82

Adoption of the new village summoning contract had been surprisingly swift. The general ability to return immediately after any mission alone was seen as a boon, though the proposed etiquette for sending messengers back and forth didn't really go anywhere because they had the telephone system that could be used much more easily. They only had twelve people from the island fight it, all of them 'do not leave the island' individuals. Those from Amegakure were more skittish about the contract for a number of reasons...at least until they found out that it would help them gain access to training areas.

Due to the sudden influx of shinobi wanting advanced training, Naruto had decided to build new training islands instead of keeping everything on the main island. Instead of creating the islands from scratch he just claimed a couple of further-out islands that nobody else seemed to have a claim on for genin and chunin training areas. Jounin would get to use the first training island from taking down the Coliseum.

Building the two islands out with various areas that shinobi could improve their skills in hadn't been difficult, especially as they were intended for lower level shinobi and he already had written guides about what they should be able to do and where they were going to get to the next rank. There was obviously overlap in levels, and the first training island got some added equipment and training areas to handle jounin-level exercises. Both new islands ended up with their own forests as well, hopefully calibrated correctly for difficulty. This time he'd rigged the seal systems for the forests to be adjustable after the fact and aimed 'low' with the intent of being able to turn them up if they weren't strong enough.

At the same time as building those out, he'd been working on a new 'examination island' too. Except that one he wanted to be visually impressive and thus he was going through a lot of extra effort for it. Especially after Hinata had told him that the technology division was giving up on the flying city due to it requiring too much energy.

Fu had started making regular trips to Konoha through the air since first being sent to inform their ally of their new location. She liked that after the first couple of trips she was now generally met by others in the air and brought in without having to land at one of the gates, but was also a little jealous of their ability to fly without wings. Visiting Konoha was also nice because they were far more used to people with 'extra features' than the people of Taki were. They didn't have anyone with insect features like she'd gotten from Chomei, but that didn't seem to stop them from shrugging off her changes and letting her get on with things without too much staring.

Nobody had commented on her spending longer inside of Konoha than strictly needed for her courier missions and Shibuki didn't seem to mind. She had to take weird routes in both directions to hide where their village was now anyway, and being predictable was a bad thing to stop from being followed. The teams that ran the request houses were probably a better target for anyone looking to find the village though, given that they had to send runners back and forth regularly and didn't fly.

Being one of the few hidden villages that actually tried to stay hidden was annoying that way, but it had served Taki well in their original location and now they had the benefit of old defectors no longer knowing where they were.

Her escorts today let her land near the in-wall training grounds on her own so that she could make her own way through the village. She had to head to drop the sealed message for the Hokage off first, then she'd see if the Aburame clan was willing to let her use a guest room for a day or two while she waited on the Hokage's response. They were especially nice to visit, and Shibuki had taken to teasing her about wanting to marry into the clan.

"Good morning Fu," Yoko called as Fu passed the Uzumaki shrine.

"Good morning," Fu replied. The fox-featured girl was incredibly easy to pick up on the location of, almost always in a very good mood that made her feel like a beacon. Somehow even when looking like she was feeling annoyed. But today she seemed to be working on the gate to the shrine grounds. "Did something happen to the shrine?"

"A merchant's cart struck the torii last night and it was already starting to deteriorate. I'd already procured the materials to repair, this just made doing so a higher priority."

"Do you need help? Fu is good at lifting things and can come back after delivering this message."

"I'll be fine. The merchant paid for an Akimichi to help me and they should be by shortly."

Fu nodded, because she'd watched members of that clan grow to help with construction before. They'd have no problem moving anything Yoko needed moved.

Half an hour later Fu had finally made it through the line at the Hokage's tower to drop the message she'd been given off, though it wasn't important enough for a personal meeting with the Hokage to do so, and she started on her way to the Aburame compound. She wondered if Shino was in the village, or if he'd made any progress with some of the insects he was breeding...

Ino's real self was running around pretending to be an eight year old while her clones slipped into the latest of a dozen houses in the area. Three teams were looking for her, and anyone else that might try to slip into the houses, but she was distracting them quite easily through the simple method of releasing her hold on her chakra every so often while in the groups of children. The teams were thus chasing chakra flares, completely ignoring the children, while her clones worked without much interference. Not that she thought her clones needed the help.

Her mission would be successful if they didn't catch her or figure out enough details of her cover identity to pick it out as likely. They'd already failed their mission because her clones had escaped with items from over half the houses on her list. She also knew that they were cataloging all the teenagers and adults in the area to see if they could figure out her cover identity through seeing who vanished without a trace. Their mistake was a combination of not including the children and assuming that she'd vanish without a trace when her mission was completed. No, her cover identity had entered with a group of children and would leave with said group tomorrow morning. A clone playing her 'mother' would then arrive to pick her up when they got back to the next town over as well. They'd only vanish after departing for a further-off town.

Shapeshifting and solid clones really made it far too easy to slip under the radar, but two of the three teams had asked for a 'harder' test of their ability to spot infiltrators. As if their accidental success on a previous joint test had anything to do with their actual skills. They'd collectively picked out the infiltrator by pure chance due to deciding that the ring one of the team had been wearing was 'out of place' without realizing that they were sold in the shop next door to the inn they'd picked to stay at for the duration of the mission. Not by the intentional details like carrying obviously wrong for the area knives or the bracelets made with Land of Earth plants.

The third team was more filler, operating under the direction of the other two due to the scale of things, and yet they were the ones doing the bulk of the useful work. They weren't good enough to spot that her clones had slipped into the houses, but were at least checking three times a day to ensure that there were no obvious external signs of break-ins and watching the overall area. They'd even stopped a couple of other thieves that had been hoping to take advantage of the festivities to grab stuff.

Honestly, the chakra pulsing was more teasing the two overconfident teams than anything else as well. She'd only started on those after the first quarter of the target houses had been hit without any of the three teams so much as noticing. Instead, before then the two overconfident teams had an overly-large focus on those coming and going by the roads. No consideration for someone coming in through the forest, or even overnight in general really. They'd seemingly taken into account checking people already present when they'd first arrived but so far she'd not spotted anything worthwhile for actually spotting shinobi.

Keeping them running around in circles was far too much fun though, and varying the apparent signature of the pulses was keeping them second-guessing the number of people they were looking for. Somewhat. They weren't really all that great sensors and it took massive swings in the chakra signature to get them to notice a difference at all. Even mimicking their own chakra signatures hadn't actually been noticed in any way her monitoring clones could spot.

The 'you completely failed' sign was going to be when her clones stole their own paperwork from them tonight before her cover group left. She idly wondered if they'd even notice that though, given everything else they'd been doing wrong.

It was probably more productive to wonder how impressive the technology division's upcoming demonstration might be. She'd be back in plenty of time to see it.

"I don't like that we've failed to get the flying city working," Hinata said as she looked over what they had managed. "Our best efforts just take too much energy to be sustainable."

"Bet Naruto has one working within a month of finding out that we gave up," Yudoka grumbled.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he's already got something working since I told him we were unlikely to get the flying city working a couple months ago now. He claimed he hadn't really started on his own version until more recently. But we do have a number of useful items here, drastically improved from what the Land of the Sky was doing. We don't need their launching system to get the flying machines into the air for one, and we adapted many of their flying city weapons for both static defenses and ship-based weaponry."

"...not sure we can claim the latter."

Hinata shrugged. "I had a busy couple of days and ran tests. They work great, though producing the ammunition for a few of them is a little tedious."

"And you think that Naruto overdoes things?"

"I recognize that a lot of what I do is far beyond the norm. He's got no clue where to even begin looking for normal, let alone what it looks like."

"Unless he's infiltrating somewhere, or so the rumors claim. Same with you and others he's worked with there."

Hinata blinked a couple of times. "Huh. You know, I hadn't considered that he's perfectly capable of playing the role of a civilian with no clue about any shinobi items, genin and chunin from basically any village he wants, and even a large number of specific people without any issue. Yet while he's himself he seems clueless about why nobody knows what he's talking about."

"...could the 'everyone else is stupid' bit be an act?"

"I don't think it is."

"Then it's probably standard Uzumaki insanity."

"You're an Uzumaki."

"Which makes me qualified to diagnose it. Sounds like he might be able to understand technology so long as he's impersonating someone who does, for that matter."

"There's no way that could possibly work."

"Only way to know is to suggest it to him."

Naruto watched the demonstration of the improved flying machines. The technology division had them able to launch in various ways instead of relying on the launching devices on the ships, but more impressively they'd built a couple of passenger variants that could take a dozen people and their equipment along for the ride at decent speeds. Much faster than the airships, but also more dangerous. Not as fast as teleporting across the continent, but faster than civilians would normally be able to go.

Building landing and takeoff areas was going to be the challenge. Entirely different requirements from the airship stations. The passenger models needed a lot more room as well, and the Land of Fire was probably the only country willing to let them operate the things over them right now. Of course, nobles were willing to pay to try things without any actual purpose beyond being able to say they'd done it, so trips out over the ocean were an option to make money.

Hell, Uzu and Konoha had both made money off of nobles wanting to try calling people on the phone. In comparison to that, a thrilling trip through the air with great visuals was probably going to be quite the draw.

His own work with a flying city was progressing a little more slowly in the other dimension he was using for it, but he was making progress. He wanted things to be a lot more reliable than the original because crashing a city was liable to create landscape problems even if you didn't crash into a different city. This meant, ideally, having three different ways to keep the thing flying. Settling for redundant copies of a smaller number of systems was also an option, but he had leads on three different ways to make a city fly and was hoping he could make them all work in one city.

"So," he said once the demonstration was completed. "Is a platform for landing these things going on that large pleasure ship you're building?"

"No," Ino answered for the group. "Not enough room for the passenger variant and it would require a lot of redesign of the ship even if there was. Er, there might be a request for a 'party island' being drafted though, for said ship to travel to, and putting something there would make sense."

"A party island."

"Yes."

"...last I checked, we don't even have enough potential staff for the ship yet, and now we want to add an entire island?"

"There's also a proposal to work with Konoha and the Land of Fire in a general sense for staff. Don't need the bulk of them to be shinobi at all."

Okay, that was probably a good point. Most of the staff in a 'serving nobles' setup needed to be servants and not shinobi. A few on hand to operate the major things and provide security would probably be all they'd need normally.

Shisui hated the formal meetings with the Daimyo, but they were an unfortunate requirement of the position. Worse was when a request came in that couldn't be done.

"This is a very well-written proposal," Shisui finally said, putting the paperwork down. "But unfortunately, Konoha won't be able to implement it."

"Why not?" the Daimyo asked, frowning.

"Because our telephone system was produced and installed by Uzushiogakure. We don't have the spare capacity in the village's system for an expansion of this scale either, so this will likely need to be built as a new system. You're going to need to contact the Uzukage as a result."

"Oh. I have to admit that I had not considered that aspect. Would there be any problems connecting such a system such that it could be used to call for shinobi aid?"

"We're connected to the Uzushio interchange, which I'm led to believe links multiple systems already. Their bunker network, their mobile phones, their secure system, and their insecure system. They're...reluctant to outfit our bunkers or set us up with mobile phones, the latter due to the differences in the size of our forces compared to theirs. Related to that, I'm led to believe that the Uzukage himself is a production bottleneck right now due to others not understanding how he's combined things."

"Ah. I appreciate being informed of that. It isn't your fault that I approached the wrong village. Now then, there was a potential request from Takigakure you needed my input on?"

Shisui nodded and produced the relevant paperwork. "Yes, their former jinchuriki may be interested in marrying a member of the Aburame clan. There's no guarantee, but Shibuki reached out about it and the Aburame elders concurred that it's a possibility. We do not yet know whether this would be her moving to Konoha or a potential creation of an offshoot branch of the Aburame clan in Taki."

"And in either case there would be diplomatic concerns that could impact the Land of Fire as a whole."

"Indeed."

"It appears that there has been quite a dialog between the two villages."

"Shibuki has been giving her regular courier missions to facilitate both her interactions with the Aburame clan and discussion over possibilities. Her...physical changes have left her with very few prospects back in Taki right now, both romantically and mission-related due to clients finding her insect-like appearance to be...undesirable."

The Daimyo nodded his understanding. "Konoha's animal features are starting to become more accepted in the civilian population, but there are still many holdouts."

Various large projects and day to day running of the village had eaten up the year quite quickly. Naruto had avoided any need for a large party for his seventeenth birthday though, spending a few days away from the village instead in a private celebration. It was immediately after returning that things got annoying, because he had a meeting with the Fire Daimyo. At least this time the Daimyo had come to him and they'd been able to skip many of the formalities, but it added a couple of projects to Naruto's list.

Building up a telephone system for the Land of Fire would be slightly tedious, though it had been known to be coming and some of the groundwork had already been started. Asking for a dock facility compatible with some of Uzushio's new ships had actually been a bit of a surprise, but their existing facility was actually doing quite a bit more traffic than expected due to being better-built than basically anyone else's so it made some sense. Wanting to be able to take the new flying machines back and forth between the Land of Fire's capital and Uzushio was almost an afterthought.

All of it combined would officially 'pay off' the remaining loans from the Land of Fire though, not that there had been any real concerns about that to begin with. Or a lack of funds in Uzushio at this point to pay them off, they'd just been sticking to the payment plan as agreed to. Naruto had actually set aside an account holding all the funds for the payment in full and had been otherwise ignoring it beyond the regular payments until now.

Unfortunately, it was also likely to result in other Daimyo wanting to buy telephone systems for their own nations. They'd already had interest shown from other hidden villages, and the public telephone houses that the Fire Daimyo wanted were probably going to be somewhat popular even before nobles wanting their own dedicated phones got into the mix. Dedicated 'call for shinobi assistance' buttons for both Konoha and Uzushio were going to be present and would likely drastically increase the mission rate for both villages. Uzushio was also getting blanket permission to accept missions in the Land of Fire as part of things, in lieu of a standard 'maintenance' contract.

Not that Uzushio hadn't been pulling missions in the Land of Fire right along, this would just be a much more open allowance that would negate the need to inform Konoha of their missions. Basically, a significant reduction in cross-village paperwork that both sides were likely to appreciate. Major missions impacting the Land of Fire would still need sign-offs, and monthly summaries would likely still happen, but not 'every mission needs a technical rubber stamp'.

...that Naruto had a copy of the stamp in question and had been applying it on behalf of Konoha with Shisui's permission, dropping off the boxes of paperwork monthly, was another item altogether and hadn't been mentioned to the Fire Daimyo.

Nagato looked over the latest retesting summaries. The bulk of Amegakure's forces were entering Uzushio's forces at a rank lower than they'd held before, but very few of them resented it after the testing and objective list of places that they failed in. Most were taking it as a challenge, and those that weren't...

...well, they were very likely to get demoted further.

He was personally happy that even without the rinnegan he'd met the elite jounin requirements. Konan had managed that as well. The summoning contract that allowed them to move between the mainland, island, and all the secondary resources was especially nice and made reaching training areas far easier than expected as well. He also had access to the secure areas underneath the new tower with the teleport departure stones, and the various bunkers had been upgraded with new computer-controlled departure stones so that you could get to the main island or Amegakure depending on your access permissions. Assuming you had bunker access at all, anyway.

"So what are we doing with the Akatsuki?" Konan asked as she finished her own review.

Nagato sighed. "Deidara and Sasori actually expressed interest in joining Uzushio in their last communication. Kisame has officially departed the group for his own reasons, not wanting to work with normal village secrets. As for Kakuzu...I have no idea because he hasn't checked in."

"...he hasn't checked in?"

"His last message said that he had a lead on Jashinism starting somewhere to the west, outside of easy communication range. It may be that we never hear from him again."

"I honestly didn't expect him to go that far in eradicating all mentions of the cult."

"Honestly, I think he finally found something he enjoys doing. You saw all the reports of him doing minor jobs as he moved along instead of acting like the monster he's spent decades acting as."

"True."

"Any thoughts on what to do with the stubborn fools that refuse to acknowledge their skill deficiencies?"

Konan shrugged. "They've been given the option of walking away and finding another village that will take them in. Not much more we can do, given that they can't force anyone to accept the rank they claim they hold."

"Are they still refusing to take missions that are 'beneath them'?"

"Most of them, yes. And refusing to train to earn the ranks they claim they deserve."

"Hmmm. Perhaps getting those of their actual rank to beat them in combat to show they don't deserve the higher rank would be a solution?"

Konan shook her head. "Already tried and it didn't work."

"Oh. Drop them on the jounin training island and see how long it takes them to call for help?"

"Naruto is against needless death sentences."

"So make it an offer instead of an order. They make it to the central tower through the forest then they've been mis-ranked. Otherwise they have to accept that they're not jounin material." He paused for a moment. "All the whiners are annoyed that they're not being considered jounin, right?"

Konan nodded. "Yes, and that might work with a few of them. The rest would probably be too stubborn and end up dead."

"Win-win situation, then."

"You are being uncharacteristically ruthless about this."

"I can't join any of the research teams properly if I'm babysitting the hurt pride of the holdouts."

She blinked a couple of times, then nodded her agreement. He knew that she wanted to see how Naruto had pulled a few things off as well. Her own role in helping finish the Amegakure integration into the wider Uzushio was keeping her too busy to do so though.

They did have to decide on a new name for the village though. Something that had been delegated to the inhabitants on the basis that they were the first ones that would need to use the new name. He was partial to 'Mizumi', personally, but hadn't voiced that for fear of biasing the populace.

Building, configuring, and installing telephone systems had happened over several months. Naruto had been convinced by Shisui to get Takigakure set up with one as well, to make it easier for them to keep their new home hidden through being able to literally call in missions instead of using runners. Then, because it wouldn't be Uzushio without doing so, he'd done all the setup and install overnight and left instructions on how to use everything sitting on appropriate desks.

Shisui had found it hilarious. Shibuki not so much.

The Land of Fire also got its telephone network, the core equipment for it stored in the capital under the control of the Fire Daimyo. Each settlement had at least one telephone hut with at least four phones now, the larger ones having several and nobles paying a yearly fee to have functional personal phones. There were also a number of businesses that had jumped at the opportunity to be able to be called and the Land of Fire was the first group to publish an actual printed directory of telephone numbers.

Uzushio had gone the simpler route of just pulling the information out of the computers and had a completely up to date directory at all times due to that. Whether the others with telephone systems knew the complete directory of connections from their central units was copied back to Uzushio was another question entirely.

Places for flying machines to land and take off from had also been constructed, but Naruto hadn't given in to build a 'party island'. He argued that they should get the pleasure ship working first, then they could consider destinations. The Land of Fire's new dock was constructed such that the proposed ship could dock there though.

Naruto had also claimed the summer exam slot, to the surprise of several nations. They needed to test chunin potentials and showing off was appropriate. Doing this without Konoha was probably the bigger surprise. He'd not yet sent out the invitations though as it was a little early for that. Claiming the slot was more to prevent others from preparing significantly for their own examinations only to need to drop things. But he did send out offers to build out communication stations so that they could broadcast things, and not only to hidden villages. Several casinos in multiple nations had sent back requests to get in on the broadcast, likely entirely for local betting purposes.

"You know," Ino said as they ate breakfast. "At some point we need to decide on what to do about a proper marriage ceremony."

"There are forms in the hall desk when you two want to make things official," Naruto replied.

"I think she means arranging the actual public ceremony," Hinata countered.

"What public ceremony? If you haven't noticed, there hasn't been a single public wedding since the village was rebuilt and that isn't a coincidence. Seventy-two marriages, zero ceremonies."

Ino blinked a couple of times. "Seventy-two marriages?"

"Yes. Ninety percent of shinobi marriages in the Elemental Nations are already kept largely quiet. I just extended that to all marriages in the country. Anyone that wants to make a big deal of things can, but it isn't anyone else's business other than those in charge of updating official records."

"But..."

"One Hokage has held a ceremony, and it was more an 'affirming alliance with Uzushio' thing than a wedding ceremony. They're one of three hidden village leaders in general that have had ceremonies, and two of those three married before taking up leadership."

"You promised to invite over thirty different people to your wedding ceremony back when you turned sixteen."

"No, I promised to invite them to a ceremony if one was held. That was even in writing so they can confirm it, and the fine print on the promises explains that shinobi generally don't hold ceremonies so the promise is worth less than the paper it was printed on."

Hinata actually fetched the paperwork mentioned, the only paperwork in the desk at all for the past year now really, and looked it over. "You planned this before the big show with all the suitors."

Naruto shrugged. "I thought it was obvious what my plans were. Daimyo may go for incredibly pompous ceremonies, but shinobi generally avoid them."

"The Hyuga clan has wedding traditions."

"So do the Uchiha, but the Senju clan's tradition is 'avoid a ceremony entirely'. As is the Uzumaki clan's tradition, for that matter. There's also nowhere in the village really suitable for a wedding ceremony, which was intentional in the original plans."

Ino sighed. "What about people objecting to the union?"

Hinata snorted. "Objecting to a shinobi union?"

"If they're good enough to avoid the kunai to the forehead then they're generally permitted to air a grievance."

Naruto nodded. "That is true. Which is part of why the Senju and Uzumaki have traditions of not making it known they're getting married. Less likely to have people start a fight during the ceremony if there's no ceremony."

Okay, that was admittedly a good point, and a really good argument in favor of skipping all the fancy stuff. Ino looked between the other two after thinking about it. "So what, sign things as needed, update our records, and send out any notices we want to send out to family and such?"

"As if our families aren't treating us as already married. The biggest question is probably if you two want to take the Uzumaki name or not. If you don't then there may not be any need to let people know at all before having kids, though we'd need to figure out which family name they'd take at that point."

Naruto very obviously didn't want to express a specific opinion on some of the details, apparently seeing it as a decision each of them should make on their own instead. Which was both nice and annoying because going along with him would've been the easy solution. Still, it wasn't hard to decide that they wanted to be 'official', and neither was aiming to create a branch of their clan here in Uzushio. Others were, but not them.

By the end of the day they were all officially down as being Uzumaki, though a quick trip back to Konoha would be used to update family instead of writing letters. It wasn't like that trip was a hardship for any of them, after all.