Chapter 99

Though their interactions had been nonexistent up until less than a decade ago, something the Lands of Snow and Iron had in common was their zealous dedication to the ideal of peace, and how they approached said ideals: A policy of complete, bordering on universal, isolationism, and security. The Samurai were the antithesis to the much more prevalent Shinobi - they were more up front, fought fair battles with honor, and never compromised their integrity, this led to a fighting force custom-made for large scale wars, for army-on-army battles of hundreds to thousands of people, as opposed to Shinobi, who were at their best when either working from the shadows, or fighting opponents individually. As a result of this, Iron held a unique position in the world in that the Shinobi - and before them, the many wandering clans of the Warring States era - had an unspoken rule to not interfere or provoke them, for fear of what would occur if they woke the sleeping tiger. Due to this, the Samurai were able to focus inward, producing a hearty nation of safety, prosperity, and freedom from bandits on the road, assassins in the night, or Undead monsters in the day. Of all the nations and villages to come of Hashirama's efforts, the Samurai were perhaps unique in that they were the only ones to completely succeed in finding the peace he had sought so fervently.

Even further north than the tundra-dwelling Samurai of Iron country were the shinobi of the only place colder than Iron: Snow. Theirs was a system of governance unique to all the Hidden Villages and Elemental Nations, in that they merged their village with their nation, making them one in the same. Further differentiating them from the rest of the fledgling remnants of Humanity was their scientific and technological acumen - Snow was the closest thing to the world Hibiki had left that he'd ever seen outside of NORAD. Trains, long-range radios, zeppelins, automatic kunai-launchers, Hibiki - through Teague - had even seen proto-televisions and snowmobiles being worked on, and that was just what resembled things from back home. Beyond that they had succeeded in combining chakra and technology, creating the Chakra Armor that made even their newest Genin rise to the strength, stamina, and chakra stores of a veteran Chunin, and their Daimyo was apparently even making efforts toward motherfucking terraforming such that he could change the weather from endless winter to a pleasant spring. All put together resulted in a village whose quantity vastly outstripped its quality, and after one attack from Kumo during the First Shinobi War provoked by Cloud wanting their secrets and weapons, no one ever dared poke that giant again. Yuki was, to this world, what the United States was in the waning years before its entry into the second World War - a superpower that hadn't yet realized it. Because of this, and their staunch isolationism to protect their secrets, Yuki was a land that, like Iron, had focused on inward development, resulting in their scientific superiority growing ever further, creating a country with the shinobi numbers of a minor village, the strength and economy of a major village, and the uninterrupted peace of none of them.

Furthermore, both lands had leaders who held an almost religious dedication to seeing their ideals continue to grow, to seeing peace and prosperity continue. Mifune of the Samurai, was in possession of skills that Hibiki had realized were completely alien to the rest of the word: Sense. Humility. Even self control - this man was a leader, through and through, and had a lifetime of experience of it, but furthermore he also knew battle, having defended his lands during the first and second wars, giving him perspective on both sides of the world: The peace he wanted to preserve, and the wars he wanted to end. Sosetsu Kazahana, meanwhile, was as civilian as they came, with an easy smile and the confidence of knowing things would work out given time and effort, he was alien to the rest of the world in that he lived in one where science and technology were beginning to be rediscovered, giving him the perspective and understanding of how knowledge and understanding would lead to mankind's salvation. They were two entire countries that subscribed to similar ideals, and were isolating themselves from the entire world, both intentionally and unintentionally depriving it of the lessons they had learned.

Enter: Teague Hast.

Before Iwagakure, Ame had been Hibiki Senju's greatest regret, but unlike Iwagakure, the damage had been so comparatively benign that Hibiki was actually able to put forth work and effort to fix it, and perhaps even make it better. Hibiki had two characters to play in the several year odyssey before Hanzo was finally put to rest - the Salamander himself, the security-obsessed, war-weary, paranoid shinobi who had been born in the Warring States, raised during the First Shinobi War, and fought through the entirety of the Second. To the outside observer, the Salamander fell deeper into his paranoia and dedicated resources he didn't even have, working his shinobi to the bone, to make things appear business as usual - at the cost of social order and even basic economic function of the Village Hidden in the Rain, and this facilitated the rise of Teague Hast, lone survivor of the Hast clan, having returned to his home after having been shepherded away by his parents during the Second War. Through his own great strength, and the addition of the immense versatility of his manifested bloodline, Teague was able to forcibly reintroduce social order, gather up what resources the people had left and put them to the most important projects, working in a way that seemed alien to the new world - instead of telling those who followed him what to do, he told them why they had to do it. Teague was a teacher first and foremost, applying his vast intellect and spreading it freely, teaching and instructing any who would listen to him and disseminating the basic concepts of the scientific method. He the unparalleled, intrinsic value of open communication and discourse, of understanding the whats and whys - and not just in how the world worked, how the universe functioned at its basest levels and what that meant as one grew higher and higher, but in how people worked.

Everyone was different - even twins, who were the closest things to actual clones one could get in genetics without technology even the Terrans barely had, or chakra techniques seen only from Konoha, had differences that resulted in alien ways of thinking, approaching problems, and solving them. Teague drew a hard line on accepting this, on each individual respecting another whilst trying to understand the why of what they did, to be willing to change their minds in the face of evidence, even if it was difficult and would cost them greatly. Human nature dictated that such a thing would be borderline impossible, but Teague - and above him, like a puppeteer, Hibiki - knew otherwise. To the outside observer, it was a perfect miracle that everything lined up in the way it had to such that things worked the way they did, but to Hibiki, Teague, and the Salamander? It was a vast and intricate play, predicated on one major factor:

Amegakure, more than anyone else in the post-Kaguya world, was ripe and ready for that kind of systemic change. Amegakure was the village that had suffered the most from both of the Shinobi Wars, was dead-set on being the battleground for the next war orchestrated by Katsuo, and through Teague and Hanzo, Hibiki had learned that they'd even had a history of such hardships even before, during the Warring States, due to their position as the geographical center of the Elemental Nations. Finally, in their first hint of peace in generations, the mummified husk of the Jubi had come to destroy what little they had managed to protect and build for themselves. Hanzo's method, even Hashirama's methods, as well as the status quo of the world around them, had failed them time and time again, and they were at a crossroads - they would either keep to their status quo, or would change - and it all depended on their leader and how they were pushed. If Hanzo had survived, he would have enforced the status quo, and the village would have been miserable, forced to either accept it or take their chances in the barely-controlled chaos of the world outside. Add on Hibiki's own actions as the Salamander, and they were more ready than ever to try something new.

So when Teague came along, a thinker, a philosopher, preaching new ways of life that would give back the same as the effort put into it, people were willing to listen. Teague's words were rays of light, beacons of hope, to the darkening rainclouds that was Hanzo's decision - and while doing what he had to do to create this environment was a stain on Hibiki's soul, it was dulled by the mitigation he was able to apply to the situation as Teague. For every evil he had to do as Hanzo, for every bad choice, there was an equal and opposite good he could do as Teague. He could, and did, teach any who would listen the basics, and to those who had the desire, he went even further. He was able to act as a mediator for the many interpersonal problems that arose, until the idea of communication, of understanding, finally began to stick, and people were engaging each other in open discourse. Arguments still broke out, fights still occurred, it was human nature and even Teague couldn't fight that, but by hammering his beliefs, that peace could be achieved through knowledge and understanding, by never compromising this, he was able to convince the old that they had to try, and was able to catch the young before the biases and hatreds of their preceding generations could latch onto them.

Of course, this inevitably came to a head - here was this random upstart, claiming the name of the only formalized, and now believed extinct, clan to have settled in Ame, building himself a following that in a few years encompassed the majority of the village and its shinobi, both new and old. Of course Hanzo couldn't ignore that, and so, they came to blows, and with Hibiki controlling both sides of the fight, it was just a matter of making it look good. Hanzo got in his fair share of licks, but Teague won out, and in a last effort to take him down, Hanzo detonated himself - which Teague obviously survived, and allowed Hibiki an explanation as to why his shadow clone, taking Hanzo's place, wouldn't leave a body.

With Teague now in charge of an entire village, Hibiki, through him, was able to effect real change on the post-Kagua, post-Homo Sapiens Earth. For the first time in his life he was proactive instead of reactive. Teague focused all of Ame's efforts inward, calling back their deployed shinobi to rest and recover from Hanzo's efforts at making things seem business as usual, while the rest put their backs into really putting the village back together, Shinobi and Civilian working side by side both in an effort to improve efficiency, and to foster better relations between them. Teague established and standardized education for the young, including within the curriculum basic chakra exercises to weed out the lifelong civilians from those who had potential to be more, and opened up the option to receive education for the adult and elderly. He was able to create a police force trained in the use of firearms, and create a small industry around the construction thereof, to increase the security of the village, to prove to civilians the power of science in a world of chakra, and to display to shinobi why they should respect civilians in matters both civil and hostile.

But of course, even when Ame was well enough to begin accepting trade and sending its shinobi back out to work again, Teague couldn't have done everything he wanted to on his own. The Renaissance started in Italy because that country was rich in material wealth and culture, but also because of it being a trade hub for practically the entire world, during its time, allowing the ideas, arts, and sciences it created to spread to the world. Ame couldn't do that alone - and while Hibiki had been setting all of this up, Katsuo and the Undead had still been threats, so in the event that Hibiki died, if Teague didn't stick around afterwards, the chance was high that all of that potential would just be focused on one spot and if it ever left it to begin with, it would probably take about as long as the Italian Renaissance to do so.

So Teague spread his wings, first approaching the Land of Snow and being rendered aghast by the technological and scientific progress they had made entirely independent of his influence. Hibiki honestly had no idea how Snow had managed to rediscover all of this, if they had stumbled across a Japanese doomsday bunker, found Earth ruins and slowly picked their way through them, or if the most educated survivors of Hamura's catalyzation had created some kind of 'city on a hill' and their investment was finally beginning to pay off, or maybe it really was natural. Whatever the case, Hibiki, through Teague, was ready to bend over backwards to get an alliance worked out with them, and he was able to do so by getting his foot in the door with his dreams of peace and unity, through knowledge and understanding. While his brother hadn't quite liked the idea, Sosetsu Kazahana had been enthralled by Teague's words and the evidence of his progress in Ame, and with his foot in the door, he was eventually able to settle on a trade agreement and military alliance. Teague and Sosetsu alike lamented Ame's geographical position in comparison to Yuki's, in that it wouldn't allow them to build railroads and simplify trade between them, but Yuki's airships were able to achieve the proper effect, just at a lower efficiency, at first.

The problem, however, was that as powerful as Ame and Yuki were individually, and as much as they augmented each other together, even considering the civilian militia Ame could raise and the air power Yuki had, they were a force completely comprised of quality over quantity. Any of the then-five Great Villages probably could have taken them down, albeit the victory would have been Pyrrhic at best. Ame and Yuki needed numbers as well as the quality of their shinobi if they would want to reasonably stand against any potential enemies, and adding a third country into their trade alliance would only open up more doors for developing their respective villages.

Teague decided to go to Iron - the only country that had outright refused Katsuo's advances on them. Securing their alliance had been much more difficult than securing Snow, to the point where Teague almost lost it entirely, but when he managed to get Mifune in a room with him, alone, so they could speak candidly, he was able to prove to the man that he wasn't seeking military dominance over his enemies. All he wanted began with protection, and from there he would be able to improve the lives of the people in his village, in Kazahana's, and even in Mifune's country, if the man allowed him. The resources the three lands had functionally allowed them to do whatever they would require, Snow's industry would allow them to build complex machinery, Ame's rapidly-budding post-enlightenment thought, fueled by Teague's access to Back Home's archives, would engender a scientific revolution the likes of which the world had only ever seen once before in the technological explosion of the late twentieth, and early twenty first, centuries. The quality of life, level of knowledge, and chance for peace - the real chance to achieve what Hashirama Senju had only dreamed of - would explode from there, but it could only happen if Ame and Yuki were legitimized by the respect the entire shinobi world had for Tetsu. In order for Teague's Second Renaissance to begin, it needed the Samurai to protect it.

Mifune's price had been to be allowed to fly from Iron, to Snow, to Rain, and then back home, and for Teague and Kazahana to accompany him - to be able to see the world from a perspective that none had shared in over a thousand years, yes, but also for the two of them to trust their lives to the science they were hinging the fate of the world on. Finally, he made Teague swear on his honor that he was being true - that he really did want the advancement of all mankind, that he wasn't just trying to settle old scores or set up Ame to be favorably positioned for the war Katsuo the Monster was seeking to spark. Teague did him one better, and showed him a picture of the Earth, from orbit - and, after giving a plausible explanation as to how he'd acquired it, asked the Samurai to find the national borders.

The moment they touched down after their flight, Iron swore itself to Teague's alliance, and from there, Teague's progress accelerated exponentially. With trade, resources, manpower, and even wealth, coming in from both Iron and Snow, Ame was able to finish in weeks what would have taken months to make progress on. Snow was able to expand their airfleet several-fold, and even Iron saw its economy boom as its traders were able to strike out to new nations and hock their goods to people and cultures that had never even seen them before.

But Hibiki, through Teague, wasn't done. This was only the start - he'd managed to get it to a point where it would perpetuate even without him, but since he was still there, he could continue to influence it, continue to use his knowledge to expand his efforts. Teague's next goal was to use what Hibiki knew of Fuinjutsu, and apply it to many of the problems that would inevitably arise from rampant industrialization, namely: Energy. This world was at a severe disadvantage to Earth when it came to energy production - the most minor of electrical applications, lights, indoor plumbing, refrigerators and stoves, were the best many villages and nations were capable of doing, simply because they didn't have fuel to do anything bigger. Even if there was oil and gasoline still out there, somewhere, even if a percentage of what the Terrans had used had been replenished between Homo Sapiens' fall and Novus' rise, there sure as hell wasn't any left to mine here in Japan - and their oil reserves had been wiped out by Kaguya when she'd done her restructuring of the landmass. Oil, natural gas, so many of the various lifebloods of the time Hibiki knew, simply didn't exist in the first place, here - and if they did, they didn't exist in the quantities required to sustain growth for more than a decade or two.

Beyond that, however, was the environmental damage. Though they had no idea, modern Humanity had lived through the effects of the Terrans' ages of industrialization, had survived the world slowly healing itself, and Hibiki had unwittingly dodged a bullet by means of skipping an impending environmental crisis, and jumping ahead more than a thousand years until it was all well and done. Add on the fact that the population of humans had gone from almost eight billion to less than one, and their energy needs had dropped to practically nothing compared to what they had once needed, the Earth had actually come out on top in the deal, and had been given every advantage possible to heal from the twentieth and twenty first centuries. For some reason, no one beyond comic book supervillains had ever considered the 'kill off ninety percent of the population' route to solving the species' energy and environmental problems. They were living proof that killing off seven and a half billion people could solve a surprising number of problems!

Jokes aside, it was an issue, perhaps not one that would become a major problem even within Hibiki and Teague's lifetimes, but one regardless - and shoving long-term problems onto the next generation had been on the verge of backfiring to begin with, so Hibiki wanted to do his best to solve them now.

Snow got away with using coal to power their bigger machines because there were so few of them to begin with, and their impact was practically nothing as a result, and the rest of the Elemental Nations got away with what little fossil fuels they used and had access to because of how resource intensive many of their requirements weren't, but all of that would change the moment Teague's alliance really got going. From there, their only choice was to go nuclear - and while the knowledge of how to create a fission reactor was stored in NORAD, not only did none of them have the resources or technology to do so, but Hibiki did not want to go down that route. As safe as fission reactors had become in the wake of Chernobyl and the advancement of the technology, fission was still a bad toy to play with, and the safer alternative, fusion, hadn't been cracked by the Terrans before they'd gone extinct. While Hibiki was confident enough that he had the raw strength to use his bloodlines to ignite a fusion reaction, all of the parts that came after - containing it, keeping it safe, sustaining it, and then figuring out how to get it to power electronics, were all logistical issues beyond his ability to solve.

But Hibiki, through Teague, didn't give up - because modern Humanity had something the Terrans lacked: Fuinjutsu.

Even before the Loop had shown him that one could create objects of higher spatial dimensions with it, Hibiki had long since proven how effective Fuinjutsu was at storing anything one would want: Matter, energy, you name it. Hibiki had created a seal that had functioned as a ninth chakra gate, and seals that made permanent barriers worked on the principle of gathering ambient chakra and using that to fuel the barrier. Fuinjutsu could effectively solve the energy problem until such a time as technology advanced enough that Humanity could rediscover nuclear energy and crack fusion - and it could do so without the environmental effects of fossil fuels! Even better was the more esoteric applications fuinjutsu could have - Kushina loved to joke about playing with her gravity seals, but to Hibiki, or the engineers in Snow, such seals could allow them to build much bigger trade and military vessels for the same energy requirements. Just slap on a seal that lowers the effect of Earth's gravity on the airship, and not only could they avoid having to stuff these vessels full of lighter-than-air gasses and court another Hindenburg, but one could effectively create a helicarrier powered by a steam engine, because of how little energy and force would be required to lift the vessel. Past that were seals that could repel water better than the best hydrophobic treatments, seals that could sterilize medical tools, could store food indefinitely, as Hibiki had so often learned, the possibilities with fuinjutsu were endless!

The problem came in the fact that Teague didn't know fuinjutsu, so he couldn't just start using it one day. Furthermore, due to its difficulty, the skill was rare - only the Uzumaki had ever standardized its use, and only then because of their natural, bordering-on-bloodline affinity for it, and they'd been destroyed because of how much other villages had feared it.

But, Ame wasn't Uzushio - where Uzu and Konoha were best described as close friends, Ame had ironclad, documented military alliances with countries powerful enough to prevent something similar happening to them.

So Teague scoured the nations for Uzumaki survivors - and immediately ran into two brothers-in-law who had been hiding in Rain Country because of how desolate it already was to begin with. They, unlike Iron and Snow, weren't receptive to Teague's advances - not at first, so Teague approached it as a business arrangement, promising to keep their secrets, and even pay them fairly, as long as they could provide him with seals. He had to start out small, just hydrophobic and storage seals, and as time went on and he built a rapport with them, he successfully convinced them to live in Ame, where he was able to introduce them to his goals and aspirations. They reveled in some of the challenges he posed, from standardizing fuinjutsu instruction for anyone Chunin or above, to creating the 'Piezoelectric Seals' that would fuel the alliance's distancing from fossil-based fuels. In the years since, while specialists were still a dime a dozen and still highly prized and universally more effective, knowledge of fuinjutsu had gone from an endangered art practices only by a handful of people in the world, to one with hundreds of practitioners in Snow, Iron, and Rain - and as the fruits of these labors were born, the raw value of the Uzumaki was made readily apparent, as was the reasoning for the destruction of their village. The alliance dedicated a lot of time and manpower to searching for more survivors, and while results were made, there weren't many left - and of those who remained, barely any had been in active, nomadic hiding like the two Teague had found, and fewer still were willing to pick up shop and move to an entire different country just because they were asked.

But for all the trials and tribulations that came with Teague's Second Renaissance, the results were many, and the growth was constant. Between Iron, Snow, and Rain, a radio-communications relay was set up, Iron got its own rail-network, trade exploded, computers slightly less archaic than the ones Hibiki saw in Konoha's hospital were created, education boomed and social unity had been at a level Hibiki was certain was unprecedented in all of Human history. Ideas were shared freely, and some advancements Hibiki hadn't even planned on introducing quite yet were instead propagated naturally! Things like the rediscovery of penicillin, the reintroduction of the field of astronomy, and naval strategy, had all been born without a word from Teague. It really was a new Renaissance, a slow crawl back to modernity, and it was great.

So of course, Katsuo made his play and goaded Hibiki into attacking Iwa, marking its obliteration and beginning the third war.

Ever since the end of the Loop, Hibiki had known that this war wouldn't end soon, and Teague was in a position to voice those concerns to his allies in Snow and Iron. They had two choices - either do nothing and let the Hidden Villages fight it out, or intervene and end the war before it went on for as long as the two before it.

The vote had been unanimous.

They had resources and knowledge the world sorely needed, or it would tear itself apart.

They'd been focused inward long enough.

Now was the time to focus outward.

Until now, advancing the three countries' military forces had been given precautionary efforts. The Samurai benefited most from advances in smelting techniques allowing for metals in their swords that better channeled their chakra, as well as fuinjutsu increasing the durability, and lightening the load, of their armor. Yuki began training more and more shinobi, whilst putting more funding towards advancements on their chakra armor so, in a worst-case-scenario, they could conscript their civilian forces too - the very armor that they offered to both Rain and Iron, and that the former accepted eagerly, while the latter disregarded on their honor. Ame put its faith in the very weapons that Rock Country had abandoned, creating a veritable militia of civilians outfitted with firearms.

It took time - it took years, but when they were done, when they had the bite to match their bark, and the power they felt necessary to force this war to end, even if they had to take on the world to do it, they had created a superpower in the shadows.

Then, Teague decided it was time to make his introduction.

The time for isolation was over.