[Third Person POV]
After nearly a month of work, Hajime had finally finished Konoha Academy, or as he planned to call it, the Kage Tower, since that's all it was without students. Plus, it sounded cooler.
While he had finished clearing the area for buildings two weeks ago, he'd spent most of the last two weeks working on things like electricity, Wi-Fi, plumbing, and all that other annoying stuff, which he'd need maintenance people for later.
With his base of operations finally in a usable state, Hajime activated the wards around the place.
A shimmer of magic rippled out from the main office, spreading across the mountaintop until reaching the boundary's edge and circling the border. Less than a minute later, one of the best ward defenses possible flared to life on an island with magic that could barely sustain it.
Honestly, Hajime was shocked that the magical defenses, which ran on ambient magic, were getting enough energy to work.
Granted, they weren't at their best, but they still managed to work.
With the barrier up, everything was ready. Hajime had sent clones over the last week to buy several sets of furniture.
Tables, chairs, beds, enough to furnish several small apartments.
One thing about the Kage Tower is that it has dorms. The Anbu had to sleep somewhere after all, and they needed to be easily accessible in case of an emergency.
The dorms were hidden in quite a unique way, that without Jiraiya's knowledge, Hajime might never have found them.
In the training halls, several high-up windows led to a courtyard, windows only accessible via wall-walking.
It wasn't that it was impossible to find, but that it was unlikely anyone would ever look at it.
Aside from Anbu and top-tier shinobi like Jiraiya, nobody was climbing on the outside of the building, so nobody was seeing it from the outside. Even the view from Hokage Rock was obstructed by trees and towers.
As for stumbling across it in the training room, why would you?
Most shinobi would train in one of the many training grounds scattered around the village, leaving just genin and academy students to go there, people who don't know wall walking and are too weak to jump high enough to see through the windows.
Besides, even if you did see the courtyard, so what?
It wasn't clear what the courtyard was for, and you rarely saw someone in it, since most Anbu members were usually busy training or on missions.
That said, Hajime was planning to renovate the place so that the dorms would be accessible to everyone. There was a normal door, but it was hidden and out of the way.
They weren't shinobi, so hiding wasn't a priority.
With all the furniture he bought, Hajime planned to give his workers a basic dorm setup that they could customize as they wished.
If any of them planned on getting their own place, he'd hire someone to build it on the flattened mountaintop.
It would be isolated, separate from any stores or restaurants, which was why Hajime planned to connect it to the city through a teleportation system. Hajime wasn't sure which city yet, but he knew it wouldn't be Kyoto or Tokyo.
They were too large and heavily monitored for him to add such things.
With the vanishing cabinets, he'd still have access, just more personal.
-----
A few hours later, and though there was still work that needed to be done, Hajime was mostly finished with setting up his base.
Having placed one of the cabinets in the head office and sent the other one back to his home, Hajime entered the cabinet, teleporting past Kyoto's wards without detection.
He gathered Tsubaki, Akeno, his summons, and the familiars and brought them through the vanishing cabinet.
"Whoa!""Amazing!""Is this place what I think it is?"
Despite having redecorated most of the building, he had ignored changing his office for now, leaving several pictures hanging on the wall.
Hajime took a few minutes to explain before leaving everyone to do their own thing.
Tsubaki, an avid fan of the show, realized which building she was in, and once it was confirmed, she immediately went off to explore with Kimiko.
Akeno and Jenny left together. Though Hajime was slightly concerned with that pairing, he also wasn't going to stop anyone from interacting. Everyone here was traumatized in some way, and connecting with others was a good way to cope with what happened.
Pam was exploring with Welf, with two of them somewhat connected by their past losses.
Blake explored alone, still trying to get used to this new world. A few days ago, he went to see how she was feeling. Though she was doing fine, it was clear she was closing herself off.
Blake is someone who runs from her issues when things get too intense.
When she was upset that her parents weren't supporting her more violent actions in the White Fang, she ran away with Adam.
When she realized Adam didn't care about Faunus equality and just wanted revenge on humanity, she ran to Beacon.
When Adam cut off Yang's arm during the fall of Beacon, she ran back home, where she could feel safer.
There was even a connection between Blake's tendency to run and her semblance, Shadow, which was only usable when she was trying to escape an attack.
Monet stayed in the office with Hajime, waiting for any orders he had.
"Hajime-sama, is there anything you need me to do?"
"Yes. Look for a mountain nearby that you can train on. Your logia should have a similar potential to Aokiji and Akainu's logias. The two of them changed the very weather of Punk Hazard, so you should be capable of something similar.
We won't practice freezing an island for now, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try making new, powerful moves, and it's best you have room to practice without worrying about collateral."
Monet nodded seriously before jumping out the window and flying off to fulfill Hajime's request.
Now, alone, Hajime opened a door in the office that led to a staircase going below the building.
As he descended further into the depths of the tower, there was a noticeable shift in the air despite the absence of any people.
This was the Anbu's personal training field.
A location so completely hidden from everything else that, to some in Konoha, it's considered a myth.
After all, as Konoha's most important elites, the Anbu must be complete mysteries to all other villages.
Even lower than the Anbu training field was a special field for the Hokage themselves.
Reinforced by thick stone walls imbued with Mito's sealing jutsu, it was an impervious bunker that would allow the Hokage to train in complete secret. Not only did it allow them to practice new skills and keep that information private, but it also concealed any mistakes that might occur during training, keeping the Hokage looking like a near-perfect figure.
Connected to the room was a science lab that was added during the time of the second Hokage.
Filled with the very best technology that Konoha could get its hands on. It was here that Tobirama researched some of his many forbidden jutsu, away from the eyes of the village, which wouldn't understand why he did it.
Making several clones, Hajime unloaded dozens of miscellaneous objects from the suitcase in his inventory.
All the samples he'd collected on Kinkow were stored inside it, especially living specimens.
When Hajime did some preliminary research back on the island, he found that almost everything on the island had traces of magic.
For some, that meant learning the traditions of Kinkow and becoming a court shaman; for others, it meant dabbling in the dark arts to acquire whatever power they could.
The creatures of the island were different, shaped by the ambient magic for centuries; they grew increasingly bizarre compared to any ordinary creature.
Hajime left anything living in the suitcase, while he brought everything else out for testing.
He had studied the Great Book back on Kinkow and even brought a copy with him, but there was always potential to learn more.
For example, what happens if a waka waka bug participates in a gu ritual?
A gu ritual involved placing dozens of different poisonous creatures in a jar together.
The creatures would fight, and as they bled and died, eventually, one creature would be left standing. Having survived all that poison, their body would adapt to become stronger than any creature that had gone inside.
Repeat this enough times, especially with magic creatures, and it wouldn't be impossible to create a god-slaying poison.
The biggest benefit of having waka waka bugs is their unique poison.
The poison will afflict someone with six unique magical symptoms, with the only connection between them being that they change the physical body.
Now imagine what could happen if such a unique poison were grown, mutated, or possibly even separated into distinct symptoms.
You could create either a highly unusual plastic surgery clinic or a highly unusual assassin group.
Hajime set the poison aside for the time being. Better to save it once he starts assimilating Tang San and his poison knowledge.
Instead, Hajime decided to focus on the many magical tree species he had taken samples of.
Magical trees in DxD were unique. Aside from the spirit fruit trees Yasaka's faction tended to, and a few well-known mythological trees such as Yggdrasil, most magic trees weren't much different from regular ones.
Kinkow was different, though, since practically everything on the island was trying to kill you.
There was a 'spider tree' that would lay vines on the forest floor and would catch you in them like a spider web.
Another tree secreted a special resin that was highly flammable, but its bark was fire-resistant.
One tree drew lightning strikes to it, with a crystalline structure forming at the base.
Hajime had dozens of these unique samples, and he planned on testing how each of them would work as sealing paper.
Jiraiya knew a method for creating pretty basic sealing paper from any tree, in case he ever ran out on a mission.
Hajime was curious about how different the sealing papers of magical trees would be.
Would the spider tree make something like the eight trigrams seal more powerful?
Could fire, lightning, or earth-related sealing perform better with different trees?
Not to mention the potential medicinal value of the plants he'd gotten.
Once the lab was set up, Hajime and his clones got to work.
-----
Eventually, as the day came to a close, Hajime sent one of his clones out to show people their rooms.
Tsubaki and Akeno got their rooms right across from each other. Kimiko was staying with Tsubaki, but Hajime already had plans to add an extension to Tsubaki's room that would be just for her.
Pam was in the room next to Tsubaki, with Blake's room being next to Pam's.
Across the hall, Jenny's room was next to Akeno's, followed by Monet's room.
In the male section of the dorms, Welf was alone for now, with the sole exception of a certain vampire bunny.
Leaving everyone to settle in, Hajime's clone dispelled, with another clone almost immediately reappearing in the lab to help the other Hajime's with their research.
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Author's Note:
Thanks for reading; I'll see you next time!