Chapter 120   - Ch120. Gear

Another three months passed and the third shinobi world war has just entered its third and final year. During these three months, Rei finally bonded with Mei and Ringo and since then, two hours of his day had to be sacrificed for the two needy girls. Thankfully, Mei respected Rei's reluctance to sleep with her before she reached fifteen years of age and Ringo respected Mei and waited for her to have the first turn.

It brought Konan and Tsunade an untold amount of amus.e.m.e.nt when they saw Rei trying to pry Mei away from him or when the two girls argued about inane things like which one of them has softer lips. Rei would say Konan was the winner hands down but he was too clever to open his mouth in front of his girls...

What brought amus.e.m.e.nt to Rei was Ringo's reaction when she found out that Tsuna was actually Tsunade, one of the Konoha sannin. Ringo flat-out fainted when grinning Tsunade with her hands balled into fists and put on her h.i.p.s cheekily told Ringo who exactly cured her disease.

The funniest moment though was when Rei showed Ringo the dimension. The poor woman could not properly breathe for five hours and had to crawl while being taunted by Tsunade and Konan as they dangled Rei's specially made dango, Ringo's favorite food and the only thing he was addicted as they found out in the past months, in front of her face on a string while she was creating a path by drooling onto the ground. Rei really had no idea if he should roll on the ground from laughter or stop his two cruel women. In the end, Mei decided for him when she brought popcorn.

Fun was nice and all but these past three months were also quite busy. Rei decided their new group, Yozora, needed a proper recognizable attire and as such, they started creating one, a very special one at that.

Rei was aware of the dangers and advantages of such a thing but after carefully weighing them, he still decided to get a proper 'uniform' so to speak. His main reason stemmed from Akatsuki itself.

Akatsuki black cloaks with red clouds... most would believe it was a stupid thing to wear them and from a certain point of view, they would be absolutely correct. Akatsuki was supposed to be a hidden organization of mercenaries. Their secret purpose was to collect the bijuu and yet every time they attacked a jinchuuriki, it was two dudes in black cloaks with red clouds. Very subtle indeed.

Not to mention that two S-rank nuke-nin grouping up was already quite suspicious and alarming but could still be somehow overlooked and written off as just teaming up for a hard mission. The bets are off the table the second these two ninjas start to wear a uniform of a sort, however. Especially if more S-rank nuke-nin are sighted wearing the same uniform as them. The whole point of being a secret organization becomes a moot point as a group of ten S-rank ninjas would be right in the striking zone of every village, which would mean they would be watched like hawks. And that's before they actually start to attack jinchuuriki. Rei had no idea how they got so far with bijuu collecting since their goal was so obvious. Either the hatred towards the jinchuuriki was really so great it drove the hidden villages near mad and not care about people collecting weapons of mass destruction, or the world itself was plot-forcing like mad for it to happen.

And yet, despite the reasons why he found the Akatsuki cloak a stupid tell-tale sign similar to Naruto's kill-me orange jacket, Rei decided to also make a uniform for Yozora. The reason was simple. In the beginning, it would not bring much to the table but later on, when their reputation spread, the uniform will become a symbol. The villages know not to f.u.c.k with Akatsuki because they are made out of S-rank ninjas. And they always wear their cloaks and are easy to spot.

Rei wanted such recognition for his own group as while stupid, it was also a very powerful weapon. After all, if he ever wanted someone to do a secret mission, all that would be needed was to take off the Yozora cloak.

The first piece of Yozora gear was a pitch-black cloak reaching the ankles with a black hood. Rei didn't care what people wore underneath it so the cloak was it. Now, Rei was quite protective of his girls so he grouped up with Konan and they got to enhancing these cloaks.

Firstly, they decided the hood will be always up during encounters with an enemy so Rei quickly added a see-through seal on the inner part of the hood. This way, the wearer's vision was not obstructed at all.

Secondly, he naturally added a seal to obstruct the vision of anyone trying to peek under the hood. Anyone who tries will see only a black void. This was Rei's measure to protect the identity of his girls. Sure, they said it was redundant but Rei wouldn't hear of it and glared at them until they relented.

And thirdly, Rei added some miscellaneous seals like warming seals that would keep the user warm if activated or cooling seals with the opposite function. There was also a durability seal drawn from the inner part of the cloak, affecting the outermost layer from being damaged. All those seals were self-sustaining by a minuscule amount of nature energy so they didn't need any chakra from the wearer. The cloak was already something the hidden villages would covet but Rei was not satisfied yet and that's where Konan came into the picture.

The cloak was made out of two layers of black, very comfortable but durable fabric mostly used for ANBU uniforms. Between these two layers sewn together, were slices of Konan paper tightly put one by one next to each other with minimal gaps between them. The ingenuity in this was the fact that Rei inscribed a sustaining seal on each of these slices and Konan hardened them the best she could with her Earth Release. This basically made the entire cloak a better armor than a full-plate from chakra metal despite being light and foldable as a feather since the paper was still, in fact, just paper. It would take some serious destructive power to get through the cloak which was yet another reason why Rei insisted on having a uniform. Akatsuki doesn't really utilize theirs well but Rei would be damned if he didn't make use of his fuinjutsu and the protective capabilities of Konan's Earth-hardening in Yozora's cloaks.

This came at a cost however as the entire cloak was a shining beacon in the senses of even the weakest chakra sensor which unfortunately made Rei forsake the idea of invisibility seal on the outer layer of the cloak and he instead drew a chakra masking seal which made it virtually invisible to the chakra sensors despite the high chakra output the cloak was giving out at any given moment due to the always active Earth-hardened slices of paper.

Rei might have created his own dimension but these cloaks... they were a masterpiece on their own.

The cloak was mostly made by Rei and Konan with Tsunade doing the sewing since she was, according to herself, free and had the greatest experience when it came to needlework. Well, as expected of the best medic... Sewing people and clothes mustn't be so different, right?

Ringo and Mei started their own project while the others worked on the cloak. Both were trying to create swords. Rei gave them tons of chakra metal to experiment and at first, he did so only to indulge them but when he saw their techniques rapidly improve, he even started debating the option of offering the two a change of occupation from ninja killer to ninja blacksmith.

Honestly, Rei had no idea why ninjas didn't use Jutsu for crafting. He was in one of the villages where the chakra weapons were made and yet, no ninja was helping in the process which took weeks for one blade. Here, Mei with her Lava Release and Ringo with her exceptional Lighting Release could create ten chakra blades per day and they were not even that skilled yet.

That was actually two months ago...

The next month, the two blacksmithing she-devils requested Rei's help. He couldn't give the blades full attention but when he had time, they experimented with putting seals on the blade which was frankly an annoying endeavor since every time they had a spar the seals would be damaged.

The solution appeared in the middle of the third month. It needed a special ink that could withstand chakra metal melting temperatures and Mei had to keep the forged swords in a melted state until Rei inscribed the seals before covering them in another layer of molten chakra metal alloy. The seals were inside of the sword... and finally, they didn't get damaged during the first spar.

The sword actually conducted electricity better, imitating Kiba Blades and Ringo was giddy at the future prospects but it was still a far cry from the actual Kiba Blades. Nevertheless, progress was progress.

Honestly? Rei was just glad that Ringo and Mei stopped arguing and found a mutual hobby.