The morning after the banquet dawned sharp and clean, the air still smelling faintly of smoke from torches and ships. Wave's harbor shimmered under sunlight, masts lined like spears, sails folded in neat stacks. The chaos that had once defined the island was gone. Fishermen rowed out without fear of collectors waiting on shore. Merchants haggled in broad daylight, no bribes passing under tables. Guards patrolled with a rhythm that suggested they knew what to do even when no one was watching.
Ren stood on the balcony of the administrative hall, cloak stirring in the sea wind. His eyes—red, three tomoe spinning lazily in their slow orbit—took in every detail, not looking for enemies but for patterns. That was what he had learned from Gojo, from Escanor, and now from Lelouch: power wasn't in the moment of the blade, but in the way people behaved when no one was forcing them.
Below, Eclipse Order soldiers blended into Wave's guard corps seamlessly. Some wore their black cloaks openly; others had taken up plain uniforms. To the villagers, they weren't foreigners anymore. They were the ones who had cleaned the streets after the fighting, who had distributed bread and water, who had carried nobles and children alike out of fire. Gratitude had replaced fear. That was more dangerous than any sword. Gratitude became dependency.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Not the heavy crunch of Zabuza's boots or the easy lilt of Gojo's step. These were precise, measured, like a man who had counted how many tiles there were from door to balcony.
Lelouch closed the distance with a ledger under one arm. His expression was calm, elegant, already the shape of command. He laid the book on the table, pages opened to neat columns of numbers and names.
"Taxes," he said without greeting. His voice was soft, but it cut like glass. "The nobles expect us to bleed them. We won't. We'll bleed their enemies instead. But they must believe they are paying us. Perception is power."
Ren tilted his head. "So they pay in coin?"
"They pay in silence, in routes, in compliance." Lelouch's violet eyes gleamed. "Coin, yes. But more importantly, they surrender initiative. They'll think it's their idea."
Gojo leaned lazily against the doorway, blindfold tilted, grinning. "You sound like Danzo. But with better hair."
Lelouch didn't so much as blink. "Unlike Danzo, I win without corpses in alleys. My corpses are paperwork. Far cleaner."
Escanor arrived next, transformed by daylight. Gone was the meek, hunched attendant from the night before; now his chest swelled with heat, every step thundered with pride. His presence alone seemed to make the room brighter. "Hah!" he boomed. "Finally, politics spoken like conquest. I approve. An empire without tribute is no empire at all."
Ren shot him a sidelong look. "You're not building an empire. You're training soldiers and drinking poetry at night."
Escanor's laughter rolled like sunlight over waves. "For now."
Haku entered last, arms stacked with scrolls, posture quiet as always. He set them neatly on the table and inclined his head. "Patrol rosters. Civilians follow our guards because they are grateful, not afraid. It is different."
Ren nodded. "Keep it that way. Fear fades. Gratitude lingers."
For a moment, the room felt balanced: the schemer, the jester, the lion, the loyal blade, and the boy who commanded them all.
By noon, the council chamber turned into a warzone of paper. Lelouch dictated clauses, his quill scratching loopholes only he could exploit later. He divided the noble families into three categories: compliant, opportunistic, and dangerous. For each, he had a different tax, a different set of words to flatter or bind.
Ren read every page, his Sharingan moving faster than any scribe could track. He didn't change Lelouch's work—he simply underlined details others would have missed. A missed signature here. A courier's loyalty there. Every flaw in the chain became a note in his mind.
Gojo, at first spinning in his chair like a child at a festival, suddenly became lethal efficiency when Lelouch snapped at him. Within an hour he had delivered six coded messages across the harbor, each with a grin that made captains move faster simply to escape him.
Escanor walked the training yards, his laughter booming with every correction. When he lifted a spear to demonstrate, half the recruits nearly wept at the pride that filled them just to be noticed. At noon, when his presence swelled to impossible heights, the drills turned from fear into devotion.
Haku sat with Wave's guard captains, speaking softly about formations. He never raised his voice. Yet men who had once been bandits now carried themselves like soldiers because Haku had told them how.
It wasn't conquest. It was assimilation. And Ren let it happen.
Far away, the ripples spread.
In Konoha's council chamber, Koharu slammed her hand on the table. "Foreign mercenaries—missing-nin, criminals!—dictating Fire's trade! And our nobles thank them!"
Homura's lips pressed thin. "They hold no title, yet they act as if sanctioned."
The Hokage's chair sat empty. Hiruzen's absence was louder than their anger.
Danzo's voice slid into the silence. "They act because no one else did."
Shikaku leaned in the corner, arms folded, expression unreadable. "They stabilized what we couldn't reach. That buys them legitimacy, whether we like it or not."
"You would kneel to shadows?" Koharu hissed.
Shikaku shrugged. "Better shadows that feed us than enemies who starve us."
Danzo's cane tapped once on the floor. He didn't smile, but his silence carried satisfaction.
In the Fire Daimyo's palace, letters piled high. Noble families praised Eclipse Order in cautious tones, describing how their children were carried from burning stands, how water lines appeared as if by magic, how black-cloaked men saluted them as if they mattered.
The Daimyo read them carefully. His eyes lingered on the final line of one scroll: We owe our lives to Eclipse Order, not to Konoha.
"They demand an audience," one minister said.
"Do they?" the Daimyo murmured, folding the letter. "Or have they already been granted it?"
In Kirigakure, Mei Mizukage laughed softly when Ao delivered the report.
Mei said, dipping her brush in ink. "Fire's nobles bow already. We would be foolish not to incline our heads too."
She began to write, every stroke a calculation.
In Akatsuki's cave, Pain stood with eyes like judgment. Konan hovered silent. Zetsu grinned too wide.
"They step from shadow into daylight," Black Zetsu whispered. "Gojo. Escanor. And the boy."
Obito's voice rasped from the dark. "Chains can break."
But even he remembered the blindfold in fire, the man who had walked through the Nine-Tails untouched.
Back in Wave, night fell. The war room glowed with lamplight. Maps spread across the table, tokens marking routes, trade lines, alliances. Ren leaned over them, hands braced, his gaze heavy.
He had wanted soldiers. Now he had an army, a treasury, a bureaucracy, and nobles who already spoke his name with gratitude. He had Gojo's infinite arrogance, Escanor's crushing pride, Haku's quiet loyalty, Lelouch's ruthless genius.
But Konoha was not his. Not yet. The clans would resist. The elders would cling. Danzo would scheme.
Ren closed his eyes, three tomoe burning in the dark.
Tomorrow's storm would not be like Orochimaru's. It would not be blood and screams. It would be quieter, slower, far more dangerous. Politics. Promises. Paper.
Chains.
He exhaled once and whispered to himself:
"We'll be ready."