Pre-Chapter A/N:Another chapter on time? Guess my lock-in is going pretty well. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. Next five chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
Inoken had them stretched out on separate beds in the Yamanaka interrogation room as different members of his clan stood over each of them. The goal was to drain them of whatever information they had of use. For the first time, we had members of the New Stone for us to interrogate, and we were not going to waste the opportunity. Every bit of information they offered was stringently recorded and catalogued. Shika had commandeered an office only a few rooms from here from some poor brown-haired fellow and was basically running intelligence out of there.
New Stone had declared war with their actions in Kusa years ago, but we had been fine with considering them a fringe concern that we would deal with when the time came. However, their actions in Rivers were an escalation. The kind of escalation that we would punish. They had taken from me, and while I had buried my worst impulses since the news had reached me, I had just been patiently waiting for an opening. I didn't need Kurama to fuck up a village anymore, so any lectures he had on that, he could keep to himself.
'I didn't even say anything,' he groused from within my head.
'You thought it,' I growled back. He retreated from my mind and returned to the movie he was replaying through my memories, clearly having decided that his fifth rewatch of Infinity War was more important than whatever it was I was getting up to.
"Do we have a location?" I asked.
"For the First Sect, yes. For the other four, no. But we are piecing things together slowly. Different bits of information that each of them noted but did not dwell upon can come together to give us a good idea of a general area. With a general area to search and the knowledge that they have favoured underground settlements, we should be able to find everything we need in due time," Inoken said. I nodded, returning to my pacing.
It was finally within my grasp. Part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind and attack the one Sect we had a location for, but that would be the wrong choice. If we warned the others, they would evacuate, and if that happened, there was every chance we'd find ourselves back at square one with nothing to go on. The idea to infiltrate the Sect and kidnap their so-called Shadow had been shut down for being too risky in the end.
His sister had a good estimation of his strength, and while I had little doubt I'd win, if he managed to cause enough chaos, it would end up turning into a whole battle in the village, and then the others might get the warning necessary to know to go to ground. His sister had already confirmed that their Sect had not been the ones to carry out the Rivers attack. She had no knowledge of it at all, so getting the one Sect I could be relatively certain had not caused this at the expense of not getting all the others would be a bit of a waste.
"I'll go bother Shika instead. Keep up the good work, Inoken," I said, tapping his shoulder as I turned to leave. He nodded even as I felt a few of the Yamanaka clansmen in the room begin to relax as I reached the door. I sighed as I closed it behind me. We'd made more progress in two days than we had in the last six months, so why was it that I was so impatient now? Probably because I could see the finish line in sight. The plague that was Iwagakure no Sato was now well on the way to being completely expunged from this world. It was just a matter of time.
I left the building instead of going to Shika's office. She wouldn't work any faster with me looking over her shoulder. The opposite was actually the case, so it was best if I found something else to do. And thankfully, there was one such task I could point my nervous energy to. In a flicker of space, I was in the R&D room.
I twisted as a bit of shrapnel flew through the air and nearly impaled me through my left eye.
"What did I say about blast shields?" Reiji's gruff voice sounded through the space. Some of those closer to him were already putting on earplugs as he began to approach the poor boy whose workstation had just exploded into a million pieces. As my good deed of the day, I stepped in between them, heading off Reiji and preventing his approach.
"Hokage-sama," he said with a whisper, bowing briefly.
"Reiji. I'm sure Chojuro knows better than to work on seals without his blast shields up now, doesn't he?" At the last bit, I turned to the boy, who nodded frantically with a look on his face that said he couldn't believe his luck. He was probably thanking every god worshipped in the Land of Fire in quick succession.
"Good. Now let's head to your office so you can tell me about that thing that was sent to you last night," I said, now turning his attention to something else.
He scowled and looked like he still wanted to say something before changing his mind and beginning to lead the way to his office.
"Where did it come from again?" he asked.
"I didn't say last night," I replied.
"And last night I was fine with not knowing, but that is no longer the case," he said.
"Not even if the matter is classified?" I asked. Reiji was self-admittedly not one of the best at keeping secrets, so he tended to leave the Council meetings when the subject turned to anything that was classified beyond the level where he was allowed to talk to his very civilian wife about it.
"This is important enough that I'd make an exception."
"Alright then, if you want to know so badly. We captured some shinobi from the New Stone, and those were the suits that they were wearing. Minato reckons they granted some stealth properties since Kushina had been unable to sense them until their attack had begun. And even while they fought, their entire use of chakra was blocked from sensing. Made for some intriguing opponents and explains how they've managed to kill so many Anbu squads on their lonesome," I said.
"Come, let me show you the seals," he said as we reached the door to his office. He opened it, and in the expansive space, two of the suits rested on flat tables near the middle of the room.
"Look at this," he said.
I followed where his finger was pointed and noted a squiggly circle drawn inside a square. It was a seal kanji, but not from any language I knew. Probably an original construction like the one I had used for my own Hiraishin.
"What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?" I asked.
He sighed before facepalming. "Of course you wouldn't recognise it," he said.
"And you do? Is this a language I should know about?"
"When we start training children on fuinjutsu, we usually don't start with actual seals so they don't accidentally open rifts in the space-time continuum or whatnot. At least most of the time we don't. Someone like you who trained under Mito would probably have skipped that stage entirely because she was focused on you throughout the process and you had enough talent that there was no need for her to apply such safeguards. Most children are not you, and most teachers are not Mito Uzumaki. So we came up with a way to allow all children to learn without exposing them to needless dangers. A child's sealing language. It was never consecrated like a true language would have been, so we were able to teach them abstract concepts and have them practice complicated seals without risking reactions," he said.
"So this is ours," I said.
"Yes. Yes, it is."
"But you said the language was not consecrated," I pointed out. If it hadn't been consecrated, then there should have been no effect in using it in making seal matrices. The best you'd get out of an unconsecrated language was a light show, and that was if you pumped a shit ton of chakra into the thing.
"There is more than one way to consecrate a seal language. Just like there is more than one way to make a real-world language. A real-world language can be formed either with conscious efforts to create a unique language, like the code languages we use in the village, or they can form accidentally. Words begin to be associated with certain meanings and it sticks across generations. This is the latter type of seal language. Having the children use these symbols as if they meant something did eventually ensure that they would mean something after enough time passed and enough effort was put into the belief—making it a naturally evolved seal language. The original Uzumaki script was one such language," he said.
"But doesn't that go against the whole point of teaching the children with a fake language then? The fact that the fake language could become real at just about any time?" I asked.
"We moved the children on from the training language after two or three years depending on their skill, and then we changed the language every five years or so. Even if any of the languages ever became active, it wouldn't matter because the other children were practicing with a different training language and the children that had learned with that one had now moved on to the actual Uzumaki script," he said.
"So why the long face then? If this is true, then we should have an easy time translating this and figuring out how to counter it and implement the same in our own forces," I said.
"I don't actually know the script. I can recognise it from when it was approved at a Clan Council meeting, but that is not the issue. If this seal is in use, then it means that the New Stone has an Uzumaki with them. A member of the clan that was taken before he was old enough to be moved on to the proper sealing languages. With the kind of talent on display here, he probably would not have been expected to spend too long on the practice language. Chances are he was about four or five when he was taken," he said. I fell silent. It was not something that was spoken of often, but the raid on Uzushio had partially succeeded. We'd interrupted in the middle, but even with our help, they had only been able to repel the stragglers.
We hadn't been able to be everywhere at the same time, so there were some things we just hadn't been able to help with. There was really nothing we could do about it to be completely honest. Some people had been taken, and others had been killed. We all logically knew this, but this was the first time we were receiving direct evidence of someone who had been taken during the attack. And the fact that he was in the New Stone of all places also said something.
"Iwa did not take part in the attack," he said the thought on my mind.
"If there's an Uzumaki there, and you do seem to be sure about it, then that means that he was traded. Uzumaki children were being traded like cattle," I said, and I could see the fury on Reiji's face at the possibility.
"New Stone will burn for it and I'll get what is ours back," I said, clasping his shoulder with my hand and nodding at him.
"Not just them," he said meaningfully.
"A war with either Kiri or Kumo would be extraordinarily costly at this point in time. We have neither the shinobi to spare nor the resources to embark on another lengthy war. We can't do anything to them," I said.
"They could have more of us. They definitely do. If they had enough children to trade with Iwa, then there are Uzumaki children being held in these villages," he said.
"Is this the kind of work that could have been created under duress? Whoever made this must have been given some resources to further their education, and they must have found the creative impetus to create something like this. He isn't suffering, Reiji. Calm down. Yes, they are not home, and as the Clan Head, I have a duty to return them home, but that does not mean we should abandon everything else now. We've got to keep our wits about us. This hits me just as much as it does you, but I console myself with the knowledge that they will return to their families when we do eventually take those villages, and we will have them with us once again. It's only a matter of time until those villages fly our flag. Until all is Konoha and nothing else exists," I said, making the promise that I had made to myself many times over.
The Otsutsuki would come one way or another. Their desire for universal conquest would never be tamed, and one day—whether Kaguya rose again or not—this world would have to deal with the consequences of beings far beyond our ken. And when they came, I would rather the world be united and waiting to face them rather than deep in the throes of another world war. That was part of why New Stone needed to end. Stone would be a symbol. It could never be allowed to return because the image was far less poignant if there was a successor.
I needed the world to look at Stone and see what happens to those who resist too much. Who dared too much. Who proved too stubborn. They would be my Castamere, to borrow from another universe. A symbol of my cruelty and rage. And on the other side would be Grass. Grass would be the exact opposite. Once the New Stone was gone, we could pour in the resources that would turn Grass from a laggard into the most beautiful of countries. The two of them, side by side, would show the others what they had to lose from resistance and what they stood to gain if they capitulated. The Kage, the elite Jounin, those who gained too much from the old system would never bend—they would break first, but they were not the ones I wanted to convince. They were not the backbone of a war effort. Speaking of backbones, my mind turned to Rain.
Hanzo's last supporters were being quietly removed. Konoha would take the Land of Rain in a year or so, and when that time came, we would be ready to make it one of the most productive places in the world. Our industrial bastion that would set the stage for what was to come. Rain was already more industrially developed than every other minor nation. With joint investment from the Daimyo and I, it would leapfrog the Great Five in that one single metric. Where other countries tried to have strong economies, food sources, employment bases, and all the other considerations that made a people happy, we would focus only on industry.
Every other thing would be imported with time. This man that stood across from me would lead much of the effort; he just didn't know it yet. My goal was to turn this world into an empire in the image of the Leaf, and fuinjutsu would have to power most of it.
"Okay. Okay. It's just waiting, yes? I know how to do that," he said. I nodded.
"Good," I said.
"Now about the suit. What else can you tell me? What are the weaknesses?" I asked.
"There are none. This thing allows one to hide from all conventional means of long-range detection. It masks the chakra of the wearer so thoroughly that the Byakugan computes the space the user occupies as empty. Aburame insects cannot sense the chakra signatures as well unless they were to physically touch someone wearing one, then they would have no hope. There are no scent masking properties built into the seal matrix, but means of combating the Inuzuka's unique senses are a dime a dozen, so either he could not include a suitable one for efficiency reasons, or he chose not to include one," he said.
"Doing all that can't be cheap in terms of chakra expenditure. Especially with a poorly optimised seal language," I said, stepping closer.
"I put one of them on. The drain is noticeable but not something that would change one's day, I suspect."
"Yes, not something that would change your day, Reiji Uzumaki. I suspect that if the average chunin put something like this on, they'd only last a few hours, and that is assuming there isn't any combat involved. That's probably why they haven't implemented their use widely. Well, that and trying to prevent knowledge of them from leaking to us," I said.
"Do you think you could reverse-engineer it?" I asked.
"Without a translation, I could probably do something similar now that I know it's possible in about a year with all my other projects."
"Someone in the clan must remember the language. Find them. Get that translation and get me a working prototype in two months. Fix the efficiency problem as well," I added before giving him a final nod and turning to leave. Now that we weren't decoding a foreign seal master's language, there was little for me to do. Getting the translation would be grunt work, and I didn't much enjoy building seals that others had already worked on. It was much less fun than treading new ground.
A/N: So we get to see some of Shori's plans and some progress in terms of New Stone. Expect a conclusion on that end relatively soon. Next five up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.