AN: INFO DUMP. It might require a bit of suspension of belief, but then again – we're talking about a series where they take pre-teens and throw them at evil ninja cats. « best example I have, yikes.
I loved the hell out of the reviews from the last few chapters. I especially appreciate those that are reviewing regularly, and I tend to respond to the interesting questions when it won't spoil anything. Naruto/Kurenai just can't happen, by the way – can't make a lick of sense of it in this story, sorry.
Chapter 6
««««««««»»»»»»»»
His elation at the sudden promotion and excuse to visit Uzushiogakure was tempered by the knowledge that the hokage obviously knew more than he gave the man credit for. He still wasn't sure how that would've come to be.
He tried to ignore the anticipation stirring in his gut as he went to bed that night, but he was only resigning himself to visions. Again. This time, all he saw were two blurry individuals – a blond man and a red-headed woman – gazing over scrawls of fuinjutsu and scratching their heads.
That was more to it than that, though. They were there.
That was all he could really call it, anyway. Every night in the past week, his dreams were centered around a particular place – he hoped it was in Uzushio, but he couldn't even tell if it was inside or outside – where a massive, pulsing seal matri- it was different this time. It was more complex, bigger, alive. It was always different, in these dreams. The blond man placed his hand on the seal's center, it pulsed angrily, a thick blue mist burst from the rows of ink decorating the floor, and he rose pleasantly surprised.
The vision ended, and he woke up with a groan.
Sleep sucked, and it wasn't even worth it. All he could remember were glimpses.
«««»»»
For someone that had always been lazy and more than a bit aimless, he was oddly driven for the trip.
Naruto visited training ground thirteen to let the rest of the team know he was off on a mission. There wasn't even a grumble about it, perhaps too surprised by the fact he was suddenly a jounin – Kurenai almost seemed offended – to muster anything against his leaving, and he left within the hour. Fuinjutsu made hauling supplies for a two-month trip pretty easy.
Wide awake and with a few hours of travel ahead of him, he no longer had anything to do but move and think… and he had a lot to sort out in his head.
There was the massive seal from his dreams, that he was beginning to think was more than just a seal, if that made any sense. Then, there was the quest pushing him to visit the seal - that had to be in the hidden objectives of Ascendance [3] and he had a bad feeling about it.
The hokage evidently knew far more than he'd ever told anyone, and he was 99% sure he'd never had his mind interrogated. That insinuated the hokage was familiar with a similar case. The hokage even went so far as to insinuate that the fourth hokage was, in fact, that case. He'd seen pictures of the fourth and his wife, who he knew to be an Uzumaki. He was orphaned the night they died. It would make so much sense if the fourth was his…
It made too much sense. It had to be the case. That he had the kyuubi sealed specifically within him only cemented that.
He had to remind himself the hokage was helping him, but… why wouldn't he be told explicitly? To be fair, he could come up with a couple reasons on his own, but it wasn't like he was happy about it.
«Skill Discovered!»
[Namikaze Heritage]
«Special»
You were fathered by a gamer and inherited his power.
Therefore, your body naturally filters the excessive energies.
-100% risk of overexposure, +10% experience
…his mother was definitely the redheaded Uzumaki with the blond man from his dreams then. It was good to know that he could discover skills without quests, but it was just giving him more and more questions…
"Overexposure to what?" he growled, running a hand aggressively through his hair. But- did that mean he wasn't even meant to have the ability? Did it just happen because his father had it? Did that even make sense? Did his mother not have the power? Why?
"How did my father get it?!"
He was done with thinking. He'd figure it out when he was there.
«««»»»
After a mad dash across the water, Naruto concluded that the Land of Whirlpools was quite a bit more intimidating up close. It was much bigger than it had looked from Wave country, and the air… it stank. It was heavy, warm, and he didn't want to be there anymore. He couldn't quite say what it smelled like, but he decided that no, he wasn't going to go to Uzushio. This was a waste of time and effort. He'd just turn back, hand the hokage an excuse, and-
«Access Granted»
-why did he…?
Ignoring the stirring in his gut, he spun back to face the country and entered its shores. The air was still heavy, charged with an inexplicit energy, and very cold. He should've brought a thicker jacket.
Once he made it past the beach, anywhere he looked there would inevitably be signs of battle. Old and rotten corpses decorated the coast-line, and the smell was worse than anything he'd ever had to deal with before. The sand was stained such a disgusting red and grey that it made his guts shiver.
He didn't recognize some of the insignia on several of the bodies, but he did recognize others. The symbols of Kirigakure were especially prominent, and he could spot another couple symbols that were also from the east.
Cresting a hill – hills were rather strangely bordering the beach and the mainland in all directions – he was struck with the sight of ruins.
Whirlpool country may as well have been called Uzushiogakure. Tall hills decorated the shores around the island, but that was it for land untouched. Within the circle made up by the hills and shoreline, taking up nearly all of the country and cresting a massive crooked river streaming through the island's center, sat what was once a shinobi village. The buildings were bigger than any he'd ever seen. Even cracked and fallen to the ground, the wreckage retained a sophisticated allure. Maybe he would change his mind if he visited a capital city, but the materials – just the way it looked, really, seemed before its time.
Then everything exploded.
He flinched, his ears ringed, his eyes burned – there was shouting, he was hurt, he-
He blinked, hands racing for his stomach, where he was certain he'd been run-through by a pair of shuriken. His vest was in pristine condition - nothing had happened.
Naruto didn't like looking at Uzushio.
He could feel it. He could remember it as if the past were the present. Mothers and fathers trying in vain to protect their kids and their home. Their children didn't just sit there either, they fought with them, young or old, but those that stood their ground all perished; the enemy were too numerous, too well prepared. Some people ran, taking their family with them, while others were slain before they could make that step. Very few actually managed to escape. Very, very few.
He twitched, barely dodging a very real kunai, and watched abashed as he tried to parry another, only for it to slip through his own kunai, his hand, and into his chest without leaving a mark.
It all played out in front of him, with no regard to order. A senseless mash of blood and death. He didn't understand what was happening. It was too much; an utter mess.
He was struck with a minor headache, and then watched as the scenes in front of him wavered and reformed. The fragments of past dreams, somehow, found one another and etched themselves together with some semblance of order. He couldn't help but watch keenly as the buildings were knit back together, the streets cleaned, the bodies regained their colour, and the crowds reformed.
His gaze found a tall but compact man with messy red hair. Uzushiogakure had a leader. They were not graced with the titles of the five kage, but they were extremely strong. He knew, watching, that this man was the first.
The first to die.
If he wasn't, if the betrayal that Naruto didn't quite know about but was certain occurred didn't start with that man, Uzushio would have stood a chance. He didn't know how he knew that, but he had a guess.
He felt himself moving down the street to follow a small group of men that he vaguely knew to be important. Uzushio's leader stood to the front, gesturing wildly and – if the apparent chuckles of those around him were any indication – cracking jokes. He couldn't hear them, though, not really. The voices were off-pitch and slurred. In a matter of minutes, he followed the group into a wide stadium, and into a large private box resting on the stadium's edge. A long window decorating the inside wall let them see out into the rest of the stadium, full of people finding seats and looking towards the large dirt field that the structure surrounded. He watched as those in the room sat down and he observed as a pair of children entered the arena below.
It was quickly obvious what was happening. Naruto had watched a couple chunin exams in the past, from the comfort of Konoha's own stadium, and it was rather similar.
He didn't know that the eastern countries hosted a chunin exam. After a moment of thought, though, he decided it did make a bit of sense. Uzushio would've learned of its success from the neighbouring Land of Fire and would have probably been convinced to start their own cycle by the Leaf themselves – the missive he was given vaguely alluded to Uzu and Konoha being allied before its destruction. It would've made more sense if some Leaf shinobi then joined in on this one too, which they didn't seem to, but he'd have time to figure that out later.
He watched as one of the chunin hopefuls 'missed' with an oversized shuriken and executed a text-book substitution knock-out. The red swirl on the winner's shirt – a pattern that he noticed to be ubiquitous in Uzushiogakure – painted him as an Uzu shinobi, and the kid pumped his fist to some biased cheering before scampering off the field.
That pattern is on the shoulder of his shirt, isn't it? He turned his head. Yeah. He thought it might be on the back of his vest too.
He heard some grumbling behind him, but he still couldn't understand it. The sounds that should've been their voices were just as impossible to understand as it was to see past their blurry faces.
The next couple of fights were over quickly enough. One Uzu shinobi won a fight against another, and in the other battle a Kiri shinobi won a short fight against a kid he couldn't place.
It was hard to shake his paranoia. He couldn't help but notice the watchers that didn't actually watch the battles, staring amongst themselves and occasionally glancing to the booth he looked from. He knew he was just watching a memory – and how the hell did that work? – but he couldn't help but tense. If these particular watchers weren't specifically excluding Uzu shinobi, it wouldn't warrant concern, but the absence made for something stark.
A red-headed Uzumaki girl won her fight, when something drew his gaze to the seats behind him. He watched as the Uzu leader celebrated, pumping his fist, and nudged the man beside him. The thin man, who he suddenly realized was the Mizukage, robe and all; groaned and handed the redheaded man a tight stack of ryo.
He pursed his lips. It was unrealistic, after losing a bet, to hand over the exact money so cleanly. The stack was too neat and it meshed against his quickly-increasing paranoia. Something had to go wrong, soon. It wasn't that he remembered much from his dreams, but he didn't remember any of this at all.
The redhead gave the money a look, instead of pocketing it. The expression paled and he gave the Mizukage an inexplicable glare and mouthed something Naruto didn't catch.
He didn't catch it because the man exploded.
His vision flashed a bright white, and now he stood outside. Wreckage assaulted the ground around him, and he could hear screaming coming from the stadium behind.
Uzushiogakure's redheaded leader was horrifically burnt, but somehow standing, clenching his fists in an anger so palpable that Naruto could see it even when he couldn't quite see the face. Across from him, on the other side of the wreckage, the Mizukage strutted forward with little regard to the injury he should have taken from the explosion. The two spat unintelligible insults, and while sufficiently distracted, the redhead was struck down from behind by one of the other men that had been in the luxury box with them. Naruto felt an inexplicable hatred toward the man, who wore a headband that he couldn't recognize. Inexplicably, he cared a bit less about the Mizukage's involvement.
Another flash, and he was on the dirt of the stadium. He watched as those very shinobi he had been suspicious of did away with the naturally shocked guards that settled around the stadium's top. The civilians, confused and afraid, were mercilessly annihilated with carelessly thrown and easily aimed explosions, while the native shinobi in the crowd were too late to put up any meaningful defence before they were similarly cut-down. The hostiles had already been within, sitting in their crowds and eating their food. There was no defender's advantage, and they took both the pre-emptive strike and the numerical advantage. The defenders had little chance. He couldn't help but wonder what difference could have been made if some of Konoha were here to help.
Honestly, it wouldn't have been much.
Another flash, and he stood outside a tall, stone school. He watched as a handful of Kirigakure shinobi leapt onto the grounds and pulled off a massive and definitely draining collaborative jutsu using the river streaming beside the school, causing tall and powerful waves of water to burst straight through one side of the school and out the other.
Another flash, the hospital.
Another, they drowned the residential district.
Several more flashes; shinobi hunting down stragglers, short and intense bouts between the attackers and the outnumbered Uzumaki, and children being cut down that had almost gotten away.
He couldn't help it. He fell to his hands and knees and he puked. It was all too explicit and too sudden, he didn't have any time to prepare himself for this.
One last flash, more significant and numbing than those before, and he was back on the hill he started on. Still standing, still in that awkward position where he had tried to block an imagined kunai. Uzushiogakure was just ruins, and no one had lived here for decades.
He had to remind himself of that several more times before he pulled himself together, resolutely choked down on his feelings, and stepped into the village.
He distracted himself by thinking about finding the library. Despite the circumstances, he couldn't help the flicker of excitement that came with finding a new collection of books to tap. In the back of his mind, he hated that he had so easily squashed his revulsion.
It took a long time, but he knew he had the right place when he found himself making excuses to leave the country again.
«Access Granted»
The doors were large, thick, and decorated with dozens of sealing arrays. He had a feeling that the Uzumaki treasured their knowledge above their own lives, for when he opened it, there wasn't a body in sight. The building was in mint condition, and the books plenty. He didn't understand how they could protect this building and not others, but it wasn't something he could figure out in his ignorance.
Probably more alone than he would ever be again, Naruto took the moment to test something private.
He made a cross with the index and middle fingers of each hand, and two clouds of wispy white smoke burst into his peripherals, one on either side of him.
«Skill Level Up!»
Shadow Clone Technique
[Lv.1 » Lv.2]
Chakra Reduction: [0.5% » 1%]
Increased endurance.
«EXP +50»
Being him, the manifestations of chakra already knew their role. They moved forward and ran their hands along shelves, making sure to touch the books adorning them. After a moment, they each popped.
The second burst of smoke was accompanied by memories, almost like his dreams had been, but they were much more explicit and pleasant… because they proved that the clones can, indeed, use skills.
It wasn't particularly important right at that moment, but it verified that they could grind, too.
To make sure he knew exactly what was going on, Naruto made the decision to read a single book at a time.
The building was circular, and when he raised his gaze upwards, he was met with the ceiling a dozen floors above him. The book-cases surrounded a long circular hole lined in railings from ground to ceiling. It was probably designed that way so that it was easy to spot who was in the building.
Thirteen floors, with at least a few hundred books a piece… it was easily going to take a few days to go through them all, and just as long to consolidate the knowledge.
«««»»»
As a mass of jounin made a ruckus leaving his office, the hokage motioned one of them to stay.
"Sir?" Kurenai asked, mildly confused.
"Would you change your mind about entering your team if I had a third member for you?"
She hummed. That was a familiar question. Originally, Kurenai didn't bother finding a third genin when Naruto left because she wasn't going to enter her team into the chunin exams. They weren't ready yet.
Or at least, she didn't think they were ready until every other fresh squad with the privilege of a jounin-sensei entered. It made sense on reflection, that they would enter while the Leaf was hosting even if the team wasn't actually ready for chunin, but she wasn't expecting it.
"I suppose I would… okay. Who do you have in mind?"
It couldn't possibly be worse than Naruto Uzumaki. He was actually a life-saver in the end, but she had hated the idea of it the moment it was brought up. Even now, she was… unsure, but she knew intellectually that she was being a bit unfair. Her other students certainly held him in very high regard after their first C-rank.
"Kabuto Yakushi is easily the best pick. He's an intelligent, well-practiced genin with advanced medical training. It would be a good experience for all three of them."
It did sound like a good idea – an advantage, even – so she accepted it without fuss. Shino would've been crushed if he thought his classmates were getting ahead of him – the little guy seemed to be almost as self-conscious as his other teammate sometimes – and it would be a necessary experience for Hinata.
«««»»»
Naruto groaned.
The last book, a cute little novel glowing with a soft shimmering azure, slid out of his hands and settled onto the table.
«Intelligence milestone!»
Intelligence: 250 reached!
Effectiveness of each point raised by 20%(33.5% » 53.5%)!
Increases all passive effects by 5%(25% » 30%)!
Choosing to read the entire library was quite the investment, but it was easily worth the time.
At least, that's what he had to remind himself frequently, because the headaches, especially with that second intelligence milestone coming in; were really, really painful. After almost a week of dealing with them, he wasn't particularly having fun.
He knew about so much crap that he wished he didn't need to know. There was so much trash that he didn't need to know at all, and also – thankfully – much of the vital information he had been missing. He was right about the chunin exams being an event copied from the continent, for example. The dates of the books – as far as he could tell when they weren't using the same dating format as Konoha – dropped off right around the time of the start of the second great shinobi war, and that explained why Leaf shinobi weren't around to help.
…but he needed some time to think about everything. There was quite a bit he had in his head all of a sudden. He had to differentiate the good from the bad, and the useful from the useless. Thankfully, he had plenty of rations sealed up and a soft sleeping bag.
«««»»»
Even while his sleep was often plagued by visions and memories, very rarely were they lucid.
That's why, as he felt the soft droplets of water in the silver, glimmering mists dance along his fingertips, he was rather confused. It was too much detail; his mind was too aware and too active for this to be a dream.
There was nothing but the mist. Everything else, as lacking as it was, glowed a soft and bland grey.
He walked, and his footsteps echoed, but he wasn't really moving. Without a point of reference, he may as well have stood still. The floor felt like stone, and oddly enough – he could see himself perfectly fine. There was light, just an absence of differentiable ground, sky... there was nothing but the soft, silver mist – and him.
Until, with a flash of white, something spoke.
"You must correct her transgressions."
"Wha-" he spun on the spot, unable to pin the voice to any specific location, but failed to see anything out of place. The thick, powerful voice's tone was an uncomfortable mix of amused and frustrated.
"The burden falls to you, now. Do not be another failure, you are the last opportunity. She will soon wake. Do at least try to prepare, for you and your kind owe it to me."
For a moment, he saw a pair of glistening white horns through the mist, before his vision was torn to darkness.
«««»»»
The odd dream aside, the next couple days were fairly regular, if utterly boring. The memories and visions seemed to have completely stopped after that particularly odd one, and so sleep became significantly more comfortable and something to look forward to.
And, of course, he'd learned quite a bit from Uzu's library… as far as he was able to believe it, that is.
The history of the Uzumaki was unreasonable, long, and – simply put – difficult to swallow.
For his own sanity, he'd worked himself down from the beginning, or at least; the beginning of what was relevant.
Let it be said that the Uzumaki wrote their history meticulously, even if much of it had been superfluous.
The Uzumaki clan shares common ancestry with several other clans. This goes as far back as a woman that, apparently, came to Earth from another dimension.
Her name was lost to history, but for all intents and purposes; the woman was described to be a god… kind of. She was also the primogenitor of chakra, and when she recognized that her twin children received the gift of chakra is when she really became a true god – in childish anger, apparently. She wanted her power back. The Uzumaki did not have the details to that process, any names, nor knew much of anything about the resulting fight between the woman and her children afterwards, but she somehow lost that battle and her children went on to progenate the Hyuuga, Uchiha, Senju and Uzumaki clans. The Uchiha and Hyuuga were gifted with prodigious talent, control, and doujutsu. The Senju received the supernatural physical prowess of the semi-celestial twins, and the Uzumaki received their share of life-energy and a penchant for seeking knowledge. The Senju and Uzumaki in particular kept in touch and stuck together within an alliance that seemed to have lasted until the Uzumaki's destruction. That would explain the Konoha-Uzushio alliance.
As a whole, the Uzumaki clan was incredibly innovative, particularly in the esoteric art of fuinjutsu. If not for the Uzumaki, fuinjutsu would not be common place. Personally, Naruto couldn't imagine a world without storage seals. Their work revolutionized trade and made many things, like long-term espionage missions, sabotage missions, supply missions, his current mission, as examples; significantly more viable.
But their revolutionary progress, combined with the more sinister details of their ancestry, brought them to the attention of the wrong individual.
Over sixty years ago, around the end of the warring states period and before the founding of Uzushiogakure, the wandering Uzumaki clan was visited. The visitor was an odd, paper-white man described as wearing a decorative set of white pyjamas with a pair of horns sitting erect on his forehead. An old but cute little hand-drawn picture of the figure came to mind, but he wasn't sure which book it came from.
He - if it could be called a he – claimed to be a dimensional traveller, like that of the primogenitor of chakra. Understanding the aptitudes of the Uzumaki, he demanded for assistance in creating a plethora of jutsu that dealt with different methods of effectively stealing chakra. It was supposedly something other dimensional travellers were already reasonably proficient in, while he himself was yet young and inexperienced. Why he needed the Uzumaki for that wasn't known, nor why the traveller had come to their world in the first place.
When the Uzumaki refused, citing that such a thing was utterly beyond their means, the being got very, very angry. It seemed utterly irrational, in text, like an arrogant and undisciplined child.
So it struck, and it ruthlessly killed the entire head-family of the time. Its strength was abrupt and undeniable. The Uzumaki families split up and went their own ways, disinclined to present themselves as a large target, but it quickly became apparent that the individual was set on hunting them down, one by one, until they either agreed to help the individual or he slaughtered them outright.
The being's actions provoked a short, but impactful war.
After seeing it done elsewhere, the Uzumaki raced back together and began settling on the island known today as Whirlpool Country and founded Uzushiogakure. They prepared countless countermeasures to the dimensional traveller, and when he inevitably followed the last dredges of Uzumaki to the island, he ran into their traps thoughtlessly. He didn't go down without killing dozens, for he was just too destructive, but his fate was sealed by his arrogance in coming to a battlefield the Uzumaki had well-prepared beforehand.
The records of what they did with the being were suspiciously absent, but he had an idea.
An idea, he thought, as the large doors creaked inwards, that he was finally taking the time to proof-check.
Sans the stadium, this was the widest building in Uzushiogakure; the centre for governance and logistics. He followed the guiding lens of wispy memories to a room in the back of the ground floor, resolutely ignoring the signs of destroyed workplaces and corpses along the way, and took a moment to study the seals decorating the thick metal door blocking him. It was fairly banged up, like someone – or several someones – had tried to open it by force.
Naruto learned about quite a bit more than just history when he went through Uzushio's entire library, and had little trouble finding the seal mechanism that would actually open the door. It was keyed to an identity seal, which was designed to identify a particular nuance in an individual's chakra.
He held no illusions that it would somehow be keyed to his chakra, and instead of tripping some of the other, alarmingly destructive seals that decorated the floor below him, he channelled a small flush of azure chakra to his left index finger and tapped the center of the identity matrix. A flush of small seals expanded over the door, and his identity was added to the log.
It was as simple as using the door handle after that.
Behind the door was a small, bland room with a trapdoor. After fiddling with the seals on it for a moment, he popped it open and looked down the hole. A ladder came down from the hatch, but he couldn't see all the way down its length due to a lack of lighting.
With a shrug, he crouched, reached for the top rung, and swung his legs down the hatch, careful not to kick against the ladder too hard when he found his perch. It would be pretty bad if he kicked with too much force and dislocated his arms or something - he could totally see it happening.
«««»»»
…it took a seriously long time before he saw anything in the otherwise pitch black of the tunnel down.
He was stiff, hungry and regretting his decisions by the time he saw the flash of a light down in the distance, and after another few minutes of climbing he'd finished the descent. A pair of cute little torches, lit with a fluffy blue light, sat on either side of another thick metal door. This one wasn't busted like the other one was, and when he tapped it in the universal gesture to expand the seal he was looking for, nothing happened. Great.
He felt kind of silly when, after a few minutes of trying to figure out the trick to opening it, he resigned himself to trying the door handle and it popped open without a fuss. It must not have been locked up last time it was used.
Naruto poked his head into the room behind and couldn't help himself.
"Holy shit."
The room was ridiculously big. The walls stretched as high as he could see, and he figured the room was just about long and wide enough to fit both the stadium where they'd hosted the chunin exams and the centre this was built under. The occasional pillar kept it structurally sound, lengths of stone in an otherwise entirely wooden and polished room.
But it was the pulsing, shimmering seal that drew his attention. A blue and thin knee-high mist permeated the room, being collected and output by the ridiculously large sealing array decorating its surface, stretching from wall to wall and end to end. A rectangular stone box – the size and orientation of a resting coffin – sat in the middle of the seal, where at least one line of every facet of every portion of the seal converged. It was difficult to articulately describe the seal, but if he had to put it into words, he'd say it was probably made up of the smallest, most precise detail he'd ever seen, yet it was still by far the largest work of fuinjutsu he'd ever come across. Nothing in Uzushio's library even suggested a seal approaching this large. He was reasonably sure that if he tried to expand a portion of the seal, he'd discover why the walls were so high.
The shape of the seal vaguely followed the pattern of the Uzumaki swirl.
He wasn't sure if he should step into the room, but after he'd checked the immediate vicinity of sealing for the third time, he just rolled his eyes and pushed himself forward.
Obviously, he missed something. For a moment, the blue glow of the massive seal pulsed an angry, neutralized green. He hesitated, indecisive, and the harsh grinding of stone against stone had him hastily pulling himself back out of the room and slamming the door shut. After a minute of standing there, holding the handle with twitching ears, the sound stopped.
He debated with himself for only a few seconds before taking a breath and opening the door again. He knew he wouldn't be able to convince himself to just leave – the quest wasn't done yet – so he wouldn't bother trying.
Where before there had been empty space around the room's entrance, there now sat a stone pedestal, reaching his chest, with a flat square top. There, a thick orange folder sat indented into the stone.
For a moment, he thought he saw the blurry visage of a blond man flipping through pages and writing notes. It was probably his father, but why he had these visions at all still eluded him.
He resolutely stepped forward and poked the book, fully expecting the incoming headache.
…which he didn't get. Instead, two silver words streamed into view, the pretty brown backdrop covering his visage of the folder as if playing a prank.
«Not Available»
"That's never happened before."
He tapped it again.
«Not Available»
Eye twitching, he pulled open the folder's cover-
«Not Available»
…it was going to do that every time he turned a page, wasn't it? Beneath the cover, an extremely thick set of pages sat clicked into place. A storage seal decorated the inside of the cover with the note 'spare paper' scrawled beneath it. Like it wasn't bad enough that he was going to have to read through something manually for the first time ever, but it was also easily the thickest piece of literature he'd ever gotten his hands on.
Thankfully, the mission statement gave him over a month more to waste, so it wasn't like he was at risk of running overtime. That in mind, he flicked past the first page, merely detailing a pretty title that read Integration of Anomaly, and resigned himself to reading through it. Strangely enough, he wasn't a fantastic reader – he really didn't have much practice.
0 UZU, April 25th
Hirohide Uzumaki, Department of Detainment and
Prisoner Analytics.
Containment is precariously chakra conductive, but
the Traveller proves sufficiently restrained. Its energies
respond well to a modified eight-trigrams seal, allowing
us to emulate the self-sufficient nature of a jinchuuriki's
seal. Next, the limits that we can extend the seal before
it begins to negatively impact the host must be tested.
This can easily be done with careful application and
extension of any chakra-intensive barrier jutsu.
A little note was scribbled messily under the passage.
This is probably what covered the island – MN
He'd bet that was probably the fourt- his… father. Naruto didn't think he would get used to having a father, but he also didn't need to; the man was dead.
That small passage of text only covered the top-left quarter of the page. To the right of it sat a clean list of personnel involved, while the bottom half of the page held scribbles of half-formed seals, and enough bits and pieces of notes and details relevant to the top-left passage to take up all of the given space.
«Not Available»
It really was going to happen every single time he turned a page, wasn't it? The next page had the same format, and he decided to ignore all the extra bits and pieces until he'd gone through all the upper-left plain-passages first. He wasn't sure how long it would take, but it helped that it was probably important.
0 UZU, July 14th
Hirohide Uzumaki, Department of Detainment and
Prisoner Analytics.
We discovered no upper limit to the seals that we were
able to draw from the Traveller, despite adding several
layers to the barrier. We created two of such barriers
before we reached our own upper limits; an inability to
produce anything more sophisticated, and a lack of
the necessity required to place barriers anywhere we
haven't already placed them. This is now a project for
the Department of Research and Development.
Another little note was scribbled below this one.
Second one is over the library – MN
«Not Available»
0 UZU, July 17th
Fumitaka Uzumaki, Department of Research and
Development.
As demonstrated by the barriers linked to the Traveller,
it is possible to create a distant connection to the host.
Creating a mobile barrier without losing the connection
to the host alludes us.
«Not Available»
0 UZU, July 23rd
Fumitaka Uzumaki, Department of Research and
Development.
Creating an expensive static barrier over a mobile host
proves promising.
«Not Available»
0 UZU, August 4th
Fumitaka Uzumaki, Department of Research and
Development.
Powerful barriers have been successfully placed and
linked to Subject U6, while being powered solely by
the Traveller. As of yet, it serves no purpose beside
channelling large amounts of chakra.
«Not Available»
0 UZU, August 26th
Fumitaka Uzumaki, Department of Research and
Development.
A seal dealing with physical reinforcement still alludes
us, but the Traveller's chakra proves to have an affinity
with mental avoidance matrices. We have added them
to the initial barriers created and linked to the Traveller.
Testing has revealed that we can temporarily cut the
connection to either seal to allow visitors without any
repercussion to the primary array.
Reminder: find these matrices and reproduce it - MN
«Not Available»
0 UZU, November 1st
Katsutomo Uzumaki, Department of Research and
Development.
Successful application of physical reinforcement
remotely powered by the Traveller. Subject U16
has moved as far as Konohagakure without a
drop in seal efficacy. There is still no noticeable
strain against the host. A form of chakra sickness
seems to linger in the older test subjects, and they
have been removed from the program accordingly.
Just in case, try limiting use of the Traveller's chakra
overtime, slowly increasing yield – MN
Something about that last note set off alarm bells. His ability was very much something 'slowly increasing'.
«Not Available»
1 UZU, January 23rd
Katsutomo Uzum-
His stomach rumbled, and he reluctantly shut the folder. It wasn't exactly morning when he decided to go exploring, and he was feeling it. He pulled a small scroll from one of his vest pockets and released his sleeping bag. There was just about enough space around the door to the room that he could rest without smushing any of the seal. Another scroll, this one larger, and out popped a brick of nutrients that tasted like cardboard. Let it be said that he sacrificed perfectly delicious food to come out here… well, it wasn't like he was going to do anything else.
He suddenly realized he was very, very boring, and the thought helped keep him awake for at least an extra hour before he managed to fall asleep. There was at least some form of temperature control down here, unlike in the library.
Was he meant to have a goal? Was he meant to be striving towards something? His dad clearly had one, but he might personally be too lazy.
Maybe he'd figure something out once he actually knew what he was dealing with.
The seal gently pulsed, and the mist curiously enveloped his form as he slept.
«««»»»
AN: Long Naruto-centric chapter, but it was really just info-dump and world-building. I tried to make it interesting. Chapter length ended up getting away from me and I ended up writing even more of an info-dump than I meant to – and I did mean to – and the arc isn't even over yet! It was meant to be concluded this chapter, but it's just too much. The next arc will still begin somewhere next chapter, and you can probably even guess what it is. Naruto has just about enough time to miss almost all of the chunin exams.
It's meant to be clear, so I'll go ahead and put it here: the figure that found the Uzumaki clan pre-Uzushiogakure and attacked them is a member of the Otsutsuki, and that is what's being researched, and being used at the catalyst powering everything. Hopefully it makes enough sense so far. Naruto still hasn't given his own opinions on pretty much anything for lack of someone he'd actually talk to about it.
Not much change, but the next chapter of the character sheet should be up when this goes up. Again, it won't show any jutsu – fuinjutsu included – that hasn't been shown in the story, even if he has learned it.