Necessary Corruption 14 (Patreon)

Necessary Corruption

Chapter 14: Allies or Enemies

-VB-

I sat across from Hatake Kakashi in the small manor I was using for my stay at the Land of Waves. It was a polite thing to offer him tea, so I had. It was a polite thing to let his team in on the meeting as there was nothing crucial or important being discussed, so I had.

But I was also using my one and only mind reader - a power that I hadn’t even known about - to read the man’s minds to dig up anything and everything ninja-related.

It was an occasion I did not expect to find myself in. It was a window of opportunity to finally break the barrier of the enigmatic ninja way of life, their societies, communities, and missions.

Was I playing with fire?

Yes.

Hatake Kakashi was not a man to trifle with, and yet here I was, prodding the mind of a man who might have alarms and detections because I could not get over my curiosity.

If I died here…

Well, I wouldn’t die there. There were too many of my lovely, unnatural retinues here guarding me in plain sight and in the shadows. I assumed that he knew as well.

Perhaps the way he calmly drank his tea as proof of that: acknowledgement. Or maybe this was the norm for ninjas; being surrounded by potential enemies while keeping up a facade of normality was just the -.

-VB-

Hatake Kakashi

What the hell was going on here?

He had come and joined a Land of Rivers nobleman because he knew how powerful this person was. Lord Takanori, the young and new lord of the Takanori Clan of the Land of Rivers, had become a subject of rumors and gossip due to his meteoric rise, the heroic defense of his peers, and the improvement of his lands.

Of course, he only heard it because there were merchants in Konoha who praised the lord for keeping the trade routes safe for them.

Trade, while not the focus of the hidden villages, was one of the three pillars that kept the hidden villages standing. It wasn’t that the hidden villages directly made something but the fact that one of the most widely taken missions was protection for caravans.

As much as one would think that peace would bring less missions for trades, this was the wrong idea. Turbulent times led to less trade, and less trade meant less protection missions. Peaceful times led to more trade, and while the percentage of merchants asking for protection would decrease, the overall number of merchants asking would increase.

An example the Sandaime Hokage often used to explain was the period of time between the Second Ninja War and the interim between second and third war. Konohagakure’s information collectors showed that during the ninja war, there were only four hundred missions for merchant protection, which made up a fifth of all non-S and non-A ranked missions. The number of merchants moving about in the Land of Fire during this period of time was less than five hundred individuals and groups. During the interim period, there were eight hundred missions for the same but made up a third of the non-critical missions, but there were over several thousand merchants moving about at the same time.

Peace, the hidden village learned, was far more profitable for Konohagakure’s purse than war. This was part of the reasons why the Sandaime Hokage preferred not to go to war. War didn’t feed anyone’s stomach or purse. War was simply not pragmatic.

This was the level of thinking that separated the jounins from chunins: a perspective of the wider world.

And right now, Kakashi was talking with the man who had as much power as the Hokage. Konohagakure was not unaware of the underground elements Lord Takanori was cultivating. In fact, there were even rumors of addictive substances passing through his lands.

This, however, was only the tip of the iceberg for the Takanori Clan. Their retinue size and quality swelled. A spy had even reported a man capable of making chakra-less puppets within the ranks of the lord’s retinue. His lands slowly alerted the economic map of the Land of Rivers; while the more fertile northern region of the Land of Rivers produced more than half of the land’s products, it was becoming clear to merchants and ninjas alike that Lord Takanori’s lands were where the exchange of goods happened. This became especially true after one of the lands where the most important trade route in the Land of Rivers became his after a tragic death of its noble.

A noble that not many merchants liked.

There was a rumor that the merchants went to Lord Takanori to rid the noble. It made sense. Takanori held the biggest military power in the Land of the Rivers, though Konoha only knew because of their spies, so it would be trivial for the lord … if there was something to gain.

And considering that there was evidence that the more powerful merchant families burned their favors to get that then lord-less land to Lord Takanori, who made that land much safer.

Konoha’s intelligence department considered it very likely.

Regardless, the man owned a ninth of the Land of Rivers and more than thirty percent of its economic power. If Kakashi added the underground elements, then Lord Takanori might as well be the Land of Rivers.

He was just that powerful.

It made him a big target, and there have already been a few assassination attempts by smaller villages, but they had all ended in silent failures.

“I have heard much about you, Lord Takanori-dono,” he spoke genially.

“Oh? I didn’t know you paid attention to civilians like myself.”

If Lord Takanori was a civilian, then Kakashi was a genin.

“You are only the most famous of the Rivers lord,” he replied factually.

The man blinked. “I am?” he grinned. “You jest~!”

A little narcissistic? No, the man liked the fact that it was he, Hatake Kakashi, a man he respected and feared a little, was the one to say it. Could he use that for Konoha’s advantage? This man was obviously someone capable of both good governance and war. If Konoha can steer the politics of the Land of River to put him on the spot of its daimyo…

There was a chance that the Land of Rivers would change from a neutral buffer state to a friendly ally.

“Lord Takanori, while I am not a representative of Konohagakure, how do you feel about a closer relationship between us?”

The man looked surprised and opened his mouth to speak.

But then there was an interruption.

Tap tap. Tap tap tap.

Suddenly, Lord Takanori’s visage changed from excited to calm. Something just happened. Something more important than meeting him, an infamous jounin of Konohagakure.

“Unfortunately, Hatake-san, I must conclude our meeting here for now. It seems a very important message is here for me.”

Kakashi nodded. He stood up and bowed, and his genin team followed suit.

As he left, Kakashi left behind a henged shadow clone behind. Hopefully he could-.

He froze outside the manor when the clone popped without even seeing who popped it.

…

He didn’t glance over his shoulder. That would just give him away.

“Hatake-sensei, what are we gonna do today? More tree walking?”

He eye-smiled at Sakura. “Why yes! You’re doing great with it, but Naruto and Sasuke are…” he gave them a faux look of disapproval. “Not so much.”

And so they went off to carry on their own day, but Kakashi could not help but wonder.

Would Lord Takanori be an enemy or an ally?

He had to send a message to Hokage as soon as possible.