A/N: Kind of a timeskippy chapter because there's like a year gap between important events. And I also ended up having a lot of fun with the secret base.

kukukuku~

"So," I said, sitting atop a sealed stone arch, "how does it look?" I took a bite from my chocolate bar.

"It looks really complicated," Naruto said, squinting. I smiled, though. It looked like he was at least following it somewhat, which was good.

"You really fucking want a space-time ninjutsu, don't you?" Kurama noted.

I huffed. "Excuse you. I'm sitting on a space-time ninjutsu. I want to know if it's a functional space-time ninjutsu." I looked at Ai and Tenten expectantly. "Well?"

Ai shrugged. "As far as I can tell, it'll work. You might want to check with your eyes first, though."

I nodded and pulled down my sunglasses. I saw only a few seconds into the future, so the drain was relatively minor; I lost maybe thirty minutes off my day at most. "Right, looks good. Wanna see it?"

"Don't you need to make a second one first?" Tenten asked me.

I grinned lightly. "Well of course I made another one already. I'm like a celebrity chef that way. Keep your arms and legs away from the portal until it's fully formed, unless you want to lose them." I took another bite from my chocolate and swung my legs up away from the portal and sent a command to the two demon sage cores embedded in each arch. I didn't see the safety illusion or portal form from my vantage point, but I did notice the shadow fall over Ai, Tenten, Naruto, and Kurama from how the sunlight was now somewhere miles away. I swung my legs back down once it was safe, using the momentum to swing myself through the portal and, with an application of chakra threads, onto the wall that was where I was sitting on the other side. It was pretty surreal, to be honest. Cool, though.

"Come on in, the water's fine!" I shouted from literal miles away. Or I guess I should maybe use kilometers...

"Why is it so dark?" Tenten asked.

I dropped to the ground. "It's a me-made cave. Wanna see?" I snapped my fingers and activated the light seal I'd placed above the arch.

"It's pretty empty," Naruto muttered. There was in fact literally nothing in the cave, except for a few strategically-placed holes for better air flow and pillars that hopefully would prevent cave-ins.

I shrugged and made a sort of picture frame with my hands, looking at the cave. "You try remotely making an artificial cave in a mountain several kilometers away. Now that I can physically go here I'll hopefully be able to refurbish this place better. Just gotta find a good place to put the gateway arch."

"How did you even find this place?" Ai asked.

"Remote-controlled body killed some bandits. Well, not remote-controlled but certainly not physically me. On the other side of the portal is an abandoned mine they were using as a hideout. It's secluded enough that nobody's gonna find it, hopefully. And once my base is more set up I'll just hide the front entrance." I walked back through the portal, then closed it behind me. I lifted my palm, and the core I was using in the keystone of the arch flew into it. The arch collapsed back into the earth. "I think maybe I'll use my closet for the gate, actually."

kukukuku~

Despite the absolute hell of boredom school was, the next few months passed by surprisingly fast. And even school wasn't really all that bad because I could telepathically communicate with Neji, Tenten, Kurama, Hinata through Kurama, Usagi, Gaara, and Karura. And even if they were all somehow busy, I could split myself without actually manifesting physically as Chikage and talk to myself without being crazy! Well, crazier...

Speaking of Chikage, we unfortunately couldn't figure out a way for her to physically take objects. There were a few ideas that almost came close, namely inscribing seals on her body to allow her to summon a sack or just seal stuff away in her, and then the simple idea of grabbing something from the shadows and trying to move it around, but unfortunately didn't cut it. The sack theoretically worked fine, but as it turns out, summoning makes a lot of chakra "noise" that a well-trained sensor can easily detect, and Danzō took full advantage of that fact. Storage was fine on the detection front, but Chikage had trouble melting into shadows with a physical object stored in her. She could still do it, but the part of her that had the object in it was always completely black and went either very slow outside of a shadow or kinda slow inside a shadow, especially compared to her usual near-light speed. Because we'd only have one shot, we were holding off on using it... And just grabbing stuff from the shadows was even worse, because it was exactly like sealing in terms of results except the object was outside of the shadow.

Moving on to brighter news, I used building the base to train my power. I wasn't two-tailed yet, but I was approaching Shukaku in terms of red chakra already. I also trained up my control of all the elements I had some kind of affinity for, letting me use more and even use two at a time. And yes, I remembered to practice taijutsu this time, meaning I could kick people kinda well. Even more fun, though, is the fact that I inspired other people to do some training. Namely, my friends. Except Kurama who, as he was locked in a small child, was naturally excused. Ino, Shikamaru, and Tenten joined the ranks of budding sagehood. Neji could manage a weak sage mode after a minute or so, and he managed to build up to first tail cloak without getting too bad of a fever. Naruto actually knew jutsu now. At least one of each type! With how I was giving Kurama back his yin chakra, Naruta was unknowingly getting better at using genjutsu, at least a bit. Hinata had gained some confidence and could control an entire one person's body and chakra, going so far as to somehow being able to make people use the jutsu that they knew, despite not knowing them herself. I guess there's some kind of chakra memory? That's probably what Sasori used with his puppets, actually. And Sakura... well technically she didn't do to much training, but she was super strong and I helped her learn how to not break things? I guess that counts as training...

Next topic, the secret base was awesome! It took me months to actually dig out all the rooms and stuff, then another month or so to find or make all the furniture and decorate it, but secret base! I also took to trying to do engineering after finding some broken up electronics. I probably wasn't the best at it, but with magnet release and Chikage's ability to possess objects essentially letting me scan things, I could do all kinds of cheating. So yeah, I modded a generator to be able to power it solely with magnet release, which was pretty simple, actually. Then, when I was finally able to fix up the minifridge I'd found, I got some snacks in my base. Well, I already had a pantry but I was able to have more stuff. I was hoping to actually make original stuff, though. Like maybe a magnet release-powered railgun. That would be fun. Or actually, if I could somehow make myself a 3-D printer or something like that knowing generally how that stuff works, that would also be useful. I didn't know what to do about plastic, but I at least knew how those things that you use to sand down stuff like metal or wood into particular shapes worked. Long-term goal, though...

In addition to the portal room, my base had some neat features. There was a sort of living room, which was where I put the snacks and some books. I was also trying to figure out how to hook up a TV in there, but that was probably a losing battle... There was also a theater that I was hoping I'd be able to use at some point, though I had yet to find any projector, much less one that was either usable or easy for me to repair. I mean I guess I could just genjutsu up visuals, but where's the fun in that? Okay nevermind that actually sounds really fun. I had my scrying room, which was just a fancy room I'd made with a really big crystal ball and some other stuff I could use for scrying. I made sure that that room in particular was visually impressive.

For the actually practical stuff, I had a mechanical workshop for mechanical projects, a fuinjutsu workshop near it for fuinjutsu projects, a poison/medical room for take a wild guess, and a gigantic storage room for materials. The mechanical workshop was really only just a table with scrap metal and reference books on it so far, but I was hopeful! The fuinjutsu room looked a little more impressive. It had shelves of scrolls on the walls, and a desk with a buttload of ink bottles on it. I ended up doing a lot of work there, because it turned out I could sell a bunch of basic paper bombs for a lot of money through my dad. Don't you just love it when your dad helps you sell a whole demolition team's worth of real-ass bombs? And then the storage room was just for storing the rest of the junk I had, plus the ores and stuff I managed to find and promised myself to mess around with someday.

The poison/medical room... was a work in progress. I mean, I kinda had some of the poison stuff going. The half of the room I had for poison was well-ventilated and separated from the other half with a glass barrier. Turns out Chikage just... had sand powers because I ate enough Shukaku. I knew I had magnet release, but I didn't actually expect that I'd have been able to generate pure silica sand. Seriously, how does earth jutsu work? And my scrying room was useful for figuring out exactly what to do with that to make nice, clear glass from that. Turns out you have to get sand surprisingly hot to make glass, but I made do by using a demon sage core for some extra chakra. I also used my glass magic to make all that mad sciencey glass paraphernalia you always see in mad science labs, using an Orochimaru base I could scry for reference.

Side note: I also ended up selling glass figurines and stuff because wouldn't you know it, the ability to make high-quality glass through supernatural powers makes for really pricey glass stuff, especially after I figured out how to alter the sand slightly to make colored glass. Seriously, that dragon was just... I was almost tempted to keep it because it was so beautiful, but I made so much from it. And then I realized I could make more. My base became so awesome a week or so of no sleep after that. I also jammed a bunch of glass in a scroll, because first off having a scroll that launches shards of glass at whoever you point it at like a literal glass cannon is a pretty good weapon and second off having shards of glass you can control with your mind with you at all times is a pretty good weapon.

Where was I? Oh, right. Deadly poison. I managed to work out a recipe for a decently good and fast-acting death poison with some help from Anko using the flora of the mountain range. It was a strangely convenient mountain range for poisoning. What a coincidence. I also made a bit of a garden for the ingredients that I could take from so I didn't have to go searching for more ingredients. I put that stuff in some Skyrim-looking potion bottles (made from glass, of course) so that I could just take a few of with me. I was hoping to use those with senbon for some sneaky kills. I also ingested tiiiiiiiiny amounts of the stuff (At large enough gaps, of course. I'm a mad scientist in training, not an idiot.) to try and build up my poison resistance, at least to my own stock. As for the medical side, well... I had a first aid kit and a few cruddy stone beds with stabilizing seals and chakra reservoirs attached to demon sage cores that would hopefully do more good than harm to anyone placed on the beds. I'm not Tsunade, that's good enough for me. The scalpels I put in there were really more for show and using my ferrokinetic powers on in the case of a home intruder. Seriously, why is Shukaku actually the most overpowered bijū aside from the Jūbi? Not that I'm complaining, of course.

I also had a bit of an exercise room made. Really, it was mostly just a track for jogging, a bunch of rocks with various weights to pick up and throw around, and a rock wall. And I found a secluded forest clearing far enough away from my base that I could hopefully use it to test bombs without worrying about the shockwaves damaging my base, at least if I kept them small enough. And it looked like it would be a pretty good training ground. I mean, I had another idea for the bomb range and training ground, but that'd do for now. I didn't exactly have enough demon sage cores to float a giant platform yet...

And of course, I wasn't the only one there. I mean, technically I was, but turns out Usagi can split themselves pretty much infinitely, so long as there are enough demon sage cores. I mean, there was still an "original" Usagi that was still carrying out their original mission and was more intelligent than the copies, but Usagi's intelligence had ended up filling all the demon sage cores that I wasn't directly using, making a bunch of hive-minded servants made of rock for me that populated my base. We were originally almost the same personality-wise, but it seemed like Usagi grew slightly... off from me. For one, the politeness wasn't an act anymore. To be honest, that was kind of disturbing, especially coupled with how I was ordering around these versions of me who were disturbingly polite. Still, they were useful because, as I said, a bunch of hive-minded servants. They fetched stuff for me.

kukukuku~

I admired a glass "gem" Chikage had just made. "Do we even need a 3-D printer?" I asked, tossing it up lightly. "This is some dang good glass, not to mention the fact that we can control it. Sure, we may want to also work on metal, but that shouldn't be too much of a step up from metal when we get more power, though we probably can't just conjure up more iron."

She stopped fiddling with the guitar she'd made from her chakra body. "Sounds legit," she agreed, then started making sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball. Her throat glowed and she spat up a ball of molten glass. "I am the 3-D printer." I still had no idea how magnet release could be used to control molten glass, but to be fair it could be used on regular sand, which isn't magnetic in the slightest.

"Hey, I have an idea," I said as I watched her mold the glass into the rough shape of a kunai, then let it start cooling so we could clean it up later. Glass blades, though a little fragile, are super sharp if you do 'em right. "You up for another blade?"

"Hit me with it." I sent my idea to her telepathically. What, you thought I was just going to tell you? She grinned and spat out another glob. I thought for a moment about how spitting molten glass would probably be a pretty good ninjutsu by itself, though that was a thought for later. Chikage waved her hands over the glob of molten glass, elongating it. The blade was longer than a kunai, but much thinner. It was intentionally weak, though not enough to fail to stab through someone. The blade didn't have a handle yet, that'd come later... "Let's hope this idea actually works, 'cause we're basically grasping at straws here."

kukukuku~

Chikage

Uchiha Shisui paused on his walk home. He surveyed the dark street and placed a hand on his blade. Something was following him. He noticed something in the shadows, and activated his Sharingan. "Who's there?" he asked. He saw an outline in the shadows.

"Uchiha Shisui," the shadow said. I bet you can tell by now just who that shadow is. "Your life is in danger."

He raised an eyebrow. "And I'm supposed to trust the shadow demon that's stalking me?"

I pushed a dagger out of my shadow, hilt first. "This is for you." I slowly moved toward him until he cautiously grabbed it.

"The blade is made of glass. What use is a glass dagger?"

"The Thorn of Spite. It was made to kill one man who is better off dead, and is sufficient for that purpose." The first of the enchantments I'd sealed onto the dagger activated, transcribing a storage seal onto his skin. The dagger automatically entered, and the seal hid itself. "It will show itself in the event your eyes fail you. You will know who you must kill then." Unencumbered of the dagger, I was able to move far away in an instant.

And then I came back. "Just to be clear, the dagger isn't for suicide."

He snorted. "Yeah, I figured." I disappeared again. He stared at his palm. "The hell was that?"