Pre-Chapter A/N:Welcome to September, guys! Let's smash whatever goals we've set ourselves this year. 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.
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," I told her, even as I began to mentally scramble for some way to get out of this. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a fucking Rinnegan. If I thought it was likely that swapping eyes would lead the both of us to getting Rinnegan, I would even have done it myself already. But it was already proven that the Rinnegan didn't come from just mixing Uchiha and Senju DNA. You needed to mix Indra's chakra with Asura's to create Hagoromo's chakra. We had examples from the show that proved it wasn't just Uchiha and Senju DNA. For one, we had Danzo. He had an arm made entirely of Hashirama cells and Sharingan in that arm.
None of those eyes became the Rinnegan. You could argue it was because those Sharingan weren't Mangekyou, but then he had Shisui's eye in his left eye socket or whatever. Even if that wasn't enough, there was the example of Shin Uchiha. He was filled with Hashirama cells and had Sharingan everywhere. Not a single one became the Rinnegan, even if they were fully evolved Mangekyou. So with that context, there was little to no chance that swapping eyes would give Uzume and me the Rinnegan.
"But think about it, Shori. I'm sure. I've been thinking about it. Uchiha plus Senju will give you the Rinnegan. If I give you one of my eyes, then your chakra should be what it needs to get the Rinnegan. You give me one of your eyes, then the chakra you have in that will flow into my body and then turn my Sharingan into the Rinnegan. With that, there's no chance we lose to the Raikage."
"So that's what you're worried about," I surmised. Of course, it had to be that. She still didn't believe my assurances that we could take him. Sure, I hadn't fought him myself, but I knew his level from canon, and I knew his weakness. His body wasn't as strong as his attacks were. All I had to do was redirect one of his attacks to him, and his durability would not be able to handle it.
"Not just him. Everyone. We do this, and we become gods, Shorirama. One god split into two bodies." She said, quoting the tablet at the end.
"It won't work, Uzume. Trust me, it won't work."
"And how are you so sure it won't?" Her eyes were sharp now as she assessed me. I couldn't tell her I knew it wouldn't because things like that had happened in canon. I also couldn't just seem like I wasn't even giving her suggestion any thought at all. I had to strike a middle ground.
"It's just common sense. If that's all it took, then we'd have some record of the Rinnegan existing already. I've healed you multiple times. I put those eyes in your head, 'Zume. If pumping my chakra through your eyes was what it took, then those things would already have evolved," I told her, pointing out the logic—or lack thereof—in her suggestion. She looked at me now, like she was trying to come up with a counterargument. I gave her all the time she needed, and there was nothing but silence for a minute before she returned.
"Medical ninjutsu is Yin chakra. You probably weren't channeling your Yang chakra, and so that wasn't enough to upgrade the eyes," she said, sounding remarkably sure.
"Do you trust in our power so little you would have us fight the Raikage with borrowed power?" I asked her instead, changing tacks. I could see the way she froze at my words. Uzume was extremely prideful. So was I. If I made this a thing of pride, she would drop it. I just knew she would.
"It wouldn't be borrowed power," she said, but I just tilted my head at her. Even she knew that that was a particularly weak rebuttal. Taking her eyes to activate the Rinnegan would be borrowed power.
"Fine. But after the Raikage, we look into this. We do it together," she said. Sure, I had to push it back further then.
"Speaking of the Raikage, there's something I wanted to test," I told her. She looked at me. I walked over, tapped her on the shoulder, and the second we made contact, we were in the Hokage's private training ground.
"What did you want to test?" she asked.
"Activate your Mangekyou ability, please?" I asked her.
"Yes, but what are you testing?" she asked as her eyes spun into their final state. I took a deep breath and covered her with flames. The jutsu passed, nothing happening.
"What was the point of that?"
"Just bear with me a bit. Now can you hold this?" I asked, taking out a scroll from a pocket and placing it in her hand. Once again, fire. Once again, no effect. She, her clothes, the scroll she held in her hand—not a bit of damage.
"Okay, you will tell me what's going on now." Her tone brokered no argument.
"Your stasis field doesn't just affect you like we thought. It affects your clothes," I said.
"We already knew this," she pointed out.
"But did we know what it meant? That scroll in your hand is undamaged. So what if you were holding on to another person? Would your stasis field extend to them as well?" I wondered.
"I— I don't know."
"That's what we're here to find out," I said, forming a clone by twisting my chakra in on itself. Eliminating hand seals from all my jutsu was one project that I had been making relatively massive strides in. I wasn't yet at the point that I never used them at all, but chances were that if the jutsu was basic enough or from one of my two major affinities—earth and water—then I didn't need it. For Wind Release, I was not quite there yet, and when it came to fire, only the Great Fireball Jutsu had been developed to that point.
My clone walked towards her, and now I covered them both in fire. I felt my clone pop a few seconds after the fire touched him, and I took note of the memories as they came to me.
"A failure then," Uzume said with a shrug.
"Not so quick. My clone only dispelled a few seconds after the fire reached him. If the fire did its job, then it should have dispelled much earlier. No, I think you can project your ability, but you just need to get a bit better at it."
"Does that mean…?"
"Training time, 'Zume!" I said with as much enthusiasm as I could project into my voice.
XXXXXXXX
"Do we have the votes?" I greeted her with as she walked into my office, Uzume at her side. Instead of replying, she just arched a brow. A well-manicured brow that framed her pupil-less eyes perfectly and contributed to the aristocratic beauty the Hyuga were famed for. There was a reason they had managed to be the only ninja clan to successfully manage to marry into proper Land of Fire nobility. The beauty of Hyuga women was such that even the fear of shinobi had not been enough to dissuade quite a few Lords of the Daimyo's court. Of course, any offspring they produced was carefully monitored to avoid the Byakugan developing outside Konoha's walls.
"I meant, how are you, Cousin? I hope you've had a lovely day." I pivoted when her brow did not drop after a few seconds of staring at each other. She hummed, dropping the brow and moving to take her seat.
"I am fine, Cousin. It is lovely to see you well, and I have had a fruitful day," she said, accepting a cup as I stood to begin making tea. I could imagine my teacher's voice in the back of my head as I went through the steps of a particularly simple tea ceremony. Superhuman dexterity, incredible memory, and unreal balance should have made even the most difficult tea ceremonies easy, but of course, shinobi had to be shinobi. The most complex tea ceremonies required all three, along with near-perfect chakra control as a minimum.
"To answer your question, yes, we do. All the holdovers needed was the confirmation of Hiruzen's unsuitability and the fact that you had the votes even without them," she said, humming as I spun my fingers, sending a tendril of chakra into the teapot that forced the tea to rise from it, following my movements as it spun, forming a tight, controlled tornado. This one had been a nightmare to learn, I remembered. I could hear him saying, 'Tighter, Shorirama. Tighter. Spill one drop, and you start again.' I spilled nothing as I forced my fingers apart. A perfect amount of tea split from the tornado, forming three tendrils that each went into a cup. Now all three of us were served.
"Six," Uraume graded as she took a sip.
"Nine," Uzume said instead.
Uraume grunted. "Trust the Uchiha not to know good tea or ceremony." She whispered it into her cup, but she had clearly fully expected the both of us to hear.
Uzume prepared to reply, so I just cut in. "So you mean to convince them to vote our way, we had to convince them that we didn't need their votes?" I asked, incredulously.
"The Clan heads are a complicated bunch. If they felt you needed them, then they would either have held out to extract concessions or withdrawn support to extract concessions from Hiruzen instead," she said.
"They would have backed him as Kage? Even with that report?" Uzume wasn't the only one shocked.
"No. But they would have blocked Shori's coup and then allowed Hiruzen to resign with honour and pick a successor."
"Good thing that isn't going to happen then."
"I can toast to that," she said, lifting her cup with her single hand instead of two as would have been proper. I stared at the stump and swore my oath again. I had to do it. One way or another.
"So I will move the motion once the meeting begins and present the report, Nara Kagame will testify to its veracity, and you will abstain from all the voting. Uzume, you just focus on having that scary expression on your face and bullying the others into submission. By the end of the day, you will be Hokage, Shorirama," she said. I smiled, feeling my cheeks stretch without my consent and remain pulled that way.
XXXXXXX
"I vote yes." Uzume, one.
"I vote yes." Shikahime, two. Even as she gave me a look that said she was far from pleased at being kept out of the loop. I would make it up to her, I knew. Of course, I cursed myself as I decided that. Four clans now, I owed loyalty to.
"I abstain," Cousin Tsunade spoke, looking at me like I had stolen her favourite cookie.
"I vote yes." Inoken, three.
"I vote yes." Choni's uncle next, four.
"I vote yes." Mateo Fuma, five.
"I vote no," the Shimura representative—I cared little for his name—tossed his vote out there.
"I vote yes." Kenpachi Onokuma, six.
"I vote no," Kagami Sarutobi, Hiruzen's first son spoke, glaring around him practically daring anyone to meet his eyes. I did so, and made sure to press him with a stare of my own until he turned away.
"I vote yes." Kimiko Inuzuka, seven.
"I vote yes." Ayame Kurama, eight.
"I vote yes," Shito Aburame said in his customary whisper, nine. Good, he had been a loose cannon.
"I vote yes," Kito Izuno spoke, clearly seeing where the ship had turned.
"I vote yes." Uraume, eleven.
"I vote yes." Me, twelve.
"With twelve votes assenting to two dissenting and one abstention, the motion to remove Hiruzen Sarutobi as Hokage for lacking fitness passes and will be forwarded to the Daimyo for assent," I said. That would have been another lengthy process for anyone else, but this is where my trump card came in. His guards escorted him in, and the Council paused in shock before rising.
He stepped next to me, looked at the motion paper I'd presented, and called for his seal. In a matter of seconds, the reign of Hiruzen Sarutobi, third Hokage of Konoha, came to an inglorious end.
"I look forward to working with you," the Daimyo said, squeezing my shoulder as he left.
XXXXXX
Once the matter of getting rid of Hiruzen had concluded itself, getting myself appointed as Hokage proved to be shockingly simple. We called for nominations, Uzume nominated me. Kagami Saratobi nominated Orochimaru, and I won by a landslide. I might have even felt sorry for Orochimaru if he wasn't so obviously being used as a pawn by those who would rather I failed.
"So what do we do now?" Uzume asked, looking around the office.
"It feels different, you know?" I asked instead.
"What do you mean?"
"The office. I've been here for weeks now, but now that the hat is mine, it feels different, heavier. Like it's not just a place I'm borrowing. It's mine. The office is mine," I said, looking out the window at the village. Not just the office, in truth. The village. All of Konoha was now mine. I wasn't too certain how to think about that, but I'd wanted this. I'd worked for this. It felt good to win.
"Yeah, that's nice and all, but I was talking about our Kumo problem. If they're moving on Iwa, do we intercept where they don't expect us, or do we wait for them to take Iwa and see what happens then?" Uzume said, cutting through my thoughts with that brutal efficiency only she could ever manage.
"If they take Iwa, they'll come for us next," Shikahime said, not even mincing words about it.
"So the question is if we want to fight a defensive war or an offensive one," Uraume summarized.
"I doubt the Daimyo would be much pleased if we let his Kingdom get burned again," I said, even as I began to turn my mind around the problem.
"So we invade Iwa then?" Uzume asked, her smile as sharp as ever.
"Through Kusa. Best we liberate them from the yoke of the troublesome Hidden Stone while we're at it," I completed. Invading Iwa—it was the kind of offensive action I would have shied away from because of our relatively diminished numbers and military, but now that everyone was guaranteed to have taken heavy losses, I was willing to risk it. There was no chance Iwa would fall without a fight—they were just too damn stubborn. And when they bleed Kumo for the taking and Kumo wins regardless, I would be there to fuck Kumo in the arse.
"Risky. Very risky."
"But think about the payoff," Uzume replied to Shika immediately.
"This is going to be the defining moment of your reign, Shori. If you win here, you come off like a god among men. If you lose, someone's going to do to you what you did to Hiruzen." And wasn't that a scary thought.
XXXXXXXX- CEE
"Landmines!" he heard someone shout for what felt like the ninety-ninth time today as another cluster of shinobi blew sky high. The Iwa strategy was a shockingly competent one. Landmines buried so deep that they activated seconds, or sometimes minutes, after being tripped. It was literally impossible to tell where the landmines were until they exploded. A different village would have taken the losses and turned about. They were Kumo, though. And one thing they were not lacking was numbers. They had the new recruits at the front of the line, leading the charge. There was no need for stealth or subtlety.
Iwa knew they were coming and would most definitely do their best to prevent them from arriving, but that mattered little. Not when Kumo was Kumo. Iwa might have prided themselves on being the stones. The immovable objects. But Kumo was the unstoppable force, and Iwa was going to learn what that meant in a matter of hours. The Raikage himself was the tip of the spear, walking at the very forefront of their charge. Already he had stepped on and triggered what had to be a dozen landmines but had stepped away unscathed from each one.
He inspired their people to continue forwards. They knew with A-sama at the helm, there was naught awaiting them but victory.
"Contact!" another voice screamed. Cee paused, searching out with his chakra. He could feel them now. Dozens of hostiles. They rose from the ground in their midst like demons from hell. Their blades lashed out, and they reaped Kumo lives with every swing.
"Form up!" he screamed even as he felt out two of the hostiles closest to him with his chakra. In a second, he had ensnared them with his genjutsu. In another second, they were dead.
He jumped forward, right into the fray, even as he sensed his fellows doing the same all around him. He felt Killua's electric chakra as it moved, arcs of Storm Release bending around Kumo shinobi to strike at the Iwa shinobi in their tens. For all Cee might have found the man bothersome and troublesome, he could admit that the bastard could fight. Yui's cloth wrappers reached out to snatch hostiles and toss them into the air. Killua shot them down whenever she did, the two of them working together well.
Kinkaku and Ginkaku, berserkers that they were, gloried in the senseless violence, moving from target to target, jumping this way and that. He could already count two life-forces that had definitely been Kumo shinobi that the idiots had killed in their rampage. He was probably the only one who noticed, and he would not be telling, he already knew. It galled him to admit it, but for better or worse, they were worth more than the lives lost to their carelessness.
Sora's shuriken flew through the air with eerie accuracy, moving from target to target, weaving around attempted blocks and following dodges. As a blur of light, the Raikage zigged and zagged through their midst, reaping enemy lives with the ease of breathing. Cee did his duty, ensnaring as many as he could in his illusions and leaving them open for others to kill.
In less than ten minutes, the entire attacking force was dead.
"Keep moving," A-sama ordered after they had taken stock of the situation.
"But the wounded…" he began, and as he started to speak, he realized it was a mistake.
"Anyone too wounded to move gets left behind. I want us at Iwa's walls before sundown. Let the cowards meet me face to face."
A/N: Ending the chapter with a look at how things are going at the Iwa front. Yes, Iwa are better at using landmines than Shori was– they have a whole explosion corps, and Kumo are much worse at detecting them (they didn't even try all that hard). 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.