Hasara Space Station.
"So it is decided." Ra stated imperiously. "We will leave agents on worlds that are likely to be attacked so that they may report back to us who is responsible for this. When they are found, I will go personally to burn their world to ash."
The assembled System Lords nodded their assent, but privately intended to see if this could be used to their own advantage somehow.
Ra and Yu were the only two System Lords present who suspected that this would also result in failure and were already thinking of alternative measures that might be taken. At the moment, their territories were far too spread out for anything else, but this new enemy had proven to be very canny and might well notice their agents before they could report anything of worth.
At least this damnable summit was finally over. Even the highly enjoyable ritual cannibalism of mature Goa'uld was not enough to offset the irritation of dealing with their fellow System Lords.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Ratania.
Standing on top of a tall building in what was clearly the more affluent part of the city meant for the Goa'uld and their servants, Naruto grinningly surveyed the action going on around him.
The stargate had been located a short ways off and his invasion force had splintered into multiple squads, each led by the most tactically inclined among them.
Kuvera's Jaffa were quite battle hardened due to being used as a mercenary force by the lesser Goa'uld, but they had been caught flatfooted by the sudden attack, not to mention that Naruto's force was faster, better trained, more flexible in their tactics and were receiving constant reinforcements via the stargate.
There was also the small matter that he'd snatched up every kara kesh hand device and healing device and equipped his Jaffa with them, since they could use them now. There weren't all that many of them, but those things gave a huge tactical advantage to every squad that had one.
They also had the side effect of demoralizing enemy Jaffa, who were convinced that only the gods could use those.
The only real problem had been the Udajeet and Al'kesh that had occasionally showed up, but those were easily taken care of by ripping out chunks of the stone buildings and using them as projectiles. Even the heavy weapon emplacements hadn't proved to be any great obstacle for his highly effective and mobile attack force.
Strangely, the Ha'tak that was parked right on top of what he presumed was Kuvera's palace never got off the ground. He'd almost taken Ratania off the list of possible targets for the next raid because of that thing and now it wasn't even going to attack?
How rude. He'd planned a whole badass flying leap of doom into the bridge(or Pel'tak in Goa'uld) of the ungainly ship, right into the face of the Goa'uld flying it and the cheeky bastard wasn't even intending to get off the ground?
Naruto admired the sheer insolence of it even as he doubted its tactical soundness. He also doubted this particular tactical failure was motivated by insolence.
Ah well, at least standing here and waiting for it to fly had served the purpose of distracting the defenders and making it easier for his mob of invaders to win the day. Considering that it was the dead of night on this planet, the slight glow of his skin and hair made him a veritable beacon in the dark and drew attention like nobody's business. His own people were at least used to it, but the defenders spent dangerous amounts of time gawking at him instead of fighting, which was all to the good.
He could have suppressed the glowing, but he had yet to find a reason for doing that.
"The city is ours Heika, the warriors of the enemy captured or dead and his underlings slain." A female voice in Japanese said to him from below, satisfaction evident in her tone.
Grinning just a bit wider, Naruto jumped down in front of his favorite subordinate so that he wasn't talking down to her quite as much. She was a short-ish woman of Asian descent in her mid twenties, with black hair cut practically short and reaching only as far as her shoulders.
Her people used to live on a world claimed by Izanagi before Naruto had visited and convinced them to come with him.
It had been much easier than most situations where he found himself on a world that the Goa'uld left undefended and only visited occasionally. Despite attempts to convince them of his supposed divinity, they despised Izanagi and stubbornly refused to worship him, clinging to their culture and traditions instead. They'd even managed to preserve their language, though there had been obvious linguistic drift.
Naruto had been delighted to find a people with a culture that clearly had ancient Japanese origins, even if much of it had been lost due to the ban on writing and Goa'uld influence. He'd wasted no time in being his most persuasive when speaking to their leader and convincing him that it really would be in everyone's best interests to come with him where they could live in peace and rediscover their culture or whatever they wanted to do.
He'd even offered to teach them how to write Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana and Furigana, which was something long since lost to them thanks to the Goa'uld...or in some cases had never been invented, but that was besides the point.
Despite the standard wariness of his appearance, that wasn't something they'd been willing to pass up and had eventually agreed to relocate to Erius. There may have also been minor amounts of chakra compulsion present in his voice when he'd been persuading them to do this.
"Excellent work Setsuna, and Te'lok should be just about finished with the Jaffa barracks and glider bays too. Were there any civilian casualties?" He asked, noting with some amusement that she was still using a cloth to carefully wipe blood off her katana, blood that was both human red and Goa'uld blue. He had a feeling those underlings had been less 'slain' and more 'executed'.
"Some." She admitted reluctantly, knowing he did not like it when that happened. "For the most part they hid in their homes and were safe, but a few Jaffa thought to take cover there and one of the underlings was cowardly enough to use one as a shield. My subordinates have already carried them to the stargate for healing or resurrection."
"Good, take command of the troops in the lower city and keep anything stupid from happening while I go into the palace." He ordered.
"As you command Tennō Heika." She said almost reverently and made her way back to her squad.
Shaking his head with a grin, Naruto started walking towards the palace, remembering how he'd met the woman.
While initially wary, her people had quickly realized that living under his and Xanna's rule was incomparably preferable to constant raids by Izanagi and his underlings and had felt that they were indebted to him and needed to offer him something more than just their loyalty before honor would be satisfied.
Or at least their leader had felt this way, as he had offered his granddaughter as a concubine for Naruto.
Naruto hadn't wanted a concubine, but the old man had been as stubborn and insistent as you'd expect from someone whose culture had spent generations silently defying an alien overlord despite the consequences, so he'd rolled his eyes and accepted.
Of course, he'd still had no intention of actually taking the girl as a concubine and would have simply directed her attention somewhere else, depending on what she was like. He'd expected either a starry eyed young girl who thought that she was being given a great honor, or a silently resigned one that felt she had no choice.
What he got was a resentful and downright angry girl in her late teens who had all but spat in his face when they met, clearly infuriated at the thought of being handed over as a sex toy for his pleasure.
Naruto had liked her immediately and asked if she'd like to be trained to fight.
Her grandfather had been scandalized...and so had the Jaffa for that matter, both of which had strenuously objected to teaching a woman how to fight for one reason or another, but Naruto had not been accepting opinions on the matter. He rather hoped that it would encourage more women to ask for combat training eventually, but so far she was the only one.
Setsuna had been ecstatic and thrown herself into the training eagerly, proving driven and skilled enough that he'd eventually given her a command position. The Jaffa that suddenly found themselves under the command of a human woman had grumbled of course, but Setsuna, much to his glee, had smacked them back in line with minimal difficulty.
Just like all of her people, she had a burning hatred for the Goa'uld and took inordinate amounts of pleasure in using the sword he'd gifted to her to execute any that she found. Not too surprising, considering that her parents had been killed during a raid.
The near worshipful devotion she'd developed for him over time was a bit unfortunate and saddening though. He missed the fire breathing little she-demon that she used to be, but he supposed there was no helping it with the way her culture had been and still was. Indeed, her people were among the least problematic to settle on Erius once they realized that he liked their lifestyle and wasn't going to pressure them to change it or demand a tithe of their population as slaves.
He also suspected that she was using that sword(or its hilt at any rate) of hers for more than just killing if his nose didn't deceive him, but what people used as a dildo was none of his business. At least she hadn't turned out like Tia had after he'd played therapist for her. There were quite enough servant girls in the palace already, pouting at him that he didn't pay them private visits often enough. He didn't need that happening in the army as well.
Ah, the perils of being too nice and too sexy.
But now was not the time to be maudlin! Now was the time to find out why the fuck that incompetent Goa'uld that was supposed to be in charge of this planet had denied him the chance to dropkick a space ship.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Tarnor scowled furiously as he stalked through the hallways of the palace, the burn scar on his face from a dangerously close encounter with a blast from a Ma'tok staff bolt making the expression something to behold.
He wasn't even surprised that the demon that he'd heard of from other Jaffa that emptied the worlds of the Goa'uld would strike at them...it was just the way his luck was apparently.
He'd thought that becoming First Prime was an honor and had been eager to serve the great Kuvera as his foremost warrior.
That enthusiasm had dissipated upon the realization that Kuvera was quite incompetent.
Once a Planet Lord in the service of the System Lord Shiva, Kuvera remained independent only because nobody could be quite bothered to conquer him. After Nirrti, at the time a scientist in the service of Shiva, had killed her master in one of the displays of treachery that she was now known for, the dominion of the Goa'uld who had taken the persona of the Hindu gods had splintered. Nirrti took a small dominion for herself, as did Kali and the rest was conquered by others.
The secret of Kuvera's independence resided in the fact that his territory was very close to Nirrti's and she wasn't interested in it, but would poison it beyond recovery with a biological plague of some sort if anyone else conquered it.
And so, Kuvera hobbled on, not good enough to rise in power but not important enough to be wiped out.
According to the tales that his father and grandfather had told him, Kuvera had become progressively less interested in the day to day running of his little empire and Tarnor knew this to be true.
He was the man that had to see his supposed god decline from an incompetent ruler to a useless waste of space. He'd become certain that the man wasn't even a god to be honest. It was hard to believe him to be a god when it was Tarnor that actually made all the decisions, while Kuvera sulked in his quarters and hid away from the world.
Of course, this was not very important at the moment, because they'd been invaded and the enemy's commander was in the palace already.
He'd been woken up from a dead sleep with news that they were under attack, but it was useless. By the time runners had come to inform him of the situation, the enemy had already taken most of the defensive positions and the only thing that might have helped, the Udajeet and Al'kesh, were being knocked out of the sky with thrown chunks of rock of all things.
Kuvera had never taught anyone to fly the Ha'tak, fearing that it would be used against him and he was currently in no position to do it himself, so a critical asset remained grounded while enemy warriors seized it.
Tarnor knew this was the end of the line for him, but at least he would die in battle against a worthy foe, which was the best that he could hope for.
Whatever kind of creature the horned demon was, he was obviously powerful beyond measure and he had already brushed aside the few warriors to have encountered him. Tarnor wasn't sure whether his refusal to kill them was a mercy or an insult.
When he finally found the horned man, he was standing before Kuvera's empty throne and looking contemplatively at the blank stone tablet in his hands.
Tarnor's expression became grim and he gripped his Ma'tok staff tighter. He knew that the next time someone visited Ratania, all they would find was an empty city with only a baffling message carved into that tablet. That was what he'd heard from other Jaffa at least.
"Tell me, if you had the opportunity to say anything you wanted to the System Lords, what would it be?" Naruto asked, not turning around to face the Jaffa pointing a weapon at his back.
Tarnor ignored the question and primed the staff instead, calling out a firm challenge. "I am Tarnor, First Prime to Kuvera. Face me in battle demon!"
Naruto did turn around now, making Tarnor tense further as the slitted eyes that burned like fire settled on him, even though his expression was quizzical rather than hostile.
"Really? You'd call them demons and demand that they fight you? Aren't Jaffa supposed to think that the Goa'uld are gods or something?"
"I have seen enough to know better." Tarnor said grimly. "Now draw your weapon and prepare yourself!"
Naruto ignored the challenge in favor of meeting a Jaffa that had apparently seen through the brainwashing of the Goa'uld. "Why do you still identify as a First Prime to the idiot ruling this planet if you don't believe him to be a god anymore?"
Confused at the lack of hostility, Tarnor lowered the staff a marginal amount as he answered. "For my fellow Jaffa. As long as I remain First Prime here, I can keep them from being absorbed into the armies of another Goa'uld."
Intrigued both by the answer and his lack of reaction to the insult leveled at Kuvera, Naruto decided that he wanted this particular Jaffa to switch sides. "Why not come with me then? I can cure you of your dependence on the symbiotes and nobody has to fight for me if they don't want to."
"I have heard of you demon." Tarnor answered grimly, putting the claim of being able to heal them of their symbiote dependence to the back of his mind for now. "You attack worlds and leave them empty of people, what assurance do I have that those who go with you do not meet their end on your dinner table?"
Tarnor was used to the Goa'uld tendency to be easily offended by even the smallest slight, so having the enormous and clearly dangerous horned man explode into laughter at his question left him quite nonplussed.
"Is that really what they think of me?" Naruto asked with a final snigger after a few seconds.
"The tales vary," Tarnor said slowly. "but it is generally accepted that the people whose worlds you attack meet some unfortunate fate."
Something that the First Prime was beginning to strongly doubt.
"That's hilarious, but not even close to being true." Naruto replied. "So, would you like to come with me or not?"
"You would leave us be if we refused?" The Jaffa asked in shock.
"I'd be disappointed, but yes." Naruto admitted.
"Then why did you even attack?" Tarnor asked in confusion.
"My wife and I are building and empire and we started out with a very small amount of people. Aside from their petty cruelty, the Goa'uld are clearly incompetent as rulers so we've taken to stealing away their people."
"And suborning their warriors." The Jaffa added as a flat statement.
"But of course." The horned man admitted proudly. "It is after all the pinnacle of a military victory to capture the assets of an enemy intact rather than outright destroy them."
Tarnor had no choice but to agree with that rather sensible logic, at the same time recalling that most of the Goa'uld were more likely to obliterate the opposition entirely as a warning about resisting them. It would also explain why the majority of the man's warriors favored the zat'nik'tel rather than a staff weapon.
"So how about it? Will you join me or would you like to stay here." Naruto continued, putting a little bit of a compulsion into two particular words to help sway Tarnor's decision. He didn't even feel bad about it because honestly, Tarnor was not equipped to make an informed decision at this point in time.
Thinking quickly, the Jaffa considered the offer. If he accepted, then he would be going into the unknown with an unknown quantity, even if what he'd seen so far had been much better than the Goa'uld.
On the other hand, the alternative was to go into seclusion and be forced to raid Goa'uld held worlds when the current batch of symbiotes started maturing, or approach another Goa'uld and ask to enter their service. Also a problem since Jaffa that needed to act as mercenaries were looked down upon by those in service to a stronger Goa'uld.
The first option seemed a lot more appealing.
"The others may not follow you for as long as Kuvera lives, but if you kill him, they will be unlikely to protest." He said, tacitly agreeing to go with the horned man.
"A problem easily solved." Naruto said with a grin. "Where is the lazy worm?"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"What's wrong with him?" Naruto asked, scratching his head as he looked at the Goa'uld that was supposed to be in charge of this planet.
Kuvera's host was a man of Hindu descent that would have been quite handsome if not for his current state. Sprawled on top of a pile of cushions, his clothes rumpled and hair askew. There was even a line of drool hanging out of his mouth.
"He has overindulged in concentrated kassa extract again." Tarnor said blandly, signifying that this was clearly a frequent occurrence.
"And kassa is...?" Naruto prompted, picking up a nearby chalice(gold of course, what else would the Goa'uld use?) and sniffing dubiously at the contents.
"A plant whose juices cause euphoria but slow the mind when ingested. A Jaffa or Goa'uld can withstand its addictive properties, but it swiftly makes humans slaves to their desire for it after a single bite." Tarnor explained. "The Goa'uld sometimes use it to deal with troublesome human civilizations, but not often as it tends to make them useless as slaves."
"I take it that not even a Goa'uld can resist the effects of the concentrated variety." The horned man asked dryly.
"So it would seem. He has been like this for years, only waking from his stupor long enough to stumble into a sarcophagus, eat or relieve himself." Tarnor confirmed. "Sometimes not even that."
"Conveniently leaving you to execute orders 'in his name' as long as his underlings didn't find out that their master was...indisposed." Naruto guessed with amused irony.
"As long as he made the occasional appearance, they wrote off his reclusiveness as caution and his underlings had neither the wit nor ambition to discern the truth."
"No wonder you couldn't think of him as a god anymore, his brain is practically dribbling out of his ears." Naruto muttered after a moment of silence.
Tarnor made no comment on that, though his scarred face did twitch into a brief smile at the mental image.
Moving closer to the unconscious Goa'uld, Naruto placed his hand on the back of the man's neck and phased the symbiote out of him without causing any damage to the host. Unsurprisingly, without the healing ability of the symbiote, the host's body quickly shut down from the massive quantity of powerful narcotics in his system.
"Oh yeah, he is so out of it." Naruto stated, flapping the serpentine creature around like a length of rope and getting only a minimal reaction out of it. Usually a Goa'uld treated like that would be writhing all over the place and screeching at the indignity of it.
Tarnor flinched slightly as the symbiote was tossed uncaringly into a nearby fireplace, something that did finally break it out of the kassa induced haze.
"Now lets go and address the people."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the ten Earth years(Naruto still wasn't entirely sure how long a local year on Erius was) that had passed since that first raid on Saral, Erius had grown considerably. Aside from the first settlement, numerous villages were popping up as the people sought out new places to live.
The constant influx of people made it somewhat difficult to keep up the education to a level that Naruto and Xanna had been hoping for, especially in the more distant villages due to lack of a communication infrastructure, but things were hobbling along somehow.
They knew that it would be handled eventually, but for now it was more important to increase the population base. At the very least, a rudimentary system for handling the refugee influx had been established so that it wasn't quite as chaotic as it had been the first time and there were now more people than just him and Xanna handling the organizational part.
Ratania, being a throne world, had a substantially larger human population than the ones he'd been raiding so far, presenting a bit of a problem for relocating so many. Fortunately, it was also mostly ignored by other Goa'uld, so Naruto could afford to take his time.
He couldn't just march the people through the gate either, as this amount of people being forced to a new world might end in some rebellious behavior from them, which would be annoying.
So Naruto had called an assembly to talk to them and persuade them to go with him willingly.
There was a lot of muttering as his horned self appeared on the palace balcony and even a short scream that was quickly cut off.
"People of Ratania!" He began, his voice booming over the entire city and easily being heard by everyone. "Kuvera is dead and you are free of his oppression. If you wish, you may stay here and live as you see fit, but know that eventually another like him will come, seeking to rule you again. I offer you an alternative, come with me through the stargate and make a new life for yourselves on my world. I rule there, alongside my wife and we will protect you. For now, go home, speak to your loved ones, sleep on it and decide in the morning whether you wish to come with me or stay here. Thank you for your time."
With that final sentence, he gave a short wave to the silent mass of people and retreated back inside the palace, out of sight before a grin made its way to his face.
"An impressive speech, if only you had not laced it with so many vocal compulsions that there is little doubt as to the outcome." A familiar female voice spoke reproachfully.
Grin widening, he turned to his visitor, spreading his arms as if she were an old friend and he expected her to leap into his arms for a hug.
"Oma baby! So nice to see you again!"
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