It had been two months since Kakashi transferred to the Uchiha Academy, and to his own surprise, he was actually enjoying school. Both Hatake and Kadoya took pride in this development, though Kakashi still preferred living with his birth father over his adoptive one.
Kadoya didn't mind. As far as he was concerned, he only needed Kakashi to be registered as his son for the Father System to start its passive, AFK grinding.
No one in the Uchiha Clan found it odd that Kakashi lived with Hatake Uchiha. Those in the know were well aware of Hatake's true identity. Those who weren't simply assumed Kakashi, like many other Uchiha orphans, was being raised by a trusted adult in the clan.
"Clan Head!" a voice called out from beyond Kadoya's house gates.
Fugaku Uchiha quickly steps in, stopping in front of the porch before kneeling down on one knee. "The Hokage would like to meet with you."
As the current captain of the Konoha Police Force, Fugaku was the Hokage's only reliable line of communication with Kadoya. The Third still didn't dare step onto Uchiha grounds himself.
"I'll think about it," Kadoya replied casually, waving him off without even getting up.
For months now, the Hokage and the village elders had been trying to summon Kadoya for a discussion regarding Kakashi's custody. But Kadoya had left them all on read, essentially ghosting the entire upper echelon of Konoha.
Danzo had been the loudest voice of protest, practically foaming at the mouth, accusing the Uchiha of betrayal. But even he didn't dare make a move. Not when there is a Madara's level threat, an army of powerful Uchiha, the support of the Three Sannin, the Uzumaki Clan, the Senju Clan, the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, and even the Yellow Flash, which has a good relationship with the Uchiha.
On top of that, the Uchiha now had a stellar public image. They were guardians of order, justice, and law within the village. To oppose them now was to sign your own death warrant.
"Kadoya, just go already," a voice chimed in lazily. "It's not like they can do anything to you anyway."
Nobunaga's words were delivered so casually, but they got Kadoya to stand up at once.
"Tch, fine," Kadoya sighed, then vanished in a blur, leaving nothing but silence behind.
Fugaku knelt frozen for a moment. "..."
He'd been coming here for weeks, practically begging Kadoya to attend that meeting. But one sentence from this woman and the Clan Head was already gone?
His eyes twitched as a thought crossed his mind.
Could she be… the Clan Head's wife!?
As Fugaku knelt there spiraling into assumptions, Nobunaga flashed a familiar grin, one that looked far too much like Kadoya's, and said teasingly, "Why are you still here? You want to dance or something?"
Fugaku disappeared so fast, it looked like he used the Flying Raijin.
Whether she was the Clan Head's wife or not, it isn't his business.
That smile was terrifying.
As Kadoya made his way toward the Hokage Building, something caught his eye, the Cremation Shop was open.
Peering through the front, he spotted Minato behind the counter. A moment later, a member of the Nara Clan stepped out casually, and Minato vanished in a flash of golden light.
Unlike Kadoya, who had opened the Cremation Shop out of boredom, Minato had turned it into a secret assassination business.
With his mastery of the Flying Raijin and his fully awakened Three-Tomoe Sharingan, Minato's method was simple, clean, and efficient: locate the target, trap them in a Genjutsu, knock them out, teleport them directly into the cremation box, all while they were still unconscious.
Kadoya gave a small smirk before continuing on his way to the Hokage Building.
Inside the council room, the clan heads were chatting quietly among themselves. But the moment the door creaked open and Kadoya stepped in, every voice died at once.
"Yo! Long time no see. Miss me?" Kadoya called out with a smirk as he swaggered confidently into the council room. Without hesitation, he marched up to the seat where the Shimura Clan Head sat, and kicked him right off it.
Then, leaning back in the chair like he owned the place, he propped his feet up on the council table.
The Shimura Head, Daizo Shimura, the younger brother of Danzo Shimura, spun around, seething with rage, but before he could even open his mouth, Kadoya shifted his gaze down at him.
"Got something to say?" he asked, voice low and calm.
His black-eyes spun, turning into his Sharingan.
Daizo's mouth clamped shut.
Fear clung to his throat.
His wife and son, both taken by this devilish Uchiha. And yet, no matter how much he wanted revenge, he knew he lacked the strength to get it.
"...No. Nothing," Daizo muttered, barely audible, before dragging himself to a seat far away, anywhere but near him.
"Kadoya Uzumaki!" Koharu barked. "Do you have any respect for your elders?!"
"Elders?" Kadoya raised a brow. "Adviser Koharu, care to explain why the Uzumaki Clan Head was left out of the last few council meetings? Aren't the Uzumaki part of this village?"
The question hit like a kunai to the throat. Koharu stammered, caught completely off guard.
Of course, one reason they'd excluded him was because most of their meetings ended up circling the same topic: "How do we deal with the Uchiha?" Not something they wanted to discuss with an Uchiha sitting at the table.
Before she could form a response, Hiruzen smoothly stepped in to change the subject. "That's not why we called you here, Clan Head Uzumaki. We're here to discuss the matter of the White Fang's son, Kakashi Hatake."
Danzo followed up without missing a beat. "The village formally requests custody of Kakashi Hatake."
He had already seen Kakashi's potential, and he wanted to add him to the Root.
Kadoya turned to Danzo, brow cocked, tone mocking. "Hokage Assistant Danzo, what exactly do you mean by custody?"
Danzo met his eyes with feigned righteousness. "The White Fang was a hero of Konoha. We... failed him. That tragedy was on us. But we can honor his legacy by giving his son a proper education, one that will shape him into a true shinobi. This is our way of apologizing to his memory."
After finishing listening to Danzo's BS. Kadoya's grin vanished. He pulled his feet off the table and sat forward, eyes sharp.
"So you admitted that you knew what happened but didn't act immediately, leading to the death of one of our village's heroes?" Kadoya asks, getting straight to the point.
Danzo's eyelid twitched, but he forced a measured nod. "What matters now is setting things right. We've arranged for Kakashi to enroll in the ANBU training program-"
"I refuse," Kadoya said flatly, cutting him off.
A hush fell over the room.
"What?" Danzo asked, voice tightening.
"I said I refuse," Kadoya repeated, unwavering. "Kakashi doesn't need the ANBU."
"Kadoya Uzumaki! Kakashi Hatake is a valuable asset of this village!" Danzo's tone sharpened, eyes narrowing.
Kadoya's fist slammed against the table. Cracks splintered across the surface like lightning, silencing the room.
"Hokage Assistant! Are you Kakashi's father or am I Kakashi's father!?"
"Kadoya Uzumaki!" Danzo shouted, his voice boiling with fury.
"Enough!" Hiruzen snapped, stepping between them. "Whatever grudge exists between the Uzumaki Clan Head and Danzo, leave it outside this room. This is not the place for personal vendettas."
He emphasized personal vendettas, making it clear this wasn't a matter of village policy but something between the two of them.
"Kadoya," Hiruzen continued, softer now, trying to pull him back in. "We're only concerned about Kakashi's future. Please don't take Danzo's words the wrong way."
Kadoya leaned back slightly, voice calm once more. "If you want custody of Kakashi, then call Sakumo out and ask him yourself."
Everyone: "..."
Every face in the room went dark.
Call Sakumo?
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Dig up his ashes? Piece him back together? What, bring him back to life just to ask for parental consent?
The man had been cremated. Even Edo Tensei couldn't revive what no longer existed.
Before anyone could speak, Kadoya cut in sharply.
"Since you've got nothing more to say, I'll be taking my leave."
"Hold it!" Danzo snapped. "There's still the matter of the village Jinchuriki."
Kadoya stopped. His voice dropped a few degrees colder. "Jinchuriki? Do you even remember her name?"
The air shifted. A dark, suffocating pressure began leaking from Kadoya's body as his Sharingan spun and shifted into the Mangekyou Sharingan.
Everyone tensed. Danzo's hand twitched toward his robe. Several others prepared themselves subconsciously for a battle.
"Since when did my clan members become nothing more than tools to this village?" Kadoya's voice echoed with restrained fury. "Is the Uzumaki really so unwelcome? Are they seen as nothing more than containers for the Nine-Tails!?"
His chakra surged, amplifying his voice until it reverberated through the room.
Hiruzen's expression contorted with a mix of panic and anger. Panic, because Kadoya was dangerously close to declaring the Uchiha's full hostility. Anger, because Danzo had pushed this far in front of the Uzumaki Clan Head.
"Of course not!" Hiruzen said quickly. "The Uzumaki are long-standing allies of Konoha. Every Uzumaki is welcome here!"
They had to prevent this from escalating. With the Uchiha boasting a Mangekyou user and over a hundred jōnin-level shinobi, the balance was too fragile.
"…If that's the case," Kadoya's voice lowered, seeming calm, until he suddenly slammed his fist down on the council table.
CRACK!
The solid table exploded into splinters, throwing a shockwave that knocked several clan heads off their seats.
"Danzo Shimura!" he roared. "By dehumanizing the Uzumaki! Konoha's closest allies! Are you betraying the village!?"
His voice rang out, shattering the windows in the room.
Everyone was taken aback, including Danzo himself, he has always been the one accusing others of betraying the village; now, on the other end of this accusation, he was at a bit of a loss for words.
Danzo's body trembled slightly, his instincts screaming to flee. Still, he stood firm, gripping the shattered remains of the table.
"I never did such a thing, you evil Uchiha!" Danzo roared back, his hands clenching onto the table's remains. Despite his body shaking and his instinct telling him to run, he couldn't show weakness now, of all places.
Kadoya's eyes narrowed.
"Evil Uchiha? Let me remind you that the Uchiha helped found this village alongside the Senju. You can hate us all you want, but you can't erase that fact."He placed a hand firmly over his chest. "To call a founding clan of Konoha evil is to slander the very roots of this village. Are you saying Hashirama Senju, the First Hokage himself, shook hands with an evil clan to build Konoha? What does that make him? Won't that make him no different from the Uchiha?"
Danzo's face twisted. His jaw clenched.
"You dare twist my words, you damned brat!"
Kadoya didn't stop; he pressed further.
"Twist? You said it yourself! 'Evil Uchiha.' That's your phrase, not mine. The Uchiha were the ones who helped build this village. If they're evil, then so is the First Hokage, who allied with them. Is Konoha today really so bold to spit on their own founders and call them evil!?"
The room went still.
Damn, you can even twist his words into that?
Danzo just said a simple "Evil Uchiha" and somehow Kadoya had turned that into slander against the First Hokage himself.
Some council members exchanged glances. Even they couldn't deny the logic, twisted as it was; it hit hard.
Danzo looked like he might rupture a blood vessel on the spot.
"That's enough, Kadoya! What do you even know about the First Hokage to talk about him!?" Homura shouted from behind Hiruzen, clearly hiding in the shadow of the Third Hokage.
Hiruzen: "..."
Everyone: "..."
Kadoya turned his gaze on him, sharp and unrelenting.
"What do I know about the First Hokage? Isn't his original goal when forming Konoha, is to create a world? A world where no child has to march off to war. A world where the strong protected the weak. A world where people didn't have to live in fear."
His words echo through the room, creating a ripple effect that resonates with those who truly know about the original Will of Fire, and even those who didn't know about it were also touched.
For that moment, those who live in the era of Hashirama suddenly see the image of the First Hokage overlapping with the boy standing before them.
What Kadoya said aligned far more with the original Will of Fire than the version twisted by Hiruzen.
"And yet, look at the village now," Kadoya continued. "The Third Hokage sends children to war. While he and his closest advisers and assistant stay in the village, weaker shinobi march to war. Where many clan members could wake up one day, and be taken away, never to be seen again."
Once again, the room went silent, not because they didn't want to say anything, but because they really couldn't say anything. Since what he just said is true.
During the Second Shinobi War, even fresh Academy graduates were forced to fight.
The Third Hokage and his closest advisers and assistant, some of the strongest people in the village, stay back while other weaker shinobi risk their lives and die on the battlefield. The Hokage didn't even step onto the battlefield.
The final part is what stung the most, Root's dirty practice of seizing clan children. Danzo has been taking young talents from many Clans to increase the force and power of his organization. Those who got taken away were never to be seen again, losing all contact with their Clan and family.
Seeing that everyone was all so quiet, Kadoya gave a final glare, then turned around and walked away; this time, no one stopped him as he left the room.
Slamming the door loudly, ripping it off the frame before ultimately taking the door with him.