Ch89. Kumo's offer

"Eeeh~! Are you really going to make this more difficult than it needs to be?" Darui asked with a disappointed sigh. "How dull."

Ren's lips twitched, but he stayed where he was and gave the man a small shrug. "You wanted to talk, so talk. Sound can reach me here just fine."

It didn't hurt that it was also a very convenient position for Ren. The Kumo ninjas had to look up, and that meant they did not look down.

"Kumo is interested in your services and in your seals." Darui decided the blunt approach was for the best, so he stopped with the small talk.

But before Darui could continue, Ren chuckled and raised his eyebrow at the man. "And I suppose you wouldn't be a dear and give me a hint about who in Konoha tattled on me, would you?"

"I'd rather not disclose the identity of our spies." Darui gave Ren a 'what can you do?' look, "But maybe once your loyalty is proven?" He offered, but he still seemed a bit shifty to Ren despite having a quite solid poker face.

Honestly, this made no sense. If somebody from Konoha betrayed him and sent him into the Kumo's clutches, they would not do it just so he could get a recruitment speech. Nobody in Konoha would want him to join Kumo. Not even the people who hated his guts.

That meant this was the work of Kumo's spy network.

But Kumo's spy network also couldn't penetrate the village's security to such a degree that they could willy-nilly insert missions into the village's mission office and ensure that the exact ninja they wished for would take them.

That would have been a massive breach of security. It would have easily allowed them to assassinate many important ninjas. The first layer of security for every ninja village was secrecy.

The enemy village could not send ten jonin after Kakashi if they had no idea where he would be at any given moment when he was outside Konoha.

No. Such a security breach wouldn't be allowed to pass. If nothing else, Konoha took its security very seriously. This must have been an insider job.

So, the natural conclusion Ren arrived at was, "You were not hired to give a recruitment pitch." He narrowed his eyes at the ninja party in front of him.

Still, ten jonin? Wasn't that a little bit of overkill for a chunin like him? Couldn't they play by the rules and send some fresh-faced chunin after him?

Seriously! These people had no concept of fair play!

Ha ~, he was complaining just for the sake of complaining. This was so freaking frustrating.

Hearing Ren's words, Darui's playful act instantly dropped. The man probably already knew Ren wouldn't take his offer, but he still tried to resolve this peacefully for one last time. "We are just the recruitment party." He insisted with a serious tone.

"Right." Ren said, looking unimpressed as he gave the other nine jonin an obvious look. His eyes briefly stopped on a blonde woman he recognized as Samui. But the other eight were unknown to him.

Probably some chumps who did not manage to get screen time in the anime. Unfortunately, that did not make them any less dangerous.

"They are here for security reasons." Darui nonchalantly added.

Both knew it was an unspoken threat. There weren't many favorable options Ren seemed to have. Fighting ten jonin? That was the force a village usually employed against S-ranked criminals.

Not for the first time, Ren cursed his encounter with Yagura. He came out of it in surprisingly great shape, and Yagura died. So, the other villages that didn't have the full picture probably made their own assumptions about his competence.

Hence... ten jonin.

Sure, Konoha did claim that Yagura was killed by Akatsuki operatives. But intelligence and counterintelligence was a constant guessing game. Ren wouldn't be surprised if Kumo decided that Konoha was using Akatsuki to shift the blame. 

And since Ren was the only Konoha ninja to walk out of that conflict, only to start making some seriously powerful seals later on... ugh, this was definitely an unintended consequence of his actions, wasn't it?

"I guess saying no is not an option." Ren more stated than asked, feeling supremely nervous as he felt his clone using Hiding like a Mole technique to do some interesting things in the ground underneath four ninjas furthest away from the sensor.

Frankly, he was continuing the conversation because he needed a distraction. Fighting all ten jonin, whose abilities he didn't know about, was stupid.

No. He needed to even out the numbers.

He wasn't interested in their offer. It would have been a gilded cage, at best. He would have been happy if he was ever allowed to step outside of Kumo once he entered their village.

Kumo always wanted seal masters and bloodlines. They are very well known for kidnapping children and adults alike. And Ren did not want to think about what their kidnap victims with bloodlines went through in Kumo.

It was distasteful.

But Kumo was the only ninja village that wasn't made by a ninja. The first Raikage was a bandit. One who was just lucky enough to loot an experimental jutsu from a ninja corpse he found when he was young. The man then spent the next thirty years improving said technique until it became the fabled Lightning Chakra Armor.

Well, a crude version of it, at least. But the man still dominated the Land of Lightning with it. He knew no other Jutsu. Not even the basic ones. But he didn't need them to slaughter anybody in his way.

To this day, his descendants focus solely on this technique, and it is working very well for them.

When the formation of Konoha happened, the man realized which way the wind was blowing and decided to put his career as the leader of a bandit group behind him in favor of creating his own 'ninja' village.

Most ninja clans kinda fled from him. That was partially the reason why Kumo did not have that many clans. The man was supposed to be unpleasant and apparently demanded a tribute from any clan that came under his banner.

Their knowledge and an important woman of his choice from their clan. And let's just say the first Raikage did not care if said woman was married or not.

Needless to say, it was non-negotiable. Refusal was met with slaughter as he plundered the knowledge anyway and took the woman by force after he subjugated the remainder of the clan.

Frankly, Kumogakure people were still, to this day, acting more like bandits willing to do mercenary jobs rather than proper ninjas. Despite the previous Raikages trying to clean up their act.

Their reputation was still god-awful.

The first Raikage was actually bonked to death by Hashirama when the man attempted to kidnap Mito after she sealed Kyuubi into herself.

In exchange and as an apology for killing the Raikage, and honestly, Ren thought Hashirama should have just stomped Kumo to the ground right there and then, but the man was a bit too naive at times, Hashirama went and hunted the Hachibi who made himself into a nuisance in the lands that would a year later unify into the Land of Lightning.

Hashirama subdued the beast, and Mito sealed it into a chosen container. That was their first mistake because, in the following year, they kinda had to give similar benefits to other rising hidden villages to keep the status quo. To ensure Kumo would not instantly declare war against the budding Iwa or Kiri, dragging the whole ninja world into it, because they now had a jinchuuriki and others didn't.

It would have been a funny story if Kumo had stopped right there. They failed to get an Uzumaki. That should have been it. But the second Raikage, who was the son of the first, took the failure a tad bit too personally.

Fast forward a few years, and Uzushio was destroyed. Yeah, Hashirama really should have stomped Kumo into the ground in its cradle.

Of course, it was just a coincidence that around fifteen years after the Uzushio's fall, Kumo gained a sudden uptick of red-haired orphan ninjas who usually sported skin tones native to Kumogakure.

Because, naturally, not all Uzumaki died in the attack. And since this was Kumo, Ren imagined that any unfortunate captive was chained to bed and... yeah.

Konoha had its own dark secrets. But at least, they were not freaking known for being absolute dipshits to everything around them.

"No. I am afraid I can not take no for an answer." Darui lazily answered Ren's question. "But don't be dull. Come on, man. We are prepared to accommodate you. Your seals are valuable. Money, power, or even women. Kumo can give them to you in exchange for your service. You will have everything you could ever want."

'Except for freedom.' Ren inwardly scoffed.

"You are saying that as if you were giving me a choice here." He outwardly huffed and crossed his arms under his chest, donning a pondering look to sell the image of somebody who was thinking about it.

His clone was almost done with its work.

"I am giving you a choice." Darui shrugged, "You can come willingly, or I can beat you within an inch of your life and drag you to Kumo by your hair." He nonchalantly said, "Don't make this harder than it needs to be. For both our sakes."

At that moment, Ren realized why Darui opted for a more non-violent approach. The man didn't seem very motivated. He looked like somebody who was given an unpleasant task at work and now needs to fulfill it despite wanting to do anything else.

"You are coming with us anyway, but coming willingly will be beneficial to you." Darui nodded with his head toward Samui. "Your gaze lingered on her. You can have her in your bed tonight. And if your seals are useful enough? You can have her for the rest of your life."

Ren almost snorted at the undertone of reluctance in the man's tone as he gave him that offer. But fair enough. They didn't know much about him. Darui was working with the information and resources he had available.

And yes, Ren's gaze did linger on Samui, so the man probably understood it as interest.

"Heh." Ren rolled his eyes as he opted for replying with sarcasm. "Your sales pitch is really hitting me in the feels. I am almost gushing with certainty that I won't find myself in her position in the future."

Darui awkwardly scratched his cheek as he gave Ren a sheepish smile in return. "Depends on your usefulness, to be honest. Good seals are in high demand. Kumo will treat you well." He then nodded with his head toward Samui. "But there is only so much she can do for the village. She is good at swinging her sword, but so are many others. Other than that, she is hot. She doesn't mind." He glanced at the blonde woman who, during all that speech, didn't move a muscle. "Do you, Samui?"

"I am cool with doing my duty for the village." She said in a cold tone, completely calmly with no emotion.

Ren gave her a deadpan look, "You don't sound like you like it very much."

But Samui only calmly insisted that, "It's cool."

Yeah, sure it was. Ren could almost feel the frigid effort she was putting into seducing him. It was positively arctic.

Darui, to give him some credit, looked a bit uncomfortable at that moment. But when Ren looked at him, he just sighed, "It is what it is, man."

"..." They silently stared at each other, Ren occasionally looking at Samui, whose face was still locked in her perfect poker face, not moving a single muscle as she dispassionately stared at Ren.

It took two minutes until Darui finally realized this was going nowhere. "Haa~. You aren't going to take the carrot, are you?" He regretfully asked, his shoulders slumping as he slowly unsheathed his sword.

"I am happily in a relationship." Ren smirked at him, feeling that his clone was finally done with its job.

"Sucks. Stick it is, then." Darui grunted and lowered his body into a fighting stance when he was startled by a booming explosion that suddenly erupted to his right, causing screams of fright and pain to reverberate through the surroundings.