When he woke up it was to see a stained ceiling and familiar surroundings. A slow look round revealed that the place was a shithole on top of being dirty and cluttered with things. 'I don't fucking believe it,' he thought, mentally kicking his family awake.
'What the fuck?' Sin said flatly.
'Family meeting~!' Daemon sang.
'Yeah,' he said, 'hang on.' He quickly formed a clone around his body and stepped into his storage. As his family materialized themselves, he started conjuring up furniture. "I should really think about putting in some real stuff, now that we aren't forced to rely on the trunk."
"We all should," Hayato said, taking a seat.
"So, we're back in a Naruto world."
"Yeah, but you're older," Ken pointed out. "Like, twelve-ish."
Tsuna frowned and called a mirror over so he could examine himself. He was dressed in a kill-me-now orange jumpsuit (had his body fallen asleep fully dressed?) and, indeed, looked to be about twelve, which could mean terrible things. "Shit," he muttered as he sent the mirror away. As an afterthought, he adjusted the clone pretending to be him up from six to twelve years old.
"Right, damage control," Xeul said, then vanished. A window popped open a moment later so he could listen in.
He opened a quick window to the shithole to check the calendar and was grateful to see it was a Sunday, which meant he shouldn't need to be anywhere that day. On that thought he "borrowed" the stove from the house trunk, reached into the storage trunk for supplies, and started cooking breakfast for everyone.
By the time he had it on the table Xeul was back, smiling happily while still somehow managing to frown. "So, it's mostly bad news, and one of us really needs to scan your body's memories."
His brow went up as he started eating.
"Tomorrow is going to be the day when Hatake offers up entry to the Chūnin Selection Exams, and I shudder to think just what your body was doing while you weren't at the wheel."
Tsuna groaned in dismay. "They all probably think Naruto is a complete moron. The last one certainly never saw much use for his brains. I don't expect this one was any better."
Xeul grimaced. "Yeah. Fangirl just loves bonking your body over the head for the least excuse, even though it has been somehow more skilled than she's ever tried to be—with the exception of chakra control, anyway."
That made him groan again. "I foresee plenty of exercises today to ensure my control is where it should be. And of course, using a few thousand clones to grind muscle memory for proper taijutsu."
"You plan to go through with it again?" Mukuro asked, eyeing him curiously.
"Nah. Don't see the point. True, I don't have a fallback team this time to slide into, but the only fucking reason they got so far last time was me. Why do them any favors, especially if those two hate Naruto, or at least hold him in contempt, as I suspect they do."
Nods went around the table.
"I wonder how Hatake will react?" Ken said quietly. "Will he let that slide, or will he flat out tell you all three of you need to enter?"
He shrugged. "Guess we'll find out. I admit to being curious myself."
xXx
They met on the bridge as usual, which meant waiting for several hours before Hatake even bothered to show up. That being so, a clone was waiting on Tsuna's behalf while he did more interesting things, like learning origami while a thousand or so shadow clones continued to work on chakra control for him. The combination of his previous life's chakra reserves plus his current made for a decided setback he had to overcome.
His body, prior to his awakening was—quite frankly—an embarrassment to everyone involved. The kid had three techniques? Kawarimi, henge (though, as it turned out, Naruto's version of henge was more of an actual shapeshift, which could come in extremely handy, as you had to be born a metamorphmagus and Naruto's technique nicely mimicked that), and shadow clone. Five if you counted tree walking and water walking, though the water walking was more than a little shaky.
His taijutsu was a travesty, consisting of a brawler style that made Tsuna flush with dismay and renewed embarrassment, he had no filter on his mouth, no real use for his brains (unless it involved pranks), and his claim to fame was being able to sneak like a pro (even in bright orange) and outrun even seasoned ninja.
The Uchiha had a glimmer of respect for him, if only because he at least tried, could be useful, and was better than Sakura, while the Banshee, used to years of being asked out by the blond moron, hated his existence, and thought that everything he did was in an effort to show up the Uchiha (a lot of it was, too, which only made it worse).
Tsuna rolled his eyes and prayed for sanity, then set his half-folded crane down when he noticed Hatake was ambling slowly onto the bridge, nose buried in one of his porn books. He blew a flat raspberry, then seamlessly switched with his clone.
"Here," the man said once he got close enough, offering up three sheets of rice paper.
Tsuna accepted one and gave it a glance.
"This is just a nomination," Hatake said. "Whether to take the exam is up to each of you. Those who wish to take it should sign those papers and turn them in at room 301 by 4pm tomorrow. That is all." The porn came back up to be read as Hatake ambled off again.
Sasuke immediately headed off, Sakura trailing along behind him, though she looked downhearted. Tsuna ambled off as well.
xXx
"It is amazing the sheer number of hopefuls who can't even see that genjutsu," Mukuro commented, as Bun-Bun got smacked back from trying to enter the wrong room. "They're pathetic."
Sasuke, of course, ruined the scheme by strutting up. "You will let me pass through, and also, remove that genjutsu you're using. I'm going to the third floor."
Murmurs started up amongst the cardboard cutouts.
"You must have noticed, right, Sakura?" Sasuke said. "Your analytical ability and genjutsu know-how is the most improved on our team."
She looked startled, but her expression quickly flashed through gratitude and settled on smugness. "Of course, I noticed a while ago. Because this is the second floor."
One of the guards hummed. "Not bad. But all you did was see through it!" he cried, then attacked again.
Sasuke rose to the challenge, but Lee Rock got between them and kept them apart.
"Hey, what happened to the plan?" Hyūga Neji said quietly. "You're the one who said we shouldn't draw attention to ourselves."
"Well…" Lee glanced off to the side, toward Sakura.
Everyone leaned forward in anticipation.
Lee turned fully and smiled, which resulted in the caterpillars he called brows to shuffle up, and a faint dusting of pink adorned his cheeks.
"Oh, no," Bun-Bun said, shaking her head sadly.
Lee marched on over to Sakura and said, "Hi. My name is Lee Rock. You're Sakura. Let's go out together!" he cried, then did a wink-grin-thumbs up pose (otherwise known as the Nice Guy™ pose) that caused light to glint off his teeth. "I'll protect you 'til I die!"
Sakura's mouth hung open slightly, then she said, "…No … way. You're lame."
Lee wilted.
No one seemed to notice or even care that the third member of Team 7 was nowhere to be seen.
"Hey, you," Neji said, "what's your name?"
Sasuke looked irritated that someone did not know him immediately on sight. "When you want to learn someone's name, you should give yours first."
"You're a rookie, right? How old are you?"
"I don't have to answer you."
Neji pivoted and started off. Bun-Bun paused long enough to blush in Sasuke's direction—
"Kami-sami, not another one," Chikusa complained.
—before following the Hyūga. Lee moped off after them, but paused, saying he'd catch up.
A pre-exams match was held between Lee Rock and Uchiha Sasuke, but someone had clearly forgotten to advertise the event, nor had they sold any tickets, as it was incredibly under-attended, and no refreshments were on offer.
"Do you think Uchiha will bother to learn from the lesson he just got?" Ken asked after Lee kicked the kid's ass.
"More importantly," he said, "why the fuck are the hallways that damn wide in a school?"
Sasuke somehow managed to turn a blind eye to his recent humiliation and proceed onward toward the third floor, Sakura dogging his heels like an overeager puppy. They were met outside 301 by Hatake.
"Oh… So Sakura came, too…" Hatake trailed off and tilted his head to the side. "Where is Naruto?"
"What?" Sakura said, not seeing the relevance.
Hatake shoved his hands in his pockets. "This test can only be taken by teams of three."
"Huh? But you said taking the test was an individual choice. You lied to us?" she asked.
"If I told you the truth, Sasuke or Naruto would have pressured you into taking the exam," Hatake explained. "Even if you didn't want to, if Sasuke had asked you, you would, even if it wasn't in your heart to do so. For the sake of Sasuke… And … well … Naruto, too."
"So if only Sasuke and Naruto had showed up?" she pressed, because clearly she was stupid.
"The exam would have ended here. But you came of your own free will. You make me proud. Now all you have to do is wait for Naruto to get here—he probably overslept again—and then you can go in."
Sakura glanced at a convenient clock and frowned. "Twenty minutes left, then."
Sasuke's expression switched from smug determination to irritation.
For the next twenty minutes the three of them stood there, one reading porn, one looking increasingly angry, and one looking increasingly flustered.
"Time!" they heard, followed by a ninja popping out of nowhere. "Sorry, you two, but you'll need to get going."
Sasuke snarled and stormed off, a black cloud hovering over his head.
"Good thing no one but us is capable of entering my storage," he said.
Hatake merely shook his head slowly, still reading, and ambled off. His bearing did speak of some tension, but it was hard to interpret exactly what he was thinking—without one of his Mists or Sin doing the translating.
As if having heard his thoughts, Daemon said, "He's pissed. Really pissed. He seems to think that if the Uchiha was able to get to the third stage and put on a good show, gain praise and accolades, that it would bind him closer to the village."
"Yeah, okay, so he's still delusional," he said. "We never did get around to giving him a haunt last time. Really need to look into that this time."
His Mists nodded agreeably.
"I wonder how long he'll take to calm down," he mused. "And if we're meeting tomorrow as usual to do more chores."
xXx
Tsuna woke up to see a very familiar ceiling that belonged to a very familiar shithole. That, of course, was very, very wrong. He had gone to sleep in his storage, after all, so what the everloving fuck was he doing in the shithole?
'Uh, guys?'
He heard a yawn, then, 'Uh…? What the hell?'
'Yeah, some freaky shit's going down. Heading to my storage,' he said, then formed a clone and stepped. "Shit," he said as his family materialized into place. "I should probably check the calendar."
Mukuro opened a window and blinked. "We seem to have gone back in time. Why have we gone back in time? Did Heul suffer a hilariously stupid death while we were sleeping?"
"I don't recall suffering a hilariously stupid death," he said helpfully.
Daemon and Xeul exchanged a glance and vanished a second later, off to (presumably) do some investigating, so Tsuna started breakfast. He really needed to outfit his storage a bit better. Maybe when he had a few spare moments he could indulge in a little property acquisition from a previous dimension (including another stove), as he did not want to strip the house trunk. He could think of a dozen or so defects off the top of his head that wouldn't be needing all that stuff considering they had been eliminated. No reason not to swoop in with a cross-dimensional window and pick up a few things that "fell off the back of a truck", so to speak.
By the time he had breakfast on the table his twins were back and pleased to tuck in.
"So, yes, we have gone back in time for some reason," Daemon said, picking up his hashi. "We are back to the same day you woke up on for this dimension. Well, we're assuming it's the same dimension. Nothing appears to be any different in our quick look around."
"We should check your chakra reserves," Xeul pointed out. "If they've remained steady, we're still in the same dimension."
People nodded; that made sense.
"The question is why," Sin said.
Hayato briefly slipped into a UMA phase, but shook himself clear of it just as quickly. "So… The Great Shuffler?"
"Why set us back, though?" Ken said. "What's the point? He's already fucking with us—Heul, really—with these dimensional hops. Why skip us back in the same one?"
"Maybe there's a condition this time," Chikusa said quietly.
"And no clues," he muttered.
"Yet," Mukuro said. "One could happen."
"So, taking into account scientific method," Hayato said, "I think we should test what happens if you do show up for the written portion and make it into the second stage. If we reset, the exams have nothing to do with this, or very little. Considering that the second stage lasts five days, well…"
"Then I can forfeit or have a whoopsy moment and lose my match, and see if we reset."
"Right. Work out the basic conditions."
"Okay," he said with a shrug. "But I'm annoyed that I'm the only student this time."
xXx
Tsuna breezed through the first stage of the exam, secure in knowing that any actions on Sakura's part (such as deliberately failing them out due to some out-of-left-field concern for Naruto's "dream" of being Hokage at some stage in his life) would be prevented. It didn't hurt one bit that his Mists had secured a copy of the actual exam, figured out all the answers (not that it really mattered in the end, since only the tenth question counted), and gotten him to memorize them.
What was funny was their meddling during the stage.
Their illusions were put to use causing various mishaps (and in one notable event, uncontrolled flatulence, which got the poor bastard kicked out along with his team after being accused of using bodily emissions as a form of code), making the spotters appear to be distracted or dozing, which caused prospectives to be more daring and which quickly got them failed, and playing up on their levels of anxiety to get people to wash (or wig) out due to nerves.
He presumed, based on the previous dimension's Chūnin Selection Exams, that his family was forcing failures for everyone who failed to make it to the finals. Or rather, nearly. By the time they had reached the tower there were seven teams in play. Tsuna had dropped out at that point, leaving ten people to move on to the third stage after the preliminaries were over.
He still wasn't fond of maths, but even he could work out that twenty-four people, or eight teams, was a good number to have going into the Forest of Death, assuming things were further orchestrated so that only four teams made the tower. That should bypass any prelims and let them go immediately to begin the one month breather.
In theory.
xXx
Tsuna employed a very simple strategy for the Forest of Death: let Sasuke lead. Given that they were a fresh rookie team, and had the interesting combination of an Uchiha plus two useless hangers-on (to all appearances), he fully expected them to be targeted by practically everyone.
But, with Samsara on duty, it should not be and wasn't an actual issue. Orochimaru's Kusa team showed up again (though only Orochimaru himself attacked), Tsuna was tumbled quite a distance away by the wind attack, and was again faced with a massive snake.
He chose to act differently, due to his knowledge of potential cameras in the vicinity. They had not captured anything last time, but that did not mean he was just as safe this time. That being so, he allowed himself to be swallowed by said massive snake. As Naruto had learned the Shadow Clone technique on his own (due to Mizuki-sensei's deception after the kid failed the academy genin exam), there was nothing stopping Tsuna from openly using it to his advantage.
He burst the snake from the inside like a reverse piñata via an overload of shadow clones. He took a while to "recover" from being swallowed whole and bathed in stomach acid (which involved diving into a nearby stream to rinse off) before setting out to "find" his teammates.
Tsuna staggered occasionally, shaking his head, just to delay things further, all while watching his your-eyes-only window on events, and made a show of sniffing around somewhat like a dog trying to catch a scent, and cocking his head as if he was listening hard for signs of a struggle.
Even if Samsara was also meddling with the observers manning the cameras, that would not alter whatever was recorded by the cameras. They could, in theory, go back in time, having "borrowed" the odd camera, monitor, and recording equipment, to stage a fictitious battle to swap with what really happened, but that seemed like a whole lot of extra work for precious little result.
I've swapped the scroll from one of the teams we intend to lose with a fake, and the real one is sitting in the usual place, darling, popped up in front of him. You can pretend you did some fancy slight of hand right there at the start with a shadow clone or something disguised as a scroll, should anyone bother to ask.
He dipped his chin in a nod and kept staggering on, seeing via his window that Orochimaru was just about to bite the Uchiha. An interesting tactic and, if explored properly, could probably be used to include shadow clone kunai or even something like sandspurs to tag along with opposing teams, reform at the right moment, and take people out by surprise.
Depending on how many times they ended up going through this, it would be an interesting tactic indeed.
He arrived on the scene, mussed beyond belief, stinking of snake guts, just in time to hear Orochimaru's parting ku-ku-ku. He sent a disguised clone in to survey the situation (for any possible cameras in the vicinity to see), then darted out of cover to rendezvous with Sakura and their downed teammate.
Sakura, in and around her "oh my poor precious Sasuke-kun" reaction, was able to impart that Orochimaru had made the same pronouncement as before, that an Oto team would be along to "kill" the Uchiha—
It really said something that the supposed smartest girl in their year could not spot the logical fallacy in that, as why would the traitorous Sannin "gift" Sasuke with a cursed seal that would lead the idiot to track him down for "more" power only to kill him off later the same day. Why not test the results of the seal (assuming the boy lived through its application), then see how the kid performed in the remainder of the exams?
—so they really needed to get a move on.
Eh, does Duck-Butt need to be awake when we hit the tower or just alive and potentially viable as a contender?
There was a pause before he saw, To be safe, let's wait until he wakes for you to head in. Follow the arrow, hole up in that cave, and move out in the morning.
His chin dipped again as he hoisted his teammate up in a fireman carry, bullied Sakura to do something more than look helpless, then set out, a group of shadow clones popping into existence behind him to clean up after them.
xXx
Tsuna sighed once inside his room at the tower. For whatever reason, they did not have singles this time. The team as a whole had to share a room, and of course the Uchiha got first dibs on the facilities, Sakura following (as the "lady" of the team), and Tsuna a sad third.
It had to have set a speed record given how little time Sakura had taken to make herself presentable. Sasuke had stalked off the second he was done and she was torn between following immediately and at least having a quick wash. If nothing else it gave Tsuna plenty of time to relax.
A bento came out of storage, then he wandered off to find the dining hall so he could eat and observe. He expected it to be a boring few days.
So, second stage complete, he saw. You dropping out again?
He took a bite of his onigiri. With so few people? But, since I expect there to be twelve of us, I can wait for Kabuto to drop out, drop out myself, and we see if we reset. How's that haunt coming along?
Oh, fine. Hatake is starting to feel the shame of his actions. We've left it subtle, for now. If we do end up going through multiple loops, we can refine it. No point in making him a total mess if there's an invasion to contend with, right?
He hummed softly and attacked his tamagoyaki.
xXx
Tsuna woke up to see a very familiar ceiling that belonged to a very familiar shithole. He sighed and shook his head, then formed a clone and stepped into his storage. "Looks like dropping out at that point is a no go."
The rest of his family sighed.
"Okay, plans," he said. "We need to get a handle on what's the same and what's not. I want eyes on the other villages, for one. At the very least, are they in or out when it comes to invasion. We should establish if it's just Oto and Suna, or if someone else got added to the mix. We know that Orochimaru killed and replaced the Kazekage in the last go, but not when. Perhaps we can figure that out, too. If we can show proof of it, the Suna nin here might turn on Orochimaru."
"Well, Gaara did turn out to be a surprisingly good kage despite being violently insane," Sin pointed out. "Not much point in saving the kid's father, not with how stupid the man is."
"What say we make Orochimaru forget how to perform the Edo Tensei at a critical moment?" Hayato suggested.
"Also a good idea." Tsuna moved to a free-standing whiteboard and starting writing down a list of issues to address.
"How about rigging any prelims?" Chikusa said. "Forget necessarily trying to only get the ones who passed to the third stage last go. It was fun this time, but even that would get boring after a while, assuming this'll keep happening until we figure out what the goal is. Ino v Sakura was amusing and all, but it might be better to have something like Sakura v Kiba, and Ino v some other Konoha nin who stands a chance of being useful."
"We could rig the first set of matches for the third stage," Mukuro pointed out. "Those were just tiles with numbers. We fix what they see to hopefully knock out anyone who did worse than we expected in the prelims."
"What else can we come up with?" he asked, having caught up on the whiteboard.
xXx
It would have been hilarious but cruel to match him against Sakura. Instead, he faced Kin of Oto. She used senbon and sound-based genjutsu. Too bad for her that genjutsu was worthless against him, and he was a pro at dodging and making it look like sheer dumb luck. The girl had no special powers and was incredibly cocky, meaning overconfident.
She never even noticed that amongst all those clones, all of which were acting as if they had been affected, was the real Tsuna padding silently up behind her. Not until he bonked her on the head with a kunai and knocked her out, anyway.
Lee got "lucky" and was paired with Yoroi. He made short work of the one-trick pony.
Gaara they forced to be unpaired, to get a bye, so that no one had to deal with him attempting to crush someone.
After that, tiles were drawn. His family had been very particular in who ended up with whom. In the first round it would be Sabaku no Kankurō v Aburame Shino. Round two featured Tsuna v Hyūga Neji. Round three would have Sabaku no Temari v Lee Rock. Round four was TenTen v Nara Shikamaru. Round five would showcase Uchiha Sasuke v Sabaku no Gaara (and would likely be interrupted by the invasion).
They didn't see the point in having the "showcase" match, flaunting Sasuke, be first, not when they knew it was extremely likely the idiot duo would show up late again and get Duck-Butt disqualified. They were doing the kid a favor he would never even be aware of.
It was all pointless in the end anyway, as they would end up killing the kid due to that Cursed Seal of Heaven. He paused for a moment and had to stifle a groan. What if the condition was to—no, he wouldn't even finish that thought. No no no.
The second they had been escorted back to Konoha proper and were released to figure out their training during the month of preparation, Tsuna trundled off in in search of Hatake. He was at the hospital for some reason Tsuna couldn't be bothered to care about.
"No need to tell me," Hatake said, "I already know what you're going to ask. I found someone who'll look after your training for the month. I have some business to take care of, so I won't be able to look after you."
Tsuna blinked. "You need to work on your mind-reading skills," he muttered.
"Now, then," came a voice from behind them.
Tsuna glanced back over his shoulder to see Ebisu, whom he vaguely recalled was Konohamaru's "elite" tutor. How "elite" the man could be when he promised shortcuts to becoming hokage to an impressionable young boy…
"You're the one with the worst basic skills," Hatake continued, "so be sure to pay attention and learn those thoroughly."
"Right," he said flatly.
A short time later he was with Ebisu on the men's side of the hotsprings and, given the mind-numbing lecture he was receiving about chakra usage, was seriously considering leaving a shadow clone behind to distract the man while he went off to do something useful, like cook for his family or investigate other nations.
He failed a few times for show as he "learned" about water walking—or at least, until he noticed Jiraiya nearby peeping through the bamboo wall surrounding the women's side and giggling obscenely.
Ebisu, in his "I am not a pervert" mode, said, "I don't know who you are, but I will not forgive such shameless behavior!" and charged.
'Does this man not know Hatake at all?' he wondered.
And just like that, Jiraiya was atop a huge toad and had bounded to the side, leaving Ebisu to get knocked out by the toad's agile tongue.
"Well, so much for that," he said, then turned around and started off. "Being around perverts is no place for a young boy."
"Hey!" Jiraiya called out in protest, then (presumably) winced when he (presumably) realized he just outed himself to a bunch of (presumably) skilled kunoichi who were attempting to have a soak and did not appreciate having a perverted geezer spying on their privacy.
"Wait a minute!" he heard behind him. "I know you."
He glanced back to see Jiraiya giving him an intent look. "So?"
"I have just the thing! Since I knocked your teacher out, well… There is something I can teach you."
Tsuna gave him a flat look. "I don't want lessons in how to be a pervert."
Jiraiya looked incredibly offended. "Not that!"
"So you admit you teach people how to be perverts?"
Jiraiya bounded over and hauled him up by the back of his collar. "Tomorrow morning, 10am, here," he said, then dropped him and grabbed Ebisu. A moment later he, the toad, and Ebisu were gone.
Tsuna shrugged and trundled off to a safe spot where he could step over to this storage. "We should consider mining his mind to see if he has anything new in the way of fūinjutsu," he commented.
"Are we taking bets on what he'll be 'teaching' you?" Sin asked.
"Well, considering that everyone knows," Hayato said, "since we haven't done the Fidelius, my bet is on the pervert trying to teach Heul how to use the Kyūbi's chakra."
Tsuna rolled his eyes. Time to get started thinking of ways to respond to that, should it be true.
xXx
"First," Jiraiya said, crouching down so he was more on Tsuna's level, "there's something I need you to understand. You have two types of chakra."
Tsuna plastered an idiot look on his face. "Two types?"
"Have you ever felt a special chakra?"
Tsuna hummed, shooting for an "I'm trying real hard to think, but the lack of brain cells is hindering me" expression. "Um, nope!"
Jiraiya looked nonplussed for a moment. "Well, this isn't really the best place to do this," he muttered. "C'mon, kid."
The next thing Tsuna knew he'd been picked up and hauled away. Some time later they were overlooking a ravine. A nearby river flowed into it as a waterfall, sending up a spray of rainbow-sheened mist.
Jiraiya retreated a bit upriver and did some technique that cast a net, so that (presumably) anyone practicing water walking wouldn't get swept away to their death. "Now, I'm going to teach you a technique that requires much more than your normal amount of chakra, so we need to be able to pull out and use the chakra that's sleeping inside you."
"How do you know I have this other chakra?" he asked, squinting suspiciously. 'And you'd have to be really dumb to buy that explanation. Naruto can pop out a thousand or more clones at a time, but he needs the Kyūbi's chakra to summon? Pfft.'
"Well, I am a Sannin," Jiraiya said, as if that answered anything. "Anyway, this special chakra that only you have will become your greatest weapon. Not using it is a huge waste. There's no need to do the same type of training as the others."
'Because you want a dumb nuke and not a smart weapon,' he thought sourly.
"Each person has things they're good and bad at, so you have your own style, too. Your training up until now focused on producing and releasing a set amount of chakra, and controlling chakra so you don't tire out. You have two types and don't tire out easily. You should train to release the highest amount of chakra possible and use that to its capacity. When you can do that there are tons of techniques you can use."
Tsuna adopted an awed look. "Like!?"
"Like the one I'm about to teach you. How to summon!"
Still in idiot mode he said, "Summon?"
"Yeah! You sign a contract in blood with various life forms and call them forth with ninjutsu when needed," Jiraiya explained. "It's one type of jikūkan."
Tsuna let his mouth drop open, then screamed, "Oh! It sounds awesome! Hurry, hurry, teeeeeeeach me!"
Jiraiya winced and said, "Well, before that, use up all your normal chakra on water walking."
Tsuna scowled and trudged morosely over to the protected part of the river, then began to "work", taking care to not be too good at it, of course. Over the course of the next half hour he purposely wasted far more chakra than he needed to and gradually began to appear more and more tired. Given that he had his own chakra from before plus this body's chakra (and technically, another load of yang chakra from the Kyūbi), he could afford to be wasteful in a highly deceptive manner.
If the man had been a better teacher, he should have motivated his student by giving him a show first, then demanding the preparation.
Around the time he appeared ready to drop Jiraiya finally set aside his "work" and said, "Looks like you finally used up most of your chakra. Now I can teach you the technique. First I'll show you how, so watch closely." The pervert nipped one of the fingers on his left hand to draw blood, dashed the fingers of his right hand through it, then slammed his right hand into the ground. A web of what looked like fūinjutsu spread out as he cried, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"
A second later the man was high atop a massive toad. The toad opened its mouth, uncurled its tongue, and deposited a large scroll in front of Tsuna.
"That is a contract with the toads that has been passed down through many generations. Unroll that, and in the next open space, write your name in your own blood, and under that, press your bloodied fingerprints, using the hand you'll be doing the summoning with."
Tsuna obligingly did so, though he didn't have the least bit of interest in toads.
"When you want to summon a toad, with bloodied fingertips of the correct hand, produce chakra and place down the hand you sighed the contract with. The hands seals are boar → dog → bird → monkey → sheep."
"So that's all? That's it?"
"Your current state makes releasing the special chakra easier," Jiraiya said with a nod. "Give it a try."
Tsuna nodded excitedly and went through the motions, fully intent on being a troll. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" He beamed. He had very proudly summoned a tadpole. "Awesome!" he screamed.
Jiraiya groaned.
xXx
Twenty-one days later he had finally "managed" to summon a toad (though it still had a good bit of its tadpole tail left) and Jiraiya had clearly about had it. Not once in all that time had the man ever directly referred to the Kyūbi or the source of this "special" chakra he kept talking about. The old fossil in charge of the village had most likely informed Jiraiya that Naruto was aware of his tenant, but…
If Naruto truly was that clueless, he would have thought the logical thing to do was give the poor kid a hint? Maybe?
But that's not what Jiraiya did. "Okay!" the man said. "Training ends today. If you don't want to die, you're going to get this right." Then he kicked Tsuna over the edge, into the ravine. The very, very deep ravine.
Tsuna obligingly screamed his heart out on the way down, wondering the entire time just exactly where he was supposed to plant his hand when he was mid-air. If he tried to slam a hand onto the walls rushing by him he would shred his hand to ribbons. Planting it at the base of the ravine seemed like an equally silly proposition.
A window opened up and kept pace with him. "Having fun, darling?" Daemon asked sunnily.
He winked at his brother as he continued to scream with decreasing volume, and wrote, Let me know when it's safe for me to abruptly disappear. No idea how keen that pervert's eyesight is.
"Of course."
I figure once I "die" and get swept away by that river, never to be found, I can make dinner. We'll find out in the morning if it resets. Either way, there's no way in hell I want to deal with this again. He's wasted nearly an entire month trying for a single thing, and has done jack and shit about teaching me anything that would actually help in the third stage.
Daemon smirked, glanced off the other side for a moment, then said, "It's safe to disappear."
Tsuna stepped into his storage and shook his head. "Seriously? The fucker tried to use the threat of real death as motivation?"
Daemon's window shot back up to focus on Jiraiya, who suddenly looked exceptionally worried.
Tsuna shrugged and headed for the kitchen area of his storage. He had a craving for Sakura Sojiro's curry rice. "I swear, some of the things that man said are just insane. It's like he was trying to tell me that chakra control was pointless and that I should become dependent on the Kyūbi's chakra for everything. That sort of shit would cause any real skills to atrophy. It'd be as bad as how most of the Uchiha relied on the sharingan exclusively because of how it imprints skills and techniques."
"Well, they do consider a jinchūriki to be a weapon for the village. And a weapon that can't fire is useless," Sin said.
"Oh noes!" he cried, looking distraught. "I'm firing blanks!"
Sin lurched forward to tickle him mercilessly, but Tsuna slid to the side. "Do not disturb the chef! In fact, you should help me. It ends up tasting better that way. Besides, no one knew that Kushina was the previous jinchūriki, so they sure as fuck weren't having her bust out that chakra where fellow Konoha nin could feel it. Why me? Because Naruto is stupid?"
After an excellent meal they passed the remainder of the day playing increasingly weirder games of Cluedo and went to bed in good spirits.
xXx
Tsuna woke up to see a very familiar ceiling that belonged to a very familiar shithole. He did the usual clone-step routine and got started on breakfast.
"So, actually participating in the third stage is a must," Hayato commented, starting water for tea.
"Sadly, it seems so."
"What does your intuition say?"
Tsuna shrugged. "I'm almost afraid to check. I did have an idea in the tower, at the end of the prelims, but stopped myself before it fully formed."
"Didn't want to jinx yourself," Sin said, nodding.
"Well, we know that it is just Suna and Oto, and we know that Orochimaru didn't leave the Kazekage dead in a ditch until after the contenders for the third stage were determined," Chikusa said. "If you recall, last go, he made sure that lingering Oto nin conveniently died so he did not have an extra kage up in the Kage box, so we probably helped him this last time."
"Did you guys get anything of use out of the pervert's head? I was a little too busy being a troll to keep tabs," he said, shuffling food to the table with Sin's help.
"Not really. Yeah, he knows his stuff, but he doesn't push at it. He's far too content to maintain his spy network and invade the privacy of women so he can write more smut."
"So we'll just have to keep messing with it on our own," he said. "Shadow clones can take the brunt of any mishaps. Knowing my luck, if I messed up personally, I'd summon Cthulu or Nyarlathotep from the void or something."
"And then we'd have a cult to compete with the Jashinists," Xeul said cheerfully.
More than a few people stared at him.
"Save that shit for kinky sex nights," Ken said, then sipped his tea.
Xeul adopted such an innocent look that Tsuna was surprised there were no rainbows, butterflies, and frolicking unicorns in the background.
"Anyway, looks like I'll be fighting in the third stage tournament. There's not a chance in hell, no matter how well I performed, that Naruto would make chūnin, so I'm thinking I should display some more dumb luck. Besides, if I'm too competent, I'll probably get hauled off to T&I to see who's impersonating Konoha's least-loved idiot."
"And now really isn't a good time to do a Fidelius, not when we're staring at an invasion. We don't need the shinobi here confused as fuck over their jinchūriki going missing rather than—well…"
"Last time they spent more time obsessing over that rather than use it as motivation to train harder. The only fucking reason we didn't lose more shinobi was because of us getting involved."
xXx
Tsuna showed up for the written exam wearing a bunny costume. The poofy tail at the back had bells in it, so he jingled softly everywhere, causing no end of annoyed looks (not to mention all the looks which stated clearly that they thought his brain must have melted).
He spent the time waiting for the exam to begin munching on carrots, because that's what bunnies did, then settled in to write down his memorized answers in no time flat. Sadly, continuing to munch on his carrots would be upsetting to the others (too loud), so he flipped his sheet over and stared at the spotters, causing his fake whiskers to twitch every so often.
The utterly deadpan stare he had going was making some of the spotters very uncomfortable for some reason.
Later, gathered outside Training Ground 44, he was seen wearing a cat costume. There were a few odd people who questioned (quietly) how he had managed to change so quickly. Everyone knew that Uzumaki Naruto was hopeless at genjutsu, so it couldn't be that. (That no one ever then questioned how the boy was capable of a henge only proved what a pack of idiots the people of Konoha were. So much for looking underneath the underneath.)
He snacked on some chūtoro (and edged away from Chōji more than once) while Mitarashi was busy scaring the piss out of the genins. He finished up right about the time that teams were called to get their scrolls and tucked away his hashi and tray.
Sakura was staring at him in disbelief, apparently too weirded out by his behavior to waste as much time fawning over the Uchiha. She was so busy gaping that Tsuna was able to deftly grab and secure their scroll (Heaven) and start off for their gate.
Earth scroll in the usual place? he asked.
Already there, darling.
Awesome.
Things in the forest went more or less the same, except for the part where his Mists collaborated to mind-fuck Orochimaru into thinking he had planted a seal on the Uchiha, but in fact had just given it to a squashy yet firm pillow. The downside was that Sasuke was awake and spoiling for a fight. As entertaining an idea it was to see Duck-Butt get crushed in a sand coffin, Tsuna behaved himself and simply "found" the scroll they needed, not bothering to object when Sakura praised the Uchiha to the heavens for his masterful performance against that pale-skinned weirdo.
He wore a koala costume for his prelim match, which was again engineered to be against Kin. She was scheduled to die later, so he simply knocked her out (accidentally, of course) and won the match.
It wasn't until they were readying to leave that the Hokage held him back to say, "Naruto, please tell me you won't be wearing an animal costume during the third stage matches."
Tsuna blinked slowly, then grinned toothily. "Course not, jiji! Nuh uh."
The Hokage nodded in relief and off they went, back to the village proper.
xXx
Tsuna grabbed his lover's hands and gave him a soulful look. "I need your help with my costume for the finals."
"Vincent Valentine?"
He frowned. "I don't think I can pull that one off. And what would I do with all that hair? Red is also so not my colour."
"How about an Oompa Loompa?"
He wrinkled his nose. "I'm too tall."
"You're a blue-eyed blond. How about Cloud Strife?"
"Ooo. And no one will have a clue, so not having a fuck-off huge sword won't be a problem. Awesome!"
They got started immediately. Sin, as always, was a demon when it came to sewing projects, so the costume was completed well before the month-long training break was up.
xXx
Tsuna glided into the stadium and up to the participants box decked out like an Advent Children version of Cloud Strife (minus the fusion sword, though it would have been cool to ride Fenrir). His hair had been lightened from the usual bright blond to more closely match Cloud's—it was less of an eyesore, anyway.
He had clearly gone insane at some point, because the idea of being able to competently wield Cloud's fusion sword was starting to look attractive, and he had always been rather pathetic when it came to any form of physical fighting that did not involve punching the shit out of things, with the odd kick or two thrown in for good measure.
They had decided they would do the same as the last go and meddle in the invasion to make things quite a bit easier on the Konoha nin. The only real difference between the last setback and this one was the order the fights would go in. Naruto v Neji would go first, rather than fourth, simply because he wanted to get it out of the way.
The Hokage gave his little speech (which Tsuna didn't bother to listen to), then Tsuna and Neji (he really needed to think up a decent nickname for the boy) were called down to fight. As expected, Neji opened the match by trying to tear him down verbally.
Tsuna responded by looking bored, and wondered if it was possible for someone to talk themselves into a stupor. Perhaps he should have worn earplugs? 'Oh, he's moving. He looks so determined to kill me. He's not much different from Gaara in some ways.'
Neji looked a bit put out when the rookie dead last tripped over nothing and miraculously managed to avoid so much as being brushed by the attack, and then stopped thinking entirely when he was knocked out from behind, his nearly 360º vision catching the blond boy recovering from his stumble with a flailing of hands that just so happened to hit him in the back of the neck.
Tsuna affected to look shocked, then incredibly proud.
Shiranui twitched his senbon to the other side of his mouth, contemplated the scene, then named Tsuna the winner when it was clear the Hyūga would not be getting up anytime soon.
"Awesome!" Tsuna screamed in a parody of happiness, then jogged off to rejoin the other chūnin hopefuls.
I have no words for what just happened.
All hail the Great Skull-sama! he wrote back. Just imagining the look on Sin's face made him want to giggle maniacally. He could so rock purple! He was a Cloud, after all. Maybe next loop he could cosplay as Skull, instead. An anchored disguise for the makeup, hair, and eye colour, a quick five-finger discount at a leather shop that catered to bikers…
Kabuki-Boy, the pussy, forfeited once his match was called.
Was that because he doesn't want to display all the tricks he packed into his puppet?
There was a short pause before he saw, Yes. He barely showed off any of it in the prelims, and he's saving it for the invasion.
Tsuna discreetly rolled his eyes. Who won jan-ken and is standing by to erase Edo Tensei from Orochimaru?
Mukuro won.
He nodded slightly and eyed the fight between the Fan-User (as opposed to Fangirl), aka Four-Haystacks, against the Genius of Hard Work. Lee was bouncing around like a coked-up squirrel, making it quite difficult for Temari to get even a glancing blow. She simply wasn't fast enough.
Eventually, Lee managed to blind her just long enough by glinting light off his perfect white teeth and get in a knockout.
"Winner, Lee Rock!" Shiranui called out. (Tsuna pretended he said Lee Rock, anyway, if only because it was nonsensical and disrespectful to have said Rock Lee.)
That was at least … interesting, he commented. Use of unconventional tactics for the win.
That's hilarious coming from you.
Bun-Bun was called down to fight against the Nara boy, which would be either exciting or dead boring. He sat back in his seat, pulled a bento out of nowhere, and began to eat while chakra-hovering a book on the history of Kumo so he could read.
Amusingly enough, Duck-Butt and Hatake had yet to show up for the finals. He wondered if this Hatake had been intelligent enough to leave a shadow clone behind to dispel as a warning, to let them know it was time to stage a Grand Entrance™.
For that matter, where was Gaara?
He looked away from his book, scanning the participant box, industriously chewing on a slice of tamagoyaki, and spotted Sleep-Deprived intently watching the battle below, particles of sand skittering around restlessly.
Why the boy didn't reek of blood he had no idea. All that talk of "Mother wants your blood" and the kid seemingly dissolving people inside his sand, leaving nothing behind… Where did it all go? He shrugged and went back to his reading.
By the time Gaara went loco and started to lose control over Shukaku, Tsuna was ready with a quick shift. He added a cadre of dancing sand bears to accompany the displaced Suna nin, tossed an illusionary teddy bear costume on the poor kid, tucked his book away, then dashed off to get lost in the crowd. Clones burst out of him in every direction, making it exceedingly simple for him to step over to his storage and be out of the line of fire.
He arrived in time to see the main show, that being the roof over the Kage box being encased with the Four Violet Flames Formation. He took a seat and chuckled when, after a bunch of pre-fight posturing had been bandied about, Orochimaru got a look of abject confusion on his face.
"And done," Mukuro said.
Sin vanished, shot a whole bunch of people, then returned and took a seat. He then glared at Tsuna. "The Great Skull-sama? Really?"
Tsuna grinned. "I plan to cosplay as Skull on one of these backsteps. Hell, the Naruto before I woke up could be Skull's long lost brother, except that Skull was quite a bit smarter."
"Eh, true, he was. Is, actually," Sin admitted. "And yes, I'll help with a costume for that. Shall we continue to take out enemy nin, then?"
"Sure," he said agreeably, not bothering to point out all those clones of his doing just that already.
"I heard that," Sin grumped. "And I want to try a new tactic. The ultimate in assassination. Firing bullets through a window."
Tsuna perked up; that would be cool.
He would like to say that severe injuries and deaths amongst the Konoha nin were at an all time record low, but…
xXx
Tsuna woke up to see a very familiar ceiling that belonged to a very familiar shithole. "Okay," he said after the usual clone formation and exit stage tactics. "Participating in the third stage doesn't do it. Neither does making sure the old fossil lives. And, neither does ensuring that Duck-Butt doesn't get that cursed seal. Shall we add more elements?"
"We should disable Root and off Shimura, for kicks, if nothing else. Imagine if we got whatever condition it was checked off, but that fossil was still alive," Hayato said.
"Not a bad point," Mukuro drawled. He exchanged a look with his fellow Mists, then eyed Tsuna.
"I'll grab supplies after breakfast. We should probably tag all Root agents now. The question remains, liquefy Shimura now, or wait until the morning of the third stage? Shimura could use the invasion as an excuse to kidnap any number of people he's had his eye on, assuming he was holding out hope for an opportune time."
"With how little Naruto wanted to use his brain, I could easily see Shimura having promised him a way to get stronger and show up that arrogant Uchiha—or something—and sucked him right down that rabbit hole. If he could fake being sympathetic long enough to gain the kid's trust, he could have slid the boy straight into an inhuman training regimen that would turn the kid into a blindly loyal puppet with exceptional skills."
"Sure, after they beat the hyper out of him," Ken said. "Or tried various drug cocktails, seals—well, maybe not seals. Anything used could conceivably interfere with the one holding the Kyūbi."
"We never did spend any time dissecting the Root seal, so we don't know how much of a hack job that might be," Hayato said, placing a pot of tea on the table as Ken finished setting it.
"Maybe we could use a fake or controlled Shimura to transfer all control of Root operatives to the Hokage, liquefy Shimura, and see how that turns out? It won't matter if Sarutobi starts asking questions about Shimura, since the man will have offed himself out of remorse or whatever. We should still see about studying that seal, to see how easy it would be to remove. Well, and acquire all those sharingan, plus that arm."
Tsuna nodded. What they were going to do with all those eyes, though… They had quite the collection already of sharingan, and one set of rinnegan. "Which reminds me, we should go pluck Nagato's eyes out and store them. Without those, half his plans fall apart. And while we're at it, since my storage is disconnected from the normal time stream, I say we go give the Hyūga elders a surprise visit."
His family all cackled and started planning.
xXx
A straight-faced Tsuna strutted into the written exam decked out in his Skull cosplay. Most of the people there wondered who this mystery Konoha nin was before he made himself uninteresting. He had made a few concessions. He had indigo shoulder, elbow, knee, and shin pieces instead of Skull's pink, and he had skipped the piercing that led from his left earlobe to the corner of his mouth.
His hitai-ate had an orange cloth, which brightened the outfit a little. He skipped the teardrop under his eye. Sure, Tsuna had killed (and killed often), but these people would not understand the significance of it (any of its meanings) or its placement. The only people who knew that Naruto had changed his look were the other members of his team, and they passed it off as him being weird again.
Kabuto was dismayed when his set of nin info cards spontaneously caught on fire, but as there was no evidence to prove who might have had a hand in it, the matter was dropped.
Tsuna stifled a yawn and quickly wrote down the nine answers to the test, flipped the paper over, and started working on a sketch of the Sandaime Hokage, Jiraiya, and Hatake, all reading smut and giggling, just for something to do.
A quiet gasp off to the side alerted him to Hyūga Hinata having noticed, but he ignored that and continued to sketch away the remaining time until the tenth question was revealed. Of course, she could probably tell exactly who he was under the disguise due to her dōjutsu, but she wasn't the sort to scream that out to the world at large.
You know, if we ever end up back here early enough, maybe we should give the kid a hand up. Poor thing has a wet noodle for a spine and all sorts of wrong thinking in that head of hers.
I suppose we could, flamed up in front of him. Reminds you a little of yourself?
In a way. It hits a little too close to home, so to speak. On the other hand, it sounds like it'd take a lot of time, and I'm not sure if she'd backslide when I experience the inevitable hilariously stupid death. If it happens, we'll see about planning for it.
Just so you don't start laughing if you see it, I altered Gaara's outfit to have dancing teddy bears on it, and his gourd to have honeybees and hexagonal decorations.
Tsuna bit his lip as he continued to sketch, holding back his amusement. Okay, then.
Duck-Butt now has ducks on his outfit, but they're rather subtle at the moment. We had a glorious argument over whether or not to make his sandals quack like ducks with each step, but figured that would be going a bit far.
Tsuna bit his lip harder. Illusion-style his hair to look more like feathers?
On it, darling.
xXx
"So, okay, month break. What shall we do aside from the usual in the event that we stop backstepping?"
"Fuck it," Daemon said, "let's go to the ruins of Uzushio. While I doubt there's much of anything left to plunder, there might be something guarded by fūinjutsu. Uzu is off the eastern coast of Hi no Kuni, so we should have plenty of time to pick the place over. We got lucky when we found the information on your body's mother's Adamantine Chains. We might get lucky again and find something of value in the ruins."
"I suppose we could cheat by sending a window on ahead, stepping to the new location, then repeating until we hit the coast," he said. "We'd have to send a window out to the island, though. I'd rather not have to hire a boatman, and I'd prefer not to waterwalk that far."
Daemon nodded.
"That being so, let me get some supplies made up. Though if you want to start on the leapfrogging, that'd be cool." He headed over to the kitchen area to start work, mostly so they could have a picnic once they arrived at the site of the ruins.
Uzushiogakure was apparently (at least, according to what they had found in village books) built around a lake at the center of the island. The odds of the original roads from the docks to the village being in good condition were slim, but that wouldn't matter to them. Hell, Tsuna could always reach back into λ15 if he really wanted to and track down one of those flying carpets that were considered verboten in wizarding Great Britain. Ride in style! Family-size carpets available!
India loved the things.
xXx
It was as they were walking along a badly damaged pathway to the once thriving village that Tsuna said, "I've figured out why I don't like this subset of dimensions. There's no music. The odd bells or chimes, sure, but there's no actual music."
"Huh," Ken said, carefully stepping around a nasty gouge in the pathway. "You're right. The music of nature is one thing, but that's… That doesn't really speak to the soul."
He nodded. "Maybe I should learn how to play an instrument. Maybe a hammered dulcimer?"
"I'll learn drums," Ken declared. "Banging on shit sounds fun."
Tsuna laughed merrily. "Sin strikes me as a guitar player. Or sax."
"Maybe," Sin allowed. "I'm thinking of the harp for Chikusa."
Chikusa nodded agreeably.
"Daemon and Xeul already know how to play the flute," he said, adding an obligatory, "damn that Asari."
His twins scowled at him. "Piano for Hayato, of course."
"Of course," Hayato echoed. "But we could each learn more than one. Hell, with shadow clones, we could be our own orchestra."
He opened a window on λ10 so he could ask Reborn for a favor. Thankfully, his friend and former "tutor" was having a cozy read, so Tsuna was free to say, "Ki-san~!"
The book went down, Reborn's head came up, and a welcoming smile graced his face. "Heul. What's up?"
"Lots of things," he said, "but first, how are you doing?"
"Well. Things are a lot more boring without Samsara around, but well enough. Where are you poor bastards this time?"
Tsuna rolled his eyes. "We're ninja! And I am the container for a massive chakra beast that, if released, would rampage violently and cause untold destruction." He spent the remainder of the walk to the ruins explaining their previous dimension, and how it differed from the present version of it. "As you can see, we've just arrived at the ruins of this body's mother's homeland."
"Huh. It's pretty, in a ruinous kind of way," Reborn said. "Kind of like the passage of time between sunset and twilight, just in the colours. It must have been magnificent when it was still standing."
"We're hoping to find maybe something locked away, only available to someone of the blood. But, that isn't why I opened the window. Any suggestions as to a good place to obtain various instruments? I was thinking of learning how to play a hammered dulcimer, the others have their own thoughts… And as Hayato pointed out, if we use shadow clones we can be our own orchestra."
Reborn hummed. "Give me a few days, check back. I'll have prices and all that, high quality source. I'd just need a list of what you want, the gold to cover it—because as much as I adore your cooking, I expect this is going to be painfully expensive—and I can arrange to get everything delivered so you can pick it all up."
"Awesome! Wanna tag along for longer?"
"Sure."
Tsuna absently shifted a slice of cake from the one sitting on the counter in his storage over to Reborn and took a good look around. "A lot of territory to cover," he murmured, then created an army of shadow clones. "Start searching, guys. If you find anything we need to investigate, dispel."
"Hai!" Clones scattered in all viable directions, eyes to the ground or roaming over various shattered buildings.
"I think I'm jealous," Reborn said. "Those clones are Grade A alibi material."
"Unfortunately, I don't think it's the kind of thing we can teach long distance," he said, closely examining the floor in a half-destroyed building for any signs of fūinjutsu. "Besides, you're already massively good at what you do. Not like you're in any danger of losing your title."
"Not the point!" Reborn protested, jabbing forward with his fork. "So why instruments?"
"There's no music here. Nothing. The village we—well, I—live in is entirely devoid of any kind of music, and it's creepy. I'm surprised it's taken this long for me to finally realize what it was that bugged me so much. If nothing else, we can spare some time and clones toward learning instruments, gather up sheet music…"
"Boss!" called a clone, who then promptly dispelled.
Tsuna pressed his fingers against his temple as he assimilated the information, then nodded. "Found a large seal array. Let's go check it out. I have a good feeling about this."
"Of course you do," Sin muttered.
Sure enough, the sealing array was blood based, so Tsuna cut himself and flicked blood all over the thing. He could always vanish the blood later, since the idea of cleaning it manually was ludicrous. Nothing happened for a few moments, but then the single remaining full wall cracked in multiple places.
He cocked his head to the side, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It was like the wall was a multi-layered basketweave of stone, utilizing such precise cuts that it was next to impossible to see the seams when "closed". The pieces slowly slid apart to reveal a square opening about six feet tall, more than generous for an average-height adult to pass through.
He leaned on his intuition, found neutrality, and shrugged. "Onward ho."
Hayato darted on ahead, apparently in guardian mode, and lit the way for everyone else by sticking spheres of magic to the walls. Tsuna graciously let Sin and Daemon trundle on after Hayato before following, with the others bringing up the rear. Far be it from him to get in the way of his guardians when they were feeling feisty.
Blue-white light illuminated the room below, thanks to Hayato's efforts. He could see torch brackets, but the torches within were so old that lighting them would probably just destroy the things. The room itself contained weaponry, standard enough shinobi gear, though all of it—after a closer look—had seals.
After deciphering them he realized the seals handled the sharpness of each weapon (where warranted) and the inherent stability or durability. "No reason to leave this stuff here. Let's shift it to storage," he said.
His family got right on that as he continued to examine the room. Sadly, there were no super secret messages in bizarre sealing arrays awaiting his gaze that would lead him to a treasure trove of rare and clan-only fūinjutsu. But maybe one of the clones would find another interesting spot to puzzle out and explore.
If nothing else, they could reverse engineer the seals for their own use. Then it wouldn't matter if any Tsuna used during the loops got lost; they could always make more. "I suppose we'll have to set up an armory section in my storage," he muttered.
"A part of me is wondering what kind of money those would get over here," Reborn said. "If they'd be considered ancient weapons due to some time differential."
Hayato paused in his shifting efforts and said, "Huh. There is no real correlation timewise, since this is a feudal-type world with a bizarre mixture of electronics thrown in. That and how Heul keeps getting tossed back in time, seemingly, after each of these hilariously stupid loops."
Tsuna shook his fist menacingly at his Storm.
"All right, we're about done here," Sin said. "How about we have lunch, and hope the clones find something else in the meantime?"
Everyone nodded, so they trooped on out, flicked a blanket into place, and broke out the food. Tsuna shifted a plate over to Reborn so as not to be rude, and because he quite liked the man. They spent the next half hour eating and socializing, catching up on events in λ10. Reborn begged off at that point (he had a date that afternoon), so after a round of farewells, Tsuna dismissed the window.
"All right, let's get back to picking over these ruins."
xXx
The real prize was under the presumed location of the Uzukage's Tower, but that was not entirely unexpected. People had a tendency toward predictability. The tower would have been one of the village locations with (presumably) excellent security, so storing village secrets under it, or at least heavily restricted knowledge, only made sense.
There was scroll after scroll regarding fūinjutsu, and every last one of them was shifted to Tsuna's storage. They would be scanned in, run through OCR software (or converted manually to text), and printed out to be bound into books for the shinobi library, as well as e-book copies added to the digital library.
While they were there they kicked around ideas for what the trigger might be. So far, it wasn't:
• Passing Stage One of the Chūnin Selection Exams
• Passing Stage Two of the Chūnin Selection Exams
• Participating in Stage Three of the Chūnin Selection Exams
• Ensuring the Hokage survived the invasion
• Ensuring Uchiha Sasuke was not given a Cursed Seal of Heaven
So what was left, aside from the (presumably) untenable issue of Uzumaki Naruto obtaining the rank of chūnin?
"Letting the old fossil die?" Chikusa suggested. "With Shimura out of commission, he wouldn't be elevated. I rather think that Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura would prefer to be advisors and manipulate things in the background, though having lost Shimura's backing, I'm not sure how effective they would be. And if we tweaked them, it would likely be a non-issue."
"It's an option we can test," he said. "We should be tweaking them anyway each time, especially since we're not using the Fidelius—yet. If we do get beyond this loop, I want it done immediately. Odds are, with the aftermath of the invasion to deal with, it'd be some time before anyone realized they no longer had a clue who has it."
"Um… Performing the miracle of somehow trapping Gaara in a paralyzing field and fixing his seal? And then somehow beating it into his head that… Ugh." Ken shook his head.
"Well, maybe," Mukuro said. "Maybe in the sense that it has to do with Gaara and the other jinchūriki out there? But dealing with Gaara in some way—and not by simply shifting him out of the way—would allow you to progress to, uh, somehow dealing with the others? In a pseudo-Arcobaleno way? Or something."
He hummed. "Forgive me for not recalling offhand exactly who the others are. I mean, I've just been so engrossed in my education and…"
Daemon sighed. "More like you didn't see the point in memorizing that information."
With a shrug he said, "This loop we'll let the old man die and see what happens. I'd rather not test too many variables at once."
xXx
His first attempts at playing the hammered dulcimer were, quite frankly, awful. But at least it didn't sound like the yowling death cries of far too many feral cats. (No, that was Hayato attempting to learn the violin.) Managing to get even something as simple as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star out of his beloved band of nutjobs was going to be something of a miracle. Thank Kami for shadow clones.
Still, he was having fun. Hopefully, during one of the loops, Samsara could pop up somewhere in the village, put on a musical show, then vanish like a mirage gotten too close to. Maybe people would take the damn hint and get creative, start finding things to bang on and pluck and whatnot. Kami knew a little culture would not go amiss.
The most he had ever seen in this version of Earth was the use of sound as an attack of some form. Controlled, focused sound, such as the gauntlets of the Oto nin, or a melody to carry a genjutsu, piped from what he would consider a crude flute.
He shook his head and focused on his instrument again. Even as a rank tyro he could create beautiful notes, just not with any sense of coherency. As an experiment, he picked up his dulcimer, made sure to have his mallets in hand, then created a shadow clone. Tsuna grinned when he realized the clone had the same instrument.
"Right, try playing that," he said, then watched as the clone set up and started tapping the strings. The sound rang true, so Tsuna created forty-nine more clones in the same way, and set them to work. His family, seeing the results of his experiment, did the same.
Given how many loops they might have to endure…
xXx
Tsuna once again demonstrated sheer dumb luck when it came to his first match. Neji was defeated in the same way, tripping over thin air, a flailing of arms, and an entirely too lucky chop to the back of the neck which rendered his opponent unconscious. Given that he was cosplaying as Skull, his look of "surprise" morphed into exuberant pride.
"You can take your so-called fate and shove it up your ass to replace the stick you have lodged in there," he muttered as he bounded away to the competitor box. He suddenly settled down, as if recognizing that he was being too open in a public forum, in front of all those important people, and made out like he was being a proper ninja. One who kept failing to hide his smile entirely.
Kabuki-Boy forfeited again.
Anyone up for subtle sabotage of that puppet?
On it.
Fan-User versus Gai-Clone went about the usual. She simply could not keep up with his speed, and lost. Bun-Bun won against the Nara; also not a surprise. It once again highlighted just how lazy the kid was, and how likely it was he would die sooner rather than later, unless something happened to wake him the fuck up.
And then it was down to Duck-Butt and Tanuki-Teddy.
Next loop, I want eyes on that month. I want to know exactly what Hatake is teaching the kid.
Sure thing.
Kabuto set off his genjutsu right on schedule. Tsuna allowed himself to be "woken up" by a less than amused Yūhi, acknowledged orders to help evacuate civilians, and dashed off, clones materializing into existence as he went.
With Samsara not helping, not causing the barrier to fall, the Hokage had quite the fight on his hands. According to the report given by one of the clones, Sarutobi used the same seal the Yondaime had to seal the Kyūbi, except in this case, the old man sealed away Orochimaru's arms.
His arms.
"Apparently he was shooting for the snake's soul, but that didn't go so well," Sin said. "The most he could manage was the, uh, soul … of Orochimaru's arms. To prevent him from using any techniques. Or something like that."
Tsuna blinked owlishly. "All right, then. Guess we'll see what day it is come morning."