Chapter 95: Naruto 9

Carl stood in the hot desert sands, no one around him. He bit his thumb to draw some blood and mentally shaped his chakra to perform the summoning jutsu. A regular ninja would have to form the hand signs in order to mold their chakra properly to complete the jutsu.

He then slammed his right hand down to the ground. Lines of black seal like script radiated out from under his hand in eight directions, with a circle of script surrounding his hand at about a two foot radius. The summoning jutsu was a success.

A huge puff of chakra smoke billowed out, obscuring the surroundings where Carl stood.

The smoke slowly cleared out, showing that Carl now stood on top of the head of a dark purple snake that was about 150 meters long. The back of his head had four straight horns sticking out, angled back towards his tail. He had jagged black stripes banded around his body from his neck to his tail. And most of all he emitted a sense of danger, disdain, and pride.

"Orochimaru! You know I don't like being summoned." The big snake growled immediately upon the chakra smoke clearing up. "You will have to provide me with one hundred human sacrifices to make up for it."

Carl flew up and away from the snake's head that he was standing on. Hovering in front of the huge snake, Carl steadily looked into his emerald green eyes with his own pale Hyuga eyes.

"It wasn't Orochimaru that summoned you today, Manda." Carl called out, his eight year old Hyuga body was dwarfed by the enormous snake.

Even his Dragon form would be dwarfed by this huge snake for a number of decades more. His Dragon form would continue to grow as he aged, but he didn't know just how big he would get, since the normal Azeroth dragon had a limit to their size. Well, there were exceptions like Deathwing that grew enormous. And he did have Dragon God blood in him from the ATG world. So he would find out as he lived longer.

"The Snake clan has a new summoner, Manda. My name is Carl Hyuga." Carl announced, staring down Manda.

"Bah! Who let such a puny and weak whelp like you sign the contract?" Manda snarled in disdain. His eyes shifted around, seeing no one else around in the desert. "And you were stupid enough to summon me without any sacrifices to feed me. I suppose you'll have to do as an appetizer until I can find something more to fill my belly."

With those words, Manda, the boss summons for the snake contract, immediately attacked.

The huge head of the snake summons darted forward, faster than one would expect for such a huge creature. His fangs glistened with poison nearly dripping from them as his cavernous mouth opened wide to swallow Carl whole.

Even though he somewhat expected the big snake's churlish behavior based on what he'd seen from the show, he hadn't expected the talking portion to be so short. Nevertheless, he was still prepared for battle. He swiftly entered into the Tenseiga Chakra mode to boost his abilities for the fight.

His small body was awash with a silvery blue energy that gave him an ethereal glowing appearance. Ten black fist sized Truth Seeking Orbs appeared hovering behind him. His practice with the Tenseigan Chakra Mode had improved his mastery over it, so he was able to manifest three more balls than he had upon the first time he used it.

With a thought, two of the black orbs morphed into giants black pillars, as thick around as Manda's fangs, and extended so that they propped open Manda's mouth, keeping him from biting down.

Meanwhile, Carl flew up and punched against Manda's nose, employing his own physical strength and control over gravity to cause Manda's strike to come to a halt while also giving him the equivalent of a newspaper smacking on the nose for bad behavior.

The enormous snake summons awkwardly crossed his eyes in an attempt to look at Carl while his mouth was propped open with the Truth Seeking Balls, and he was held in position with intensely heavy gravity, unable to even withdraw.

"Wah aa uu?" Manda called out unintelligibly since his mouth was currently propped open. Carl figured the big boss summons was asking him what he was.

"Like I said, my name is Carl Hyuga. I'm the heir to the Hyuga clan, and a ninja of some skills, and the owner of the Tenseigan eyes. And I'm the new summoner for the Snake clan. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Now, if I let you go, can we have a reasonable discussion?"

The big snake didn't reply for some time as he thought it over. He was in a very poor bargaining position, and he knew it. But his pride was at war with his practicality. Finally, Carl felt the big snake minutely nod in his gravity powered grip.

Carl then released the enormous snake, morphing his truth seeking balls from the pillars he had shaped them into back into the balls that hovered behind him; he flew back to his previous distance from the snake's face, staring at the giant snake that was disturbed to have been so easily overcome.

Manda closed his mouth with an enormous snapping sound and looked searchingly at Carl for some time, seeing his glowing form lit up with enormous amounts of energy while Carl was still in the Tenseigan chakra mode.

"When I am summoned, I require at least 50 human sacrifices. Doing work for summoners is energy intensive, so I need the meat and chakra they produce to do anything for you." Manda finally announced.

Carl had simply waited out the time, a method of negotiation to gain the upper hand. Manda felt his position was somewhat weak, considering how easily Carl had stopped his attack, so Manda had broken the silence first.

"No, I don't think so." Carl said.

"As a summoner bound by the contract you have to-" Manda began before being interrupted by Carl.

"No." He said more firmly. "I carefully read the contract before I signed it. And it laid out the duties, responsibilities, and privileges of the summoner. Nowhere does it say I must feed you, let alone feed you human sacrifices." Carl rejected outright the ridiculous demands of Manda. Just because Orochimaru was a monster who thought nothing of sacrificing hundreds of humans to gain Manda's help, didn't mean that Carl would.

"Now, I'm a reasonable being." Carl continued. "I realize that even though I don't owe you any food when summoning you or other snakes, you would work harder towards my goals if I were to feed you something nice. So I'm willing to feed you some prey animals to get your best efforts. But I will not be taken advantage of by the snake clan, and I will certainly not encourage any snakes of the clan to treat humans as livestock, to be slaughtered to assuage your greedy gut."

"Fine, little human." Manda almost pouted at not getting his way.

Carl could see that the big snake was used to having the upper hand in negotiations, even with Orochimaru. Apparenly he was perceptive enough to realize that Carl wasn't going to bow down to his whims like Orochimaru would. Which was smart of him, since Carl didn't need the big snake for anything, really.

The only reason he summoned Manda was to introduce himself to the boss snake summons before Carl reverse summoned himself to Ryuchi cave, where the Snake clan lived in the summons realm.

And even if he had need of some of the summoned Snakes for ninja activities, he would prefer to make friends and partners with a younger snake that wasn't as set in his or her ways to interact with and teach.

The Snake contract was clear in how he would have to pick at least one snake to be his personal summons, who he would work extensively with. That close contact would give the snake plenty of experience and power as they grew. The Snake clan would then have a powerful member of their clan, able to contest with the surrounding animal clans to keep or advance their position in the power hierarchy.

And Manda was certainly not Carl's pick of a snake he would work with regularly. Not after he had worked with Orochimaru for so long. But there was no reason to tell the big pouty carnivore snake baby that to his face.

"To show my good will to the Snake clan as their new summoner, have a taste of this ox I've been raising for some time." Carl finally said, when it seemed that Manda realized that he wasn't the push over that Orochimaru was. He already showed his stick by stopping his attack and bopping him on the nose; now it was time to feed Manda a carrot.

With that Carl pulled out a 15 meter tall dark blue ox that had been growing on the farm. The strangely colored ox was from the ATG world. Ever since he got his hands on one in the ATG world he had kept a population of them growing on one of the ranches on the Farm.

But now, with his Hunting Grounds that he got from the Dinosaur Gauntlet, Carl was looking for ways to get rid of the enormous animals from his Farms to make room for more valuable animals to raise. He had already tasted all the animals he captured from the ATG world, which meant there was a population of them present in the Hunting Grounds if he ever needed them, so Carl was looking to get rid of the less valuable ones he had been raising on the Farm, thus freeing up space for more valuable and new animals and plants.

And feeding them to the summoned animal clans to get on their good side to speed up the process of him being taught the Sage arts was a worthy use of the excess animals.

Judging by how Manda's pupils dilated when he flicked his tongue out to taste the ox, it smelled quite delicious to him. The big snake wasn't polite, he immediately struck at the ox, wrapping it up and squeezing it lightly to death.

Carl chuckled at that. Manda didn't want to squish his prey, and he was a 150 meter long snake, so even his light squeezes was enough to kill the 15 meter tall ox.

A short time later, Manda had swallowed the ox whole, and disappeared back to the realm of the summoned creatures with a puff of smoke after Carl told him he had nothing else for the big boss snake summons.

It was only when the big snake had reappeared back in the summoning realm that he realized that Carl had been speaking in Snake all the time. He felt some regret that he didn't make a better impression on the impressive little human, but soon threw that thought from his mind as he curled up in his personal cave to digest the meal he had gotten without having to do anything.

"That seemed to go well." Carl muttered. "I wonder how much time I should give Manda to tell them about me before I send myself there?"

Carl had no idea that the lazy Manda had simply curled up and gone to sleep, not telling anyone about him.

While waiting, Carl checked up on what his blood clones were doing. At this point he had made six of them. One was taking his place in Konoha, making ties with the various kids there while going through the Academy, and making sure that his friend's training was going well.

'Things seem to be well in hand there.' Carl thought with a smirk when he saw his friends were encouraging Hinata to join them in their pranks under the guise of "ninja training". 'Probably a good idea to give them the gravity and resistance seals in the next day or so.'

Carl felt the acknowledgment from his blood clone on the thought. While in time compression he had come up with a number of training aids for his fellow ninja hopefuls that would help their development greatly.

One of his pride and joys was an absolute masterpiece of seals inscribed into a simple belt. It combined gravity, wind, medical, and yang release all into something designed to increase a young person's comprehensive body strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility.

The extra gravity made it so even simply walking around could give a good workout to the wearer. The gravity that weighed down on the user was countered just under the user's feet so they weren't incredibly heavy and breaking the roofs that they ran across. Going through a normal workout with extra gravity upped the impact of the workout greatly.

The wind part of the seals had two parts that it fulfilled. The first part created a certain amount of wind resistance against the young ninja's movements. It would feel like every motion they made was through resistance that worked every single muscle.

The other part of the wind centered seal work ensured that the user would always have enough air to breath while heavily working out. The increased oxygen would keep them energized through their workout.

The medical aspects of the seal work had all the diagnostics needed to monitor the user's body to ensure their growth wasn't stunted from too much gravity or exercise. The diagnostics would determine how much gravity and resistance was added to the ninja's body to maximize the workout parameters, which could be changed.

If they wished to focus on building strength, then the belt would adjust for heavier gravity to focus on strength building. If they wished to focus on endurance, then it would lighten the gravity just enough to focus on that aspect of their fitness. And if they wished to focus on speed, then the wind resistance would be calibrated accordingly.

The diagnostic seals would continually monitor the ninja's health and energy levels to make sure they had enough oxygen flow by regulating how much of the wind seals provided them.

And finally the diagnostic seals were linked with yang release seals that could be used to stimulate the body's stamina and health. His belts basically created an artificial downplayed version of the Senju and Uzumaki stamina bloodline for other ninja to benefit from while training.

And of course he had security and privacy seals in place so that no one could steal his work or tamper with it to cause damage to the wearer.

Carl's blood clone in Konoha would be distributing the belts to certain trustworthy friends and individuals in the next week. Unfortunately for fangirls and Uchihas, they wouldn't be benefiting from the devices.

The blood clone that Carl left in New Uzushio also reported back good things about his people there. The Silver Dragon Flight members were popular among the people he had recruited, especially as they were proving to be good tutors for the young ninjas in training.

Karin, Hanako, and Carl seemed to be getting along very well. They seemed nicely focused on training with their new trainers at the moment.

The third blood clone was making use of their ANBU identity to act as a Hunter ninja, focusing on looking for any ninjas that ran from their villages, evaluated why they ran, and determining what to do with them. He determined if they were trustworthy or not, and either went after them for the bounty, or invited them to join New Uzushio.

Another blood clone was solely focused on tracking down all those responsible for the massacre of Uzushio, as well as evaluating the threats to the Hyuga clan, like Orochimaru who wanted to destroy Konoha. It was good to be proactive in fighting off threats.

The next was looking into people to recruit, mostly orphans. But he also had some plans to go talk to Tsunade and her apprentice Shizune to see if they wanted to visit New Uzushio. Carl chuckled at that. If he could help get the legendary medic ninja Tsunade past her traumatic past and hemophobia, then she could be a huge asset to him.

The final blood clone was looking for more summoning contracts out among the ninja world. While doing so, he was also checking up on any ninja libraries they could glean more information from. Carl didn't know if he could get a recommendation from the Snake clan to go talk to any other clans, so he was looking for more summons contracts to hedge his bets.

While he was satisfied with what his clones were doing, he felt like there were some slack areas he needed to keep track of.

"Hmm. I should also make a clone to keep track of the politics of the different nations. And one to focus on trade would be good." Carl muttered.

Looking at his chakra reserves that would take a small hit from making a couple more permanent blood clones, he debated the wisdom of doing so right before he left for the summons realm to begin training in Senjutsu, or the sage arts.

"Eh, I'm sure it'll be fine." Carl finally decided. "Might as well use my cheat-like Time Pearl to make a couple more blood clones and train them up before going to the Ryuchi Cave. Even if they are only dealing with politics and trade, having the strength to back up their words and protect trade goods is still essential."

Carl disappeared from the desert for a few hours.

After a few hours, three figures reappeared in the desert.

"We're off boss. Have fun with the snakes!" Two of them saluted the third before disappearing once more, having teleported to New Uzushio.

"Well, it's time to go be a sage." Carl muttered before reverse summoning himself to the Land of Summons.

Carl landed on the side of a mountain in a clearing surrounding by trees that dwarfed even the trees that were prevalent around Konoha. The clearing was filled with tall grass and bushes, but he could see that under the trees with wide foliage there wasn't much underbrush.

The other thing he noticed about the forest of huge trees was that even Manda, as big as he was, could easily pass between the broad trunks without touching the trunks.

"Huh, that would make tree hopping very difficult, except up high in the foliage." Carl muttered as he looked around. The space between trees made it difficult for the average ninja to make the jump. "And a fall would be quite devastating for the average shinobi."

While looking around, Carl was quite pleased to find that his connection with his blood clones wasn't interrupted by his trip to the summons realm. That was a bonus that he hadn't expected, considering that he didn't know exactly where the summons realm was in relation to the main world.

He knew they weren't anywhere present in the regular world, but he wasn't sure how the dimensional shenanigans lined up. At least, not yet.

He could smell the strong scent of snakes in the area. He recognized Manda's scent nearby, like the old snake had passed by recently. There were dozens of others that he didn't recognize.

Up above in the gap of the trees he could see the blue sky, but the sun was hidden by the forests. Looking around the mountain forest landscape, he could spot several caves here and there, and he spotted plenty of snake trails, but he didn't see any snakes moving around at the moment.

'Huh, I thought the contract said something about how the snake sage lived in the Ryuchi Cave. It kinda made it sound like there was only one cave, but I'm seeing quite a few here.' Carl had spotted half a dozen caves visible from where he stood.

From what he remembered of the show, Naruto went to learn Senjutsu from the toads of Mt. Myoboku, and the one who taught him was the old toad Fukasaku. It wasn't the boss toad, Gamabunta, who taught him. So he was reasonably certain that the one who would teach him the sage arts of Senjutsu among the Snakes wasn't Manda.

With a shrug, Carl started making his way slowly to the cave closest to him. He didn't follow the scent trail for Manda because he felt like he could get answers just as easily from any snake around as he could get from the grumpy boss snake.

"Hello, the cave! Anyone home?" Carl called out once he arrived outside the cave. It would be rude to just enter someone's home, after all.

"So weird! Someone's at the door!" An immature voice called out from inside the cave.

"What? Someone's at the door? That's weird!" Another immature voice echoed the first.

"Do you two idiots always have to repeat each other, I'm so sick of it!" A third voice called out, followed by the sound of a bonk echoed twice.

"Ow! Why'd you do that, sis? That hurt!"

"That hurt, sis! Why'd you do that? Ow…"

Carl shook his head with a smirk on his face when he heard the sound of the bonk, which was probably a smack to the head, repeated twice more.

"Cause you keep saying the same thing over, just backwards! Stop it, it's irritating! Just because you're twins doesn't mean you have to repeat each other's sentences!"

"Well, at least they're speaking in complete sentences. Just imagine how irritating it would be if they kept switching back and forth mid-sentence." Carl called out, thinking of the year the twins spoke in their "twin-speak".

"Nooo! Don't give them ideas!" The voice that was the sister yelled out in despair.

"Thanks for the idea…"

"Mister, we'll give it a try…"

"It could be fun…"

"Though we don't know why."

"And now they're rhyming! What have you done? That's it, I'm out of here!" The sounds of slithering came closer and soon a snake appeared at the entrance of the cave. "What? You're a human!"

"A human at the door…"

"Wonder what he wants…"

"What's even more…"

"Uh…I think we need to practice it more…"

"Yeah, we need some more practice…uh…"

"Yeah, I'm Carl Hyuga, the new Snake summoner. Pleasure to meet you." Carl chuckled as he greeted the emerald green pit viper that had reared up in front of him. He stared into her shocked red eyes, red and white stripes of color that contrasted the predominant green running back from her head.

Two more green pit vipers that looked identical to each other soon appeared behind the first one. The first snake that appeared was about 5 meters long, while the twins were only about 3 meters.

"Hi, I am Mikor!" One of the twin snakes cheerfully called out.

"Rokim am I, Hi!" The other twin followed.

Their sister glanced at them in exasperation for a moment, before turning back to Carl and nodding a greeting.

"And I'm these two idiot's older sister, Dakir."

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you three." Carl smiled at the three, but got down to business. "I've just signed the Snake Contract, met a grumpy Manda, and came here to see if there was someone that could teach me Senjutsu. I was wondering if you knew the way and could direct me?" Carl ignored how the twins hissed in amusement at Manda being described as 'grumpy'.

"Well, it's strange that no one was there to greet you upon arrival." Dakir muttered to herself. She turned to the twins and gave them a stern look. "You two stay here while I take Carl Hyuga to the Ryuchi cave to talk to the White Snake Sage. You hear me? Don't leave and study your lessons!"

"Aww…" The twin snakes hissed in frustration in concert but reluctantly nodded. "Fine, sis. We'll stay here."

"Good." She nodded, then turned to slither away from the cave. "Come, follow me, Carl Hyuga. I'll take you to talk to the Elder."

Carl ran alongside Dakir as she moved very quickly towards a rocky outcropping that he hadn't paid much attention to. When they got closer, they made their way around the concealment of the rocks that blocked sight of a large cave.

Following along behind Dakir, Carl entered the large cave. Normally the transition from daylight to dark cave would blind someone, but his vision transitioned smoothly and immediately to the dark.

The cave was simply cavernous. He wasn't sure how the physics of a chakra laden world worked. Yet. Something to look into. But there had to be something there that prevented the cave from collapsing, because it looked like nearly the entire mountainside was hollow. He wondered what was holding it together, or if there was space jutsu happening.

He only quickly glanced around the enormous chambers that looked to have carvings on the wall, pictures and writing. Most of his attention was taken up by what was directly in front of him.

There was an enormous raised dais that held a pure white snake curled up on it. Carl couldn't be positive because the snake was all curled up, but judging by the snake's head it looked like it was even larger than Manda.

And it was smoking from a Huka.

Carl had flashes of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland floating in his head at the sight, but carefully didn't grin. Wouldn't do to leave a poor first impression.

"White Snake Sage, this here is Carl Hyuga. He says he's the new summoner for our Snake clan. He just showed up, so I brought him here." Dakir respectfully introduced him to the snake.

"Yes, little Mandy was just complaining about you, Carl." The enormous snake had a surprisingly pleasant female voice. "He was quite surprised you speak our tongue. Didn't even notice until after he returned. But he's off pouting about the fact you wouldn't feed him humans."

Carl chuckled a bit over the "Mandy" nickname she gave Manda. He could just imagine that the Big Bad Boss Summon Snake was pouting from the nickname, which wasn't fitting with his image.

"Yeah. I'm willing to provide a little meal of farm raised animals to encourage those snakes that work with me to give it their best effort. A reward and bribe for their efforts. But I'm not in the habit of feeding random members of my species to lazy snakes."

"Grabbing a bunch of random civilians who haven't done anything wrong would be despicable and a betrayal of my responsibilities. And going to the effort to procure 50 to 100 criminals would mean that summoning him to help would be more trouble than it's worth. I'm not going to accommodate Manda's peculiarities like that. I'd rather find some other Snakes who would actually be interested in working with me."

The White Snake Sage took a long draw on her huka while appearing to be in thought. Carl stood still, completely at ease with the silence while waiting on her response. He was amused that she seemed to manipulate chakra to control the huka without hands. Meanwhile, next to him Dakir quivered a bit in what seemed to be silent laughter. No love lost between her and Manda, maybe?

"It speaks well of you that you hold to your duties and obligations so well. I've told Mandy many times that he should drop Orochimaru, traitor to his own people, but he refuses to listen. Mandy feels he gets too many benefits out of the relationship to cut things off. As long as he never betrays the Snake clan, we won't do anything about it, but few among us will actually respond to Orochimaru's summons. It is, what it is."

And it was understandable to Carl. The Snake clan held no loyalty to Konoha or any other human group, aside from a beneficial relationship with their contracted summoners. So while they may think that Orochimaru has little honor, as long as he never attacked or betrayed the Contract, then they wouldn't do anything to him.

"Understandable." Carl nodded agreement with the White Snake Sage. "I came here today to build a relationship with the Snake clan towards the opportunity to learn Senjutsu and anything else you'd care to teach your new summoner. I realize we haven't known each other long, less than a day, but I'm willing to prove myself to you, if needed."

Carl was certainly not worried about doing some hard work to prove himself to the Snake clan in order to get the required teaching necessary to accomplish the scenario. And he had a good feeling about this White Snake Sage. Certainly a much better feeling than Manda had given him.

"Well, now. I think you'll be staying here for some time to learn our martial arts and Senjutsu. When I think you're ready, at any rate." The White Snake Sage spoke casually, as if to an acquaintance of many years. "For now, how about staying with young Dakir here and helping her with her chores and training with her?"

Carl turned to Dakir, to see what she thought of the idea. He didn't even need to ask the question. The look in her red eyes and the eager body language easily told the tale that she was excited about the opportunity. He turned back to the White Snake Sage to see a satisfied look in the White Snake Sage's eyes.

'She seems pleased that I took a moment to confirm with Dakir that she too wanted the proposed partnership, and didn't just jump on the offer like a person who was greedy for power would.' Carl thought in amusement. It was nice to work with smart beings.

"That sounds like a fine idea. So, what's on the agenda for today, Dakir?" Carl smiled at his new personal Snake summons partner.

"Ooh, we can have some fun, Carl. Come on, first I want to introduce you to my friends, then we can go back home and this afternoon mom and dad will be back…"

And Carl followed the happily chatting Dakir out of the cave to meet her friends, leaving behind a smiling giant white snake that seemed quite pleased with how things were going.

Jario was pretty bored today working gate duty. He was set up in the shade under an awning just inside the massive wooden double doors that was the entrance to Konoha. It was nearly lunch time, and no one had come or gone for hours.

There had been more traffic earlier in the morning. A genin team leaving on a C-rank mission that was escorting a trade caravan on their way to the Land of Rivers. A few groups of jonin on their way to fulfill A-rank missions, and a couple orphan refuges trying to get entrance to the ninja academy.

There were always a few orphans every month, showing up in the hopes they could gain some strength to change their destiny by joining the ninja force of a major village. They usually didn't get too far with that, since most of the time they only made their way over when they were already 12 or older.

Their academy graduates were already 12 when they started on the path of genin, and by that time they had been training most of their life already, having been started on their path by their families. Whether one was from an established ninja clan or civilian family, if they wanted to walk the path of the shinobi, they had to start young. Starting at the age of 12 was already 10 years too late. They would never catch up.

And it was hard to trust that the 12 year olds showing up at their gates weren't spies being planted by other villages attempting to infiltrate Konoha. Even if their background check was impeccable. Hell, most of the time having an impeccable background check was itself a red flag.

Jario scratched his cheek, boredly watching a beetle walking towards the table leg on the ground. Despite his indolent and uncaring body language, he still had his chakra senses occasionally stretching out to see if anyone was approaching the gate.

Which was why Jario was quite surprised to sense five signatures appear out of nowhere 150 hundred meters away on the road, just out of sight of the gate around a bend in the forest.

His sudden stiffening alerted the other gate guard, who also straightened up. They were about to have visitors.

A group of five figures walking along the road appeared. They were walking at civilian pace, but Jario could tell they weren't civilian weak. Not to mention that they were all around seven feet tall.

"Halt. What business do you have in Konoha?"

Jario watched as Sazan questioned the group.

"Greetings. My name is Goram. We are from a newly established trading group and wish to set up trade relations, perhaps a storefront, here in Konoha." The large male with long pointy ears and the slightly purple skin in front answered.

While Sazan was looking at their papers, Jario carefully inspected the group, especially noting the large bow on the back of their leader, and the various swords, halberds, and staves that the group was equipped with.

"Ah, yes. The world is a dangerous place, so we feel it is better to be armed to protect our trading interests." One of the females of the group, seeing Jario's inspections, explained.

"Makes sense." Jario nodded, a bit embarrassed that he had been so open in his information gathering.

"Well, everything seems in order. The recommendation of the Hyuga clan will go far in ensuring your success, I'm sure. But you'll still have to go through the procedures of meeting with the Hokage before you can purchase property and begin business here." Sazan carefully instructed.

"That's perfectly understandable." The large leader of the group smiled at the two guards while Jario sent the signal for an on duty chuunin to come and escort the group to the Hokage tower. It would also alert a team of jonin to shadow the group to stop them if they were up to something.

"So, what you think of them? All pretty big, right?" Once they had departed, Sazan easily sat back on his chair and asked Jario his opinion.

"Yeah, they were. But it's not like we haven't seen stranger ninja clans before." Jario said. "It's just strange, though." The sensor ninja carefully thought out his words. "They felt like they had plenty of energy, but it felt off, somehow. Like it was but wasn't chakra at the same time."

"Huh. Well, who knows what some ninja or samurai ancestor did in the past to make them that way. But as long as they aren't an enemy, it should be fine." Sazan didn't care one way or another, he was too busy thinking of the date he had later with the hot new chuunin, and wondering if he would get lucky.

"Yeah, guess you're right." Jario went back to watching the occasional beetle as it crawled across the ground in front of his awning while extending his senses out from the gate to pickup visitors, infiltrators, or attackers.

"…and everything looks in order. We here at Konoha look forward to doing business with your Silver Flight Trading Consortium." The third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, smiled as he finished signing the permits for the new trading partners that were recommended by the Hyuga clan. It looked like there would soon be a nice economic boost in Konoha with all the goods they would bring.

"Thank you, Hokage. We appreciate the expedited manner in which this was accomplished." Goram said with a smile as he took the papers.

A few minutes later, after the pleasantries were exchanged, the group of five draconic beings in their Night Elf forms were escorted by another chuunin to the office dealing with real estate. A few hours and tours of properties later, and they were exchanging the local currency for a nicely situated estate they would build a housing complex on, a warehouse, and a storefront property where they would start doing business in Konoha.

It would take some time to have everything ready, so for the time being they made their way to a high class inn that was Lord Carl's property.

"Man, that was boring!" June explosively shouted when they were in their room with silencing wards up. She threw herself onto the couch nearby, sprawled out without a care.

"I gotta say, I'm amazing you didn't explode before that, sis." Jeff chuckled as he seated himself more sedately nearby. "I've never seen you so still."

June stuck here tongue out at her hatching brother in response.

Goram, the one in charge of the mission chuckled at the typical interaction as he made his way over to the nearby table. He pulled out his tablet and began typing up a report for Lord Carl on the success of their mission.

He knew Lord Carl was in the summons realm at the moment, working on gaining the loyalty of the Snakes. But his blood clones were linked to him and knew everything he knew, so it was sufficient to pass on orders.

"I think that ninja at the gates was a sensor ninja." Hilda said from where she was set up, performing maintenance on her swords. Not that they really needed it, but it was a habit that always seemed to calm her when she was feeling antsy.

"Oh? What makes you say that?" Mortic, the final member of their group asked. Aside from Jeff as a Rogue replacing Carl's spot for the mission to begin making themselves an economic powerhouse in Konoha, it was the same five man team that Carl had dominated the PvP circuit in Azeroth.

"The way he was twitchy when he was looking us over tipped me off. We don't have the chakra coils yet that naturally mix up the mental and physical energies needed for chakra, even if we do have large amounts of both those kinds of energies present in our bodies. He must have felt that difference, which made him wonder." Hilda reported.

"Oh, I can't wait for this world to be over!" June moaned. "I can't believe that a simple wording error can make it so we don't automatically get chakra coils when we join Lord Carl in this world! You'd think that so called Jump-chan that set everything up was a lawyer or something, being overly concerned with rules and words!"

"You just want chakra so you can get ahold of that shadow clone technique, don't you?" Jeff teased his sister. "What are you going to do with it? Something naughty?"

June jumped up angrily and shot a weak spark of lighting at her brother.

"Like you're one to talk. I swear, if-"

"Stop!" Goram barked, causing the two shape shifted Dragons to pause mid word. "Remember why we're here. We can't afford for you two to break everything in your fight on Lord Carl's property and give us, give Lord Carl's Silver Flight Trading Consortium, a bad name with Konoha. So Jeff, stop provoking your sister. June, stop flying off the handle at his poor jokes. Got it?"

Two subdued Dragons muttered "yes" to his question.

"Goram?" A moment later Jeff got the attention of the older Dragonspawn.

"Yes?"

"I know I don't get paid per joke, but there was no reason to call my humor poor. I get subsidized from other work, after all." Jeff said.

A chorus of groans and a cushion being thrown at his head was his only response. Which was more than enough for Jeff, as he smirked at the lot of them in triumph, the reward of truly atrocious humor echoing in his ears.

The clanging of alarms gained Carl's immediately attention. Opening his eyes from his meditation, he glanced over at the suddenly restless form of Dakir.

Over the past few weeks he and his snake partner had been doing training and various chores, similar to D-rank missions from Konoha. Generally speaking, when Dakir wasn't being driven up a wall by her twin brothers, she was good at focusing on the tasks in front of her with enthusiasm and patience.

"What are those alarms?" Carl asked, having not heard the like so far.

"It indicates an enemy raid on the clan." Dakir spoke with a shiver.

"Is there anything we should be doing?" Carl activated his eyes and looked out over the landscape outside the cave for clues as to what was going on.

"No. We're not part of the defense force. We would just get in the way. Let's gather Mikor and Rokim, and hole up on the shelter." Dakir slithered off to gather her twin brothers.

The sibling's parents were out on patrol at the moment, so it was just the four of them. He had met the pair of parents briefly a couple weeks ago. They were both snakes about 70 meters long, and they were generally decent snakes. Unlike Manda, they weren't arrogant and selfish tosspots.

Carl followed along behind Dakir while keeping an eye on his surroundings, ignoring the chatter of the excitable twins. Just when they were about to go into the shelter further underground, he saw what the enemy was that was attacking.

A 45 meter long mongoose appeared in his sight, darting through the shadows as it made its way toward the cave systems that was home of the Snake clan.

Carl momentarily debated with himself what he should do. Technically, he was on the lowest rung of the totem pole in the Snake Clan. He wasn't expected to do much of anything. But he knew he had to gain their trust, and to do that he needed to show he was trustworthy.

His decision was made for him when he watched the mongoose digging its head into one of the caves. He could see the young snake inside cowering back, trying to avoid the sharp teeth and claws of the mongoose. The snake wasn't any older than Dakir. Carl narrowed his eyes in anger.

"Dakir, keep your brothers safe. I'll be back in a bit." Carl said before disappearing from the cave.

"Carl?" Dakir looked around, shocked that her partner Carl had disappeared just like that. "Just what kind of special abilities do you have?"

Carl reappeared in the air just above the mongoose. He activated his Tenseigan Chakra mode, and manipulated gravity to pull the enormous animal away from the cave his head was stuck in, and floated it up in front of him.

"Human!" The mongoose chittered angrily upon setting eyes on him. "Let me go this instant, or I will hunt you down! I will hunt down your family and make them pay!"

Carl could see that the mongoose in front of him really and truly meant it. His senses were telling him that the mongoose in front of him was a bitter and vindictive creature that liked to cause terror in his prey while he played with them.

"In that case, I have no reason to let you go."

Carl grabbed his hand in the air, and his sword Blue Orchid appeared in his hand. Shaping wind chakra into a vibrating blade that extended out from his sword, he slashed once, twice, and a third time.

Using his control of water to shape the blood that spurted out from the butchered mongoose so that it wouldn't land on him, Carl sent a mental command to his ship so that the blood and carcass that he had dismembered was teleported up. He was interested to see if he could create a summons clan in his Dinosaur land by eating it, or if it would simply create giant mongoose that weren't intelligent.

Spreading out his senses, and looking around with his eyes, Carl found a half dozen other mongoose that were running around on a raid, using hit and run tactics to avoid being ganged up on and overcome.

Carl frowned at the figures who were jumping around crazily. The rest of the attacking group didn't feel as nasty as the one he had killed, who took pleasure in other's pain. But they were still attacking his Snakes. So he would have to do something about it.

He apparated over to the nearest attacker and pointed his sword down. Lightning arced down faster than the mongoose could react. It struck the mongoose in the head, shorting out his ability to dodge the attacking snakes for just a moment.

A moment was all they needed; the surrounding snakes latched onto the mongoose with their mouths and tore him apart in several different directions. Carl lifted an eyebrow at the bloody and brutal scene. He then shrugged and teleported to the next attacker. It didn't really matter how they killed the attackers.

The third attacker was a bit bigger than the first two at 55 meters long. It didn't make any difference. Carl tilted himself down, accelerating at mach speeds as he slashed several times in the second it took to fly past him.

The mongoose's head fell off his body, spurting blood everywhere. His limbs then fell apart, dropping his body to the ground. The surrounding snakes hissed a cheer at the sight of the dead enemy.

Carl turned his attention to the next attacker, who was already retreating. Its bloody mouth and claws told the tale that it had already managed to kill some snakes, or at least seriously wound them. He wasn't going to let it get away to brag about its deeds.

Concentrating on the jutsu he wanted, Carl shaped his chakra and released the jutsu in a fraction of a second. The illusion he formed found its target, causing the mongoose to begin running around in circles instead of escaping like it wanted.

He watched as the snakes were now about to intercept it and gang up on it. They bit into the mongoose, wrapping up or twisting hard to tear it apart.

Looking around for any other attackers, Carl was surprised at how quickly they had escaped. He thought about tracking them down to finish them off, but put that thought aside for the moment. He wanted to learn about just what was going on before he plunged into hunting down the attackers.

He flew back over to the defenders that were celebrating a triumphant win.

Looking over the group, he didn't see any snakes that needed healing, so he made his way back to Dakir's cave, where he reunited with his snake partner.

"Carl? What did you do?" Dakir asked when he appeared.

"Yeah, Carl! What did you do?" Mikor piped up.

"Quiet!" Dakir hissed furiously at her siblings, getting them to shut up for a moment.

"I saw some attacking Mongoose and took care of them." Carl replied with a smile before tapping Dakir's head, sending a short memory of the attack to her.

Dakir's eyes grew wide as she saw what Carl was capable of.

"Ooh. You're going to have to teach me some of those techniques, Carl!" She enthusiastically bobbed her head up and down, staring at Carl like he had just become her idol.

"Sure. We'll get you trained up good and proper." Carl agreed.

With the attack over, the group of snakes and Carl wound down once more, returning to their rooms to sleep the rest of the night away.

In the morning, before he and Dakir left to resume their chores and activities, a snake showed up to pass on a message. He was a relatively short one, at only 20 meters long and a deep red color.

"Carl, it's good to meet you. I've heard good things. I'm Monordo. The White Snake Sage had me come by to request your presence this morning. You and Dakir, that is."

"Thanks for passing the message, Monordo." Carl replied.

He and Dakir arrived at the White Snake Sage's cave a short time later.

"Hello, White Snake Sage. I received your message that you wanted to see me?" Carl politely greeted her.

"Thank you for your efforts last night in protecting the Clan." The White Snake Sage began. "It reassures me that you are our summoner, since you are fierce in our defense. As such, I wish to begin your training in our martial arts and, when you prove ready, the Sage Arts of Senjutsu."

"I would be honored." Carl replied with a smile. It looks like things were on track for him with the Snakes.