It was a day like any other - waking up to an empty house, a still sleeping Tsunade, and a note on the table, usually an apology from their parents who went off to some kind of mission again.
Surprising as it was, the child and niece of the two previous Hokage still needed to take more than the average amount of missions required, even during peacetime. Konoha had faced assaults from all other great Shinobi Nations, and though they were not joint attacks, any smaller nation would have collapsed almost instantly against those odds.
For the civilian born ninja, it was even worse. Not only were they assigned more missions, it was purely out of necessity, less they starve. The war had taken its toll on Konoha, and it would take at least several years, maybe a decade, before they could recover fully. During this period, however, everyone would have to work harder than ever to get back on their feet.
Akira had personally experienced the battlefield, the deaths, the screams of agony as lives were casually taken like your daily tasks. He never fought on the frontlines really, though, and that was a grace and blessing not everyone could afford.
The missions they did were less dangerous and important. In war, the frontline battles weren't actually the most dangerous thing to do. It was the reconnaissance, the strikes from within, like destroying food and weapon supplies.
Thankfully, Akira didn't do any of those, at least not directly. Instead, he, along with Sakumo and Katsuro, both of whom he had grown closer to, served as one of the backup troops along the Kumogakure front.
When he was first graced with the opportunity to take his first life, all moral values had to be disregarded, as such was what a shinobi was supposed to do. Though Akira had struggled at first, it was only for a few seconds, as with his already matured mind, he didn't hesitate to take the next one.
But in his mind, he silently prayed for each of their undisturbed departure to the Pure Lands.
And it was this day that Akira suddenly had an idea hit him in the head. A deviation of his first ever self-created ninjutsu: Raiton - Raihimo
He had no one he could test it on, but he, along with his team, had a certain mission assigned to them where he could.
.
.
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"Sorry I'm late!"
With a sigh, Koharu only shook her head before going directly to the point, "You're only a few minutes late, so it's okay for today. Anyways, I was just about to brief Sakumo-kun and Katsuro-kin about the mission."
Today, the Third Hokage had assigned them a A-rank mission. It was considerably high for their age and rank, all were only recently promoted chunin and barely around a decade old. But once again, all three were also rising stars, much like Team 7, consisting of dear ol' sister Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Jiraiya.
It wasn't that unreasonable taking into account the mission's nature though. It was quite simple, a task of eliminating a group of rouge shinobi trespassing on a high-ranking noble's land.
The rank of said group was undetermined, hence the reason for such a high mission ranking.
But in reality, the real power level of these nuke-nin were disappointingly low. Of course, this could only be said because he and Sakumo were just unscientifically too strong.
Akira couldn't be said to be a special jonin, but he was too powerful for a chunin either. He could be considered the thin line between those two, a barrier between a jonin and chunnin.
For Sakumo, on the other hand, he was no doubt a special jonin already, albeit not a very strong one, given his age and experience. It was mostly due to his new handling of a chakra blade, courtesy of Akira, though nobody could argue he was weak at any point.
His mastery over his blade was a testament to his sheer talent and natural hard work, every slash, every stab immaculate, calculated, deliberate.
Put them together and you basically have the power of a whole squadron consisting of genin and chunin.
Katsuro didn't fare as well. Being a civilian, not that it was detrimental to his growth, he didn't have the clan backing from childhood. This didn't mean he was weak, it just meant he couldn't have access to those 'instant' powerups from unlocking a bloodline limit. But now that their sensei, Utatane Koharu, was from a clan herself, and was the Hokage's advisor, he didn't have any shortage in resources.
Back to the mission, currently, Sakumo, Akira, and Katsuro were at the base of the trespassing shinobi while Koharu stayed back to watch, and would only ever interfere if any were in true mortal danger.
As usual, within seconds, almost all nuke-nin were subdued. And I say subdued because that is what Akira had requested of Sakumo.
Another was restrained while Akira was stepping on one particular shinobi who kept on screaming a string of curses, doing who knows what.
Then, he stood up abruptly and walked back a few steps, seemingly prepared for something.
Suddenly, the nuke-nin stood up in slow, jerky movements, despite his legs being wrecked until you could barely recognise them as anything related to a limb.
While the poor and unfortunate soul was screaming and wailing in agony, having stood up involuntarily, even while his legs were in such a sorry state, with blue sparks electrocuting him as they danced upon various spots of his body, Akira stood simply with his hands raised, fingers arranged and moving in a rather peculiar fashion.
The movements of his arms and fingers seemed too similar to a puppet masters.
But before the groaning and moaning man could even fully stand up, Sakumo, purely acting on instinct, immediately unsheathed his tanto, slicing through his bone and flesh like tofu.
During the whole ordeal, the white sheen of his blade never lost the pure white it had, as it had moved so fast, so fast that the blood didn't even have time to splatter before it was resheathed again.
"*sigh* Maa maa, Sakumo~ Did you have to do that, really? I was just testing out a new jutsu y'know, and now you've killed my perfectly good experimental subject," Akira drawled with a teasing smirk, not at all bothered by the head rolling by, with its tongue lolling out of one side, and eyes panickedly dashing in all directions.
"New jutsu? Apologies for slaughtering one of your dear experimental subjects. I do hope you find another," Sakumo replied in a formal tone, but this time it lacked the stiffness and politeness, nor the teasing edge it had now.
"New jutsu? What's it about this time?" Katsuro quereed curiously, stepping over a hill of dead bodies, having just finished cleaning out the rest of the base.
"An adaptation of a sort from 'Raihimo'."
And that was all he said, so neither probed further, as a shinobi's secrets and jutsus were more than often more important than their own lives. Besides, they were smart - they didn't need a day to figure the basics out.
Based on the unfortunate person's jerky movements, it could be concluded that he was not doing so of his own free will, and instead was controlled by another party. There were only two 'normal' ways a shinobi could control another, which the first was genjutsu. But as far as anyone knew, Akira was painfully mediocre in this area.
The second was puppetry, a specialty of the Hidden Sand Village, Sunagakure. Judged from his strange finger movements and stance, Akira was most likely copying this, but in a different form.
But only from witnessing it first-hand could you tell his extraordinaire level of chakra control, one that rivaled even elite jonin. To him, it was just a simple exercise, but to others, it was much more. Just controlling a fully conscious, though injured, shinobi with chakra strings was hard enough, but adding lightning release chakra to the mixture? It was worth less than the effort made for most.
And then he made it so thin, yet dense, that even this nuke-nin could only tell he was being controlled due to him obviously not doing it with his own will.
Even his first try at this newly invented copy of Suna's puppet masters was this good.
"Well do you want another lab rat? We've got plenty of those here," Katsuro asked, pointing at the heap of bodies he had previously stepped over.
"No, but thank you. I need live subjects so they can struggle accordingly, a cold corpse would simply be too easy to maneuver, and I need the experience when I'm controlling a fully conscious and resisting opponent," Akira shook his head, discarding the idea.
"Is it just me, or is this conversation starting to get morally wrong? Seriously, 'experimental subject'? 'Lab rat'? And just now, we were talking about defiling corpses."
Everyone laughed after that, but in Akira's previous life, someone would have probably fearfully call an mental ward for housing three psychopaths had they heard the conversation.
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