for it and waited for the squirrel with the actual message to be summoned before accepting the message. Both squirrels then vanished in puffs of smoke. The flying squirrel clan was useless in combat, but made for excellent secure messengers between the dozen people in the village permitted to sign the contract.

B was intelligent enough to know that anything delivered directly to A in this manner needed to be checked immediately and waited patiently. It didn't take long to find that the scroll had all the correct indicators on the outside for being from Yugito. Hands trembling slightly, A grabbed the correct code book from a drawer before carefully breaking the seal. The sixteen markers on the message for it being written while not under duress, and the lack of the nine that would indicate that she was, were the first thing checked before he quickly flipped through to the marked code page for the message.

"We've got our justification for not invading Konoha," A finally said after confirming the message five times. "Uzushiogakure forces took the two-tails from Yugito without killing her."

B took a moment to process that. "Uzushiogakure?"

"Yes."

"But they were destroyed, weren't they?"

"Apparently they were just driven into hiding, if they've regained enough strength to aid their allies again." Looking over the stacks of paperwork on his desk, A nodded. "Time to call an emergency meeting and shut down the idiots."