71 Naruto : Chapter 71
Naruto, disguised as Dark Phoenix, stood in the Hokage's office talking about how they could stop Orochimaru's plans. Naruto had been called as he was the village's only seal-master that was currently present. Jiraiya was out to investigate a rumour as Naruto was in the exams.
As Naruto wouldn't return to his official residence, which he used to meet with Jiraiya as he had no intention to tell him where he really lived, he didn't trust the man that much, until after the second round there was more than enough time to check with one of his informants.
Kakashi, Anko and Ibiki were the other ones present. Naruto had passed on the information that Kabuto was indeed a spy and worked for Orochimaru as well that the Oto team was under his command. It was worrisome, but for the moment they couldn't do anything.
Anko had told them that Orochimaru had threatened to attack if they cancelled the chunin exams.
Naruto promised to upgrade the security seals on the village walls immediately after he finished with the second exam. Ibiki would take Kabuto into custody with Kakashi and Gai's help.
No matter how good Kabuto might be, against the future Hokage and two high-class jonin he wouldn't have a chance.
Naruto also gave them a new seal that he had developed to test after the exams. If it was placed either on the head, the spine or the heart of someone, it would shut down the chakra circulation of said person immediately, which would make everybody it was used on pass out.
He had only tested it with Tora so far, as he said with Naruto's help, a comment which only Kakashi and the Hokage understood, he admitted sheepishly.
The other ninjas sweat-dropped at that comment. Though Kakashi could understand it. He had been really sadistic having his team catch that cat so often in the beginning. Nonetheless they agreed to try the seal with Kabuto.
They all knew that Dark Phoenix was a genius with seals and if he thought they would work there was a high possibility that they did. And Tora was no normal cat.
"I can also report that Naruto Namikaze's test of the identification seals in the Forest of Death was successful. He contacted me after he and his team reached the tower.
They work within a distance of three hundred metres to inform you that an ally is close by and you can tell who it is within twenty metres. I suggest placing those seals on all our ninjas for the finals.
Well, the chunin, jonin and ANBU at least. I don't think it would be wise to include all the genin. They aren't trained to retain information under pressure long enough and we can't risk anything of our plans getting out beforehand." Naruto said.
"You are right. I also want those listening seals on all ninjas. That way we can manage to have an idea what is going on in the parts of the village. Orochimaru won't concentrate on one part; he will attack in several places at once."
Kakashi said, looking over a map of the village.
"The main gate, the southern wall, perhaps from the top of the Hokage Monument, inside the arena and we should look out for underground attacks."
"Can't we use something to inhibit underground movement?" Anko asked.
"We could place special wires underground that would send chakra disrupting waves out. That way no earth user could get into the village undetected, but for this to work the attackers would have had to start their work already.
From the outer edge of the barrier to the village's walls there are several kilometres to be covered. No way that that wouldn't have been noticed." Ibiki said.
Naruto nodded, knowing that Danzo would have noticed immediately. His ROOT bases used tunnels like that after all. And he had bugged the tunnels without ROOT knowing. He could listen into what was spoken in the secret base any time he wanted. There was after all no reason to fully trust Danzo.
And his listening seals wouldn't be influenced by a standard privacy jutsu. You needed to know which frequency was used to disable them and finding the exact one would take time or a major coincidence.
"So we can safely assume that the attacks will concentrate on areas above the ground. Nonetheless I would like to have the immediate area around the walls protected like Ibiki said.
It will prevent attempts to dig under them and bring them down that way." Kakashi pointed out.
"We also need to find out how Orochimaru got in with us having the barriers changed already."
"We will set a team to both of that after we take out Kabuto. We can't risk him informing Orochimaru." Ibiki said and got nods.
The Sandaime let Kakashi lead the meeting. He was the next Hokage and this would soon be completely his responsibility. He and Danzo had done their part as far as they could and taken out all spies that they knew about.
Jiraiya had changed the way the barrier worked like Naruto had proposed which would warn them of large groups attacking immediately and thanks to Naruto's new invention of flying backpacks they had an eight person strong unit to fend off aerial attacks.
The things the boy could do with seals and ingenuity didn't cease to amaze him.
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Team ten was in hiding in the forest. For some reason this round was much harder than they had thought it would be. In the beginning they had done well and only had had bad luck with finding only a team with another heaven scroll like theirs.
They had still pocketed it as having a spare would be smart as Shikamaru pointed out. But now everybody seemed to be after said heaven scrolls. They had listened to three other teams thanks to Ino possessing a mouse and spying on them from under a bush.
Shikamaru knew that probably the two that they had were either the last two in the forest or very close to being the last. It was making this whole exercise much more dangerous. They had relied on stealth to stay undetected so far.
Now they were really glad that the senseis of the rookie teams had set up so many different challenges to help them develop their skills and had trained them extremely hard. Especially in the weeks following the failed mission to capture Naruto.
It had been a major blow but also a much needed wake-up call and Shikamaru rather had it that they had been forced to see reality in a safe training mission than in real life where it would have cost them their lives.
The hard training had been the deciding factor in them being able to stay alive. The only way to be safe would be getting an earth scroll and heading to the tower. But at the tower there would be several other teams that would be waiting to intercept them.
Well, in regards to trapping an opponent nobody could compare to a Nara.
"Ino, Choji, we should get to the tower and ambush one of the teams that are waiting there to ambush other teams." Shikamaru declared.
"For some reason there are very few heaven scrolls left in the forest, so any team we come by should have an earth scroll if they even have a scroll left.
Something happened, even if we can't tell what yet. The longer we stay here, the more dangerous things will become."
"Ok Shikamaru. What's the plan?" Choji asked.
"We will stick to the shadows. I have a technique that will make others overlook us as long as we stay in the shadows.
My father taught it to me just before the exams. It's similar to a genjutsu. In this forest are more than enough shadows for us to get to the tower quickly.
We sneak up to a team that waits for an un-expecting team to come by and knock them out quickly.
While I can't attack while keeping the jutsu going, you and Ino don't have that handicap. Ino, you did some work with paralysing poisons after being hit by Naruto, didn't you?" Shikamaru addressed his blond teammate.
"Yes, I wanted to know how he could paralyse me with a simply senbon hit. Turned out that my mum was an expert in the area and she taught me some of her secret techniques.
I have a supply of senbon needles with paralysing poisons with me.
That was also the only kind of poison she would let me use until I have built up some resistance to my own poisons." Ino answered.
"Good. We will use them to paralyse any team we come across and take an earth scroll. Then we will go to the tower ASAP without foregoing stealth. If we do this right we will be out of this troublesome forest before dawn." Shikamaru said.
Ino and Choji nodded and the three took off keeping to the shadows. Shikamaru was now very glad that Asuma had also worked on their chakra reserves with them, otherwise using the shadow concealing jutsu wouldn't have been an option at all.
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