I still need to improve the poison seals I use, but fortunately I managed to make them for potential subjects who can be used as cannon fodder on the battlefield or with my own spies, but it's only one step towards the final project.
But that can wait for now, as I now have some new products that I had made at Tenten's parents' shop.
"Ah, young Kenji, welcome."
Upon entering the shop, I am greeted by what I believe to be Tenten's father with a big smile on his face.
"Is the product ready?"
The gunsmith narrows his eyes and flashes a smile full of pride and conceit as he shows me a metal box.
"Of course, we wouldn't be the best gun shop in Konoha if we couldn't get orders ready on time."
The shop owner opens the box and inside is what I requested.
I carefully take the product, a pair of special gauntlets made of leather and elastic fabric with scaled metal plates to facilitate movement.
The metal itself is a chakra conductor, so it's easy to induce any nature into them, plus they also have some tiny spikes all over the metal part to easily prick when I block a taijutsu attack. In those spikes, there is a small hole that makes it easy for me to expel poison as if they were syringes.
On the knuckles, there are larger spikes that resemble the claws of a big cat, which make it easier for me to injure them if they dodge, thus increasing my range of damage, even if only slightly.
On the underside, below the palm, there is an opening where I can place another weapon, be it a hidden blade, cannon, or even a small crossbow that I can fire using a hidden mechanism.
Am I basing this more on Assassin's Creed? Yes, a little, since I liked its style, and I thought they were good, interesting weapons that a ninja would use.
"It's a great job, as expected from your shop."
The owner shrugged but with a big smile on his face.
"You already have the preparations to embed the sealing patterns, right?"
His eyes widened when I mentioned that, and he took the ink out of the case along with the materials for it.
"It's a shame we don't have the staff to do those sealing techniques, but we still have the capacity to have them prepared."
It was obvious that they couldn't make those seals on this product. I am the inventor, and I don't plan on sharing these techniques with them for the time being.
The reason sealing techniques are so complicated is not only because they require near-perfect calligraphy, but also because they require memorizing the functionality of each pattern as well as surgical precision in chakra circulation for such tasks.
Do Samui and Mabui know about this? Yes, they know it exists, but they would need practice with sealing before even attempting it, or they could poison themselves.
An example would be: you know that airplanes exist and you have seen them and you may have seen the inside of one, but without the knowledge, it will just look like a bunch of pieces of metal put together without any logic.
It is the same in this case, even though they have seen the process, they do not know the logic behind it and they do not have the sharingan to know how I channel the chakra into the seal, so everything is safe in that regard.
"Everything is in perfect order and I have received it in good condition," I say as I sign the delivery receipt for the weaponry.
The shop owner puts the receipt in a separate box. "Have a nice day," he says as he leaves.
After picking up my new weapon, I see little Anko Mitarashi again, now eating three-colored dango.
That sweet must be old, since even Anko, who is over 40, still eats it...
If I remember correctly, she is the same age as Samui and Mabui, so she is 5 years old now and should have already entered ninja school.
As I was thinking about this, Anko noticed me and moved her other skewer of three-colored dango away, thinking I wanted to take it from her.
After that gesture, I decided to buy two more skewers of dango and gave them to her. It's only fair to pay for such an adorable act, right?
Anko smiled and thanked me as she ran away happily to tell her parents what had happened.
Many say it's a shame she's gained so much weight in Boruto, but in my opinion, it doesn't matter if she gains weight or not, she's still a very beautiful woman, and even so, I would continue with the exercises to have children if she were my wife.
Or could it be that with so much nighttime exercise, I won't get to that point?
Lost in my thoughts and staring into space for a few minutes, I come to my senses and turn around.
What was I supposed to have come here for? I forgot.
A short time later, after remembering the rest of my to-do list, I returned home to begin preparations to return to my laboratory, but Samui and Mabui greeted me at the door with a bow and a sad face.
"Is something wrong?"
They didn't respond with words, but handed me a sealed scroll with my name written on it.
"Your faces are because you thought you were amazing spies and that I never realized it, but it turns out I knew from the beginning, right?"
Samui and Mabui froze. At five years old, the ninja world had already taught them that failure was punishable by death. I saw their small shoulders begin to shake under the shadow of their bangs.
"Don't worry," I said, wrapping my arms around them. They were so small that I could feel their hearts beating wildly against my clothes, like frightened birds. "No one is going to touch you. Not the Uchiha, not Root. You are with me now."
I felt them relax little by little, clinging to my robe. To the rest of the village, they were spies from Kumo, but to me, they were just two girls whom fate had thrown into a den of wolves before their time.
I look at them both with affectionate eyes; to me, they are like little girls who are easy to tease.
And even though they are spies from another country, I love them dearly like younger sisters after having spent these years with them and having them support, even unwittingly, all my plans.
If they had been ninjas already trained at the academy, they would be suspicious and would walk away or try to escape.
Considering that Mabui is intelligent, I think she thought about it, but after living with me for so long, I don't think she has any intention of leaving, because she knows that I use many methods to capture spies, so the mere idea of trying to escape is absurd.
After that scene, I read the scroll they gave me.
I unrolled the scroll carefully. The words were written in the rough and direct calligraphy typical of Cloud ninjas. It contained a series of Lightning jutsu and basic Taijutsu routines from his village; a "gift" that was actually a bait.
"If you want the Lightning Armor, Kumogakure needs tangible merits. Prove that this alliance is worth the sacrifice," I read between the lines.
It made sense. In this world, no one gives you their secret weapon for a pretty face, let alone a child who has just "kidnapped" two of their future promises. The proposal for an alliance between Kumo and Konoha was there, on the table, waiting for me to make the next move.
I looked up at Samui and Mabui. Their childish faces were already beginning to show glimpses of the seriousness of the women they would become. My mind, treacherous and full of memories of a life that had not yet happened, projected their adult versions in front of me.
I've always been more attracted to Samui. I'm not going to lie, her future curves are the kind that make you wonder if you're under a high-level genjutsu, but it's more than that. It's her icy gaze, that impeccable bob cut, and that professional calm that borders on naivety. She's magnetic.
Mabui, on the other hand, has a more subtle beauty, the kind that people tend to overlook. Her dark skin and platinum hair are an incredible combination, and her strategic intelligence is, honestly, superior to that of most of the Jounin I know.
"If I train them well," I thought, watching them with a mixture of affection and ambition, "they could even surpass the Kage level." But I shook my head to dispel those delusions. I can't let arrogance cloud my judgment; the moment I think I'm the only smart one in the room, I'll be dead.
Many in the village call me a genius, but I know the truth: I'm an idiot with a good memory and an unhealthy obsession. If I understand ninjutsu quickly, it's because I experiment to exhaustion, write down every detail, and forget that the rest of the world exists. Sometimes I get so lost in my chakra flow diagrams that I forget something as basic as eating.
Maki often has to send one of the girls to my lab to remind me that I'm still a flesh-and-blood human being. Sometimes Samui or Mabui end up feeding me while I continue scribbling formulas.
As that phrase that stuck with me said, "I don't need sleep, I need answers."
...
I spend a good while after straying from the subject and staring into space, but then I remember that I was supposed to be thinking about something else, but...
What was I supposed to be thinking about? Who cares, I'll go back to my work.
And so I left the subject and continued with my experiments.
When I finished reading, I stared blankly at the ceiling for a few seconds. My mind was already miles away, mapping out supply routes and chemical formulas. I left the parchment on the table with a vague gesture and raised a hand carelessly, imitating Hiruzen's classic and irritating attitude.
"I'll think about how to solve it," I said before turning around and walking away, lost in my own thoughts.
Samui and Mabui were stunned, although deep down they were used to me leaving them talking to themselves when an idea struck me. As soon as I disappeared down the hallway, Samui broke the silence.
"Mabui... do you know exactly what that scroll was about?" she asked, approaching her companion.
Both of them already knew that their cover as spies had been blown—the scroll I had given them earlier left no room for doubt—but the contents of Kumo's official letter remained a mystery to them.
Mabui took the paper with slightly trembling fingers and her eyes quickly scanned the lines. Her expression changed from gloom to a spark of hope, ending in a grimace of uncertainty.
"Well?" Samui insisted.
"The good news is that the Raikage is not going to punish us for being discovered," Mabui explained in a low voice. He has placed us under Kenji-sama's direct protection. But... the bad news is that, technically, Kumo has given up on us. They have sold us to Konoha."
Samui tilted her head, confused by her friend's tragic tone. To her, staying with Kenji did not seem like punishment.
"Samui, you don't understand," Mabui sighed. "We are no longer citizens of the Cloud. We are exiles. If Konoha and Kumo go to war, we will have no home to return to. The Raikage has indirectly ordered us to ensure that Kenji achieves this alliance. Our lives depend on his success."
Samui was silent for a moment. Then her resolve hardened and she nodded firmly. If her destiny was to help Kenji unite the two villages, she would do so with every fiber of her being. What neither of them suspected was that "staying in his care" was also tacit permission for me to include them in my experiments... but that's a story for another day.
MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE IN KONOHA
"Hiruzen, damn you!" Danzō's shout echoed off the walls of his private bunker.
His eyes were bloodshot and the veins in his neck threatened to burst. He couldn't process that his "old friend" had resigned so lightly, let alone that he had given the position to Sakumo instead of him. With a brutal blow of his fist, the solid wood desk shattered into a thousand pieces.
The Root ninjas standing guard tensed. They knew this state of rage; one false move and their heads would roll.
"You!" Danzō barked, pointing at them with a finger trembling with rage. "Find out who the bastard was who leaked that information! I want results now! Understood?!"
"Yes, Danzō-sama!" they replied in unison before disappearing like shadows.
Danzō regained a forced calm and glanced sideways at his two personal guards, Fū and Torune.
"Spread rumors to discredit the new Hokage immediately," he barked. "That position must be mine."
On the other side of the village, Hiruzen Sarutobi was doing what he did best: absolutely nothing. He was leaning calmly on a railing, watching the hot springs while lighting his pipe with who knows what mixture of herbs.
Many would think that Hiruzen was a brilliant strategist trying to manipulate Sakumo, but the reality was simpler: he was fed up. He was tired of Danzō and his two parasitic advisors, tired of the demands of the Daimyō and the suffocating rules of clans like the Hyūga.
Giving the position to Sakumo was not a master political move; it was basically throwing a burning bag of trash at someone else so he could go on vacation. In his mind, Hiruzen was just thinking, "Look at this mess, Sakumo. I can't take it anymore, so now it's your problem."
And while the high command tore each other apart over a title, I, deep in my laboratory hidden in the forest, let out a laugh that scared the birds away. In front of me, the result of weeks of isolation glowed with a faint light.
"Finally... I've done it."
I had discovered something that would change the rules of the game. A technique that didn't require large reserves of chakra and that even the most evolved Sharingan couldn't detect easily.
A/N:
I apologize for taking so long to write, but so much has happened that I really haven't had the time or inclination to write.
My ADD is getting worse, making it impossible for me to concentrate at all, and I now have a job as an assistant in a fast food restaurant, so I come home from work tired and don't feel like doing anything.
All right, with that clarified, it's understandable that I won't be writing very often, but also that if I do, I'll be using AI to help me, as I have no experience in writing. The ideas are mine, the course is mine, but the writing itself is not entirely mine, as my method is very flat and direct, as you may have noticed over time.
Another thing, Kenji uses the clone technique, the shadow clone was only later when Tsunade took him to teach him some things, because in the anime translated or dubbed into my language, there was an error where the clone technique and the shadow clone or shadow multiclone techniques were mixed up, because they always mentioned the same name for any of the three, which confused me. My apologies for that.
Also, I plan to include only four girls in the harem. Any more than that would be falling into the cliché of the Chinese chad who collects waifus, but I've already dropped hints about who they would be, so it's pretty obvious. Right?
But as such, my own ADD and autism prevent me from doing a good job of writing, so I'll say it again, I'll be relying on AI to be able to do a better quality job and perhaps eventually adopt it to my real way, as I've said many times before, "I AM A NOVICE WRITER," so I will make many mistakes and would greatly appreciate your comments so I can improve, because if you don't comment, I won't know where I went wrong and I will make the same mistakes and always feel like I did a terrible job.
Thank you very much for reading, and if you want to contact me, my Discord is LeoCreepy. You can write to me there, as I always have that app open.