As he listened to the responses from the students who had spoken up, Masao (the fatter, slower version thereof) nodded sagely as he tallied up the different types of responses. One of them, Haru by name, definitely seemed to be forming his own ideas about the ways of the world, and would bear further study later.
“You bring up a lot of good points, Santaru Haru-kun, especially about the exchange of liberty for security. I’ll cover more of these points later in the lecture, though, so keep paying attention,” he said to the unexpectedly philosophical boy. So far, most of the students had provided a short history of their origins, and the others were either too shy to speak up or remained silent for their own reasons.
“Thank you to those who responded. As you can see from even this small sampling of the senior academy class, there is a wide amount of variation in where you students come from and how you came to be in this precarious position. We have a scion of the founding clan of the village, a daughter of civilian workers in the village, a member of an ancient servant caste, and a pair of orphans who grew up outside of Kumogakure entirely.
“It is no accident that you all come from such varying backgrounds, and that despite many obstacles to your entry here, you made it anyway. Your presence here is a product of random chance as well as complex and deliberate design. The random chance aspect comes from the fact that the ability to wield chakra, although seemingly natural to those who spent their childhoods in this village, is actually vanishingly rare. Less than one in one hundred thousand children born in this country possess the genetic mutations required to generate an excess amount of biochemical energy that is traditionally called ‘chakra’. Keep in mind that all living beings generate ‘chakra’ – if they didn’t they’d be dead – but that it is your capability to generate a surplus of it that differentiates shinobi from non-shinobi. Even in shinobi clans like the Santaru or the Chigokai or the Inuzuka, who have spent centuries on selective breeding programs to ensure the highest probability of inheritance of chakra potential, there are still a fair number of children born who do not have the ability. Fairly or unfairly, those same children often perish here at the academy, or are artificially turned into chakra producers via forced mutation.
“The deliberate design aspect comes into play when you all end up at the shinobi academy. Have you ever noticed that besides the obvious cases of missing nin running amok, that there are NO ‘civilian shinobi’ who live outside of Kumogakure or work for institutions outside of Kumogakure? Every shinobi in this nation is beholden to the Raikage and his representatives. If you are not, then you are in trouble, and probably being hunted down by the ANBU or other agents of the village. This is because the role of this village is to act as a containment vessel for everyone with the power to generate excess chakra. In essence, the village is both a factory as well as a prison, and the only escape is either to attempt to break loose as a rogue, or perish.
“The Academy itself is therefore one of the most important parts of the village. The bakufuu, or military government of Lightning County, expends a great deal of money on making sure that anyone with the power to generate excess chakra is immediately sent here for training, as well as for containment. There is simply no room for what a common person might call a ‘bush mage’. So in the end, despite the vast differences in your origins, you ended up here as students because of forces far more powerful than yourselves,” he said, sipping from his flask again. Talking for extended periods of time made his mouth feel cottony, that was for sure.
“Most of you are about to become genin, the lowest rank of what is considered a true shinobi. And you will soon find that no matter what branch you work for, most of your tasks will be to fulfill the terms of some type of contract from outside the village, and that most of those contracts are actually work orders from the bakufuu itself.
“The bakufuu, headed by the Shogun of Lightning, is the governing body of Lightning Country, and the institution that all of us, from illiterate peasant to the highest rank of nobility, are expected to obey, at least in appearance. At the top is the Shogun, of course, and he is the absolute ruler of this country, with certain caveats which I will get into later. Immediately under the Shogun is typically the Chancellor, who is a combination of the Shogun’s closest advisor as well as his primary representative to the rest of the government. Under the Chancellor is a collection of ten other Daimyo, who together are called the ‘Council of Eleven Moons’ and are responsible for carrying out the Shogun’s wishes through the actions of their subordinates, who are primarily lower-ranked nobles who comprise the main body of central government, the ‘Council of Nobles’.
“Nobility are typically all land-owners who have direct ownership over the hundreds of provinces and territories that comprise our nation. They inherit their titles and ownership rights on a hereditary basis, and are expected to manage their own lands and the workers who live under their rule. They are in theory supposed to obey the dictates of the Shogun and the Council of Eleven Moons, but there is little to be actually done if they choose not to. It is virtually unheard of for the Shogun to order a direct military action against a recalcitrant noble, and if a group of them band together in opposition to an order from above, then this can create massive political instability. What usually keeps them in line are both the ambitions of their neighbors – disobeying the Shogun is an invitation for nearby nobles to attempt to take their lands by force under pretext of punishing insubordination – as well as the covert actions of shinobi such as yourselves.
“Now remember, I said it is unheard of for the Shogun to order direct military action against a noble, so why is he using shinobi? The answer is that shinobi are not actually part of the regular military of Lightning Country, like the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy. Rather, you are considered to be an irregular force, and not subject to the usual chain of command one might expect. You are not obligated to take orders from say, an Imperial Army officer. On the other hand, if that officer attempts to kill you in return, he is in no danger of reprimand. Therefore, shinobi rarely go on missions alongside recognized military forces. You will either act independently in support of the Army or Navy, or sometimes even in seeming opposition to them. Essentially, shinobi are a force that everyone can wipe their hands of and avoid responsibility for when something goes wrong and people die. And the truth is that shinobi can and do die on missions. Not just against other shinobi, but also against non-shinobi as well. Chakra is not by itself protection against a bolter or a sword or spear. Even if a shinobi can destroy an entire army in theory, that doesn’t mean he or she will be able to do any of that in practice.
“Interestingly enough, the Raikage is actually a member of the Council of Eleven Moons, and carries the noble rank of Daimyo in the bakufuu government hierarchy. His personal land-holding is essentially Kumogakure. It is the only non-hereditary position on that Council. It also means that the Raikage is not the most powerful man in the land, politically, but that the Shogun is. If the Shogun wished for undue concessions from Kumogakure, he would need but order it, and even Hayata Shin would have to comply.
“So thus, the question I have for all of you is this: There is enough military power in Kumogakure to overwhelm the entire Imperial Army and Navy at once, and if he wanted to, Hayata Shin could declare himself Shogun. So why doesn’t this happen? Why might this situation exist where a clearly superior military force must pay heed to a much weaker one, relatively?”
From visual appearance alone, the purported guest speaker was not impressive at all. For someone who shared essentially the same name with the village’s Main Branch Sennin (known for his power as well as the harsh discipline he visited upon his subordinates in the form of hairbrushings), this Masao was anything but puissant. He was a chubby, squat man with an unnaturally round face and a generic haircut, and his exhalations were accompanied by an ever-present, high-pitched wheeze that he had long ago stopped giving a damn about. Clad in a nasty-colored orange sweater with plaid pants, it was also clear that his fashion sense was clearly lacking. Then again, Cloud was a village where ninjas wore pastels, so that misstep could be forgiven.
