worth the power than came with being a shinobi.
Even dying early would be better than to be around when the insanity really took off and you got body-snatched or turned into a tree battery. Maybe if this was a place like the Hidden Mist I'd have an easier time finding the ninja way reprehensible, but Konoha actually did live up to its claims of an enlightened way of life.
Relatively speaking. True meritocracy, for both the ninja and civilians, but without cheapening the value of inheritance.
I could testify to that by the simple fact that the amount of propaganda here was less than a tenth of what it was in the world of my previous incarnation. The people of this land were also quite spiritually minded as well, even though their ancestral, animistic beliefs hadn't survived Kaguya and her children.
Unfortunately, there was a deliberate and enforced divide between the ninja and civilian branches of the village logistics. Well, actually this was Konoha's one, massive advantage that the other villages didn't practice.
It enabled a strong middle class with a minimal attrition rate that produced abundant wealth for the village to run on, as well as nurturing the highest citizen loyalty of all other places on the continent, save maybe the Land of Iron where the Samurai code still endured.
It was unfortunate for me personally, though, because it meant that civilians didn't have ready access to certain things. Like the Anbu 'hotline.
' Or the one of only two newspapers in Konoha that the ninja actually bothered reading. Why You Shouldn't Bully a Dragon, Neuroplasticity and Murder, The Dangers of Exclusivity, all the columns and articles I contributed to the Konoha Herald had given me precisely zero in with the Konoha Sage, despite the professional sourcing standards I brought with me from my previous life.
Even more annoyingly, the Konoha Military Police didn't seem to have paid much mind to them. Despite there being a whole department of Uchiha chunin whose entire job was to read and approve or disapprove of everything civilians submitted for any sort of public print, same as for postage to anywhere outside Konoha.
Whether it be a single-word shop sign or pages-long article, it needed nin approval, so I know they were all read. I'd made some pretty good points in them too, when I threw shade at everything from child persecution to being forced to shoulder the entirety of the village's resentment.
I was notjust talking about jinchuriki there.
I refused to believe I was too subtle for the shinobi intelligence services. It was why I hadn't submitted the big one – if they didn't take me seriously before, why would they do it when I 'attacked' their entire institution? More likely they'd snatch me out of my house in the middle of the night and genjutsu me into an early retirement for 'abusing Konoha's goodwill'.
I was two years past the point where I didn't care if that happened to me.
Maybe I should file for a D-rank mission to have a message delivered straight to the Hokage's desk, I thought grumpily. It'd raise questions if nothing else.
I swear, massacre prevention shouldn't be this difficult.
"Hanzo! Do you ever not glare like a stung boar?"
"Oh I'm sorry, I can come by another day. "
"Still can't take a joke either," Ren grunted as I stepped past him into his shop. "Load's in the back, I already laid them out for you.
There's Shiori's wagyu in it for you if you if you get them all done today. "
"I'm only doing this because you're good advertising. "
"That's what everyone says!"
I snorted as I took the stairs to the cellar. "If your wife didn't have to nag you for even the most basic kindness, we'd have other things to say too!"
"Oh just fix your merchandise! Or don't so I can have my wife's cooking all to myself. "
She'd put the same effort into your food as she does for strangers if you weren't such an ungrateful ass.
The man was an efficient businessman though, you had to be to make it in a ninja village. The items were laid out in neat rows with all the necessary space to get to work.
The most important pieces were even labelled in order of priority. I took a seat, spread my tools and set about opening the first one – yes, it was the capacitor just as I thought.
I was right to bring a whole pack of replacement wire. Then again, if I couldn't even guess what a drunken lightning jutsu accident had done to stuff I made, I might just have to quit life.
Toy kunai and shuriken patterned off fidget spinners. Actual training models done in the same manner.
All with motion-activated electric lights built in. There were even a few that were actually mission-rated, on request for unexpected ninja clients who apparently liked to use them in night-time training and distractions.
I didn't expect this when lightning release techniques and seal tags were a thing, but I won't complain. The balancing on them had been a bitch to get right, but somehow I'd managed.
I even got a request to create a fuuma shuriken with van de Graaf functionality along the central ball bearing. Salved my pride a little, in those two months between electrical refurbishing contracts when my main source of income was children's toys.
In a ninja village.
What kind of lightning jutsu does this on accident though? This stuff isn't exactly disaster-rated, but it's no slouch in the rugged department either.
Shrugging, I got down to business. Changing capacitors and connectors was drudge work, but I could easily pretend to be meditating so that's what I did.
I made sure to do the labelled ones first, then did a couple of each other type so Ren could put something on the counter before the evening rush finished. I could hear the bell ring more and more as time passed, doubly so after I sent the first stuff up.
Business was good, and this was just one of four shopkeepers I had contracts with.