At that moment, Toji remembered a character, the Punisher.
The boy's act of protecting his sister with excessive violence tremendously changed his mindset, his thought that 'killing' is wrong changed to 'killing is allowed against bad people'.
This made Toji's eyes light up, he began to think about what this very world represented, the ninja world.
A world where children picked up weapons and went to war, a world where killing was considered a normal concept, as long as it involved the right principles.
It was at this point that Toji realized there are many ways to fall. Becoming depraved is one way to fall, but changing one's peaceful beliefs to become a selective killer is also a way to fall.
Some say the Punisher is a good guy, an anti-hero, but for Toji, what the Punisher does is actually worthwhile: kill sinners, instill fear in their hearts, so much fear that those who were thinking of doing evil can control themselves and not fall into depravity.
However, the fact remains that, in moral terms, killing is killing.
To kill means to forcibly take something from another person, their life, which is even worse than stealing.
Killing in self-defense wouldn't work for Toji, but changing his beliefs to think that killing is acceptable, isn't that the principle of this world? The principle of the ninjas?
Of course, not every ninja has their own weights and measures, a good number of them may end up enjoying the act and not even caring about right and wrong, but isn't that even better? Ninja society is something of this world, but that doesn't mean it's free from its sins just because it's 'normal' enough.
Toji found his breakthrough point.
He already had a preliminary idea, he needed children, he needed to create his own 'vigilantes,' through whom Toji could act, making them fall in a way that he didn't feel was truly depraved, but still, malicious enough.
Ultimately, that's how the world is, as long as Toji didn't teach them how to kill innocent people, he could live with it.
He also wouldn't choose children at random, his goal was clear: those children who truly had a sense of justice, those who wouldn't mind absorbing the darkness of the world to make the rest of the world brighter.
The very boy Toji saw that day, protecting his sister, was his first target. He saw a good seed in that boy, so much so that he even decided to go after poor villages controlled by unscrupulous people, the kind who led difficult lives and wished they could stand on their own two feet.
Toji would accept everyone, without really differentiating who truly had justice in their hearts, those who did, good, those who fell beyond the limit he allowed would give his actions a good boost, then he could simply get rid of them, after all, the goal of these boys was to become vigilantes, not villains.
Toji wouldn't encourage it, but if they fell apart completely, Toji could only apologize, the world was unfair, he had already done enough.
As for their strength? Didn't they have the Seimei no Ro and the curse mark? He could transform them into powerful forces in a short time and then let them go and collect those unfortunate souls across the world.
Since his idea came from the Punisher, he would simply call them that, Punishers. Turning those pure, innocent children into executioners, if that isn't demonic enough, Toji wouldn't know what is.
Having made his decision, Toji sent his clones out directly, this time the objective was no longer to go after sinners, but to find suitable targets.
The purer the better, the worse the living conditions, the better, the terms were clear: the clones only needed to travel, searching for villages in precarious situations.
In this feudal ninja world, situations like this were readily available. The big cities were still fine, as were the busier villages, but those isolated villages were good targets for these parasites in human form, whether nobles or bandits.
Unfortunately, Toji had practically cleared the surrounding area of sinners, so the clones could only go further and further in their searches.
However, now that the overall direction had been defined, he just had to wait.
//-//
Jiraiya wasn't having an easy time these days, he, like Kimimaro and Pakura, was searching for Toji. However, he faced far greater difficulties than they did. On one hand, he also had to keep an eye on Akatsuki, and on the other, he constantly stopped to "have fun" along the way, searching for "information."
Of course, there was another reason why he didn't know if Toji was the true target of his search, the Sage Toad had only given general information. He first had to use this general information to narrow down the search, and when the information finally matched Toji, leaving him about 90% certain that he was his target, only then did he begin to search for Toji in earnest.
The problem was that when he set Toji as his target, he discovered that the guy had completely disappeared!
The last sighting of Toji was in the Land of Wind, so now, Jiraiya was unhappy, wandering through this place with sand in locations where there shouldn't be sand.
It was while searching the area that he was seen that he discovered the newly created entertainment city, Taizai no Machi, wasn't it?
Jiraiya's steps led directly to that city, it certainly had nothing to do with his 'research', he just wanted to find Toji!
--x--
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