I miss many of the creature comforts from my previous life. I would watch T.V. all the time, and one particularly popular show was Law and Order. There was always a new season, and I could keep it playing in the background while I worked out and did chores around the house. They have radio shows here, but they don’t scratch the same itch.
One of the secrets to the show's success was that they would take ideas from the news and make an episode based on current events. It was a good plan for a T.V. show, but a better plan for D.N.D or what I was calling Dangerous Ninja Decisions for my students. I read over public ninja records of missions and what transpired, then take the interesting ones, maybe merge some together, and then make a little mini-campaign for my students to play slash study during their cooldown period. It forced them to think not just about what they would do but also about what others would do with different resources in dangerous missions.
This would help with working with teams of other ninjas but also predict enemy actions. The big problem I’m currently facing with my students is a lack of field experience. I was busy inside the village and couldn’t leave too often. If what Orochimaru said was true, I would have to take my team with me on a potentially dangerous mission, and there was no replacing field experience; this was the best I could come up with.
A knock on my door took me out of my musings, and I sent a string of chakra to open it. “Amon, I am here for… What have you done to this office.” Kengo Uchiha said as he entered. My office was a little cluttered with public mission reports and other paperwork scattered on every surface.
“Oh, sorry, could you give me a moment to pick up?” I grab a few vanilla folders and quickly mark the differences between them. Using more strings, I brought the scattered paperwork from across the room to me and sorted them. Kengo came across the room and sat himself down, and grabbed one of the reports from my desk.
“These are mission reports. Why are you wasting your time on this?”
“You know it’s no wonder why Fugaku is the clan head and not you,” I said back dryly. Kengo glared at me as I put the rest of the reports away. “It’s for my students. I run scenarios with them based on these reports.”
Kengo looked at me, then down to the report in his hand. “You are coddling those kids too much. How many missions have you taken them out on?” I pause to think about my answer but am stopped. “The fact that you have to think about it is answer enough. I understand that you don’t like the ways Uchihas train are young, but try not to throw the baby out with the bath water.”
“I know there is no replacing true field experience. This was the best I could come up with.”
“I hope your lying, if not then this village is doomed if you become the next Hokage.”
With an annoyed huff, I ask him the question he wants me to ask: “Oh great, an Uchiha with an opinion. Your clan is so famous for keeping their opinions to themselves. What would you have me do?”
Kengo glares at me for a minute before opening his mouth to answer. “It doesn’t surprise me that you can’t think of the solution to your problem. You have hopped from one long-term mission to another. One thing I noticed is that none of those reports you had flying around here were from the police.”
“No, they weren’t. I am training them to get ready to leave the village with me on missions, not join the police force.”
“You want to keep them safe inside the village walls with you as long as possible while trying to toughen them up. Your years working as a bodyguard and a medic are working against you. Request that Fugaku allow your students to tag along with his people when they go on patrol. You almost certainly are training them in chakra control and the rest of the basics. This should cover the rest of the weaknesses in their training.”
I paused my snarky response; the man was right. It kept the kids inside the walls while giving them a chance to stretch their legs as shinobi. “Would Fugaku okay that?”
“He was your teammate. Your guess is just as good as mine. Any other shinobi team would make it seem like an insult or an attempt to succeed them and take over, but you should make your intentions clear. Plus, I’m sure you would be able to stoke the ego of the ‘opinionated’ Uchiha clan.”
“Hmm, well, that’s a good idea. I’ll make a request with his office tomorrow, but today, we are here for you. First, how’s the leg?”
“Fine,” the man answered curtly. After no response from me, he spoke with a little more detail: “It is…better than it was before, and my memory recently improved. I didn’t realize it was a problem until it was gone, but I was having a hard time keeping track of things. Names, faces, who’s dead and who isn’t. One of our clan members died a little while back, and I had to pretend.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Pretend about?”
“I-I thought he was already dead; I thought the kid died years ago. I already wrote him off, but he had been alive. My wife reminded me that we even attended a party and talked with them briefly. I feel like an outsider in my own district.”
“But your memory is improving?” I said, taking note of his symptoms.
“Yes, absolutely, yes. I didn’t realize all the little things I was doing to make up for it. I deliberately avoided talking about specific people and dates. I didn’t lose anything; my wife keeps everything in order around the house for that to happen, but for clan meetings, I would forget we had them scheduled and not be prepared when I went, forgetting topics, topics that were secret and couldn’t be talked about to freely, I had to be careful when the topic would resurface in the meeting and pretend I knew what they where talking about. I was just losing time, plain and simple. I felt like someone else was living my life when I wasn’t looking, and I was joining conversations halfway through.”
“Hmm, and tell me more about these secret meetings, Plotting my demise?”
“Drawing straws on who gets to deliver the finishing blow. But that aside, I don’t have to pretend around my people as much.”
“As much or at all?”
“As much. I have been practicing more and more, but my son has been out on missions more often than not lately, making up for his father's absence on the battlefield, trying to feed a family by himself.”
“Well, I think we can solve two problems at once. I still have time before the third decides what to do with me. Do you think I should talk to Fugaku about having you escort my students on low-priority patrol around the village? Little more than a walk around the neighborhood for a man like yourself.”
“The pay would be awful.”
“Just a job that would cover a day's ration for you, the wife, and my students. Fugaku should have enough in his budget for that. The village isn’t lacking money, but manpower. The Uchiha clan likes its monopoly on village security; with you, they can still keep it.”
“I guess Fugaku shouldn’t have that big of a problem with it. The only problem I see is my leg, Going on long patrol’s…”
“I have been thinking about that. As you know, I was stationed in the Sand Village for a time, and one of the things I studied while I was out there was their prosthetics. The puppet users would make theirs like living art. As beautiful as they are deadly.”
“And as deadly to my wallet as they are beautiful. What’s your point? The Uchiha clan is financially secure but a Sand Village prosthetic. It would cost an arm and a leg to cover the cost of replacing only one of them. And that’s just staring price, Let’s not even talk about maintenance.”
“Actually lets talk about both, What if I had a cheaper solution.”
“What if it rained cats and dogs? There is no way the Sand Village lets you study how to replicate their prosthetics for cheaper.”
“I found a workaround. It will take some time, and I must ask, How good are you at chakra control?”
Kengo glared at me, and once I told him the plan, he hesitated. Uchiha's is kinda good at chakra control. When they use their Sharingan, Uchiha's can see chakra and can even detect irregularities in chakra flow, though not as effectively as the Byakugan, it still allows them to learn Jutsus much faster than none users. The only problem with this is that if they can’t see someone else when learning unique Jutsus, it becomes difficult. The Uchiha’s never had to deal with this problem because of constant fighting in their history. Good Jutsus that are effective in combat show up in combat, but if the Jutsu is new, different, and unique to the individual, take puppeteering, for example. You, one, need to see the puppeteer, and two, have a puppet to use. If a Sharingan user has both, no problem, but one or neither, then things get more complicated.
After several hours, and because of the stubborn pride the Uchiha's are so famous for, I managed to help Kengo through the process. Finally, hours after I was supposed to be done for the day and Kengo should have been sitting down with his family eating dinner, we finally did it.
Kengo detected his son's approach and opened my office door to let his son in.
“Dad, Amon.” Shisui bowed at me, which I reciprocated. “Mom sent me to fetch you for dinner.”
“Then go and fetch her! We are celebrating tonight!” Kengo proclaimed.
Shisui had an awkward look on his face, but I swooped in to save the young man. “My treat. Thanks to your father's help, I had a breakthrough on an independent project I have been working on. With his future support, I hope to help the lives of many shinobi in our village.” I said, gathering my things. “Yakiniku Q is a personal favorite of mine; any objections?”
“Go fetch your mother and meet us there.”
Shisui looked between the both of us, happy about our good moods but still confused as to why.“Um, can I tell Mom what specifically we are celebrating?”
Kengo threw his hands in the air and had a sarcastic, angry look on his face, and turned to me. “And he calls himself a shinobie. A Sharingan possessing Jonin he is, can you believe it.”
“Standers must be dropping.” I played along.
“Well, I’m sorry for my ignorance; I will strive to do better in the future; now, would you please educate me on why we are celebrating,” Shisui spoke.
“Oh, he’s no fun if he’s going to be polite about the whole thing. You sure he’s yours, pretty sure he has your neighbor's eyes.” My comment earned me a dirty look from both of them.
“Huff, Shisui, look,” Kengo said, lifting up his pants leg.
Shisui looked and stared. What should have been a peg leg connected to a shoe now was a healthy-looking normal leg. Surprised, Shisui activated his Sharingan and saw…a normal leg. No difference.
“I don’t understand. How is this possible?”
“A special kind of shadow clone jutsiu. It's a mirror of his other leg. Still working out the fine details, but it's functional.”
“The trick Amon used was something called a sender and receiver seal. My leg can transfer information it’s feeling to a seal attached to me.” He lifted his pants leg higher, and two glyphs were right next to each other. One is attached to the chakra-made limb, and the other is right above it on Kengo’s thigh. “It’s not just a dense peg leg. I can send commands to my foot and feel the ground underneath me. I can even channel chakra through it.” He demonstrated this by rolling his ankle in the air and showing the bottom of his shoe, which, with Shisui Sharingan active, he could see chakra coming out of it.
“This is… this is amazing.”
“That’s why we are celebrating tonight. Now grab your mother and meet us at the restaurant, or I will do it,” Kengo said with a warm smile on his face.
