Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
I watched her as she completed the examination. In the end, she did not need to change anything in the report apart from some notes about the scar tissue in his legs. Then she passed the report over to me. I nodded, knowing what I had to do. The new Clan Council meeting was scheduled to take place in two days. I'd have Uraume do the rounds with this and then bring it up during the meeting. Kagame seemed willing to witness it in person, so that would make things even better. She could tell the Council in person how bad things were, and even while they'd still be able to tell my true intentions, it would be much harder for them to deny me with her there, saying how bad things were to their faces.
With this, I'd become Hokage without any fanfare.
"You mentioned that you helped my granduncle with his jutsu. What did you specifically work on together?" I asked as we walked away, trying to make some small talk.
"Just a tiny jutsu known as Edo Tensei. He needed help recalling the soul's information. Considering most of that is just Yin chakra, he turned to the foremost expert in Yin chakra he knew," she said with a smirk.
"You," I completed.
"Precisely." And then there was silence. At least a few seconds of it before I asked the question on my mind.
"So why the whole hermit thing? Today, you could read and write perfectly, your chakra seems as strong as could be, and you didn't fudge a single thing when using that diagnostic jutsu on Hiruzen. Considering you're yet to officially retire, why exactly do you spend your days here?" I waved my hand towards the Nara district we were approaching.
"You entertained me today, boy. You think every day at the hospital is as entertaining as this one? It all gets monotone after a while. People whining about losing limbs, losing family members, spouses. I got sick of hearing it, so I closed the door on that. At least here I don't have to deal with any whining. Everyone knows not to bother Old Hag Kagame," she said. If I wasn't mistaken, there was some bitterness in her tone.
"I doubt the Nara are the kind to do much bothering in the first place," I said with a chuckle.
"Indeed. Too much Yin in this lot. Not enough Yang to make them good gossipers," she said.
"What if I have something more engaging for you to work on?" I asked, leading her to the question I had. I'd done it. I'd all but secured the Hokage hat. That meant I had to begin working on what would come next.
"Speak, boy. I'm too old for all this leading on," she nearly barked. I looked at her again. Did I even want to work with someone like her? She was definitely immoral enough not to care about the inevitable need for human experimentation—a factor that had made me hesitate about involving Tsunade. I couldn't do it on my own, though. Where would I even start? Asking Orochimaru for help was just begging for trouble.
"I have a project I want your help with."
"And this project has no name or details?" she asked, an eyebrow arched.
"I need to know if you're interested."
"And how would I know if I am interested if you don't tell me what the project is? Are you sure your brain's working properly?" she snarked.
"Careful now," I warned, allowing feigned anger to enter my tone. A little bit of ribbing would do little to annoy me, especially considering I made a career off of doing the same to others.
"What are you going to do if I'm not? Kill me? You'd be doing me a favour. Do you know how much it hurts to get out of bed in the morning?" she said, and looking at her told me she was being honest enough. I wondered how it would feel to grow that old. I sure wished I would, but I also wished that I never quite got to this level of physical degradation. It would bother me more than anything else—the frailty, the pain, all of it. Even Uzumaki genes would only delay it for so long. Mito hid it well, but she was clearly in pain more often than not. It had been getting worse since Kurama was transplanted into me, though.
"Fine, fine. I need your help in seeing if it's possible to transplant a kekkei genkai into either a child already born or maybe even into a fetus. We just need a fool-proof way of getting children to inherit certain bloodlines regardless of their base traits," I said, and she nodded almost instantly.
"So which one of the clans is on the chopping board? My bet's on the Uchiha—smug little bastards."
"Wait—what the hell are you talking about? There aren't any clans on the chopping board," I said. Was she actually insane?
"That's disappointing. Surely you don't expect them to sit idly by while you reconstruct their kekkei genkai?" Why the hell was she looking at me like I was the insane one?
"We're obviously not going to be reconstructing any Konoha kekkei genkai. Why the hell would I go through all that trouble when I could just pay the parents to have more kids?" I said.
"So what would you have me working on?"
"I'll take that as a yes. And the answer is Iwa bloodlines: Explosion Release, Lava Release, and eventually, Dust Release," I said, and I could see her beginning to salivate at the thought. Yup, I was right. This was right up her alley.
"If you were any more handsome, I'd kiss you," she said.
"I'm easily the most handsome man you've ever seen." She scoffed.
"Back in my day, we had real men. Men with muscles and real scars. Just look at you. Not even a whisker of facial hair. How disappointing." I resisted the urge to use a seal to shut her mouth… permanently. Barely, though. Just barely.
XXXXXXXXXX
Uzume looked nervous. That was new. That was very new. It was like looking at a scared lion or a small hippo. It was so strange and new that I allowed it to stretch out, perhaps for longer than I should have. The Council meeting was in two days. I'd handed the report and copies over to Uraume, and we were discussing a schedule for approaching the relevant clan heads—the ones who were undecided as far as we knew and were likely to support me instead of Hiruzen once the report was out. The report was damning. Even without it, I should have been the obvious choice, but that wasn't how politics worked. Personal interests over country, always.
We rounded off the meeting with a base decision and list. "Can you excuse us, Cousin? Uzume has something to talk to me about." Uraume didn't look much surprised at the dismissal. She'd probably noticed Uzume's nervousness as well. In fact, the only person who looked shocked was Uzume herself, snapping to attention like she had been caught dozing off in class or something. I fought off the desire to chuckle… barely. She wouldn't appreciate being laughed at very much.
"What? What do you mean?" she asked, even as Uraume had left the room in all haste, probably eager to get to work spreading my will and clearing the way for me. I gave Uzume an assessing look. Uchiha and Hyuga. Both clans, and the Uzumaki to some extent, would be the backbones of my power bloc for a while. They would need to be rewarded. That shouldn't have been too difficult, except that they had some ill-conceived rivalry that went back a while. Unlike the Senju, there hadn't been any true reconciliation there. If I wanted to bring them together, it would take some effort to get their respective elders to agree.
"I mean that you clearly have something on your mind. What kind of friend and Kage would I be if I didn't give you a good forum to vent it? Talk to me, 'Zume," I said, standing from my seat to step closer to her. I caught a whiff of her perfume. It was spicy, the kind of thing that was harsh in long doses but intoxicating in short ones.
She looked hesitant for a second or two before she made a decision.
"Come. I want you to pray with me," she said, and I nearly tripped over my own two feet at that.
"You said what?"
"I said come pray with me," she said, and so she began dragging me out of the office. When we'd left the building, she turned to me, and I could see some hesitance returning. That wouldn't do.
"Race you to your clan shrine?" I offered. And in a blink, she was off.
I joined her, resisting the urge to cackle into the air.
I had a marker near the entrance of the Uchiha Clan District. I had markers like that all over the village. They let me get from place to place instantly in the case of emergencies, but this wasn't an emergency, and Uzume would definitely call it cheating. Besides, I was having a great time as we were.
Uzume was fast. It was a fact that I had sort of known, but now it was clear. Neither of us was going truly all out. If we did, the race would be too short to be any fun. But that didn't mean we were jogging, either. With my byakugan, I could see that she was only using the smallest trickle of chakra to help her along with the jumps from rooftop to rooftop. Beyond that, it was just sheer physicality. I mirrored her, and despite the handicap, we were flying.
I jumped over a clothing line, using the next empty one as a slingshot that shot me two rooftops over. I landed with a roll and kept going. Now behind me, Uzume scowled and banked a sharp left. She ran across an electrical wire that connected the next five buildings while I wasted precious time with each leap over space. Running was always faster than jumping. By the time she was back to the rooftops, we were neck and neck, and I could see the gate of the building. If I could, that meant she could as well.
Almost as if by silent agreement, we both dialed things up a notch. I jumped over two buildings at once with only the barest thread of chakra boosting me with explosive force at the beginning. I kept running, Uzume keeping pace. Only one more building before the gate. She moved to jump between the rooftops, and I applied Wind Release to my feet. I shot straight at the gate, flipping myself in the air to land on its surface with my feet, sticking to it. A second later, Uzume had her hand on the gate as well.
"You cheated," she said.
"We never agreed on any rules," I countered.
"Implied by conduct."
I shrugged. "You should have spelled them out then. Besides, it's not like I couldn't have gotten here faster," I said, pointing her over to a semi-hidden part of the gate. Her eyes narrowed at seeing the seal.
"Let's go," she said instead of commenting on the seal, taking my hand and beginning to drag me through the district. It felt strange being here again. Growing up, it had either been the Academy, Hokage Tower, Senju Clan Compound, or this place. I'd spent more time here than even in the Hyuga compound, which was insane. Izuku and I had terrorized the old ladies I could see selling this or that all over the place. We'd knocked over stalls, rigged things to explode, and made seals to cover people with paint. We'd been little terrorists here, and now I was back, but he was gone. It was like walking down a familiar road with all the signs missing.
We walked down the road to the shrine. This was one of the places in the Uchiha district that I had never been to. Izuku avoided it like the plague. I hadn't been religious either, so what was the need for me to push on visiting it? I knew it had relevance in canon, but what did that matter here? The second Black Zetsu turned up or showed his face in my village, I would cut him to pieces and scatter Kaguya's will to the wind like sand in the desert. There would be no Obito. Not on my watch.
We walked into the shrine. I had kept my byakugan inactive out of respect for the Clan and its inhabitants, but the second we stepped into the room, my eyes sharpened into focus. I looked at the tatami mats, able to see with my byakugan the inscription beneath the seventh tatami mat, but nothing beyond it. So their seal blocked even the byakugan… interesting.
"So what did you want to pray about?" I asked her as I moved to light a candle. I wasn't religious, but Mother was. Before she'd fully gone insane, she took me to pray with her on more than one occasion. They weren't very enjoyable at the time—on account of the oncoming insanity, you know?—but now the memories stood out as one of the few things I'd done with a parent in this life.
Uzume scoffed and proved my suspicions correct, dragging me straight to the seventh tatami mat. She wove seals faster than most could follow, but I took note of the sequence either way. The mat slid out of the way, revealing a stone with a sharingan carved into it. That folded inwards, revealing a set of stairs.
"Whoa. Secret hideout?" I asked, trying my best to act surprised. Thankfully, I was actually surprised. I never anticipated Uzume bringing me here or showing this to me.
She dragged me down, and we made short work of the surprisingly long stairway. Someone had buried this place, and buried it deep. It made me wonder how my granduncle hadn't noticed it being built. His natural suspicion of the Uchiha should have meant that he'd be watching them like a hawk while they were building. It was impressive that they managed to make this without his knowledge. And it was definitely without his knowledge. If he'd known the Uchiha had a secret meeting place like this one, he would have either prevented it entirely or taken steps to warn me about it.
The stairs led to a hall. While not massive, it was about the size of the shrine itself—easily enough to contain hundreds. No wonder they'd been comfortable planning a coup here. My byakugan couldn't even see out of here. The walls just darkened and blocked everything out. Without a man on the inside, there would have been no chance for Hiruzen or his bum boy to know just what was happening here. While I looked around the hall, Uzume's eyes were fixed on the tablet.
"Stop getting distracted, Shorirama," she hissed, turning about once she realized I was too busy looking around to follow her to the tablet. Who could blame me? This was literal history. Well, history that was yet to happen, but you get the vibe.
I walked to the tablet, and even with my byakugan, there was nothing to be seen. Just characters that were either half or a quarter formed. They didn't mean anything.
"I assume there's something here I can't read?" I said, turning to her.
"Bloodline-based? A seal that can tell I don't have Uchiha blood and thus blocks me from reading it?" I asked.
"Close. Only those with the sharingan can read the beginning of the tablet. More of it becomes available as your eyes progress. An Eternal Mangekyou like mine can read most of the tablet, but the bottom bits are missing. For those, I need better eyes."
"Better eyes?" I asked. "You want me to lend you my byakugan? Shame to burst your bubble, but I can't see shit, superior eyes or no." Uzume looked about to pull her hair out. It was fun, being annoying in situations like these.
"I mean the Rinnegan." I was sure to give her a look like she was insane.
"That's a myth."
"Seeking stability, one god was divided into yin and yang; these opposing two acting together obtain all things in creation," she read out. And it was clear that she was quoting more from memory than the tablet itself.
"What does that mean?"
"The tablet tells the story of the Sage of Six Paths. He wrote it himself. He was the god you see there. He fought the Ten-Tails and divided it into the tailed beasts. Before he had the Rinnegan, he had the Mangekyou Sharingan, and that is why the Mangekyou can control the tailed beasts. Because the Sage made them."
"I still don't see what this has to do with me."
"How can you be so blind, Shori? It's me and you. Uchiha and Senju. One god, the Sage of Six Paths, was divided into yin and yang. Yin, the soul, the Uchiha Clan. Yang, the body, the Senju clan. It's clear that our clans are the product of the Sage's sons. We are his descendants. If we want to make the Rinnegan again, we need to find some way to fuse the clans again," she said, sounding so passionate I had to check to be sure she wasn't under some genjutsu.
"If this is some sort of marriage proposal, it's not a very good one," I said, trying to lighten the mood, but Uzume wasn't having it. She actually took me seriously.
"No. Children won't work. I've tracked down at least two Uchiha and Senju marriages in history. The children were born powerful, but they inherited the sharingan, not the rinnegan," she said.
"So what do you think?" I asked.
"I think we need to swap eyes." Yup, she was certifiably insane.
A/N: And so we get a talky chapter. This one just has us moving through Konoha as Shori tries to consolidate his power, even as things ramp up in Iwa. Next five up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.