I bought a little bunny/The Seven Substitute Shinobi

[classicdrogn]

I'm sticking this here due to the tangential connection to Kirigakure, since this is where we've seen the most of Katsu, but I was originally musing about Konoha, how big it is, and how many non-mission ninja it needs seem to run all the city offices. This led its way by twists and turns to a connection to "the noble family of Konoha" and the thoguht that it might be BECAUSE of the Hyuuga that Konoha is so large, and has so many at-least-average nin to administrate, and furether has a population that produces enough exceptional nin to turn out an entire graduating academy class's quota of mission team genin who can take on the Sound Five (who whooped up on chuunin) less than a year later. Namely, Hyuuga can see the inner coils system of anyone they care to cast an eye over, and despite Rock Lee's counter-example it's the people with the best inner coils systems who are most suited to being ninja. So? So any Hyuuga who happens to be passing through a normal town or trade caravan or whatever, can do a quick check and see if there's anyone worthy recruiting, either as kids young enoguh to go directly to the academy or as adults worth encouraging to move to Konoha to be part of the gene pool. I'd imagine that being a ninja, even an admin-nin liike most non-clan-affiliated academy kids become, pays better than most other careers at that tech level, and as a bonus they can read, write, do arithmetic, and handle minor rowdiness even after getting to their thirties or fourties and retiriring as ninja. Of course, only a total idiot would press-gang anyone into it, but in the manpower crunch after Zabusa'a killing spree Mist might have tried it (which could explain how many Mist nukenin we've seen relative to other villiages, actually) and after the Sand/Sound war the Leaf could well have offered financial incentives to people willing to come to Konoha and put a child into the Academy - or even just send the kid.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows