A/N: from here on out, would y'all like to see longer chapters? I might not upload two at a time, but they'll be at least 8k words or something like that. Review and let me know.

Chapter 4 To Build Rome

Naruto woke up in a bed. A comfortable bed.

"The hell?", he said to himself, his memories were hazy at best and his whole body ached.

"Kami! Fuck! It hurts to think about moving!!", he groaned.

His cry baby groans were heard by someone outside whatever room he was in and he could hear them whisper to another person to go get, "The lady". Whoever that was.

His head screamed at him as he heard the footsteps out the door as if drums were being abused in her ear. He lay there in lessening pain for a few moments when he sensed someone about to open the door.

"Naruto?", spoke a woman. A familiar woman. That's when all his memories flooded back into his brain, causing a little more pain.

"Uchyo.", he said in between winces. "Wait. Where am I? Where is the samurai commander? What happened??", he asked question after question while his eyes darted around the room he was in.

"Calm down," Uchyo said with a stern but caring voice. "You're safe now. That was three days ago.", hearing the news, Naruto visibly relaxed a bit.

"So..What exactly happened?", Naruto inquired.

Before Uchyo could answer, the door swung open and Curin walked in, bowing to Uchyo and Naruto.

"A lot has happened, my lord.", Naruto only stared at Curin, waiting to be enlightened.

"After you were hit with the lightning, chaos ensued as we took down the commander. We eventually killed him, but we lost Kerae and two others in the process.", Naruto visibly grimaced at this revelation. However, Curin wasn't done.

"Once we had gained control over the palace, we did everything in our power to get things back to normal. But, the people of Tasero wanted to see you. Their leader." The room was silenced for a few moments as Naruto gathered his thoughts.

After a few seconds, he sighed, "I see. Send for Abe please, I wish to see how he's been. Also, I'm going to need a more detailed update on Tasero's state of being."

"Of course.", Curin bowed and sent a look to a woman standing guard. She quickly bowed and left the room.

15 Minutes Later

"You called for me?', Abe said as he entered the room seeing Naruto and Curin talking.

"Abe, yes, how have you been?", he said as he put on a different shirt.

"About as well as you'd expect. Have you talked to Isuro?", at the question from Abe, Naruto's eyes widened for a moment. He hadn't seen Isuro at all, much less talked to her.

"Figured as much. I haven't seen her either. Don't even know where she is.", Abe sighed.

"Do you think something happened to her?", Naruto asked with a worried look.

"Dunno'. But with all your newfound power you should find out. Wouldn't want Chino to haunt you from the grave."

Naruto tensed a bit at Abe's slightly hostile tone but nodded nevertheless. After a few more minutes of talking and catching up Naruto decided he would waste no more time in professionalizing the militarization of Tasero. He walked around the town to see the people cleaning up what remained of the battle for the village. Although it was hard work, the villagers and warriors that had taken up arms in his absence cleaned and repaired with happiness and a newfound hope.

Naruto told Curin to gather every single fighting man and woman to the outskirts of the village for an official start to their training.

Once they'd all arrived, he looked over what was from the tree he'd been standing on. He saw possibly a little more than 300 men and women. 'That means one out of every three people have decided to fight. Very good.', Naruto thought to himself, smirking at the crowd of fighters he'd make.

"Now that every person who wishes to fight is here, get into five even lines.", he ordered over the crowd with a chakra enhanced lung.

After a few minutes of shifting around, they managed to get into a uniform formation.

"Alright! Now begins your training!", he exclaimed over the open field they all stood in.

"It doesn't matter how old you are, what sex you are, what background you have. So long as you're loyal to the people of Tasero and me, you will do well in this new army I am to establish.". He paused for a second and looked over to see the faces people were making. Many had looks of determination, something to prove. Others had looks of confidence. And some had looks of hatred, although not directed towards him. Among the many, he noticed the 7 remaining loyalists that had been the main ones with him while they overthrew the commander. Even though most of the village began fighting once the initial fights broke out, those 7 had been through the brunt of it and survived, remaining ever loyal.

"You seven.", he said aloud, grabbing their wrapped attention in less than a second.

"You seven are what's left of the initial 20. Each and every one of you have proven yourselves to be more than competent warriors and able to follow strict instructions. That is why you seven, along with anyone else I deem worthy, will be trained separately as a special force. Much like the beginning of an anbu division in hidden villages."

Seeing they didn't understand what he meant by the term, "anbu", he mentally waved that away for another time.

It had been a difficult few hours, but Naruto had summoned hundreds of shadow clones and organized the people to the best of his ability. Out of the 311 people willing to fight, he'd found 5 with either special abilities or extreme talent and skill in fighting and decided to add them to the 7 existing special ops now having 12 total. As for the rest of them, he'd been able to siphon out 8 people that were sure to be liabilities or get themselves or someone else killed. Telling them something along the lines of it was for their own good and to train stronger.

Those that remained, however, were now considered the new army of the reaper.

After four days of organizing and constant training in the teachings of chakra, the use of swords, advanced taijutsu, tactics and strategy, and various other things to get them quickly up to speed of the rest of the worlds warriors, Naruto had divided his soldiers into three groups aside from the special ops.

Out of the 308 total fighters, he deduced 160 of them were basic fighters; not at all bad but in no way specially skilled. Simply competent. 105 of them were actually rather skilled in one thing or the other, whether it be an affinity for understanding chakra and ninjutsu theory, being especially good at taijutsu, tactics, or swordplay. The 31 outside of the special 12, however, were what Naruto considered to be very special warriors in almost all accounts. Nearly elites but not quite as skilled as the 12. Oftentimes, those of the 31 highly skilled warriors would be excellent at one thing, great at another, and good at the rest. Only having one fault if any at all.

The 12 he selected were simply on another level. If Naruto were to fight all out with everything he had, he'd be high Jonin level or really low kage level. Using himself as a sort of measuring glass, he'd observed that the 12, if they were to give everything they have, were high chunin level or really really low Jonin level. The 31 were mid chunin to high chunin, the 105 were high genin to really low chunin, and the 160 consisted of all genin levels with the best of them managing low chunin at dire times.

Naruto also deduced that because they'd only been training for four days, as hard as he'd pushed them, they all had much more they could learn.

Now having an established idea of where his military stood, he had to properly organize them.

Because they weren't a hidden village and didn't have a jonin sensei system, he decided they wouldn't use that system or anything like the hidden villages he so hated. His warriors would know how to beat samurai and ninja alike but they wouldn't be confined to either category.

As Naruto stood in the palace bedroom and stared at the war-scythe on the wall, he thought of what warriors under his banner should be called. As he flipped through the pages of a nearby book about the ancient warriors that the samurai of the current day were based off, he read an interesting page. It read,

"And so the warriors of the land were protectors of their realm. They beat the ancient evils with the use of chakra and heart. The samurai outmatched shinobi in every way. And they were called… Hatamoto."

"Interesting.", he mused aloud. Naruto took the rest of the night to read the book and by the next morning when he was in the fields with his warriors for another day of training, he gave an announcement.

"Warriors of Tasero, hear me.", his voice boomed and echoed throughout the lands, causing a group of birds to fly up from their trees.

"I have decided that your respective groups should have names.".

Murmurs of curiosity broke out upon the crowd but silenced when Naruto raised his hand.

"Along with names, we will have uniforms and certain weapons depending on your skillset. First things first, the largest group of our forces, you'll be called gokenin. This means you are the lowest rank of our army, however you are still important and this group will be taking the brunt of the tasks. Seeing as you gokenin are the largest group, you will have the most captains and commanders. I will organize that later.

Next, the 105 group. You will be called goshenin. Along with the gokenin, you'll be taking most of the tasks and be the brunt of our force. Backing up gokenin or other goshenin squads when things go wrong or anything of that matter. You, too, will have many captains and a few

commanders. Lastly, the 31 warriors that proved to be elite. You'll have the rank of hotenin. As they're only so many of you, having as many captains won't be necessary and you'll only have one commander. Is all of this understood?"

The crowd was silent for some time and Naruto began to think maybe they didn't appreciate his new system. That was when someone he recognized as a goshenin raised his fist,

"Hail the reaper-lord!", he declared, sending the rest of them into cheers and similar sayings. It was safe to assume that even those that were gokenin were happy to have official ranks and structure.

It had been two weeks since he'd announced the new way his military would work and now he was establishing captains and commanders. He had personally overseen each person's training and now had a basic makeup in each rank.

Each rank of soldiers had more ranks within themselves. For example, the gokenin.

While the gokenin is a rank itself, there are many ranks within the rank of gokenin you need to acquire and pass to get to goshenin. Same for goshenin to get to hotenin, and hotenin to get to the karisaku. Naruto didn't actually name the 12 elite-of-the-elites the "karisaku", they'd come up with that by themselves during a training because apparently they wanted to strike fear in those they faced using their glorious leader's name and reputation.

(AN: karisaku is a rough translation to "Reaper-ops" if i change around some of the words)

Along with many ranks in each rank, Naruto needed a way to easily identify them. So, he used some ryo he'd gotten after selling many of the former lords things to acquire a cheap chakra metal that he then ordered the blacksmiths of the village to smith into various masks.

When he was young he'd seen the anbu operate with masks on which gave him the idea.

Instead of just having the karisaku have masks, he'd made enough masks for the entire army and many more for he knew he'd have additions to the ranks.

The way the masks would work is he'd have each and every soldier wear a basic vulpine-like mask that stuck to the face when chaka was applied and would fall off when chakra was applied again. Each captain of a ten man team would have red highlights and their second would have blue while the rest of the squad would have no highlights. The masks would also have a number on the forehead area signifying what squad the soldier belonged to, and a symbol that would say one of the four ranks, either goshenin, hotenin, gokenin, or karisaku. Allowing for easy regroupings. Of course the karisaku wouldn't have numbers as they operate differently from squads and captains. Lastly the commanders would have gold highlight and a symbol signifying what rank they commanded. Every person was allowed to customize their armor to an extent so long as it didn't interfere with the ranking system. They were all also allowed to change their weapons from the standard wakazashi's all soldiers started with.

Once Naruto had organized and distributed all the masks accordingly, he was happy with the result. Some things were sure to change but for now, they were looking like an actual formidable force.

The next month, Naruto was standing in one of the many training fields with Yundero Itoru, the new hotenin commander.

"Yes, my lord. I've also heard word from some scouts I sent out that the mountain daimyo himself is on his way to Tasero and he will be here in two days' time.".

Naruto sent a look to Itoru that said, "is there any more info?".

"That is all they could find out as they didn't question him or his soldiers. I apologize, my lord."

The blonde sighed, "It's alright. We'll know soon enough. Alert the ranks of the circumstance and double the guards on the walls and outskirts until they arrive. We need them to see we are no longer the weak village we once were."

Itoru saluted, bowed, and body flickered away. A technique that only a few could understand as it was rather hard for people just now using chakra.

Naruto closed his eyes in thought then opened them to see Abe standing in front of him.

As he raised an eyebrow, Abe spoke. "I wish to be a captain.", he said blandly, almost as if he thought it a normal request. "What?", Naruto halfway laughed out. 'He must be joking.', was his thought as he slowly moved into a slight chuckle. "You heard me, Naruto.". At the tone Abe was speaking, Naruto had to accept that his old friend was not joking and was very serious.

Naruto was also willing to let the sign of disrespect slide as Abe hadn't referred to him in any respectful titles like reaper or lord, not that Naruto enjoyed the titles.

"Abe, you know that's not how it works. You're not even enlisted in any ranks.", the reaper tried to reason with his genuine friend, but he wasn't hearing it.

"Oh fuck that!", the redheaded friend of Naruto's said with repugnance.

"If you can become one of the most powerful men in mountain country in less than a year, why can't I just be a captain!?". Abe spat each word with more and more anger as he subconsciously took steps up to Naruto.

"Is that what this is about? My power? I never asked for any of this!", Naruto said with more anger than he realized.

"No, you didn't. But you have it now! These people worship you like you're a god! All I want is to be a captain! I'm not asking for commander or second in command..I just..", Abe looked down and let his thoughts trail on as he was lost in his own thoughts.

"Abe, look. You don't get to just rise through the ranks like that. Every captain, commander, and karisaku I have has proved themselves.", Naruto said, placing a hand on Abe's shoulder.

The hand was swiftly swatted away.

"Abe don't-", he was cut off when Abe grabbed the collar of his shirt with both hands.

"Don't you ever-", Abe couldn't finish his sentence when 2 masked karisaku soldiers dashed on either side of him, wakazashi's equipped and pointed towards his neck.

"Release him, traitor.", said the one on Abe's right. Naruto hurriedly waved them off of Abe and they dashed away after saluting.

"Abe, I'm-", again the one speaking was cut off when Abe let go of Naruto and brushed the invisible dust off the blonds shoulders. "It's fine. I should've known better than to lay a hand on my lord.".

"Abe, before I am your lord I am your friend.", Naruto said, trying to connect with his best friend before he was lost.

"No. You're not.", he said simply and turned to walk away. Before he began walking, he turned his head to halfway face Naruto, "I'll do as you say. I'll prove I'm worthy of being a captain. No. I'll prove I'm your equal."

As Abe walked away, Naruto could only ask one question.

"I already considered you my friend, why do you need to be my equal?", he called out to the shrinking shadow of his friend. He heard him scoff but he gained no answer.