She was a prostitute – she already slept with men for a living, why in the world should I care if two people decided that they didn't want to pay her or ask her for services she already diligently offered?
But, of course, the people around me believed that I cared – and that was the entire point.
I grinned.
It was all a matter of time.
________________
"To think, that I had actually once believed that my son was a spineless bookworm who couldn't hurt a fly!"
I sighed, pinching my nose, and not responding in lieu of the smell of human excreta.
"Do humans always shit themselves when they die?"
"Actually," Kitami Hiro, Gato's elite guard squad leader spoke up, "I think these ones shit themselves before they died."
Gato smirked. "Serves the cowards right. To think that they actually believed that they could get away with stealing from me? Bah!"
"I get the whole 'execute the traitors' thing, but was there any particular reason why you had me kill all of them?"
He shrugged. "I wanted to mold you into a man who could do what needed to be done in this shitty, dog-eat-dog world of ours. I never expected you to be so good at it though."
"They were tied up, crying, and begging about how they have wives or children. Even a dog could have dragged the sword across their necks – I don't see how that makes me good at killing."
Hiro dumped a body into the slowly growing pile. "You didn't hesitate. It was one thing to see you kill what you assumed to be rapists, and another thing to kill begging, sniveling men and women."
I coughed, as fire was set to the pile of bodies. "They weren't innocent people."
Hiro rose an eyebrow. "Because they stole from your father?"
The smell of burning meat hit my nostrils. "No."
I couldn't particularly tell them that one had been an abusive husband who got off on beating his wife into submission and watching her cry, and one woman had been a black widower who married and poisoned eight husbands and their children to get their inheritances. Probably because I wasn't supposed to know this, but I did, courtesy of my Observe skill, and it made it relatively easier to kill fictional characters, when you had their rap sheet of evil deeds and crimes right in front of you.
A shame that I only got 1EXP per head though. Still, 21EXP wasn't all that bad for a few minutes of work.
"Alright!" Gato clapped his hands. "I believe that covers most of what we can do for today. You did good work Junior, very good. I've got some business and expansion opportunities that'll be taking me to the Land of Earth next month. When that time comes, I'll be confident to leave Waterlily Town in your care."
Hiro glanced at him, and then back at me. "Gato-sama, most people would find it extremely odd to leave such responsibility to a child that is less than half a decade old."
Gato shrugged. "That's their bloody business. After what I've seen today, and taking into account Junior's book smarts – I trust him more than I do any of these so called managers."
"I'm still here you know."
"Of course," Gato then grinned at me, "I'll leave Hiro here with you. We have to make sure you're protected from those savages in the village, and also, we have to make sure that those damned foggers don't try anything funny with their war heating up down south."
I rose an eyebrow, turning to Hiro. "Foggers?"
"He means the shinobi from Kirigakure no Sato. That's a derogatory term by the way, I'd advise you not to say it near any of them if you like your head attached to your neck."
The image of particular man with a giant butcher knife flashed into my mind.
I rubbed my neck slowly. "Duly noted."
Gato snorted. "The foggers know better than to attack civilian cities under the Daimyo's control. Their little civil war would end the second they did that, as it doesn't matter who attacked, just that shinobi did – and like that, the Daimyo would remove all thier funding, send in his samurai and hire help from foreign villages if need be, and put every last one of them in the ground."
Huh. Well that explained that. I had always wondered why the Kage in villages humored the Daimyo, when they had super-ninja powers and the Daimyo were just plain old men. Turns out, ninja villages don't necessarily produce any consumables that can be sold, or at least, they don't produce it in enough quantity for them to be self-sufficient. The Daimyo was the one who provided major funds to the shinobi villages, and without them or the civilians who hired shinobi, well – their entire economy would collapse in days.
Of course, the Kiri civil war would never turn in that direction, because it was really Obito angsting out about how Kirigakure killed his childhood crush, and as such, he decided it would be justified to completely destroy the lives and homes of dozens of innocents who had nothing to do with any of it.
Wow. Sounds really pathetic when you think about it – and doubly more so when you realized that this guy who masterminded the closest thing to a genocide, eventually died a 'forgiven' and 'changed' man, redeemed, happy, and got to meet his childhood crush in the afterlife.
All those nameless extras that died at his machinations? Well, they don't matter, he's forgiven and happy, after creating dozens of widowers, widows and orphans.
Total. Bullshit.
Alright, it seemed that I was going to have to interfere in the Bloodline Purges. Even if I couldn't end it completely, I was certainly sure I could manage to mitigate some of the damages. Which led me to staring back at my status screen.
Name: Gato Junior
HP: 100/100
CHK: 10/10
Level: 2
Age: 4
Rank: Civilian
Title: Little Cutthroat
EXP: 2521/3000
SPECIAL
Strength: 4 (-2) [E– Rank]
Perseverance: 6 (-2) [E– Rank]
Endurance: 6 (-2) [E– Rank]
Charisma: 2 (+20) [D– Rank]
Intelligence: 4 (+20) [D– Rank]
Agility: 4 (-2) [E– Rank]
Luck: 0 [F Rank]
Status
Buffs:
N/A
Debuffs:
(Malnourished: -2 penalty to Strength, Perseverance and Endurance)
Foils:
(Strong Civilian Heritage: Possesses less Chakra than the average human, 60% harder to increase Chakra reserves)
(Son of the Monster: –50% Reputation Gains with Civilians.)
(Machiavellian Principle: –50% Reputation Gains with Honorable or Good Characters, +50% Reputation Gains with Amoral or Evil Characters)
Boons:
(Arithmetic Prodigy: Grants +20 to Intelligence)
(Utilitarian Principle: Grants +20 to Charisma)
(Size Matters: Grants Perfect Chakra Control if Chakra reserves are less than or equal to available Health Points.)
Bio
Gato Junior, or Gat, or Junior, is the son of the prominent, but often amoral Business Tycoon Gato, and the sole heir to the Gato Shipping Conglomerate. Possessing a brilliant mind, a flair to be overly dramatic and pointlessly deep, he believes himself to be a genuine psychopath who will take over the world, enslave its women and become a God-Emperor.
All at once, I paused.
Wait, why was I going to try and stop the Bloodline Purges? Weren't these just fictional characters? 'Fake' people in an equally 'fake' world? What did it matter that hundreds of random nobodies died? How did it affect me?
"Come on, let's head home. We have big things to plan for Junior, lots of big things."
I shook my head, ignoring the whim as it had come. There was no need for me to do anything that would interfere in that. I saw no need for me to bother risking my life, as I was, four years old, all in the name of the lives of a bunch of nobodies.
Maybe when I grew older, but then again, maybe not.
For now, I'd bide my time. I'd think and play smart, rather than acting like those traditional gamers who wanted to rule the world with their fists. No, I'd be the man who conquered the world with nothing more than pen and paper.
I'd win this blasted game – or I'd die trying