"Come on, Kankuro, put some spirit into it!" Ren smugly exclaimed his encouragement while standing straight in front of the sitting puppeteer, his hands behind his back in a scholarly pose he had seen so often in all these bullshit cultivation stories from his past life. "Make your master proud!"
His jaw hurt from how much he was suppressing his laughter.
"Shut up, you bastard!" Kankuro shouted after his focus wavered, and for the tenth time in a row, the technique he was trying to hold failed as a translucent, barely visible dome of air above him dispersed.
Ren grinned at him, making him scowl.
"You are doing great!" He gave the boy a double thumbs-up gesture.
"I'd be doing much better without your guidance." Kankuro quietly mumbled to himself in irritation. "Why the hell am I even doing this?"
Unfortunately for him, sound was transmitted through vibrations in the air, and ever since the ambush by Kumo and Akatsuki, Ren decided to put more effort into training to sense things through the air. He heard him well and decided to reply.
"Because I paid for a mission and chose you as the man for the job, my adorably irritable, catsuit-wearing, doll-loving padawan."
Kankuro took a deep breath, trying to ignore the asshole who was making his afternoon a hell on earth for his own kicks and giggles.
"If I knew what a pain in the ass this would be, I'd have refused the mission." He muttered, and still sitting with his legs crossed underneath him, he put his hands together again and tried to focus on the new technique Ren wanted him to learn.
"But then you wouldn't have the money for the materials for that new puppet part you were daydreaming about today." Ren shrugged. Frankly, he didn't need Kankuro for this part of his plan. But the boy was practically bemoaning his fate and the lack of his funds, irritating Temari somewhat fiercely during breakfast while begging her to lend him some money.
Temari had the overall control of the funds from their father's account, and from what Ren knew, she and her siblings had agreed to set it up so that each of them would be getting a generous monthly stipend for whatever they could need.
Except, Kankuro liked to blow through his money within the first ten days of the month, trying to build some new puppet part or hidden weapon or buy new poison or new seal... He never had issues with spending his money.
So, as a kind brother-in-law, Ren decided to offer Kankuro a mission. The poor sod jumped on the offer, not knowing what he was getting into.
"Let's just get this over with." Grumbling, Kankuro let out a breath and closed his eyes. Shortly after, his chakra seeped out of his body, flowing into the air above him as it slowly suffused itself into the air and created the same translucent, barely visible dome covering everything in a five-meter radius around the boy.
A bead of sweat appeared on Kankuro's brow as his eyebrows scrunched from intense focus, but it lasted only for a moment until the dome stabilized and Kankuro's expression eased up.
Taking a deep breath, Kankuro's hands slowly released the hand seal they were holding, and he carefully brought them back into his lap before he opened his eyes, his expression morphing into a triumphant one. "How is that!? I've got it!" He asked with restrained giddiness in his voice, grinning cockily at Ren.
Ren noncommittally hummed, and a small ball appeared in his hand with a small puff of smoke before he half-heartedly lobbed it at Kankuro. It nailed him in the forehead, making his head snap back a bit as it bounced off and puffed out of existence.
"Still not good enough." Ren informed Kankuro as the dome above him once again cracked and shattered alongside his focus before completely dissipating.
"Sister-fucking son of a b-" Almost toppling back, Kankuro vehemently cussed at Ren, but when he saw the ball reappear in Ren's hand as he raised it in a silent threat, Kankuro stopped in his tracks, only giving his tormentor a stubborn, defiant look as he scowled some more.
"Again." Ren easily commanded as his lips twitched in amusement. "Your focus is still not good enough."
At least, the boy had already realized after the ten previous tries that arguing would not help him and silently got to casting the technique again.
To be honest, besides his personal amusement, Ren wasn't screwing with Kankuro for nothing. He needed him to learn this properly. Well enough that he could do it while half-asleep, so he could teach other ninjas how to do it, too.
This was the next step in Ren's plan for Sunagakure. He invested the first eleven million Ryo he had received from Suna for his seals this month, and commissioned several missions from the village.
First, he needed a ninja who would learn a technique from him. That's what was happening right now. Then, that ninja was supposed to teach three other ninjas.
And these three other ninjas would get a mission to teach another three ninjas each. And those would then go and repeat the process with yet another three ninjas, who would do the same.
Ren was basically doing pyramid-scheme-style training here. The only effort he would need to put into having half of Sunagakure learn this technique was to teach it to Kankuro for a day. Well, that and the eleven million he had to pay Suna for these missions, but money was kind of useless to him in Suna right now anyway.
Without Ebizo's help, Ren would have never been able to push through his requested missions, but once he explained to the man his plan, or rather, this step of his plan, not that the old man knew that, Ebizo was happy to help despite the paperwork it would generate. Poor Temari was unwillingly conscripted as a paper pusher by Ebizo because of that. But, eh, she could consider it a training for her future Kazekage role.
Ren's idea was simple, yet it was also something that many ninjas would be too proud to do. Fortunately for him, Suna ninjas were not in any position to complain. They would simply be happy to get a paycheck at the end of the month as it currently stood.
Suna's protection missions were flat-out not earning enough money for the village. Hence, the solution was quite simple. They needed to diversify their services.
The Land of Wind was a country built on internal trade. It was well-known for its countless caravans that went between cities and villages on a near-constant basis, trading anything and everything from spices, rare metals, food, and even people.
But the most important thing when it came to caravans was that with a lot of trade, there were bandits. Which should mean work for ninjas, right?
Well, no.
Unfortunately, that's not how things worked in this land. The ecosystem was simply different.
Unlike literally anywhere else, in this desert country, even the freaking bandits depended on the caravans, and that completely changed the game.
The bandits here couldn't exactly go into a forest or a mountain and hunt themselves some game to feed their group. Not in the desert. So, usually, they stopped a caravan, asked for a toll to be paid, and the caravan just... did that. The bandits asked for food, water, and cheap goods they could use for their survival, and to make a bit of profit most of the time anyway, leaving the more lucrative merchandise in the caravans alone.
There was an unspoken accord between them and the merchants. There wasn't much plundering or outright destroying the caravans because the bandits recognized that doing so was the easiest way to irritate somebody important and get ninjas hired to hunt them down. After all, trade was too vital for survival in this country where many settlements depended on these caravans bringing them food and other necessities they could not get in any other way.
This, however, meant that many merchants did not feel pressed to hire ninja guards. Why would they, when the bandits just asked for a reasonable toll most of the time? If the toll cost them less than hiring a ninja team, there was no reason to pay more, no?
It wasn't as if they had to pay too many tolls along the way, either. The bandit groups usually fought among themselves for lucrative spots and cleared up such problems before the merchants lost their patience and decided to hire ninjas.
In the end, this created an interesting situation where there wasn't much business to be had for Suna when it came to protecting the merchants, despite their country being known for unceasing trade and literally infested by bandit groups.
Of course, there always were merchants feuding against each other who hired ninja escorts as a precaution against their competition. Or nobles who wanted to feel safe during their travels. Or other circumstances where ninja guards could be hired. And these held Suna afloat financially.
But in other countries, the threat of bandits forced pretty much every merchant to hire a protection detail, even if it was only a few genins. The smart bandits never attacked a merchant protected by ninjas, which brought a massive amount of business to any other hidden village. It was kind of why ninjas did not tend to kill bandit groups they encountered unless they were provoked first.
Suna did not have that. But what Suna had was the heat of the desert.
And that was where Ren's Wind Release: Dome Technique came in. It created a protective dome of wind. A weak one. It was only a C-rank technique that even people without Wind Affinity could easily learn. And the protection it offered reflected that. A B-rank jutsu would be at best only slowed down by it, and it wouldn't even be an obstacle against an A-rank one.
But the user could channel the heat inside the dome. By itself? Anywhere else? That was a useless feature. Here? In the desert of the Land of Wind? It was a priceless treasure.
Traveling through the desert was not a pleasant affair. The days were hot, and the nights were cold. The really rich merchants usually had several attendants whose job was to fan them during the journey to combat the heat. And during the night, these same attendants were there for sex, to combat the cold. All the while, everybody reeked of sweat and other things because a bath was just a distant dream.
The Wind Release: Dome Technique could counter the heat. It could make travel for anybody within its radius a pleasant thing, no matter how hot it was outside. Ren decided that if the merchants won't hire Suna ninjas for the protection they can offer them, then they will hire them to make their travels actually enjoyable. Plus, less heat meant less sweat, which meant way less smell. What was there not to like?
All that heat the technique's user was managing could also be channeled into a Heat Storage Seal Ren had made. Once that seal was charged, it could work like a portable heater for the cold nights until the heat within it was depleted.
A ninja could buy empty ones from him. It was no big deal. He or his clones could make one of these in five seconds. He could easily supply the entire demand for these in Sunagakure.
The user could then charge them during the mission and sell them to their employer or some other merchant to make additional profit. Hell, the merchants could sell empty ones back to ninjas for a small token price, too. Rinse and repeat, and you have a repeatable side-business.
All in all, Ren felt very proud of this scheme of his. It would bring more money to Suna, especially its average ninjas. And with a richer populace, more merchants would be attracted to come and do business with Suna.
With more merchants, cash would flow, and maybe, just maybe, Ren would actually get some investment opportunities for all the money he was about to receive from Sunagakure while also revitalizing the village as quickly as possible.
And who will the Suna ninja have to thank for the sudden upturn in their fortunes? Who would be the guy who ensured the Wind Release: Done Technique would be spread, while also making sure those who learned it would know who came up with it? Who would be the guy selling them the heat storage seals?
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
As far as Ren was concerned, it was eleven million well spent.
"Come on, Kankuro! Put some more backbone into it!"