90

Naruto looked over the gathered genin a mere ten minutes after the end of the second round. They'd gotten things down further than he'd expected, only nineteen teams making it through, but that was still more than they could handle in the planned final round. They'd need preliminaries, even allowing for two days of fighting.

"Congratulations on making it through the second stage," he finally said. "These exams are seen as a proxy for war by some, as advertising our strength to each other for preventing war by others, and I'm reasonably certain as simply a way of gauging relative strengths by others. For those non-shinobi watching this first exam broadcast from start to finish, I hope you're learning a bit about what it means for someone to be a shinobi. That said, for the final round in a month we don't wish to have three days of fights, so we need to reduce the numbers here further."

Okachu stepped forward. "I volunteered to help run the preliminary eliminations. Does anyone feel that they or a teammate cannot enter a fight for medical reasons at this point? I do not wish to hear that you do not wish to continue, just that injuries mean you cannot continue without medical aid."

One genin was pushed forward by their teammates as they were missing half an arm. This was enough to get them to at least even numbers for preliminary matches.

"We will be splitting into four rooms," Okachu said after a moment as he made three paperwork clones. "Seven matches will be held in each room." Four monitors lit up on the wall behind him, and fourteen pairs of names appeared on each. "Upper right monitor is this room."

One of his clones stepped forward. "If you're on the upper left monitor, follow me." That group followed the clone, and then the process repeated twice more. Naruto had clones in all four rooms already, his original self not actually present at all, and jounin from villages split up in their own ways. Konoha and Uzushio were the most likely to have their jounin create paperwork clones of their own to monitor more than one room at a time.

Guren had been sent to serve as a replacement sensei for their four 'split off' genin, and was happy to see that all four had made it through. Even better, they were all in the same preliminary room so she could easily watch their matches and the four weren't pitted against each other. The latter had been hard to tell if it would be the case ahead of time because of the fifty-seven genin there were only fourteen Uzushio and twenty-four between Uzushio and Konoha. Kumo losing one genin to a severe injury hadn't done much as that just meant nobody got a free pass.

Actually, a quick review of the matches showed that the alliance connection with Taki had likely been used to split things. Every match had one of Konoha, Uzushio, or Taki against one of the other villages. This meant that nobody had to fight their own village, though alliances were in flux so she couldn't say the same about fighting allied villages. The Oto genin that had filled in slots in two Taki teams were also not fighting their temporary teammates, which was a nice consideration if it had been intentional. Obviously, the other two that had filled in slots in Iwa and Kumo teams hadn't needed to worry about things with the way the matches were split.

Needing to pay closer attention to four out of seven matches for purposes of training advice for deficiencies that got them eliminated or weak areas to work on before the finals was honestly better than having all twenty-eight to sit through, if less generally informative about other villages and participants.

She found that Naruto was in the new room as well as the one they'd just left, but he was known to use solid clones. Moving towards him had him gesturing for her to come closer.

"You have a question?" the young leader asked.

"I'm curious how much is coincidence and how much was intentional," Guren admitted, without specifying what she'd seen.

"Your looking over four genin instead of their original sensei and another jounin taking over a second team for a total of six genin required a hasty software patch to allow sensei to have more than three genin in the preliminaries. Only groups that we know have sensei that can create clones to monitor multiple rooms were split across rooms, and we kept that to no more than two rooms. Ensuring that nobody fought temporary teammates from the second stage had been planned ahead of time. The computer took over four hundred attempts to generate a match set with all the restrictions we placed on them, rarely getting over eighty percent of the bracket built before running into a restriction and having to start over."

A pamphlet was pulled out of a pocket and handed to her. She looked at it, finding that it was a summary of what he'd just said, with more solid numbers. "You are far more open about things than any other village I've ever had to deal with."

"Burying secrets under layers of other secrets encourages far too much digging for secrets and we stand to make far more money in the long term through being trustworthy. Which isn't to say we don't have secrets, of course, but you knew that."

Temari winced as she watched Urabi slam into the arena wall. The girl had been doing quite well, but ran out of chakra before her Uzushio opponent did. All of the Uzu genin seemed to be powerhouses, even though very few of them were Uzumaki, and this wasn't the only match where one had simply outlasted their opponent. It didn't necessarily mean that Urabi wouldn't end up with a promotion, but the full report on her performance would need to be looked over before decisions were made and that was going to fall on Gaara.

Uzu's medics were top-notch though, and had all injuries taken care of within a couple of minutes. That had been the last of the seven matches for this arena, and it happened to be the one they'd started in so they were now waiting on the return from the other three. Those from one started filtering in almost immediately, likely having been kept away while the quick repairs to the floor happened, and then the other two took a few more minutes each.

"Looks like we have a decent mix for the finals," Naruto said once everyone was gathered again. "Ten from Uzushio, five from Konoha, four from Otogakure, three from Iwagakure, two each from Kumogakure and Sunagakure, and then one each from Kirigakure and Takigakure. But those of you who were eliminated, you aren't necessarily out of the running for promotion. Everyone has had their performance evaluated during the exams and those of you who remain on the island assisting in the training of others may be evaluated further."

There was a pause there, and Temari had to admit that was beyond what she'd been expecting.

"But now we need to figure out the final bracket," Naruto continued as the monitors behind him lit up again. Twenty-eight names with times appeared, seven on each screen. "These are the lengths of your preliminary matches. None were close enough for the precise timing of a proctor's call to matter in ordering, so we've used them to seed your ordering. Fastest against slowest."

The monitors shifted to display match-ups, and a stack of hardcopies was brought out. Temari collected one, and noted that they included the full bracket. Everyone was fighting one match the first day. Day two had a run of everyone remaining fighting, but the winner of the first match got a pass on the second round of fights. It was hard to say whether the fastest or the slowest had the advantage though.

On the backside of the hardcopies were instructions for reserving training areas throughout the island for the break if you wished to remain, including the option of hotel rooms near the elemental areas if you preferred to be closer to them. There was also a warning that chunin and jounin from various villages were going to be permitted to visit the island to give challenges a try and a note about where sensei could sign up for first dibs if they wanted to try specific challenges themselves.

...Naruto was being far, far too open about how they did things. The worst part was that he was making it work.

"You have a month to train," Naruto said. "For those watching remotely, additional highlights and replays from the first two stages will be played alongside others coming in to try out challenges to evaluate them for themselves. No footage of the genin training will be broadcast."

Yoko looked at the island she'd previously claimed, but hadn't done more than start laying out groundwork and doing initial experimentation on. For what she wanted now it was going to need a lot more work, but Naruto had done plenty of this and thus she knew what to do. Her small experiments were also low enough in power to be torn out before she started on the proper construction, unlike some of his early work with the large-scale forest seals.

Also unlike the various forests Naruto had set up, the one on this island was going to be connected to 'light chakra' beads. The whole place should end up with an otherworldly feel due to the purification aspects of that alone, and the experiments she'd run showed that the addition of the beads tended to create plants and wildlife that were far more beneficial than anything else. The small-scale experiments had led to great ingredients for healing and scaling them up was going to be interesting. After she dug down and built the needed underground infrastructure, anyway, and she wanted to do quite a bit of reshaping of the entire island.

It would be far more impressive-looking with the primary 'shrine entrance' as the highest point, paths and stairs leading up to the main doors. A long circling path up the mountain for those who didn't wish to use the stairs, intersecting with the more direct stair-filled path up? Both the long path and the stairs would also make for good stamina training for shrine maidens, but regular resting points for any other visitors would be necessary as well. Smaller shrines along the long path, perhaps? She'd need to think about that, but for now the island was far too flat. Raising the whole thing, but leaving an obvious 'arrival' area with a dock, was her current plan. Perhaps plantlife-covered cliffs around the outer edge, to help reduce the need for other seals to help hold back erosion?

Underground would need a variety of things, including transport pads, the primary summoning contract, the telephone system, probably a full computer system. She was considering setting up some of the stationary puppet systems for defense, but rigging them to appear to be suitable statues when not active. The technology division had also come up with 'mobile farming puppets' instead of using zombie seals for that, so perhaps some roaming 'shrine maiden' puppets controlled by the central computer could handle some of the day to day maintenance when there weren't enough shrine maidens in residence?

And of course she'd need to decide where the summoning arrival stone should be, what secret passages should exist, and a pile of other details...

A looked over the grotto filled with 'challenge pedestals'. "I'd expected to be given a map of where to find them in the forest, not to show up three days after the end of the second stage to find them all gathered and well-labeled."

"We weren't exactly going to be leaving them in there," Naruto pointed out. "Having them in the same places across exams, or even running the same exam conditions for that stage each time, would be silly."

"I suppose that makes sense."

"Besides, nobody else can configure them, so if we rent the island out for someone else's exam they'll need to figure out their own team combat stage conditions. Plus most of them had to be reset due to no longer having scrolls because those wanting to try them out don't need to worry about the scrolls anyway."

Okay, that was all good arguments and interesting information. Renting the island for exams would pull a lot of strain off of Kumo, even if it presented a very different environment than their normal exams would. Amazingly little of their mission load happened in rocky mountain terrain as it was.

"Good luck against the ice monster," Naruto said, gesturing towards the 'ice' pedestals.

A looked at B and Darui, who both nodded back, and then the three of them headed over to the correctly labeled pedestal. All three placed their hands in and pushed chakra in, and a moment later they were very much elsewhere.

"Ugh," B groaned, coating his body and tail in chakra. "This ice is not nice."

"Suck it up," A said, glancing at the instructions on the pedestal and then turning to the exit from the cave they'd arrived in. "I let you pick this one. I can't see it giving even one of us trouble either, at least if it's properly scaled for a team of potential chunin."

Finding the ice monster was easy enough, and there was a 'mock scroll' behind it in an ice cage as had been present for the chunin hopefuls. A waved B forward, and he jumped forward to test the beast, holding back significantly at first and gradually using more of his strength until he overcame it. The cage melted away to allow access to the scroll once the beast was defeated.

"That thing might've been a bit weak for a team of three," B said with a frown.

"And what if you assume that only one of the three is ready for chunin?" A questioned.

"Hmmm."

It seemed that Uzushio had taken 'this should really be a solo test, but the international agreements force us to do a team round' seriously. They'd forced it to be a team round, but likely scaled most of it to a pair of genin led by a chunin. Only one member of a team needed to be chunin level, so long as they were able to lead the other two properly...so long as you didn't run into a massive type disadvantage. Like being water-focused in the lava challenges.

"We need to test one of the stealth challenges," A finally said, gesturing back towards their arrival point. "They're the hardest to get a feel for from the footage."

Obito was waiting in line to try out the daring leap challenge. Prizes were even being offered 'while supplies lasted', though he wasn't sure if he cared about that. He just wanted to see if it was as fun as it looked, but the group of 'honorary genin' academy students he'd been convinced to chaperone were more excited about the potential prizes.

"Remember," Obito said as they reached the ladder. "You all begged to come try this. I was instructed that anyone who tries to back out after looking down is to be subject to the Thousand Years of Death."

The six kids looked at him in horror, but he gestured for them to get climbing. Once all six had started up the ladder he made a shadow clone to wait by the transport arrival pad to corral the ones that returned before he made his attempt, then climbed up himself. By the time he was up the six kids hadn't actually gotten their turns as it seemed the last person before them hadn't made it out of the water yet. Keeping people out of the landing area, and getting the floating platform out of the way, were sensible safety precautions.

He got to watch as the kids collectively looked over the edge and gulped, before looking back at him and going wide-eyed as they considered the alternative. They then each judged their chances and attempted their jumps. Five of them hit at least one ring on the way down, though the things seemed to be made out of soap bubbles or something like that and just reformed after a minute. The one kid that didn't hit any of the floating rings on their way down also didn't pass through a full set of any one color of rings, so no prizes for them.

Once the last one was out of the water, all six remaining on the floating platform to watch his attempt from below, he examined things. Nodding, he focused a little to create chakra gliding surfaces along his arms and legs before he jumped off. Spinning and twisting let him use the gliding surfaces to control his fall and pass through the center of all of the rings on the way down, then he pulled up at the end to come across the water towards the platform. He landed on the water and water-walked the last couple of meters, the wet group of kids staring at him with shock and awe on their faces.

Doing that over water was easy. It got really nerve wracking when you were cliff diving into a forest and making a mistake likely meant hitting the ground hard.

"We're out of explosive kunai sets," the shinobi on the platform said. "But you get a three hot meals scroll and a two-person tent for the other two prizes."

Well, free meals weren't a bad thing, and the tent would probably make a good reward for the kids paying attention in class next term...

Naruto was happy that he'd prepared multiple telephone systems ahead of time, but the summoning contracts were trickier. Needing two full versions instead of one so that Yoko's shrine village could have one wasn't much harder than making one for Iwa though, and then he needed a single contract instead of a double contract for other plans. Going through and making ten contracts with five summoning stones each was future-proofing options. Six of the contracts had the 'hidden second contract' trick and four were single-contract setups.

Iwa would get one of the hidden second contract stones, but not necessarily be told about the second contract for now. They'd see how things went in the next few years. But the foxes wanted one of the digital contracts for working with the shrine maidens as a kind of 'official mascot' for the shrines as well and had no need for the dual-contract trick.

Creating a stack of extra transport pads had also been needed as the existing stock hadn't been sufficient for existing plans. Civilian-usable ones were included in that, though they needed regular recharging by shinobi or to be hooked up to a generation system of some kind to remain functional due to how much chakra they ended up using. Well over ten times what one activated by someone going along for the trip used due to not being able to use that traveler as an anchor for the transit bubble.

And as more of a 'cleanup' project he'd been dismantling Uzushio's exam stadium. He didn't intend for them to ever be holding a chunin exam on the main island again, so it was just wasted space now.

Tomorrow he'd need to take time to go visit the summoning clans evaluating genin too, to see if any that Uzushio was holding the contracts for had made decisions about things. Really, if they didn't want to work with Uzushio directly then they should just reclaim the contracts, but he'd made the mistake of being a 'trustworthy guardian until suitable summoners are found'.

Nize hadn't made it into the finals, but Dotsu had so they were sticking around to help him train...and doing their best to make some extra money because the supplies here were far better than back home. Leaps and bounds better. 'Went home, collected as much money as they could get their hands on, and came back to stock up on everything' better. Just being able to unseal an already-hot meal, ready to eat, was incredible.

'Small jobs', on par with D-rank missions, were available for those participating in the exams. Many of them involved running around for a few hours with a noble that wanted to see things up close but didn't have enough chakra to visit the elemental areas without assistance, and they generally preferred someone from their 'local village' to escort them when possible. Some of those even tipped well. She'd also spent half a day as a sewing dummy because she was close enough to the build of another noble that didn't want to stand there while the tailor worked on the bulk of the fitting.

Said noble was happy enough that they'd even paid for a second dress for her, 'so they could be twins' despite the significant differences in their appearances.

But right now she and Tazo were waiting on Dotsu to make it out of the hospital building. Getting your exploding kunai mixed up with your normal kunai was a bad thing, doubly so when you don't realize you primed the kunai you were holding to explode at the same time as the explosive tag you just planted on a rock.

Aito looked at the 'unflappable shinobi', an obvious Uzumaki that had been presented as a 'difficult challenge' in the first stage of the exams. The goal was to make him want to hit you, and nobody had succeeded. It was seen as a bit of a test of when to give up and move on by most, but she wanted to prove that it was possible to rile him up.

She wasn't sure what his name was, but based on previous interactions she'd observed she had a plan. Unfortunately, it wasn't her turn yet. The idiot in front of her was trying to use incorrect and nonsensical mathematical proofs, but the man just pointed out the problems. Or produced correct versions of things from a drawer. In at least one case he looked interested, then rederived the proof himself and pointed out the flaws.

It was likely that being a mathematician was more of a side thing, but she thought it was an 'in' to getting under his skin. Finally it was her turn, and the crowd looked curious what tactic she was going to use.

"Five was prime last year," she said, causing the man and most of the audience to blink.

"What?" the man asked.

"You heard me."

"Bah."

"And eleven will be prime next year." His eye twitched at that. "Of course, one won't be prime tomorrow." She noted a couple of those watching looking confused. "Last month Pi was the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter."

The man looked pained at that one. "The Uzukage does...unwelcome things with Pi and curved spacetime."

Well, that was...probably something to not think about. She'd need to skip other mentions of Pi, and it seemed that had reset his annoyance. "This morning two plus two equalled four, but by the time I pick up dinner later five plus five won't equal nine."

That brought back twitching. She continued throwing statements that were technically true but implied mathematical truths changed over time. It was obviously getting under his skin, and a couple of times he looked ready to snap before obviously calming himself. As he seemed to be approaching that level again she changed tactics entirely.

Keeping a serious look on her face, she looked him in the eye. "Last week Uzushio was a powerful village."

Being ready for him to lash out meant that she successfully dodged when the unexpected statement caused his annoyance to boil over. The clapping from those watching caused him to blink, realize what he'd done, and scowl.

She'd need to see about getting Omoi to swing through and run paranoid ranting by the guy too, honestly. That was enough to get anyone to want to hit him.

Yazo had run into a bad match-up in the preliminaries, his ability to control his wind chakra not being good enough to overcome an obvious fire specialist, but after his burns had been healed up he'd stuck around on the island to help out with training. And to hopefully buy more meal scrolls, because the three instant hot meals without needing to cook had been great in the second stage. The exploding kunai weren't really his thing, but the tent had been awesome too. Significantly better than what he'd been able to get back in Suna, and a test run in the wind area showed that it worked well even in a small sandstorm.

But today he'd been told to take a day off from helping after needing to visit the hospital twice yesterday and was wandering around checking out the minimal shops in the area. Souvenirs and resupply were plentiful, as were quick bites to eat and restaurants, but obviously nothing intended for permanent residents. Presumably because there weren't permanent residents, though he idly wondered if there would be eventually.

"Good morning Yazo," a familiar voice called, causing Yazo to turn around and find the Uzukage standing there.

"Er..." Yazo said, glancing around. He didn't think he'd wandered anywhere he shouldn't be.

"Don't worry, you aren't in trouble. Just need a quick meeting with you since you won't be in the finals group."

"Um...okay?"

He was led into a meeting room over a store that didn't look anything like it should've been a meeting room. Another Uzukage was standing there, with Raishi-sensei, and when he turned to look at the Uzukage that had brought him in he found that one was now missing. Turning back to the other two, he noted Raishi-sensei signaling that this was okay...only for the Uzukage to openly use the same signal language to state that hand signals like that are horribly insecure.

"How?" Yazo asked.

Raishi-sensei sighed and shook her head. "Hand signals with someone who has the ability to see them even when concealed aren't discreet, though the Uzukage is obviously showing off his village's intelligence gathering as well."

"Suna probably shouldn't sell copies of the signal book in stores they let visitors purchase from," the Uzukage retorted.

"We what?"

"Tried to be clever with the fake signal books locked away in stores restricted to your own shinobi while the real ones were sold openly in the stores anyone could purchase from. Obviously an attempt to make the real books look like a sucker's purchase, but the fake ones are the only things in the entire 'your shinobi only' stores without a listed price and the locked boxes holding them have obviously not been opened legitimately in years."

Yeah, that sounded kind of stupid. Yazo had gotten his book from Raishi-sensei and had assumed there was a special way to get an official copy, not that games were being played. Raishi-sensei also looked like she wanted to go hunt down an idiot and punch them.

"But we're not here to discuss questionable ways of disguising village secrets," the Uzukage continued, turning to Yazo. "You may have heard about those who got more than promotion in the joint exams. A number of people have assumed that only those making it to the finals or that have earned promotion were considered by the summoning clans, but that isn't accurate. Several summoning clans have been evaluating all of the genin participating, and the pigeons indicated that they'd like to work with you, if you're willing to sign their contract."

A glance at Raishi-sensei had her nodding to indicate that this was legitimate, but not indicating which way he should go. He recalled that there had been joking about the freshly-promoted chunin being stupid when they'd just signed contracts presented to them, but being permitted to sign a contract at all was an honor. Only someone who expected to be able to sign a different, more preferred contract would be likely to question it at all...and Yazo had no expectation of being permitted to sign even a personal contract with a single summon.

An hour later he was in a training ground that the Uzukage had reserved for his use for the next couple of days so he could work on initial meetings with the pigeons.

Ino looked over notes from all the genin that had remained on the island, those in the finals and those not. Observed attitudes, skills seen as training happened, number of visits to the hospital, even their choices in food. A lot of information compiled down into as impartial an evaluation as they could manage to add to the final recommendations for each genin. Three genin had even flipped from 'recommend promotion despite failing to reach the finals' to 'do not promote now' based entirely on deliberately not eating enough.

Honestly, the biggest surprise there was that only one of the three was a kunoichi.

A different group of three genin had also gotten summoning contracts and their initial interactions with the summons had been evaluated. Two ninken packs had decided that they liked the tracking methods of genin, one from Taki and one from Uzu. The former they'd produced a pile of forehead protectors for the ninken and the latter pack didn't want to be that easily identified. More amusingly, the Uzu genin was one of those with cat features...and got along with the dogs without any trouble at all. Then there was the Suna genin that had impressed the pigeons with their skill in using wind chakra for navigation, though being one of the few 'all three prizes in one shot' genin from the daring leap challenge hadn't hurt.

She blinked as she reached some of the more recent observations. One team had been spotted intentionally hitting each other with non-training kunai? Huh. Training to fight while injured, or at least that was the assumption as the team hadn't been asked, and it looked like they'd visited the hospital when they were done. Their methodology, if the assumptions about their goals were correct, had been torn apart. Not enough to risk the promotion of one that had reached the point of getting one recommended, but worth putting notes into files before handing things over for the final pass by the evaluation teams.