I hate Vista.
Really, I hate it. I would have updated this a lot sooner if it hadn't deleted eight pages of writing because it had to do another useless update during the night. I saved the document correctly, too! There should have been no reason for it to lose it's memory.
So, yah, I hate Vista and who ever came up with the idea of it better start running right about...now.
Gaara has returned to the manga! I don't really like the guy who is supposed to be the Tsuchikage. Danzo's turning out to be interesting, but not enough for me to actually like him. The Mizukage on the other hand is cool in my books. If Kishi gives me a name for her, I will give her a spot in IDA.
Dead Jiraiya approves of the Godaime Mizukage!
Karin is getting freaked out by Sasuke chakra. I think it's kinda cool that she has that Minds Eye of the Kagura ability. I will admit that Karin was annoying at first, but she's grown on me.
So here we go: a tribute to the freaking continent because once again, Sakura and Tenten are giving me writters block.
Warning: There is some mentions of sex in this tribute. This fic is rated M for a reason, people.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, though I can say that I own the ideas behind Senji Gingo, the not-so-cannon Yondaime Mizukage, Uzumaki Karin the First, Aria Tabito, Sato Noriko, Forty Two, and Sota.
The Elemental Nations: The Things the Textbook Won't Tell You
1. The textbooks that are used in the academies of the Hidden Villages will tell you many things about the Elemental Nations. They can tell you about how there are a grand total of thirty-one countries; seventeen of which have some sort of shinobi village. It can tell you that the five main powers are Konohagakure, Sunagakure, Iwagakure, Kirigakure, and Kumogakure. Each one is led by a single Kage and a council of elders.
The textbooks will tell you of Konoha, one of the most powerful villages in existence. They will inform you of Suna's belief that accomplishment of a mission predominates the lives of the ninja trying to complete it. They will show you Iwa's "rock headed attitude" and how they will fulfill their leaders orders, even if it means death. They will tell you of Kiri's strong and merciless army that will fight with their dying breaths. They will show you that Kumo's swordsmen are on par with and, in some cases, better that those of the Kiri no Shinobigatana Nananin Shū.
Then they will explain the middle powers, known as Takigakure, Soragakure, and Yukigakure. They will show the devastation left on both sides of the battlefield from Taki's Hero Water. They will tell you of the technological advances made by both Sora and Yuki, giving shinobi the ability to fight in the air.
Finally, they will introduce the lower powers: Amegakure, Getsugakure, Hoshigakure, Kagero Village, Kusagakure, Otogakure, Yugakure, Uzugakure, and Takumi Village. Not much will be mentioned about them; just a small acknowledgement that they are there, a list of possible jutsus and weaponry, as well as their allies. This is understandable, since Ame is a black hole when it comes to information, Kusa stays neutral no matter the situation, and Yu stopped taking missions a long time ago.
But what are not mentioned in the textbook are the secrets that each Hidden Village has. Some are dark and dangerous, some are absolutely fascinating, and some are just plain weird.
And when these secrets come out, no one will ever look at the Elemental Nations the same way again.
2. Since the appointment of the Godaime Kazekage, Sabaku no Gaara, Sunagakure as gone through some dramatic changes. The first of which was the end of the civil war with Taki, one that had been eating up the money in the treasury for almost five years. This triggered the end to the village's near depression and freed up enough cash to fund a proper academy to train new shinobi, instead of the old apprenticeship program of the past.
Then he does something so completely out of the blue that no one knows what to make of it: Gaara legalizes same-sex marriage.
Sure there are rumours as to why he did it, but no hard fact. Not even his siblings get a straight answer, just a strange look and a quick change of topic.
Gaara is eighteen when his secret comes out. It happens in the market place with one of the councilman, Joseki, a long time supporter of the Yondaime Kazekage. The older man is a sucker for tradition and has wanted an excuse to boot the red head out of office for a while.
So Joseki accuses the Kazekage of being gay.
Gaara calmly corrects him, saying that he is not gay and is in fact attracted to women.
The councilman begins to laugh, but stops when he sees the look in the red head's eyes. One that made the eighteen year old look like a small child, screaming "Lookatmelookatmelookatmeplease!"
"I have been denied love for too many years," Gaara says quietly, "I do not wish for anyone else to go through that kind of pain."
As he walks off he leave countless people staring at his back, not really knowing what to think about what their young leader just said.
This is one of the few times that Temari has cried in public, that Kankuro has let her hold him in front of a crowd, and that Baki has looked away in shame.
3. Despite being known as a group of jolly tree-huggers by the other villages, Konoha's history is littered with secrets. The village itself is built atop of the remains of the original home of the Fuma Clan, an enemy of the Senju clan that was second only to the Uchiha. Then there was the trading of the bijuu that Hashirama had under his control to create treaties with the other nations.
But these are nothing in comparison to Konoha's darkest secret. It is not the betrayal of Uchiha Madara, the truth behind the Uchiha massacre, or how the council was able to scam Kumo out of getting their hands on the Byakugan.
Konoha's most sinister secret is that Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto is not their first jinchuuriki.
Hashirama was only interested in giving the bijuu to the countries that would later become the Five Great Shinobi Villages. He kept the Nanabi no Kabutomushi for himself. When the Nidaime Kazekage managed to turned his own son, Shinji, into the first ever jinchuuriki during the Second War, Senju Tobirama decides to do the same.
Senju Gingo, the only child of the Nidaime Hokage, is Konoha's first jinchuuriki. Gifted with the power to control poisons, he becomes a deadly weapon of the village. Few could stand up to him in battle.
He is seven years old.
Gingo manages to survive the war with all of his limbs intact, which is not saying much considering the massive amount of casualties that nearly cut their shinobi force in half. But after it, he is no longer needed. The Nidaime Hokage is forced into imprisoning his son by the council and Gingo is thrown aside like yesterday's trash.
He does not take that too well.
During the third week of his incarceration, his prison guard mutters something about "foul demons." Gingo's red-yellow eyes pop open and he transforms into the Nanabi. Six massive wings and a single stinger break open the walls of his cell and Gingo flies skyward.
Three things happen because of that day. The first is that both the retired Shodai and the active Nidaime loose their lives retraining and extracting the Nanabi from Gingo.
Then the Sandaime, Sarutobi Hiruzen, would literally shove the pot containing the sealed bijuu into the hands of the shinobi leader of Takigakure because he feared its power.
Finally, there is a law created stating that any jinchuuriki that Konoha may create in the near to distant future would never be used as a weapon and never learn of the monster inside of it. This is the law that Danzo and the rest of the council have been trying to make the Sandaime and Godaime Hokage break ever since Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto's birth.
When Naruto discovers this secret, hidden amongst the scrolls in the back of his storage room, he spends five days trying to find the location of Senju Gingo's grave.
He is the first and only person to ever leave flowers on it.
4. Kirigakure is known as the most bloody and vicious country in the history of the Elemental Nations. Among other things, it is infamous for the Bloodline hunts that its shinobi participate in under the direction of the Yondiame Mizukage.
But why would the Yondiame be so willing to send promising warriors into battle to fight their own people? Why is the Yondiame so afraid of clans possessing a kekkei genkai that he would declare them to be sub-human?
The truth is that he knows exactly how a Bloodline Limit is formed.
The human genetic code does not just mutant randomly to form things like the Sharingan. It takes something incredibly powerful, as well as unnatural, to change something that has been in the works for tens of thousands of years.
Something like massive amounts of radiation from a nuclear bomb or direct contact with pure yokai.
Kirigakure is the absolute worst country when it comes to fuinjutsu. So much so that any jinchuuriki that they create is guaranteed to die sometime between when they turn eleven and nineteen. The seal will fail, the bijuu will escape, and then no one is safe.
Momochi Zabuza remembers the day like it was yesterday. The Sanbi no Kyodaigame had escaped from its former container, a solemn purple eyed girl, and had begun to attack Kiri. He and his best friend, Hoshigaki Kisame, are forced on to the front lines to lead the attack as the newest members of the Kiri no Shinobigatana Nananin Shū.
Fighting the bijuu was hell; that day Zabuza saw too many good men and women being drowned in a way no Kiri-nin was supposed to. But things momentarily look up as he spots Kisame standing a top the Sanbi's head, his sword, the Samehada, raised over his head.
And then it happens: Kisame plunges his sword into the monster's left eye. The Sanbi roars in pain and sends out a blue-grey wave of yokai.
Zabuza is on the edge of the blast zone when he is hit. He wakes up in the hospital about a week later to discover that he has gills on the side of his neck. It is around this time that he starts to wear a mask made of bandages.
Hozuki Suigetsu and Mangetsu are a little farther in, trying to prove that they can be just as great as the famed Swordsmen of legend. The older of the two brothers spots the incoming threat before Suigetsu and leaps in front of him.
Mangetsu is liquefied on the spot. Suigetsu gains the ability to turn his body into water.
And then there is Kisame.
Before the Battle of the Ocean (as it would be called in later years), Kisame had floppy brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a smile that was to die for. The yokai channelled up the Samehada, transforming it from a slim rapier into the monstrosity that it is today, and into him. His skin and hair turns blue, his eyes shrink, and Kisame becomes a freak.
It is around that time that one of the councilwomen shows up with her six month old son, Yagura, in tow. She seals the Sanbi into the boy, using her life force to bind the seal. Yagura dies when he is eleven and a new batch of bloodlines are created before the bijuu escapes into the depths of the ocean.
The most ironic part of the Yondiame Mizukage's campaign is that Kiri it the number one creator of kekkei genkai in written history.
5. Konohagakure likes to believe that it is the first hidden village to have kunoichi among their ranks. This is a lie.
The first kunoichi came from the smaller village of Uzugakure; the only village to have a still have a royal line of shinobi.
Queen Uzumaki Karin, who is the great grandmother of Kushina and also the woman that Shun would later name his own daughter after, rules over her people with a gentle hand. She is the first woman to ever take the post as the leader of her village, but it's not against their rules: the first child inherits under Uzu law, no matter what sex it happens to be.
Many of the countries at the time believe her to be weak because of her gender. So when the Shodai Tsuchikage invites her to a meeting, Karin is not surprised to be ambushed by a squad of Iwagakure chuunin.
The Shodai walks into his office the next day to see her sitting in his chair, a large lumpy bag at her feet and one of her ornamental chopstick that she used to pull her hair out of the way in her hand. The man then literally spends twenty minutes ranting about how women were weak and useless and would only be a distraction to men in the line of duty.
Karin smiles and then calmly asks whose shinobi it was again that got "their asses kicked by the weak and useless woman" as blood begins to puddle out of the bag and stain his brown carpet.
The Tsuchikage sees red, but then quickly pales when he realizes that the chopstick in her hand is not a hair ornament at all.
It's a poison laced senbon dart.
The Shodai runs from the red headed woman, whose laughter would haunt him to his dying days.
Soon after, nearly every shinobi village implements some sort of kunoichi program.
Iwa, though, does not simply because they hate to lose.
6. Iwagakure finally gets its wake-up concerning kunoichi after the death of its Yondaime, Ryotenbin no Onoki. He becomes the first Kage in history not to die in battle. Instead, Onoki dies in the hospital, surrounded by friends and family, an ulcer in his stomach.
His will dictates that he wants Aria Tabito to succeed him. No one really objects to that, as the name Nadare no Tabito is spoken among the other countries with fearful respect. Even the legendary Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto was hard pressed to defeat him in a friendly competition (one that got slightly out of hand).
But surrounding the young man are mysteries: why he will not bathe in front of someone during missions, why he has never had in interest in girls, and why Tabito, Naruto, and Gaara have started getting along so smashingly?
All of their questions are answered the day that Tabito takes his position as Tsuchikage.
Instead of a man with electric orange hair and neon blue eyes in the standard jonin uniform, a woman with electric orange hair and neon blue eyes in a dress that shows off a heck of a lot of cleavage takes the brown hat from the stunned elder and announces herself to the shell-shocked crowd as Aria Tabito, Godaime Tsuchikage.
The silence is then broken by a whoop of joy.
"Oh yeah!" shouts Naruto, "I knew she would do it! Gaara, you owe me money!"
The Kazekage, who is standing beside him on the tower, sighs and starts to count out bills into the blonde's waiting palm.
As it turns out, Tabito had been disguising her true gender for almost thirteen years now. Having heard the stories about women warriors in other countries, she took it upon herself at the age of eight to prove to Iwa that women could fight just as well as men.
Her disguise was perfect; in fact the only person to ever discover her secret was Gaara. The Kazekage is worse than a shark when it comes to sensing blood and was wondering throughout Tabito's battle with Naruto why a man was having his period.
Gaara put two and two together and got four. He told Tabito his findings afterwards in front of Naruto, who promptly passed out.
After being assured that they would reveal her secret, the odd friendship between the Kazekage, the Hokage, and the gifted explosives artist began.
The first thing that Tabito does as Tsuchikage is to implement a kunoichi program.
The next thing she does is to work together with Suna and Konoha to shut down Iwa's slave market, one that was said to be the largest in written history.
7. Most people believe that Kumogakure wants a Hyuuga for one of two reasons. The first and most popular theory is that the Raikage will implement a breeding program on any Hyuuga they happen to capture that will help establish a branch clan in their village. Others believe that a team of scientists will try to recreate the Byakugan (or a mutated version of it) through a series of Orochimaru-class experiments.
Both theories are wrong.
Kumo does not want to steal the Byakugan from Konohagakure.
Kumo want Konoha to return the Byakugan to its rightful homeland.
The foggy mountains just to the north of the village provide a natural defence against any kind of invader. In fact, the only way to safely navigate through the passage is to have some sort of all-seeing eye.
Or a heck of a lot of dumb luck, as Senju Hashirama would later discover.
As he was traveling through Rai no Kuni, the future Hokage would somehow stumble upon the Hyuuga's home, save their leader's first daughter from a freak accident, and then negotiate an alliance with the clan before the sun went down that day. The Hyuuga and its kekkei genkai follow Hashirama back to his home in Hi no Kuni and would later become one of his greatest allies.
The funny thing is that clan leader's grandchild, Hiashi, would later have his own daughter's life saved by Hashirama's grandchild, Tsuande, when she returns to the village. The soon-to-be Godaime would take one look at Hinata and repair the damage Neji did to her heart, lungs, and chakra system in the blink of an eye.
Hiashi's unwavering loyal to Tsuande begins that day.
It's odd how history manages to repeat itself when no one it looking.
8. Say what you want about him, but Nagato was one of the best damn things that ever happened to Amegakure. Hanzo's rule of terror cast a spell of darkness over the village, driving neighbour against neighbour, friend against friend, and brother against sister.
Then the entity known only as Pein descended against the Salamander with the wrath of god, bringing with him the swift hand of justice and a power that only a fool would fight against.
But that was not the only thing Nagato did under the guise of a god. He created shelter for the homeless. He provided food for the starving. He built schools for the uneducated.
Nagato banished Ame's fear and gave its people a reason to want to wake up in the morning.
He gave the country a reason to cry anymore.
When Konoha returned the seven blackened bodies of their leader – of their hope – of Ame, one of the largest funerals in history takes place. Mourners came from across the country to try to connect one more time with Nagato. Long speeches were made in front of weeping crowds about how their god had been realised from his mortal bodies. They talk about what he did for them, how he had saved them, and how his was now gone.
But no one talks about what they will do next.
Until she stands up.
Sato Noriko, a kunoichi of their village, steps in front of the crowd and yells at them. She tells them how they are insulting Pein by weeping for him, instead of continuing his legacy in shaping Ame into something they can all be proud of. She calls them cowards, she calls them fools, and they slowly begin to support her and her ambition to get Ame back on it's feet again.
Noriko is not a god. She's not an angel, either.
Noriko is as human as they get, and that's probably why she is promoted to village leader at the age of fourteen and three-quarters.
This, of course, smashed the previous record of youngest shinobi leader set by Sabaku no Gaara. Noriko has yet to let him live it down.
9. Kumogakure likes to say that they are the first nation to come up with the idea of the ANBU. This is true. However, the original design has only been improved on in one country: Takigakure.
ANBU is traditionally made up of three departments: the Black Ops, the Hunters, and Intel. The Black Ops get the fancy swords and armour. The Hunters receive their cloaks and the equipment used to destroy bodies. And Intel…well, no one really knows what they wear.
No one ever sees them. They are just that good.
Taki, however, has a fourth division, known only as Forty-Two. Forty-two does not officially exist. It is made up of shinobi and kunoichi that have nothing to lose, who have no need for glory, and who will no be missed if they die.
Forty-two agents do not wear hitai-ate. This is because they are usually deployed into areas where the presence a Taki shinobi would be, at best, a cause for war. They are trained in non-Taki jutsu, use non-Taki weaponry, and deploy non-Taki strategy for this reason as well.
They are told to succeed by any means necessary, because if they fail there are no reinforcements coming. No back up will be provided from their village. Instead, their leader will release their files to Takumi Village (the universal distributer of the Bingo Book) and officially the Forty-Two were never sent.
The concept of Forty-Two was created by a man named Kakuzu. Ironically, he is the first to fall to its harsh life. One minute he is trying to nurse his wounds from his failed assassination on Senju Hashirama and the next he is running full tilt from his own people.
Today Forty-Two is staffed by close to fifty shinobi and kunoichi, ranging in the ranks from green genin to seasoned jonin. The strongest of them is a seventeen year old girl named Fu. She specializes in poison.
Fu's last mission is to assassinate Sabaku no Gaara while he is on his way to the peace talks with Taki. She never even gets to try, as she is ambushed by Konan of Akatsuki and dragged off to their lair to extract the Nanabi from the seal on her fore arm.
Shibuki does not even blink when the Kazekage enters his office, alive and well. He had originally assigned Fu to Forty-Two in hopes that she would foul up on a mission and get herself killed.
Fu was jinchuuriki, and that alone made her a monster deserving of death in his eyes.
10. After the nearly continent-wide creation of kunoichi programs, there was still heavy debate as to whether or not the things that these women were doing on missions were bringing dishonour to their families back home.
Kunoichi were becoming a different class of warrior, a different breed of spy. They are ready to sing, dance, and strip of secrets. Sex to them was as much of a tool as the tantos that many shinobi favoured as a weapon. Kunoichi were shunned by their male peers as cheats, using their feminine charms to not provide an honourable fight.
It is Yukigakure that finally steps up and creates a series of laws to protect kunoichi against prosecution. Most of it is about giving the female fighters equal rights to their male comrades, but there is one law that stands out like a bloodstain on a white sheet.
Law 58-J of the Kunoichi Act dictates that no kunoichi of any race, culture, village of origin, and political status can be disinherited, disowned, shunned, or prosecuted if she engages in sexual activities to accomplish the mission she is given and/or to stay alive.
This Act is then presented at the next Shinobi Convention and is put into effect in nearly every country, despite the blue-blooded elders on all of their councils telling the Kages and village leaders that it was a bad idea giving these women freedom to do what they want.
They were successfully ignored by the general population. And not for the first time, too.
11. Getsugakure has one of the most culturally diverse populations in the Elemental Nations, beating out Kumogakure and Amegakure by a landslide. This is because Getsu is not actually a village; it is a nomadic tribe that picks up stragglers in every country they pass through.
They have members from the dark skinned mountain dwellers of Kumo to the pale white of Kirigakure. If rumours are true, they even have a few branch member Hyuugas that managed to break free of the Caged Bird Seal.
Uchiha Sasuke is passing through Getsu one day while travelling to the North Base with Orochimaru. He is taking a break when he notices a group of children playing kickball.
He does not think much of it until he takes a look at one of the boy's faces and sees that the kid looks frighteningly similar to his father, Fugaku. Sasuke manages to convince himself that it is a coincidence, but as he is leaving he glances behind and catches a glimpse of something that he is not quite sure what to believe.
No one asks why the Uchiha was so twitchy that night. Kabuto will wonder, but he will not voice his opinions.
But if he did, Sasuke would have sworn by any god Kabuto cared to mention that he saw that kid activate his Sharingan in order to get in that goal.
12. Like a few other villages, Kusagakure has picked up Kirigakure's distaste for clans with kekkei genkai. While there are no Bloodline hunts in their history, many of their people believe those with Limits are cursed.
Many of the clans have the idea to go into hiding and interbreeding with the ordinary population in order to water down their kekkei genkai into nothing. This plan slowly begins to work and bloodlines stop appearing in their shinobi.
One of the genes cropped up again in a village on the northern border with Iwagakure. A little boy is born with mouths on his hands and chest. His parents, not knowing what to do, hid him away in their house and tell the neighbours the kid was stillborn.
The boy's kekkei genkai was a mutated version of the Korusuki clan's bloodline limit, one that allowed them to turn anything they pumped chakra into into an explosive. All this kid needed to do was place an object into his mouth-hands and BOOM! Things would go up in a fiery mushroom cloud and paint the sky red and orange.
He discovered this on his fifth birthday when he destroyed his family home.
Unable to pay the bills to rebuild, his parents are forced to sell him to Iwa as a slave. As traders pass back across the border, they are stopped by a three-pronged kunai. They are given a second to contemplate their doom before hundreds more rain down on them, bringing with them a Yellow God of death.
Only the slaves are spared.
As the Yellow God leaves, the boy spots one of his kunai in a tree. He tries to give it back, but the God leaves before he can. So as he runs north, the boy takes it with him in hopes that he will see him again.
When he is six, the boy is discovered by an Iwa shinobi named Roshi, who sees his talent to become a shinobi and takes him back to his village. When he is shoved in front of a class of boys his own age, he introduced himself in a thick Kusa accent as, "Deidara, yeah!"
The boys laugh at him, calling him nasty things, insulting his parents, as well as his country of origin. One boy, Sota, goes as far as to call him a "Kusa-coward," a deadly insult to anyone in Iwa. Deidara does not really care what they say; he is going to be a great shinobi, after all.
But when his teacher teaches them horrors of the monster known as the Yellow Flash – his savoir, his god – Deidara is insulted to the point where his decides he wants to kill them. No one insults the inspiration for his art and gets away with it.
When he is thirteen, Deidara flees the village, leaving half of it in ruins from his C3 blast. He makes sure to watch Sota die, spinning his three-pronged kunai on his finger and asking, "Not bad for a Kusa-coward, yeah?"
Kusagakure's secret is something that they do not even know themselves: they did have retribution for the lives they lost during the Third Great Shinobi War.
Deidara does not care. Kusa means nothing to him now.
In fact, it never did.
13. Otogakure's secret is about a subtly hidden as a flying mallet. Despite the inhuman power displayed by its members, everyone knows that it is the weakest village in the Elemental Nations.
This is because Oto shinobi and kunoichi lack one quality that everyone else has: loyalty.
Sure, they say they are loyal to Orochimaru, but this is only because they literally have no where else to go. It is better to be clothed, fed, and used as a tool for the rest of your natural life then to be completely alone.
Every Oto shinobi can and will betray their leader if offered a better life somewhere else. Even the fanatically loyal Kimimaro would have turned his back on Orochimaru if someone that knew what they were doing offered to cure his disease.
This is why Sunagakure was able to utterly destroy them during the war that started with the assassination of Temari and Kankuro. Suna was loyal to their village and to their leader. They trusted Gaara with their lives, and in turn, he trusted them with his.
Orochimaru will never understand this bond. Kabuto will never understand this bond.
And that is why they will fail.
14. Most people believe that the plans for the kunai canons used by Yukigakure were stolen from Soragakure. This is true. But then Sora stole them from Getsugakure, who borrowed them from Suna, who bought them from a flee market in Nami run by a former blacksmith of Takumi Village.
Takumi Village is not generally acknowledged as a Hidden Village despite the fact that is does contain shinobi of its own. This is because instead of gaining an income through taking missions from allied and neutral countries, they take weapons orders from other Villages, no matter what side they are on.
They make kunai and shuriken for every country; they take special orders for katana and staffs, and even adapted the Fuma Clan's massive windmill of death into the foldable one that can be bought today.
The created the Seven Swordsmen's swords, Orochimaru's Kusanagi, and the Yondaime Hokage's Hiraishin kunai.
The idea is quite sound: if you deal the necessities of war to both side, you can make an astounding amount of money just on kunai alone. But if you stop providing them, the fighting will cease until new supplies are given to them.
That is their secret: how they are secretly monopolizing the Elemental Nations and their Great Wars.
When they learn of Pein of Akatsuki's goal, they laugh at him. They've been doing the same thing for nearly a hundred years now.
15. Yugakure is a former Hidden Village, having turned into a tourist destination about forty years ago. Its hot springs attracted more customers than missions ever did and slowly the shinobi industry ground to a halt.
But within the village's walls lies two terrible secrets. The first is a lot better known then the second: that Yu is home to the Head Temple of Jashin, God of Destruction.
The next has to do with the Akatsuki member, Hidan. His father, who was the shinobi-leader-turned-mayor, decided that paying the workers who were responsible for keeping all fifty-three of their hot springs was costing them too much money. So he decided to get into the Iwa slave market.
Of course, slaves without proper discipline will rebel against their masters. So the mayor decides that he needs to do something so frightening that no one will ever question his authority again.
So he takes his seven year old son to the Temple and makes him a priest of Jashin.
Hidan is used by his father for nearly twenty years to punish rowdy slaves and anti-slave supporters in horrible and obscene ways. He hates it, because the laws of his religion say that he is supposed to sacrifice those that he fought in battle in a glorious way, not chained to a wall in a superheated tunnel under a hot springs hotel.
So he kills father when he is thirty, kills his neighbours (who are in on scheme as well), and frees nearly three hundred slaves from their hell under the springs, before walking off into the sunset to carve his own path as a follower as Jashin.
When Pein finds him, Hidan has to be assured that whatever Akatsuki is planning, it will involve the freedom of slaves across the continent. The false-god agrees, before saying that anyone who is caught owning a slave will be given to him as a sacrifice.
That put a smile on Hidan's face.
16. Soragakure is known for its high powered sky gliders and its floating battle stations. This not only gives them a massive advantage against any village they happen to attack, but gives them a very interesting look at the world.
It is through this point of view that they were able to discover how minor demons are created.
Every human being has chakra, whether they are shinobi or civilian. It is what keeps them alive, without it they will not survive, the proof of that statement being in the fatality rates of severe chakra exhaustion. But with the body constantly creating chakra, if it was not used or expelled, something called chakra overload will occur.
Think of a balloon. Then fill it with too much air. Now change that balloon into a human body and the air into chakra.
Splat.
Not good.
That is why humans are designed to naturally expel chakra through their pores and breath. This chakra travels skyward, condenses above the clouds where Sora-nin can see and then (if there is enough) creates a demon.
It takes a heck of a lot of expelled chakra to create a even the weakest of minor demons, but it can be said that as long as there are human beings on the Elemental Nations, there will be demons.
The only thing that confuses them is the bijuu. The massive amounts of chakra that form the nine Great Tailed Demons would take astronomical amounts of time for them to form. But there are only records of people living on the continent for less then two hundred years and by their scientist calculations that would not be enough.
Maybe it is best that humanity does not know the truth about the bijuu.
Maybe it is best that they never learn that they were once humans, just like us.
17. Hoshigakure was named after the star that fell into their country during the reign of their first shinobi leader. It was the first time that any object from outer space has landed in the Elemental Nations. From exposing their shinobi to it, they gained incredible powers that cost more lives than it saved.
What they do not tell the world is that there were originally two stars that fell to the ground. One glowed purple, the other a ghostly green. The green one was stolen by a man during the Second Great Shinobi War.
The star was later shown to a blacksmith in Takumi Village by the man who stole it. The blacksmith was to make it into a sword. Price was no object.
Almost a month later, Orochimaru walked away from that shop with his infamous Kusanagi.
When Sunagakure is going through the things that they found in the many bases of Otogakure, the sword shows up and is put on display in a museum. That year, the Shinobi Convention is held in Suna and the shinobi leader of Hoshi declares their rightful ownership of the legendary sword.
Gaara is happy to get rid of the thing. It reminds him too much of his brother and sister's deaths via Oto shinobi.
18. Kagero Village's secret lies in why such a small shinobi village would try to attack a superpower like Konohagakure. It was not out of jealousy of their power, or even because of their shinobi leader's superman complex.
They declared war on Konoha because information got mixed up.
Thirty years ago, when the messenger system was not so great, the scroll containing the possible trade roots and the supplies that could be exchanged was accidentally swapped with one of the first Icha Icha manuscripts that Jiraiya ever created. Kagero's leaders believe that Konoha was not taking them seriously and then decided to show them just how powerful they could be.
Jiraiya will never know of this mix up. He will though wonder why, five months later, when he sends the exact same manuscript to his publishers and gets a green light. He will become incredibly confused when they say that his work has defiantly improved since he sent them that horribly written non-fiction novel.
19. At the west end of Kaze no Kuni, there is a wall made of sticks and stones and mud. Behind it is the edge of a gorge that contains a beautiful crystal blue lake. Surrounding it are tall trees on even taller mountains and a waterfall that causes rainbows to form when the sun hits it just right.
Beyond this lake are untold wonders. There is said to be fertile farmland in the southern most end, forests that go on forever in the east, enormous canyons that are even more beautiful at sundown, and a snowy mountain range that could allow you to touch the sky.
This is the Outer Rim, the home of monsters and thieves, of demons and freaks.
The demons that Soragakure watch form usually end up here. Outcasts and monster flee across the wall, knowing no Hunter nin will follow them there. The Elemental Nations use it as a dumping ground for it's most dangerous criminals.
For all its beauty, the Outer Rim is one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Just standing on the ground can kill you if you stay long enough. If it does not, it will screw with your genetic structure and turn any child you have into a freak.
Someone with the Byakugan once scanned it, to discover an odd green energy seeping from the ground. Radiation, he called it, from the War of Machines.
But that was silly; the War of Machines was all but a legend. Tales of a civilization that lived to destroy themselves by building better and more deadly weapons could not be real.
Metal birds could not exist.
Metal boxes on wheels could not travel faster than a shinobi.
Right?
It is said that Uchiha Madara visited the Outer Rim sometime between when he abandoned Konohagakure and when he attacked the first time with the Kyuubi in tow. It is also said that that was where was driven mad with paranoia, and then with hatred.
What they do not know is that Madara was not alone when he went insane.
The Outer Rim was where he met Zetsu, the cannibalistic plant man, and together they fell into the darkness and were consumed by the thoughts of power and greed.
20. The Elemental Nations are filled with secrets: the true origin of the Hyuuga clan, the mystery of the minor demons, and the truth behind kekkei genkai are all hidden amongst its citizens.
But the continent itself has a secret that only four people have the privilege of knowing. It is going to die. Everyone is going to die because of Uchiha Madara and his ambition to watch the world burn.
What the continent does not know is that their only hope of survival lies within these four people: a dead-last loser who cannot even perform a signal Bushin (Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto, Rokudaime Hokage, the Hurricane of Konoha), a little girl who is all brains and no brawn (Namikaze Haruno Sakura, Head of the International Medical Department, the Angel of Death), the man who killed his own kin (Uchiha Itachi, Right-Hand man of the Hokage, The Hurricane's Shadow), and a psychopathic mass murderer in the form of a child (Sabaku no Gaara, Godaime Kazekage, the Oncoming Storm).
The Elemental Nations do not what is about to hit them.
If I ever get the smart idea to make another one of these continent tributes ever again, somebody needs to remind me of this one.
Before anyone tells me, yes, I am aware that Yagura is supposed to be the Yondaime Mizukage, but in this story he is not for the simple reason that...well...this is fanfiction and since when did fanfiction follow the rules of cannon?
Never right. That's why it is called fanfiction.
Okay, I promise that I will give you a Sakura tribute next. Pinky promise!
Later,
Whitefox