Shimura Danzō worked himself into a rage and then… raged.
He really wanted to storm into the Hokage's Office, smash the door, and slap the desk at the Fourth brat, shouting: "What are you doing?!" "Kill all the Uchiha!" "They're an evil clan, how can you reuse them?!" "Listen to me! Only my decisions maximize Konoha's interests!"—lines like that.
But on the way up from his furious stand to the Hokage's Office, Danzō suddenly remembered: it wasn't Sarutobi Hiruzen's era anymore.
Namikaze Minato had no friendship with him and wouldn't indulge him.
If he barged in on Minato spouting deranged lines, his status, his power, everything would be stripped without mercy.
After all, the shinobi world isn't "within the four seas, all are your dad."
If not for the Third coddling him like a doting partner, with Danzō's high-eyes-low-hands character he'd have been killed eight hundred times already.
If you asked Uchiha Yorin, Danzō becoming like this was all the Third's spoiling. Zheng Bo punishing Duan at Yan; a doting mother ruins her son.
"Namikaze Minato, Hokage..."
With that thought, the darkness in Shimura Danzō's heart grew thicker.
"Only by becoming Hokage myself can I better protect the village's interests."
Having said a line no one outside Root would believe, today's Shimura Danzō still wallowed in fierce internal conflict, unable to extricate himself.
...
Meanwhile, in the Hokage's Office, Namikaze Minato finished the entire paper.
Beyond the front-page headline "A Clan of Love," most of it was gossip—like Killer B's impromptu rap performance, or Sasori's puppet show.
An ordinary person might be interested.
But as Hokage, Minato no longer had the right to enjoy gossip.
He skimmed, confirmed nothing extra or crucial lurked in there, then focused entirely on the front page, rereading two lines over and over.
"As long as the village gives the Uchiha more love, the Uchiha will return it tenfold, a hundredfold."
"As long as you treat the Uchiha as comrades, sincerely, the Uchiha will treat you as comrades and give you their whole hearts."
"Yorin."
"This is what you wanted to tell me, isn't it."
He sighed, and a blue figure flashed through his mind again.
"Obito."
"Uchiha."
"I hope I choose correctly."
...
Yorin's plan, stripped bare, was simple: assign the Uchiha a tsundere persona—not the modern M-writer kind that's only tsun and never dere, but the old-school kind of "I work myself to the bone to hand you all the benefits and wash up nice to let you ravish me, not that it's for you or anything."
That tsundere.
At the same time, Yorin would give the Uchiha a tragic, friendship-valuing persona.
Tsundere may have fallen out of meta. But tragic-beautiful never goes out of style.
Everyone loves a tragic-beautiful character.
If they wanted good relations with the village, the Hokage leadership, and other clans, then this New Konoha Daily was Uchiha Yorin's pledge of allegiance.
...
On the outskirts, near the forest, in a small printing house, Uchiha Yorin mused:
"Right now they must be furious. Hope they spare me on account of me being the top genius of the new generation."
He reviewed his plan end to end and found no issues. Then he flashed a cheerful smile at the buddy across from him: "See, Shisui, I told you—we'd do something big together."
Uchiha Shisui opened his mouth, then closed it.
Yorin's one sentence had too many spit-take points to roast; in the end, the warm, passionate, slightly naïve boy made the simple choice.
Don't overthink. Just smile.
...
The New Konoha Daily was a long-brewed plan of Yorin's—part of reversing the Uchiha clan's fate.
For a plan this big, he couldn't do it alone, so he found Uchiha Shisui.
They weren't that close, but no matter—he only had to say: "I've got an idea, low risk, high return. It'll help the clan and the village get along."
Once said, Shisui howled to join: "Please let me participate and contribute!"
Thus he became Yorin's unpaid labor. Working overtime, gathering material all over, and Yorin didn't even pay overtime.
...
Besides this guy who sincerely hoped for harmony, five hundred ninja cats were bustling about.
Some operated the presses, set ink and paper. Some stacked printed papers. Others clamped the papers in their teeth and delivered them door to door.
Yorin was broke. He couldn't keep a whole print shop. Luckily, the Uchiha had face.
The pact with the ninja cats let Yorin summon these clever little fellows.
What he paid was just small dried fish, matatabi wine, and some petting and smoothing labor—ten times cheaper than hiring real printers, and no labor laws to worry about. Too convenient.
"..."
This behavior also shocked Shisui, giving him a huge "holy crap, you can do that?" jolt.
So shocked he didn't know how to comment. In the end he chose again: "Just smile."
"Next, we see how the Fourth returns the serve," Yorin said to Shisui. "It takes two to tango, and a new official needs three fires. If he's smart, he'll respond."
Honestly, it was luck he'd crossed when the Fourth was alive.
If he'd crossed after the Nine-Tails incident, only eight words remained: "Abandon illusions, prepare for struggle."
By then, the Uchiha and Konoha's leadership had nothing left to say. The spiral of suspicion slid toward the abyss. If you didn't want to die, you'd better get ready to fight.
But now Minato still lived; there was room to maneuver.
This time Shisui had to speak: "It will work!"
He said, "Yorin-nii's plan is flawless! We can do it! Once your plan is in motion, everything will get better!!!"
Yorin looked at him solemnly: "Yes, that's what I think too, Shisui. Everything will get better."
"Yorin-nii!"
"So, Shisui," Yorin gripped his shoulder. "You're willing to give everything for the village and the clan, right?"
"Of course!"
"Then you handle what comes next. I'm out."
"Um... huh?"
As Yorin vanished with a Body Flicker, Shisui was about to praise, "Your Shunshin is really good," when hurried footsteps approached—and many very familiar voices:
"Uchiha Yorin! Bastard, get out here!!"—the clan's elders and youths.
Having had their tsundere nature exposed by Yorin, they were mortified and enraged. They came to kill you.
Shisui: "!?!?!!"
Uchiha Shisui: "Eh, wait—"
...
In Year 50 of Konoha, the Fourth Hokage issued his First Hokage Order.
The Mission Desk would divert a portion of mission revenue to the Uchiha clan as a gesture of outreach and goodwill.