Chapter 16: Ch16.Bandits? Really now.

Rei and Konan were going down the mountains, hand in hand. Rei was leisure while Konan was outright skipping. She didn't really care where they were as long as she was with Rei...

They were almost in the closest village to the mountain and finally reached a road frequented by merchants that want to avoid shinobi skirmishes.

Konan suddenly stopped skipping and was about to raise her free hand, her papers about to burst from her sleeve, but Rei squeezed the hand he held. Konan looked at him questioningly only to find him minutely shaking his head.

Shrugging they continued.

'Suddenly' a band of ten men jumped out of the bushes! They barely scrambled out of them with scratches all around their bodies and barely managed to 'surround' Rei and Konan in a very loose formation. They held... weapons. More like gardening tools really. Their clothes were torn and their expressions distraught as they panted. The men weren't even burly. More like starving. The leader even had to catch his breath for a few seconds before he looked ready to let out a sound again...

How... underwhelming.

Thought Rei as he was deadpanning at the men.

Tsk.

Thought Konan as she rolled her eyes, infusing her paper with futon chakra. Only one gesture from Rei and she was ready to slaughter these nuisances.

"Y-you! Su-surrender a-and we wi-will not har-harm you!"

"Har har, hardly." Rei dryly uttered.

The bandits looked at the twelve years old looking boy as if he was an idiot. He was being threatened by a bunch of scrawn-, ahem, powerful men and was openly mocking them?

"Yo-you should know wha-what's best fo-for you!" The leader shouted.

He was getting more and more uneasy about these two kids by the second. Normal kids would be already pissing themselves but these two looked at him as if he was insane! He chose them as a target because their clothes looked expensive! They looked wealthy! At worst he could probably ask for a ransom from some wealthy merchant who was most likely their father! But...

"Look, man," Rei slowly but purposefully puffed his chokuto into existence, making the men freeze. "we can do this your way, or... we can do it my way."

The 'bandits' froze. They have never seen a ninja in their life. Ninja's were rare! But they did hear about the might of theirs! After all, their country was ravaged by shinobi! The merchants sang the atrocities these, these... things did. Whole towns disappearing... Yes, shinobis were a scary existence for the common folk. Especially during a war.

"I am sorry!" The leader threw himself on his knees, straight into dogeza. "We didn't mean to shinobi-sa, no, shinobi-sama!"

"We didn't mean to!" The rest of the bandits quickly followed.

Rei almost did a double-take. He could only awkwardly look at snickering Konan.

"Look, man. If you wanna play a bandit, at least get the mannerism right, kay? Now, lead us to your village."

Rei rubbed his forehead in exasperation at these idiots while Konan slightly pouted that her paper shurikens won't be used. For now.

Rei and Konan quickly found themselves sitting in the kitchen of the village Elder who was 'coincidentally' the father of the idiot playing a bandit.

The bandit group was ten farmers who thought to make their lives better by stealing. They never thought about the consequences, really. They were currently in seiza as their spouses and parents were berating them while Rei only sat behind the table, his chin supported by his hands as his elbows were on the table. He happily watched, beaming every time one of these idiots was smacked.

Serves them right! Haha.

"What were you thinking, you, you, you!" With every 'you' the wife of the leader delivered a painful swat on his forehead with a roll of paper. The man was growing quite a bruise on his forehead.

"I am sorry dear!" He exclaimed with tears and snot streaming down his cheeks.

The woman looked as if her anger was sated after beating the man but... Rei was a petty person, too petty to let it go.

"You know, if it was any other shinobi you would be all dead." He exclaimed cheerfully, attracting attention as he started to explain his reasoning. "It was obvious they were not bandits but farmers from some village around. This is the only village around though. Hence, your actions could have cost this village its life." He told them with a fake-cheerful eye smile, still beaming at them.

The woman brokenly turned back to her husband, snarl on her face as she gripped the knife in her hand tighter.

Oh shit...

Rei excitedly thought as he used his chakra string to get the knife from the woman, making her turn to him.

"No butchering your husband. You can beat him senseless though." Rei eye smiled.

"With pleasure." She cracked her knuckles as the terrified man let out a manly high-pitched squeal!

Rei just watched in amusement as the idiot suffered a beating or two... or ten. After all, he was the mastermind and every man in his little group had a spouse… or mother… or father that wanted to tear him a new one.

Ah, what a fine way to spend an afternoon~! Nothing beats watching some well-deserved justified violence!

Rei grinned from ear to ear.

The village they were in was a very out of hand, peaceful if a bit too poor one. They didn't need the outer world much. They could make enough clothes, grow enough food, and even had some cattle. They were not affected by the war much except that more merchants were passing by their village in recent months. Which was a good thing.

The reason for 'banditry' was that their crops for this year were very, very poor. This happened at least once per decade so it was not a new situation. The men would just need to go to the town and find some work there for a few months in order to buy enough food for their household. Nothing new.

The problem was the war. The towns would not let them get work. They were barely able to function as it was. They could not take new workers. The village would starve. It was an apparent and very distinct possibility for the village and it was looming over their heads, getting closer by the day as their food supplies dwindled. But the villagers knew they indeed do have a way out. But...

The merchants who passed usually had enough money. And they more often than not looked for a companion on a cold night. If men could not make enough money, women could. That was what drove the man to try his hand on banditry. He just didn't want his wife to sell her body in order to ensure their daughter will have enough to eat.

It was clear the villagers were mostly resigned and one of them was rumored to even start offering his three daughters to the merchants for a night. Rei could believe it, the girls did not look happy when he saw them. Gloomy and resigned.

But... this was the reality of this world. And yet, here they were. The villagers sharing their food with him and Konan. He couldn't do anything but shake his head at the kindness of these people.

That's why he was now, in the middle of the night, standing with Konan on the edge of their field. They surprisingly grew potatoes! He and Konan connected their hands and focused on molding chakra.

Apparently one could use chakra without molding. They could grow a tree without molding. But if one adds molding, it becomes a Jutsu. Because molding gives the chakra a kind of a manual direction. It strengthens the effect exponentially and makes chakra possible to affect the world more.

For example, Hashirama had a lot more chakra than Rei and Konan together. But even he would be able to raise at most thirty trees with his chakra supply alone. But when one added molding and made it into Jutsu? He was suddenly able to raise forests and gigantic statues, capable of restraining a bijuu. That is why Jutsus were so revered. The growth of strength rose exponentially while the cost decreased even more. That was what determined the rank of a Jutsu. How much stronger it was comparable to its cost. Of course, higher rank needed higher destructibility.

Also, one can not spit the ocean like Hoshigaki Kisame with water chakra alone. Oh, Rei tried. But... after he produced only an ordinary spit over hundred times he gave up. He could only gather water from his surroundings and affect it with his water chakra. Like he and Konan did with the clouds.

But once one creates the chakra in his throat and MOLD it? It suddenly became possible. Same with fire. Same with earth. Same with any element. It was almost laughable and Rei understood that hand signs were nothing but pre-learned sets of molding. One of the Iwa-nin had a book about it but it made no sense to Rei until he realized that simple single thing about molding. Kids are taught hand signs and how to mold their chakra instinctively according to these signs in the academy. Some are better, some worse. But if one wanted to be shinobi he had to know how to mold his chakra. That's why some people could skip some hand signs. They just could mold the jutsu without them because they were very proficient in it.

That's what Rei and Konan wanted to do. But it was hard. Learning to mold their chakra without a crutch. But they preserved! By now, after an entire half-year of on and off of trying, they could still only instinctively mold chakra according to one hand sign. It was a long run, indeed.

They molded the chakra, slowly, kneaded it, and interwove it into their Jutsu. It took them thirty minutes of continuous molding and focusing but finally, they had what they wanted.

"Mokuton: Gift of Mother Nature." They quietly whispered together.

A small tree rose in front of them and as it reached 4 meters in height it stopped growing. Instantly tendrils of wood burst from the ground around it and started to enwrap the tree in a spiral-like motion, leaving not even a bit of the original tree visible. When they were done, it looked like a weird thick tree with a spiral-like bark.

This tree had enough density and the ability to channel nature energy. It did it in two ways. First, the outer shell strengthened itself with the energy. It would take at least B-ranked jutsu or chakra metal to penetrate the bark. Impossible for the villagers. It was a precaution from having the tree chopped down by some greedy schmuck. It also looked incredibly ordinary and was masked from the senses of a ninja. Unless it was a Senju or Sage in sage mode, both would have to be close, nobody would be able to realize what it was.

The inner tree though, that was a masterpiece they were able to do only thanks to a year of continuous use of Mokuton and learning about it. It gathered nature chakra and dispersed it into the ground, revitalizing it and enriching it. The fields around the tree would grow crops at an insane rate and it will be very healthy too. The harvest could be done once per two months all year long. Even the dreary weather or winter would not impede it. Ah, the wonders of chakra!

"Well. That done..."

Suddenly they heard leaves shuffling from the direction of the forest. They didn't need to be caught using Mokuton! They chose the night to not be, dammit! They quickly turned around and saw...