106

Naruto found it interesting how the moon construction project was being viewed by most. The live streams were only providing 'safe highlights' for security reasons, and almost all reports indicated that civilians in particular had no clue about the scales involved. Because of that, there was a general assumption that the pace of construction was a nice slow and sedate process. Admittedly, this very much excluded scientists around the planet, and the bulk of shinobi had done at least enough research to know that the civilians were incredibly ignorant.

That things were visible with the naked eye within a week, if barely, and trivially visible by the end of the month was rightfully creating panic in those who understood the scales involved. Those able to keep an eye on him and Yoko to see that each 'pause' in construction had them showing signs of mild chakra exhaustion were even more concerned in their own ways. There wasn't a whole lot to be done about that aspect though, as Hinata and Ino didn't have the deep knowledge of things needed for the work.

They'd tried to argue that they had to be able to help in some fashion, but they also didn't have sharingan or rinnegan eyes that could help with several aspects and the entire construction process assumed that you had a deeper understanding of seals than either of them could manage normally. It had been tempting to get them to help spot incoming rocks though. The first few during the deconstruction process had been a slight surprise and adjusting construction plans to include protecting key areas from strikes had been needed.

Today was a very important day though. The 'core' of the new moon was completed and ready to be powered on. Only a third of the final diameter, but with the first layer of equipment for keeping its orbit stable and generating shielding. Powering it up would mean that the core's spell processors could maintain a shield spell to protect against the annoying rocks, cosmic rays that normally got stopped by the planet's atmosphere, and the full intensity of the Sun's rays. As an added bonus, keeping everything in the right orbit would no longer require regular use of the flight spell with hundreds of clones to push things back into place.

At this point there wouldn't be atmospheric containment though. The lack of atmosphere largely made corrosion a non-issue and made it a lot easier to ensure that a number of bonds were far more complete than they likely seemed like they should be.

Unfortunately, first the batteries had to be charged, as power generation wasn't installed yet. The middle of the three construction 'layers' would include the technological generators and the surface was going to have forests, but those weren't available yet...

Ino stared at Naruto, eyes wide. She'd been worried when he'd looked like he was suffering from mild chakra exhaustion on a regular basis while working on the moon project, but today he seemed to be suffering from major chakra exhaustion. "What did you do?"

"Powered up the core of the moon," Naruto replied, before yawning. "The core has no generation though, so charging up the mana batteries was needed."

"There's a significant amount of extra generation from all the forests. Why didn't you just temporarily hook up to all of that?"

"We did."

That brought her up short. "You did?"

"Yes."

"And still drained yourselves?"

"It wasn't going fast enough. Couldn't power anything on until the batteries were two-thirds full due to the expected draw of initial casting."

Blinking, she moved over to one of the terminals and checked the power drain over the past couple of days. She blanched as she looked at the numbers, and the fact that all the backup storage had apparently been nearly drained across all systems, then shook her head. "You could've waited another day or two."

He gave her a confused look. "For what?"

"To let the batteries charge with the excess power generation."

"That would've taken far too long."

She looked at him. "You pulled a ridiculous amount of energy out of all the storage systems."

"To get just barely over one and a half percent charge, assuming the charge meters aren't over-reporting at below five percent. There's a good chance they are."

Looking back at the numbers, and processing that claim, she frowned. Especially as the output she was looking at showed a continued heavy drain on things even if storage was refilling. Slowly. "How far did you charge them up to?"

"Seventy-six percent, to provide a buffer in case the two-thirds wasn't enough."

"...how?"

He gave her another look. "The ten of us with the tailed beast collection nodes have insane amounts of mana available, especially before it gets converted to chakra, and as we adapt the amount goes up. There's a reason the tailed beasts were considered to be inexhaustible. Yoko and I are at the top of the pile due to our connection and because I was the first converted jinchuriki and have had the most time to adapt."

That made a lot of sense...and implied that she was the weakest because she was the last one to get a tailed beast collection node. Not that being the least powerful of the top ten powerhouses on the planet was a problem for her. At the same time, the implications behind the amount of energy Naruto and Yoko had pumped into the batteries caused her to shiver. No living thing could be that powerful, could they?

Orochi was surprised at how much of an inconvenience carrying a child was. At this point she could admit that she'd not have done well in Oto's various bases, and especially not dealing with Oto's various idiots. Tsunade was a godsend in various ways, and Ruri was loving the various medic-nin lessons. In the latter case there'd been some grumbling about not having idiots to experiment on, but she seemed to have adapted.

There was a very good chance that bandits were going to have a hard time when the girl was cleared for out of the village missions though.

"It's nice being married to the world's premier medic," Orochi commented after Tsunade had helped soothe some cramps.

"Too bad you aren't," Tsunade commented. "I'm third on the list at best these days, possibly fourth."

"I know you claim that Uzushio has come up with incredible treatments, but that surely doesn't exceed your own skills and experience?"

She snorted at that. "Naruto alone has exceeded me handily, and Hinata isn't far behind him."

"At his age?"

"He personally regrew Sasori's body and provided information on two different aging-reversing treatments as accidental discoveries while working on making seals to improve the quality of Uzushio's shinobi through what turns out to be genetic manipulation. One of those treatments specifically allows regrown organs and limbs to be 'age-matched' to the rest of the body, which he seems to have used on Sasori to ensure that his cells are the age his body appears to be. The only reason he hasn't tried cloning anyone is not seeing a need. Well, I think he offered that as a possible solution to Isaribi, but she declined due to not wanting to take the chance of it failing and I have no clue how he planned on transferring her to the clone."

"Presumably the same way he moved Shinnō into a sow. One session with Ruri and he killed himself though, so we won't be asking him any questions."

"...a sow?"

"Yes, and then sold it to me. I'd made the decision to see if any piglets were more intelligent with a human soul in their mother, but he didn't cooperate. It was quite annoying at the time, but the price was fair for what little use I got out of it."

"That's...what?"

"My assumption is that the rinnegan was involved, as Nagato mentioned a couple of things about that, but there's precious little written down about what those eyes can actually do."

"But...no, you obviously don't have answers. I'll have to see if I can get some time to talk to Naruto or Yoko about it."

Yoko frowned as she brought up the control systems for the other continent's shrine security after putting a 'do not enter' rope up on the entrance. She and Naruto hadn't fully tested a couple of things when building the shrine out, but they were going to be tested now. The batteries had recovered over the past couple of weeks, meaning that there was plenty of energy available, so she powered up the spell processors.

The system ran a number of checks for her, running scanning spells through the spell processors as both a check of the processors and the two fence boundaries. Comparison to other sensor feeds were used to confirm the accuracy of the scan, and everything came up good. Nodding, she activated the next stage and felt the energy as shield walls formed at both fence boundaries. These were calibrated to allow air and rain through, but not much more. Another set to form a domed 'lid' on each set of walls followed, in case anyone tried to come in from above.

These went into the ground, but deliberately not deep enough to fully protect the cave system. If something went wrong then that could serve as a backdoor to regain access without needing to overpower the shields. Hopefully that wouldn't be necessary, but it was an option anyway. She left a clone behind just in case before heading out to check on things, confirming no gap between the domes and walls and that she could leave the shrine but not re-enter normally. Channeling light chakra caused the shields to allow her to pass again.

It wasn't the security level they'd prefer, not having set up a proper authorization system yet due to not having a permanent priest or priestess presence, but it was more than sufficient for closing the shrine temporarily. Enough information had been provided to the locals for them to process things, and the regular visits to answer questions already provided in the written materials were cutting into the moon construction. When that was done she would reopen things and see what else had come up with the locals.

Hiraishin brought her back to Shrine Island, and she avoided groaning as she considered the other reason for taking a break from the moon construction. More shrines needed to be set up, and nobody else was currently good enough with the seals to do the initial setups.

...and she still wasn't sure if she wanted to go to the effort of setting up a Tsukuyomi shrine on the moon when they got to that point.

A stared up at the moon-in-progress, contemplating the absurdity of it. The night the previous moon had imploded had changed the way anyone with a brain viewed the thing, but Uzushio's distributed information on the beneficial effects of a moon made it obvious that it was important to have one. It seemed likely that the replacement was also going to be far stronger than the old one had been, given that the old one had apparently been formed from rock gathering and then hollowed out over centuries.

They'd need to reevaluate the claim that the planned lightning cannon would be able to 'blow up the moon'. Assuming they built it at all, given how quickly Uzushio was making the rest of the planet look like they weren't even trying these days. By the time the thing was constructed it would be obsolete, if it wasn't already anyway.

"I've got the list of genin for the exams," C said as he walked up. "Six failed to pass their physicals."

"Major injuries or lack of training?" A questioned, honestly curious.

"Lack of birth control."

"...on six genin kunoichi at the same time?"

"Honestly, we're surprised it wasn't seven."

"Oh. Should've realized it would be that group. Lucky bastard." Pausing, he flinched. "Well, he was lucky. Now he gets to deal with a whole pile of kids at once."

"With any luck his bloodline will continue in at least one of the children."

"If we're lucky it'll continue in at least three of them."

"I suppose. Would you like to review the rest of the genin tonight or take care of it in the morning?"

"Let's head back to my office so I can get it out of the way."

Tsunade scowled at Jiraiya's drink, but stuck with her juice. "The rinnegan is crazier than I thought."

"Orochi said she finally mentioned the pig to you," Jiraiya noted.

"Yes, though Naruto claims he's not made any other attempts to stick a soul into another vessel beyond the pig. Not enough good subjects for it, or so he claimed."

"It would be incredibly situational and have the potential to create who knows what kinds of problems."

"True."

"So why are you skipping alcohol?"

"Orochi made me promise to not drink alcohol while I was forcing her not to."

"Huh. Where is she, anyway? I half expected her to join us."

"She's at a gathering of Ruri's friends in Uzushio and hoping to pick up a couple of books she was told about. Assuming they'll sell her copies, anyway. Some of the medical research that she isn't cleared for access to Konoha's hospital library for."

"Ah. How have her mood swings been?"

"I was surprised at how few she was having and gave her a deeper checkup. Something about her pregnancy is moderating her emotions through her connection to the summoning chipmunks, though Katsuyu thinks that it's probably either accidental or a side effect of their sage training. The big exception is when someone threatens Ruri."

He winced. "I heard about that, and the farmhouse that the idiot landed in."

"No, that was my doing. We're still examining the poor sod that Orochi gave permanent menstrual cramps. How she did that to him is baffling."

"...permanent menstrual cramps?"

She nodded. "Yep. Granted, she castrated him in the process, but she didn't give him a womb. The chakra constructs involved are fascinating, but she couldn't describe what she'd done either. Natural energy is involved though, so some kind of unconscious sage trick is likely."

He grimaced at that, though with his own sage skills could probably clear it out of himself if he was ever hit by something similar.

Shisui had volunteered to handle Uzushio's genin this exam cycle, given that Naruto was obviously quite busy and had previously handled Konoha's. That only two of Uzushio's genin had made it to the finals was a bit of a surprise to many, though only if they hadn't paid attention to see that only four had entered the exam in the first place. Losing two genin to poor preliminary matchups was honestly not bad, and both of them had lost to Konoha genin.

Having the flying exam island automate things had generally kept the quality of the exam high enough to not cause problems despite a minor village officially running things, though the simplicity of the second stage had been somewhat expected and most villages had only sent a few genin. Konoha had been the exception, but had pulled heavily on the satellite village genin instead of the main village. They'd done surprisingly well, in part to the secret seals Naruto had put in all the bunk areas to boost chakra capacity.

"Pity that Naruto didn't join us," Kurotsuchi commented as she sat down. "I'd been hoping to get his view on the status of the moon construction."

"He keeps needing to worry about interruptions," Shisui answered. "Mostly diplomatic complaints, as several nations are very annoyed that he's doing this unilaterally despite his previous statements."

"I know that much, but he's not put out an estimated completion update in a while."

"My assumption is that he gave up on that given how much he has to deal with every time he reaches a stopping point."

"Probably not a surprise, I suppose."

The single day of final matches started not long after, and had no surprises at all. Just straight-up one-on-one fighting all day. Then again, not everyone could use Uzushio's systems to their full extent, so sticking to what you knew you could manage was probably the safest option.

Hinata stared at the domed device sitting on a platform in the training ground. "I see that it has a spell processor in it, so I assume this casts a spell for you. But it doesn't look like any of the shield generator setups we've deployed."

Wame nodded, and started adjusting the controls. "This contains one of my spells and is intended for long-range viewing."

"Oh. What kind of range does it get?"

The girl just grinned, as did Odoroki off to the side, before activating the device. A spell was obviously cast into the air over the device, split into two pieces. One piece spread out quite a bit well above their heads while a smaller piece appeared over the device itself. The latter took a moment to settle, but when it did it was showing a very good image of the moon construction in progress.

Hinata frowned after a moment, but thought of something that had come up recently. "Okay, that's a bit of a security headache if it becomes more common, though probably not a major one once the construction completes. Line of sight only?"

"Line of sight from about a kilometer up with these settings," Wame explained. "Though the center of the receiving field can be adjusted. Much further than the moon and I can't compensate well enough for atmospheric interference though, which means it's hard to look at other planets."

"Ah, but what if we scale it up and stick it in orbit? There's no atmosphere to interfere with things there." Odoroki and Wame both gave her a look at that, and she shrugged. "The technology division was asked by some scientists about possibly sticking a telescope in orbit to be outside of the atmosphere. If this will work for that then it'll be easier to build than the giant lens that would be needed for the current half-formed plans, and you've already got a spell processor version of it. How difficult do you think it would be to feed the data back into the computers instead of displaying it?"

Wame was obviously a bit shocked, but Odoroki spoke up. "She already figured that out, since she thought that sticking one on top of the island's mountain peak would be a good way to be able to observe everything in the area."

Okay, that was a pretty good idea too. "Then we just need to figure out if this can be scaled up and how to build the systems to control a telescope in orbit. We're actually working on the latter already, but Naruto hasn't had time to swoop in and drop something ten times better than our current plans on us lately."

It would take Wame nearly half an hour to recover properly, though mentioning how much money she was likely to get for the spell for security and scientific purposes combined had probably been poorly timed.

The second third of the moon's diameter had taken around as long as the core had to assemble, though had quite a bit of 'empty space' included. A lot of that could be used as storage space, and there were a lot of provisions for fuel and water storage in particular. At the moment everything other than the fuel storage was still empty of everything, atmosphere included, but that layer was now done and the generators in it were on standby for powering the moon. If needed, anyway, because the taps to the planet were still active and providing plenty of spare energy for now.

With all of that in place, and all measurements and computer checks returning as expected, they could move on to the outer third. This was going to go faster at first due to everything being pre-constructed and assembled already, just needing to be brought in...and then it was going to slow down significantly once the technology side of things was completed. The process of filling in the areas for the forests would follow, as well as creating a breathable atmosphere and getting water into the tanks. Once all of that was handled, then the growing of the forests would commence.

But all of that would begin in a month or so. Hinata and Ino had decided that they were going on a family vacation for a month. Yoko had been invited, but had declined due to having shrine business to worry about. She also wasn't interested in the activities planned by the girls. Naruto hadn't even checked where they were going, and was thus slightly surprised to be dragged off to the West.

"There's supposed to be a beautiful lake out here that we can camp at for a couple of weeks," Hinata explained as they flew through the air. "Far enough away from all settlements to keep anyone from bothering us."

"The bean-shaped one or the one with a spring forming a waterfall?" Naruto questioned.

"...the former, as the latter is regularly visited by travelers. Did you already map out the entire continent?"

"Of course not." The girls gave him looks of disbelief. "I mapped out the entire planet, and when the moon is done it'll keep track of things in a more automated fashion."

"Oh."

"I wonder if the moon could cast the telescope project spell," Ino mused. "If you could put the collection array around the entire thing then you'd probably get amazing images..."

He looked over at Hinata, who'd gone wide-eyed. "I don't think she'd considered that. Telescope project spell?"

"Wame made a spell to examine the moon before you announced to the world that you were building a replacement and Hinata realized it could be used instead of a lens and camera for a telescope."

"Ah. And the girl has probably seen a lot of things I didn't want to show the world about the construction process as a result."

"Probably. The Tome group has spent more time working on that than anyone else has."

"I'll need to check with them. They probably didn't want to bother me in the middle of a large project and I've not kept up with the details of anything not flagged as urgent due to how many clones I've been running in orbit."

"...that you're running enough clones in orbit to be unable to keep up with examining all the paperwork might give some people heart attacks."

"The moon is big. Anyone in the know is probably already having heart attacks at the pace of construction.'

Kakuzu swore as pulses of chakra flowed from the collapsed mountain. Apparently his work to contain Jashin hadn't been as solid as he'd hoped. It was going to be difficult to get down there to see what the problem was though, and there was no sign that the trapped man was currently making any headway in escaping.

Digging out his notes, he started going over what he'd done with the seals. That definitely wasn't a strong point for him, and he'd probably made a stupid mistake. Hopefully he could figure out how to fix it before he had to fight the would-be god again. Unlikely, unfortunately, as the problem was almost certainly in the execution and not the planning and he couldn't just wander down to check on that.

He'd been at it for two hours when he realized that someone was approaching. Turning to look, he saw three animal-featured figures flying towards him, one of them obviously having dropped a stealth technique of some kind to make them noticeable on approach. They landed nearby, and the familiar-looking blond young man stepped forward.

"You seal something down there and now it's trying to escape?" the young man asked.

"Yes," Kakuzu admitted. "A would-be god that refuses to die."

"Ah. Annoying. And you're close enough to where we want to camp for a bit to be distracting. Does the would-be god have a name?"

"Jashin."

"Ugh, him. Didn't realize he existed and wasn't just a fiction." The young man looked at his female companions, who both nodded. "Well, I'll just pop down and see if I can either take care of him or fix your seals."

"That isn't likely to be trivial with everything I set up to stop him."

"I doubt you did anything that can do more than slow me down slightly."

Watching the young man take to the air again before diving down and using an obvious underground movement technique had Kakuzu sighing. "I hope he's strong enough for a fight with someone who made a good effort on immortality."

"He's possibly immortal himself," the blond young woman with dog ears commented. "Or at least long-enough lived to possibly not matter."

"...really?"

"Yep. We all are."

"How'd you manage that?"

"Bound bits of tailed beasts to us," the blue-haired young woman replied, and he suddenly realized who she was. And who the young man was.

Gulping, he turned back to the former mountain. "Well, I suppose if anyone can take on Jashin it's him."

Three quarters of an hour later the chakra pulses intensified, and then ten minutes later they stopped. An hour after that the young man returned, looking annoyed. "That asshole gave me a whopping headache, but he's dead now."

"You killed him?"

"I did to him what Nagato did to Hidan, but Nagato didn't have to deal with all the 'collected souls' passing through him. Or attempts to stab him in return for the duration of things, but some reinforced stone bindings took care of that. Then I had to properly dismantle your seals so they wouldn't cause problems with nothing to contain, and fix structural problems so that there isn't a massive collapse in a couple of years. Oh, and I noticed that your 'shrine' is incredibly substandard even by civilian standards. I think we've gotten reports about it being a fake all the way back in Uzushio."

"...the one set of visitors I've had before you reported that the shrine was a fake?"

The young man shrugged. "Apparently. Was it just a cover for containing the asshole?"

"Yes."

"Then I guess you can dismantle it at your leisure. Or abandon it. Don't really care, since I'm supposed to be on vacation."

"We knew something would come up," the blue-haired young woman commented. "This probably won't be the only thing, but it means that we're not waiting for the first problem to crop up."

"I suppose." The young man half-bowed. "Have a nice day, Kakuzu."

Watching the three fly off, likely to the lake nearby, had him shivering. Though having Jashin finally dealt with was nice, that very much told him that going back to the Elemental Nations was a bad idea.

Kurotsuchi looked over the report on the death of the Daimyo and his family, frowning. Over the course of two weeks the man's entire family had died, and there was no obvious cause. Massive medical issues in every last one of them, but no signs of outright attack or poison. There wasn't even enough to point at shinobi action at the moment. Sighing, she put the report down and picked up the phone. It took a moment to dial the correct number, and it didn't take long to be answered.

"Uzushio intelligence division," came an unfamiliar voice. "What does Iwa need today?"

"The Earth Daimyo's family appears to have been the target of an attack, but there isn't enough evidence to point at the cause."

"Ah. We'd wondered when you'd call about that. They all ate improperly-prepared food."

"...that sounds like they were poisoned."

"Not poison. Someone prepared items with medical chakra without the ability to make the food safe. Ulcers and other problems become a major concern when that happens."

A quick scan of things showed that all of the deceased had severe ulcers as part of things. "Huh. So was it one of my people or one of your people? Because I don't think anyone else is preparing food in that way."

"One of your runaways that didn't get all the lessons and wanted to get some of the money from the chakra-infused food."

"Oh great. Now I have to send someone to hunt them down."

"Nah, they died last week thanks to eating their own food. That's how we figured out what went wrong, our people found their corpse and identified the cause of death. Too late to do much about the Daimyo himself when he wasn't willing to complain about the stomach pains."

"He would tough that out, but this creates a massive headache for the Land of Earth. Nobles are going to practically go to war over who gets to take over."

"Back who you want and flip the previous 'nothing is done without the approval of the Daimyo' around to 'the Daimyo serves at your whim'."

She scoffed. "We don't want to be in charge of the civilians. Any reason you didn't warn us of things as soon as you knew?"

"Our agreements state that we'll warn you when there's time to act on the information by the time we find out. The last death in your Daimyo's family was approximately six hours after we recovered the corpse of the runaway and it took us twelve hours to process it."

"I see. Far too late to do anything about it. Thank you for the information anyway, I'm sure you'll send a bill for services rendered."

"Nah, just an acknowledgement and a full copy of the report on our end. You're entitled to that for anything affecting the Land of Earth's government."

"Thank you."

"Speaking of things we should inform you of though, please tell your grandfather to put better safeties in place on his side projects. He's liable to get himself killed with some of what he's playing with."

...she'd been told he wasn't playing with anything, which annoyed her. "I'll have a chat with him later today, thank you."

"Not a problem. Have a nice day, or as nice as it can be under the circumstances."