A/N: So... Thing is, this chapter was actually already written two months ago when I posted the first chapter, I was just unhappy with it and then lost interest in writing this for a while. Any updates in this story will probably be as erratic as this, because I'm not going to force myself to update this story on a regular basis; I have neither the time nor the motivation for that, sorry. I'm posting this now because the mood struck me to write chapter three, so depending on whether that mood stays or not I may just end up with chapter three up by next week or so.
Naruto was shocked, to say the least. After everything he has gone through in the war, one would think he would be desensitized to carnage, but this…
He had woken at the crack of dawn the next morning, nervous but ready to explore the island. After examining the outskirts, he took a deep breath and headed toward the remains of the town, and here he had stood for at least half of an hour in shock. It was clear from the skeletons everywhere that nobody ever attempted to return after the carnage during his mother's childhood. Biting back his tears for the lost clan, HIS lost clan, Naruto made a hundred shadow clones and set them to work. Fifty left town to begin extending the cemetery on the cliff overlooking the sea towards the Land of Water, while fifty more began transporting bodies. Naruto himself slowly walked through the wrecked buildings, creating shadow clones as necessary to move fallen parts of walls and ceilings as well as ensure that the buildings he entered wouldn't collapse on him. Naruto felt his heart breaking every time he found a small skeleton clutching a doll, every time he found a site where parents tried defending their children, but he couldn't let himself cry for them. The ninja in him knew that the mission had to come first, that he needed to get this done today so that he can begin his search for information tomorrow. Shutting down his emotions, Naruto focused solely on the task at hand in complete silence. He spoke neither to his clones nor Kurama, and by mid-afternoon all of the bodies were out of town and being laid to rest. Popping all fifty clones that were working on transport, Naruto nearly vomited while examining their memories… then ran to a building near the center of town.
He had not spent much time in this building earlier, as it didn't stick out much. However, one of the clones had seen something, so Naruto returned to check it out. He slowly picked up what the clone found, and finally Naruto broke down, letting out the day's grief. In his hands was a picture of his mother before she had moved to the Leaf, as well as three other girls around her age. The picture was sun-bleached, moth-eaten, and brittle but it was still clear enough to tell. Looking on the back, Naruto saw the names of his mother's friends inked in, as well as the date the picture was taken… from what he had learned, his mother was moved to the Leaf within a month of this date, with the destruction of the Hidden Eddy Village not too long after. Focused entirely on the picture, Naruto placed a hand on the ground to help himself up. He didn't feel the pain as a rock sliced open his palm, didn't notice the blood dripping down his hand. He did, though, catch a seal array activating in the middle of the room where his blood had dripped. Jumping back to the wall, Naruto cautiously eyed the seal that was opening a portion of the floor. He slowly made his way to the newly visible spiral staircase, performing a quick fire jutsu on a piece of fallen timber to make a torch.
Recognizing that this place must have been some sort of family secret (with a one in four chance of it being HIS family secret, based on the picture), Naruto threw caution to the winds and walked down the staircase. What he found down there amazed him. Sitting in airtight display cases stretching as far as the eye could see in his makeshift torch's light were shelves upon shelves of scrolls. In awe, Naruto murmured, "There are enough scrolls here to take ten lifetimes to READ, let alone memorize, and I only have 27 weeks left until the Five Kage Summit… good thing I can fit ten lifetimes into that time." Naruto gave a halfhearted smirk and set to work creating a shadow clone per shelf, lighting the torches that adorned the outer walls on his way.
"Alright Narutos, listen up!" he shouted from the middle of the library. "It's time for us to study like we've never studied before! If we can learn all of the information here, we won't be just the strongest ninja in the world; we'll be the best seal master in it too! But ya know what? I don't think you guys are up to it. I doubt we could even get through half of this information by the time we have to go." Grinning at the resulting shouts of indignation, Naruto watched as thousands of himself set to the one thing he's never been able to stand with as much fervor as the time when he mastered the Rasengan in a week.
Naruto continued this way for three months, cramming his head with as much sealing information as possible. However, he was becoming increasingly frustrated. They had been through over three fourths of the scrolls by now, and there hasn't been any mention of a way to seal a Tailed Beast outside of the Reaper Death Seal, which had apparently originated from the Uzumakis instead of the Namikazes as commonly believed. Today, he decided to quit early… when something interesting registered in his memory banks. Going to the shelf that the clone the memories originated from was assigned to, he opened up the most recent scroll, and there it was. Naruto grinned widely… he had already perfected the first of his father's signature jutsus, why not try the second? The Flying Thunder-God space-time jutsu… it was derived from this transport seal in his hands. Naruto had retrieved one of the teleportation kunai from the final battlefield, and the seals were almost identical.
"With just a couple tweaks," Naruto mumbled, "I could make this jutsu take up a quarter of the chakra while increasing its potential range tenfold… Heck, with the right tweaks I could make it to where I can flash between any of the five great hidden villages effortlessly!" With a renewed passion, Naruto remade his clones and got back to learning. He wanted to know as much as possible now, because if he could do that much better than the Fourth Hokage, considered to be one of the greatest seal masters in the Leaf, with just 75% of the knowledge in this library, with all of it he could be the greatest seal master EVER, not just the greatest alive!
Another three weeks passed by, and Naruto finally finished going through the library. While he didn't find anything directly applicable to the Tailed Beasts, he had an idea on how to design a seal that could be perfect for his goals. In addition, he had begun to work on designing and learning his "perfected" version of the Flying Thunder-God technique. With it, it took almost no chakra for him to teleport from one side of the island to another, and he was beginning to attempt to take small animals along for the ride. While the first few mice didn't make it, he soon learned how to control the technique enough to keep it safe for them. After all, if his father could use it multiple times with a baby in tow, so could he! After the mice consistently survived, he moved up to rabbits, of which he only ended up injuring one. There were no larger animals on the island, so he was forced to limit the extent of his training with that technique there.
Finally, Naruto set the next part of his plan in motion. He intended to examine the seals used by Cloud, Mist, and Sand in attempt to incorporate their ideas into the new seal he was designing. He had debated sending a message to Rock, but nothing about their previous Jinchuriki had stood out to him. They did not have a Jinchuriki who could tame his beast, one who could maintain a position of Kage for years without contest, or one who had originally no control over his beast or himself. Naruto needed to learn from each of those sealing styles as best as he could to make a truly perfect Tailed Beast Host seal.
However, Naruto was beginning to grow impatient. Sure, he had twelve weeks left before the Five Kage Summit, but Naruto was aching to test out the extent of his new technique. Sending out messenger toads to the three villages in question with his new seals hidden inside, he resumed his usual training. Each message sent by his toads had a specific date and time inside where he said he would appear alongside the scroll, requesting that it be either alone or only with the village's respective Kage. First on the list was of the Sand, partially because their seals were the weakest and would be least likely to take the full week allotted to them, and partially because he wanted to catch up with his friend Gaara who he hadn't been able to speak with since the end of the war.
One week later, it was time for his trip to Sand. Naruto found himself taking a deep breath to calm down. While he was confident in his abilities, this was the first time he would be making a jump that was outside of his line of sight and that made him excited and nervous at the same time. Going to the Hidden Sand Village was also going to be the longest jump of this journey. Closing his eyes and focusing his chakra, Naruto made the now familiar single-handed seal. With no indication that the technique had worked outside of a sudden drop in humidity and increase in temperature, Naruto relaxed. Slowly opening his eyes, he took in his new surroundings. He was inside Gaara's office, with Gaara himself quickly recovering from the look of surprise on his face.
"Naruto Uzumaki… that was a rather sudden entrance. Would you care to explain?"
Smirking, Naruto reached out for a handshake. "It's nice to see you too, Gaara. I've just been working on one of my father's old techniques. It's rather handy, yeah? I just came from the Land of Water."
At the mention of the distance travelled, Gaara just sighed and shook the offered hand with a light smile. "There is nothing that can even slow you down anymore, is there?"
"Actually, there is. That's my excuse for dropping on by! I'm just curious, how much of your sealing libraries are available to your citizens and good friends?"
"Sealing libraries? We… do not use seals much here. We only use them for puppetry, storage and…" Gaara's eyes narrowed slightly. "Naruto, what are you planning?"
"I can't tell you just quite yet, but I will say it's going to be big. Like, Five Kage Summit big."
Gaara sighed and made a hand motion. Outside of the office, a message was formed in the sand for his guards. While Gaara and Naruto continued to catch up, Temari and Kankuro were sent to gather all of the information that the Sand had on seals effective against demons. Merely an hour later, Gaara's siblings entered the room, and were completely shocked to see Naruto.
"Not that I mind you coming to visit, Naruto, but as captain of the Sand's guard I have to ask… how on earth did you get here without myself or my guards noticing?" Kankuro sounded mildly irritated, but was just as impressed as annoyed.
"I did what any good ninja would do, I cheated!" Naruto gave Kankuro a cheery smile, then turned back to Gaara. "So Gaara, this is what you're comfortable with me reading?"
"The Sand owes you a great deal, and we no longer have any need of this information. You're welcome to keep it if you so choose."
"Naaaaah, I just need an hour or so to learn what I need from it."
"An hour?" Temari scoffed. "Not even a genius could learn this much that fast, and from what I've been told you're far from being a genius."
Naruto looked mildly insulted, then smiled. "What I lack in smarts I can more than make up in numbers! How many scrolls do you have?"
"A little less than forty, you'd have to learn at… a…" Temari just sighed when she saw eighty Narutos pop into existence outside of Gaara's window. "Fine, whatever, here." She opened the window and dumped her scrolls into the hands of the nearest Naruto, who passed them out and ordered clones to take two to a scroll. As they began to study, the original chatted with the sand siblings.
As the clones began to finish learning their scrolls and disperse, Kankuro asked, "So, last time we visited the Leaf they said you weren't there, and nobody could tell us where you had gone. What's up with that?"
"Can't say much, but I've been off somewhere doing a bit of research. You guys will learn more in a little under three months," Naruto replied with a mischievous smile. Finally, the last few clones vanished and Naruto began to piece together his new knowledge. He wasn't surprised that there wouldn't be any drastic changes to his plan, though an extra flourish he observed in one of the seals might help reinforce the mindscape barriers, preventing another berserker like Gaara. A frowning Naruto got up and examined the scroll in question. "Hey Gaara, why wasn't this added to your seal back when Shukaku started bleeding over into your mind?"
Gaara stiffened a little, and looked over the scroll. "I… do not know. It is possible that it would have been incompatible with my style of seal, or that those who designed my seal were merely ignorant of it. It is also possible that it was desired at the time for me to behave as I did. I suppose now it is impossible to find out either way."
With a curt nod, Naruto accepted his explanation and picked up the scroll embedded with the transport seal that allowed him to flash over. "Well, I need to get back to my training. Gaara, do you want this kept here? If you don't want to I get it, it IS technically a breach in security even if only I can use it."
"As much as I trust you, Naruto, I cannot afford to keep it in my office. However, may I move it to a more secure location, such as a holding cell with chakra restraining properties, so that if someone else happens upon your technique they are not immediately set up to assassinate myself or my closest advisors?"
"Fine by me, place it wherever you want. If you decide you would rather it not be in your village, just tear the scroll a little. The seal inside is set to eliminate itself if the scroll is damaged or tampered with in any way."
"That's… an alarming amount of forethought from you, Naruto. Shikamaru was always complaining about how you never think things through, but you're proving him rather wrong." Temari fixed Naruto with a mildly suspicious glare, and he sheepishly scratched the back of his head.
"Since the war and how many people commended me for my quick thinking and all I've been trying to be a little smarter. Plus, I've had about 300 years of studying crammed into my head in the past couple months, as well as a few weeks just to think about how best to handle my transport seals so that everyone wins. That's enough to bring out some brains in anyone, eh?" Naruto paused for a bit, then…
"Wait, since when do you talk to Shikamaru about me? I thought you two were just forced together to work on those Chunin exams! Don't tell me you guys ARE dating after all, I thought he was going to ask Ino out?" Seeing Temari turn red and Gaara's and Kankuro's heads duck down, Naruto realized that angry Temari was in all likelihood ten times stronger and violent than angry Sakura and he had pressed exactly the wrong button. He promptly bid farewell to his friends and flashed away right as her fan was coming down on his head, narrowly avoiding a concussion and probably causing half of Gaara's office floor to need to be replaced.
Chuckling to himself, Naruto sat down in his library and created a few clones to rewrite all of the pertinent knowledge he gained from the scrolls in Suna. With his current knowledge of the sealing arts, Naruto finally felt confident enough to begin to set his plan into motion.