Harvest War

Part 1

Hokage. Translated directly, it means 'Fire Shadow'. However, to the people of Konoha, it meant strength, compassion, protection and so much more. There have been only six that have been chosen, not counting 'Dozen Day Danzo', a man who got the position through treachery, only for karma to end his very short rule using a crazed missing-nin.

I was one of them.

I first got the position after the War of Red Dawn. I was a powerful, charismatic, idealistic warrior who was thoroughly convinced his rule would end all war.

'Be careful what you wish for' was not a saying back then, but it summed up the situation perfectly.

As charismatic as I was, I was the bull in the china shop, not at all suited for the subtle, fine-tuned world of politics.

The other nations sensed that weakness, and snared me in the spider's web of made of legalese and manners. Until the only way out of the web, was to fight.

Only Suna and the Kazekage stood by us when things came to blows.

However, I had an ace in the hole. I was a Seal Master, who just discovered what many consider just a myth.

Artificial Intelligence.

The ability to manufacture a self aware, thinking, feeling being.

We called them Fal-cie: Fuuinjutsu Artificial Lifeforms-Cognitive Intelligent Entity.

First was Jagan, the All-Seeing Eye, the Big Brother of The Fal-cie.

Second was Ganesha, the Scholar.

Third was Kajishin, the Tireless Metalworker.

After Kajishin came Kuebiko, the Master of Agriculture.

Then came Omoikane, the Advisor.

Jagan started out small, slightly bigger than your average video camera. That's because that's what he was supposed to be, before I discovered it was actually aware. By the time the war started, he had so many upgrades he was the size of a train car.

The creation of Jagan spurred me to begin studying how the human brain worked, and just what made a entity 'aware'. Ganesha was my attempt to replicate what made Jagan 'aware'. I was successful, but as he was made to be intelligent, he couldn't do much but think. However, that's all he needed. Most of our technological advancements since he was born came from the mind of Ganesha.

Including Kajishin. This was long before our culture really figured out 'industry', so the idea of a factory was enough to confuse most, much less a completely automated one. Nevertheless, I had enough clout to make it happen, and once Kajishin began producing things that would normally take weeks to make within mere minutes, no one questioned me again when I decided to make a Fal-Cie.

As such, Kuebiko was a much easier sell to the populace in some ways, and a harder one in others. No one thought of the Fal-Cie as money sinks or 'the Hokage's hobby' any more, but Kuebiko, an automated hydroponics chamber the size of a city, was not only a huge investment, but many farmers were concerned their jobs were obsolete if it was finished. Metalworkers mostly managed to avoid that fate, by making things that were more ornate than Kajishin cared to waste time on, but farmers didn't have that luxury. My counter to those concerns was that food wasn't exactly something that went out of fashion, and there were always mouths to feed.

Unlike the previous four, Omoikane was designed for my personal use. He was designed to not only have every law and treaty memorized, but to be an excellent reader of emotions and thoughts, not to mention have excellent manners. But Omoikane was too little, too late. He saw about a month as my political advisor, before he had to use his talents for war.

Once the war broke out, Ganesha came up with our salvation: mass produced Fal-cie. It was every bit as effective as we imagined. with my raw power, Jagan's intel, and an inexhaustible army, there were only two nations left after the war: Konoha and Suna. As such, it became known as the Unification War. In tribute to our alliance, Konoha gifted the barren Suna with Daikokuten, the 'twin' of Kuebiko.

However, Now that peace was assured, Ganesha discovered a new problem- without war to keep our population down, overpopulation was a long-off, but inevitable occurrence. So, we looked at multiple solutions. One solution was to, of course, design higher capacity buildings and infrastructure. A second solution was to send explorers to uncharted areas of our world, which we would then colonize. The third was much more radical. Space Colonization. Of course, there was no good reason we couldn't do all three.

I tasked Jagan with surveying the realm of space for habitable environments, entrusting standard recon teams for the ones on our world. I then constructed Amenhotep, a Fal-cie designed to construct buildings, who was given a 'brain' just shy of Ganesha's capabilities, so he could come up with his own architectural designs. That left Ganesha to learn whether or not space travel was viable.

It was not hard to convince Gaara, The Kazekage and a personal friend (possibly even my best friend), of my plan. He agreed to search the West for viable colonies, while I searched East of the Elemental Nations.

Suna found a massive continent, which, to our surprise, was inhabited.

We wasted no time in brokering a treaty. Gaara even got married to one of their rulers to seal the deal. I tried talking him out of it, but he was adamant that he would not risk another war. I later learned that this was complete bullshit, and Gaara married her because he genuinely loved her. He only pretended that it was necessary in order to satisfy his detractors, who claimed he would be betraying Suna if he didn't marry someone from Suna. Of course, if Suna was getting something out of it, that was a different matter.

I myself did something very similar, when Konoha discovered an inhabited island chain called Spira, and I discovered the love of my life.

Yuna.

I won't say it was love at first sight. Granted, I noticed immediately how gorgeous she was, but 'love' and 'lust' are two different things, though they might overlap.

She volunteered to be the ambassador that greeted us, as she was a prominent figure, yet neutral in politics. She also had a sense of civic duty that rivaled my own. She then gave me a guided tour of the entirety of Spira. It was on that tour that I started developing feelings for her. I loved listening to her talk about the places she visited and the people she met, and she did so with such passion that I could tell she loved her home. The tour took two weeks, and yet I still wanted to spend more time with her. So I invited her to Konoha.

There was a bit of culture shock, as the now abundant Fal-cie were completely alien to her, and she was raised in a theocracy, not an authoritarian government like Konoha, but she was quick to adapt. Due to Konoha's expanded borders, it took over a month to show her everything, and I loved every minute of it. However, I quickly began to run out of excuses to keep her around, and she had to return to Spira.

That was when Ganesha hit pay dirt. He devised a way to not only survive in space, but to travel vast distances. The latter was done by using Seals to recreate the doujutsu Kamui.

I put Yuna out of my mind long enough to gather volunteer space colonists, and to construct Njord, the Fal-cie in charge of constructing these newly designed space ships. Jagan was even retrofitted to be a space ship on his own, as was Omoikane and Ganesha, Omoikane becoming my own personal ship.

It took a couple of months to sort that out, so I figured it was time to set up another 'diplomatic mission' to Spira. In reality, I was there to see Yuna. She greeted me like an old friend, and we began talking about every topic under the sun, and yet still never tired of speaking with her. I wanted to stay for longer than I did, but the morning after my arrival, I was called back to settle a minor dispute between two clan heads, whose names I can't recall.

I then waited a week, and set up another 'diplomatic mission.' I think she was getting wise to me, because she insisted we have our 'diplomatic discussion' at a restaurant, not the office given to her after First Contact, as we usually did. Not that I complained.

I descended into habit, visiting Spira for 'diplomatic reasons' at least once a week, each visit losing more and more pretense, until there was no difference between our 'diplomatic dialogues' and a date. Of course, people had figured out what we were doing halfway through month two, and so we fooled precisely no one.

That lasted for four months, before I proposed a 'treaty' that was to be enforced by 'political marriage'.

The happiest moment of my life was when she accepted.

I spent the next two years happily married, having little to do but watch my nation prosper.

I was the Sixth Hokage. During my reign, to the people of the world, Hokage meant peace, safety, and prosperity.

Until the Reapers came.

AN: Let me know if you feel I glossed over too much, and if so, what. It was my intention to write this as if it were being written many years after the fact, and as such, stuff is either glossed over or forgotten.

I am very well aware that this is not my usual style, and as such, please let me know how I did.

The second half of this fic should be up shortly.