Several weeks had passed since Naruto and Xanna's hostile takeover and things had more or less settled down. Or at least, that was their best estimate since the day on Erius was about twenty six hours and twenty minutes long…measuring time on a different planet was going to be a bitch.
Both he and Xanna were rather flummoxed as to how the Elemental Nations had a twenty four hour day just like Earth, which was something they hadn't considered up till now. In the end they wrote it off as a coincidence, because the idea that one world was some kind of weird offshoot of the other simply made no sense.
The human population of the planet had at first been terrified of them, fearing that their situation would worsen with the two scary looking horned people in charge, but much of that passed when they were told that they didn't have to work in the mines anymore.
Their population had always been small, just shy of a 100,000 when Zeus had first come to put them back into slavery under the Goa'uld and their culture hadn't been able to develop much due to the ban on reading and writing that all Goa'uld enforced. Despite being free for centuries, that edict had lingered long after the Goa'uld had abandoned Erius.
Zeus' arrival and subsequent ham handed changes had seen their population drop to a paltry 17,000 in the two hundred years that he'd been around. Forcing them to mine for naquadah, which they had absolutely no use for at their current level of development, utterly prevented any progress from being made and took manpower away from the much needed area of food production. In combination with poor hygiene this had caused far more death than all the direct killing that Zeus had done over the years.
The Jaffa had been somewhat more problematic. Their lives under Zeus had actually been fairly good, so there had been a some grumbling when they had been commanded to help the humans with any kind of manual labor they might need, such as building homes and difficult bits of farming. Naruto couldn't bring himself to feel any sympathy for their scuffed pride. The small Jaffa garrison on this planet had been left to make sure that the slaves continued mining and they had lived easy, if boring, lives on account of that.
Besides, it's not as if they had anything better to do and it would also help to fully integrate the humans and Jaffa so that they didn't consider themselves separate anymore. It's not as if the Jaffa were anything but a subspecies of Humanity anyway.
The other thing he had done in making sure they didn't get any stupid ideas about rebellion was to invite them to kill him and when they inevitably failed, he started teaching them how to fight worth a damn. Slowly but surely, they were all starting to see him as a warrior to be respected, more than just a god to be feared.
He hadn't been much impressed that most of their tactics seemed to consist of massed charges and reliance on overwhelming firepower. He wasn't sure if this was because there was no experienced Jaffa Master present to teach them better, or if this was fairly standard procedure for the Goa'uld.
He certainly wouldn't put it past them. 'Charge! Run them down!' sounded very dramatic, but it usually resulted in humiliating defeat unless there was no chance of defeat in the first place.
Or if the enemy was just as stupid with their tactics.
The only real incident that had occurred since their takeover had been due to the small priesthood that Zeus had used to peddle his religion. The priestesses of the Goa'uld were usually unwed Jaffa women in high standing who took care of the newly spawned Goa'uld who weren't yet ready for an implantation into a Jaffa. There was also the occasional human priest or priestess among the Jaffa females…these were humans who had fully bought into the whole 'Goa'uld divinity' thing and served the purposes of convincing others of the same, as well as helping the Jaffa priestesses safeguard the larval Goa'uld.
Naturally, they hadn't taken too well to the fact that he and Xanna were now in charge, or that Zeus and Hera were dead.
Flashback no Jutsu!
"Stand with me brothers and sisters! Stand with me and let us march against these pretenders so that our lord Zeus may rise again!" A human priest was saying, sticking to the age old tradition of being as loud as possible so as to seem more convincing.
With him stood a small number of Jaffa priestesses, wearing some very skimpy priestly garb that revealed the 'X' shaped opening of their stomach pouches where immature Goa'uld were held. They were standing in front of the temple that Zeus had ordered built long ago.
Before them stood a congregation of humans and Jaffa who believed what he was saying and actually wanted Zeus back despite the fact that their quality of life had actually improved quite a bit since the Goa'uld had been know, the gullible ones.
From nearby, Te'lok observed with a worried frown. Seeing Zeus get his head pulped had rather disabused him of the notion that his former master would be coming back, so he did not have any religious fervor to soothe his worry.
lord Naruto and Lady Xanna had proven themselves to be remarkably even tempered and merciful, but he wouldn't soon forget the cruel smirk on the horned man's face as he crushed the symbiote's skull between his fingers or their casual talk of keeping the Goa'uld as pets to see how long it took them to resort to cannibalism. That smirk was the reason why he was anxious of their reaction to this gathering.
They had already had him tell the priesthood to disband, but they wouldn't listen and he was hesitant to turn his weapon on them. Both because he didn't want to kill the Jaffa women(the human priest he didn't much care about, as the man was quite irritating) and because he was outnumbered.
"I could swear that we had you tell these people to disband." A rumbling voice said mildly, causing Te'lok to freeze in fright.
"They refuse to listen my lord, citing that you are impostors or demons and need to be driven out." Te'lok managed to say once he'd calmed down his racing heart.
"It's the horns isn't it?" Xanna asked flatly from Te'lok's other side, nearly giving him another heart attack.
"What?" The Jaffa asked, confused and somewhat frightened by her flat tone.
"They think we're demons because of the horns." She elaborated.
"Among other things yes."
"Figures." Naruto grumbled and turned towards the ranting human priest. "Hey, old guy!"
"It is the demons! Attack brothers!" The man cried. While not technically in charge of the priesthood, he did tend to be the loudest and he'd gotten the crowd fired up enough that they did as he said. Additionally, he'd been a member of Zeus' priesthood for a long time and had amassed quite a bit of favor with the Goa'uld due to his zealotry, in spite of the fact that Goa'uld tend to think of humans as inferior creatures. They tended to think of everyone but themselves as inferior creatures anyway.
Te'lok winced at the brutally one sided ass kicking that the attackers received and felt relieved that they were at least left alive. He doubted that they would still be breathing if the horned man was truly upset.
Naruto approached one of the Jaffa priestesses and addressed her. "Zeus isn't coming back, go home and think about what you want to do with your life."
"LIES, HE WI-" The ranting priest was cut off by a backhand that sent him spinning into the walls of the temple.
Naruto made a mental note to keep an eye on that one and have him killed if necessary. Nothing was more annoying than someone that had their verbal caps lock pressed all the time.
"My life is dedicated to the service of my lord Zeus. He will rise again and destroy you for your insolence." She said tremulously, clearly afraid of him but unwilling to back down.
Naruto bit his lip to keep from making a crack about was really going to rise in response to her skimpy outfit. Now was seriously not the time. He managed to restrain himself, barely.
He also saw that she wasn't going to be convinced by words alone, so he placed his hand over her pouch opening in preparation.
The priestess clenched her eyes shut, expecting those claws to be plunged into her pouch and kill the larval Goa'uld she carried, poisoning her and causing her to die in agony. Such a death was often given to traitors or those who greatly offended the gods and she had feared that it would happen to her for daring to stand against the newcomers, but she did not regret staying true to her faith.
Just as she had been praying to Zeus to see her soul safely to the other side, a feeling of warmth spread from her abdomen, suffusing her whole body.
Blinking in confusion, she saw that the horned man had already turned away and was now giving the outer supporting pillar of the temple a contemplating look.
Glancing down at her stomach, she let out a surprised gasp at the sight of her unblemished skin. No X shaped cut, no symbiote pouch and more distressingly, she couldn't feel the larval Goa'uld she carried anymore either.
Her head snapped back towards the temple when she heard the cracking of stone and watched in shock as Naruto tore it apart with his bare hands.
"Perhaps this will convince you that these worms are not gods." Xanna said from the other side and standing next to her was the container full of fluid that held the immature symbiotes who weren't yet ready for implantation into a Jaffa.
There were many cries of shock as black flames burst into life under it and a webwork of chains further out prevented any approach.
"If they are truly gods, they will escape and if they are not…..they will boil." The horned woman said indifferently and walked away.
Normally, Naruto would have objected to the killing of children, which these larval Goa'uld technically were, but their genetic memory precluded the chance of them being born innocent. Thanks to that, they inherited the combined evil and insanity of all their ancestors. In light of that, they were never innocent and Naruto had no compunction leaving them to be boiled alive.
While his wife had been setting up her little show, Naruto had repeated his process of healing away the symbiote pouches of the other three priestesses, not bothering to remove the Goa'uld first he'd been planning to merely dissolve them, but he'd found a much more useful thing to do with them.
After that he left as well, taking Te'lok with him and telling him that he'd found a way to let the Jaffa keep much of their enhanced abilities without the need for having a Goa'uld in their gut.
Flashback no Jutsu: Kai!
Naturally, all of those larval Goa'uld had boiled to death, even though a few stubborn souls had tried to save them.
Things had been more or less quiet since that day.
The annoyingly loud human priest had continued trying to get people to rebel until he'd slipped on the stairs in his home and broken his neck. A tragic accident to be sure.
More and more Jaffa were becoming convinced to agree to having the same thing done to them as had been done to the three priestesses, now that they were assured that they wouldn't be losing the good health and longevity that the Prim'tah granted them.
It had also silenced the dissidents who still believed that Zeus was a god and would one day return when he'd showed a few of the Jaffa how to use the kara kesh hand device since they now had naquadah in their blood.
They were quite clumsy with it, but the fact that they could use it put a lot of doubt in their minds over the supposed divinity of the Goa'uld.
Naruto personally doubted that the changes he'd made to their bodies by using the Goa'uld they'd once carried would transfer to their children, but it might happen. He wasn't a geneticist and had no idea whether their kids would be born Jaffa, human or whatever he'd just turned them into. All he'd basically done was mash the Goa'uld together with their own bodies without making changes to their genome. Not exactly a procedure one would expect to be survivable, but he was a god so fuck logic.
None of that was currently on Naruto's mind however, because he was fiddling with Zeus' hand device to kill time instead.
It was a bit of a tight fit on him, since his hands, fingers and forearms were a good deal larger, making the ribbon like golden wrapping a bit strained around his forearm, but it still fit. The bigger problem were the caps that were supposed to fit over the fingers. For one thing, he'd needed to put the claws away to even attempt getting them on and they still only barely fit.
The kara kesh was one of the few technologies of the Goa'uld that was at least passably impressive. It could throw out a wave of force, generate a personal energy shield and torturously slowly kill a single individual. For such a small thing it had quite a bit of utility, all without taking away the use of the left hand of its wearer.
Its most impressive feature however was the cognitive interface that allowed it to be activated mentally. It wasn't a particularly sophisticated one, responding more to willpower than actual thoughts, but it was impressive nonetheless.
Normally, the kara kesh required its user to have naquadah in their bloodstream to power it, but Naruto was easily capable of generating the energy to activate it, as well as forcing the device to respond to his will.
On a whim, he decided to use it and see what happened if he overpowered it.
The red-orange emitter jewel in the palm of the device glowed as it let out a wave of force far more powerful than it was designed for, after which it exploded. Had he been a normal man, such a thing might have cost him his hand, as it was he merely stared at the shattered jewel for a moment and then shrugged.
Next, he turned to look at the wall at which he'd aimed the device and grinned sheepishly. It was hardly the first wall that he or Xanna had knocked down during their redecorating of the palace, but it was the first accidental one.
"Didn't like that wall anyway." He muttered to himself. "It's like the baby version of a Shinra Tensei."
He was suddenly assaulted by the mental image of a Goa'uld going around saying 'Shinra Tensei!' and 'Know Pain!' while blasting people with this thing, making him wonder if there was some kind of relationship between being able to throw people through the air with waves of force fired from the palm and delusions of godhood. Also, the Goa'uld could make their hosts eyes glow, while Pain/Nagato had the Rinnegan.
Maybe the Rinnegan wielder had been a Goa'uld?
Shaking his head to clear it of the idiotic thought, Naruto muttered to himself again. "Too much dimension hopping."
Deciding to fiddle with something else, he reached for the hand held healing device, when the voice of his wife intruded upon his tinkering.
"Husband, what are you doing?"
"Fiddling."
"To what end? You know that this fledgling empire of ours doesn't have the technological base to do anything with those toys yet."
"Because I'm friggin bored!" He said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "The only thing we've really done in the past few weeks since boiling those Goa'uld babies alive was tell people to wash more thoroughly and I spend my mornings teaching sweaty men how to beat the crap out of each other better. I need to do something."
"Then how about you come do me while Akitsu does you?" Xanna suggested, nibbling lightly on his ear.
Naruto shivered and felt himself responding to the suggestion, but he still forced his mind back on track. "Your attempts at distracting me are…..100% effective, but I'm still feeling rather superfluous as a leader if I'm just redecorating the palace." He finished, waving at the wall he'd collapsed earlier.
He couldn't really bring himself to seriously call himself an Emperor at the moment, since they ruled the equivalent of a large town at the very best.
Xanna hummed and leaned her chin on his shoulder, staring down at the pieces of a dissembled Ma'tok plasma staff weapon. Before moving on to the kara kesh, Naruto had apparently been scrutinizing the power source of the staff, which was a small liquid naquadah energy cell. Very efficient, and it looked vaguely like glowing green Gatorade.
Xanna wouldn't have been surprised if her idiot husband had eventually decided to drink it 'just to see what happened'. Of course, nothing much would happen due to his godhood, but he'd have probably done it anyway.
Aside from the staff was also the healing device which he had been about to reach for and the overly elaborate device that Hera had worn wrapped around her stomach. It had a similar, though larger, jewel as the hand device, but with a very different purpose in mind.
A rather nasty thing that was, used for a quick and dirty transformation of a regular human into a Jaffa, by way of creating a symbiote pouch on the stomach. Such a Jaffa wouldn't have the same strength or endurance of a regular one, but over time the hormones and various chemicals that the Goa'uld would secrete from its skin would work to give that human a considerable physical boost as they were absorbed through the slimy walls of the symbiote pouch, all at the low, low price of their immune system, which would be supplanted by the symbiote's healing ability. Xanna had to wonder if any of the Jaffa ever thought about the fact that they owed their enhanced abilities to what was basically Goa'uld shit.
Probably not. That would require some education.
"People generally do not react well to sudden changes, especially those on which they have no influence. We needed to give them time to adapt to the fact that we will rule from now on, as well as to our appearance." She finally said.
"Yeah I know, but still-" He started to say, but was interrupted.
"However, I think that enough time has passed that we can begin directing progress."
"You mean teaching them to read and write?" Naruto asked.
"Indeed." She confirmed.
They had talked about this earlier and eventually decided with some reluctance that English would likely be the best choice, as it was the simplest language they knew. Both of them were rather fond of Japanese, but the Japanese alphabet was far too complex to be practical when there were simpler alternatives available. They could have started teaching Japanese with the English alphabet, but that would be silly and kind of miss the point of using Japanese in the first place.
Neither one of them even considered keeping the Goa'uld language around, it was just too stupid.
"We never did decide who we were going to teach so that they can pass it on though." Naruto pointed out.
"Indeed, but there was one group of people that we overlooked in our original discussion because they hadn't showed up yet." Xanna said with some smugness at his puzzled face.
Naruto scratched at his face and tried to think of what group of people they could have possibly overlooked. It wasn't as if there were many of them really. Since Zeus had forced most of the men into mining for naquadah, that left the women and children to work the farms and grow food. Any other pursuits had been abandoned due to the need for survival and it would take a little while before people started working more specialized crafts again.
Now that the men had returned home, they had taken up the farming again and with the way that he had forced food production to be a joint venture between Jaffa and humans, it looked as if there would be plenty enough food for everyone in the future.
"Not all of the women working the farms had husbands Naruto and few of those had farms of their own." Xanna hinted.
"Ah, I see." He said in realization. "The prostitutes."
Prostitution had been a fact of life pretty much everywhere that Naruto had ever been and it had been a fact of life throughout history as well. Since most societies were male dominated due to the need for hard labor, which included the one they'd just taken over, a certain number of single women inevitably found themselves in a position where they had no choice but to sell their bodies in exchange for money, or trade them for food and shelter if there was no monetary system in place.
17,000 people was plenty enough of a population that it produced women who had no one to help them and couldn't survive in any other way.
"There are none quite yet, but I do not doubt that prostitution will indeed appear soon." Xanna confirmed. "While you are teaching them to read and write as well as basic mathematics, I will be teaching the farmers better farming techniques, the current ones will be woefully inadequate once the population expands."
"Don't be too hard on them now." He snickered, imagining his wife losing patience with some skeptical farmer who thought he knew better, because that was how his daddy did it and his daddy's daddy and his daddy before him.
Though he supposed that would be 'mommy', since it had been the women working the fields for nearly two centuries now. Two centuries by the standards of Earth in any case, since they still had no idea how long a year on Erius was…..measuring time was going to be a bitch.
"That will depend on how quickly they start listening to me."
Naruto snickered some more and got off his chair with a stretch. "Well, I guess I'm going to find me some whores.".
He always did like prostitutes, even if he didn't like their profession.
"They're not prostitutes yet Naruto, just women who will soon have no other recourse."
"Close enough."
"And send some Jaffa to do it. You're an Emperor now, you have people for these kinds of things."
"Blasphemy! What kind of man doesn't even pick up his own whores?"
"Firstly, the kind that has other people to do it for him and secondly, do you really want to start rumors about how you collected a group of women, took them to the palace and ate them?"
"That sounds awesome!" Naruto exclaimed and then leered. "Maybe I really will-"
"Finish that far-too-obvious innuendo and you won't get to eat me or Akitsu for the next two days." Xanna cut him off, smirking.
"That's way too long!" He protested, aghast.
"Indeed it is, but I am willing to make this sacrifice if it keeps you at least semi-amusing." She said magnanimously.
"I so totally am amusing." Naruto sulked.
Xanna's eye twitched, knowing that he had just used the speech pattern one might expect to hear from a ditzy cheerleader because he knew it annoyed her. Honestly, she'd made one crack about how he looked like a dumb, blonde valley girl because of his hair and he takes it as an invitation to act like it occasionally.
"But really, ate them? Why would people think that?"
"Take a look at your teeth in a mirror and then consider the reality distorting powers of gossip."
"Good point." He conceded wryly. "Still not sure why I should care though."
Xanna suppressed an eyeroll at how obtuse he was being. It wasn't that she cared for anyone else's opinion either, but there was no need to cause problems when they could be so easily avoided.
"Because husband….." She whispered, leaning closer to him. "…..I'm telling you to."
With a growl, Naruto grabbed her and slammed her back first onto the table where his little tinkering projects were, sending them skittering to the floor.
"Weren't you going to 'pick up some whores'?" She purred into his ear but used her legs to pull him closer.
"Later." He growled so deeply as to be barely understandable, already naked and pushing inside her.
Xanna shivered in pleasure at his tone, having always liked how his unique Senjutsu had changed his voice. She let out a rumbling moan of her own and clenched her pelvic muscles hard enough to bend steel as he entered her fully.
Yes indeed, farmers and almost-prostitutes could wait.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the end, Naruto had been persuaded to send Te'lok and a few other Jaffa to around town to give anyone that seemed to be down on their luck an offer of employment.
Just as Xanna had predicted, the vast majority of these were indeed women. The current society being what it was, if you didn't have big enough muscles, then chances were that there wasn't going to be much for you to do. Before his arrival, they had been working on farms that didn't need them anymore and they had nobody else to either work for or take care of them. A few of them had even worked in the mines and had even less.
Mixed in with the women were a few men who had worked in the mines their entire lives and had no other skills, no family and absolutely nothing to do.
All in all a group numbering twenty five had showed up. While Naruto figured that there were more of them that had been too wary to step up, it was still a surprisingly small number. If nothing else, being oppressed by a Goa'uld got people to take care of each other, with these being the few exceptions.
Perhaps the most surprising addition to the group were the four priestesses who had been the first to have the whole 'mash up the Goa'uld with your body' thing done to them. From what he'd heard over the past weeks, they'd been floating about from one Jaffa household to another and basically living on charity because he and Xanna had put a stop to any silly tributes being given to the temple.
As opposed to the rather dirty and disheveled appearance of the others, the four of them looked much better, being clean and wearing the same skimpy priestess outfits as the last time he'd seen them.
"Well I certainly didn't expect to see you here." He commented, looking at the four Jaffa women. "What's your name and what can I do for you?"
The former priestess took a deep breath, kneeled and spoke. "I am Mara my lord and we are here to pledge our allegiance to you."
The past few weeks had been difficult for the four of them. Without the tributes given to the temple, they had nothing to live on and had been forced to rely on the generosity of their fellow Jaffa. At first, it hadn't been too difficult to find a few who still supported Zeus, but those numbers had dwindled by the day until none were left.
With the evidence mounting that Zeus would not be returning and that his godhood was not what he'd claimed it to be, they were forced to re-evaluate their beliefs. They couldn't even decry the newcomers as evil tyrants because they had only done things that helped the community. True, more than one warrior had grumbled over being forced to do manual labor because they felt that it diminished them somehow, but they did it anyway and it was starting to show. The city, Hesa as the humans called it, while still looking rather haphazard, was visibly improving.
Eventually, their convictions in the divinity of Zeus had been shaken and collapsed, leaving them adrift and without purpose, so they had come together and decided to convert over to these new gods. They looked terrifying, but they did seem to have good intentions and they didn't as of yet have any priests or priestesses of their own. Perhaps they could fulfill that role for them.
Seeing the four priestesses kneeling quickly got the humans present to do the same, long years of conditioning telling them that failure to do so would be met with a Jaffa guard smacking you across the knees from behind at the very least.
Naruto rolled his eyes and sighed in exasperation at all the kneeling. He would have been more impressed if they tried to slug him across the face, but he knew that wasn't likely to happen any time soon. "Don't do that. Seriously, get up, I didn't ask you to be here because I had the urge to see someone grovel."
Many confused glances were exchanged as the group got on their feet. Zeus had so far been the only authority figure that any of them had ever known and he'd always demanded that people kneel in his presence, so encountering someone that was apparently annoyed by it was more than a little confusing.
"I'll just get right to the point." Naruto said, wanting to avoid any more displays like that one and being far more comfortable when someone was trying to stab him. Why was he doing this Emperor thing again? Oh right, because he had to go and adopt a bunch of little cuties who just so happened to need it…..and because his wife had decided that they were going to do it. "I'm going to teach you all how to read and write."
"But it is forbidden!" One of the other priestesses protested instinctually.
"Not anymore it isn't." He replied flippantly. "In fact, I'm hoping to make it mandatory for everyone within a year."
Hopefully a year was at least a vaguely similarly long time on Erius as it was on Earth, otherwise he might have just said something very dumb.
"What about us my lord?" Mara asked.
"What about you?" Naruto asked back quizzically. "I'm not going to force you to learn if you don't want to, but keep in mind that eventually, I willrequire that everyone knows how to read and write and more besides."
"But will you not give us instructions on how to spread worship of you and Lady Xanna to the people?" She asked, just as puzzled as him.
"Don't be ridiculous." Naruto chuckled, finally understanding what the whole thing was about. "They can decide that for themselves."
"But what if they reject you or refuse to believe in your divinity?" Mara asked in shocked bafflement.
The humans present were just as shocked, albeit for slightly different reasons.
"They can believe that I'm a moose for all I care, it's not like it would change the truth." He shrugged.
"What is a moose?" She asked in puzzlement.
"A large, hairy, four legged, plant eating animal with very big antlers." He explained. "You don't have those on this planet?"
"Not that I know of my lord." The former priestess replied a bit numbly, unable to quite process the idea of a god that didn't care whether the people he ruled compared him to an animal. Under Zeus, such a thing would have been punished with a torturous execution.
"Crap, now I need to find a new horned animal." Naruto muttered to himself. And he'd gotten so fond of the moose comparison too.
"How about goats, are there goats?"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Some months had passed since the day that Naruto had taken up teaching a group of humans and four Jaffa women the basics of education. At least, that was his best guess. Being on another planet was playing merry hell with his sense of time and he just knew that it was going to keep doing that for a while.
Xanna found his preoccupation with that issue endlessly amusing. She of course had long since waved the whole thing off as unimportant, deeming herself far too old to be bothered about such things. He knew she was right, that it wasn't important, but it still bugged him.
Either way, since then he'd taught them the English alphabet, basic math, the metric system of measurement, basic scientific reasoning, as well as started them on the English language itself. They were picking things up fairly quickly, though he was cheating a bit with the language and sort of mentally 'massaging' it into them to speed it up. He really wanted to switch away from Goa'uld as soon as possible, not to mention that many of the humans spoke some derivative of Ancient Greek instead of Goa'uld.
Wouldn't it be convenient if the whole Universe spoke English?
Unsurprisingly, once it had gone around that his students were getting free meals, could use the extra large baths and could explore the palace if they really wanted to(something that his wife had not been too pleased about), his 'class' had expanded considerably. Enough that he'd knocked down some more walls to have a big enough room for them all.
He knew perfectly well that many of those coming over were doing it only for the perks, but it didn't matter since they were still learning and the more people he could educate now, the faster it would spread and the faster they could stop being so freaking primitive and therefore boring. There were even some Jaffa getting in on it, though not very many.
Still, he was intending to order that a school be built soon and making attendance mandatory for all children under a certain age. Mara and the other three former priestesses at least had the makings of decent teachers, being used to public speaking and the dissemination of information.
In a move that surprised him and caused him to feel the unfamiliar-but-very-unlikeable feeling of guilt, Akitsu had asked if he could teach her too, causing him to remember that she had only ever been taught the very basics of….anything really. So he'd set some more time aside to teach her too, or else had a clone teach the others while he taught her since she didn't like crowds. She was smart, picked things up fast and having lived in Japan during the year 2020 had caused her to pick up a lot of small bits that let her progress faster than the others.
Xanna sometimes joined him for Akitsu's lessons or outright took over. He'd once asked her if she'd like to take over teaching the others too sometimes, only to get a flat stare in return, as if she couldn't believe he'd just asked that. One of these days he was going to mellow her out enough that she was going to be willing to tolerate the presence of regular humans for longer than ten or twenty minutes.
But it would not be this day….and possibly not this century either.
He was starting to see why her previous two attempts at ruling had failed so spectacularly though. It was hard to rule over a population that you actively disliked, especially if you had a volcanically volatile temper.
Things were progressing as well as one might imagine, more and more people were becoming literate and they had already started making paper and writing utensils available. At the moment it was still just a feather of some bird and an ink bottle, but he couldn't very well start introducing them to ball point pens.
Well he could, but Xanna had firmly vetoed that idea, saying that she didn't want to skip ahead, so he had done it the old fashioned way after his wife had tossed him a book about how ink was produced in ancient civilizations, apparently having expected the issue.
Naruto got the distinct feeling that she saw the whole thing as a very long term game and wanted to limit 'cheating' (read: use of divine power to sidestep problems), to a minimum. She'd even told him that displays like the one with the boiling Goa'uld were to be avoided in the future and if they use their power, it was to be as subtle as possible…just enough to keep people from forgetting what they were.
She even had a very good argument that he actually agreed with, but he still didn't like it. Yes, the more they used their power to help people and make their lives easier, the more they would come to rely on that instead of doing anything for themselves. If they kept on doing everything for the people with their power, then they'd end up supporting the entire society, and it would collapse into shambles the moment they stopped.
A good, solid, indisputable argument. Naruto was still sure that she just didn't want her fun spoiled.
But that didn't make him any less restless and bored. The whole teaching thing had settled into a routine and he'd soon ask the three former priestesses if they could start taking students of their own.
The town of Hesa was starting to look a lot more respectable nowadays. With plenty of food, shelter, enough free time and their residual fear of him and Xanna having dissipated completely when 'the other shoe' never showed up, people did what came naturally.
They fucked like rabbits.
This of course led to there being a great many pregnant women around, since the concept of birth control didn't exist here, but with a base population of just over 17,000 it was going to take a long ass fucking time for that number to climb into the millions, much less the billions. Even longer since he'd changed the definition of 'adult woman' from 'when she gets her first period' to '18 years old'.
Or his best guess at 18 at any rate. Really, he'd just grabbed a girl that looked to be in her late teens and said 'kids stop being kids when they're as old as her'. Fortunately, he was a master at guessing women's ages just by looking at them.
Wouldn't it have been convenient if the whole Universe measured time the same way as Earth? Sure would save him a lot of head scratching.
All this and more went through his thoughts as he lay in bed with Xanna and Akitsu, idly drawing circles on their backs.
"If you are so bored, then take some Jaffa through the stargate to another Goa'uld controlled planet and abduct the human population." Xanna murmured languidly into his neck. "It would help to widen our rather limited gene pool at least. But take no more than five thousand, as we lack the food surplus to take in any more than that."
Even five thousand was a fairly generous estimate and they would likely have to cheat a bit by multiplying the food stores when people weren't looking.
Naruto stopped his circle drawing as he thought of the idea, getting a displeased mewl from Akitsu and a growl from Xanna, causing him to restart it. "That's a great idea. We get to speed up our population growth, the presence of multiple different languages is going to force people into switching over to English sooner and we put some variety into the gene pool as you said."
"Just make sure you don't leave any traces that the Goa'uld could use to track us back here, that would be annoying."
Naruto huffed a bit irritably at that. "It still seems kind of ridiculous that we're skulking around like this when we could effortlessly kill them all right now."
"You took your sweet time with your little sisters, I want us to take our sweet time with the building of our empire." She countered.
"Doesn't seem like quite the same thing." He grumbled. "This is going to take centuries."
"Do tell what other pressing business you have?"
He couldn't argue with that, even if he wanted to. There really was nothing else that he had to do, he was just being impatient and he missed having the Sekirei around. There was nothing else for it though, he didn't want to bring them out into a time where they wouldn't even have a modern toilet, much less the various amusements that they had gotten so used to on Earth. Not to mention that many of them were still quite hung up on finding their 'destined one' and the current selection was rather lacking.
Kusano was going to hate him so much when he kept scaring off her boyfriends(or girlfriends) because they weren't good enough. He could hardly wait.
A hand gently fondling his testicles distracted him from his glum thoughts of how long it was going to be before would be able to let the Sekirei out of temporal stasis and he looked down at Akitsu with a raised eyebrow.
"I thought you were tired?"
"Ah…." Her habitual pause before finishing her sentences was interrupted by a yawn. "…no."
"You little liar." Naruto chuckled.
Akitsu pouted a bit and then looked at him with a far too innocent puzzled look. "Master can't get it up?"
Xanna burst out laughing and rolled off him, laughing even harder when he gave her a sour look.
"Yeah yeah, laugh it up." He grumbled, but couldn't quite keep down a grin. It had been a good joke.
"Well husband, that sounds like a challenge to me or else I've never heard a challenge before." Xanna said with a final few chuckles.
"It's okay if you can't." Akitsu offered before he could respond, causing another bout of laughter to erupt from the horned woman on his other side.
"That cheek of yours is getting out of control." He commented before spinning the Ice Sekirei around and demonstrating that he had no problems like the ones she'd implied.
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It was just over two weeks after being falsely accused of impotence that Naruto had the right target picked out. He'd needed to slog through the disaster that the Goa'uld called an operating system on the Ha'tak mothership that Zeus had ever so generously donated to them and then prepare once he had a target picked out.
Don't get him wrong, he was seriously impressed with how idiot proof the thing was. He'd tried using an Apple made computer once and come to the conclusion that it was a fairly simple thing once you got the hang of it, but the Goa'uld computer put that to shame. All you needed was to know the language and a very basic understanding of how the tech functioned to work it.
The problem was that he wasn't trying to fly the ugly fucking thing, he was trying to get information out of it, which turned out to be a bit harder because it was disorganized as shit.
Not a lot harder admittedly, since the Goa'uld had apparently never heard of things such as 'passwords', 'firewalls', 'encryption' or anything else that might even remotely be called computer security. They just sort of assumed that nobody would ever try or even think of hacking their systems, so the only difficulty was actually finding the list of gate addresses and planetary descriptions and then picking the right one.
To be fair, other Goa'uld apparently didn't think of it, but Naruto resolved to make them bitterly regret that oversight once they finally started a war against them.
But that was far into the future, now it was time to launch a raiding party.
The planet in question was called Saral and it was provisionally ruled by the Goa'uld Banaded. Provisionally, because Banaded was an underling of Ra for all intents and purposes. He'd apparently tried to establish his own domain at some point, only to fail miserably and ended up asking the Supreme System Lord for protection.
Nowadays, he was technically an independent Planet Lord allied with Ra, but in practice he was just another underling.
"Alright men, you know the plan." Naruto spoke as he paced in front of the assembled Jaffa, a force of a mere sixty warriors. "This Banana guy isn't expecting us and he apparently hasn't been involved in any fighting for centuries, so we're going to just walk right in like a bunch of badasses and take over. Any questions?"
"What if they fire upon us immediately when we step through the gate my lord?" Te'lok stepped forward and asked, having gotten used to the fact that he could speak his mind over such concerns without fear of reprisal by now.
"Then we screw the plan and storm the walls." Naruto stated airily. "But don't worry, I don't expect anything of the sort to happen."
The Jaffa nodded and stepped back, most of his worries allayed. He was still worried about being cut down as soon as they stepped through the stargate, but Naruto seemed confident that it wouldn't happen.
Then again, Naruto was never anything less than confident, so it was hard to judge whether he was really certain of success or if he just didn't contemplate failure.
There was one other issue that his fellow Jaffa had asked him to raise with their new god though. "My lord, though your plan is quite cunning, we cannot help but feel that it is...dishonorable...to attack Banaded in such a manner."
"Honor is all well and good for regulating your personal behavior, but trying to apply honor to warfare is the domain of the stupid and the dead." Naruto stated firmly before continuing in a lighter tone of voice. "Since you aren't dead and you don't strike me as stupid, I'm sure you'll see the wisdom of using some subterfuge."
"Yes my lord." Te'lok agreed, though his voice was still somewhat dubious, as were the expressions of more than one of his fellow Jaffa. Cunning battlefield tactics and stratagems was one thing, this outright duplicity was quite another though and they couldn't help being leery of it.
Another Jaffa stepped forward before Te'lok could consider the issue much further, bringing forth another question. "My lord, what is a banana?"
"It's a delicious, curved yellow fruit wrapped in an easy to remove peel that turns yellow and starts developing brown spots when it ripens." Naruto lectured patiently. He had encouraged them to ask questions after all.
"And what is a...'bad ass'? Why would we walk into enemy territory like bad donkeys?"
Naruto pursed his lips at that one and resisted the urge to facepalm. Not a single banana or moose to be found, yet of course there were donkeys, horses, sheep, chickens, oxen and other such shit aplenty. He and Xanna were actually having to steal certain fruits from other dimensions for their smoothies or outright create them themselves, all the while resisting the urge to introduce foreign flora to Erius' ecosystem for the sake of convenience.
"It's a way of describing someone that is distinctly tough or powerful and has nothing at all to do with donkeys." He finally said, choosing to oversimplify something that they couldn't possibly understand without some exposure to late 20th or early 21st century Earth.
The Jaffa nodded, satisfied with the explanation. It wasn't the first time that their new leader had said something that made no sense whatsoever and they'd gotten used to that particular quirk. It made him hard to understand at times, but the martial arts training and combat drills he put them through had them regarding him with the respect they would have given to a venerable Jaffa Master by now, so a few quirks were easily dismissed eccentricates.
This latest plan to attack Saral being a perfect example of said eccentricates.
Usually, when a Goa'uld planned an attack, it was done with ships and armies and nobody would have been mad enough to attack a place like Saral, which was a trade planet deep in Ra's territory. No mothership could possibly hope to reach it undetected and no army of sufficient size could come through the stargate fast enough to overwhelm the defenses before Ra's ships arrived to reinforce the defenders and blast the invaders to dust from orbit.
Additionally, there was nothing on Saral that would be worth making such a risky assault.
But Naruto had no intention of being so obvious even if he could easily overwhelm the defenses all by himself. He could easily overwhelm the entire Goa'uld Hegemony all by himself for that matter, but Xanna had nixed that idea before it could even properly form. Besides, it wouldn't have helped much anyway, since his goal was to create a civilization for his newly adopted little sister where they could be safe and happy and the Galaxy was in general terms, a shithole.
Oh sure, there were planets out there that weren't Goa'uld dominated and fairly advanced, but he'd just be back to square one of needing to conquer them first and that would cause more problems than it would solve. The thought of simply trusting them to be decent and not try to exploit the Sekirei never even entered his mind.
So here he was, standing in front of sixty Jaffa who now had the spiral marking of the Uzumaki clan on their foreheads and he was going to be introduced as 'Uzu, the Great and Powerful' who had come to trade with Banaded.
Naruto had snickered quite heavily as he'd given them those instructions, remembering the super idiots from two dimensions ago and the cruel prank he'd played on them. Good times.
The Jaffa were quite confused by his mirth, as they thought that the name sounded rather impressive. Additionally, having the symbol of their god on their forehead was almost comfortingly familiar, even if it was only temporary. Yes, Naruto had already talked them through the idea that the Goa'uld branded their warriors like this to instill a sense of ownership, but at the end of the day it had been all they'd ever known and adjusting to new things took time.
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