I was randomly inspired probably months ago and then today I was 'what's this word document?' and clicked on it. I have been able to write more recently, so I'm hoping I'll be up to The Plot (and the thank-you-for-reviewing and other gift chapters) sooner rather than later.


Akamaru sniffed the air and wagged his tail happily.

"Hi, Moms!" Kiba waved cheerfully, grinning at the knowledge that he was surrounded by bodies and he was so badass.

"They wouldn't stay home," Inuzuka Tsume grumbled approvingly.

"Look at you!" Inuzuka Chihiro gasped, delighted, lifting up her kimono so it didn't trail on the bloodied ground as she ran up to the boy. The giant dogs flanking her took large enough strides they could keep up at a walk.

Kiba preened.

The competition for civilian-born academy graduates with excellent chakra control, decent chakra reserves and a basic killer instinct was fierce, but the Inuzuka had something that gave them an unfair advantage.

Puppies.

Most of the clan techniques and the work that needed doing revolved around dogs. Dogs who appreciated people who helped them protect the pack and gave good scritchies. Tsume didn't have to worry too much about the clan compound when the dogs could handle the fighting and specialist ninja with thumbs could handle the booby traps. Chihiro even had a talent for explosive tags and other seals. That was an unexpected windfall – Yuri was the one Tsume would have entered a bidding war over, when she was a poison specialist and the Inuzuka needed to defend themselves against not just poisons that affected humans, but their precious dogs.

Thankfully, puppies were a great recruitment method. That and the Inuzuka's reputation for looking after their pack, which made them a good pick for a kuniochi who was worried about what another clan might do the kids once they had them.

For compound defense you'd want a genjutsu user, but Tsume had to think about what was best to add to the clan bloodline too. Medical jutsu and genjutsu were a little finicky for her taste.


In the wake of the Kyuubi attack, Konoha needed every trained ninja on duty. They couldn't afford to appear weak or their rivals would take advantage.

The ninja clans understood the reason for the reservist call-up and refusal of leaves of absence, but it left them with a problem: Konoha was weak now, and it would be even weaker in the next generation unless they acted fast.

With missions being handled by out of practice reservists and the experienced shinobi pushing themselves, they'd take more casualties. That meant fewer people to have children and train the next generation. The older clans had survived to become older clans by knowing how to avoid going into that sort of death spiral, and they warned their allies.

Konoha's clans needed a baby boom. And fast, to be sure the kids were ready to train before clan techniques could be lost.

Thanks to the Senju plan to develop a chakra-rich civilian population, several of Konoha's clans had sworn themselves to Konoha's service in the first place so that they could pull themselves out of similar death spirals by gaining access to Konoha's bastard children.

Many clans were able to preserve techniques and traits not only by contracting with civilians for children, but adopting children with chakra traits that would let them learn clan techniques into the clan – often along with their mother's brothers or other relations, since that made a family line that allowed their traits to manifest part of the clan.

After the tragedy of the Kyuubi, even women from civilian families were able to put themselves on the list of potential mothers and go to the hospital to have their chakra typed in the name of patriotism. Some clans took advantage of that to adopt formerly unknown bearers of their bloodlines or just for a single child, but for many clans, the fact that many sex workers had no ties was an advantage – it meant that if they found someone excellent they could be courted into signing a more permanent contract with the clan, or even joining outright, giving the clan multiple children and helping to raise those children while their biological fathers and mothers were on missions.

And if those mothers could fight? When Konoha's ninja were afraid of an attack on their village, they wanted capable ninja. Academy graduates were ideal… as long as they were only taught basic skills and nothing that would make it difficult for the clan to retrain them later in clan styles.

The genin who graduated after the shinobi attack knew their duty to their home.

Or in theory that was the reason why education standards had slipped for kuniochi. Why they were loaded up with knowledge so they could be taught to apply it later. Why they were taught physical fitness but not pushed to practice academy-style moves until they became reflex. Why they weren't discouraged from making themselves pretty.

After all, having a good foundation for training did mean that a jounin-sensei could get them to combat-readiness just as easy as personal training from multiple clan members, if they decided to become part of the conventional ninja forces, right?

Chakra control was useful for everyone, not just someone carrying a surrogate child who had to make sure there was no conflict between her chakra system and the system of an 'invader' trying to leech off her chakra.

The trouble was that with the clan kuniochi on duty, how were they going to obtain full-blooded clan children, who were guaranteed to be able to use the techniques? In clans with especially finicky abilities, half-blooded children or even grandchildren couldn't be relied on to have the full power of the clan – those clans especially were on the look-out for people with powerful chakra and potential as ninja, so that their pureblood descendants would eventually have people to marry who could have children with the clan powers without producing sickly, weak children.

Surrogate motherhood no jutsu.

The trouble was that a ninja's chakra system helped them fight off poisons and diseases. Diseases like massive cancerous growths damaging their organs, draining their chakra and trying to pillage the body for resources so it could continue to grow.

It was far too easy for a ninja's immune system to mistake a growing child that wasn't theirs for an invader and kill it. Preventing it took excellent, trained chakra control.

Konoha needed every ninja out in the field, including clan kuniochi. But the clans would rebel if they weren't allowed to secure their next generation. The village didn't just need potential kuniochi with basic training – the clans needed to be reassured that the village could guarantee them a supply of potentials long enough for the clans to get back on their feet.

At first the Uchiha Massacre was a windfall for the clans – the loss of the Uchiha Police Force sent the sex-work-based portion of Konoha's economy into a downward spiral. Women who before were making too much money to want to be tied to a longer-term clan contract (much less have a child when that would be bad for their income!) were now more willing to consider surrogate motherhood (and having a clan that would take them in when they retired) instead of constantly lowering their prices and standards as they competed for fewer and fewer clients each year.

Even a decade after the kyuubi, when Naruto graduated there were two male genin for every female genin available for team assignments. Half the female graduates of his year were either half-blooded clan children who pulled from the field ninja training track for training in clan techniques, self-defense, and trapping and other means of defending a clan compound, or born to poor civilians who had sent them into the academy as a way to get themselves and their families out of poverty.

While field work could bring in a lot of money, getting killed didn't and if you had aging relatives counting on you, did you really want to take that risk? Especially when several clans were eager to adopt your family into the clan, making sure they'd be taken care of even if something happened to you?

Shimura Danzo considered himself very intelligent. He knew why his sensei wanted ninja genes in Konoha's civilian population. He just didn't want those genes remaining in the civilian population where foreign villages could snap them up.

Genjutsu on academy student supplies helped funnel civilian-born potential kuniochi into the clans. As for the males, Root would make sure they didn't sow any wild oats – and no one noticed the dearth of civilian-born males in the younger generation of ninja because now that the clans were allowed to hold kuniochi in reserve, a lot of them were sending the weaker males off to make a name for themselves or get culled while the female children not suited to field work were given intensive tutoring in clan jutsu before trying out for ANBU if they showed talent. It was in the clans' best interest for Konoha to have a strong force guarding the village. The showy field ninja made money and deterred invasion, certainly, but it was ANBU that got shit done.

What Danzo failed to grasp that his efforts to drain that well meant the well would run dry.

Without sex work bringing ninja genes into the civilian population, with the males with ninja genes deprived of opportunity to sleep around without the knowledge of their clans and fewer and fewer and fewer women with ninja genes remaining in the civilian population when ninja had muscles, what did he think was going to happen the next time Konoha had enough casualties the clans were faced with the possibility of a death spiral? They would reach into the well of ninja potential that convinced many of them to join Konoha in the first place, and find nothing.