audio test jdv

by Hankton

narration test

4. c 34-44

Chapter 34: Birthday Celebrations

It was a two day run to the sea using best speed, and then another day on a Fast Courier-Boat. A Fast-Courier was a new type of ship which used recent advancements in aerial propulsion to create a water-jet engine capable of cruising at up to sixty mph, similar to cigarette boats on Earth. Chakra intensive and heavily armed, the boat was kept small to minimize the water-resistance and thus there were few comforts. This particular Fast-Courier was one of mine, or at least my trading company's; I had one carried on board some of my larger trading vessels. That way, it conserved chakra, but if any pirates were detected nearby they could be quickly engaged. At most, two FCBs would go with a large convoy, but it was sufficient protection given the speed and armament differences.

The sleeping arrangements though were more of the "get comfy together" variety than anything truly comfortable, but, luckily for us, it was just a day's journey. Sachiko and I spent the time getting some cuddling while relaxing; Yasu spent most of his time staring off at the horizon. I had always loved the water, and going fast on it; I decided I'd get my own Fast Courier, just for relaxing on, and maybe the occasional mission that took us to sea. The trip, taken during early summer, was a fairly perfect way to transition from mission mode to my lordly duties.

We finally arrived at Hawk's Haven, or to be more specific, at the docks at Seal-Hawk Harbor. Hawk's Haven was a small sized island of about five hundred square miles, a bit bigger than say Hong Kong. There were a little over forty thousand people living there, with about a quarter living in the main town and only significant port, Seal-Hawk Harbor. The rest tended to be fishermen, ship-builders, or workers in the local mines. There was sufficient croplands for the island, though only about half of it had been developed, with sheep and goats for meat. Seal-Hawk Harbor had been under a constant program of expansion since we'd taken charge, and was home to my trading company. There was a factory on the outskirts of the town for seal-sword production.

My home, the fortified complex that I'd had built was actually on the water, off to the side of the harbor. It made sense, as it let me have my greatest concentration of weapons prepared to defend my main asset; the port town. At it's tallest, the Nest (the name given to my home) was five stories, and it was an example of fairly typical Japanese fortifications if you ignored the seals. Between the main house and the surrounding homes and barracks, there was room for myself and my family, as well as up to two hundred servants, retainers and guards. There was docking space for one mid-sized ship and up to four patrol craft or fast couriers, of which one was occupied by a patrol craft and two by fast couriers. When we docked, we filled the last open space for smaller craft.

Tou-san was there to greet us, and after a relatively light dinner, and bows from my servants whom I'd never met, we went to bed. The general plan was that in the morning, and for the next couple days, I'd meet my retainers, take their oaths and basically hold court. Then, there would be a party for my fourteenth birthday, after which I would tour my holdings, inspect the guards, and similar flag-waving type events. About two weeks into the stay I would be announcing the new school and militia programs designed to get the population to eighty percent chakra use and at least basic military training for all over the age of eighteen.

It was exhausting. If it weren't for the fact that it was my duty, I totally wouldn't have done it. I had over a hundred and forty combat capable ninja and samurai under my banner, counting genin and samurai apprentices, and a further four hundred guardsmen. The ninja and samurai had families, many of whose oaths I also had to receive. Many of my troops were seconded to my trading company for ship protection, but there were still hundreds of oaths to take in, honors to grant, and rewards to be given. After three days of that, and the endless "Fuutaka-dono" and bowing and scraping and gawking at the young lord, I was ready for a real vacation. Still, it was my duty, and it meant a lot to the people that were willing to (if necessary) die at my command, so I sucked it up and got on with it.

Finally, the endless meetings were temporarily finished, and while the household scrambled to prepare for the hundreds of expected guests, I relaxed, caught up with family, sparred with Tou-san, and basically had a good time. Kaa-san and I talked about sealing, and I finally met my little sister, Ayumi-chan (who was still a total midget). It was nice, but a bit odd; I hadn't seen them in person for almost six years, and then there we were. It was almost easier to talk to them over a communicator than in person. But we all pressed through the awkwardness until everything felt right again.

Spoiler: "Lime"

The best part of my visit was definitely what happened on my birthday. The night before, I had gone to bed fairly early in anticipation of the celebration the next day. While it might sound like fun to have such a large party, as the over-lord of the region it was actually a fairly formal pain in the ass, more politics than fun. At midnight though I was woken up by someone coming into my room and turning the light seal onto a low setting.

Doing that kind of thing to someone with ninja training, well, it was lucky that I recognized my visitor as Sachiko.

"Sachiko, what are you doing? What time is it?"

"It's midnight, master. Happy birthday. As for what I'm doing, well, do you remember when you said that we wouldn't do certain trainings together until you were old enough? I'm here as part of that agreement, Daichi-sama."

It took a moment for that to sink in. On the one hand, was I ecstatic? Hell yes. We'd been cuddling and fooling about a bit for a while now, and it had taken a fairly prodigious level of willpower to resist going further.

On the other hand, I always hated getting woken up, even if the person doing so was a beauty dressed in a small, cute, pink sleeping-robe and looking for fun.

"And so you thought it was worth waking me up for your desires, Sachiko?" I asked with a relatively neutral tone. She immediately bowed her head, and I could sense a pang of guilt and self-loathing coming from her.

"I'm sorry master. Please forgive your foolish retainer." I snorted at this. She did have a bit of a self-confidence issue, at least as far as our relationship went. Despite living in the Elemental Nations for over a decade, I hadn't fully lost that modern, Earthlike view of romance and sex. But even the relatively advanced Uzushiogakure wasn't committed to the principle of equality the same way the West was. Especially not between people of different ranks.

"I didn't say I was upset, Sachiko. A combination of elated and a bit annoyed at most. So look up." When she did, showing her hope and excitement, I continued. "Now, if I remember, you said you'd done some advanced studying, hm?" I mused rhetorically. She swallowed.

Sachiko had adopted the viewpoint that the relationship between us would be partially training both of us, but most of all me; she wanted me to gain skill, find out what I wanted, what I was looking for in a partner and such for my future wife and harem. I think she did it for a few reasons. Partially, because she really did want what was best for me, and that justification helped overcome her (in her mind) "unworthiness." Plus, if I really were as inexperienced as I would have been without reincarnation, it would have been legitimately helpful. Part of her viewpoint as well though was to protect herself, to set her expectations and understanding of the situation so that if I did tire of her, or move onto a partner of greater status, that she wouldn't be as hurt as if she had as fully dedicated herself to me as a romantic partner.

And part of it was that she could tell I found it amusing when she talked about our relationship that way. I'd pretty quickly realized her own hang-ups due to the status difference, rationalized that, and then moved on. I was immortal, after all, and living in the moment, taking enjoyment from what I could, changing what I found distasteful, and accepting what I couldn't change were all necessary to live a long, happy immortality without going mad.

"Yes, Daichi-sama."

I winced a bit. "I really wish you wouldn't call me that at moments like this, Sachiko," I replied.

She looked up into my eyes. "I know. But I refuse to call you without the respect you deserve, Daichi-sama," she said quietly but firmly.

I sighed. "I could order you to call me Daichi, you know."

Her lips quirked. "But would it then have any meaning?"

We'd had the argument a dozen times if we'd had it once. It was pretty infuriating. But given the circumstances now…

"You know Sachiko, if you have a particular preference, you know I'm happy to accommodate you," I said sultrily, teasing her.

She blushed a bit, far more of a reaction than I could typically get from her, and bashfully swept at the floor with her foot. "I hadn't really thought about it, but maybe next time, if it pleases you, Daichi-sama?" she said softly, demurely, as if she were a total innocent.

She wasn't. I'd seen the books she liked, and they were enough to make me, a twenty-first century male, blush. I suspected she had a long-term plan how to if not corrupt (for Sachiko would never do such a thing to her precious master), at the least finagle me into being willing to try out some of the more extreme scenes, their pages dog-eared and binding cracked from how long she had dwelled on them.

"So what were you planning for tonight then?" I asked curiously.

She smiled and stepped forwards. "First, I thought I'd show you your present," she said. She let her robe fall from her shoulders, gathering along the floor. A ribbon wrapped around her, covering what a bikini might, tied in an artful bow at her pelvis.

I made a point of looking her over. "You're very beautiful, Sachiko." And she was. Medium sized but firm breasts, toned muscles, excellent bone structure. She showed all the selective breeding that went into a ninja retainer.

"Thank you," she said blushing a bit. "And now it's time to unwrap your present."

I first let my hands wander, tracing a few light scars from training and missions but avoiding the most erogenous zones, instead brushing her stomach, flanks, legs, and neck in between heated kisses. Finally, I let my hands wander to the dangling ends of the ribbon and was rewarded by a quick intake of breath.

Suffice to say, I very much enjoyed what came after I unwrapped my present.

It was strange to lose my virginity a second time. I definitely performed better than the first time, and I had much better expectations as to how much fun it would be. Sachiko blew those expectations out of the water. I don't know what other training manuals she read, or what exactly she did to practice, but the results were amazing. Nor, really, did I want to know; knowing how a magician performs a trick takes the magic out of it.

I made sure to memorize the night using my visual and physical sensation memorization reinforcement, and decided I needed a seal to be able to transfer memories. It would be pretty damned kinky for Sachiko to go through the events, then see it from my point of view. Moreover, I was certain she'd enjoy being able to appreciate the result of her efforts.

Chapter 35: Explanations

Actually, if I remembered the seal settings correctly, the Kyubi had a direct access to the physical sensations too!

I blanched and tensed at his growling voice, deep in some way beyond sound or feel; this tenseness prompted Sachiko to look at me.

"What is it, Daichi-sama?" I swallowed. This wasn't exactly how I'd intended to introduce myself to my tenant.

"I'm not the only one that woke up for this. It seems we managed to wake my guest too."

And if it weren't for something so enjoyable, you'd regret having done so, human.

Well, I thought, that's one way to soothe the savage beast.

"I'm glad you're not upset," I said aloud. "Give me a second, there's a seal to allow you to speak beyond your current, um, domicile." I activated the seal so that Sachiko might hear him. "I'm not sure what to call you; I know you are called the Kyubi, but I'm sure that the Sage of Six Paths named you. Is it perhaps Kurama-sama? And if not, may I know it?"

I wasn't sure how I knew it, but I could tell that the fox recoiled when I said Kurama.

"How did you know that?"

I glanced at Sachiko, then decided they might as well both know. "Alright. Sachiko, I think you've suspected something about me, that I'm a little better than a human should be. Kurama-sama, you have read-only access to those memories not related to sealing, which are protected by the Third Grandmaster's Protection, so you'd likely be able to find this in time. In short, while I'm human, I'm not really mortal anymore."

Well, to be more accurate, he had access to the memories stored in my body's brain and/or spiritual chakra field. Just, many of those memories referenced the fact that I had reincarnated, or had alien viewpoints because of the reincarnation. Not quite the same, but still enough for him to work it out.

"I knew it, Daichi-sama," Sachiko stated while drawing me a little closer to her.

"You don't seem to have any particular divinity beyond the strongest ninja though. I'd be able to tell." Even Kurama was distracted enough by my claim that he didn't seem to be reacting to his situation.

I shook my head. "I doubt you'd be able to tell. I didn't become immortal to Ascend or become a Bodhisattva. In my original life, I was dying. But I loved life too much, wanted to continue to experience it too much, and so I meditated and fasted and as I came to Death. The pull of Below. The lure of Above. The potential of Ascension and Divinity. The call to become part of the One. And the crushing presence of the Void. I passed through them all, and rejected them all. I achieved what I wanted. Immortality as a human, through reincarnation rather than life unending."

Was I worried that they would talk? Not really. Sachiko was scarily devoted; had I declared myself a god, she would have immediately declared herself my first priestess. As for Kurama, he generally disdained humanity, and could only communicate with my approval.

"Is that how you're so strong, master?" Sachiko asked.

I laughed. "No. This is only my second life, actually. I'm in my mid forties, if you count my previous life, and my old world didn't have chakra. I'll admit, I made chakra-powered versions of some things, but the technologies are totally different."

"Like here, before the fall..." mused Kurama. I nodded and made a note to myself; I'd have to ask more about that later. "This doesn't explain how you knew my name."

"Ah, well, that." I activated the highest level of the privacy seals over my room as I decided I may as well go with total disclosure. "See, there was a manga, and then an animated version of the future of this world, called Naruto. It was about a boy, born to Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina, living in Konohagakure. After the death of his mother, the previous Jinchuriki of the Kyubi, due to the attack of a man with the Mangekyo Sharingan, you, Kurama-sama, were enslaved again and set against Konohagakure. The Hokage, Minato, used a sacrificial summoning jutsu that called up Shinigami-sama to consume your yin-half and lock your yang-half into Naruto." I could feel Kurama recoil at this.

"What! That fucking Uchiha! That damn cockroach is still alive?" he roared. Sachiko and I winced.

"Kurama-sama, please, that was very loud. But yes, Madara is still alive. He's being manipulated by a being called Black Zetsu, a remnant of Kaguya, as part of some plot to capture all the Biju and allow her resurrection. At least, that was the case in the Manga; I have no idea how much it overlaps reality. I've been changing things too – Uzushio still stands. In fact, we're stronger than ever, having conquered Water-country. Before, we would have been destroyed."

Sachiko gasped. "The Battle of East Kaizoku Sea."

I nodded grimly. "Exactly. I think they had help from Konohagakure's Danzo and his Root to get past some of our seals, but yes. But, Kurama-sama, I should mention. We've given you a seal that prevents the Sharingan from being effective on you, and another seal that makes it impossible to seal you with something on the level of the seal that Mito used. As you have noticed, we have attempted to make your stay with me as comfortable as possible. The Uzumaki Sealers did not agree with Mito's actions; there was a reason she was effectively exiled by being married to the Senju. At the time we lacked the power to fight against Konoha and your continued imprisonment was a political necessity, for which I apologize. When I am near death I have been instructed to release you, if that meets with your approval." I could sense shock from the fox, changing into a puzzled optimism and contentment.

"Very well. It might be an amusing way to while away a few decades. But see that you release me, human!"

"Of course. Sachiko, you've been quiet. Are you alright?"

"Of course, master. I am honored that you trust me with this, and allowed me to become your retainer. Now I know how you just performed so well. It's really unfair you kept me from that due to 'age', master," she said while snuggling closer.

I grinned and laughed softly. I should have known. "Alright, it's late and I have a party tomorrow. Goodnight, Sachiko-chan, Kurama-sama."

"I will watch some of these memories, I think, and contemplating."

I nodded. "Of course, Kurama-sama, and if it pleases you, you may call me Daichi." I was perhaps a bit obsequious, but the entity was at least nearly godlike in power (I could barely channel enough chakra to account for what he passively emitted on a daily basis), and he was centuries my senior. A bit of politeness never hurt. "I'll be deactivating the communication seal. I wouldn't want to freak anyone out." I said as I did so.

Very well. I will tell you when I am ready to grace you with my words again, human.

"Goodnight, master."

Waking up the next morning was pretty great. Suffice to say, Sachiko had decided that the previous night was not my only birthday present.

When I asked her why, Sachiko grinned. "I want to please you, master." I just laughed and shook my head before pulling her into the shower where we fooled around for a bit before dressing formally for the day's celebrations.

My birthday was fairly tedious. Lots of meeting people, receiving gifts, a long banquet with endless toasts. I was glad when it was over and we could finally retire to my bedroom for a repeat of the previous night's activities.

The rest of the visit was fairly busy. I visited the seal-sword factory, and helped improve output. We opened up Hawk Haven Academy, and made attendance strongly encouraged (basically obligatory) for everyone aged four to fourteen. There were yearly tests; if you could pass the one for the year above, you didn't have to attend that class for that year. This option was mostly taken advantage of by some of the ninja and samurai families.

For everyone else, the goal was to have citizens with basic combat skills, unlocked chakra and an understanding of how to improve it, and basic math, language, and technical skills as well as an understanding of the law. Basic sealing was taught, and those with more potential could get further tutoring from Kaa-san. There were other, optional classes that happened, some only irregularly, ranging in everything from carpentry to offensive water jutsu.

Other than establishing the lower level Academy, we established specialist training departments for the Militia (part-timers), Guards (regulars), Specialists (ninja, sealers and samurai), Officers, and Sailors. The goal was to have the entire next generation go through the militia course, which could funnel those with a particular inclination into the Guards or even Specialist units. I could afford to have them all well-equipped.

The initial training for the Militia focused mostly on basic personal combat skills, as well as providing logistical support to the Guards, territorial-defense, and guerrilla operations on their home turf. That set them up to at least be a threat an nuisance to any proper invader. Meanwhile, they could out-match lesser raiders or pirates, and support the better quality regular forces if called upon to do so.

The Guards were taught how to skirmish, and combat doctrine focused a fair bit on how to work with recently distributed DEWS guns and Cyclone Seals. They also learned how to assault a position, and some shipboard combat. Many got specialist Marine training, as they would see service on the ships. Others, especially those with too much seasickness to be effective on ships, received police and public relations training.

Specialists were taught how to work together, as well as how to support the guardsmen. Those deemed sufficiently loyal were trained to pilot Pelicans or other such devices. Some were also trained in more advanced espionage, counter-espionage, military police work, how to train locals into a guerrilla force, and psyops.

Officers, obviously, received leadership and small to medium sized unit tactics training, and were typically taken from the upper ranks of the specialists. They also received training on how to operate by living off the land without unduly stressing the local population, and trained a lot on proper logistics.

The sailing courses taught everything from the basics to advanced navigation, though the upper level courses only happened when there were enough candidates. It also cross-trained some specialists and guards who were focusing on naval combat or amphibious operations.

It wasn't quite up the quality of Uzushiogakure, partially due to the difference in quality of the people going in, but the goal was to make our home a strong-point, not the strongest-point. At the specialist level, I actually had a fairly competent group. We'd attracted the cream of the crop by handing out seal-blades to all the chakra-active fighters that swore loyalty, and seal-armor to those that were worth it. A lot of opportunistic second sons from Samurai families and entire groups of unemployed ninja had come over to Water-Country for the war, and Tou-san and my forces had recruited heavily. We were also on the leading edge when it came to adopting and adapting to new combat doctrines, largely because I was re-inventing these doctrines from half-remembered military documentaries and books on various wars.

Other than the military program, there was also an advanced civilian academics program. This offered training in things like the sciences, mathematics, ship-building, technical skills, management, history, accounting and law. Some of the courses were obligatory for aspiring managers within my trading company or certain government offices that I oversaw as the governor.

Honestly, only the fact that I was an original investor in the Uzushiogakure Air Mail Service, the profits of our merchant fleet, and the seal-sword factory allowed us to take so much of the population out of the workforce, and put them into education or militia training. As people went through the training an ever smaller portion of the workforce would be training rather than producing, and hopefully the returning workers would be more efficient and effective. When the education costs went down, I planned on making micro-loans available to further increase local industry (and my tax-base); similar programs had proven effective in India and other industrializing regions back on Earth, so I figured they were worth a shot.

The militia training course for those that hadn't gone through the academy was a full year, with a six month "unit training period" afterward for all new formations. The formations, based on geography, were obviously all new since they hadn't been formed yet. For those who had gone through the Academy, training was six months, and they were on a higher unit training tempo for three months following that. Since a lot of these programs were officially opening with my visit, having only been under preparation or training up cadre before-hand, it was a big shift with over a thousand men and women starting militia training.

There was some muttering, but the tax benefits and increased earning potential of certain achievements (being chakra-active top among them), free lunch-time meal for students, and pay while serving as militia seemed to do the trick of keeping the population content. Some of the nobles and landowners seemed a bit wary, but between Tou-san and I we managed to convince them to our side. I had never been particularly standard, but had always been highly effective, so I got the benefit of the doubt as long as things went well.

Kurama seemed quite interested by everything, but was much quieter than he was portrayed in Canon. I could tell that he was watching through my eyes quite often, though he still spent most of his time rifling through my accessible memories, but he rarely spoke to me. Maybe he was still tired, maybe he was just unsure of me yet, maybe he was cautious of the fact that in some ways I was more lofty an existence than he. Or maybe it was less annoying to be bound to a competent, mature, adult (ish) immortal rather than a simple, loud, daft, lowly human. I know if I were bound to Naruto I'd have gone fucking insane.

Eventually though the whirlwind of activity wound down, and it was time to return to Konohagakure.

The Jonin test waited.

Chapter 36: The Jonin Exam

On our way back to Konoha, we finished our plan for the Jonin Exam. The test itself was given only semi-infrequently, and when it was, it tended to be a big deal. The gap between chunin and jonin was pretty huge, and gave enough prestige, position, and financial gains that the competition was fierce. With the recent draw-down of the war in Water Country there was a return of numerous now-experienced veterans. As a result hundreds of chunin were competing for testing slots, and hundreds more genin were participating as it was now much harder to receive field promotions.

The jonin test that year, like most years, consisted of three main sections. The first was individual exams. Part of this was testing knowledge in required subjects such as Konoha's laws and operating regulations. Part was getting a record of acknowledged skills, especially in the basics of ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu. And part of the individual exams were optional tests in less common subjects; these tests covered everything from interrogation techniques to swordplay. These optional tests were frequently used to obtain special jonin (also known as tokubetsu jonin or tokujo) status.

The second section consisted of war-games. We expected to be pitted against other jonin and chunin teams in everything from escape and evasion to hostage retrieval to full on simulated combat. In some parts of the exam we may be alone, others as a team, and sometimes as a small part of a larger military unit. For larger war-games, actual serving jonin often took higher positions in the command hierarchy to see how they performed and test out experimental strategies. This was by far the most dangerous section of the exams; it was widely known that the acceptable temporary casualty ratio was somewhere in the vicinity of five to ten percent of the examinees. Even with care being taken, everyone going into it knew there would be deaths and crippling injuries.

The last section of the exam was interviews and a final promotion board. The point of these was to go over the service record, get answers for any inconsistencies, and hand down a final recommendation to the Hokage. Examinees could expect either their original jonin sensei (in our case Jiraiya) or their primary commanding officer to be one of the members of the board.

The board could recommend staying as a chunin, in which they would typically say what the chunin should work on. It could recommend promotion to tokujo, and list specific qualifications, as well as what to do to be further promoted. It could, finally, recommend promotion to full jonin, as well as possible departments or mission profiles to be assigned to.

Tokujo were sort of like warrant officers in a modern Earth military. They were typically either subject matter experts and administrators who weren't in the combat command track, or individuals who were nearly but not quite up to serving as a jonin. Most combat track individuals ended up being promoted to tokujo instead of full jonin due to some combination of a weakness in their combat style, lack of sufficiently well-rounded experience, lack of previous command opportunities, political issues, perceptions of unreliability due to youth, etc. Only about one quarter of jonin were directly promoted from chunin.

I was hoping to be among their number, but I could see it going either way between full jonin or just tokujo. On the one hand, I did have my command over my squad. We performed well on missions, and were individually powerful; I was easily strong enough personally. On the other hand, we hadn't been part of the war; this meant that while we had a lot of peacekeeping type missions (a plus), we lacked the battlefield experience that some other competitors had (a significant minus). I was relatively young too.

To confuse things further, I was still at least theoretically part of a nation foreign to Konoha, and held high rank there. That said, due to the alliance and my consulship I was politically important, and had a lot of sway. Things were pretty close without the international political angle; had I been I part of a small but important Konoha clan it could have gone either way. Ultimately, whether I was appointed or not would be a political move.

The Hokage could have had the board approve me, and agreed with their recommendation. That would have shown a desire on Konoha's part to have a close working relationship with Uzushiogakure. He could have had them disapprove me, and yet promoted me anyways. That would have show a dedication on his part to our alliance, and how much he valued it, while putting me on notice that I was enjoying a relatively decent time as a ninja only under his forbearance. Those two were, in my mind, the likeliest scenarios.

Less likely, he could have had the board approve me but disapproved my promotion. That would have demonstrated significant ire on his part, and make my position very shaky in Konoha; everyone would know he disapproved, since ninja gossiped like fishmongers. It also would have likely negatively affected relations between our two governments. Or, he could have had the board disapprove me and agreed with their recommendation. Still a bit of frosting between relations, a bit of putting me on notice, but less so than countermanding the board to not promote me would have been.

The biggest problem though with the jonin exams was that it gave away many of one's best tricks. While I was specialized as a strategic-class destructive combatant, that was one of the very worst specializations to be known for; it attracted assassins like flies to rotting meat. I wanted to emphasize my combat capabilities, but come off as a generally well-rounded but elite prospect. Part of that was that I didn't want my team to be assigned to heavy-combat operations; I much preferred the semi-independent troubleshooter jobs we generally took.

The first decision we made was which individual tests we would take, and what capabilities we'd reveal. I wasn't capable of sitting the specialist exams for genjutsu or taijutsu. Both focused on not just personal achievement, but in furthering the theory and discovering new and better techniques to teach basic and intermediate practitioners. My personal taijutsu, though exceedingly deadly, relied on use of chakra-chains and chakra-scribing seals on contact. My genjutsu, though actually deadly, was totally incapable of the subtle uses that needed to be demonstrated. The true value of a genjutsu master was not on the battlefield, but in the parlors and dining halls, subtly manipulating opinion and emotion to gather secrets and obtain preferential deals. Both would stand me in good stead as part of my general combat skills tests, but neither were applicable to any potential tokujo status.

While I might have been able to take the ninjutsu exam, and my personal chakra expansion techniques would likely have gotten me a promotion on their own, I had no desire to share those with anyone outside of possibly my family. Displaying my wide-scale ninjutsu was also off the table; it would have gotten around. Similarly, I couldn't take the sealer's exam since any sealing work I did had to happen under the aegis of my Uzushiogakure identity.

There were two combat-oriented specialist exams I could take: Swordsmanship and Battlefield Presence. I was a capable swordsman, and was finally large enough and strong enough to actually match and defeat other swordsmen worth that title. While I was expected to eventually take students or apprentices, that wasn't actually required; unlike the basics of ninjutsu, taijutsu, basic ninja tools and genjutsu, swordsmanship was its own, specialist skill that was based more on battlefield usage than on theory and furthering the art.

As for Battlefield Presence, well, I was capable of shutting down everyone within range after only a few months practice; I'd since spent six years refining my technique until I could do everything from making myself project a weak SEP (Someone Else's Problem) field, whip a crowd into a frenzy or pacify them in a moment, or make myself so dreadful that my enemies just shut down. My projection of the Death Experience was strong enough that it could kill those with weaker chakra systems because the sympathetic resonance convinced them that they were, in fact, dead.

Apart from those, I was also taking the "Diplomatic (focus: Noble)" test. I was fairly sure I'd make a good showing, and there was always a need for noble-ranked individuals capable of diplomatic missions since ninja tended to lack social status compared to the samurai caste.

Sachiko had signed up for the Genjutsu, Poison and Court Intrigue specialist exams. While her genjutsu and poison might not be quite up to the level of, say, an Uchiha or Orochimaru respectively, her skills were more than strong enough to support her focus in Court Intrigue. Since she and Yasu were permanently part of my team due to laws concerning retainers, foreign dignitaries and Konohagakure generally not wanting to piss me off, this would help keep us positioned to take non-combat or low-combat operations in nice places rather than lengthy patrols or search and destroy missions against enemy ninja.

Yasu finished us off with taking the Stealth, Trapping, and Tracking exams. His stealth was truly impressive, and he was capable of the urban aggressive investigation modules. He was skilled enough with his traps to keep them well positioned and hid, and his capabilities were significantly enhanced by using advanced Uzushiogakure seals. As a tracker, he was middling-skilled. His chakra sensing was strong, and he had a type of limited psychometric technique that allowed him to trace chakra trails in the right circumstances. That said, he lacked the wide-range scent and physical evidence scanning capability of the Aburame's insects or the Inuzuka's nose.

After I got a look at the competition, I anticipated that I would make jonin, and that Sachiko and Yasu had fair chances. We were all sufficiently skilled in taijutsu to at least keep up in combat, though we tended to focus a bit more on using weapons and combat multipliers like chakra-flow, poisons and seals. I'd made sure that we were all at least above average for jutsu, and everyone knew at least a few utility, defense and offense techniques using Water and Wind techniques. We could all do at least some genjutsu. As a trump card, we had my seal-armor, and Sachiko and Yasu's full Body-Seals, including the Cyclone-seals. That said, we wouldn't be demonstrating any of those beyond the lowest level of the armor or body-seal systems.

If anything, I might have actually harmed Sachiko and Yasu's chances. They couldn't be deployed without me, so there was less incentive to promote them. As a group, we weren't experienced enough or trustworthy enough to be a full unit of jonin taking absolutely top-tier independent missions, and I wasn't experienced enough to command such a group. Nor had we gone through the military track that might see us getting assigned as the Auxiliary Ninja Command Group for one of the Fire Daimyo's Legions.

A high-level group of a jonin and two tokujo, on the other hand, was a bit more believable as a final squad makeup. And then in a few years, as we continued maturing and growing, we might become one of those extremely rare elite jonin squads.

The compulsory section of the individual exams went about as I expected. I limited my jutsu demonstrations to A-rank, but showed off my full mastery of wind and water jutsu by using minimal chakra and exquisite control. It was a careful balance. I wanted to be strong enough to be fearsome, but not so strong that I was a priority target. A few years more, and I knew I'd be a monster so powerful that people would be afraid of targeting me, strong enough that none but the greatest might hope to challenge me; I wanted to avoid the stage where skilled but not legendary assassins were dispatched against me and that was actually a threat.

My Presence exam was pretty amusing. I showed off the breadth and depth of the effects that I could create; most others with that kind of interest in emotional manipulation skills were capable of genjutsu that I simply wasn't. Instead, I used my Presence for all of those applications. While I was "merely" the equal of the top contemporary generals and leaders when it came to wide-scale morale-boosting and speech-emphasizing, I was among the most advanced ever for subtle use of Presence.

I was truly unmatched when it came to aggressive Killing Intent; even at a fraction of its full strength, my Death Experience knocked the most susceptible of my examiners into a day-long coma. This was partially due to the short distance and partially due to not being in a fight-to-the-death situation which tended to raise Will-to-Live. The chief examiner for that section told me that I would certainly be receiving at least tokujo for that alone.

My Court Diplomacy test similarly went well. It was very unusual for a Konohagakure ninja to be a noble or even a samurai; my status meant that I was fairly uniquely suited to dealing with certain traditionalist lords as well as ceremonially important roles in negotiations that required a representative of a certain minimum status. I knew the typical behavioral patterns and customs, and while I was a lord of Whirlpool, I was still clearly a lord. Being a bit more of a traditionalist himself, the examiner didn't actually say straight out what his recommendation would be, but still conveyed in the double-speak of courtly phrases that I had done well.

But by far and away my most interesting exam was in swordsmanship.

Chapter 37: Facing the Fang

The swordsmanship exam had three sections to it. First, a demonstration match using bokken (wooden swords of similar weight and size to the real ones) or dulled blades. In our case, I gave my examiner a seal which would lock the location of the sword when the blade was about to cut flesh or bone. That way we could go all out without worrying about death, and use our usual swords to do so.

The second part was a controlled, chakra-free duel to score light wounds. Internal strengthening and speed-enhancing techniques were allowed, but nothing else. The threat of death was part of this test, so safety seals weren't allowed in this section.

The last part was a full on, (certain) chakra techniques included, kenjutsu match. We were meant to avoid death or maiming, but this exam was one of the most dangerous. There were two full jonin-level medic-nin on standby, and each had a chunin medic assistant. Even then, this exam was known to have a relatively high injury and death rate.

The thing that made my swordsmanship exam so interesting was my opponent. I was up against the White Fang, Hatake Sakumo himself. He was Konoha's greatest practitioner of kenjutsu techniques, partially due to his family's unique White Chakra Blade style. Unlike most kenjutsu styles which focused on enhancing a blade, the White Chakra Blade extended a "perfect blade" formed from chakra given some base blade. Senju Tobirama's Sword of the Thunder God was actually inspired by the Hatake Kenjutsu. While the White Chakra Blade allowed conventional kenjutsu techniques, just using the super low-weight and sharp White Chakra Sabre, it excelled most as a nin-kenjutsu style, combining no-tell, high speed ranged attacks with sword-combat. Funnily enough, my own chakra-based wind-variant of the Whirling Sword style was somewhat similar.

I decided that I didn't want to risk my heirloom blades, and so I was using my secondary swords for the fight. They were practically identical to my actual swords, with the same weight and shape, but were seal-swords rather than seal-enhanced chakra-conductive metal. Sakumo, likely due to the chakra free sections of the test, was also using a full katana rather than his typical white tanto that had led to his moniker of "Konoha's White Fang". We bowed to our examiners and each other, and began the demonstration match.

There were a few different ways a sword fight tended to go. The first, and most brutal, was the type of fight you saw on the battlefield. Two swordsmen met, and they tried to cut through each other as quickly as possible. The faster, stronger, more skilled and luckiest survived; the other died. These fights were quick and decisive, but carried a much higher risk when facing enemies that were of similar skill levels. Such combat was most frequent when killing as many people as possible in as short a time as possible was the focus on both sides, and endurance was a factor. Advancing troops drove combatants together, and forced victory or being trampled or surrounded and cut down. This was the kind of fight practiced by heroes and soldiers on the battlefield.

The second type of fight was the kind you tended to see in a duel between similarly skilled opponents. They started further away, and tried to lure their opponent into making a mistake large enough to allow a decisive blow to be struck without taking one in return. Most of the fight occurred at longer ranges, and the fighters often withdrew several times as the clashes were inconclusive. Sometimes, they would ramp up the fight slowly, varying tempo and force to get a better read on their opponent without giving away their own secrets, tricking the enemy into a set expectation and then pulling out a sudden acceleration or zero-range technique at the critical moment to achieve victory. Musashi Miyamoto's Sparking Stone, one of the few techniques actually described in his Book of the Five Rings, was one such technique; it called for a sudden reinforcement of the blow at the moment of impact, without any tells, to break the guard and wound the enemy. This was the kind of fight that inspires story and song.

The third type of fight was almost totally foreign to Konohagakure and the Elemental Nations as a whole. This was the sport-spar. Think of it like Western Olympic Fencing. The objective was not to kill or incapacitate your opponent without receiving a blow of your own, but rather to do so first. It was practically suicidal to practice that way as an actual combatant, since far too often both sides would end up striking a killing blow at nearly the same time.

My first match against Sakumo, the demonstration match, was closest to the second type of fight. We weren't trying to crush the other as quickly as possible, but to pull out all of our opponent's skill and demonstrate our own to the examiners – after all, Sakumo may not have been up for promotion, but he was still being seen fighting by his peers. Our purpose was to have a beautiful fight, rather than just to win it.

I could tell within moments that he was a better swordsman. My own style relied on using things like super-dense wind-flow, setting up openings to launch my chains, and distracting the enemy at crucial moments by flaring my Presence. Sakumo surely used those techniques too. But where my footing was almost perfect, his was perfect. Where my reflexes were trained within moment, his were a fraction of a moment. He was stronger, a bit faster, and just more experienced. Not for nothing was he the greatest Kenjutsu master in a village with thousands of superhuman killers.

To put things in perspective, I might have ranked in the top one percent with the sword, even better with chakra; he was in the top five Konoha-affiliated swordsmen without chakra, period. With chakra, he was the best. If I could have faced him all out, and surprised him by tanking a hit to my armor while launching a full out strike using elemental manipulation, chakra chains, and a territory-control seal array, I might have been able to take him.

As it was, well… I put up a fight, and learned more in that match than I had over months of practicing.

We opened up with the basics, at a relatively slow speed. My overhead slash was diverted with the minimum of effort, and I slid next to his retaliatory thrust, guiding his sword away from my torso with the body of my sword, then giving it a slight push and trying a to catch him in a horizontal sweeping slash.

As he stepped back, my sword just brushing his clothing. I extended in a lunge, trying to catch up to his retreating body. He dropped into a middle guard, caught my sword in a blade-lock, and began to go for a disarm. I twisted and disengaged, grinning as we each stepped back and prepared for another clash. The whole exchange had lasted less than two seconds.

We met again and again, ramping up our speed and power and pulling out flashier techniques and combinations. Fifteen minutes in, I was covered in sweat and breathing heavily, and was inordinately pleased that I had managed to get Sakumo sweating at all. I had switched from the fairly standard techniques to the faster, if more energy intensive, movements and sweeping blocks of the Whirling Sword. I had definitely come out the worse for our exchanges, but I could sense that Sakumo was impressed. I had at least managed a few touches of my own, including a few with my hands that would have allowed me to plant a killing seal. The judge called out the stop, and we disengaged and bowed before deactivating the seals that kept our swords safe.

There was a five minute break between the demonstration match and the live-steel duel. The next match was best two of three. The purpose was to make sure the examinee's skills didn't degrade when there was the actual threat of death. It also meant that I had five minutes to come up with some sort of strategy to score at least one point on Sakumo. But without chakra-techniques beyond internal reinforcement being allowed, I really didn't have anything I could think of.

With my time ticking down, I remembered something that was "so crazy it might just work". The suicidal technique of Shirou Emiya from Fate/Stay-Night.

In actuality, his style was pretty shitty against any properly experienced fighter. The idea of leaving openings to force a certain battle-progression has always been a technique, and quite well known to most high level martial arts fighters. As such, there are a number of ways to defeat the technique. First, and most obvious, was to force the opponent to attack, and win in the counterstrike. This avoided the ability to be forced into a certain attack pattern. The second, also basic, was to attack however you please anyways. So what if there was a weakness you can take advantage of? If you were truly that much faster, stronger, more conventionally skilled, then just attack. Attack as you please, and break through his strength. Or third, quite simply being better at that sort of martial mind game than the opponent was.

Unluckily for me, my opponent was quite capable of all three approaches. So if I wanted to win, I had to not just appear weak, but actually become weak.

Again, we faced each other, and saluted our judges and opponent. Sakumo kept position in guard, as did I while we maneuvered. I was pretending to be more affected by the psychological pressure of facing a superior swordsman than I actually was. Eventually, as my feet slid into position, I flared my reinforcement and attacked.

I was fast, furious, powerful. Our blades met once, as he deflected my slash with a parry. A second time, as I knocked his counter-thrust off line to the left of my body. A third time, as he tried to cut me with a horizontal slash; I blocked and used a diagonal footwork that resulted in our keeping contact and spinning in a circle as I tried to disengage. A last, fourth time as he began to withdraw, then instead doubled down with his strike, breaking through my guard and leaving a cut on my upper left arm. It wasn't dangerous, but did weaken the arm significantly.

We disengaged, and as my sleeve soaked in blood my arm healed. That was perhaps the greatest advantage from Kurama's waking; he was able to do part of the work of filtering his chakra, and had improved how effectively I healed. But I pretended that it was still wounded, still weak.

I fixed up my uniform, making sure that it was just so, and made sure that neither my katana's sheathe nor my wakizashi would impede my movement. Both were organized on my left hip for a right-hand draw; generally, the wakizashi was a backup for places where politeness required you to remove your main sword (such as at the dinner table) or used in tight spaces. While some dual-wielding techniques existed, they were more typical of a samurai than a ninja.

Both ready, and with Sakumo seemingly content to wait on me, I prepared to attack again. I moved into range, and attacked with a right-footed forward-stepping slash aimed at his shoulder on my right. It was a blow that used the right side more than the left, and kept him thinking my injury was still an issue. He blocked, shifting my sword further to the right.

Just as predicted, I thought with a vicious grin.

Rather than disengaging as he'd suspect, I extended my step into a lunge, bringing me in close. I let my sword go with my right hand, and began dropping my body to lessen the pressure on my sword enough that I could stay in contact using just my left handed hold. As I did this, I used an Iaijutsu technique with right hand on my wakizashi, a rapid-draw lateral slash aimed at his stomach.

Sakumo's eyes were full of his shock at the situation as he tried to dodge. Time seemed to crawl, a side effect of the mental-reinforcement technique I was running to improve my reaction speed. And I could tell that my wakizashi was going to just miss.

Despite everything, Sakumo was just too good. So, as he was springing back and slightly to my left, I released the wakizashi, flinging it after him. It caught him as his feet were leaving the ground, and sliced through the muscle just below the ribs on his left flank. It was only barely more than a scratch, but it counted. Ecstatic and smiling broadly, I recovered my footing from my attack as one of the stunned judges declared my point.

The third and final point, Sakumo decided to be on the attack. He attacked mercilessly, ruining my guard with a flurry of powerful blows. Soon he knocked my sword into a totally useless position and leveled his blade across the side of my throat with a faint grin before I could recover. His message was pretty clear; I wouldn't be getting an inflated head. Despite my defeat, Sakumo was kind of like Hanzo the Salamander. I might not have beaten him, but even giving him a fight was enough to be seen as badass.

Again, we had a five minute break before the third stage of the exam. This time, it was an all-out kenjutsu match. One round, one winner. Ninjutsu or genjutsu using hand-seals and sealing were forbidden, but attacks that used chakra through the sword and Battlefield Presence were allowed, as were certain classes of nin-kenjutsu, including techniques like Hayate's Dance of the Crescent Moon from canon Naruto, or Hatake's own chakra-blade techniques.

This meant that I actually had a chance. I was close enough to Sakumo in speed, and not so much weaker, that he wouldn't be able to crush me in an instant. Which meant that I'd be able to deploy the full weight of my Death Experience as we closed.

Sakumo was a true monster, veteran of over a hundred battlefields and thousands of life-or-death moments. Given time to acclimate, he was likely among the very few that might be able to stay combat effective at close range to my field, even when it was focused onto him. But the first time he felt it, at point blank range? That was a different matter entirely. I hypothesized it would be able to cripple even the Hokage for a moment, enough to secure victory. Until I faced a similar enemy in a true life-or-death struggle, this was my best chance to test that theory.

Unlike the previous rounds, I could now use my kenjutsu style in its full glory. While I was capable with a sword, it was largely a hobby that helped train speed and physical fitness in a way that was at least somewhat useful; in real combat my sword was something between a prop and a focus for the weight of my Presence and Elemental Channeling. My goal, when using the sword, was not to face an enemy as an opposing ninja, but to represent the full fury of a god. Most enemies would fall to chain and seal and jutsu; the remainder would be cut down as they cowered at my approach. It was a style designed both to be effective and to overawe.

As I prepared to face Sakumo that last time, I started to flare my chakra. At first, the examiners and Sakumo noticed the weight of my chakra on their senses with a bit of surprise. But I just kept building, and building, and building until the air around me was starting to waver due to the metaphysical force of my being on reality. Soon the judges, jonin all, were visibly struggling to maintain chakra levels high enough not to be incapacitated.

I grinned at Sakumo, and surrounded myself with a dense shell of wind, focusing it so heavily on my sword that it looked and felt to people's senses like I was carrying a hurricane. But, for all the chakra I was outputting, more than Sakumo and the three judges could as a group, I had perfect control. There was no great wind, no leakage. And that, to those who really knew what mattered, was probably the most terrifying thing of all. In response Sakumo's sword lit up like a brand with a bright, white chakra.

Half a minute into my preparations, a squad of ANBU arrived then said something into their communicators before retreating to the edges of the training ground. Clearly my rampant chakra had worried Village Security. I would have laughed if it weren't so inappropriate.

Instead, I just continued in raising my chakra level, expanding my bubble of chakra around myself and making my wind denser and sharper. While expensive in terms of chakra, a bubble of your own chakra around you acted as a form of limited omniscience within that space. It was a high-level technique, and one that was popular among upper-level swordsmen. It was also a way to forcefully impose higher levels of Presence and limit the Presence to a certain space.

"Hatake-san, you should prepare yourself for my Presence. It is typically crippling on first exposure. I've been looking forward to being able to test it on you since I heard you were assigned as my evaluator."

He quirked an eyebrow at me. "Normally you don't warn your opponent about that kind of thing, Uzumaki-san," he replied in a smooth baritone.

"I value the experience of how the technique fares against such a high-level opponent more than I would value beating you due to lack of preparation," I answered. While I was being truthful, I was also playing to the judges a bit; that foresight could help when the board review my application.

He just nodded. Eventually, one of the judges came forward, sweating at the combined pressure caused by my massive chakra flare and Sakumo's own more tightly focused aura that he was using to prevent my flare from affecting him.

"Begin!" called the judge from a safe distance.

That instant, I slammed on the Death Experience, keeping the limit of my area of effect as tight to myself and Sakumo as possible. Sakumo, already in motion, froze for a full second, so stunned that his chakra control failed and his blade extinguished.

In a battlefield, with the chaos and team-mates to cover for him, he might have survived such a failure. In a duel, at our range, and using our level of ranged chakra-flow techniques? A second was an eternity. I made it clear to the judges that I was taking my time as I positioned myself just to his side and struck.

My wind-flow flew right past Sakumo, doing nothing but ruffling his clothes. The forest behind him was not so fortunate, with a forty yard long cone of trees of earth blasted apart, shredded in the storm of my elemental blade. I sheathed my katana and stepped back as a stunned judge called the match in my favor.

Sakumo and I bowed to the judges and each other, then he approached me. Luckily he didn't seem upset at his loss.

"I would never have believed anyone, let alone someone of your age, could create such an overwhelming presence," he praised. "Your sword skills are impressive too; when you're in the village, you should call on me to spar or practice."

That was a pretty big compliment from the White Fang. Being invited to spar like that meant that he recognized my abilities, not just as a promising student of the blade, but as an actual opponent. I bowed fairly deeply.

"That is a great honor, thank you," I answered. He laughed outright and shook his head.

"You managed to beat me. I think we could both gain from the experience."

"Very well, Hatake-san. I'll look forward to it!" I replied with a grin.

Later, I heard through the grapevine that this fight had netted me another sobriquet. Apparently one of the other top jonin had heard that Sakumo lost to a fourteen-year-old chunin in a full-on sword match and decided to tease him a bit.

One of the judges was there too. "Had you been there, you would have understood," he said. "Sakumo-san didn't face a simple ninja in that match."

"If he didn't face a ninja in that match, what did he face?" the shit-stirring Jonin then asked.

At this, the judge and Sakumo were quiet for a moment before Sakumo gave an answer.

"I faced a Wicked Storm."

Chapter 38: The Tea Cup Conflict

With the individual exams completed, we had a couple days off before the main event of the promotion exams: the war-games. For this year, we were recreating the Tea Cup Conflict, which had occurred a few decades before. Despite its name, the conflict was a real mess that culminated in a three way civil war.

The first side in this war was the teenage heir to the Daimyo's seat for Tea Country. He had been usurped by his uncle following the previous Daimyo's death, and was spirited away by a group of loyal ninja clan members who were his retainers and guards. With him were his two younger sisters and wife. His wife was a noblewoman from Fire Country, and a distant relative of Fire's Daimyo (the one before the lord at the time of the exams). Between this, an old treaty's semi-loose language and the usurper's distaste for Fire Country, the Fire Daimyo decided to send a detachment of ninja to assist his "Royal Cousins in their efforts to regain lawful control of the great nation of Tea." The heir's forces were concentrated in the North, especially in the semi-mountainous, mostly undeveloped forest region where Konoha's guerrilla ninja slaughtered any of the usurper's forces that trespassed.

The second side was, obviously, the usurper (or new Daimyo, depending on your point of view). While a bit of a bastard, he was a competent military leader and diplomat. He leaned towards a greater reliance on longer distance trade via nations like Sea rather than being a client of Fire, and was in talks with Wind and River countries for support. While there were some rebels still hiding out with his nephew and a bit of grumbling, he did have control of the military forces and the lawful apparatus of government. His main problem was not, in fact, his nephew. Rather, he was dealing with a major rebellion in the South.

This brings us to the third side. The Southern rebels. A fairly progressive bunch, their leadership and funding came from a wealthy coterie of merchants and landowners, with a few lesser nobles sprinkled in for good measure. They were trying to take advantage of the situation to secede from feudal control, bringing the most productive and profitable parts of the country with them. While this faction had a lot of money, and a fairly large population base, they were not as competent militarily. They relied on mercenaries and hired ninja, typically not from any great village but from the clans that had yet to join a village. They lacked the elites of the heir's Konohagakure forces, or the leadership and professionalism of the usurper's army and retainers. They did, however, have fairly large numbers of battle-hardened troops at the lower levels, even if their discipline and morals were often lacking.

The part of the conflict that we were copying was the end of the war. Historically, the usurper had captured the heir's sisters and wife, and had given him three days to surrender himself. An infiltration specialist from Konoha managed to kill the usurper with a teacup during a tea ceremony (hence the Teacup Conflict for a name). With the usurper's death, the heir was able to re-take command of the legitimate forces much in the same way that Napoleon did after returning from exile, and then proceeded to reinforce them with his resistance fighters. The newly unified army, previously being pushed back, managed to make a major reversal. Simultaneous assassinations of Rebel political leaders by loyalists and a large offensive broke the mercenaries, and within weeks of the usurper's assassination the war was basically over except for some mop-up.

Historically, the civil war was interesting for a few reasons. Most applicable to Konoha though was a shift into allowing more women to fill combat ninja roles, even though it had been an infiltrator that accomplished the assassination. As a side note, a young (at the time) jonin called Hatake Sakumo was the second in command of the heir's Konohagakure forces, and made his name in the conflict.

For our exam the war-games were meant to represent these last days of the conflict. Jonin and chunin candidates were divided into the three teams, in roughly equivalent numbers to the historical situation. Commanders were allowed to assign a certain number of troops to special zones including the Usurper's Command Post (where the hostages were held), the Rebel Command Post (where "assassinations" would remove a percentage of the Rebel forces) or the Heir's Camp. The rest were deployed in the "general combat zone" to duke it out.

The general objective was victory, but each team would be judged by the watching judges on how well they achieved their sub-objectives. Candidates could get points for everything from enemy kills, to changing sides to the winners after their side's leader was "killed", to managing to avenge their leader. Those rules more than anything drove home the fact that this was a ninja exam to me.

The exam limit was five days. Unlike the chunin exam in Naruto (the show), this was meant to simulate warfare, not replace it. Blunted weapons were used, as were "safe" poisons. Highly damaging techniques were meant to be aimed just a little bit away from the "enemy" when possible. General soldiers were simulated by examiners specializing in clone techniques. Judges were responsible for calling people out as "dead", as were individuals themselves. Cheating on that was considered to be lying to a superior officer, and could be grounds for some fairly nasty punishments.

Our unit was assigned to the Red Team, the heir's forces. The usurper's team was represented by a blue sash, while the southern rebels had white sashes. We were interviewed during the down time between the individual exams and the war-games by the Red Commander, a jonin called Nara Shikata who was a former legion jonin. He was a good pick for something like this; he was used to working with conventional military forces, and focused on being a strategy, guerrilla and counterintelligence specialist rather than a heavy hitter himself. As a legion jonin though, he would have done little to command larger formations of ninja, and was restricted to mostly supporting conventional operations rather than managing special forces operations themselves. I suspected that this exam was partially to test his ability to command larger groups of ninja, especially in the kind of skirmishing warfare that ninja practiced rather than the more straightforward combat seen in the Daimyo's army.

We met our temporary commander in a tea shop on the edge of the Nara lands. We were shown in by one of his adjutants, and with a bit of a grin at the "life of a ninja" moment, I noticed a screen of subtle guards, likely trying to avoid ninja from the other teams from spying on our preparations. He was sitting behind a table with tea and snacks. The adjutant bowed and left, leaving us in the room with Shikata and an examiner who was sitting off to the side. As the examiners were technically "invisible" for the purposes of the exam, we weren't meant to acknowledge them. Shikata seemed to be in his early thirties, and had the typical fit and lithe form shared by most ninja, as well as his fair share of wrinkles from the weather, and small scars on his hands from training with blades.

At a guess, he had put in a full twenty years' service as a ninja assigned to the legions, and taken the opportunity to move over to Konoha's village command structure with a half-pension. He looked professional enough; I could sense that he was reasonably powerful and had a good control of his chakra. A legion jonin was typically the top ninja out of an entire legion battle group, which would normally include a little over sixty genin, ten chunin and a tokujo or two. Under normal circumstances, they would work their way up the ranks. Considering casualties and transfers out, this meant that Shikata was likely in the top fraction of a percent of the ninja assigned to assist the Daimyo's forces (though his clan connections would have helped him achieve promotions). Compared to someone like Sakumo though, he was a cat next to a tiger.

Shikata already had our service records, which included our performance in the most recent exams. He motioned for us to take a seat. I sat across from him, with Sachiko and Yasu on my right and left. We exchanged greetings, and he served us some tea and placed the snacks, a set of rice cakes dusted in sugar, in front of us.

"You represent quite the problem for me, Uzumaki-san. Beyond the main objectives of keeping the heir "alive" and winning this wargame, we have two main secondary objectives. Kill the usurper and rescue the hostages. Of course, our enemy knows this too. I have to balance the troops assigned to distracting the forces hunting for us, retrieving the hostages and killing the Usurper, and preparing to assist or destroy the Usurper's forces in the field." He paused for a sip of tea. "Can you think of how you might be a problem for me?" I took a moment to think, then answered.

"It's a combination of my power, my lack of proper battlefield experience, age, and my political visibility. I'm strong enough that if you don't make the best use of me, it'll hurt your judgment from the examiners, especially after I managed to take down the White Fang in my Kenjutsu exam. On the other hand, some of my strongest abilities are either too lethal, or, like my Death Experience, don't discriminate between friendly versus enemy forces well enough. While I've extensive experience leading a chunin cell, I haven't led larger units, and we tended to take "elite police" type operations rather than military ones. Further, no matter how strong I am, there are genin in this that are older than I am, which hurts my ability to give commands. My status just means that people will be paying even more attention, and I could probably make trouble for you if I were upset."

"Exactly. So, what might you do in my position?" Fucking Nara, and his Socratic method. Then again, it was pretty clever; if he could get me to come up with his solution, then everyone would be happy and I wouldn't be able to bitch and moan afterward.

I thought for a few moments, then decided to be a bit of a smart ass. "I'd likely ask the young potential jonin how he thinks he should be employed."

The Nara gave an amused grin at my cheek and motioned for me to elaborate.

"If he agreed with my plan," I continued, "then at the least I'd be insulated from blow-back. If he had a better idea than I originally had, I'd be able to use it. And, at the worst, I'd have a better understanding of his skills and how he thinks."

Still grinning, Shikata nodded. "Good. So far, we agree then. So, how should I best use you?"

"You should assign us the strike against the Usurper's Command Post."

"Alright. Convince me why."

"We're the best unit for the job. You should know from our records that we're a well rounded team with high combat potential. Since the defenders are allowed six hours of preparation, a normal group can't just blitz the post. Knowing the results of the Tea Cup Conflict, the enemy may begin to move the Blue Leader (who was the stand in for the usurper) or the hostages from the Command Post as soon as the game begins, accepting the slight increase in communications time for messengers and using communications seals to compensate.

"I can shut all of that down. Sachiko will provide air support with a Custom quality Pelican, and take out any messenger birds too. I'm good enough with seals to shut down the enemy's communications via seals in the opening moments as well." At this, the jonin raised his hand to stop me.

"How good are you with seals? And what can you do for us with them? There's a note in your service record that says you're a full Uzumaki Expert, but no notes on any missions to do sealing work."

"Technically, any sealing work I did would be as a member of Uzushiogakure, not Konohagakure. Konoha would have to pay a full Uzumaki Expert Sealer's fee, which is fairly intense. I'm allowed to use whatever personal seals I want though." He nodded.

"I understand. So, you'd first knock out communications, and prevent reinforcements or retreat via your Pelican. Then what?"

"That's right. Then, Yasu and I would assault. Yasu would scout, and we'd avoid, disarm or destroy traps between us. When we approached the Blue fortified Command Post, I'd use my Death Experience Presence at maximum power to incapacitate the base. Then, while Yasu retrieved the hostages, I'd kill the Blue Leader and instruct the Blue Commander and guards to turn to our side or be wiped out. We would send you word, and move to the main battle region to support the newly joined Red and Blue forces."

"How strong is your Death Experience technique?" he interrupted as I paused, finished with my explanation of what my unit would first accomplish

"Strong enough to let me beat Hatake Sakumo," I answered with a smile. "Would you like a demonstration?"

"I know this is going to be troublesome, but I probably should."

"Very well. Brace yourself." That said, I began to ramp up the power. Shikata was looking visibly uncomfortable. "Right now, I'm not focusing the technique to any particular region, just letting it free." I continued to increase the power by trickling more power to the Presence. Shikata was sweating and shaking a bit. "And, I've just hit about one percent of my power. Should I stop?" Shikata gave a jerk of his head that I interpreted as a nod. I stopped the technique, and he slumped backwards.

"Gods above. No wonder Hatake called you the Wicked Storm. That was brutal. Alright, you've sold me on your plan. It's good too, I'd originally planned on at least two jonin candidate cells and a half dozen chunin candidate cells for that operation, and would have launched it on the second or third day. A quick blitz, led by that technique, will result in far more turning to our side and a better victory. You're capable of the more usual uses of Presence; are they of similar strength?"

"They're not as overwhelming, but because of certain issues I have with genjutsu, I focused more on training my Presence to use as a substitute."

"Interesting," he replied, then sat up with a much stiffer posture and more commanding voice. "Jonin Candidate Uzumaki Daichi. Here are your orders. You will lead your cell, and launch an assault as we've discussed on the Blue Command Post immediately upon the start of the war-games. You will first block communications, retreat or reinforcements using aerial assets and personal seals, then assault the post, rescue the hostages, and execute the Blue Leader. You will turn as many as possible, and execute the rest.

"Upon success of the first part of your mission and your report by communications seal, you will proceed at maximum practical speed to the main combat region. There, you will announce your success and use Presence techniques to turn as many of the former Blue team to our side. You will meet up with the local command squad, and launch aerial assets, striking at the White Command Post. New orders may be given as the situation develops. Are these orders understood, and do you accept your mission?" In unison, we bowed our heads and replied.

"Yes Sir!"

Chapter 39: Game Breaking

Honestly, I was pretty stoked about our mission within the war-game. It was the best use of our squad, and even though it was just a game, it would earn us some good reputation within the village. Plus, when it leaked, which it would, it would give the world a totally incorrect impression of me. Instead of being "that scary fucker with ridiculous strategic-class jutsu" I'd be "that monster you cannot fight at close range."

It was basic strategy, laid out by Sun-Tzu. Appear weak where you are strong, and strong where you are weak. While my close range combat was good, it wasn't really the best, especially if they could overcome my Presence. Engage me at mid to long range though? You'd be lucky to last seconds. And shaping enemy engagements that way helped my survivability a lot. My new armor, even though it wasn't a full set of body seals, took care of a lot of the threats that fell under the category of "ranged assassination" methods, and my body was highly resistant to even the deadliest toxins due to the absurd levels of chakra powering my Uzumaki bloodline and Kurama's assistance.

The war-games started at dawn on a Monday, with the first six hours being restricted to your "starting-zone" to make traps, defenses and preparations. The war-games ended at sunrise on Saturday, or when one side had won. During those first hours, Yasu set up protections for Sachiko and a trapped fall-back position for our squad, while Sachiko launched one of her Pelicans and I prepared the jamming-seal. Off to the side, there was a judge with a black and yellow striped sash and head-cover watching our team. With our tasks completed, we ate some food and caught a quick nap. Ten minutes before the games started, I trotted over to the examiner.

"Examiner-san, I have a question. You are using a seal-based communications system, correct?" I asked.

"Yes, why?"

"This seal," I answered, pointing at the seal I had prepared, "will jam all Konoha communication seals in the region. I was wondering if this fell under the rules for wide-effect jutsu that the judges make orders on to simulate rather than the jutsu actually getting used." The examiner looked pretty interested at the possibilities.

"You can do that? Let me ask my superior." He activated the communication seal, then spent a few moments talking to one of the higher examiners. "Alright, so the ruling is, if you can activate it for thirty seconds at the start of the test, then deactivate it, and we will issue a ruling not to use communication seals in this combat area."

"Thank you, examiner-san. As a note, my squad's communications are immune to this particular seal, and I have left a communicator with my commander that is on our communications net." With the ruling given, I returned to Yasu and Sachiko. I gave the seal to Sachiko to activate it when the round started. Yasu and I went to the edge of our starting zone, ready to blitz through the forest and attack the enemy command post about one mile away. We heard a loud trumpet-call starting the exams, and were off.

"Comms check," I called out as we ran through the woods.

"Yasu, up," Yasu replied.

"Sachiko, up. Jammer active. Pelican overhead. Showing your targetting information too," Sachiko added. The HUD-projector seal that I used could link in with the Pelican controls, allowing me to effectively designate targets. A few seconds later, Sachiko continued. "Showing one messenger squad, three chunin candidates at a guess, leaving the command post. Orders?"

"Just the one? Track, do not engage until out of sight, then engage with DEWS." We were already coming up on the post, and entering the boundary of the enemy's starting region. Yasu took point, and we both started moving more slowly, checking for traps using our sensing and special vision modes to notice the reflection from wires. Yasu had a Void Sensor, a seal that used vibrations to detect hidden rooms or spaces, but that could also detect pit-traps. He pointed a few out to me, and we traced a safe path through the defenses.

"Targets out of sight of the command post, now engaging. Target one and two down," I heard from Sachiko. "Target three evading, target three down." The messenger squad was officially "dead" now. The enemy was likely in a bit of disarray from having their communications disabled, and a messenger from the general combat zone was likely headed our way to find out what was happening.

"Good job," I replied. "Keep an eye out for reinforcements or an investigation unit from their main force."

"Will do."

By now, Yasu and I had made it to the edge of the woods surrounding the enemy command post, which was now about a hundred meters away. It was a small, fortified compound with a stone wall that many ninja could simply jump over, and a small stone keep and training ground on the inside. It was likely based off of a military outpost designed for local bandit suppression, with a total population of up to a century, or eighty men and officers. There were likely only a few squads inside. At a guess, one jonin participating in the exam (the Blue commander), a squad of jonin candidates, three to five squads of chunin candidates, and a few dozen clones provided by the judges. That last hundred meters between us and the compound were over open ground. The time for stealth had passed.

"We're about to make the assault. Death Experience up in 10 seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Attack!" Yasu, of course, could hear me, and Sachiko could too through the communications seal we used. As I said the word "Attack," I flared my presence up to a high setting, and directed my Death Experience at the outpost. I could see a pair of lookouts collapse. At a sprint, we cleared the ground, using Wind and Water jutsu to clear out any mines or traps, then leaped onto the wall. We sent a flurry of capture-bolas, a weapon designed for non-lethal take-down and incapacitation via seals, into the squad of enemies that had been on patrol when they were overwhelmed by my Death Experience.

"Yasu, break off and find the hostages, then get them out. I'm going for their commander," I said after we blew through a second story wall into a corridor. Pro-ninja tip; even if you blow through the entry-way, it could be trapped or defended. Blowing through a second (or third, depending on building height) story wall into a corridor, especially where there wasn't a window to sneak in, had the lowest probability of being trapped.

He nodded, and set off to the left, looking for the pair of physically small, genin sized chakra signatures given off by the clones pretending to be hostages. I meanwhile went right, towards the concentration of jonin level signatures. I passed a pair of collapsed chunin candidates who had been guarding the entrance to the room with the high level signatures, and slapped on capture-seals. In the room, there were a trio of jonin candidates, the Blue Commander, the Blue Leader, and a judge, all incapacitated and semi-catatonic. It looked like they had been able to at least resist my Presence at long range, as they had drawn weapons and arranged themselves in a defensive posture, but were overcome when I got closer.

Taking out a dull kunai with paint to simulate wounds, I "executed" the usurper's stand in, and used capture seals on the jonin and jonin candidates.

"Command center taken. Four officers captured, enemy leader executed," I reported to my teammates. "Yasu, what's happening?"

"Breaching the hostage room now. Hostages secure, I am returning to the fallback. Sachiko, can I get some cover? I'll be leaving how we came in."

"Sure. Good job, guys," I heard Sachiko say. And it really was. The op went down pretty much as well as could have been hoped. Hostages safely rescued, enemy leader dead, no casualties, total capture of remaining enemy forces.

"Alright, I'm going to pull back on the Presence. I think we got everyone inside the base. Time to see how many will turn to our side." With that, I dropped my Death Experience, and watched as everyone regained consciousness.

For most, it was a bit of a disturbing wake-up; no ninja likes to wake up unable to control their body after being knocked out, and the judge was the only one that wasn't restrained with a capture seal. For the examiner though, after he figured out what was going on, he clearly thought the situation hilarious. He wasn't openly laughing, but the scene was pretty funny.

One battle-hardened jonin, supposed commander of an entire faction's forces, and three experienced jonin candidates all captured, all glaring at me. All of them at least in their twenties. And then, me, grinning a bit, fourteen years old, not yet fully grown, having beaten them within minutes after overcoming not just them and their guards and over six hours worth of traps, but having beaten them without even being seen.

How's that for ninja!

"Gentlemen, your leader is dead. I am here to offer you an opportunity to join our team, the winning team, and show you're capable of more than fainting. What say you?" They were, of course, silent. The seal didn't let them talk.

"Oh, silly me, I forgot!" I said while making a handseal and triggering the "interrogation" mode of the capture seal. It still screwed with the nerves below the neck and the chakra system, but at least allowed them to talk. I could see them moving their jaws a bit as the numbness wore off. Then one of them, the group's commander who looked a bit like a Nara, spoke up.

"Hah. How irritating. Now I know why cousin Shikata was so cheerful, with you as a trump. I guess we'll join you."

"Fantastic. Now, let's collect the rest of the chunin candidate guards, and go turn the main combat troops. Forward for Red!"

Honestly, this childishness on my part was also part of the plan. While I wanted to win, and become a jonin, I also wanted to avoid the main combat forces. It was dangerous, uncomfortable and unnecessary. I much preferred working on my seals, training, and the occasional investigation or domestic operation. Relations with Sachiko in a military ninja unit would also have been much more difficult. And, to this goal of slacking being seen as a genius, politically important eccentric unsuited to larger military forces would be useful. Short of a major conflict brewing, I'd likely be able to avoid it.

After collecting and getting the allegiance of the chunin candidates, all save one with some anger management issues who we had to "kill", and Yasu handing off the hostages to their escort out of the combat zone, we proceeded to the main combat zone.

Coming through our ranks, I began to project glory towards myself and my allies, the futility of challenging us, and a rather large heaping of sheer power to show that I could back up what I said, then released a massive Flash-bang firework to make sure I had everyone's attention. At my suggestion, Red forces had withdrawn a bit, and I had everyone's attention. I cast a voice-amplifying wind jutsu and began to speak."

"Forces of the usurper! Your Lord is dead. Your commanders have changed sides. Those that follow their rightful ruler, and join us will be forgiven their misguided actions," I channeled pride, desire, rightfulness, hope for a better future. "Those that do not will be destroyed," at this, I channeled sheer Doom. Not quite Death, but more the idea that no matter what they try, they will fail. Having a lengthy death-sentence on my head in my past life, I was rather adept with this power too.

Those listening and feeling weren't thinking of this as an exam anymore. Oh sure, those at the edges of the zone, or those that were at the very top of their game might have resisted. But given the situation (their side had already lost), my influence, the defection of their strategic leadership, and now so many of them removing their blue sashes, only a few die-hards were willing to keep going, and they were quickly overwhelmed.

Our objective completed, our squad returned to the command post while the newly unified Northern Force got organized and went to the waiting zone until they could deploy to the "Southern Combat Region," where the Blue remnants and White forces were still in conflict.

Yasu, Sachiko and I launched our Custom Pelicans, and got an examiner to rule them within striking range in fifteen minutes. So for a few minutes, they flew circles above our battleground, as we looked over maps of the White Command Post and likely enemy locations. Ruled within range, we unleashed (imaginary) hell. Many of the examiners had served with Uzumaki Pelican support, and after we described what munitions we were loaded with, they quickly ruled a complete destruction while we put on a bit of a fireworks show by launching munitions into the air.

We purposefully left a mercenary company messenger post alone so that they could bring word of the "destruction" to the remaining White forces, most of whom chose to E&E (escape and evade) for at least some points. The White forces were simulating operating as mercenaries in a foreign area; a successful E&E back to Konoha meant at least avoiding losing those ninja, so it was worth something.

As the White forces melted away, the newly enlarged Red forces showed up, swallowed up the majority of the remaining Blue, and hunted down any White groups that hadn't ran fast enough. The conflict, which had been scheduled for a few days, was over before nightfall. We, as the architects of this victory, were pretty stoked. Our commander came over with a smile that seemed a bit exasperated.

"Congratulations," he stated.

"Thank you, commander," I replied with a grin. He sighed.

"You do realize you've completely broken this exam, don't you?" he asked. I shrugged in response.

"What can I do? We're just too awesome," I said smiling a bit more.

"Truly a troublesome squad. I suspect they'll re-run the exam starting tomorrow, but without you participating."

"Ah, I do apologize. Your plans will need to be re-worked."

"Yes. Well, if I can win a second time I'm fairly sure to be get the position I want, so it's not all bad."

"And you avoided any issues in having me assigned to you," I commented.

"I said no such thing," he protested fake-innocently with a smirk. I laughed. "Anyways, well done. Good luck with your promotion board; I don't think I need to say it, but it was interesting working with you. I'd like to do so again in the future, and will be strongly recommending your promotion to jonin."

"Thank you, sir," I said sincerely. That was a pretty hefty compliment. "I'll look forward to working together in the future as well."

It turned out that Shikata's suspicions were correct. We were told by an examiner that the exam was being repeated to get a better idea as to how others would perform, but that our squad was excused.

The promotion boards were pushed back a day, and so we had a full ten days before our boards, and a total of two weeks until the promotion ceremonies. From how Sachiko was looking at me, I figured that a lot of the time was going to be spent in my bedroom. Yasu picked up on her look and my grin, and told us he was going camping and training, and to contact him if anything came up.

In the back of my head a certain primordial entity just chuckled.

Chapter 40: Promotion

A rather raucous week and a half with Sachiko followed our victory in the exams. Of course, we didn't just spend time in the bedroom; while it was fun, and decent exercise for a civilian, we still trained a few hours every day to keep our edge. Still, the week was, to pardon the pun, fucking awesome.

Honestly, missing sex when I didn't have the hormonal drive for it, and was further lacking the physical capacity for it, was bad enough. As a teenager, with all the boost to my vitality that chakra gave, and Sachiko's propensity to flirt (or at least her equivalent of flirting), and most painfully her obvious willingness and physical contact… the fact I lasted so long is a testament to the strength of my meditations. After such a long dry-spell, it was great to just take some time off, relax, and try everything with my partner.

Granted, we didn't try everything. But we did try a lot. Sachiko was, if anything, more desperate than I. She was significantly more developed, and had been nursing her particular brand of what I eventually decided to call "semi-fanatical devotion with lustful intent" for several years. We experimented extensively, pushed both of our boundaries, and committed acts which were literally damning on at least three worlds I've since visited. The break was awesome, though I was glad for my regeneration; chafing would have brought things to an end earlier otherwise.

Towards the end of the week, I called back Yasu so we could discuss what type of squad we wanted to be in the future. Previously, we had been an upper level territorial trouble-shooting team. We covered a territory, and were typically fairly independent. We would normally receive mission requests from the local government organizations, or the occasional bulletin from Konohagakure's Intelligence department. We hunted missing nin, or forwarded reports of high level missing nin to Hunter squads. We mostly took on organized crime, the occasional mundane psychopath, some counterintelligence work, corporate espionage, that sort of thing.

The problem was that we weren't really fit to keep doing the same thing. It was a practically a given that we'd all be at least Tokujo by the end of the exams, and we weren't capable of the specialized performance needed.

Take investigations, for example. Before, we would make do with our own skills, and call in a specialist team, perhaps with Inuzuka or Aburame for tracking or forensic analysis, or Yamanaka for interrogation. As a top level territorial squad, we needed to be able to do all that, and more, while covering a larger area. Most areas didn't have top level territorial squads for this reason, and those that did, tended to have squads that were specifically formulated at the genin level to include three specialists, each capable of covering each other's weaknesses.

As powerful as my team was, we weren't true specialists, and lacked the bloodlines needed to do a truly great job. We'd have been sufficient, at least in time, but it would basically be a dead end for our ninja careers, and a waste of our potential. So we needed something else to talk about with the promotion board, a new specialty to focus on during our training at the jonin academy.

Other potential avenues had their own issues. Combat specialization or being an "Elite" Division Jonin Squad would make us far too well known too soon. Sachiko and Yasu were quite capable of taking on standard jonin in combat. With the Advanced Personal Armor System, or APAS, they were capable of giving even top jonin a challenge. With me backing them up, we were a terror to face.

Which was exactly the issue. We were strong enough that if we became well known for our strength, the enemy would form special units to counter us and take us out. Granted, we likely had more tricks than they'd account for, and the new semi-autonomous command seals built into our air-support gave us a load of back-up, but it was a situation I preferred to avoid. Frankly, those on the level of Madara, or one of the Kages, or their top assassins, were far too likely to be able to kill us regardless. And hostile villages would send such titans to strangle us in our proverbial cradles.

I was a powerhouse, with massive, controlled chakra combined with top level elemental manipulation and sealing unknown outside of the top echelons of the Uzumaki. But I hadn't taken anything into the range of myth and legend, getting by with extra chakra and a bit of cleverness. I couldn't match the First Hokage's forming of a forest with a quick jutsu, the Second's ridiculous control of water, or Madara's ability to genjutsu the fucking Kyubi with a single look. Even Sarutobi's ability to extemporize jutsu and use his control over multiple elements to imitate bloodline techniques was beyond me.

Were their legends exaggerated? Perhaps. I'd never seen these people cut loose, go all out. More worrying though, all the legends likely had abilities they kept in reserve. And the ones I just listed are only the legends of a single village.

I was in no way ready to challenge these monsters. But in my full power, I had no doubt I'd be capable of just as legendary acts, and so I had to take these things seriously. I was close, and could give them pause, but I wasn't up to their level. Not yet. I had no desire to put myself in a position likely to challenge them anytime soon.

What might normally happen at this stage in our careers was that we'd split up, at least some of the time. Again, not really an option; they were my retainers, we were a diplomatic exchange unit with what was now one of the most fearsome militaries in the known world, and most importantly there was no way I was giving up what was mine.

That really limited our options, and other possible tracks weren't easy either. We were too young and effective at field-work to go into administration or analysis. Much of the research we did or even could do was classified by Uzushiogakure (or, alternatively, by Konohagakure), so that was out. And we had none of the military experience required for the ranks we would fill if we went into the Legion Ninja Auxiliary.

After crossing out most options, and taking into account our political position, there was one specialization we picked out.

Diplomacy.

I know, I know. I was not exactly the most diplomatic of people. My first instinct with Water was to use a WMD (even if I was later proven justified). My actions within Konohagakure included some fairly risky maneuvers when I arrived, and that was with me knowing that we depended on their goodwill for defense. It all worked out in the end, but it was a tad fraught.

As I grew stronger, my penchant for daredevil diplomacy only got worse, not that I had all that many options to use it. Honestly, it got to the point where I realized that it wasn't just the standard arrogance of the powerful, but partially an effect of my chakra density and volume telling me that I'm in some way grander. I took measures to limit this tendency once I knew about it, of course, but that sort of attitude is rarely desirable in a diplomat.

In all other respects though, becoming part of the Diplomatic Division, itself part of the Strategic Intelligence Corps, was the right move. The Diplomatic Division included three groups within it. The first, and actually the largest, was the Diplomatic Division HQ&Support or the Diplomatic HQS. This consisted mostly of chunin intelligence analysts who collated intelligence from all across Konohagakure's massive information gathering apparatus, and distilled it into something useful. The administration and trainers for the Diplomatic Division also fell into this group, as did a number of advisers for the Hokage. Needless to say, this was not the group we'd be joining.

The next largest group were the Diplomatic Guards. These were typically jonin or tokujo led chunin combat units that were extensively trained in diplomatic protocol and VIP protection. These guys were pretty humorless, and when I met them gave me the strangest impression. It was like someone had taken the British Buckingham guard, and a bunch of ninja, and somehow merged them. Fairly prestigious, they tended to recruit from longstanding veterans, and often selected those from the more upper-class clans who had served with the Legions and had experience dealing was the more difficult lords or samurai. We were, frankly, too high ranking to be part of a Guards unit for anyone below the greatest lords or a Daimyo, but were too young to guard such people. So we wouldn't be going there.

The group we decided we wanted to join was the Arbitrators; as is so often the nature of such things, they were both the smallest and the most interesting of any group within the Diplomatic Division. The Arbitrators filled a very odd role. In a dispute, one or both parties might hire an arbitration team from Konohagakure. Arbitrators would then fill a neutral role, and help all parties come to an agreement that they could accept.

Arbitrators might also be hired as advisers or even advocates, and it wasn't unheard of for two arbitration teams from the same village to be facing each other over a negotiating table. They would often be used when a merchant house, for example, wanted to negotiate with the local government or some nobles, but lacked sufficient social standing to do so. There was always a vague hint of threat in ninja involvement too which added a certain lubricating frisson to the negotiations. Often things were tense enough by the time Arbitrators were brought in that they had to be on extreme guard, and many assassinations and assaults (both by those in negotiation and third parties) had been prevented by arbitration team members.

Of course, despite our supposed "neutrality", Arbitrators were still loyal to Konohagakure. So, while trying to maintain an appearance of strict neutrality, they were also responsible for intelligence gathering and secretly shaping any agreements such that they were beneficial to Konohagakure. Arbitrators were allowed a limited authority to make deals for Konohagakure as well; for example, a trade deal might include a guaranteed rate on insurance or ninja guards, or possibly an investment from or sales channel through Konohagakure. Some arbitration contracts strictly forbid the Arbitrators from acting as an interested party; other times, it was one of the services that the clients specifically desired.

When I heard about them, I decided this was the perfect job for us. It was basically what the Jedi in Star-Wars did, except that as ninja we were more like grey Jedi, or Sith pretending to be Jedi. And I meant that to the full extent; travel, adventure, combat, trade, economics, subtle intelligence gathering, even assassination were skills required of a good Arbitrator. It was perfect for us, and would teach me what I needed to be a more effective Lord and Consul.

While the Arbitration job sounded awesome, it was also highly competitive. I had no real worries that my team would get it, though. One of the main reasons I was sure we could get the position was that Arbitrators needed to have a high social rank. Between that and the high performance requirements, the arbitration sub-division was always understrength.

But as a full Lord and Consul of Whirlpool, I had enough rank to represent people in front of a Daimyo, or organize negotiations between rival Daimyo's courts if necessary. Only a handful of Konoha ninja were of similar social rank, and most of them were senior members within the more military or shadowy parts of the hierarchy, since those allowed them more influence and power within the village. There was no way they would have wanted to refuse me the position.

As for access to training and intelligence, it was great. We could take pretty much any training courses we wanted in our downtime, and frequently had long stretches for personal use in between missions. We got access to whatever intelligence was needed for each mission, and had general access to intelligence and analysis on the national and multinational level, which meant that my companies and fiefdom would get the benefits from that too.

It turned out, the examination board agreed with me. I was promoted to jonin, while Sachiko and Yasu each made tokujo, and we were assigned to training starting the next week. The training was a bit odd; partially because the Arbitrators were such a small group, with less than a half dozen jonin squads at any time, we actually had a unique training program and we were typically the only students. Our trainers tended to be Arbitrators taking time off in between missions or analytical experts with a focus on the subject material. This was actually pretty fantastic, since it meant they taught as quickly as we could learn. We had a year set aside for training, and I wanted to get as much as possible out of it.

Chapter 41: Training

The training was more rigorous than I had imagined. We learned the standard diplomatic conventions for all the different nations, as well as any lord's court which deviated significantly from the norm. We learned how to talk, behave, what to wear, the proper gifts, ways of eating, and what to eat in what order to deliver what message. And that was just the beginning before progressing further into poetry, song, dance, theater, literature, both doing so ourselves and appreciation of the same for as many cultures as they could cram in. Some of it was actually quite good, and I memorized enough of the best literature that I could, in a future life, plagiarize (if that was even a possible cross-dimensional crime) for fame and profit.

Sachiko and Yasu, lacking my mental techniques, had a bit of a harder time, though we were all taught advanced Memory Palace and other memorization techniques to improve our recall and begin making our minds harder to interrogate. The mental representation techniques were a bit strange for me; by combining mind and soul, I had in a way skipped that stage. I had no worries of my mind degrading, and the amount or similarity of memories didn't really impact how easily or quickly I could access them. I knew my soul and mind on an instinctive level, and that was enough. As for protecting my mind and memories, apart from my own unique being I was protected by the highest level seals. What the mental techniques did improve however was my ability to visualize, organize and cross-link thoughts and memories, somewhat improving the rate at which I could connect concepts and innovate. In other words, while not necessary, or even particularly helpful for individual memories, concepts or thoughts, the mental organization was useful as a kind of database and library.

I had plenty to add to my mind as well. Apart from the cultural education and diplomatic conventions, there was just so much trivia. For example, we had to learn more than a thousand insignia for the noble houses as well as prominent merchants, guilds, and townships. Honestly, I without my perfect memory formation technique it would have been a real pain, and absolutely impossible for a regular person without the techniques we were taught. With those, however, and my own childhood as the somewhat distant scion of a noble house, I excelled in the niceties.

Sachiko and Yasu actually had it comparatively easy. They already knew how to be retainers to an Uzumaki lord, which was most of what was required of them, and my grandfather Uzumaki Kenichi likely made even the most formal of our trainers seem uncouth. Suffice to say, our trainers were more than pleased with our progress.

The not-so-niceties were very interesting as well. We were taught standard jonin ciphers, keys, recognition signs, signals, battle-cant, and memorized lists of supply caches and contacts. We learned more about poisons and subtle assassination, stealth, infiltration, covert intelligence gathering, how to read body language, even some seduction and counter-seduction. Sachiko took a specialist subtle genjutsu training, while Yasu learned to be even more of a ghost. For my part, I trained in my swordsmanship with the White Fang and learned all the varieties of formalized duel etiquette.

We spent a full six weeks on a diplomatic bodyguard course, in case it was necessary to protect a VIP; I hated it, and banned either of my retainers from sacrificing themselves for anyone, myself included (though I doubted they'd obey in the latter situation). I tested out of the seal-communications and secure-space creation sections of the training designed to teach us how to set up secure rooms and communications to report to Konoha. The section on detecting bugs and other listeners or watchers was quite informative, however, and led to a security overhaul of our own consulate.

Perhaps the most interesting section of our training, however, came from our trade and economics training. It wasn't something that had been covered in detail at any point before, and my own efforts were based almost entirely on my own best guesses and precepts I'd remembered from my first life. Comparing historical analysis and a basic knowledge of a semi free-market capitalism with a feudal-renaissance filled with ninja-sorcerers wasn't exactly a perfect fit, however, and I'd always been an engineering/science type rather than a grand financial genius.

The economics training supported my belief that the world had once been significantly more advanced; their economic and political theory was very well developed. By the end of the year I had no doubt I could whip out a dissertation-worthy work on similar societies. My "assistant Consul" from Whirlpool, who was a trade and policy expert, was always happy to discuss these matters as well, and provide a more Uzushio-centric viewpoint.

Of course, the Arbitrator training wasn't the only thing I did during the year. I also trained extensively outside of it. I had decided to focus on three things:

First, I wanted the kage bunshin. I doubted it was as it had been described in manga/anime of my original world, but even if it were just a bunshin capable of jutsu that was hugely helpful and thus worth learning.

Second, I wanted to figure out how to achieve the Hiraishin. Instantaneous movement at low chakra cost was a "holy grail" jutsu, and since Kushina hadn't come to Konohagakure to train Minato in sealing, he wasn't going to be developing it.

Third, I wanted to become a sage. Sage powers were a massive boost, and represented a type of chakra knowledge and understanding that I wanted for no other reason than bragging right. I had strong suspicions though that those techniques would be somewhat applicable across all of reality, regardless of universe or plane. Plus, if that toe-rag Naruto could achieve it, I had no doubts I could as well.

Getting my hands on the kage bunshin actually turned out to be hilariously easy. The basic shadow clone technique wasn't restricted, only the Mass Shadow Clone technique, with the basic being available to jonin. I had learned the technique within a day, and by the end of the week had reverse engineered the Mass Shadow Clone and Exploding Shadow Clone techniques.

It was a good news/ bad news situation. Good news, the clones had high combat potential. Though a bit slower and weaker than I was (and massively less durable), they were otherwise combat ready, which was about what I expected. Because of the durability limitations, they were more limited in the extent of their chakra reinforcement, both physical and mental. The clones could use jutsu however, and think independently, both of which were the main restrictions for elemental clones. With the exploding clone technique, they were dangerous to dispel in close combat, and the clones were even capable of a limited version of my Death Experience. I could make a load of them with my chakra reserves, and did discover they were capable of solid transformations. I could make a host of clones capable of fighting chunin, or a few that could act as jutsu artillery or strike-craft pilots. I could also use the clones to test seals I developed that fell in between the "test yourself" and the "test in a special testing chamber" danger scale, or search through large volumes of information for something specific.

The bad news was that the clones did not have some special memory transfer ability. What they did have was the ability to transfer a few images via chakra resonance, but it was a specific technique that dispelled the clone. Expert users could build in the ability to do the image transfer on death. So, while they could scout, they couldn't train for me. Furthermore, they were somewhat focused on whatever I wanted them to do when they were made, and were significantly less intelligent than I. At a guess, it had something to do with how much of my mental chakra or chi I used, and how well I structured it. Thankfully, being bright enough to begin with and having an excellent idea of my mental chakra patterns, I was capable of kage bunshin that were reasonably intelligent and useful.

Long story short, the kage bunshin was useful, and represented a great combat multiplier (literally a multiplier, I was about two to six times as effective just knowing this technique, depending on the situation) but didn't represent anything game changing. I was happy that it was so useful, but disappointed that it wasn't some magic "I win at all ninja arts because I have the most Chakra!" technique. I had no real desire for "fair play" after so long as a ninja, not that I had much before then either.

The disappointment grew as I wasted months on the Hiraishin. I could go fast. Really fast. But the problem was I couldn't get anything instantaneous, and the speed scaled with a bit more than a squared amount of chakra. In other words, doubling the speed required about four times as much chakra. Actually it was closer to six times as much chakra, the equation for the jutsu seemed to be something along the lines of:

[speed] = S

[Chakra used] =(S)^2 + (S) + [constant].

To make things worse, as I started to push the jutsu and seals I was using, the chakra use started to get less efficient. It was maddening.

I tried a number of things beyond seals that basically translated to "put the thing you affect there", but had to tap out when I started getting too close to seals that transited through other dimensions. I had a theory that by moving to another plane or dimension, one with a perfect and consistent mapping function to that of the Naruto-verse I was in, I might be able to cheat. In other words, that there was some dimension out there with distances and vectors that perfectly correlated to the distances in the dimension I was already in. If that was the case, I could "step" into that other dimension, transit a few feet, "step" back into my dimension, and end up traveling miles until I was only a few feet away from where I wanted to be.

The problem was I was unsure if I should be transiting dimensions or universes or planes (there was a difference), and mistakes in this sort of thing tended to result in Cthulhu-type entities taking notice. It was in fact risky enough that it was illegal for an Uzumaki to research without the proper contingencies. Even my borderline research ended up losing several clones to the point I never even got any chakra resonance images from them. No way was I using that.

So I shelved the Hiraishin for a time, and used a bit of that time to practice the shunshin, specifically using it without hand-seals. Once I had that mastered, I intended to try partial shunshin to accelerate my body in combat and make myself a real speed demon. Unfortunately, my chakra control, though excellent, was still adjusting to my body changing from puberty, and I reached the limitations of what was safe until I finished growing physically. So no partial shunshin for me.

Part of the reason I spent time on the shunshin was that I had no idea how to train the Sage arts. I didn't have a summons, and certainly not one with experience with senjutsu. I knew that Jiraiya did, but Minato was the heir to those techniques. My grandfather had the Sea-Hawk summons, but I wasn't sure if they used sage mode and even if they did, one of my uncles had already signed the contract years ago. Frankly, the number of contracts available versus the number of ninja that wanted them meant that I was pretty screwed; at least unless I risked my life with a contract-less summoning technique to summon myself to the demi-plane of whatever summoning animal fit me. I decided that was too risky though, and so spent the month I was somewhat training the shunshin to search the library for any hint as to how to become a sage without a summons to both teach you and prevent natural chakra poisoning.

Finally, finally, I figured it out, and when I did I wanted to smack myself. The secret was in what everyone was told when they start tree-walking: "By mastering tree-walking, you can truly master any jutsu." I doubted that anyone else had figured it out from Hashirama's semi deranged ramblings; they just liked the saying since it sounds wise.

The saying was, in fact, the first Hokage's though, and that is what made me look at it a bit deeper, since he was the only person I found who was reputably reported to have developed Sage powers without a summons to help. The man was apparently something of an idiot-savant when it came to chakra. People thought it was because he could use Mokuton (tree release), but after my realization I believed that Mokuton came about because of his earth and water abilities and large exposure to natural tree chakra as a child.

When I describe Hashirama as an idiot savant, I mean that quite literally. He was notorious for taking things at face value and exhibited several other signs of the syndrome; in fact, the Senju on a whole showed a predilection for at least mild savant syndrome which led to both their random areas of expertise, as well as some of their slightly less public issues (or, in the case of Tsunade's alcoholism, more public issues). As the Senju inbred more and more, the negative aspects began to overwhelm the positive, partially leading to their decline.

As for Hashirama, he was famous for his inspired understanding of chakra. What most people don't realize is how much savants have contributed, despite whatever issues they had. For example, in my original life, on Earth, much of mathematics and engineering owed their progress in actually making calculations to savants, at least until the advent of the computer. The logarithmic and sin/cos/tan charts used during the 19th century, for example, were often generated by savants gathered from all over Great Britain under a number of mathematicians at Oxford and Cambridge. Similar practices were in place in France and elsewhere. The famous concept of "Mentats," a type of artificial savant used as human computers to replace electronic ones in Herbert's Dune may have been based on the historical use of savants to perform the kinds of calculations we now perform by machine.

After I figured out that Hashirama was a savant, I realized that he had in fact hidden the secret to the sage arts in his description of tree walking. Whether this was on purpose or lack of communications for certain concepts was uncertain.

Someone who mastered tree-walking didn't actually use any of their own chakra. They used the tree's chakra. Nature's chakra. Anyone capable of this was capable (in theory, at least) of high-efficiency healing that used the patient's own energy. They were (again, at least in theory) capable of manipulating anything with chakra, first with a touch, then at range. That was an honestly terrifying possibility, and what I decided to aim for. They could use jutsu in the right environment without using a drop of their own chakra.

One of the important differences between Nature chakra and that of a person was the potential; Nature chakra can be thought of as unfiltered light, while that of a person is a specific color. This meant that it was harder to block a technique that uses Nature chakra, since a person's chakra was only really effective at blocking their own bandwith and an opposing bandwith. So if I became a good enough Sage I would have been able to remotely destabilize chakra effects (including enemy jutsu), create my own effects at range by using natural chakra manipulation (something enemies couldn't track), and empower my justsu even more.

In other words, a sage could make stronger techniques, do so with less energy, and can even potentially manipulate others' chakra, or at least that of the environment for some truly epic possibilities. And that was just the beginning; I had ideas as to how to use Sage Arts to perform what was basically magic. It all came from tree-walking. Of course it wasn't all that easy; I already knew, for example, that the source of natural chakra effected the energy signal (or color of the light, to use the previous analogy), so unlike using my own chakra, using a sage technique could be easier or harder depending on where I was. But I had a direction for the next major upgrades to my ninja capabilities, and so I dove right in.

After I developed that theory, I spent months meditating while sitting sideways on a tree, trying to develop the technique. And I succeeded. Granted, it was the absolute lowest form of Sage arts. All I was capable of was wall-walking on a number of surfaces without any chakra use. It was useful for stealth or those without much chakra reserves, but not all that great. I was having real difficulties accessing the tree's chakra, possibly because I was more oriented with Wind and Water than with Earth.

Overall, it improved my chakra manipulation and recovery, and I began a long term project as to how much natural chakra I could control, for how long, at what range, and how much I could absorb safely. It was painfully slow progress, but I felt that it was reasonable for the two hours a day I spent on the task and total lack of any guiding information. I expected to be capable of something useful after about a year, and something astounding a couple years after that. That was slow for me, but fast enough to be worth pursuing.

As a further bonus, while I was meditating I figured out what I was missing with the Hiraishin. It was a time-space technique. I had thought that the "time" was a holdout from when people understood the relation between time and space, that it had some meaning due to the Elemental Nations' history. I was wrong. The Hiraishin worked, or at least this was my theory, by taking some defined space and making the entire region indeterminably defined by time, making it also undefined in space. The trick was controlling the space of that non-definition, effectively superimposing the space along some vector, and then reinserting the defined space into time at the lowest energy location, which would be by the target seal.

That's why Minato was the "Yellow Flash"; for a non-moment of time, he occupied all the space along that vector and none of it, resulting in some weird visual artifact effect. It was actually, from my initial calculations, a fucking genius solution. Oh, dangerous as hell, and vulnerable to some exotic attacks and a number of sealing-field interactions, but both the sealing knowledge and especially chakra requirements were pretty low compared to the Hiraishin's functionality.

My own version would be a lot safer and a bit more chakra intensive. For example, I planned a triangulation technique to come out anywhere within a space defined by the seals. But that alone would be a major challenge, since it would have to respond to change the effected region rather than act as a beacon.

Still, I had a starting off point; the rest was engineering.

By the end of the year, I hadn't quite figured out the seals I needed, let alone the array including the safety features, but I was making a lot of progress; I had a very productive collaboration going on with Hikaru jii-san. When I did finish was going to ask the Head Priest of the Uzushiogakure sealers to take a look, since he specialized in these kinds of effects and liked me enough.

Perhaps most usefully, I was finally really advancing my seals intuition. Before, I was advancing my sealing knowledge, but not really the level at which I understood how seals and reality interacted. It was more "Applied Seals Engineering" than the kind of "Sealing Scientific Philosophy" needed to advance as a sealer. As the year of training came to an end, I finally broke through and achieved Seventh level intuition, making myself a High Master of sealing at the age of fifteen.

The Head Priest actually sent me a note that I "wasn't the youngest to achieve High Mastery, since (he) knew (I) would be wondering." He went on to note though that he was very impressed, and with a bit of humor that I was obviously a credit to their teaching. My prototype Hiraishin seals were finally done and basically waiting review and testing by the Uzushiogakure Sealing Department, so I expected to be able to start using those anywhere from a few weeks to a few months after I finished my Arbitrator training.

As the year of training wound to a close, our training focused on current events and political briefings. Generally, not too much had changed. Fire Country had a strong alliance with Whirlpool/Water Country, mirrored by Konohagakure's alliance with Uzushiogakure and all of the subordinate ninja and samurai forces. Fire Country had further stabilized the alliances with Grass, Waterfall and Rice, and the traditional alliance with Tea Country was going strong.

Whirlpool, which was then also the capital province of Water Country, had stabilized its own alliance block with the Lands of Hotsprings and Noodles. Frost Country was increasingly influenced by Water-based trading companies, which had largely taken control of the sea-going trade by the combination of Cyclone seals meaning well-protected ships and sets of navigation and seafaring seals meaning faster, more robust vessels capable of carrying larger cargoes. The new air-mail business was showing large profits, and the Uzushiogakure fielded air-force was unmatched and unchallenged. Water Country itself was completely pacified, and happier than ever under its new, relatively enlightened rule. The neighboring island nations Nagi and O'uzu were beginning the long diplomatic dance to improve relations and perhaps form an alliance.

Wind and River Countries were still trying to recover from their losses at Hanzo the Salamander's hands following their poorly executed invasion of Rain Country, while Earth Country was too busy trying to replace losses due to their war with Wind and River to cause much trouble. Earth Country was in fact dealing with a small rebellion in the Western Mountain region near the border with Bear and Mountain countries.

Wind Country was dealing with a rather more serious rebellion, verging on civil war, in their Western River Basin region, which was one of the wealthiest and densest populated regions of the country and somewhat difficult to invade given the massive desert in between it and the Capital or Hidden Sand village. Their Daimyo had just sent in an army to stabilize the situation; if it failed, the situation was likely to become a full on civil war.

Lightning Country meanwhile was still agitated by their reduced status in the world, and both it and Kumo were becoming more and more belligerent. This linked to a number of "bandit" and "pirate" actions, and Frost Country was a hotbed of subterfuge and secret conflict. The Fire-Water alliance was interested in curtailing Lightning influence and capability.

Other than the concern with Lightning, Fire Country, and thus Konohagakure, were interested in three main areas. First, they were interested in establishing friendlier relations with Iron Country. Iron Country was a major source of not just metals, but Chakra metal. It was also now bordered on all sides by Fire Country allies, and under a bit of pressure to establish deeper trade ties including favorable tariffs or even free trade across the border. This went somewhat against their policy of neutrality, and was a major subject of discussion.

Second, Fire Country was interested in establishing even basic relations with Rain Country. Hanzo had conducted a coup – well, theoretically, bandits overcame the Daimyo's convoy and killed him, his family, and a hundred-strong company of veteran chakra-wielding samurai but everyone knew the truth. Bandit forces capable of taking on elite chakra active companies didn't exist. Following that "tragedy", Hanzo had himself declared Daimyo. He then totally closed the border to lawful traffic, which was a problem as Rain Country included the major land-route into Earth Country, as well as access to Claw and Fang Countries. His regime was rumored to be conducting purges of anyone with any loyalties to other lands.

Furthermore, and least acceptable, Rain was full of disreputable missing ninja and ronin samurai leading bandit bands. Hanzo had a non-interference policy so long as they raided outside of Rain, but aggressively pursued any forces chasing these criminals. Fire and Grass were displeased with the raids, and with Hanzo's uncooperative nature. Wind, Earth, River and Claw had been raided as well, but were less capable of complaining given recent events and military weaknesses. River country was, however, in talks with Fire Country, which if successful might be cause for more pressure against Hanzo.

The Daimyo were unhappy with the fact that Hanzo declared himself Daimyo as well, since it was a bad precedent. And Hanzo's personal power made him something of a threat. If a diplomatic solution failed over the next few months, it was entirely likely that Hanzo would be facing a multinational land-grab backed by strong ninja support and, in the case of joint Fire and Grass forces, air-strikes. The initial diplomatic teams, sent to deal with "Hanzo, Lord of the Hidden Rain Village," had been sent away and forbidden from returning; new teams formed to deal with "Hanzo, Regent of Rain" were en-route.

Third, Fire Country was interested in relations with the Land of Rivers. Although Wind Country had established better relations there a few years prior, the bad taste between them over the failure of the Rain Campaign had cooled relations, and improved the standing of both the pro-Fire and isolationist factions within River's internal politics. Fire Country was looking to improve relations, not least because it would secure the majority of the western border.

Apart from the major political events, there was rather a lot of interesting events for trade and merchant houses. The breaking of the pirates operating in Water-Country and the new industry developments in Whirlpool and Water Country had led to a massive expansion of sea-faring trade, with commensurate increases in trade and merchant activity in general. A number of negotiations were available due to this.

Overall, when my team finally finished our training as Arbitrators, it was a good time to be in the diplomatic/negotiations business.

Chapter 42: The Gathering Storm

"So, you're offering transportation for our goods, with a price of one part in four of our carried cargoes, said part not to be less than a quarter-koban per five tons of ship, pro-rated for partial loads, with a minimum cargo of a quarter of a hundred-twenty ton ship..." one of the merchants I was stuck supervising droned on.

The first few of these negotiations proved quite fun. I mean, every bit of the deal that I got better terms on meant more money in my pocket. Often a lot more. Then it lost its novelty, people realized they couldn't take wild advantage of me, and I became a glorified merchant with ninja training.

See, one of the reasons I was a preferred shipping Arbitrator was that I tended to put my trade ships in their convoys. I typically got twenty percent of the entire convoy value; ten percent for protection (my ships carried small cannon-seal armed speed-boats for defense), and another ten percent for the service of having current market prices as relayed by my factors via communication seal. Though that amount could and did vary on a variety of factors, including length of journey, weather and pirate risk factors, etc.

But boy was it boring. And because I created so much value, pretty much all the arbitration work I saw for months was shipping.

I remembered when I was a kid. Maybe eleven years old or so. We were in chapel (compulsory at my school), and someone's Dad had come in to give a talk about what they did. Yes, we had a good dose of religion, and then a good dose of life-lesson.

It was very British.

Anyway, this guy gets up in front of us all, and takes out this thick pad of paper, bound with a flexible plastic spine and cover. There were hundreds of pages, about a full printer-paper package's worth, almost exploding with various sticky pads coming off at all angles. And this guy proudly started to talk about his career as a lawyer. Specifically, a shipping contract lawyer. He described how interesting his job was, how he methodically accounted for every possibility. If the shipped coffee spoiled what penalties there were. Inspection of the coffee on either end. Time schedules. Costs. Cost sharing. Liability. Allowed routes and ports. Disciplinary record limitations on the crew. And so on.

To be honest, it was actually a great presentation. I'd never really thought about the subject before. I learned a lot. It was, from an educational standpoint, valuable and interesting.

I swore that day I would never do shipping contracts.

I became immortal, learned (ninja) magic, destroyed nations, changed the course of history. I was a titan of that age, and living the dream of many an otaku back on Earth.

And what did I end up doing after all of that? Fucking shipping contracts.

I just… had no words. It was so boring that Kurama had literally put himself into a coma. Fucking shipping contracts, evil enough to beat the Kyubi. The chakra beast hadn't even lasted a week, the lucky fox; I wished I could put myself in a coma until it was all over too. That was all I could say. Oh, they were just as bad as I'd feared.

Even worse, I was getting better at them. At first, it took me a week to go through the negotiation and post "mission" analysis. Then, I could do two a week, then three. After a few months, half the time I was finished by lunch. Which just meant that I would get even more fucking shipping contract missions.

I swore, if I somehow ended up Konoha's shipping contract expert, I was going to kill someone.

Literally. To get out of that twisted reflection of a groundhog day scenario, I'd have happily murdered a lot of people. Preferably our enemies, but I was starting the think that maybe meditating inside a prison cell would be less tiresome.

I considered all this as I continued to guide our collective progress through the latest shipping contract while on autopilot myself. I knew the final result. The goods supplier would pay one part in five, or twenty percent, to the ship owner. I would get one part in five. The insurers (an Uzumaki bank in which I had heavily invested) would get one part in ten.

Spoilage would be split between the factor and the ship-owners, partially coming out of the portion they in turn paid the crew, so long as it was below a tenth. If it was more than a tenth, it would come out of the ship-owner's portion, then the factor's portion, then my portion, but would be recouped by the insurance at one half the destination or median price for those goods (whichever was lower) for spoilage over a fifth, subject to inspection and investigation.

See? I was being corrupted. It was like the Borg, or some sort of memetic cognitohazard. Soon I would be standing in a temple telling young ninjas in training about how they too could enter the exciting world of shipping contracts!

Maybe I should start sending a clone to these things, I mused. Technically, dereliction of duty. Practically, a sanity saving measure.

I was considering having one of my seals "accidentally discharge" to get me out of there when Sachiko interrupted.

"Sir, there's something you need to see," she said.

Bless her. Sachiko was the best.

"Oh, how terrible," I said, only able to keep from laughing in glee because she pinched me. "Excuse me, gentlemen. My assistant, Tokujonin Hisakawa Yasu, will be taking over the negotiations. He has my full confidence." With that, I stood and left the room, not even giving them time to protest. More importantly, not giving Yasu the opening to prevent my leaving.

Both the merchants and my poor assistant were becoming wise to how I would leave for "emergencies" and spend the rest of the afternoon in "necessary strategic consultations" with Sachiko in our bedroom. The merchants had learned that if I was that bored, I'd often give up as much as five percent, a full quarter of my cut, just to get them out the door. Unfortunately, that meant they tried to make things even worse, at least until I realized I could just ditch after delegating to Yasu.

I left the room trailed by Sachiko. As soon as the door was shut my shoulders slumped. "Oh, Sachiko, thank god. I was going insane. So, where exactly is this emergency?" I asked, waggling my eyebrows suggestively.

Sachiko shook her head. "There's an actual emergency. You're needed back at the residence."

As an aside, we weren't even posted somewhere nice. We were, instead, in a second tier port on the southern peninsular region of Fire Country, bordering the Kanashii ocean. The port was rapidly expanding without the perennial issue of Water Country pirates/privateers, and responsible for an increasing portion of Fire's trade with Tea, Sea, Crimson, Moon, and various other Countries that also either bordered or were islands in the Kanashii ocean.

But for all its importance for trade, it lacked culture to enjoy or a surfeit of high ranked ninja to train with. The dinners with the local merchant powers were much more chore than pleasure.

Sachiko was referring to the secured residence, part of the property where we had set up our trade mission. If she couldn't mention it without being there, then it was serious.

I sighed. When I prayed for deliverance, no matter the source, I wasn't serious.

Soon enough we entered the residence.

"So, what is it?" I asked.

"Priority message," she replied. "Significant troop buildup in Lightning."

I snorted. "So what's new?" They'd been sabre rattling pretty noisily for over a year and a half, but I didn't expect them to do anything about it.

"They've established widespread cloud cover using jutsu," she replied. "Reports from infiltrators are that multiple legions have left barracks and are headed for the border. A low-pass by an aerial asset showed similar indications of mass mobilization from Hidden Cloud before it was destroyed. Grain is being distributed from the granaries, and the Lightning ports are empty. The Daimyo is not in residence at his palace."

"Oh, fuck a duck," I swore. "What are the reports from Frost?"

"They were reporting another surge of violence. We thought it was the usual, but we're not hearing from several of our listening posts at the border. The chakra-laced fog would block most communications, but I think we have to assume the worst."

"So it's not just a war-game, but a full on invasion," I noted as we entered our war-room. It was equipped with numerous screens for different video conferences, priority message boards for orders from command, tickers and chatrooms showing real-time intelligence reports and analysis, maps showing allied and assumed enemy locations, and various images from active flight cameras. Far too many of the last showed fog.

"It looks like," she agreed.

"Are any of our assets overhead?" I asked. Over the years my fiefdom's contribution to aerial superiority had grown, as was perhaps only natural considering I invented the subject, and Hikaru jii-san was among its top pioneers. Nearly all of my fiefdom's taxes were paid off by our contributions, both research as well as pilots and aircraft, to Uzushio's air power.

"One of our Ospreys based out of Hidden Leaf should be overhead one of their assumed gathering points within the hour."

"The new variant?"

She smiled. "Yes."

That was great. The new variant was a surveillance optimized Osprey which jii-san and I had been working on. It was specifically designed to counteract anti-surveillance attempts. Particularly clever were the networked system of bio and chakra mimetic sparrows and mice, with larger owls and moles to act as control nodes and long-distance repeaters. Some of their communication channels should be capable of piercing through the fog, which some sacrificial probes had shown was being kept far enough off of the ground to allow the Lightning forces to know where they were and where they were going.

The new system was pretty expensive, but it was the height of foolishness to assume that no one would come up with any way of reducing or removing our aerial advantage. For Uzushio it was less of an issue; a ship, or fleet, could only generate so much fog, and we could just hammer the whole area. On land, with water chakra trapped between the hills and valleys, the region was simply too large to efficiently bombard.

I fully familiarized myself with the situation, and then waited anxiously. There was really nothing I could do or contribute until we got images. Or didn't get images, but I was hoping for a successful first combat usage of our designs.

And then we had image, and even sound. We were watching a fort and supply depot near the border. If Lightning was trying anything, this was a natural gathering point from which to re-equip, stocking up on food and water before launching the invasion.

And Lightning, it seemed, was doing just that. To make it more serious, judging from the flags, their Daimyo was there, as was their Kage. Clearly this was a "do or die" moment politically, and even accounting for their high dispersion, the size of the army was estimated to be about twenty percent of their total forces. Considering this was just one of the border forts, and taking into account the number of "mercenaries" and "rogue ninja" active in Frost before hand, and our best estimates were that sixty percent of Lightning's standing army had been mobilized for the attack.

It seemed that Fire and Whirlpool-Water's joint economic pressures had had a result. Just not the one we wanted, where Lightning accepted the new reality, reduced its militaristic nature, and joined us in trade and prosperity. Instead, they were throwing the dice on one last gasp of imperialism. I doubted it would work, but it could easily spark another continent spanning war.

Soon enough, a command meeting was called. Given that the current surveillance was coming from a Seal-Hawk Island Guard flight, and my own position as consul, sealer, advisor and lord, I was invited. This was an initial Uzushiogakure conference, where we decided how we wanted to react before we then added Konoha and Fire Country to the discussion.

Kazuo-sama started the discussion off as Whirlpool's reigning lord. "It seems that Lightning has finally made their move," he said. "Let us discuss our response. Though before that, Uzumaki Hikaru and Daichi, you have my thanks, and that of our nation, for the timely and extensive surveillance you have provided."

We bowed in response.

"So," he continued. "What are your recommendations?"

Chapter 43: Terrible Swift Sword

Strategic bombing was an interesting military concept. Basically, the idea is that you crush the enemy's ability to fight by bombing the fuck out of them. Could it break up formations, make peoples' lives miserable, hinder resupply, and be a general nuisance? Sure.

Could it win a war?

Well, it depended on who you asked, but generally, no. Despite all the sound and fury, whether it was artillery (World War I, II, Korea) or aircraft (World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan), they didn't win the fight against a dedicated enemy. They were force multipliers, yes. But strategic bombing effectiveness was historically overstated by bomber commands; post-analysis often showed only one-third (or less) of the expected performance.

Take Korea: even with all the bombing the US did in Korea (and we did a lot), it wasn't enough. Nor was the destruction in World War II Japan enough to take them out of the fight (at least without nuclear weapons). US analysis post World War II concluded that strategic bombing in Europe was a failure. And that was with over ten thousand bombers and about two and a half million servicemembers involved from the US alone, with similar numbers of British bombers taking part as well.

The most important contribution from Allied bombing raids were the million men taken from the front to operate AA defenses, and the destruction of German planes which helped facilitate the Normandy landings. Not the damage the planes (or bombs) themselves did. Even attacking petroleum refineries, which are basically giant bombs that the workers have to try very hard not to explode was significantly less effective than expected when the missions were OK'd, or when analyzing post-bombing images.

In Japan, the US burned 58 of 62 cities with populations above 100,000. Forty percent of urban land area was razed, and about a third of the population left homeless. And yet it was still considered necessary to use nuclear weapons, rather than actually face the survivors of these bombing attacks on the ground.

So why wasn't strategic bombing successful?

Well, it turns out that bombs aren't that effective. Even a five hundred pound bomb (which makes a big bang) doesn't do too well against hardened structures or with near misses. Even bombs which are in the ton range do less damage than you'd expect. Especially after ground targets spread out, limiting the damage you can do with any single hit, troops travel at night, tanks camouflage themselves, etc.

Accuracy when attacking is hard, especially with imperfect weather, night conditions, warping of aiming gear due to temperature shifts, etc., etc. And our birds were, if better in some ways, not that different from those active in the Second World War. Precision munitions were much better performance wise, and we did have those, but they were expensive. Both for 21st century Earth militaries, and for Uzushiogakure. And strategic bombing was all about mass damage, not precise, tactically informed strikes to support the (much cheaper) infantry.

On the strategic bombing morale effect, it turned out that humanity has evolved the capacity to lose horrendous amounts of people and infrastructure to natural disasters. Whether plague or weather, we've come through a lot over the years, and it's almost a certainty that all our ancestors went through some period where fully half of their friends and family died around them, or their city was destroyed by flood, fire, or earthquake.

They survived it, and so can we. Psychologically, we treat bombing similarly. Where a unit in contact with the enemy will often break at twenty or thirty percent casualties, a unit being bombed often won't. And breaking doesn't really have any advantage over dispersing anyways.

But despite strategic bombing's limitations, people love it anyways. They love the idea that they can win in such a lofty fashion, destroying the enemy without even really engaging with him, just hitting him really, really hard. There's something viscerally satisfying about it.

That said, even MacArthur, one of the US's top generals and commander for much of the Korean war, wasn't a fan of conventional strategic bombing. This is the man who was so in favor of establishing a nuclear wasteland across the North Korean peninsula to block Chinese reinforcements that he was refused control over nuclear missiles despite being one of only five men to ever reach the rank of General of the Army in the US's history. The man who would later be cashiered by the president for being too bellicose.

At the end of the day, strategic bombing helps. It negatively impacts an enemy's ability to make war. But it doesn't win wars by itself. Not unless you're willing to up the ante to something truly 100% lethal, like a nuclear bomb, and threaten the enemy with total and unstoppable annihilation. That brings things from "the tribe survives" to "this is utterly lethal" in peoples' underdeveloped subconscious, and is a sufficient shock to end the fighting. At least for a while; the US and USSR showed that even mutual annihilation wasn't sufficient threat to prevent decades-long conflict, merely enough to limit it to proxies.

Now, if all this applied to relatively squishy non-chakra active infantry, the crucial question became what did I think it was going to do to supersoldiers with illusion decoys, active shields, instant foxholes, and on-demand cover?

In short, I wasn't optimistic. Sadly, I was in a distinct minority with that opinion.

As Uzushio, we had only really used our aerial assets in one war. During my childhood, in my first year in Konohagakure, a massive coalition had launched the single largest maritime invasion in the Elemental Nations' history. And our birds, backed up by naval artillery, had shredded them. Subsequently, we used tactical air support to destroy strong-points and aid conventional forces.

Did that make a huge impact? Hell yes.

But it also gave us an unrealistic understanding of how effective air support was. Against wooden sailing ships, which were minimally mobile, highly dense concentrations of targets, air support was utterly dominant. Even with technology advancements, that equation didn't change too much; in modern Earth, entire fleets were built around aircraft carriers, and aircraft carriers were one of the biggest metrics of naval power in the 21st century (much in the same way dreadnoughts were in the 20th).

We were facing an invasion of hundreds of thousands of infantry, tens of thousands of them chakra active samurai and ninja. The biggest problem with chakra active units was their tendency to use storage scrolls. That meant no fat, slow, road-bound targets to hit and ruin the logistics needed to keep a unit in the field (one of the top applications of widespread strategic bombing), and no significant reduction in mobility by our taking out roads or bridges. To make it worse, they had planned and prepared to counter their understanding of our known capabilities. The situation was more like Korea or Vietnam than some naval battle in the Pacific.

Now, I had done some things to improve that. I'd forseen much of this issue, and designed our aerial assets to operate more like helicopter gunships than bombers. Again though, that role depended on good sight lines, and preferably concentrated enemy forces. In many ways, given the constant cloud and fog cover, we might even perform worse than strategic bombing, and I fully expected Lightning's forces to go for economic destruction and widespread guerilla operations rather than a straight-up fight.

After all, if I were in charge of Lightning, and looking down the barrel of gradually worsening economic weakness and political irrelevancy, I would do my best to wreck everyone's economies, and then try and recover somewhat better after negotiating some treaty to end a mutually destructive war.

Now, if only I could get that through these idiots skulls!

"Commander, I designed these weapons. We tested it, and simulated it, and under realistic conditions, we won't take out a tenth of their chakra forces!"

Saito Uzumaki, commander of the newly established Independent Air Force, glared at me with enough hatred you'd think I'd murdered his child.

"Kazuo-sama, respectfully, I appreciate what the consul to Konohagakure has accomplished," he started, referring to me in the way least associated with my military talents, "but he just doesn't know what he's talking about. Our war-games clearly show an expected destruction or routing of eighty to ninety percent of enemy forces; even in the worst case, we will cause sixty percent casualties. Do not hold us back out of fear!"

"Fear?" I scoffed. "How about wisdom? We will run through months of Uzushiogakure's chakra production from ammunition expenses, and in the end all we'll do is embolden the enemy by demonstrating our restrictions! With the next generation of surveillance, and the fire-control networks, it might be different. But as it is, this is just a waste of resources!"

Due to conversational mores about topic relevancy, I hadn't even been able to present my plan yet. Sometimes traditional, formal, feudal manners were a pain in the ass like that. I'd merely stopped Kazuo-sama from ordering a poorly considered strike due to one man's enthusiasm. It didn't help that Saito was close friends with the head of our army, and they shared opinions on military strategy.

"Gentlemen, this is a war-conference. Let us have some civility," Kazuo-sama interjected. "Fuutaka-san," he called me, emphasizing my role in the creation of our aerial program, "I understand why you think a mass aerial strike would be ineffective. What would you recommend?"

I grinned, though I wasn't happy. Finally, I'd be able to present my idea.

"We are presented with an opportunity. Lightning believes they understand the limits of our power. And the rest of the world is watching to see if they are right. But rather than answer the challenge with weapons we've already shown, why not use something new? Something that will leave the rest of the world wandering 'what else do they have in store?' I have developed a weapon capable of destruction on a massive scale. Originally, I had intended to use it to destroy Kirigakure, but it wasn't ready in time. I see no reason why Kumogakure might not serve as a demonstration instead."

It was a pity, but it was necessary. The death of a few armies was inevitable at this point; limiting the war would limit the destruction. Destroying Kumogakure was no great evil; they were unenlightened, vicious, murderous brutes with a penchant for capturing and rape-baby-farming teens with useful blood-limits, and the city itself was a legitimate military target.

On the other hand, fully establishing the Pax Uzumaki could lead the world, or at least our part of it, into a new golden age. In short, the action I was proposing was at least moral in a utilitarian sense.

Further, I was utterly unwilling for this turn into our Vietnam, and it certainly had that possibility without my action. Or worse. Our rule over Water was largely based on improved conditions; high casualties among Uzushiogakure forces, and high demands over our new subjects could result in widespread rebellion and unrest. Something Lightning was likely banking on, and an investment our treaties with Fire Country required. I wouldn't risk my parents, our cousins, friends, even simple fellow citizens on a conventional war going well. Lightning, after all, had good planners too, and they thought it worth invading.

No, for my family to thrive, Lightning had to fall. Fast, hard, and completely. It was just a bonus that the example would dissuade anyone else from trying the same in the future.

Plus, I'd been stockpiling my updated orbital bombardment seals for years. I kind of wanted to see if it would work as well as I expected.

Kazuo-sama raised an eyebrow. "How much territory would you destroy?"

I took control of the strategic map, and began placing circles. They covered the three largest forts near the border and five secondary ones, the Daimyo's Court in the capital, and Kumogakure.

"These territories," I replied. I had more than enough ammunition, after all. I'd long since brought Sachiko and Yasu in on the secret, and regularly used some of my spare chakra when we were travelling to add to my arsenal.

"How sure are you in your success?" Kazuo-sama asked.

I thought for a moment. I had successfully tested one of my kinetic bombardment rods with updated radar spoofing and laser-resistant shields against the ocean, but it was possible the orbital fortress (assuming that was what intervened when I first tried this against Kirigakure) didn't consider that a threat worth responding to.

"Ninety percent that the technique works, eighty percent that it does as much damage as I'm predicting," I replied.

"And how long will this take?"

I thought about it. I pretty much just had to enter in the targeting coordinates, send the weapons out on a remote controlled boat in case the fortress decided to return fire, and then send them off.

"An hour," I replied.

"Very well," Kazuo-sama allowed. "We will see how effective this new seal is, and then should it prove necessary Commander Saito Uzumaki will lead our Air Force out. Let us reconvene in an hour."

I bowed. "Thank you, Kazuo-sama."

Then as the meeting wrapped up, I turned and left.

Back on Earth, the US Strategic Air Command, the organization that held command over both nuclear bombers and ICBMs, had a motto: "Peace is our profession."

But originally, it was something different: "War is our profession. Peace is our product."

It was time to make peace.

The impact was impressive, but less so than many seal-based fireworks. Oh, the rods were loaded up with chakra, and exploded nicely, but there wasn't the panache, the beautifully organized destruction I'd grown used to seeing.

Instead, it was just a series of really big bangs, and huge clouds of dust and smoke. Between the seals they were loaded with and the shear kinetic energy, each rod hit with energy equivalent to about a twenty ton TNT explosion, with most of the energy focused to go horizontally rather than vertically.

Their armies largely destroyed, the strongest concentration of their ninja scoured from the earth, and their bureaucracy crippled, Lightning faced a grim choice. They could continue to fight, in which case we threatened unrestricted bombardment similar to what had effectively already defeated them. Or they could surrender unconditionally.

They chose surrender.

But it did put us in a bit of an awkward situation. Whirlpool was already fairly extended just dealing with Water Country. Further, humanity needs foes to conquer, places to adventure. And in a generation's time, if Lightning did get parceled between Fire and Whirlpool, and our alliance stayed strong, we'd be collectively so strong that the rest of the Elemental Countries couldn't withstand us. Long term, that meant stagnation, civil strife and internal conflict.

So rather than let Fire take over, we created the Grand Pact. An agreement between Whirlpool-Water, Fire, and all their respective allies and protectorates. This agreement balkanized Lightning over various cultural and geographical boundaries, creating twenty six new states. They were forbidden from establishing any mercenary armies, which would prevent their having a strong ninja system (unless fully funded and supported by taxes, but that was unlikely). They were required to have free trade, and allow free passage of Pact traders (though they could charge the same tolls they charged their own citizens). And the borders were static; furthermore, no individual could rule land within more than one of the new countries.

The former Land of Lightning would have a ninja system, jointly administered and staffed by the Grand Pact. This would put our ninja in contact with each other, hopefully building cross-border friendships and making war less likely in the future. It was all very "Allies occupy Western Germany." But it would also allow for adventurism within well defined limits. The national equivalent of individuals taking up paint-ball, or perhaps dueling, rather than full on war.

Lightning's Bijuu were processed by Uzushiogakure, getting the same seals that protected the three-tails from outside interference before being turned loose under parole not to destroy human areas without first consulting Grand Pact and Uzushio forces. Our sealing department estimated that the damage to the dimensional fabric from chakra imbalance had at the least stabilized, and would likely begin to improve as more Bijuu were protected and freed.

Finally, the Grand Pact declared a policy that the act of any nation succeeding or attempting to develop a superweapon without Pact permission to be causus belli, and in and of itself justifying preventative strikes by Pact superweapons. That was something I insisted on. There would be no analogue to the USSR's development of the atom bomb and ensuing decades long threat to existence.

In return, the Pact agreed not to deploy superweapons without agreement from both Whirlpool-Water and Fire Countries, though I retained the ability to deploy the superweapons which I had already produced. This part of the agreement, something that was meant to be secret, leaked, earning me a nice, fat "flee on sight" in the Bingo books. No one was going to risk my annoyance if I survived a fight with their forces, and no one was going to bet that strongly against my survival given that it was widely known I'd beaten Hatake Sakumo in a sword-fight for my jonin promotion.

Honestly, I'd had Thor II seals working for years. I wasn't some bloody handed war-monger, and I did have self control. It was just that I also had a very healthy desire for peace.

But if it kept the enemies at bay, I wouldn't complain.

For all the death and suffering, I was sure it would lead to a brighter future.

And if nothing else, at least it got me off of shipping contracts duty.

Chapter 44: Rainy Days

I regretted ever using my weapon. Oh sure, it go me off of contracts.

But, and I was fairly sure this was a punishment from Konoha for not informing them of my abilities, it got me on to the border adjustment teams.

If I thought endless, repetitive discussions about shipping were bad, I quickly learned that it could get so much worse. Each of those twenty six new mini-nations needed to have their borders fixed. And while we could have used old provincial boundaries (and did), Lightning had been divided into far fewer provinces, yet far more counties. And all their nobles thought this was an excellent opportunity to bring up how so-and-so's grandfather had stolen their land, or this marriage agreement needed to be enforced, bringing these fields over into their lands in a now different nation. And on, and on, and on.

To make it worse, both the Fire and Whirlpool courts had assigned their own bureaucrats and minor nobles to the problem, and so every discussion had one from each nation (and often, for the more important discussions especially, even more bureaucrats, up to ones from every member of our alliance). So not only did I have to mediate the arguments from the locals, their lords, and the new governors (all of whom may have different views on whose land they belonged in), but after that I had to get the most quarrelsome group of functionaries it was ever my displeasure to meet to agree to some solution.

Sounds torturous?

But that wasn't all! No, to make it extra annoying, there were the bribes. So many fucking bribes. And for such petty things, in such petty amounts. And not just the people involved, no. Third party villages, towns, nobles, and governors were all happy to stick their oar in too, sabotaging the talks or driving them to some result that would in turn help them.

I wanted back on shipping contracts!

It got to the point where I decided to pull rank. I'd been promoted to Viscount, or Lord of the Third Rank, and given a parcel of territory near to Seal-Hawk Island in return for my actions, and as payment for handing my seal design over to the Uzumaki sealing department. That meant I was one of the more senior individuals participating at the level of talks that I mediated. Which in turn made me capable of pissing everyone off by starting the day at six in the morning, and ending at nine at night; there were no food or water breaks.

The others functionaries started becoming much less obstreperous after a week of this torture. Oh, we still had to deal with all the different locals' positions and arguments, but no amount of bribe money was worth a burst bladder to already financially comfortable functionaries, and they were far too tired for courtesans to whisper in their ears. After week, the minor flunkies had learned the cost of being obstructionist, and I changed my rules so that we could leave as soon as the day's business was done. Honestly, at that point the functionaries were too willing to come to an agreement, but as long as I did my duty, and fairly evaluated the situation (which I did no matter how much the process was driving me insane), the result was no worse than what others were managing, and better than most.

After all, I wanted balkanization, trade conflict, multi-national economic opportunities, and a good bit of ninja operations mixed with the occasional military "police" action. But I certainly did not want never-ending internal hatred and slaughter. Even if it was miserable, I was willing to do the work for my part of that outcome.

It was still months of tedium though, and I was starting to think we'd made a mistake becoming jonin. As chunin, we could do the whole roving troubleshooter thing, which was honestly a fair bit more exciting. I had learned that while I liked the concept of the Arbitrators, the reality meant lots and lots of listening to stupid people give stupid arguments over stupid things, taking fools seriously, doing the same damned thing again and again and again, all while dressed in my least comfortable clothing and exhibiting perfect manners.

So the negotiations dragged on, conducted in the Land of Hotsprings (our nearest Pact nation to Lightning). At least after I tamed my particular group of fellow negotiators we were making progress, and I had time to train in the afternoons. Not that I could do anything particularly interesting. After my contribution to causing Lightning's fall, everyone was watching me. I don't think it would be exaggerating to say that a full tenth of all the various spies in Hotspring's capital during the negotiations that were literally reshaping the political situation in the Elemental Nations were there not for the negotiations, but for me.

Which, flattering, granted, but holy fuck was it annoying to have so many eyes on me everywhere. I felt like I was in that movie, the Truman Show, where that guy is living inside a dome as the subject of a reality show without actually knowing. Except I knew.

I tried to have a bit of fun with it. For example, I really enjoyed varying my route to the building where we held negotiations every few days. It was hilarious how I'd change route, and then the next day the very same roadside vendors and layabouts who'd been along my previous route just magically decided to switch where they sold stuff (or stood about, depending on their cover).

The worst part was the food. We had to bring all of our rations in seals from Uzushiogakure for fear of poisoning. And that meant a lot of pretty shitty MRE-style rations. At least when I was doing shipping contracts we got some nice seafood.

Then, about three months into the negotiations, four since I'd broken Lightning, I was saved.

"Uzumaki-san, it's nice to see you," said Yamanaka Ito, the head of the Konoha Diplomatic Division and my boss's boss, greeting me politely as I entered his office. He'd relocated to help manage the balkanization.

I bowed lightly. "Likewise, Yamanaka-san." We saw each other at least weekly for the end-of-week summaries and analysis sessions. That had been two days ago. But Yamanaka Ito was a bit of a stickler for the proprieties. By which what I really meant to say was he was totally OCD. Even if I'd seen him that morning, I'd get some similarly inane but polite greeting.

"There is a new mission for you. From the Daimyo himself," he informed me.

My eyes widened imperceptibly. The timing was a bit odd; given how long it had been since I'd acted to resolve the impending invasion, I doubted it was anything to do with that, or just personal interest. And it could only be diplomatic, given my posting.

"How may I serve his excellency?" I inquired.

"The Hanzo situation remains unresolved, and Fire's most recent envoy has been sent home. Nara Mei will brief you fully on the situation. But to summarize, you are charged with negotiating with Hanzo, Regent of Rain. He must step down from ruling the country, or at the very least continue as regent only after he swears fealty to Hideki Susumu, and swears to end the regency by Susumu's eighteenth year, whether Susumu survives or not. He must also agree to open Rain for trade, and either destroy the bandits and missing-nin hiding within that country, or allow Pact forces entry to do so. This is his final chance; should you be refused, it is likely that Rain will be invaded or destroyed."

Wow. I guessed the Fire Daimyo had had enough of Hanzo. I could see why they were sending me. Technically, I was around the right rank of noble, and seniority (or lack thereof) to negotiate with Hanzo without it looking like we were giving him so much diplomatic face (an Eastern concept including dignity, prestige, honor, and public standing) that we effectively recognized his de facto rule over Rain. I was also strong enough that he'd think twice before kicking me out, or trying anything really.

Likely most importantly, I was a very obvious reminder of what might happen if he refused our offers.

Honestly, it wasn't that unreasonable. What Hanzo had done, taking control over the country, was not an accepted outcome politically. Ninja didn't rule. Period. The Daimyos were very firm about that, especially after the Hidden Village system came to be. Arguably, the head of any of the villages was the single strongest vassal, if not in direct military power, than certainly in subtle military power. All the rulers had a strong vested interest in preventing their Kages from getting ideas above their station, as did the majority of the samurai chakra-active noble houses.

"Thank you for this opportunity, Yamanaka-san," I said. I wasn't smiling, because that wouldn't be proper, by my aura was positively radiating my happiness. Travel, negotiating with Hanzo, more travel… I was willing to bet I could drag it out to two months, by which point the Lightning balkanization negotions were scheduled to be finished.

I was free!

He looked like he was about to reply and ask what I meant (he had this particular way of raising his eyebrow just before doing so), so I shot him a look. "You know what I mean."

"Yes, these negotiations have been trying," he commented. "But that was all I had to say. Nara-san is expecting you at two in the afternoon."

I bowed, and left to go give Sachiko and Yasu the good news.

The next day, we departed, headed for the Fire Capital to pick up our official escort. The Daimyo was sending a century of his royal guard as my escort, another sign of how he was taking the situation seriously and willing to throw down if needed.

Leaving at the head of an excellently turned out detachment of the royal guard, off to hopefully avert a major war, friends at my side, I smiled.

This, I thought, was exactly what I signed up for.

I was living the dream.