The Groundhog Exam
Chapter Fifty-Six

by Lionheart

I I I

Seeing via a quick glance that her leader wasn't going to defend her, the red haired Sound maiden assumed a battle stance and brought her flute up, glaring at Naruto. "Don't come any closer! You aren't going to break ME, you (Censored) (Censored), (HOO boy is this really Censored!)!"

The next thing Tayuya knew, the boy had Body Switched for her flute. In a moment, he had her immobilized from a Temporary Paralysis technique shot at point blank range, and followed that up with a shot of his hands to her temples, accompanied by a surge of the most amazing memories.

"What was that last technique you used?" Orochimaru asked curiously.

"(Censored)." Tayuya was bending over, holding her temples and shaking her head over the recent input.

Naruto held up an admonishing finger. "Now, Tayuya-chan, remember the First Rule."

"Sorry!" the girl fell on her knees before him, hands help up, asking for an apology, actions that caused the rest of the Sound ninja to gape at her.

Naruto spoke nonchalantly over his shoulder to Orochimaru and lied, "Time Dilation Illusion based on the Kaleidoscope Sharingan's ability to trap victims for what subjectively feels like days."

While Naruto HAD such an illusion, what he'd really done was restore the redhead's memories of previous resets.

"Hmm, interesting," The Snake Sannin grinned, then directed a sharp look to Tayuya, who was still on her knees begging forgiveness. "And what is the First Rule?"

"Naughty girls who use filthy words do not get any treats," Tayuya recited automatically, without raising her head or changing her position of apology.

"Oh? Kukuku," the sannin chuckled, amused.

Smiling, Naruto bent over to tell Tayuya, "Well, I guess I could forgive the one slip, if it was a nice girl asking, that is."

The kunoichi instantly bowed in gratitude, then sprang up and away, using an Earth Style Wall to create a private changing area, which she landed in, and her hat and severely unflattering shirt came flying out moments later.

"Nice girl?" Orochimaru questioned.

Naruto shrugged and tossed a package in, and Tayuya emerged a moment later wearing it. Raising a finger, she quoted, "Nice girls use pretty language, and take care to look their best."

The rest of the Sound ninja's jaws dropped open, looking at her.

The former tomboy, who'd dressed like she'd robbed sackfuls of old clothes taken out of the dumpster of an all-boys orphanage, simply gleamed. She was in brightly colored Chinese style clothes of green and gold, complimenting her hair nicely, which had itself undergone a massive change from limp, dreadful stuff like seaweed plastered to her head, to an elaborate coiffeur, standing up with tinkling ornaments before handing back down in a lovely drape across her shoulderblades. Makeup and grooming were also present, having been applied by jutsu in seconds after her brief but thorough water jutsu bath.

She looked amazing, and the transformation was so thorough that Kidoumaru raised his hands and channeled chakra into an illusion negation technique.

To their shocked disbelief, there was no change.

Tayuya remained looking like a princess, instead of an orphaned street rat, as she calmly walked over and presented her hand to Naruto.

Her team gaped in amazement over how thoroughly she'd been broken.

"Those must be some treats," Jiroubou muttered.

"You have no idea," the girl returned with a brilliant courtly smile, causing eyes to bug out over the behavioral switch.

"Now," Orochimaru grinned menacingly. "What shall we talk about?"

I I I

The real Tayuya had Body Flickered out of her private changing area during the midst of all those washing and grooming jutsus meant to make her look nice, so the chakra trace of her disappearance was lost in the haze. She'd also created a Shadow Clone to leave behind.

The Naruto who'd encountered the Snake Sannin's group was already a clone, so did not have to plan so elaborate an escape.

The clones would then remain to engage the invaders in conversation. It was amazing what you could learn from even guarded enemies that way, and with Tayuya to expand on and expound the points raised, they were learning a lot, and quickly, about the inner operations of Orochimaru's organization.

Not having used the Cursed Seal Removal technique in front of him, the pale man was slightly less murderous, but only slightly. Their clones would usually end up dying before an hour had passed.

Naruto was still working on how to trick or wheedle a jutsu or two out of the Legendary Missing Ninja or his entourage, besides Tayuya, of course, who was already eagerly sharing her prized techniques with the clan. Stripped of all of her stage magic and nonessential trappings, what she had was a way to create puppets out of pure chakra, formed however she wished, and control them at a distance and indirectly through coded musical notes.

It was a devastating technique.

I I I

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

Kiba was shaking his head. "I never thought I'd see the day when Gai and Lee were prizes in a chick fight."

Naruto grudgingly nodded. "Yeah. I gotta admit I never thought that we'd be hearing that mantra in a girl's voice."

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

I I I

Hinata had finally gotten the Wood bloodline.

She'd only died six times during the experiments to find a way to activate it safely.

The regular process of bloodline theft was safe, if you had sufficient skill (which they did, being experts by this point). But the extra stuff needed to take that additional step and grab it out of unliving tissue stripped all of that safety away, and it became a very perilous procedure no matter your skill.

Still, as gruesome as that was, and as hard for Naruto to bear (he'd also gotten the Wood bloodline, and had only had to die four times before they'd discovered a method that gave it to him safely), having the Wood bloodline at last was an event well worth celebrating.

So they did.

They'd gained one of the most prized bloodlines ever, adding it on top of their kyubi-bestowed one, and though it was difficult (actually deadly) to perform Orochimaru's post-mortem bloodline theft, it was possible.

The process was, by now, well understood by all in Clan Kitsune. The trouble came from the details, all of the fine tuning to get it just exactly right, made worse that all of the final work was specific to each person.

Orochimaru would just blanket a large group and hope that one of them lived, so he could study that success and maybe eventually learn something that could make it safer. But Kitsune Clan didn't have that luxury. They wanted, no needed, the process to always work on specific people.

Namely themselves. No other subjects were required.

In order to grant someone Wood techniques, they had to put them through a gruesome experimental process to get it right. There were so many variables that everyone died the first few times they gave the bloodline to them. For a normal clan that would be a complete failure of a technique, but by using the resets and learning from each failed attempt, they could fine tune details until they eventually got a process that worked for one person.

Then they had to start all over to get a process that worked for someone else. What worked on Naruto, to grant him the valuable bloodline, did not for anyone else. The same for the specifics of Hinata's process not being a proper fit for anyone else.

They only had to get it to work once per person before they could repeat it precisely to grant the bloodline to them safely, every time. But each person had to go through the gruesome experimental stage for themselves.

They supposed that would be different if they had any identical twins to be performing this on. But, as it stood, everyone had a unique set of genetics that had to be carefully accounted for in its own particular way.

So far the record low was four deaths. A handful of others had matched their husband's record on that. The worst was nine, and Ayame didn't want to talk about it, but was very sweet about all she'd gone through to gain it.

However, initial success always got followed by testing Tsunade and Shizune put them through to verify that the new bloodline was stable and not going to degenerate on them later. They were rigorous by any standards. One could count on one of their deaths just being because of Tsunade TRYING to get the stolen bloodline to fail after a supposedly successful implant. Which, while unpleasant, no one begrudged her.

Naruto's family didn't want to find any unpleasant side effects like sterility or insanity or degeneration anywhere down the road. No Uchiha-ing for THIS Clan! They'd all much rather get those final details ironed out here, when it didn't matter so much, than have the thing fail on them years down the line when they'd thought they were free and clear.

In the end, Tsunade pronounced each process a success only once it was as stable as one to which they'd been born naturally. Of course, this was also a great deal of work, so for right now it was restricted to actual members of Clan Kitsune. Making a version that didn't account for the Kyubi's bloodline decorations would be a whole nuther set of calculations no one felt up to doing just yet (and, no one without it could, at the moment).

During this time, however, another cause for celebration was found, as Ayame earned her medical badge for having generalized Naruto's method of regeneration of Lee's chakra coils across a majority of birth defects, curing most of them.

Tsunade pronounced the process one of the greatest advances in medicine.

But it was also one of those things that would invariably be so popular they could hardly admit to owning it, to prevent wars being fought over them and their knowledge. And they couldn't share it, as the knowledge was too easily adapted into a torture technique that could permanently cripple a person.

As if to counter that, Temari announced her own happy news, demonstrating that she had discovered a way to generalize Ino's Painless Childbirth jutsu, by inventing a version that could be applied externally, without taking over the mind of the patient.

And, thus, earning her own medic status for having created a technique that could be taught to others, as it did not involve any major world-changing ninja secrets outside of the medical jutsu itself.

This doubling of official, Tsunade-approved medics in the Clan put pressure on the others to start getting their own projects done.

I I I

Kin stepped out onto the grass of Wave Country, having just crossed over the Great Naruto Bridge, and found her way to two untended graves she'd heard described.

Most people in Clan Kitsune knew each other's life stories very well by this point. Hers wasn't very interesting compared to some others, just another young kunoichi trying to make her place in a hostile world.

But Naruto?

Already the guy had been part of shaping the current ninja world, even if he didn't want to face it. Having personally fought, planned a successful move against, and ultimately participated in the destruction of one of Hidden Mist's Legendary Seven Swordsmen, was no small accomplishment!

But that wasn't what Kin was there for.

No, because buried beside that ninja legend was another body, that of a small boy no older than herself (or how old she appeared to be, these resets really caused some confusion over the topic of one's age!), and trapped within the genetic code of that buried body was the secrets of the Ice bloodline, one of the few that could argue any equality with their newly acquired Wood line.

That was what Kin was there for. She'd gotten Tsunade's approval for her medical badge if she could restore the lost Ice bloodline to their clan.

She noted absently that the big sword Zabuza once carried was missing. It'd been left there as his headstone, she was told. But it wasn't there now. Still, due to her local guides, she knew these were the right graves.

"Earth's Gaping Maw!" She called out a technique after forming the proper handseals, and the jutsu meant for moving aside enough dirt to create an instant pit trap cleared away the soil to reveal the two coffins.

Kin looked behind herself and smiled. "Alright, open them up."

Behind stood a well-sprung carriage, beyond the skill of most local artisans. She'd read about it in one of Konoha's library books, a storybook about fairy tales, to be honest, and Naruto had been kind enough to make her one.

The two wooden horses that stood in the traces, having drawn the thing here, were her own creation. They'd all begun using and experimenting with their newest bloodline as soon as they'd gotten it, and growing instant puppets was one such operation of the technique.

Wooden horses were superior to normal ones in that the puppets were both stronger and faster, and they never required any rest. So, so long as she'd left a Shadow Clone in the driver's seat to control them, Kin could (and had) traveled the journey in one night and slept through the entire trip!

There was a very comfortable bed inside that carriage.

Springing from the sides of that carriage, two wooden footmen, soldiers really, but also a specific office like butler, the 'fetch and carry' men of aristocratic households, came down and climbed down into the open pits to open the coffins therein.

Then, after doing the preparations themselves so Kin didn't have to get her hands dirty, they sprang back to the carriage, and brought down two bound men, thugs left over from Gato's organization that she'd found trying to illegally charge tolls of travelers across the bridge.

They were thugs and thieves, charging rent on a property they did not own, but also enemies of her husband, and therefore her family and herself, so Kin felt no remorse at all for what she was about to do to them.

She formed a very long series of handseals, before calling out, "Impure Resurrection technique!"

The two leftover bandits collapsed, then rose again moments later as the duo of Zabuza and Haku.

"You're a girl!" Kin observed in surprise.

"I am," Haku admitted, nodding once in confirmation.

"But you told my husband, Naruto, you were a boy!" Kin objected.

"On the road, especially without a clan's protection, it drew less attention," Zabuza's raised state volunteered. "So I ordered her to conceal her gender when around others, but to practice in private."

"Why?"

"There are uses for a mature kunoichi, infiltration and such, that require refined manners and practiced femininity. But such were of no use to us until she was of a proper age to use them. So she practiced in private, but played a boy in public to avoid attracting unwanted complications. The split improved her skills at acting, and were a further benefit on the run, confusing Hunter Ninja, and so on."

Kin thought it over a second, before shrugging and declaring, "Fair enough. You two, go down and grab your real bodies. I need the genetic data of Haku's and I promised Anko I'd bring back Zabuza's so she could experiment on him."

"Why did you raise us this way?" Zabuza asked, going to do as she'd asked.

Kin noted with a quirked eyebrow that Haku deferred to her former leader when he was taking the lead, and remained quiet in the background. "Two reasons, really. One is you are, or were, one of Mist's Seven Swordsmen, and while our clan knows one sword style, yours is another, and one we wouldn't mind having, especially if it is as great as tales say. The second is simple, I need Haku's genetic data to try to recreate her bloodline, and thought I could probably get an advantage doing that if I could question her as to specifics. If nothing else, she can teach us her techniques once we do get it copied, so we don't have to reinvent them on our own. We're already doing that last with the First Hokage, raising him to have him teach us his bloodline powers."

"Copying a bloodline out of dead tissue is impossible," Haku informed her calmly, displaying the medical knowledge Naruto said she'd shown in life.

"Not for us," Kin smugly replied, raising her arms to form a handseal and call out, "Birth of Trees!"

The giant sequoia spring forth out of the ground was proof enough, even if it only did reach about roof-height instead of its full potential growth. But her clan were still getting used to the techniques.

They had a lot of improvement yet to do.

Zabuza had reclosed the coffins and loaded them on the luggage rack, so Kin motioned them inside, while her wooden footmen reboarded the conveyance and her Shadow Clone directed the puppet horses to take the carriage back to Konoha.

"So," Kin had folded the bed out of the way, and was now using it as a bench, "Tell me about yourselves."

Zabuza hung his head. "I am roasting in Hell for my crimes."

Kin gave a pained grimace. "I meant: What were you like in life?"

"A sinner who delighted in committing crimes for which I now roast in Hell." Zabuza responded.

The former Sound girl adopted a false smile to cover her grimace. She'd forgotten how... distant and remote the subjects of this jutsu were. They didn't use it often, anymore. No real good reasons to, well, except for the First Hokage for reasons already named. Turning to the other girl, she asked, "And how about you?"

"I was a tool." Haku stated politely yet woodenly.

"She was my servant, so perfectly devoted, pure, kind and loyal that with her unblemished heart she resides in Heaven, while I burn in Hell," Zabuza mourned.

Kin winced. This looked like it was going to be a long trip.

I I I

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

"Stop!" Naruto waved his hands for silence, interrupting the argument. As he got attention refocused on him, he used his rarely employed executive power to halt the ongoing arguments. "Okay, this is how it's going to happen. We're going to judge by two criteria before any other consideration. First will be ease of access. We want our allies aware of previous memories as early into each reset as possible, and it does no good to assign someone to bring in a person they will have trouble getting to. So, by that measure, Tenten has first dibs on Lee and Gai."

"YES!!" Tenten vigorously pumped a fist, having been one of those arguing.

"Second criteria will be blocks to romance," Naruto declared, shaking his head. "It would be worthless to bring a guy in for fifty resets, only for a girl to fall in love with him and have her foxy protections eject his shelter from her mind, ruining all those memories and experiences he'd accumulated. So, judging by that measure, Tenten loses all rights to Lee, as he's her age and has already been infatuated with her."

"Aww!" The weapons mistress mourned, dropping. "But he's my closest friend outside the Clan!"

"That's exactly our problem," Anko agreed over folded arms. "Other than already being taken, you have no barriers against falling in love with Lee. So, to prevent future complications, you shouldn't be the one bringing him in."

"Exactly," Naruto agreed firmly. Then, turning to Tenten, he said, "So, if you want to bring in Gai, he's yours. We'll count the age difference and teacher-student relationship (coupled with his honor not to abuse that) as a barrier against romance, and therefore a safe bet."

The girl considered for a moment before nodding brightly. "Alright!"

"And, by the same token, Temari has access to Gaara, and we'll count their being brother and sister an excellent barrier," Naruto continued evenly.

People were nodding, coming to accept that things were being resolved fairly, if not exactly how they would've liked them to be.

"Sorry, not possible."

All eyes turned round to face the Kyubi, who'd spoken, and who elaborated as soon as she had their attention. "People can only be brought into the resets by placing them under my aegis, so to speak. And Gaara has his own demon. I may be more powerful than Shukaku, but not enough to subdue him utterly - which is what it would take to shelter his container. Sorry."

"Okay," Naruto sighed. "So no Gaara. That's bad, as I was sort of counting on him. But okay, we can deal with that. Temari can bring in Kankuro instead. He's still a strong fighter, a reasonable mind, and a good guy. I like him, and want him in the resets."

"Can do," Temari nodded agreeably, then smiled. "To tell the truth, Kankuro is going to be easier for me. We may argue, but he's sane. I've always known he'd back me in the end. Gaara would be a... struggle to trust sufficiently."

She got several nods of fervent acknowledgement of her point.

"Hana already has Kiba," Naruto plowed on. "So that's taken care of, and I'm glad to have him in."

Kiba smiled at the acceptance of the Alpha Male. It meant more than anyone outside an Inuzuka could possibly believe.

"I could bring in Shino!" Hinata volunteered.

"Sorry, not possible."

Once again, all eyes turned to Kyubi, who rolled over and lounged.

"But why not? He's trustworthy, and I like him as a friend," Hinata protested before facing her husband. "Plus, as my teammate I have easy access, and I find his bugs too icky for any romance potential."

'As if there was any chance of that,' half the clan thought aloud. Hinata was almost proverbial in her devotion to Naruto.

"Because Shino is an Aburame, and they are not one, they are many," Kyubi answered with a yawn. "The pathways you might use to tap a linkage into his mind are the same ones his clan have adapted to link to their bug symbiots. So that port is already taken, so to speak. You'd have to kill off his bug swarms to get him, and he would not take kindly to that, if he survived the trauma of their loss."

"Oh," everyone sagged, a little depressed.

He would have been a good ally to have, too! Not only for his own potential, which was great, but for the fat that it could have brought Team 8 complete into the resets, dropping awkward moments significantly.

Team Gai had a similar hangup. Where soon they hoped to have Gai himself, plus Lee, and they had already had Tenten since practically the start of the clan, Neji was just out of the question. No one liked or trusted him, least of all his cousin Hinata.

Neji went out of his way to not be a likable person.

Naruto started scratching his head. "Well, Ayame can bring in her dad, at least."

I I I

Author's Notes:

Some of that 'not everything goes their way' sort of luck is striking right now, in that people whom I have nothing against, and would be really useful (like Shino and Gaara) are being blocked for no faults of their own.

Well, I guess Gaara is still a psychopath.

A big part of why I didn't let them have the Hokage was, by that point, if they got him there would literally be no more challenges to face.

Already I am having a hard time. Wrapping this up is so different to starting it! At first I was afire with ideas and possibilities! Now it's a totally different style of writing, as instead of plunging headlong into 'Wow! Look what I can do with THIS!' I am being forced to bring everything quietly to a close, wrap up hanging threads, tie up plotlines, and start putting away all of my toys.

Although the idea of a sequel is starting to be more and more attractive to me. I wonder why?