(Can u guess who are the new F4 before starting the chapter?)
•••
•••
"I need to change the ninja academy system." Tap. "I need to change the medical system." Tap. "I need to refine the ANBU, Military, and Police systems." Tap tap. "I need to make the intelligence system so fast it can pass messages from Kumo in a few seconds." Her fingers stopped. "I need to weaken, even delete, the Daimyō." A pause. "I need..."
The list kept going. It had been going on since before she even sat down and won the hat.
Hell, since before she'd decided she wanted it and was hesitating about whether to take her clan out of Konoha
But when she decided to become the Hokage, Azula had known the things she'd need to change, that was the blessing/curse of seeing the world clearly when everyone else was stumbling around half blind.
It's just that she'd figured, hey, the system's been running for decades. Not well, maybe, but running, maybe she could take her time, change after change, slow and steady giving the people the time to adjust.
That was before she'd actually looked at the systems up close.
Now? Now she'd spent three hours going through reports, organizational charts, mission logs, academy curriculum, hospital protocols, and a dozen other things that had made her want to set the whole village on fire and start from scratch.
They were practically primitive. Her perfectionist brain was screaming at her to fix everything by tomorrow, which was impossible, which made her want to scream, which she absolutely could not do because she was the Hokage now and Hokages didn't scream at paperwork.
She chuckled instead. Low and dry.
"This isn't bad, I guess." Her voice echoed a little in the empty office. "I've played plenty of kingdom building games. But this time it's real. Guess a lot of people would die for this kind of chance."
"But first things first." She sat up straight. "I need to choose my F3 to form my F4. The ones who'll actually act according to my direction instead of running off to do whatever the hell they want."
The people she could trust to execute her vision without needing their hands held every step of the way. She already had names in mind. The question was whether they'd accept.
'They did' She decided, smiling.
•••
•••
"I'm not the type to question you, but seriously, Azula? This?"
Tajima's eyes flicked to the two other people standing there, then snapped back to his daughter. The disbelief on his face was subtle and controlled, he was an Uchiha, after all. But Azula could read him like one of her own manga volumes.
She just smiled. That smile. The one that said she knew something you didn't and was enjoying watching you catch up.
"What do you mean? I think I picked my advisors pretty well." She turned her head slightly. "Right, Shikoku?"
Shikoku was still in a daze. His eyes had that unfocused quality that meant his brain was running at full speed somewhere far away from his body. Smart as he was, this was taking a minute to process.
When his name hit his ears, he answered on pure reflex, the way you do when someone catches you daydreaming in class.
"Yeah. Yeah, definitely."
The words came out flat and automatic, making Tajima's eyebrow twit.
Here was the thing: Shikoku was fifteen years old and not even a full Jōnin.
He still wore the chunin vest like it was a size too big, which it wasn't, but something about his posture made it look that way. And now he was a Hokage advisor. A position ninety nine percent of the village would commit actual crimes to obtain.
It was handed to him like someone passing out flyers for a ramen shop.
"Still," came another voice, smoother and quieter, "I thought Hiruzen sensei deserved a spot on the council."
Orochimaru. Tajima noted that this was probably the most words he'd ever heard out of the Third Hokage's tight lipped student in one go.
The young man stood near the window, arms crossed, his pale face half in shadow.
"Who better to advise a Hokage than someone who held the seat for that long?"
And that was exactly why Tajima was questioning Azula in the first place. He looked around the room again, 'Two fifteen year olds.'
His daughter and the Nara boy. And Orochimaru, who couldn't have been much older. The whole advisory council looked like it had wandered out of the Academy's upper years and gotten lost on the way to lunch.
For Hokage advisors, even being under thirty was considered young. Most of them were gray haired veterans who'd survived wars and political shuffles and knew where all the bodies were buried.
These three still had baby fat, metaphorically speaking.
Tajima sighed internally. 'Then again, her being Hokage at all is already an exception. The rules went out the window the moment she put on that hat. I just hope she adds some older heads later. People who know how to navigate the clans without setting off a civil war.'
There wasn't really a hard limit on advisors. Back when the village was founded, practically every clan had a seat at the table. Hashirama had wanted everyone to feel represented.
The problem was that with too many voices, decisions dragged on forever. Meetings that should have taken an hour stretched into days. Nothing got done. So the council got trimmed down, streamlined, made "efficient."
But even ten advisors wouldn't be considered excessive by the old standards.
"I thought you were smarter than that, Orochimaru."
Azula's voice cut through his thoughts. She was looking at the pale young man now, and out of everyone she'd picked, Orochimaru was the one she'd spent the longest weighing.
"In my circle, I don't need someone telling me what to do," she continued. "Especially if that someone's only achievement is being old.".
Orochimaru didn't flinch. His yellow eyes met hers without a flicker of discomfort.
"I still think there are things you could learn from Hiruzen sensei. But I understand your reasoning." A small pause. "And I know you understand mine."
Tajima watched the exchange with growing interest. There was a dynamic here he hadn't fully appreciated before.
With Azula, as long as you weren't trying to play games with her head, you could actually have a decent relationship. She didn't punish honesty, she punished stupidity and manipulation.
Orochimaru's recommendation had come from what he thought was right because it made logical sense.
Who better to advise a Hokage than the Hokage who came before her? The logic was sound, even if Azula disagreed with the conclusion.
And Azula knew that was exactly where he was coming from. Logic first, results first and no sentimentality clogging up the works. That same mindset was the whole reason she'd picked him in the first place.
"Anyway," she said, shifting in her chair and letting the tension bleed out of the room, "we're not here to debate the appointments. That's already settled."
All three of them nodded. Even Shikoku, who finally seemed to be surfacing from whatever mental ocean he'd been swimming in.
"We're here to make this village a better place for the people living in it."
"But honestly, The situation is kind of pathetic. There's so much innovation just waiting to happen. So many tasks piled up that even with the four of us, it's going to take forever."
That put a smile on Orochimaru's face. A real one, or as real as Orochimaru's smiles ever got..
'There it is.' His thoughts were practically visible in the gleam of his eyes. 'Innovation, Change, the way you've always done things. I can't wait.'
Those were his thoughts. The entire reason Orochimaru had accepted a role like this despite his obvious dream of learning every last ninjutsu the world had to offer. Azula offered something Hiruzen never could.
Freedom to push boundaries, to experiment, chase knowledge wherever it led without shaking head and muttering about 'forbidden this' and 'dangerous that.'
"So what are you planning to reform first?" Tajima asked.
He asked it because he genuinely wanted to know. When it came to innovation, he trusted his daughter more than anyone else in Konoha, the late Second Hokage included.
Azula didn't even need to think about it. "To start, three things absolutely have to change. The Academy system, the mission system, and the legal system."
She ticked them off on her fingers as she spoke.
By this point the discussion had shifted into serious territory, and Shikoku had finally snapped back to full awareness with his posture straightened and eyes focused. The lazy Nara facade slipped away, replaced by something sharper.
He was also the one whose fate had been tied to Azula's since the earliest days at the Academy. Back when she'd planted a fist right in his face for reasons that probably made sense to her at the time.
Shikoku understood Azula in ways most people didn't, which was probably why she'd picked him despite his age.
"The Academy is the most critical," Azula continued. She stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the village below. "The Academy I'm imagining is the greatest in the entire ninja world. One capable of producing top tier talent in every field imaginable."
She paused, her mind working behind her eyes. Building something none of them could fully see yet.
She'd built her vision of the Academy, of Konoha, hell, the whole ninja world, by comparing it to something similar to the western magic world.
She planned to turn Konoha into the capital and center of the world.
And the Academy into the place every young person worth their name would dream of attending. Didn't matter if they came from the Land of Water or the Land of Earth or some tiny country nobody had heard of.
If they had talent, they'd come here. And they'd leave loyal.
There would be multiple departments. Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, Fuinjutsu, Intelligence, Science and Research, ANBU, and plenty more as she kept refining the blueprint.
A system that didn't just churn out generic soldiers but created specialists and innovators.
Of course, she knew that no matter how sharp Tajima and Shikoku were, probably only Orochimaru would fully grasp what she was trying to build without the knee jerk 'but we've always done it this way' that infected everyone else.
"The Academy, huh?" Tajima turned the thought over for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I've felt for a while that some changes could be made there, even if I didn't have anything concrete in mind. What are you planning?"
He asked it with genuine curiosity. Not as her father questioning her judgment, but as someone who wanted to understand the shape of the thing she was building.
"The changes I'm planning can't happen overnight." She turned away from the window and faced them fully. "But first, I need to train new instructors. At least two hundred of them. All former Jōnin, including those who've been forced into retirement because of injuries."
"Orochimaru will be the one in charge of training them."
The pale young man's smile widened, just slightly. If Hiruzen were in the room, he'd have said she was turning his own student into her personal Danzō. Training men for her purposes and building a power base outside the traditional structures.
But Hiruzen wasn't in the room. And Orochimaru didn't seem the kind to mind the comparison.
"Two hundred new teachers." Shikoku's voice cut in, questions written all over his face. His brow was furrowed in that way it got when he was running calculations. "Jōnin level at that?"
His brain kicked into gear, visible in the slight tightening around his eyes. 'Add in the teachers we already have, and even if she wanted to educate every kid in the Land of Fire, it's too much, and to begin, there aren't that many children with the potential to become shinobi worth being taught by Jōnin, unless she's thinking...'
Shikoku's eyes widened a fraction. Being a Nara, the best of his generation, and having spent more time navigating the chaos inside Azula's skull than most, he eventually landed on a conclusion that felt plausible.
Maybe even realistic.
She wasn't planning to educate Konoha's children, but to probably educate everyone's children.
But Azula didn't elaborate on her Academy plans. She'd already tapped Orochimaru for that particular project, and she trusted him to execute without needing every detail spelled out. Instead, she laid out the rest.
"You don't need to worry about the Academy. It'll be handled by Orochimaru." She looked at each of them in turn. "Each of you has your own role. Shikoku, you'll handle innovation in the mission system. Like, seriously? A big village like Konoha depending on Mission?"
"And my father will oversee the legal system." Azula's eyes settled on Tajima. "Something he's already more than familiar with."
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
As you can see, I've been thinking about where the next part of this story would go, what do you think of Kingdom Building?