[Purchases:
Normalcy. -10 63
Pavlov's Bell. -10 53
Time Savers. [Rank 2: All Retinue.]. -8. 45
Shikamaru Nara: Added Potential: Yakumo Kurama. -5. 40
Hypnos. -15. 25
Sticky Fingers. -5. 20
Social Club. -10. 10
Maestro. -10. 0
0 Credits Remaining.]
Waking up the following morning, and making some last minute purchases, I got out of my bed, stretching as I felt immensely pleased with myself.
Normalcy meant that having multiple partners wasn't an impact on my social life or through social standing. The rest of the world would just kind of consider us fairly normal as long as we're not doing anything outrageous like fucking in public.
Pavlov's Bell basically installed an app on my phone that allowed me to give a sense of pleasure or pain, of various degrees, numbness, or even a variety of sensations at my discretion, to my retinue. With Target Tracker, this allows me to tweak each 'waifu' to be set to specific responses based on what they were doing or how they were feeling.
By raising Time Savers to rank 2, the same basic benefits of Time Savers is expanded to all of my retinue. [Only need 6 hours of sleep, always well groomed and smelling great, never need to use the bathroom, can fall asleep within a few minutes with ease.]
Added Potential: Yakumo Kurama. Easiest 5 Credits spent. Ever. Yakumo Kurama is a rather plain looking girl, who was born with a frail body, and an extremely powerful potential bloodline that amplified Genjutsu to such a degree, that even untrained, that the human brain would think her genjutsu was real enough to retroactively believe it happened in real life. In short, with Itachi's Tsukuyomi, you could be tortured for three days, but still technically survivable with Tsunade's help to bring you out of the coma. If Yakumo tortured you for three days in a genjutsu, you died. Period. How could I not go for some absolutely broken genjutsu abilities?
The drawback of Yakumo Kurama is that her bloodline is so immensely powerful that it creates a separate personality to wield it, a separate personality that is all too happy to inflict absolute carnage on the world just because it feels like it. Of course, that doesn't work thanks to [Mind Defense II, [Stress Defense II, [Immutable Self, and [Possession Defense II].
Hypnos. The ability to fall asleep instantly, really neat, in order to, get this, enter the dreams of anyone I've met in the past day. I can mentally check if any valid target is dreaming at any time. I can control the dreams of the target once I'm within their dream, and I can manipulate the events of the dream, save for the target's own mind, body, and action within the dream. The dream will substantially influence the target for several days afterwards, more if they genuinely connect with the experience. I can choose if the target remembers their dreams and, if I choose to make them remember, how vividly they remember the experience.
Sticky Fingers is a staple, and it has a lot of potential. I don't really need to go over how driving someone wild with a touch of hand, can influence a person.
Social Club. It gives me a dream realm that I can fully control. Within this dream realm, my mind and the mind's of my retinue are present, whether we're awake or asleep, and cannot impact our ability to function, while using or interacting with the dreamscape. I can control how aware each mind is in the dream realm, such as making them feel the sensations of the dream, but not what's causing them, or making someone believe the dream world is the real world, or even mix the elements of the real world with the dream world, overlapping the dream world with the waking world. No one else can enter this realm. It also allows me to bring my retinue's minds into the dreams of my targets from [Hypnos].
Maestro. The upgrade to Hypnos, because it allows me to manipulate the target's mind, body, and actions by assigning them a role in the dream.
So, imagine my surprise when I find out that there's not two mind's in this realm, myself and Naruko, but three.
Turns out, I fucked up when buying Shikamaru Nara as a Companion, thinking it was a requirement for Substitute. It is not.
Of course, the Company doesn't give a shit if you don't read the fine print, so they gave me the companion Shikamaru and just shoved him into the Pocket Apartment since having two of the same target in the world wasn't legally reasonable. Their words, not mine.
Of course, see, the Waifu Catalog Company isn't perfect either. They also fucked up.
Because everything I had done to myself at Chargen, before the world started, also ended up applying to my Companion Shikamaru, since the catalog considered us the same person. They did end up taking away the Talents, since I didn't have Talent Sharing, but everything else? Fair game. The Company lawyers looked horrified upon finding out that little loophole when I pointed out to them.
So, now I have a Companion Shikamaru who had all the same stuff as I'd had at the start. A true duplicate of myself as I had been yesterday.
How would the shinobi world handle two of me? I could even play it off as an upgraded variation of the Body Duplicate Jutsu that I recalled one of the Stone Kage had done in the Fourth Shinobi War. Just, a one time kinjutsu in my favor.
Of course, that didn't mean the other me could just hang out in my Pocket Apartment until then either. See, the other me would be my 'eye in the sky', using the frozen internet from my laptop, thanks to Memorabilia, to keep me updated on the stuff I wasn't likely to remember.
It had been years since I'd watched the original Naruto, after all. And a part of me wondered just how many movies and filler episodes would be making a return in this reality.
Getting out of bed, I swiftly got dressed and headed out into the living room. not surprised in the least to see dad was already out, likely doing his thing as the Jonin Commander/Clan Head.
Mom looked stunned at seeing me awake, as I would almost never get up without her yelling at me to wake up. "Shikamaru? Are you okay?" She asked with some concern in her voice.
I raised my hand, giving a 'so-so' gesture. "Yeah, I slept pretty well, but I'm actually feeling a little nervous since Naruko isn't exactly the easiest person to get to know over dinner. She's an orphan, so she hasn't been taught or raised on any manners or on how to be polite, so she's very straightforward. She's also heavily ostracized by the village, something I don't understand since all she's mainly done are some harmless pranks that get a laugh out of people. So, I'm worried you guys won't see Naruko the way I see her, and might judge her like the rest of the village, without really giving her a chance."
Mom's eyes softened and she gestured for me to sit down as she sat across from me. "Honey, I can't speak on behalf of the Nara Clan, I married into the family, but I know your father and I won't prematurely judge anyone you date. Your our son, it's frankly a miracle you've even decided to date at all. I could tell you the stories about how I practically had to drag your father into doing things with me, let alone dating, since all he wanted to do was watch the clouds. Tell me about Naruko. Help me 'see' her the way you do."
I nodded, thinking for a moment, gathering my thoughts together. I truly hadn't been giving it a ton of thought when I'd been honest with Naruko. What surprised me was just how... genuine those feelings had came to me. I guess, even with my own memories and the skills/abilities of Gojo Satoru, I was still Shikamaru Nara. I was still the same teenager who wanted to be lazy, but also wanted to keep his family and friends safe. The same teenager who called himself the 'greatest coward' who somehow still stood up for his friends even at the cost of his own life.
"Naruko, seems really simple on the surface. She's loud, boastful, always shouting from the rooftops about wanting to be Hokage. She can never sit still. She hates doing homework. She's always doing pranks. She misses the details a lot of the time, since a lot of social cues and stuff goes over her head. She'd make a terrible diplomat." I chuckled a bit before continuing, a soft smile on my face.
"She's smarter than anyone gives her credit for. She's aced the trap making parts of the Academy like it's nothing, and she can be devious when she wants to be. She's strong, sometimes even giving Choji a good solid fight, which is hard to do. She's so passionate, and stubborn as hell. Even with most of the village hating her, even when she's had no one in her corner, she still wants to be Hokage, and she'll continue to shout it from the rooftops, no matter how many people keep telling her she won't be Hokage. She's gorgeous. The way her yellow hair catches in the sun, it's like she's covered in gold sometimes. Those blue eyes, sometimes it feels unnerving to see how open she is, how honest her emotions are, it feels like those blue eyes could just take my breath away. Though her laughter, her smirk when she successfully pranks someone, those moments when she looks so happy, it just... does something to me. Like I want to be the one to help her feel that way, you know?"
Mom sniffed, her eyes wet with tears. "My boy's in love." She sighed, shaking her head as she grabbed a napkin to wipe her tears off quickly as she coughed to clear her throat.
"Okay. So, I'll help Naruko learn all the things she's been missing out on, and though she might dislike it sometimes, it'll help her and you in the long run. Especially since she's been having to figure out all those things on her own, and probably missing the point of a lot of things. Poor dear. This village doesn't deserve her." Mom hissed quietly, her eyes narrowing in anger at the injustice Naruko had been going through, before smiling wryly. "I better tell your father that you might get married to Naruko in a couple of months if you're that emotional over her. The wedding planning will be such a drag, but it's worth it for a good daughter in law."
I couldn't help but laugh at mom making fun of how dad and I often said how troublesome or what a drag it was to do chores was, slipping that in. Mom's eyes sparkled as she chuckled with me. "Now, go get with your team. I'm sure they'll be looking for you eventually." She ordered and I got up out of my seat and headed out the door.
So, Naruko, what'd you think of my mom?
You asshole! I'm fucking sobbing into my morning ramen, you dick! Who makes a woman this emotional this early in the morning?!
Why are you eating ramen at 8:30 in the Kami damn morning?!
It'd been pretty easy to 'overlay' the images and sounds of me and mom sitting and talking next to Naruko eating ramen, so that way Naruko would feel like it hadn't just been a dream. The fact that Naruko had nearly dropped her ramen at the start was hilarious, though the fact that I could make her believe it to be real was quite convenient. The fact that Naruko hadn't even questioned on how I was able to do such a thing was amusing, since she was likely going to wave it off as some esoteric jutsu I'd picked up.
If I did that to someone like Ino, she'd have been asking a billion and one questions, trying to pick apart the technique to see if she could replicate it.
The world is still gorgeous, and I couldn't help but take it all in. It was part of the reason I didn't keep my eyes blindfolded: while I still had the Six Eyes, my eyes still looked the same, and the slight draining caused by overusing the Six Eyes wasn't present thanks in part to Accelerator's Template, whose computational skills for his Vector Manipulation, even at Tier 5, made using the Six Eyes a breeze.
I could feel Naruko's emotions, her feelings of gratitude, love, loyalty, and passionate joy were echoes through the dreamscape. For all her bickering and annoyance of being emotionally vulnerable, her real emotions and thoughts were as clear as a sunny day to me. Social Club allowed me a space where the mind's of my retinue and I were always present, a space where the physical and spiritual world didn't matter. I could be in Hell, and Naruko in Heaven, and our minds would still be connected by the dreamscape. It was a form of social insurance, and a way to help each other. If Naruko was in danger, I would know about it.
If I was in danger... I chuckled. Ha. Me, in danger. That's a good joke. Hilarious even.
Once I got to Training Ground 10, the rest of the team arrived at roughly the same time I did. Asuma nodded with approval at seeing us. "Alright, today I'll be figuring out where each of you stand. All three of you are from Clans, so no doubt most of your training will probably be from them for Clan Jutsu, but I can help shore up the basics. A solid foundation is important for all shinobi. We'll start with a simple endurance test. Laps around the training ground until we get a feel of how long anyone can last."
Training Ground 10 isn't all that big, roughly three miles in diameter. Unlucky for Ino and Choji, Gojo's constant Curse Reversal Techniques meant that I never got tired. I was in battle condition, pretty much always. 3 Laps, Ino stopped, exhausted. Asuma gave her some water and told her she hadn't done that bad. Some more general conditioning, and some more food like the meat heavy meal from the barbecue, and she'd be set.
5 Laps, and Choji stopped, exhausted, looking baffled at my easy going pace as I was still going. An easy going smile on my face as I loved the feeling of the air in my face, the big blue sky, the clouds.
10 Laps, and Asuma called for me to stop, and I came to a stop, with Asuma looking rather astounded, and worried.
"Shikamaru, are you okay? Your last conditioning had you pegged at the same laps as Choji." He asked quietly. "I hope you haven't been taking steriods or some drug enhancers. They kill your performance in the long run." He commented seriously, his eyes staring at me.
I shook my head. "No, Asuma. I haven't taken anything. I just woke up like this. I feel great even."
Asuma nodded slowly. "Okay. I'll monitor you, but for now, we'll hold off on taking you to the Nara Clan to be evaluated until later. The next thing is sparring. You and Choji, no ninjutsu."
After a couple minutes, to let Choji catch his breath and get into fighting shape after the warm up, the sparring started.
Or rather, Choji tried to punch me and I watched as his fist never landed, simply hovering in the air.
"Asuma, Choji can't hit me. Some sort of... field seems to be blocking him." I said aloud, pretending to be confused.
Asuma's eyes narrowed before he told Choji to step away, only for Asuma to try and surprise me with a fast kick.
The kick never landed, and Asuma's eyes widened.
"Ino, Choji, you're dismissed. Shikamaru, we're stopping by to visit the Hokage."
I said nothing, noticing that Asuma didn't even try to touch me to take me along to the Hokage's Office.
Asuma didn't even knock, entering through the door to the office, much to the Hokage's secretary dismay.
The Third Hokage and Danzo looked at us, with Danzo's regular eye narrowing slightly at me as I shrugged at them both.
"Asuma, what's the emergency?" The Third Hokage said aloud, looking at us with a serious expression.
"Shikamaru. Can you explain to us about what your feeling, and how this morning went so far."
I explained how this morning went in regards to the exercises this morning and the sparring, before explaining how I didn't feel any chakra being used to maintain this field. [Covert Talent] was soaking up a ton of subtle knowledge and talent from the Third Hokage and Danzo, especially in conjunction with [Communication Talent].
I deviated from the subtle interrogation, frowning at the Third Hokage.
"I feel fine, great even. I don't see the problem."
The Third nodded, looking curious. "Indeed. His chakra hasn't dropped in volume, and this ability appears passive in nature. A random mutation in the Nara bloodline, perhaps?" He muttered quietly.
"Shikamaru Nara, I wish to extend an invitation for you to train under me. Such a talent cannot go wasted." Danzo fired immediately, his regular eye fixed on me.
The Third Hokage moved to speak, but I spoke up first.
"Sure. I don't mind. It's not a permanent thing anyway. I will want a contract with you though. My current employment is under the Hokage." I said lazily, shrugging.
Danzo's regular eye narrowed. "A contract? Is the word of an elder not enough?"
I yawned. "Words are cheap. A contract allows me to set the parameters of our working relationship. If I just agreed without anything, you could just enlist me as a permanent 'apprentice' and call it a day. No thanks."
Danzo actually nodded slightly, a twitch of his lips as his regular eye glinted with approval. And annoyance.
"Very well. Write up the contract and we can both sign it."
The Third Hokage sighed as he gave me a blank piece of paper and some ink. "You can always ask me for help if you need it, Shikamaru-kun." The Third Hokage offered quietly. I smiled, nodding to the Hokage. "That'd be great!"
[Covert Talent] and [Communication Talent] eagerly sucked up every drop as the Third Hokage helped me iron out the contract that I'd written out for the Master/Apprenticeship Contract as designed, especially as I still wanted to be under Team Ten, so it'd be more akin to a thing to do when I'm not on missions for Konoha. Then I surprised both of them when I wanted to write up a Contract for Danzo separately as well.
"Being an elder just sounds so ambiguous. Like, you can offer advice to the Hokage, but so many people offer advice unsolicited already on it's own. I'm thinking the Elders should be signing Contracts to really iron out what their roles actually are, especially since the Hokage should never need to doubt if he's getting bad advice from the people advising him, no?" I asked with a large grin on my face.
Ooh, Danzo looked pissed, especially as the Third Hokage's gentle encouraging smile ended up widening at the idea. "I better tell Shikaku that his son might have a better head for diplomacy than he did at your age." The Third chuckled. "Absolutely. Danzo, I order you to sign the contracts that Shikamaru is making, and I'll even bring in Koharu and Homura to sign contracts of their own."
The contracts made for Danzo, and for the Elders, were fairly simple. They couldn't assassinate the Hokage or the Clans in Konoha and anyone in them, they couldn't knowingly help anyone assassinate the Hokage or the Clans in Konoha and anyone in them, they would be required to offer the best advice possible for whatever situations the Hokage brings to them, excluding all advice designed to allow them to influence the Hokage in some manner for their own gain. They were required to use all formal and informal resources to help Konoha in times of crisis such as an invasion, spies leaking immensely dangerous intel or knowledge, etc., even at the cost of their own lives if need be for the good of Konoha and the Will of Fire. In times of peace or when not in an emergency crisis, said formal and informal resources would be used to aid Konoha in subtle manners that would either not be traced to Konoha if it was illegal within the Land of Fire, such as Black Scroll Missions, even not telling the Hokage if such subtlety would prove beneficial to the village on a need to know business as well as allow plausible deniability, and openly if it was legal within the Land of Fire as to allow increased positive reputation for Konoha.
Danzo, with extreme reluctance, ended up signing the contract as I handed it to him, with the Hokage looking bemused by the fact that it truly didn't change much for them aside from making Danzo liable if he got caught fucking up. Again.
Or at least, that's what the Third Hokage thought was happening. In reality, Danzo immediately felt the iron-bound metaphysical chains of the contract, the old man stiffening in a mixture of awe and horror silently as he realized that my contracts were fully binding when signed.
And since we weren't currently in an emergency or crisis, he couldn't tell the Hokage even if he wanted to. The power of the contract ensured he couldn't, in order to avoid making the Hokage liable in some manner.
Danzo was all but required to use my ability to create contracts in order to fully bind himself and his forces to my contracts, because it would subtly aid Konoha in the long run. The Third Hokage happily allowed me to write up copies of the same contract for Homura and Koharu, pleased that he'd been able to fully turn the concerns his son had held into something he could use to pin Danzo down later. "Shikamaru-kun, I'll inform your father about the curious mutation in your bloodline. We'll do some extensive testing in a couple day's time, and we can see how modified your bloodline has become compared to it's normal iteration." The Third Hokage informed me.
With that, Asuma, reluctantly, allowed Danzo to take me for training, no doubt worried about if I'd be indoctrinated into Root.
Alone, Danzo turned to me, his face passive. "I will bring you some papers for further contracts to be given to all of my forces. I don't know how you've done this, but it's power cannot be understated. Write up the contracts so as to ensure absolute loyalty and secrecy, even to that they cannot have their minds read."
Danzo vanished, and my smile widened with satisfaction, and he returned shortly after with a set of paper in his hands and some ink. He had a Root shinobi take me to a desk in some random room, seriously this far under Konoha it's like an ant colony nest crossed with a maze in here, and I got to work, specifically creating a contract that Danzo and all of his forces would be required to sign and disperse silently.
Roughly an hour later, I coughed aloud and Danzo arrived, silently signing his copy and taking the stack of papers with him.
'With this contract, all those who signed are bound for eternity, in life and in death, to the service of the one who wrote this original contract. All those who sign this contract are obligated to be utterly, silently, loyal above all else, and bound, to the one who wrote the original contract, without being able to recall why or what caused the loyalty. All those who sign the contract will behave and act identically as before writing the contract with the exception of not being capable of harming, killing, stopping, or damaging anything or anyone else that has signed the contract or is otherwise bound to the original contract writer in some manner, and they will be incapable of knowing why, explaining it away with some rational reasoning.
Those who signed this original contract will be required to make copies of this contract to be given to any they believe they can make sign the contract, whether it be willingly or unwillingly through the use of some subtle method such as using genjutsu to hide the contents of the contract. All copies will be considered a part of the original contract, binding those who signed those copies to be considered signees to the original contract and utterly loyal/happily bound to the original contract writer directly. All other contracts signed by the signees, if written by the original contract writer, are still in effect so long as it doesn't expose the original contract writer in any fashion, or inhibits the original contract writer in any way.
All those who sign the original contract, and the copies of the original contract as written above, will be unable to share the knowledge of anything within the contract, nor the existence of the contract itself, in any fashion, whether it be verbal, written, memory, or otherwise, aside from the permission of the original contract writer himself. All orders from the original contract writer, be they given verbally or through some other methods, are considered absolute, and will be followed to the spirit of the order given, even superseding the contract itself if required. All who sign this original contract will subtly help one another without being asked or ordered, and will be fully believing it to be of their own free will, unless it would endanger the signee of acting or behaving against their normal behavior or thought process, and all who sign this contract will be unable to recall any information that could endanger the original contract writer, or the original contract writer's nation of origin and all within that nation of origin, if under interrogation or being probed mentally/socially in any way by others.'
[Danzo. Signed and Sealed Capture. 54.
Fu Yamanaka. Signed and Sealed Capture. 28.
Torune Aburame. Signed and Sealed Capture. 12.
Sai. Signed and Sealed Capture. 12.]
I didn't expect to get Sai, but I suppose he was either deeper in Root or he was in training for Root. Either way, it was annoying to realize that Root truly didn't have a lot of Named Characters, and so there weren't a lot of shinobi worth points. Perhaps I'd get lucky with Danzo visiting Kabuto, since I believe he was still here pretending to be a genin/medic in training, but the odds of them forcing Kabuto to sign, sounds unlikely.
The fact that I now had Danzo fully under my control, and Root as well, was a fairly heady feeling. I wouldn't need to worry about Danzo messing with Naruko anymore. In fact, Orochimaru was about to get a rude awakening if he stopped by Konoha. I didn't recall when Orochimaru visited Danzo, but I knew it was prior to the invasion, as Root shinobi hadn't moved to protect Konoha as they should have. At least, from what I recalled from the show.
I yawned. Not bad, and it's still before noon.
Reaching for Danzo's mind through the dreamscape, I ordered Danzo to remove Shisui's Mangekyo Sharingan, as well as the arm made out of Hashirama Cells/Sharingan if Orochimaru had given them to him yet. Afterwards, he'd give me the eye in a preservation jar, and the arm. A few hours later, he'd send a Root Shinobi to pay a visit to Yakumo Kurama, informing her that she can be a shinobi if she signs the contract, and that she'd be given further training in genjutsu. Then he could use Body Tune-Up to restore his missing eye and limb.
By the end of today, I should have Naruko being at home for dinner along with my parents, and I'll have an extremely powerful, if not yet trained, Yakumo Kurama in my forces. With some training, I'd give her Shisui's Mangekyo Sharingan, because who better to give a powerful tool for genjutsu than a Genjutsu Mistress of her caliber? With 5 Credits, I could even make Yakumo an Uchiha, and allow her to utilize the Sharingan as if she had been born with it alongside her Kurama bloodline. Itsuki Uchiha would be in for a rude awakening as this 'plain girl' took her precious Tsukuyomi and bent it to her will with barely more than a thought.
Gojo Satoru wanted to uplift the next generation to change the Jujutsu Kaisen World. Why couldn't I do the same here, and change the shinobi world?
"Among the heavens and the earth, I alone am the Honored One. Time to shake things up in this hellhole, and make it interesting."