84

Hinata looked over Naruto's notes from the spell processors and was having a hard time believing that they were his notes. Not when they looked like what she and several members of the technology division would've written, including several markings that she used but wasn't sure she'd ever explained the meanings of to others. She was positive that Naruto had never gotten an explanation though, yet they were sitting there on the paper, in her handwriting. Even the word choice felt like what she'd have used, and she was able to understand the spell processors just by reading the notes.

She'd known that he was good at impersonating people, but didn't think it was good enough to fake their skills that he didn't have. Worse, they'd already tested it and it didn't work if he tried to fake being a generic person who understood technology. No, he had to be impersonating specific people. Somehow he could impersonate them down to brain chemistry or something and end up thinking exactly as they would, but with the exception of being connected to his overall mindscape.

They suspected that it was him somehow examining people down to the cellular level over time, because he couldn't manage it with those from villages other than Konoha and Uzushio where he kept legions of clones running regularly. How this particular style of impersonation worked at all was still more a pile of guesses than anything concrete though.

Now, the actual spell processors themselves were honestly quite useful. Naruto had used them to handle a bunch of things for the flying island, but had also secretly started integrating them into other systems. Like the stationary and roaming autonomous puppets, which could now cast Knight Armor spells to protect themselves and bullet spells for ranged attacks. All of it expertly integrated as well, as though the technology division had spent a week or two on it.

They were obviously determined to come up with something he hadn't figured out already, but that was proving to be difficult. He even had notes on why the roaming puppets hadn't been given flight spells.

"Good morning," Naruto said to Onoki when he came out to see him.

"I wasn't expecting a visit from the Uzukage today," Onoki replied.

"I'm personally delivering invitations to the chunin exams and offering to set up transportation in advance."

"...set up transportation?"

"I decided that airships are too slow, so dedicated transport pads would be better. As the full system will be bidirectional you're obviously going to want it set up outside of your village if you accept one."

"As if you'd need to use them to get into the village."

"Actually, that's more because you aren't in our authentication system so it'll be an 'open destination' usable by anyone who can get to a departure point instead of locked behind access rules. You're going to want to be able to monitor who comes and goes without it being inside of the village walls as a result."

Onoki blinked a couple of times. "Wait, are you offering a teleportation point, that would be usable to reach the chunin exams and any other public teleportation point you've set up?"

"Yes."

"Most villages just force people to make their way, you know."

"We're hosting the exams on an island."

"Never stopped Kirigakure from making teams travel to them."

"An island we will be using means like this to reach. If you opt to send teams to us over land instead? We'll need to send them to the exams through similar methods. I figure that having faster options means you can visit for the opening ceremonies and finals with less travel headaches."

Onoki thought for a moment, then nodded. "So you've set something up a good distance from shore, making traveling by ship difficult?"

"No, it'll be off the coast of the Land of Fire for the duration of the exams."

The man looked at Naruto oddly. "It's...not there yet, or not there permanently? Did you figure out how to scale up your 'illusion turned real' arena to make an entire island?"

"Of course not. The chakra requirements for that would be prohibitive, even for me. No, the island will fly into position a couple of days before we're inviting people to start arriving."

"...fly into position?"

"Yes."

"You have a flying island now?"

"Don't worry about us copying the Land of the Sky. Their system was horrible, and I didn't put any outward-facing weapons on this one." Naruto pulled out a stack of pamphlets. "I've got pamphlets providing basic information."

Onoki took the stack of pamphlets, then looked at the top copy, initially looking at it in disbelief before paling and half-whimpering as he read some of the details.

An hour later an area a distance away from the village gates had been chosen as the place to put the transport pads, with a potential for building a small guard station around the pads. These were different from the ones previously deployed as the departure pad was also on the ground. Stick everyone you wanted to travel on the trip onto the departure pad, pick a destination on the display, and activate the pad itself with chakra. Onoki had given it a try, traveling to the public pad at the mainland dock facility and back again, deciding that it was 'acceptable' while looking like he was just plain jealous that Uzushio had this and Iwa didn't.

Smaller villages were generally asking that the pads be set up outside of a convenient town nearby instead of outside of the villages themselves, owing to generally trying to keep themselves 'less accessible' as part of their security. With Iwa accepting a set of pads the 'big five' now all had pads outside of, but reasonably close to, their main gates. Konoha was in the middle of getting their shinobi into a new access system so that private pads could be put inside the village as well, which would also allow them to reach the various training islands they were allowed to use.

Orochimaru looked over the building her people were constructing around the transportation pad that Naruto had put in a couple of days ago. It was an incredibly useful item just for the ability to cross international borders, though it was also incredibly likely that every location with one would be heavily monitored by the locals because it allowed for crossing borders. Hence constructing a border station of sorts around this one.

"They didn't need this for the first exams they hosted," Guren noted.

"I suspect that they decided that it was too much of a security risk to bring teams into their main village," Orochimaru replied. "As such, they probably built up an additional island, and it's far enough out to make normal travel take too long."

"Ah, there are rumors that they've got an entire collection of islands across a wide expanse of the ocean now."

"Which makes sense to allow them to evacuate any given settlement in the case of attack. I might need to procure tickets for Ruri to watch things though."

"Assuming we have anyone make it to the finals this time."

"In general, actually, tickets for the opening ceremony as well as the finals. For the latter you might be keeping an eye on her if I'm with the village leaders, but she will want to see the flying island."

Guren blinked. "Flying island?"

"Remind me to give you one of the pamphlets. If you go you may need to avoid a medical examination though, as they're very good at figuring out how to duplicate chakra-based skills such as yours."

"Or I offer to let them figure it out on the condition that they help give Ruri the ability to use crystals."

"...I have to admit that I'd not considered that option, though I also wasn't aware that you might desire to share that with her."

"I'm not likely to have kids of my own and she's the only kid I'm close to."

"You seem interested enough in male company, and I don't recall any medical issues..."

Guren snorted. "The last man that I was intimate with required immediate medical intervention."

Orochimaru considered that, then flinched upon realizing what was implied. "Perhaps we should hold off on trying to give Ruri your abilities if it creates problems like that, given that we have no clue where her own preferences will sit. Though if you want to ask Uzushio for assistance solving that particular problem then I won't stop you either."

Deidara looked over Sasori's workshop, full of partially-assembled puppets. "Sasori, my man!"

"Please don't get close to the workbench," Sasori replied.

"I heard you only tested to chunin level!"

"In an evaluation that was entirely fair. Being an expert puppeteer by Suna's standards doesn't make me an expert by Uzushio's, plus I rely far too much on poisoning opponents. My knowledge of seals and brainwashing techniques are also far below others in the village, and the latter were actually ineffective against the test subjects, meaning I couldn't lean on them instead. Even my knowledge of how to make human puppets wasn't enough because they stopped working months ago."

Deidara blinked a couple of times. "Stopped working? Hm."

Sasori nodded. "I realized too late that any that I let sit long enough for their chakra to go 'dormant' stopped being able to use the abilities they had in life. I don't know why, as I mostly used the Third Kazekage puppet and didn't realize the others had problems until I wanted to use a water technique with one and it couldn't use water chakra. Then I spent too much time trying to fix that puppet and testing the rest, only realizing what the likely problem was after I'd left the Third Kazekage puppet sitting unused for too long."

"Ouch."

"And I couldn't even use my knowledge of making the puppets to angle for special jounin because even new ones don't gain the abilities they had in life."

Deidara considered things. "...you're absolutely furious, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"But with yourself and not with the test?"

"Yes."

"Hm."

Sasori sighed. "Word is that your results let you claim special jounin level."

Deidara nodded. "Bit too explosion-focused, but everyone was kind of expecting that. Hm."

"By any standards before Uzushio's new ones we'd both be full jounin."

"Yeah."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I have an...appointment at the main island hospital in a few days. That's going to be painful and set me back months."

"Your 'living core' is a small capsule."

Sasori nodded. "Yes, and that proved to be a significant hindrance to me in my testing. They want to attempt to regrow my body."

Deidara blinked. "Regrow your body?"

"It's very hard to perform a number of chakra-boosting procedures on my current core self and I neglected the benefits of physical training to improve my chakra capacity in the first place. I'm not sure it's possible to reverse what I did to myself, but they seem confident that they can do so. In a day."

"Seems like a big risk. Hm."

"...they might have also realized that I've got five years at the most before my core self just stops functioning due to an oversight on my part. What I thought was a correction for it was just delaying the inevitable breakdown and they were able to spot and explain where I went wrong."

Ah. 'Attempt the risky procedure or fall over dead in a few years' would be good motivation, and would also explain being so angry with himself over the mistake.

...oooh. But he'd have an actual body again! With taste buds! A proper meal would need to be waiting for him, so Deidara was going to have to pick up some things at the store. A variety, actually, because who knew what the soon to be former puppet would actually like...

"It's a pity we can't take out the trees," Indra commented as they worked on one of the last connections to the grid.

"Only so much we can be expected to do," Asura said. "We're hooked into the wrong place to do anything to the trees."

"Feels wrong that I'm the one complaining that we can't keep the trees from destroying the worlds they're already growing on."

"The seeds are very specifically coded to not 'take root' without sacrifices that can connect to the grid, so at least anyone else finding the things won't be likely to spread the problem."

"True."

They worked in silence until they'd reached the 'as soon as the connection is stressed it should fail' point. Asura then nodded as they started towards the next one. "So, what do you think we'll end up doing once we've run out of them to ensure the final deaths of?"

"...we'll be stuck in here bored watching a bunch of worlds die with no ability to help them."

"Which means you're focusing on the trees as a problem that we could spend time working on figuring out how to attack instead of sitting around doing nothing."

"...maybe."

"Once nobody is left capable of attaching to the grid we can explore options. Failing and breaking the grid itself would tell them how they're being attacked, even if we don't think they can do anything about it now."

Indra sighed, but nodded. Ensuring that they completed the first task of getting rid of the idiots was important in this case, even if it was unlikely that anyone would really know that they'd been responsible.

Shisui looked over the report on the computerized access control system Naruto had installed as a precursor to providing a summoning contract. They'd gotten their people into the system and now had actual logs for when people opened doors, which was nice when compared to keys and seals that just provided protection and not logs. It looked like there weren't any obvious questions for when they set up the summoning contract though, which was good.

Looking up as Naruto entered the office, he nodded. "Good morning."

"Morning," Naruto replied.

"You already provided the hookups to our tech teams to attach to the security system?"

"Yoko actually dropped those off last night."

"Ah, good. So today we set up the core of the summoning contract and the arrival stones you've set up for us."

"I already did most of that work too, actually."

Shisui snorted. "Of course you did."

"Mostly because we're going to need some extra time to cover black file secrets."

"...black file secrets? Kage's eyes only?"

"Yep."

Well, that was a bit of a surprise. "How important is this information?"

"I think it's very important, though admittedly I've not needed it for Uzu yet."

That was intriguing, and Shisui followed Naruto down under the village to where they'd agreed the core summoning contract stone would sit. Guards were waved to stay outside when they got there, and as promised the stone was already in place with a stack of boxes for the registration terminals off to the side.

"So," Shisui said. "What's the big secret?"

"This is actually two contracts," Naruto answered. "The electronics are hardwired together so that registering with one registers with both but you have to be removed from them independently of one another."

Well, that was...interesting. "So someone trying to screw up village security through wiping people from the contract is likely to fail?"

"No, that's still going to cause possible problems. The secret contract needs to be kept secret because it does not have a consent clause."

"...what?"

"Set a few trusted individuals as a 'retrieval team' and toggle on the summoning allowed flag of a defector that removed themselves from the public contract and the retrieval team can summon the defector without the defector's permission. Done right and the defector will just vanish with nobody needing to know that they were recovered."

That...was a genius move. "You've already convinced every Uzushio shinobi to tie themselves into a system that basically guarantees that you can recover them if they defect."

"Yes, though I only plan on using it for those that run off with significant village secrets. Lower level shinobi deciding to leave after getting a taste of missions aren't a major problem from a security standpoint once you remove their access. You also have to remember to still put bounties out as though you hadn't recovered the ones you use the secret contract to recover though, implying that they escaped and went into hiding instead of being recovered almost immediately."

"Well, yes, that's kind of obvious."

"Unlike the access method for the secret contract. But before we can look at that we need to get you tied in properly."

Connecting to the contracts was simple enough, and it was obvious that the techs had attached things to the access control systems when his access card worked. Naruto gave him a quick lesson in configuration at the terminal, including how to set things up for access groups in the main access control system, and then demonstrated how to access the secret contract's terminal. That one acted as an independent system that there was no way to know existed ahead of time and didn't pull from the access systems at all. Naruto demonstrated changing settings and removing himself from that one, as well as showing how nobody being within a meter of the terminal caused it to hide itself again if you tried to walk away without hiding it yourself.

Then they went through the interconnection process with Uzushio's public contract. That would automatically allow anyone on either contract to summon while inside of either village's general summoning areas due to the automatic tie-in to the summoning blocking seals and would allow access to selected summoning stones. Summoning individuals wasn't currently allowed by either end as a security measure, meaning that you'd have to be on both contracts to be summoned by shinobi from either village. That could be changed later if they ever wanted to though. Setting up the specific shared summoning groups between the two systems was also handled at that point, mostly linking up the equivalent definitions for genin, chunin, and jounin so that the Uzushio contract would allow Konoha shinobi access to the appropriate training islands.

"This doesn't have anything to do with the transport pads, right?" Shisui asked as things were closed up.

"No," Naruto agreed. "Those are pure security access, and you'll still need the private pads I installed to reach the training and bloodline islands through that system. Oh, but I suppose I should warn you that Takigakure is getting their own access control system in the next couple of days, and a private pad for an area just outside of their village. Up to you if you want to arrange with Shibuki for more direct access to their private pad."

"We had to push for you to let them get telephones. Why are you suddenly handing over access control systems and a private transport pad?"

"They offered free access for Uzushio shinobi to pass through, which gives easier access to the ocean to the north of them and I don't think the Land of Earth was going to make a similar offer anytime soon. It also drastically increases their village security if they can have teams get to the public pads and authenticate to reach the private pad instead of having to travel to the village directly, so they're getting a major benefit from their point of view for the minor hassle of allowing a village they aren't at war with to pass through the country and get access to their shinobi roster through the access control system. But they haven't gotten full access control for the inside of the village like Konoha has and don't currently have access to other Uzushio resources."

"Ah."

"But once in place you could, for example, give Fu personal access to items in Konoha with her Takigakure identification, should you desire to."

"I don't recall bringing her up with you at all."

"She and a good percentage of the Aburame are friendly with Yoko."

...there were times that it was far too easy to forget that Naruto and Yoko were different expressions of the same person and that what one knew the other knew as well. Then again, Yoko didn't give off the same 'vibe' through doing things like creating flying islands.

A sighed as he looked over the minimal information on Uzushio's upcoming exams, ninety percent of which had been provided in the form of a pamphlet describing their new flying examination island. They could infer more from their chunin requirements book, which made arguments that were far too good to ignore, but this felt like it was going to be another 'too different from previous exams to prepare for' situation.

The worst part was that it would almost certainly make for a better exam that way, just like the previous shake-ups in the standard formula had.

Then there were the 'transport pads', largely allowing quick travel between the hidden villages for shinobi right now. They'd obviously allow Uzushio shinobi to go more places...but Konoha and Taki had both been seen using access cards with the things as well, so the network was being shared a bit more than you'd immediately expect. Who knew where else they went right now, but they did have the added benefit of being a money maker for teams. Civilians couldn't activate the pads, but could be sent along if a shinobi activated the pad for them. Doing so from the side even meant that the shinobi didn't have to go through themselves, so the guards could accept a small payment to activate the pad for a merchant with minimal trouble.

Unfortunately, Uzushio was definitely capable of maintaining a private network of pads as well as the public ones. It would be impossible to spot someone heading to an observation bunker if one of the pads was inside of it, allowing for the construction of hidden observation points with no other way in or out. Not that they'd necessarily need to use such points unless they wanted to use Hyuga though, because slipping a hardwired camera and microphone into a room that was plugged in across the continent was an option for them anyway.

Once upon a time they were seen as a potential threat large enough to need to be removed. They'd long since surpassed that now, coming back harder and stronger than anyone could've imagined...and even without their strength they were 'improving things' to the point where even the Lightning Daimyo didn't want to antagonize them and lose potential future access to their stuff.

The series of diplomatic plays making them politically impossible to assault was not something anyone had expected to happen. No, the shows of strength indicating that it would be suicide to try to take them out had been the expected side of things and had also been done quite effectively. Raising the standards of the entire continent to meet their insanity, with well-reasoned arguments for the changes, felt more like being chided for getting complacent in comparison.

...that Kumo had, in A's opinion, never actually gotten 'complacent' was another matter. They still didn't quite meet up to the standards Uzushio had put forth, at least for chunin and jounin. Their graduation standards were fine for genin though, even if they needed to ensure a few more things were covered in the first few months of missions. The worst part there was that their own regulations said those things should be covered and they'd just not been enforcing them.

"I almost want to send a team of chunin that didn't meet the requirements set forth by Uzushio when they were originally promoted," A finally said. "But they'd almost certainly call us out on it."

"They demoted a bunch of their own people due to failing skill tests," B noted from where he was going through genin records. "Demoting our own people for the same reason would probably be acceptable to them, but then we'd have testing results showing that they aren't ready to be chunin."

"And those were 'absorbed from another village with different standards' instead of 'promoted through their own system' demotions."

"Reports say that they've got a 'test to keep your rank' schedule."

"...okay, you've got me there. Your point about having testing results saying they aren't ready to be chunin, and thus shouldn't be sent to the exams, is still an unfortunate point against the idea."

Yoko was finding the current crop of shrine maidens to be making good progress, even those that weren't kunoichi or kunoichi in training looking for a good cover profession for when on missions. Working with the academy to provide such options had been something Iruka had left in his suggestions when he'd left for Uzushio, and a much wider version of it was in place on the island, but the limited version added to the curriculum here in Konoha was working nicely as well.

Convincing the civilian girls to do a number of physical and mental exercises daily, those unwilling to do so being deemed not dedicated enough, was also resulting in noticeable growth in their chakra. They were unlikely to ever be kunoichi, but in a couple of years a number of them would almost certainly be capable of a few interesting little tricks. Odoroki was doing the same with civilian would-be shrine maidens in Uzushio, with a desired plan of taking the best of them and going through a 'bring a bit of Suijin to new shrines' show to spread clean water shrines to more areas with the new shrine maidens spread out to run the shrines.

Water-generating seals would be trivial targets of theft or sabotage, or even those who merely wished to control access to them. But a water-generating shrine was a religious location that would be far less likely to be targeted. There were even plans to rig a couple to flow downhill into a spot prepared for hot springs, if the land could be legitimately obtained anyway. Odoroki hadn't been able to go out to do personal research or attempt to purchase any of the locations she was considering for shrines yet, and only a couple of locations involved existing run-down shrines that would be rebuilt instead.

There was no desire to turn the network of shrine maidens into an information network, though they would generally be convenient places suitably-trained kunoichi could travel to in order to have a reason to visit an area. No, the primary purpose was to ensure that clean water was available in more places that had problems with local sources. The Land of Snow's shrine was actually a decent example there, being the best source of drinkable water in the area around it.

Making the trips to 'enshrine' Suijin in all the new shrines was going to be annoying though, when they got to that stage.

Gaara was still trying to wrap his head around Uzushiogakure having a flying island. He'd heard stories of the Land of the Sky, but not really believed them, only for Naruto to apparently pull off something even more impressive to host the chunin exams on. Not to take over the continent or anything else that might be reasonably expected, but simply as part of an event that he already saw as 'showing off for the other villages and the masses'.

Uzushio hadn't made any bid to join the 'Big Five'. No, they'd scoffed at the rest of the continent and set themselves above it all. Konoha was benefitting the most from the improvements, but was obviously nowhere near Uzushio's level despite being close allies. Everyone else was just looking on wondering where you even started in order to have any hope of catching up.

"I've got the final set of team recommendations," Temari said as she entered the office. "Minus the two with injuries and the three that couldn't pass the preliminary test you tasked them all with."

"Having too many genin not pass the likely 'are you genin' phase this time would be a significant embarrassment," Gaara noted as he accepted the stack of paper.

"Even Uzushio didn't have all their genin pass that."

"Which is the only reason it wasn't more of a problem. We're likely to see basically every village on the continent show up this time, no matter how small, and if we don't want to be seen as no longer being one of the 'Big Five' then we need to make a good showing. Doubly so given that they're likely going to be broadcasting all the stages in some fashion this time."

She sighed. "To allow people to see what actually goes into the exams, except their exams are nothing like things have traditionally been."

"Shaming the rest of us into shaping up or giving up on running them at all."

"They might allow others to use the flying island, if only to reduce the amount of people they have to use for any given exam cycle. It's obviously designed to be an 'insecure zone' for them anyway."

"And then we'd probably have to agree to it being flown into our skies."

"...that's unfortunately likely, but rumors of it being visible from coastal settlements in the Land of Fire have driven tourism. Being able to place it in a suitable location here would likely do the same for at least the next few years."

"Which would be more of a decision for the Daimyo instead of for us, and we've already got enough civilian upheaval with relocations to newly flourishing oases. A full quarter of our missions in the past year have been related to checking or creating markers in the desert to help merchant caravans find their way to where new settlements are being constructed."

Temari nodded after a moment. "With escort missions to help said caravans navigate unfamiliar routes safely being the most common missions we've been getting. I suppose it would be bad to suddenly have people wanting to make trips to see a flying island when our travel routes are already a mess."

"We'd probably spend weeks searching for lost idiots in the desert and finding far too many corpses."