_________ POV Narration _________
The constant training was starting to take its toll on some of the Blades... More specifically, Akira was bored out of his mind and wanted to do something more productive with his time.
It seemed that he now found killing off random bandit hideouts boring as well, so in the end, he started sparring with the others...
Well, he tried to anyway.
Saburo told him off in the kindest way possible, and Tosho told him it was a complete waste of good training time.
Ken was also not that keen on sparring with anyone, he was far too busy training both himself and the children in the brotherhood.
He had little free time since he took a more direct approach to the training of the children, but at least they were all advancing much faster than expected.
Unfortunately, that meant Akira was now left without a playmate(Sparring Partner)... At least until Kazue stepped in...
The Uzumaki Prodigy figured that it would be an easy way to pass some time, as well as gauge the strength of the Blades a bit more.
Ken did advise him against accepting the duel. In his words 'This has no chance of ending well for either party...'
But Kazue just thought it would be a good way to pass some time, it was just a spar at the end of the day. They also did it away from the compound, in a clearing somewhere near their mountain.
Kazue still considered the Third Blade to be the weakest at that time, so he figured it would be an easy fight to pick.
At first glance, Akira appeared to be a happy-go-lucky former shinobi, one that shouldn't really have any place within the blades...
The Uzumaki Member's perception did change a bit when the fight started...
Akira's smile didn't disappear at all, his attitude was the same, but it was as if a switch had been flipped.
His speed instantly put Kazue on the ropes. The Third Blade was already on him the second the fight started, slashing at him with two blades.
Kazue was hard-pressed to block, as he stepped backwards, his hand was scratched a little... The Uzumaki watched with wide eyes as the Third Blade licked a single drop of blood off of his blade...
Akira then immediately sliced at the ground underneath him with a smile on his face, forming a strange pentagram seal...
At that moment, Kazue knew he had to do something... In a fit of panic, shining golden chains sprouted from his back and tore apart towards the Third Blade and the ground in front of him.
Akira didn't seem too perturbed, he just laughed a bit and jumped through the hail of chains without a worry in the world, rushing towards Kazue once more.
The Uzumaki gulped a bit as he realized that the spar would turn out more bloody than he had expected.
His chains immediately impaled Akira's arms and legs and drove him into the ground, cracking it and raising a huge cloud of dust.
Kazue was immediately worried about harming Akira a bit too much, he immediately opened his mouth to apologize.
"S-sorry I shouldn't ha-"
At that moment Kazue felt his entire world stir, he felt a sharp pain digging into all of his arms and legs, a pain that immediately rendered him immobile.
The dust cleared as Akira laughed a bit more... The Third Blade had landed on his back, and was still impaled into the ground, underneath him was his own cape, with a very familiar sigil drawn upon it.
"S-shit..." Kazue didn't quite know what the sigil was for at first, he had attacked exactly because he didn't want to find out.
Now he understood exactly what it was...
'He took in a bit of my blood, and now we are linked together... What a suicidal technique...'
Akria stared at him with a slightly crazed smile, every time he struggled a bit against his bindings, Kazue felt more pain.
'How can I even break out of this?!'
Unfortunately, Kazue didn't get the time to figure that out, as a voice broke out from beside him just as he was about to try and fling Akira away with his chains.
"I think this one counts as a stalemate..."
Ken was already by his side, his masked face facing Akira, who was still struggling, unable to break out of the Adamantite Sealing Chains.
The Blind Assassin couldn't help but smile when feeling the chains. He had observed the battle since the beginning exactly because he wanted to personally 'see' how the fabled chains worked.
Feeling them in person was certainly something else...
'I don't even know if I can cut them...'
Ken understood more and more why the other nations saw the Uzumaki as a threat.
Besides the fact that their bloodline granted them absurd chakra reserves and endurance, they also had Bloodline Limits such as this.
Kazue didn't argue against calling the situation a draw, he just retracted his chains and apologized once again for injuring Akira...
He then looked in shock as Akira's wounds closed themselves off in seconds, with not even the slightest trace of them left on his body.
After that incident, the two of them would duel many times.
Slowly but surely, Kazue had figured out how Akira's technique worked, but it did take losing a few of the spars.
It was a lot harder for him to catch Akira in his chains now that the Third Blade knew they were impossible to break out of.
Kazue wasn't foolish though, he understood that if they were on the field, he likely wouldn't stand a chance against Akira.
He would've died in their first encounter if they were actual enemies, Akira seemed to be able to shrug off all of his attacks, and all he really needed was a drop of blood to end a fight for good.
Ken was a bit against them constantly sparring at first, but he didn't bother stopping them either, as he didn't want to take Akira's fun away.
Kazue did learn a valuable lesson. 'Appearances can be very deceiving'.
Akira may have had a nice demeanour and was easy to get along with. But he was also the most insane(arguably) of the Blades, while also simultaneously being the strongest.
His insanity was a product of his past experiences, just like his strength.
Kazue, despite not joining the Dark Brotherhood, still managed to find a rather good friend in Akira, who was a very genuine person.
It was a rare breed in the Shinobi World, so the Uzumaki did understand that he was lucky to find a friend in Akira, especially when so far away from home.
Ken was also not against them being friends. Especially since now, Kazue was putting more effort into teaching Akira separately.
Yue was also picking things up quickly, so it wasn't like he had much time to police the relationships that the Blades entered.
The Little Princess was proving to be even more absorbent than a sponge. She took everything in stride and with unextinguishable enthusiasm.
It was quite endearing to Ken, as he got to 'see' a more childish version of his past self, one that was a bit less flawed, in her.
She had the same aspirations as he once had, but she had a proper teacher to stop her from straying off on the wrong path. It was something he sorely lacked...
She also had a network of people supporting her in her Father and Mifune, which was certainly doing wonders for her mental state.
By her age, Ken was still hopping around in the Foster Care System, it wasn't a pleasant time, but he did blow off steam by killing small animals.
Yue had directly started killing people... Well, bandits.
Prisoners more specifically. They were mainly just props for when Ken decided to teach her more about torture and 'information gathering'.
She had a remarkably steady hand now, and she could torture people for hours with a smile on her face.
She looked so cute and innocent in those moments... If only her hands weren't covered in blood the entire time. Really spoiled the image.
Regardless, Ken had, at some point, decided that training Yue was a worthwhile undertaking. And not just because he was now on the best of terms with the Land of Iron.
'She's just that talented... Just like me... I am curious to see what she'll grow up into.'
Besides that, Ken had also started training in some other techniques that he couldn't quite comprehend from his past life...
More specifically, he started experimenting with the technique of the former 'Nr. 1 Assassin' back in his past world.
It was the one that had come before him. The former 'best' in his field of expertise.
The man was mostly a legend and had essentially retired by the time Ken/Joseph started his spree.
The man did also have a nickname of his own, 'The Reaper'. It was a lot more straightforward than Ken's own.
His technique was essentially a weird method of using vibrations to burst blood vessels within the human body.
It was said that he could kill or knock someone out just by tapping on a wall that stood in between them.
It was a technique so deadly that it had become infamous, and many had tried their hands at it.
But only The Reaper was able to do it consistently.
Now that he could perfectly feel the vibrations in the air, he decided to try it out.
Ken quickly discovered that most of the rumours were likely exaggerated...
It was a lot harder to do through walls, completely impossible without Chakra and specifically the Wind Nature.
'The Reaper' likely was able to do it through glass walls and windows only.
He tested it on prisoners, and it took quite a bit of time for him to figure it out on his own.
He only knew the theory of it, but he had never been able to even put it into practice in the past.
At first, he could at most only burst someone's eardrums and rattle their brains a bit.
Then, his vibrations started causing brain haemorrhage, and that was about the most powerful they could get.
Ken did discover that putting in a lot of Chakra could lead to turning someone's brain to mush using said vibrations.
The technique was a bit draining as the people in his current world were tougher, so the vibrations themselves needed to be stronger.
There was a small caveat with the technique... One needed to create vibrations by tapping on a surface.
It could be either near a human's body, or the human body directly. But Ken couldn't create the right vibrations without touching a proper, solid surface.
Still, the technique was deadly even with that small 'restriction'.
So deadly in fact, that it slightly scared the Strawman as he looked over the bodies Ken's 'training' left in its wake.
Without knowing any better, Saburo immediately assumed that Ken was the one to create the technique.
He also asked Ken a bit about how it worked... And the explanation somewhat sealed the deal for him.
'A close-quarters S-Ranks Wind Release technique that essentially attacks only the insides of one's body... Such absurdity is really only possible when our 'Dear Leader' is involved...
Good thing we aren't enemies... Really, this partnership is looking more and more advantageous as time passes...'
The Strawman whistled as he collected the dead bodies of the prisoners and disposed of them.
And as he was doing that, Ken slowly walked back to his office. His senses studied the current state of his organization.
Before he had realised it, he had spent entire months researching his newest technique.
Before his own 'eyes' many of the children in the brotherhood had reached the age where they were now given the choice to join a department.
All of them chose to enter the Bounty Hunting Division. Tosho's department was immediately expanded, as he now had 26 new recruits, all ranging from 14 to 15.
Ken was somewhat forced to slightly lower the age of entry. Some children showed a lot of promise, and virtually all of them wanted to be in the field already.
Regardless, no matter how much they begged him, Ken wasn't budging much when it came to age, 14 was the limit, and it was already pushing it.
He didn't like the idea of children running around on battlefields. Even if the children weren't exactly helpless...
'But now we have more than enough hands... So much progress in such a short time...'
Ken reached his office at some point, but he didn't sit down, instead, he walked over to the posters of the Mist Swordsmen and smiled underneath his mask.
'I guess the time has come... Time for revenge that is...'
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