"There's something I'm not getting," Kaiyo interrupted. "How did he get all of our DNA to resurrect us? The Uchiha were wiped out years ago, and the Uzumaki were scattered."
She was right to ask since most of the deceased were either buried, burned, or lost.
Rin rubbed her arm as she felt the dense, modified muscle beneath her sleeve. "Things started with lord Kaito."
Because Kaito had successfully integrated into the Akatsuki, he eventually crossed paths with Obito. Kaito, therefore, played his part perfectly and slipped a secret Flying raijin mark onto Obito's cloak.
All Arthur had to do was just wait.
Rin continued to explain how Obito eventually returned to his personal, hidden sanctuary in the Mountain Graveyard. The moment he did, Kaito passed the coordinates directly to Arthur.
Arthur would in turn teleport to the area where he found a mountain of preserved Sharingan and genetic material taken from the massacre. So he managed to scrape enough DNA from the jars to map out the entire bloodline.
"But what about us from the Uzumaki clan?" Kaiyo pressed. "Our village was destroyed decades ago."
"It was actually thanks to me," Rin admitted. Her voice lost its conversational tone. "Our lord sent me to the Leaf Village's funeral lot. It was the land he had won from Tsunade, so he had unrestricted access."
"So you dug everyone's DNA samples?" Shigeru deduced.
"Yes, including Minato and Kushina's…"
"But I hadn't died in the Leaf!" Kaiyo tried.
Rin paused, remembering the stone of the ruined monuments. "As for the rest of your clan, that took longer. It was a few weeks after the Uchihas were resurrected before the vats could produce enough Ryūzetsu clones to handle the strain. Once they were ready, lord Arthur ventured into the coastal ruins of the Hidden Eddy Village and pulled most of your genetic markers right out of the blood-stained rubble."
"Don't you feel a bit of reluctancy for betraying your home?" Shigeru asked. "I mean, I understand you were following orders, but you dug up your own leaders."
Rin kept her gaze fixed on the horizon. "I did at one point when I was revived. But then lord Arthur showed me the truth. He showed me what my former teammate, Obito, had done to the world in my name."
From the takeover by the Akatsuki to the Nine-Tails attack to the Bloody Mist to even the Fourth Shinobi War, Arthur had indeed revealed just about everything to Rin. He also went as far as making her understand who was really in charge of the Akatsuki.
Remembering all these things made her tighten her jaw. "Without lord Arthur, I won't be able to help anyone."
"Gee, Rin!" Kaiyo mused, trying to lighten the heavy mood. "You must be his favourite or something!"
Rin managed to let out a low chuckle. She knew she was special to the man on the throne. She was, after all, the first of the resurrected.
But more than that, she was the only one given a specially modified body. The frame she walked in was not a standard vessel; it carried the synthesized cells of the previous Kages of the Leaf. Her bones were denser and her chakra reserves were massive.
While she might have looked like a standard kunoichi, in a real fight, she was a walking bioweapon capable of holding her own against entire squads.
"There's still something I'm not getting," Kaiyo said, tapping her chin.
"What is it now?" Shigeru pressed.
"How come no one knew about lord Arthur's plans? Sure, we all know that he faked his death. But if people were coming back to life, you'd think someone other than the Akatsuki would catch on by now, right?"
Rin realized she had skipped a critical detail.
While Arthur was busy coordinating the mass revivals in the lab, he had already finished resurrecting the Sound Four prior.
He outfitted them with the notorious white camouflage coats—the fabric woven to mask chakra and blend into the environment. They also received specialized training from Hoshikaze to be more useful as a unit.
It was then that Arthur had sent them into the field to test the camouflage. Their target was a high-profile group who had already left the Leaf: Jiraiya, Naruto, and William.
The three of them had planned a training journey that would last at least two years. But that ship sailed the moment the Sound Four, led by a fully cured Kimimaro, ambushed them in the hot spring mountains.
The appearance of Kimimaro and his team shocked the Leaf shinobi because four of them were believed to be dead.
Their ambush was only half the distraction. While the Sound Four attacked the travelers, Arthur played his part by reviving Minato and Kushina before dropping them both by the Leaf Village.
They arrived confused and breathing as the Leaf Village went into a state of panic.
They didn't suspect Arthur on account that most of the shinobi world believed him to have died in the Tea Country. Therefore, the only person known for manipulating the dead was Orochimaru, so the Leaf leadership assumed the snake had perfected the Reanimation jutsu to a horrifying degree.
Every ounce of suspicion shifted away from the Land of Birds and settled squarely on Orochimaru's shoulders.
There were immediate repercussions for this act. Reviving the fourth Hokage and tossing him at the gates was an act of psychological warfare. That made the Leaf Village demand Orochimaru's head.
Tsunade mobilized her forces conveniently as Alexander and Margaret returned from a secret land. But before the team could depart, Jiraiya was sent out alone and tasked with finding the snake's main hideout at all costs to put an end to the madness.
Arthur watched their confusion unfold from a safe distance. He knew that if Orochimaru was cornered and captured—which was highly likely with a Toad Sage on his trail—Sasuke Uchiha would also be taken back to the Leaf Village as well.
Arthur refused to allow the Uchiha boy to return to that cage.
Using his extensive network of Flying raijin formulas hidden across the world, Arthur manipulated Orochimaru's supply lines and patrol routes. This allowed him to lure Sasuke out of Orochimaru's compound and into what the snake thought to be a safe mission for him to execute.
That's when Jiraiya caught up to the boy.
To make matters worse, Naruto had snuck out of the Leaf Village since he deeply cared for Sasuke and refused to stay behind while Jiraiya hunted for his former teammate. Naruto was therefore able to block the Flying raijin marks on him and track Jiraiya to the valley before walking right into the confrontation.
"Before the reunion could turn into a brawl, lord Arthur intervened," Rin told them. "He needed the adults removed from the board."
Arthur intervened as Kaito by quickly teleporting to Jiraiya and transporting both him and the Sannin to a barren wasteland miles away.
The fight that followed was catastrophic.
Jiraiya understood immediately that he was facing a monster. He went as far as summoning the two elder toads, Fukasaku and Shima, to enter his Toad Sage Mode.
Arthur by no means chose to fight fair. He summoned every single one of his clones as they, too, entered their Sage Modes.
The numbers were overwhelming once the clones moved with the most insane coordination anyone's ever seen. They tore through the elemental attacks, isolated the elder toads, and crushed Fukasaku and Shima into the dirt, silencing them in the end.
One could compare the fight to when Jiraiya fought Nagato and his Six Paths. Arthur did something similar, knowing that was the best strategy to defeat such a formidable opponent. The only difference was that Arthur finished the fight by trapping him in a deep genjutsu.
By the time Arthur returned, the two boys were close to settling their dispute. Naruto, to everyone's expectations, had once again brought Sasuke to his knees.
But once they saw Arthur on the scene, he defeated the boy by activating the hidden curse mark he had planted inside Naruto's Eight Trigrams Seal months ago.
The black markings crawled up Naruto's belly as he screamed and his muscles tightened up.
Yet Arthur miscalculated a single variable: because he had Uzumaki blood flowing through his own synthesized veins, activating this seal in such close proximity resonated with the boy's lineage.
The reaction was violent as Naruto's own Golden Chakra Chains erupted from his back before lashing out blindly in defense of their host.
Sasuke watched as Arthur eventually subdued his friend. When that was done, Arthur moved to grab Sasuke, fully intending to drag the boy back to the Light Village and dump him in front of his revived clan.
Then, the air above them fractured as Margaret arrived.
She hit the ground hard, and, from the look of her new appearance, she had pushed herself beyond her limits to awaken a brand new Sage Mode.
She charged without thought as the very clouds shook from their clash.
Margaret fought with desperation and refined fury. But Arthur was a wall of taken biology and perfected combat data. He read her movements, absorbed her strikes, parried her heavy blows, and dismantled her new techniques piece by piece.
Even with all her efforts, the gap in raw stats was simply too wide. She had lost. Again.
Sasuke was completely awestruck. What he had failed to do to Naruto, Arthur had succeeded.
Only then did Arthur drop his transformation to reveal his identity. Sasuke was perplexed and somewhat frightened at the revelation. So Arthur, who knew the boy would react this way, removed Orochimaru's curse mark and then summoned Shisui, who was wearing the same white robes as Arthur.
Sasuke froze upon seeing the ghost of his brother's best friend standing right in front of him, breathing and whole.
Shisui convinced Sasuke that true strength wasn't found in a snake's damp cave but back in the Light Village, where Arthur had revived the clan.
All this information caused Sasuke to agree to follow Shisui, which in turn meant he would also be following Arthur.
Arthur, therefore, teleported them away before he turned his attention back to the two bodies lying in the dirt.
Margaret and Naruto were battered but still breathing. So he methodically erased their memories of the entire ordeal.
"What happened to them?" Shigeru asked.
"Jada and Minato found them once they sensed their Flying raijin marks," Rin answered. "They brought them back to the Leaf. But the damage was done. The village leadership was terrified, so my sensei… I mean, Minato, suspended Naruto from active duty."
The boy was stripped of his ninja status, placed on strict lockdown, and forced to have escorts watching his every move. All this because Arthur was playing in the dark.
"Gee!" Kaiyo blurted out. "It feels like everything's centered around Naruto." She then pumped her fist. "Can't wait to meet 'em when we arrive in the village!"
"Same," Shigeru agreed. "I'm hoping to see what the new Nine-Tails Jinchūriki has up his sleeve."
"Wait," Kaiyo interrupted. "I thought you were gonna ask for Karin's hand in marriage so you could bring her back to lord Arthur."
"I said no such thing!"