Civilization Erosion

After he had marched, single-handedly, upon the Village of Snow, Jae remained there for some time, cleaning out the rabble which had festered in the improperly cared for village. Normally, he would not spend any real amount of time in a place so bland and uninteresting, but the snowy village had grown a bit on him in even the few days it took him to finally approach the place. Surely he would not remain for ever, or even for a few years, but he did spend a bit of time erasing the ninja presence from the village and turning the regular civilians against the idea of being ruled over by some super powered freakish elite.

When finally he had finished, nearly an entire year had passed and he'd slain some untold number of Yuki shinobi but, at the end of it all, the village was rather peaceful. The Land of Iron encompassed this place and positioned samurai to function as local police should another ninja threat ever return to attempt to reclaim the Snow Village, though after the mass slaughter, Jae suspected that the inhospitable place would be left well and truly alone.

News of the fall of Iwa had, by now, reached the man's ears as he began on another long sojourn to countries far off. He had never been this far east before and found that the climate had become much more temperate and that the air held an increasingly high amount of water the more he traveled. The destruction of an entire nation was, by now, nothing to him; whole civilizations could fall with the defeat of a singular powerful person or influential family and, besides, the ninja system was not one built for long term economic success. Additionally, he assumed that probably had something to do with his old acquaintance Voltaire, who he had not seen in quite some time but new had his eye upon the destruction of the foolish terrorist group.

Whirlpool was now in his site off the prow of the boat he had rented. He still went alone but had needed to enlist the help of a few sailors to get him from the mainland to the island and, once there, he got to work. In the course of freeing the population from the tyrannical grasp of the ninja who lorded over the place, he came upon a rather weak individual who resorted to mental trickery and illusions in place of actual combat. While aware of these issues, noticing some of the more subtle ones always caused a bit of trouble, though luckily nearly no one was subtle here. Still, he'd found himself stunned by some illusion only to hear a voice in his head tell him that what he was seeing was not true.

Here, he met Jaaku, a proud bird who could apparently communicate telepathically. There's little more to say about this other than this eagle was not generally impressed by the weakness of those who occupied his homeland and, for one reason or another, enjoyed Jae's moxie or whatever. Anyway, he went a traveling with the man after he had slaughtered the ninja of the island, once more freeing another minor nation and securing them as good friends to the mighty Iron Empire.

Ame was next on the list, a rainy village which, rumor had it, had become a protectorate or slave colony - details unclear - of the village of Mist. Perhaps that would make it more interesting to remove the power which dominated this land. He and Jaaku did not speak much, as was their own way, for they were quite different. The bird was proud and smart and serious while Jae was just short of raving. He took nothing seriously save for the thrill of combat and wreaked of that slow burning death of a whole world which has utterly given up on sanity or effort. He was simply a monster born of his place in the world.

Disappointingly, Ame had no defenses of note and nothing worth fighting against. Sure, a few ninja were scattered here and there, but the previous sacking of the village had failed to allow it time to recover and the new ruler, this alleged Amekage, had done nothing to alleviate this. If it were true that Kirigakure had taken over Ame, they had done nothing at all with the resources they had attained. Even Jae, after a conquest, gave the lands over to the local governments and named the place a city owned by Iron. Kiri, however, appeared to have just killed off the rulers and left. Certainly this was effective at destroying the village, but would not serve Kiri in any particular way. How... utterly stupid.

In any capacity, the de facto ruler was not here and the ruling houses of old had already been destroyed, which left nearly nothing for the shogun to do other than say that Iron was here to help restore order and offer protection from the madness of the very ninja system which had caused this tragedy.

The Land of Rain Forests was another uninteresting place, though at least something odd had occurred there. By the time he reached the tropical location, he found that nearly the entire village had been completely destroyed. Small rumors of this had drifted to him, but he thought nothing of them, only that this vast decimation would only prove easier for him; the more the ninja recklessly destroyed the world they built, the more simply Jae could convince them that the way of the samurai was obviously superior. The people of the greater nation of Rain Forests had attempted to pick up the pieces of their life but had no one to rule them. Jae fixed that problem by offering them a place within the new Empire that the Iron Nation had already built. They, like the minor nations before them, would simply be rolled into this conglomerate and would, of course, be allowed to select their own ruling families and forms of government below the overarching authority of Shimogakure, which would rule and protect them from the insane, destructive shinobi.

Five years. Five long years of marching and destruction had transpired. He had fought so many ninja, killed so many weak and proud families, and freed so many civilians from the control on ninja. Where before this passage of time, he had thought that the shinobi were simply stupid, but now he understood that they were perhaps completely evil. Moreover, they were chronically selfish to the peons that lived in and around their village They did not grow or make food, sew clothing, or store money. No, they simply fought and, more often than that, they simply postured with fake political power and weakness. He had removed the power of shinobi from the minor villages, given that power to the samurai, and built up those populations to a stable community which could rely upon the throne for protection.

All of this, done by a man who grew up as a slave and gladiator, who wanted nothing more than to challenge and collect the world's most powerful blades. The fact that he could bring some modicum of peace to these places and the ninja - the self-proclaimed harbingers of peace - could not, made him laugh. Even Jaaku found the absurd juxtaposition comical and a rarely heard laugh escaped from him. Now, he moved on, headed off for the greater lands of the Shinobi, unknowing that apparently Iron had simply... vanished?

Exit