Of Journeymen Swordsmen and Master Kidnappers
Clang! Clang!
The sound of my upward parry and downward slash smashing into Jinin's hasty block echoed throughout the dojo. Even with the benefit of transition turning her from an ugly man into a decent looking woman, her nose remained large enough to annihilate cocaine mountains. My lead foot lashed out in a brutal teep that knocked the newly revived member of the Seven Swordsmen off her feet. She slid across the surface of the indoor pool we fought atop without sinking an inch in a good showing of her restored chakra control.
"That's enough." rasped the voice of one of my two new purchases, Shigure Kosaka, a fem fatale dedicated to non lethal weapon martial arts and immodest dress.
Fem Jinin grit her teeth, her heroic spirit taking a hard boot today against me, just like all the other members of my renewed Seven Swordsmen. We'd sparred for hours down here in this training center welding high quality steel swords. The entire pack of them wanted to follow their psychic connection to their iconic equipment, but I denied them the right to leave the village.
"You've all shown a solid understanding of the basics." Shigure continued entirely unbothered by my gaze fixed on the ridiculous secondary sexual characteristics hanging off her chest like a pair of ripe melons, "Good journeymen swordsmanship."
"Did she just call us journeymen?" Ringo shouted in anger.
"We greatly anticipate your teaching, sensei." I cut off any support for the loudmouth with a bow.
"Let us begin." she calmly stated then stepped onto the surface of the water, once again showing her prodigious talents despite only gaining chakra through the Added Potential perk this morning.
With sword in hand and a pair of seemingly disinterested lilac eyes under her unique lighting bolt eyebrows, Shigure quickly demonstrated what I suspected all along about the vaunted swordsmanship of Kirigakure: we suck.
It's not that we are bad in verse, Mist shinobi fare well in sword fights against any other faction, it's just that saintly sword skills are not the focus of the Naruto-verse's power structure. Enter Shigure Kosaka, a weapons master from an IP dedicated to ultra exaggerated martial arts skills. If not for my immediate ensnarement in genjutsu, there is no guarantee we could have contained her if she wanted to leave after her summoning. Much like my second choice in purchased sensei, Speed-o-Sound Sonic from One Punch Man, just for different reasons.
The Company placed a contractual limit on me for both Templates and Waifu/Husbando purchases, only allowing me to take options tagged Ninja in the database while completing my Grand Mission: Village Hidden in the Waifu. While others might chafe under this restriction, I found it enjoyable to be working with a unified theme for my team. I'm a stickler for consistency, nothing taking my enjoyment out of the programs produced by The Company more than someone like Supergirl getting dropped on a setting like A Song of Ice and Fire, or Star Wars, or really anything not comics related.
Shigure and Speed-o-Sound Sonic can both offer me avenues of power not present in the setting, while also maintaining some respect for the themes and motifs of Naruto. Though my sword swinging harem may have felt insulted by Shirgure's words, they all noticed the immediate and profound benefits of working with her while we shared the Martial, Athletic, and Education Talents. The first two cause us to quickly scale to the prowess of our mentor, while the second makes our mentor capable of teaching without any kind of misunderstandings. Even JJK characters could successfully explain their techniques with Education Talent. Fwoo then Hyoi, understood, say no more.
A single session with Shigure felt transformative for my skill set, and I suddenly felt the desire to cut steel with a rice spoon. My fellow swordsmen, now swordswomen one and all, also bore expressions of shock and awe as our new sensei slipped her sword into its sheathe on her back, under her lustrous high ponytail. The woman's talent and achievements as an athlete and combatant greatly overmatched her top tier sexual attractiveness, and if my goon squad feel inadequate in her presence, then they're right.
"We will continue training, after lunch." Shigure announced in a low rasp heard throughout the room.
"Nah, they're with me after lunch." a slim woman in a dark bodysuit called out as she leaned on the doorway.
Speed-o-Sound Sonic, the second key to the future domination of Kirigakure. Despite the egregious power creep and hyperbolic 'data books' no one in Naruto has a movement speed faster than light. In fact, no one has speed feats that reach hypersonic when discounting teleportation. Naruto never dodged lightspeed attacks, he simply kept himself ahead of the head aiming those attacks. The fastest characters in the verse top end at Mach 2. My ninja Sonic could break the sound barrier even before he started training in response to encounter Saitama, as such he made an economic and logical choice for speed coach to benefit from Athletic Talent.
"Hmmm. Speed training is important." Shigure agreed, seemingly having forgotten the training schedule for the team.
I left the group, taking lunch in the Mizukage's office where Gengetsu Hozuki sat behind the desk, now a willowy woman with a flaxen pompadour and generous breasts barely hidden by her grey pinstripe kimono. Even gimped by my trash tier Edo Tensei and suffering under the Five Element Seal making his chakra unresponsive, Gengetsu almost no sold my mind infiltrating genjustu, and I ended up spending nearly two days to completely subdue the greatest of my predecessors.
"Ah, Lord Fifth, finally decided to return to your duties as kage?" Gengetsu grinned, thinning her wide lips.
"Nah." I denied bluntly, "Just checking in on how well you've got a hold of the current situation."
"Tch." Gengetsu clicked her tongue, "Putting me in charge is hardly better than using a clone. I took over during the war and never spent a day wasting time on civil matters."
"At least you have Administration Talent and Haku supporting you." I cracked my neck on both sides and sank into the plush couch I brought into the office on my inauguration day.
Haku, the ever courteous servant knocked on the office door and arrived with a silver food service cart for us. The life of a Shizune fit her perfectly, combat and warfare something that chose her, not the other way around. Despite her blessed talent, a peaceful heart beat in her now far more ample chest.
"Honestly, without them, we might as well let Yagura get back to sabotaging things." Gengetsu growled, "I'd like to see that Uchiha brat try that trick again with me here."
Speak of the imp and she shall appear. Fem Yagura entered the office more haggard and exhausted than any of my other servants. Dark bags hung under her pink eyes, and she had enough dirt and grim under her nails to pass for a hobbit.
"The village is five percent secured from my former efforts." the littlest Mizukage sighed and hung her hook-club up on the wall, "And I found where I'd kicked Juzo's remains to."
"Nice. Another Swordswoman for the battle harem." I smirked as my peers grimaced, "What? Even if I never touch any of you, you all look like a battle harem."
"Please, for the love of the gods, do not do that!" Haku cried desperately and the three of us glanced at her side-eye.
"Thirsting." Yagura deadpanned and Haku stared at the floor while her cheeks turned pink.
"If you're not looking to press yourself upon us, then why even bring us back as women in the first place?" Gengetsu inquired as she loaded her plate with rice and lobster.
"Getting love confessions out of a bunch of guys has been too close for comfort already." I answered, "And just because I didn't go rapey with my mind control doesn't mean I'm not down to pound. I'm just fine letting any romantic and sexual entanglements fall where they may."
"And if I were to start looking elsewhere, perhaps even form a harem of strapping lads for myself?" Gengetsu needled, her tone obviously lacking sincerity.
"I always thought Kubikiribocho was shaped like that for castration." I deadpanned back.
"Hah." Gengetsu darkly chuckled.
"Too close to cuckoldry for you, mighty Lord Fifth." Yagura asked pointedly before sucking the meat out of a crab leg.
"You salty I killed you with genjustu release." I turned my sharp toothed smile on the petite little blonde.
"I'd have handed you your ass again in a straight fight." she viciously grinned back.
"Good thing I'm a shinobi." I shrugged and started cracking king crab legs.
"Don't be cute, I've got the Water Mirror Technique and Coral Release. Back then I had the Three Tails too." Yagura continued pushing on me with one of her crab meat greased hands, "Come on big guy, what do you got? A bunch of jonin level skills and a big sword that grows back when it gets the blood flowing."
I turned to snap back at her, but the hand that was pushing my side slipped into my pants and pulled out my Company Device. Mimicking my previous usage, Yagura navigated to the Companions tab and scrolled my limited selection until she arrived at the listing for Kagura Karatachi.
"My son." she announced with a twitch of her face, "I was supposed to father him soon."
"And now you never will." I stated coldly.
"I don't know how to feel about that. To see my living legacy, and know he will not exist." Yagura frowned, "The Uchiha took everything from me, everything but him. You took him from me, and gave everything back."
"Just another day at work making Kirigakure great again." I shrugged.
"With the three of us here…" Gengetsu mused, "We are able to match the top level of any of the other Hidden Villages. There are remarkably few strategic grades currently loyal to the shinobi system. If Hiruzen dies soon, then all the old monsters, the real geniuses that built this world, are gone."
"As things stand, there are more S Classes in the Akatsuki than in the Hidden Villages." I confirmed, "What's worse, most of the S Class shinobi are Kage or Jinchuriki, tied down to their respective villages, unable to move freely, entirely reactive. There are really only a handful of active duty S Class shinobi, but soon Kirigakure will restore that imbalance in favor of the established powers."
"It's like you are mocking me." Gengetsu frowned as she looked around the paper strewn Kage desk.
"Take it as motivation to get the rebels on board with us." I goaded the workstation bound warrior, "I'll push for Mei to marry me to bind up the peace, then dump all the administrative work on her."
Gengetsu drew in a long breath through her nose and let out a rough sigh, "I'd pity the woman if she wasn't liberating me from my shackles of ink and paper."
"Which is great, because as soon as you're free you're going all over the place on a conscription tour." I informed the deskbound kage.
"Pardon?" Gengetsu asked for clarification.
"You are forgiven." I magnanimously responded.
"I meant, why am I going to be needed for conscription? Why do we even need conscription? Once the rebels are back in the fold we should have at least six thousand active shinobi. We can focus them on raising up genin within the village and be back to full strength within a handful of years. No need to muddle things with substandard candidates from outside the shinobi gene pool."
"I don't care if the conscripts have the combined potential of a horde of shuriken chuckers." I snorted, "I'm on a three and a half year timeline, and need both ten thousand active shinobi and to be recognized as the strongest Hidden Village. Between then and now there will be a war for the fate of the entire world that will kill half of all the participants on our side in the first day of fighting. The latter goal will be easy with the group being trained by Shigure and Sonic, as for the former. Bodies. I need lots of bodies."
"Wouldn't it be better to delay this war then? Seek out some greater advantage?" Yagura commented while still looking at the Device, "Most of these people are just hot pieces of ass, but some of these options are very powerful. Why didn't you simply buy one of them instead of wasting points on your two teachers?"
"This mission I'm on comes with a load of fine print tacked on by The Company." I sighed, "More than just the requests of the client. One of the objectives is to be recognized by my peers, but that word, peers, comes with a much deeper meaning and rules. I can't Capture or use direct Company assets against them to gain my recognition, nor to be determined the strongest. That means, people like Shigure and Sonic are thrown right out, so is my version of mind control. Both are for strictly domestic use."
"Ah, and this Fourth Shinobi World War is the stated condition, trying to get around it…" Yagura led.
"Frowned upon at best, and you don't want The Company frowning upon you." I finished for her.
"So, conscripts?" Gengetsu pulled us out of the legalese.
"Pirates, bandits, thieves, whores, the homeless, orphans. There's millions of people on these islands, and thousands of them are the unwanted. People no one will miss." I explained to my servant, "If we can't kidnap them all, we don't deserve to be shinobi. Bring them all back here and I'll whip them into shape with Shadow Clones. I don't care if they barely have enough talent to register as a speed bump to a passing Konoha genin, I'll instill a level of grit and duty in them so intense it'll make the other villages green with envy of our propaganda machine."
"What do you think of her?" Yagura tilted the phone to me and I saw the listing.
"Tachibana Serika?" I read her name while admiring her posting pics, "Don't know a thing about her other than she's got an ass like the North Star."
Wise men'd follow that thick piece of Taimanin ass to their doom. How the hell did anyone manage to ever draw her one handed?
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