Once I paid the money I casually created a crystal fishbowl that I filled with salt water and reached into the tank to grab my new crab. It didn't care and if anything seemed quite content to be in the fishbowl with the water that wasn't stale like the water it had been in. The wolf was even easier to deal with as I simply released her from the cage and unmuzzled her. She seemed to consider torching Toge for a moment which made the woman tense but chose not to in the end so all good on that front.-
With that done Karin and I along with my new beasts headed for Ichiraku for dinner. Teuchi didn't even bat an eye at my two new beasts and without skipping a beat had a bowl of raw steak and eggs set aside for the wolf and strips of raw shrimp for the crab. The man absolutely knew how to win over people as my two new beasts took a shine to him immediately after that as they feasted. Karin and I got our own food shortly after they did and in the end went home with happy bellies.-
It was rather amusing to see Kiba(the wolf dog) show an immediately interest in the new wolf while she literally turned her nose up at him. Not an outright rejection so much as her pretty much telling him that he had to prove himself worthy. Which was ironic considering she was barely at the level of an academy student whereas Kiba was on the verge of reaching the peak of jonin. Like two steps away from S rank in power. Still clearly my new wolf had other priorities in mind than pure strength which I suppose was fair.-
As for my crab it turned out it didn't matter if the water was salt or fresh so I ended up putting it into the crystal clear spring fed pond I had outside my house. It was a fairly small pond but the crab seemed perfectly happy with it's new digs and that was all that mattered. Things settled into a nice and quiet order for the next few days until something happened that ruined it. Naruto, Sakura and Kakashi had all set out to hunt Sasuke down. There had been a report that said he had been spotted in the land of rice and that was more than enough for Naruto to convince the rest of team seven to go out of the village.-
I could only sigh at this and give Kakashi a one time summoning scroll for my hawk in case of an emergency. I wasn't all that worried about Naruto so long as Kakashi was there but better safe than sorry. At the very least though Sakura had managed to get decent at Genjutsu which she had a pretty good talent at so she wasn't totally useless here though not very useful either.-
She had tried to get teaching from my sensei as one of the strongest women in the world but after I had told my sensei what she thought of us medical shinobi that path had been cut off from her. She snubbed the medical field when she thought she had options but once she learnt that she in fact really didn't she comes begging for a chance? Not happening. She was free to try and start from the bottom in the field but learning straight from my sensei was out of the question.-
Anyways with Sasuke rearing his head again and Naruto off on the hunt for him things start moving in the shadows that draw the concern of my sensei and by extension me. Kumo and Iwa have been moving around like they were restless and only a single excuse away from declaring war. At the moment however it's merely been some small scale skirmishes at the borders and in their lands from shinobi caught in places they shouldn't be. After the events of the chunin exam and my own time in the land of water Kiri and Suna are both firmly enough allied to Konoha so neither the cloud or stone villages are willing to provoke a war with us at the moment but they clearly want to.-
I suppose it's understandable really as we have shown a surge in strength and are beginning to even overtake the other villages in power with the help of my limit collection. Speaking of the collection it had been moved into my meditation room in my house and only with the three layers of checks down on a person and proof of them did anyone get to see the collection. Three spies had attempted to barge into my meditation room to steal the collection while I was out with Karin but I ended up with three new lawn ornaments instead.-
Five new kekkai genkai users had appeared in Konoha however so the news had been more or less confirmed for the other villages that the collection was legit. I personally found it rather amusing how the ambassadors of the other villages all tried to press my sensei into releasing the collection to them out of "balance". It was nonsense of course as the other villages were merely afraid of getting overshadowed by Konoha and unable to fight back.-
This was stupid of course as we had never been the ones who started a war or attacked others which was a point my sensei used to get the ambassadors to back off if only temporarily. They tried the whole give us the thing and we won't declare war approach but my sensei flat out said to bring it on. She made it clear that something like the Hyuga incident will never happen again and if they want war we will happily give it to them. In other words she called their bluff and there was not a damn thing they could do about it.-
Even more insane was the sneaky bastards trying to skip the village and go straight for the source and trying to get me to hand over the collection. Bribes, threats, thievery and even seduction for some reason were all tried and all they earned for all that effort was nothing. Frankly speaking it was really kind of annoying that they thought me so easy to sway. I was THIS close to just dropping the pretenses and killing them outright with only the threat of war holding me back.