A SAGE ADRIFT - #21

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A SAGE ADRIFT

#21

The Christian Frost Academy for Special Kids, Lake Tahoe Area

Naruto’s eyes snapped open as he heard the sound of his kids screaming in grief once they learned of his passing.

Sighing, he sat upright on his bed. His ridiculously comfortable bed. He looked around his quarters although calling them quarters would be doing them a huge disservice. He had honestly expected just a small apartment where he would go to just sleep, at the end of the day. Instead, he got this huge penthouse, overlooking the entirety of the academy.

The Christian Frost Academy for Special Kids. 

The Academy was named after Emma’s deceased brother who had no one to turn to after being manipulated by his father and thus, committed suicide out of depression. Emma, who was out of state when that happened, almost snapped and that was when, in the period of mental trauma, developed her secondary powers.

It was almost poetic in a way because Emma had assured Naruto that there would be no recruitment or political nudging or any kind of effort made to exploit the kids in any way on Academy grounds.

Grounds were big enough to house thousands of students with ease, even if the students were predominantly mutants and inherently needed more space to grow properly because of the wide range of powers that teenagers had and the limited patience they had with those powers.

The Academy was still not ready but Emma had informed him that they had already started putting out word about the Academy being a safe space for both kids on the run and also for parents who are incapable or unsure about raising a mutant kid.

Mutants.

He actually was of the opinion that they should not be called mutants at all. It sounds negative, especially since mutations in this day and age were associated with horrible mutations that occur due to nuclear radiation, another boogeyman that was manufactured for the masses to hate and fear despite Nuclear energy being the cleanest source of energy everywhere.

There was still a lot of work to be done before they could open up the academy to the public but he had a discussion with Emma about granting asylum of sorts to any mutant that shows up at their doorstep hoping for a safe space. He was surprised when Emma went so far as to guarantee entry to every mutant, irrespective of age. He was of the opinion that the older ones would be sent to either Xavier or inducted into her personal team while the kids young enough to become students would be the ones actually enrolled in the academy. Back then, she had sensed his surprise so she had explained to him that the sheer size of the academy makes it actually impossible to hire an entire crew that could be trusted to run the academy. So, she had come up with a plan to hire mutants. 

Most of the adults that would show up here would be desperate enough that they would readily agree to a mental scan at the beginning of their tenure with an additional lie detector (Emma had someone on her team who could check if a person was lying or not as long as they were in physical contact with each other) test that would happen every quarter. No staffing company would agree to such demands so enlisting the mutants who would no doubt be provided safe space on the academy grounds was a win-win situation for Emma. They would get work and pay with dignity along with a safe space and Emma would get trustworthy workers that would help run the show behind the scenes because if there was one person on Emma’s team who was aware of the hardships concerning the runnings of an Academy with superpowered kids, it was him.

Back when he had first become the Hokage, it was when the village was in a great situation, financially at least. Because of his strength and reputation, the Daimyo and the nobles had not spared any expense in throwing their weight behind him, hoping to be in his good graces. That had allowed for the village to be fiscally positive for the first time since its inception so he had a pretty much unlimited budget when he had to allocate it to important sections of the Village, like the Academy, and even with that much money, he was just a single step away from tearing out his hair when he had read through binders and binders of the operation of the Ninja Academy. Eventually, he had dumped the matter on Shikamaru’s hand before literally poofing out of the situation. He had used a shadow clone to do it :).

So, he knew that while Emma would be the face of the Academy, the actual running would need someone extremely skilled to make it happen. Fortunately, Emma had someone in mind and she was supposed to be arriving later this weekend. 

He technically had no work to do until the new Principal arrived but he could not just sit still while there were kids out there without a safe space to call home. So, he had set out to create exactly that.

A safe space.

Even now, as he stood up in front of the windows showing him the view of the entire academy, he could spot flashes of his clones running around the academy. He had actually figured out a way to create shadow clones using just dimensional energy mixed in with very little chakra. The drawback was that he could not get their memories once they were dispelled but the advantage was that he had access to near unlimited dimensional energy, allowing not only himself but also his clones to create numerous shadow clones before they ran out of chakra.

Of course, with them mostly running on dimensional energy, they could not perform the flashy jutsus that chakra could but what they could do was manipulate dimensional energy to conjure tools. Tools that would help them mold the ground, test the wall strengths, or to simply place heavy barricades on a certain section of the walls to test the security.

He was unilaterally placed in charge of campus security by Emma when he had expressed interest in actively involving himself with the academy. He had expected to maybe teach a class or two or maybe act as a public deterrent against the enemies that have no doubt already begun moving once the news of the Academy opening reached them.

In the beginning, when he had not yet seen the Academy, he had thought that he would be able to protect the Academy, at least the interior buildings of it, all by himself. It would not be wrong to say that that was never going to happen.

The Academy was big. That could not be understated.

Thousands of acres of Forest Land near Lake Tahoe, one of the biggest and deepest lakes in the world. Sprawling mountains and small lakes that adorned the property that Emma had purchased through various shell organisations before ultimately consolidating it into a single private organisation owned exclusively by Emma. It was not under the ownership of any publicly traded company so the sole executive vote =went to Emma and Emma alone.

It would be impossible to create a border around the entire area so Emma had just gone ahead and created a small, relatively speaking, enclosure around a flat area where the main buildings were being built.

Right now, only the administrative building along with his quarters on top of it were completed but with his clones helping the mutant responsible for the speedy and bizarrely difficult construction of all of Emma’s bases, the Academy would be completed with all of the construction within a few months at worst.

According to the plan Naruto had seen in Emma’s office, there were going to be three separate buildings for classes. The buildings would be separated on the basis of the ages of the children. Then there was going to be a huge practical building where state-of-the-art labs would be available for the kids to learn.

There was also going to be an outdoor lab but that is going to be far from the main campus and also unsecured so that will be an activity for later, once the security around the campus has been beefed up and the rest of the world sufficiently warned about touching the kids under his protection.

Then there were the dormitories. There were going to be, in total, three dorms on campus, both on different sides of the campus. One side will have two dorms, responsible for housing the male and female students of the Academy. The other side will be responsible for housing the adults or the staff of the Academy. He had been adamant about having all the living quarters of all mutants within the Academy boundaries, where everything was under surveillance so they could immediately respond to any request for help.

The entirety of the campus was loaded with sensors and cameras that could capture even the smallest of movements. Sensors that could sense the activation of a multitude of energy types, mainly the energy generated by spatial disturbances, allowing them to understand if some sort of unauthorized teleportation has occurred on the campus or if has someone tried to experiment with their powers without permission. Naruto was sure that it was going to cost Emma more money than it was worth but for some reason, she had come into a lot of money and did not mind spending it on a project that was the namesake of her favourite family member.

The Academy, sadly, also had an area where Emma was planning to have a detention centre. It was, thankfully, going to be underground where no students would have to see it but there were inevitably going to be situations where they would have to hold mutants. As far as he could understand, the power suppressors used in that prison were mostly harmless and their main method for containing mutants was putting them under a mild sedative that would keep them asleep for the entire duration of their stay there.

It was a difficult discussion point between them but he and Emma had decided that they were not going to create a private prison in their academy. That would be against the very principles he had lived his entire life by. 

Eventually, they arrived at the difficult conclusion that if, and only if, the detainee has committed a violent crime and is incapable of changing, they would be handed over to the appropriate authorities, despite them knowing that the mutant was almost certainly not going to a normal prison.

For something like accidental usage of powers or minor harm caused due to unauthorised power usage, pranks using powers, or not following the rules, they were just going to give them extra chores because the Academy, at least in the initial days, was anyways going to remain understaffed. Repeat offenders might get some time in the detention centre but he was going to do his best to make sure that at the very least, no student ever had to go there.

The Academy would not just stop at the buildings made above ground. No. The amount of space being built above ground was actually less than the space being built underground.

Bunkers for Students.

Labs for dangerous experiments.

Detention Center.

Operation Base for Emma’s team and then a place where Emma was going to install the Danger Room once she had traded it for something from Xavier. He was suspicious about Xavier just giving one of his most advanced secrets to Emma but she had assured him that she had something he wanted just as much.

For some reason, they were also going to be building an underground transportation network that would span most of the property of the Academy. Once Emma was sure that the current buildings were going to be full, she was going to create another replica of the same compound and then repeat that process until she had filled the quota of this property.

Then she was going to buy an even bigger property but someplace else. She had big plans regarding the Academy and as much as he was sure that she had some ulterior motive behind everything, the fact that it would benefit so many mutants was undeniable.

Using his clones as unpaid skilled labour, she was going to build a labyrinth of bases underneath the property once the first campus was filled.

Of course, building the entirety of the campus did not come cheap, both in terms of money and energy.

Emma had done some sort of deal with the Ancient One and had snagged herself some sort of energy reactor that had enough of an energy output that it would allow Emma to keep running her campus, even in its expanded form, for decades before it lost any sort of energy. 

That was good because the Danger Room and all the security of the building along with all the other measures was going to draw more power than a small city and he had written in his security vulnerability report that reliance on the grid for electricity was an easily exploitable vulnerability that should be rid almost immediately and evidently, Emma had acted upon it.

Now, all that was left was to welcome the first set of students that were going to reach the Academy today. Students that were rescued from Detroit. They were being used as unpaid child labour and had to be rescued by Emma’s team.

The first admissions of the Academy.

He was excited.

Word Count - 2303