Uchiha Makoto stood there, clutching his sleeves with a sigh, worry for the Uchiha's future written plainly on his face.
He was dead serious about building the persona of a man who lived for the Uchiha. With that image in place, prying bricks from Konoha's wall later would be much easier.
The daimyō of the Land of Fire watched Makoto's expression without a flicker. That anxious look did not seem feigned; Makoto truly believed the Uchiha would one day be destroyed because of the Senju.
Of course it was no act.
If this world kept following the original timeline, then decades from now the Uchiha really might meet their end. The clan would be massacred by Uchiha Itachi, leaving only a single younger brother, Uchiha Sasuke.
One sapling does not grow into a forest overnight. Turning one person back into a clan is no simple matter. Sasuke was not exactly helping; if he wanted to revive the Uchiha, he should have been opening a harem, yet he married only Sakura.
Fine, skip the harem, then at least sow diligently. Instead he drifted the shinobi world like a wandering ghost and delayed the Uchiha's great cause. He was satisfied with a single daughter and not even a son. That girl might be spirited away by the Uzumaki family's blond brat, and by local custom a woman takes her husband's surname after marriage. Children follow as well.
In the original, the Uchiha really did look doomed.
Sasuke was a pitiful victim, though; blame could only go so far. The chief executioner was Itachi. That weasel—no one had ever taught him clan, parents, kin, or how to know friend from foe. Thinking on it, perhaps no one truly had.
At four, he was dragged onto the battlefield by his "timid" father, Uchiha Fugaku, to draw first blood. In that hellish environment it was a miracle he survived at all. Kunai and shuriken have no eyes on the battlefield; even as the noble eldest son, with elite Uchiha guarding him from the shadows, accidents could not be ruled out. Nawaki died to an explosive tag—there are too many accidents in war.
His deadbeat father never offered the slightest mental care. The moment Itachi awakened the Sharingan, Fugaku was overjoyed and forgot that it had opened when Itachi witnessed a comrade's death. He let the boy run feral and used the clan's glory to guilt him at every turn. Hiruzen Sarutobi, that old man, at least praised Itachi for having a Hokage's mindset at a young age.
Pile the Uchiha's characteristic grimness onto Itachi, add everything else, and soon a child who should still have been playing in the mud was pondering the relationship between clan and village. A Hokage's mindset means a Hokage's position. Fugaku even preened, thinking his son bore a Hokage's bearing. With position and backside already tilted, there was nothing left to discuss.
All the tragedies that would befall the Uchiha should be traced back to now. Was Madara wrong? He only wanted to fly in twin lodging with Hashirama and realize the childhood dream of peace. This was the fault of the innately malicious Tobirama Senju. At Konoha's founding he forged anti-Uchiha-ism, and so in later years Uchiha revivalism flourished within the clan. The Uchiha suffered systemic oppression under Konoha.
"Makoto, you are too anxious.
"Your Uchiha are a thousand-year bloodline clan. So long as you abandon illusion, face reality, and begin the struggle—then not even the Senju could wipe you out."
The daimyō kept smiling and spoke gently to soothe him.
He was not wrong. If the Uchiha abandoned illusions, recognized reality, and fought on, they could escape extinction. Especially Madara. If he wished to preserve the clan, he had many ways. He could not match Hashirama head-on, but against other Senju he was overwhelming.
At worst he could hunt every Senju except Hashirama until Hashirama compromised—no Hashirama on their side, no Madara on ours. Remove Hashirama and only Tobirama remained. However strong he was, he could not create an insurmountable advantage over the Uchiha. In fact, the balance might tilt toward the Uchiha.
The Sharingan was born for the brutal conditions of the Warring States. The harsher the environment, the stronger the Uchiha grew, an edge the Senju could not match. And the three-tomoe Sharingan could trigger two terrifying ocular arts: Izanagi and Izanami.
Izanagi, the ultimate yin-style ocular art, was costly to cast and required sacrificing a three-tomoe Sharingan, but it warped and rewrote reality itself. In plain terms it was a revive coin, and handled well it could even act as a group revive.
Izanami was equally costly, also needing the sacrifice of a three-tomoe Sharingan. Used mid-battle, a single moment of eye contact dragged the enemy into a genjutsu space, and unless they recognized their mistakes and faced reality, they would be trapped until they withered away. Its effect was like a mini Infinite Tsukuyomi.
With these two ultimate safeguards, how could the Uchiha lose? Even with the Flying Thunder God Technique, Tobirama was at risk of a first-encounter kill.
The daimyō kept comforting Makoto, laying out pros and cons. In truth, such words only fanned the fire. How could the Uchiha and Senju abandon a millennium of blood and simply shake hands? Blood must be paid with blood. Best to see Madara and Hashirama fight until the sky went dark and they dragged each other down. Without their deaths, how could the daimyō ever sleep?