Chapter 471: Swapping the Birds in the Cage
There is a saying: commit to the work you chose.
Yasushi was a responsible person. Since he was now a daimyo, he was going to behave like a daimyo.
Which meant organizing his daily schedule in strict accordance with established daimyo custom.
Banquets. Banquets. And more banquets.
Jun had developed a specific face she made every time she saw him.
"You are a shinobi. Do not forget that."
"The three forbidden vices: alcohol, lust, and greed. You have collected the complete set."
"I am doing this for cover." Yasushi smiled at her without the slightest trace of guilt. "A daimyo does this every day. If I suddenly stopped, it would attract attention."
"I don't believe a word of that."
"I watch you having a wonderful time every single day."
"Wonderful? I am suffering." He adopted the posture of someone lodging a formal grievance. "I have been working myself to exhaustion. My back is nearly broken. I am nutritionally depleted."
"Workplace injury. This is a workplace injury."
The shinobi world produced fast physical maturity, and adults did not particularly shelter children from what adults did. Jun was ten years old and understood more than she would have preferred to about what he was implying. The knowledge produced a flush across her face, a sharp sound of disgust, and a rapid exit from the room.
On one particular afternoon, Yasushi had a dancer in his arms when Jun came in briskly.
"Your Excellency. Takumi Village has sent a delegation."
Yasushi considered this, untangled himself, waved the entertainment out, and had the banquet cleared.
"Show them in."
Jun left and returned with a group of about a dozen, three of them at the front.
"Takumi Village jonin Kigame, Suiko, and Kujaku, leading their team. We present ourselves to Your Excellency."
Those names were familiar. Yasushi tilted his head for a moment and placed them: the group that had been trying to resurrect Seimei. Younger here than he remembered from the source material, and the youngest of their number was not with them yet.
He smiled and waved away the formal courtesy, but did not offer seats. He let them stand at the base of the dais and addressed them from above.
"I have heard your names. The rising talents of Takumi Village."
"Thank you for the kind words, Your Excellency. The village naturally sends its best for the daimyo's personal protection."
"Young jonin already. That is genuinely impressive."
He let his gaze move across all three of them.
"I have heard of Takumi Village's Four Legendary Ninja Tools. I do not see any of them on your persons."
Kigame produced a pair of gauntlets from inside his coat and held them up.
"The Four Legendary Tools are the village's most prized possessions. They are held by the village elders and do not leave the village under normal circumstances."
"However, we each carry our own personal tools. They are not equal to the Four Legendary Tools, but they are exceptional by any ordinary standard. Any jonin from a major nation would not find us easy opponents."
"I see."
Yasushi nodded without committing to an expression. Inside, he had already passed judgment on the village elders who were sitting on legendary artifacts rather than contributing them. That was the kind of decision that had a predictable endpoint.
He clapped once.
Jun emerged from the shadows in the corner, wearing ANBU gear and a dog-head mask, and took a position beside him.
"This is Tengu. Head of the daimyo palace's shadow operations."
"Your Takumi Village personnel will fall under Tengu's authority from this point. Take your orders from her and report to her. My own instructions will come through her as well."
"The demands on a daimyo are considerable. Do not come to me directly unless the situation is critical."
"Understood. We will take our leave."
He dismissed them with a wave, and Jun led the delegation out.
When they were gone, Yasushi formed a single seal. A shadow clone stepped away from him and slipped quietly out of the room.
He had been looking for a suitable location inside the country to set up the main operation. The Takumi Village delegation had just solved that problem. The village was close, accessible, and now had his people inside it through the liaison arrangement.
He would run both operations from the same site. Clear out the targets, fold Takumi Village into the structure, and do it all at once.
Over the following days, Yasushi assembled his full roster of missing-nin. He used whatever he needed to: money, threats, demonstrated capability, appeals to self-interest. Each method applied to whoever it fit. When the group was large enough and cohesive enough, what he had was not a team exactly, but a collection of people whose interests had been aligned to the point where cooperation was the rational choice.
When the roster was complete, he summoned all the nobles to the palace.
The event opened as a routine banquet, which was its own kind of communication. When a daimyo called you to a feast, you came and you ate and you drank, and the business happened after the formalities had smoothed everyone's judgment.
When the table had done its work and the room had the particular warmth of people who have eaten well and drunk better, Yasushi set down his cup and arranged his expression into something that combined personal offense with civic concern.
"Esteemed colleagues. You will recall the assassins who attacked this palace some time ago."
"My household's investigation has identified where they are hiding."
"These individuals have been hiding in plain sight, as it were. They are currently sheltering in Takumi Village."
"I intend to deal with this. However, the assassins are formidable, and a small force risks letting them escape."
"Additionally, the wandering shinobi we recently recruited are still in the process of being organized and trained. Their coordination under field conditions is not yet reliable."
"With that in mind, I am asking each of your households to loan me a portion of your guard forces for a joint operation. Takumi Village's leadership has been notified and will cooperate. The objective is to take the assassins into custody in a single decisive action."
He looked across the room with an expression of earnest appeal.
The nobles exchanged glances.
The logic was sound on its surface. A combined operation against clearly identified targets, with local cooperation, did not sound like something that would fail. But those assassins had killed a significant portion of the palace guard in the initial attack, which implied they were not easy problems. Personal guard forces were investments. Losing them in someone else's operation was a cost.
Yasushi watched the hesitation and added something to the offer.
"I am naturally aware that I am asking a favor, and I do not ask for free. Any household that loans guard personnel will receive a corresponding reduction in their tax assessment at year's end."
"A jonin-level guard: two hundred thousand ryo in reduction. A chunin: fifty thousand. A genin: ten thousand."
"Any guard who is killed or injured in the operation will have full compensation paid by the palace. Not by the household."
"One condition: do not send me untested people you recruited for the occasion. I need your actual guard forces."
The atmosphere in the room changed immediately. Eyes that had been cautious went bright.
"Your Excellency, you need not worry about the tax reduction to secure our support. We would not allow such criminals to threaten our country's leadership regardless."
"Eliminating those who attack the daimyo is every noble's responsibility. Our house will send everything we can spare."
"An attack on the daimyo's person is an attack on the entire noble class. We stand with you completely. Our household guard is at your disposal."
"Your Excellency, I can give you thirty. My full complement."
"Take my personal guard as well. Twenty years of service. Absolutely reliable."
They were competing to be the most generous before anyone else had a chance to be more generous than them. The tax reduction had been the critical component, but the protection against paying their own compensation costs had removed the last rational objection.
Takumi Village was close. Two, three days at most. Nothing serious could happen in that window.
The hall had the energy of an auction in its final minutes.
Yasushi stood and raised his cup.
"You are the backbone of this country and I am grateful for every one of you."
He let the warmth in his voice land before adding the final piece.
"Given that your guard forces will be deployed, I want to make sure none of you are left without protection while they are away. The palace's own guard forces, whatever their current limitations, will be assigned to cover all of your households for the duration."
"Stay here with me. We will maintain the feast for several days. By the time you are ready to go home, your guards will have returned with the mission complete."
This was received with enthusiasm. Palace protection, free room and board, continued festivities, no personal risk. If there was a downside, none of them found it.
Everyone sent for their guards immediately. Jun was at the door to receive them, count them, and log the details.
The nobles settled in for an extended celebration.
The combined guard force departed for Takumi Village.
After the column had cleared the city, Yasushi did not move immediately. He kept the food and wine coming, kept the atmosphere festive, kept himself visibly relaxed and hospitable.
A final meal before a final outcome was not something he found difficult to provide.
The drinking continued into the evening. By full dark, the assembly had reached the stage where nobody was in a condition to do anything purposeful. The hall had gone from celebration to the quiet sounds of people who had lost the thread of what they were doing there.
Yasushi clapped his hands once.
The servants and attendants were cleared from the hall. A different group came in.
A cluster of missing-nin in guard uniforms entered in disciplined silence, eyes sharp, weapons recently used.
Most of the noble guard forces had gone to Takumi Village. But even with the majority borrowed away, the nobles had kept a token presence with them, because rank required visible protection regardless of operational considerations. Those remnants had been distributed across the capital.
Kakuzu had handled them during the banquet.
"Everything outside the hall has been dealt with?"
"Please be at ease, Your Excellency. We had the advantage of preparation and numbers. Not one escaped."
"Good. Kakuzu, this operation counts as one million ryo against your account. Collect directly from the Finance Minister's family vault when you're ready."
Yasushi understood how Kakuzu worked and did not waste language on anything except the relevant number.
He stepped into the center of the hall and looked out at the assembled missing-nin.
"Is everyone ready to begin the Swap?"
The group exchanged looks. The responses were not verbal. What moved through the room was visible in the way people held themselves and the way their eyes settled.
They looked at the collapsed nobles around them, at what they were about to do and what came after, and the tension in the room had the particular quality of people approaching an irreversible threshold.
This was killing nobility and assuming their identities.
Once that was done, there was no version of the shinobi world in which they would be welcomed back. The world they had been living in, however uncomfortable, would be gone permanently.
Yasushi read the room and did not wait for the moment to become something that required management.
"From tonight, you are not the kind of people who spend their lives looking over their shoulders, waiting to be killed by some chunin looking to collect a bounty."
"Tonight you become nobility."
"Not in name only. With my recognition as daimyo, you will have actual standing."
"Perform well, complete what comes after, and when the families are dealt with, I will formalize your status. Real nobility, with documentation."
"The people in the villages who looked down on you, the former colleagues who treated you as something disposable: when they see you next, they bow first and call you lord."
"Your children will be born noble. They will never have to be what you were."
"The people who despised you will send their children to serve yours."
He let the image settle.
The tension in the room found a different expression. The mouths that had been closed opened slightly. The eyes that had been uncertain found their focus.
Ambition was easier to work with than fear. Fear made people hesitate at the wrong moments. What was in the room now did not hesitate.
Yasushi let it run for a moment longer, then pointed toward the interior door that led to the private wing behind the main hall.
"The plan is in motion. Take your assigned target. Move to the back. Extract what you need to know."
"When the information is confirmed, finish it cleanly. No loose ends."
"The guard forces we sent out are not coming back. You need to know your new identity thoroughly before news of that can reach here."
"The Takumi Village ninja I have posted around the city are part of the city's normal operations. They know nothing about what happens tonight. They will be distributed among you as cover personnel."
"But Takumi Village people have existing loyalties. For anything that actually matters, you need people you recruited yourself. Use whatever contacts you have from before. Build your actual support structure around people you can rely on."
"This country is not large, but running it requires more than a few people. You do not want to handle everything personally once you have rank."
He let the briefing settle.
Then he raised his hand and brought it down.
"The Swap begins now."
"Move."
The leash came off.
The missing-nin scattered across the hall in complete silence, each one reaching their target without wasted motion. They grabbed the unconscious nobles by the back of the neck and dragged them toward the door, the bodies bumping across the floor without anyone sparing attention for the noise it made.
They had work to do.
Chapter 472: The Age of New Nobility Has Arrived
The nobles had no idea what was happening to them.
They came back to consciousness feeling wrong, eyes unfocused, shapes moving in front of them that they could not quite assemble into a coherent picture. The instinct of people who had spent their lives being handled with deference took over before their minds were fully awake.
"Careful with that!"
"Is this how servants behave?"
"When I am recovered, you will answer for this."
The missing-nin dragging the Grand Minister had been looking for an excuse since before the feast ended. He did not wait for the sentence to finish.
The slap was not gentle.
Half the man's face went red immediately.
"Tell that to tomorrow."
"There is no tomorrow for you."
"You think you're still the Grand Minister?"
"You are in my hands now. I decide whether you breathe."
"So sit down and give me everything I need to know about your household, and I will make this quick. Give me trouble, and I will make it last as long as I feel like making it last."
The Grand Minister screamed. The sound that came out had none of the authority of a man accustomed to being heard. It had only the raw pitch of someone who has suddenly understood that the rules he has lived by for his entire life stopped applying while he was unconscious.
He pressed one hand to his ruined cheek and looked up, and the face above him was not a servant's face.
He took in the room properly then.
His colleagues, the people he had eaten with tonight, were being dragged across the floor in every direction like dead weight. The men in guard uniforms were holding weapons that had been used recently. His own personal guards, the ones he had brought to the palace himself, were lying in the corner in the particular stillness that was not sleep.
The cold went all the way through him. Every trace of the evening's wine was gone.
"What do you want?"
"Money?"
"I have money. I have considerable money."
"Let go of me and I will have it delivered to you immediately. Whatever amount you name."
The missing-nin looked around at the scene spreading across the hall, at every noble in the same condition, and laughed.
"You think I need your money?"
He let go. The Grand Minister's head hit the floor. The missing-nin stood over him and looked down with the complete comfort of someone who has arrived exactly where they intended to be.
"How do people get this stupid?"
"Look at your situation. Do you still not understand what is happening?"
"How did people like you ever manage to run anything?"
"I must have lost my mind somewhere along the way. It never occurred to me to just take a noble title and run it myself."
He reached down, grabbed a fistful of fabric, and resumed dragging.
The Grand Minister's body made sounds against the floor as it moved. The expensive robe tore where it met the stone. He clawed at everything in reach and found nothing that helped.
"Help! Someone help me!"
"They are killing nobility in here!"
The screaming pulled others awake. The hall became chaos: nobles discovering their situation simultaneously, adding their own voices to the noise, some shouting for guards who were not coming, some cursing, some begging.
Yasushi's expression tightened. He looked at the room with mild displeasure and waved one hand.
"Are you people actually capable of handling this?"
Being questioned in front of each other was sufficient motivation. The missing-nin responded in whatever way suited their instincts: some applied the most straightforward solution, which was physical; some employed genjutsu; some simply hit the loudest voice first and worked from there.
Inside two minutes, the hall was quiet again.
The last stragglers disappeared through the door into the back wing. The main hall sat empty and still, the banquet tables in the condition of a meal that had been interrupted and abandoned.
Yasushi sat in the daimyo's seat, poured himself a cup at his own pace, and waited.
Moonlight came through the windows and settled across the floor in pale rectangles.
From the back wing, sounds reached the hall occasionally. They were brief. He did not adjust his expression.
The first replacement emerged after a while.
The clothing was correct. The way the person moved through the door was not, carrying a loose quality that had nothing of hereditary dignity in it.
"Your posture tells everyone in this room exactly who you are." Yasushi looked at him sideways. "That is not a compliment."
He pointed to the correct seat.
"That is where your noble sits. At every formal occasion going forward, you occupy that position. Do not sit anywhere else."
The replacement made an adjustment, moved to the indicated seat, and arranged himself with the deliberate care of someone consciously performing something unfamiliar. The back straightened. The hands went to the knees. The effort was visible.
But the eyes would not cooperate. They moved across everything in the room with an excitement and a hunger that had no practice at concealment, jumping from Yasushi's face to the hall's furnishings to the other empty seats and back again, the grin threatening to take over the lower half of his face entirely.
"There will be days for that later. Tell me how your target's debrief went."
The replacement composed himself and delivered the report.
"Everything went smoothly on my end, Your Excellency."
"The man was not particularly resilient. He came in trying to talk down to me, dropping his brother-in-law's name, the usual. I gave him ten slaps and broke two fingers. After that he was fully cooperative."
"He is a minor noble, so there was not much to cover. The social contacts are limited, the household's needs are simple. We moved through it quickly."
"Understood." Yasushi nodded. "The assignments were drawn by lot. Do not feel disadvantaged for drawing a minor title."
"Noble wealth has very little connection to rank. Some minor families hold more than families with grander titles. The exposure risk on a smaller household is also lower, which means the operations you run out of it can stay cleaner for longer."
"How much you extract depends on your own ability. The title is the instrument. What you do with it is your business."
"I understand, Your Excellency."
The replacement's expression was appropriately respectful. His eyes told a different story. They had not stopped moving across Yasushi's person with the calculating quality of someone taking inventory.
Yasushi did not mind.
Ambition in subordinates was useful. An ambitious person worked harder, thought more carefully, and invested more genuinely in the outcomes they were chasing. Managing the redirect was straightforward.
If the ambition eventually turned inward rather than outward, well. He was familiar with how that went. The welcome mat was always out.
The others came out in sequence, trickling back into the hall over the following time, each face carrying the same combination of excitement and unreality.
They returned to the seats that matched the positions they had replaced, re-establishing the hierarchy's shape with new occupants.
When they were all seated, someone laughed first.
Everyone else followed immediately, the sound filling the hall without restraint for the first time all evening.
"Look at us."
"To where we have arrived."
"Gentlemen, in honor of our new existence, I propose we raise our cups to the daimyo who made this possible."
"Seconded. This deserves proper acknowledgment."
Every glass came up facing Yasushi.
He raised his own.
"From tonight, the governance of River Country falls to you."
"You may run it however your judgment directs. Extract from it the way the previous nobles did, or reduce the burden on the farmers and small merchants if you prefer, or squeeze the working population harder than they have ever been squeezed. Any approach is your prerogative."
"I will not interfere with how you manage your territories."
"My requirement is singular: finish clearing the old noble lines, and break up the major commercial families who have accumulated independent wealth. The holdings you recover from that process are split equally between us."
"Do that, and if your activities ever draw outside attention, if the major nations decide to make this their business, the daimyo of River Country will back you. Formally and publicly."
"Is that understood?"
"Understood!"
The cups came down empty.
"Different skills for different people. We know killing and taking. That is where we excel. You can rely on us, Your Excellency."
Yasushi noted the enthusiasm without particular trust in any of it, and nodded.
"Good. For the next several days, remain here as my guests. Familiarize yourselves with your identities and the way your predecessors carried themselves."
"When word comes back that the operation in Takumi Village is finished, you return to your households and assume your roles."
The hour was late. He had accommodation arranged for the new nobility, and the hall emptied as people found their rooms.
When the last one was settled, Yasushi created a shadow clone, left it in the palace to manage appearances, and slipped out through the least visible route available.
He moved toward Takumi Village.
He had a clone in place there already, but clones were not a reliable substitute for direct oversight in situations where unexpected variables were likely. The noble guard forces he had sent ahead would be arriving soon.
He had departed a full day after the main column, but a single person traveling without the pace constraints of a mixed-ability force covered ground significantly faster. A unit's speed was set by its slowest member, not its fastest.
He reached Takumi Village first.
He did not recall the clone. He waited. When the timeline suggested the main column was approaching, he dropped the daimyo's disguise and walked through Takumi Village's front gate looking exactly like himself: Uchiha Yasushi, with the scratched Konoha headband of a missing-nin visible on his forehead.
The gate guards looked at him.
They looked at the headband.
They waved him through without asking a single question.
He walked into the village without incident.
In a village that had been at peace long enough to become accustomed to peace, this was apparently not an unusual situation. Takumi Village did business with everyone. The identity of any given person walking through was considered less relevant than whether they had currency.
He shook his head slightly and kept moving.
Takumi Village had the active, commercial atmosphere of a place that made money from making things and selling them to the world. Vendors worked both sides of the main street. Merchandise changed hands in continuous low-noise transactions. The tool market that served the shinobi world drew buyers from everywhere, which meant the village's foot traffic had a cosmopolitan character that most shinobi settlements lacked.
He found the central sales building without difficulty. Three stories, built with the confidence of an establishment that expected to be taken seriously, the entrance moving steadily with commercial traffic. He noted the cloaked figures near the entrance whose presence explained why the gate guards had stopped caring about headband condition: this place operated as a neutral market, and enforcing shinobi village affiliations at the door would eliminate a significant portion of the customer base.
He went in.
He found the counter, set two fingers on its surface, and tapped once.
"I need to speak with whoever runs things here. I have a business matter."
The woman at the counter looked at his headband, reassessed her initial reaction, and composed her expression into the particular professional neutrality of someone who has learned not to underestimate people based on appearance.
"Of course. Please wait in the seating area. I will inform jonin Yoshiki immediately."
He sat by the window, crossed one leg over the other, and waited with his tea.
A man arrived within a reasonable time: early forties, dark grey shinobi wear, a tool pouch on his belt, and the face of someone who had been doing business long enough to produce a professional warmth that was indistinguishable from genuine warmth to anyone who did not look carefully. The nods he received from people he passed as he crossed the room confirmed his position in the local hierarchy.
He extended that warmth toward Yasushi as he approached.
"A visitor from Konoha. Welcome."
"I am Yoshiki, jonin. Everything related to Takumi Village's tool sales goes through me. What can I help you with today? A bulk purchase? Or perhaps something you would like to sell?"
He let the second option land with just enough openness to make clear that provenance was not a question he was prepared to ask directly.
Yasushi set his cup down.
"I have heard about Takumi Village's Four Legendary Tools for some time."
He smiled pleasantly.
"Name your price."
Chapter 473: Takumi Village's Day of Reckoning
Yoshiki's face went rigid. The smile disappeared.
His voice kept its professional courtesy, but the warmth left his eyes completely.
"I apologize, honored guest. Those tools are the village's inherited treasures. They are not for sale. Under any circumstances."
Yasushi raised an eyebrow and laughed without any warmth.
"Not for sale? I've decided I want to buy them. Does that mean it's actually your decision whether I walk out of here with them or not?"
He set his cup down.
"Those four tools of yours. I'm buying them today. That's settled."
Yoshiki's patience ran out.
He stepped back and made a single gesture.
The sound of fabric and air moving filled the room at once, a rushing sweep of motion from all directions, as a group of ninja-armored guards burst from the shadows and closed around Yasushi in a tight ring. Their positioning was precise and rehearsed, each person covering the angles the others left open, every exit sealed.
This was clearly not the first time they had handled a disruptive customer.
The legitimate merchants in the hall had already scrambled out of their seats and pressed themselves into the corners, desperate to avoid what was coming.
With his guards at his back, Yoshiki's confidence settled. He looked down at Yasushi with a cold, composed expression.
"If you're here to do genuine business, Takumi Village welcomes you with open arms."
"But if you've come here with some other idea in your head, thinking you can just take what you want from us, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."
"We may be a small village, but we have enough ninja to deal with people like you. This is not the kind of place where any stray can walk in and help himself."
He put a particular weight on the last four words.
The guards took the cue and laughed. One of them spun a kunai between his fingers, letting the light catch it.
Yoshiki stood with his hands folded behind his back and watched Yasushi with a slight smile at the corner of his mouth. He had seen this kind of situation many times. It was always the same: some reckless kid with a little power who thought that was enough to justify making demands.
He would have the boy's head removed afterward and send it to the Leaf Village. Might even turn a small profit on it.
"Well," Yasushi said, and let out two quiet laughs. "Being underestimated."
He did not stand up. Under the table, his fingers blurred through a sequence of seals too fast to track, and behind him more than a dozen golden chains erupted upward like striking serpents and launched themselves into the formation of guards in a single sweeping arc.
Takumi Village's ninja were nowhere near the standard of Cloud Village or Sand Village forces. They had no time to react at all. The chains wrapped around them instantly.
Before Yoshiki or anyone else could process what was happening, Yasushi crooked one finger.
The chains contracted.
The screaming that followed was brief.
The dozen guards twisted, folded, split apart under the pressure of the chains. Blood rose in short bright jets, more than a dozen of them, covering the floor of the trading hall in a red layer from wall to wall.
A merchant crouched in the corner felt something warm hit his face. He reached up without thinking and wiped it away. His hand came back red. He looked at it for a moment, and then the sound that came out of him was high and raw and had nothing composed in it.
"People are dead in here!"
The hall came apart. Everyone who was still standing bolted for the exit at the same time. The wide front door became a bottleneck immediately: people colliding into each other, going down, others running over the people already on the ground, the people on the ground getting pushed back down before they could rise. Screaming, crying, and the stamp of feet combined into a single noise that had no structure to it.
Yasushi deliberately let them go. He wanted the news to spread. He shook the chains once, and the bodies scattered across the blood-soaked floor like dropped objects, the last decorations on a red surface.
"Hm. And those were supposed to be jonin."
"Not much stronger than chunin from Sand Village, honestly."
He let the cold smile sit on his face for a moment, then picked up his tea and continued drinking.
Outside, the street had already gone loud. Voices were shouting something, and more figures in shinobi gear were converging on the building from multiple directions.
Yasushi watched them coming through the window and let the corner of his mouth lift.
Good. Come.
All of you. Come.
The more the better. This performance had barely gotten started.
"Who dares cause trouble in Takumi Village?"
The elder hit the front doors like a battering ram, leading with one foot, kicking both panels completely off their hinges. The doors sailed across the hall, smashing through tables and chairs, rolling all the way to Yasushi's feet before stopping.
A wave of ninja poured in behind the elder and spread into a wide arc, closing off the room.
Yasushi looked the elder over. White hair standing up in every direction, eyes wide and furious, and the strangest armor he had seen in a while: a few strap-like bands fixed at specific points, offering no actual coverage anywhere, with a single beast-head design sitting on the chest. Nothing else to speak of. He held a long weapon with an unusual shape, like the head of a trident except the blade was composed of separate joined segments, as though the whole thing had been assembled from pieces. Taken together it looked more like a sculptor's project than a combat weapon.
Yasushi smiled.
He recognized both. The armor and the sword were exactly what he had come for: two of Takumi Village's legendary tools, the Infinite Pore Armor and the Yagari Dark Blade.
The Infinite Pore Armor absorbed chakra from incoming jutsu, protecting the wearer from ninjutsu attacks. The Yagari Dark Blade could freely extend, retract, and reshape, functioning at both close range and at a distance, with considerable stopping power.
Neither tool was any use to him. But for someone like Jun, both were exceptional. For ordinary ninja, jutsu attacks were the primary threat. One piece of Infinite Pore Armor meant standing in most fights without the risk of being taken down by ninjutsu.
He did not bother with words. He raised one hand and the Adamantine Chains launched again.
Since acquiring near-limitless chakra, Yasushi had found himself reaching for this technique more and more. Fast, wide coverage, strong damage output. In pure practical terms it was easier to use than Susanoo.
This elder was considerably stronger than the guards from the first wave, and he reacted in time. But either his confidence was very large or his faith in the Infinite Pore Armor was total, because he did not dodge. He raised the weapon in both hands and stepped forward to meet the chains head-on.
"Let me show you what Takumi Village's legendary tools can do!"
"Yagari Dark Blade!"
Chakra flooded into the weapon, and what happened next was immediate: the jointed segments began to loosen and soften, the structure of the blade dissolving as though something inside it had been released. In less than a second the entire weapon had liquefied into motion, extending many times its original length, splitting into three silver-white forms that rose into the air and shot toward the golden chains like living things.
Yasushi moved the chains fast, pulling them out of the path of the three silver shapes and sending them around and past, driving them instead toward the other ninja flanking the elder.
He had no way of knowing how durable the tool actually was. Accidentally destroying it would be a problem.
But dodging the technique rather than countering it gave the enemy exactly the wrong impression.
"Hahaha! Kid, you think running away is going to help you?"
"Let's see where you go from here!"
The three silver forms circled once in the air and came crashing down toward Yasushi from directly above.
The other ninja responded without hesitation: some threw themselves sideways or ran seals to reinforce their defenses, and at the same time they counterattacked. Explosive tags taped to kunai and shuriken came down in a storm, covering every angle. The jutsu followed immediately after.
"Earth Style: Earth Flow Wall!"
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
The coordination was good. Attack waves with clear timing and distinct layers, each element building on the one before it. Training that had been put to regular use. Even a jonin-level fighter would have been pushed onto the back foot facing a combination like this.
Yasushi did not even raise his eyes. The Mangekyo patterns rotated in both pupils, and a chakra skeletal structure condensed rapidly around his body.
The main event had not arrived yet. He could not afford to be too overwhelming. If he frightened off the noble guard column coming from outside the village, the whole operation would go sideways.
He raised the skeletal left arm and held it steady. Every attack landed on that single raised limb and stopped there.
The three silver forms from the Yagari Dark Blade struck the arm over and over, again and again, dozens of impacts in rapid succession, like something smaller and more frantic trying to work through something that had decided not to move.
After all of it, the arm showed nothing. Not one crack.
The kunai and shuriken bounced off in every direction, falling harmlessly across the floor. The explosive tags went off after their delay, one detonation after another, and accomplished nothing at all.
The elemental jutsu came down next.
The fireball struck and exploded outward in a spray of sparks, producing a slight warmth against the surface of the skeleton and nothing more. An earth spear hit the structure and snapped apart on contact. The Susanoo did not sway.
When the wind blade came through and dragged a harsh grating noise across the Susanoo's surface, Yasushi's brow creased slightly. That one, he noticed.
The combined fire and wind jutsu had set the surrounding furniture ablaze. The flames reached the Susanoo's outer form and simply stopped there, unable to advance, reduced to crawling along the energy surface with a quiet hissing sound. Clinging and burning and going nowhere.
Ordinary fire was not going to work through that defense in any useful timeframe.
"How is this possible?"
"What is that thing?"
The elder's eyes had gone very wide. Everything on his face said he was looking at something that should not exist and was having difficulty adjusting to the fact that it did.
In the moment the elder lost his focus, the Adamantine Chains moved again.
The hastily raised Earth Flow Wall was adequate against ordinary jutsu. Against the Adamantine Chains, which had torn apart Wood Release techniques before, it was not meaningfully different from paper.
One sharp detonating crack, and the wall collapsed inward, exposing the faces of the ninja sheltering behind it. Wide eyes, open mouths, no time to turn and run.
The golden chains swept into the crowd. Moving like serpents through the space, wrapping around every target they reached.
What happened next took only seconds.
The human body's limits were specific and unavoidable. Against the chains, these ninja lasted no longer than the ones who had come before them. In a few breaths, every one of them was bound tight.
"Stop!"
A voice from outside the door, panic and fury fighting each other inside it.
The next instant, the wind arrived.
Wind blades came in from the door, the kind that could cut metal and stone. They sheared through the walls on both sides of the entrance, reducing them to flying rubble, and carried that rubble directly at the golden chains in the air.
Half the trading hall was destroyed in one moment.
The razor wind struck the chains. Sparks came off in showers, the metallic cutting sound rapid and overlapping like rain on a tin surface.
The chains swayed. They did not break.
Yasushi smiled slightly and ignored the voice entirely. His fingers moved.
The golden chains pulled outward in every direction at once.
The sound that followed was wet and final.
The ninja bound by the chains were reduced instantly, each one compressed and torn apart, coming apart in sections. The coordinated, disciplined force from a moment before was now just bodies falling in sequence, wheat going down before a blade, patch after patch. Screams, the sound of bones, the tearing of flesh all at once, blood and pieces of people spreading across the hall.
The air inside the trading hall had the thick iron smell of a slaughterhouse.
"Damn you!"
"You have no idea what you've done!"
"Takumi Village will not rest until you're dead!"
Two figures came through the smoke and debris at speed, both with white hair, both carrying the bearing of senior village elders. Both of them stopped when they saw the floor. Their eyes went red. Their hands were shaking.
Takumi Village was a small shinobi settlement. It had never had many ninja to begin with. After what had just happened in this building, in two rapid passes, the village's experienced fighting force was gutted. The damage would take years to recover from, if it was ever fully recovered from at all.
The elder who came in first held a pair of fine steel longswords, one in each hand. The blades were long and slim, cold-edged, each handle set with a pale blue gem that radiated a distinct chakra signature.
The other held a sword that drew no attention: a black blade, flat and unremarkable to look at, resembling a plain iron weapon, distinguished only by a single transparent gem set into the tip where faint light moved inside it.
"Well, well. The Flying Twin Swords and the Light Sword."
Of the four tools, the two Yasushi actually cared about were the Infinite Pore Armor and the Flying Twin Swords.
The Flying Twin Swords could release powerful wind jutsu and could redirect incoming enemy techniques back at their user. Strong enough that even an elite jonin like Temari would not have an easy time against someone wielding them. For Jun, who had no shortage of chakra, these would be ideal.
The other two tools were only useful for the element of surprise. Once an enemy understood their mechanics, most of their value was gone.
Like right now: Yasushi reached into his collar, produced a pair of dark glasses, and put them on.
The Light Sword's core ability was releasing an intense beam of light, temporarily blinding anyone caught looking at it. On a battlefield, the disorienting effect could change a fight completely. It had done so before, presumably.
The moment he put the glasses on, both elders understood exactly what he had done and what that meant.
Their expressions shifted from fury to something that had genuine alarm in it.
"You came here specifically for our legendary tools."
Chapter 474: Total Annihilation
"A shinobi never fights without preparation."
Yasushi said it mostly to himself, the posture of someone who enjoyed the sound of their own composure. He estimated the noble guard column had entered the village by now, and began laying the groundwork, waiting for the fish to come to him.
"Magnet Style: Iron Sand Drizzle!"
With perfect control over One-Tail Shukaku, he handled Magnet Style as naturally as breathing now.
An enormous quantity of iron sand rose into the air, spiraling upward with a life of its own, passing through the holes already torn in the roof and spreading quickly across the sky overhead. The particles drew toward each other, clustering and accumulating, and within moments a miniature black cloud had formed above the building, blocking out the light from the broken ceiling. The cloud churned and rolled in place, hovering, its edges catching the dim light in brief metallic glints, as though countless small living things were moving through it from within.
Everyone inside and outside the village could see it clearly.
The noble guard forces who had just entered Takumi Village stopped walking and looked up.
"What is that?"
The question went through the column in a ripple of overlapping voices.
No one needed to answer. The answer arrived on its own.
The dense cloud of iron sand transformed all at once into thousands of needles and plunged downward. From a distance it looked exactly like a sudden downpour.
Jun, at the head of the column, received Yasushi's signal immediately. She raised her arm and let her voice carry.
"We're too late. The enemy's already engaged with Takumi Village's people."
"If we don't move faster, there won't even be scraps left for us!"
The column's collective mood changed at once. Thoughts of merit and reward crowded out everything else, and the risks that had been present a moment ago were simply no longer part of the calculation. Someone let out a battle cry and charged toward the sounds of fighting.
"Move!"
"Don't let the merit get away!"
"Kill the assassins!"
Once someone started, others followed. Within moments, most of the column had emptied out from around Jun and gone sprinting ahead.
She glanced sideways at the guards who had stayed, then asked with a light tone.
"Why are you still here?"
"Capturing a handful of assassins doesn't require this many hands. Our involvement in this operation was purely for the daimyo's sake, to preserve appearances."
The one who answered was the guard captain, a man of about forty with his chin slightly raised and a note of comfortable arrogance in his voice. The people behind him nodded along with the same restrained, knowing expressions.
"Since Takumi Village has already made their move, there's no reason for us to rush in and compete for the credit. Let the ordinary guards handle what's left."
He said it as though it meant nothing. In practice, it was a tactic he had been running his whole career. Send the lower ranks in first. Let them exhaust the enemy, expose the techniques, absorb the worst of it. Then move in at the end, take the decisive action, and walk away with the best outcome at the lowest personal cost.
He had been doing this longer than most of the people around him had been alive.
"I see."
Jun nodded as if this explanation made perfect sense to her. She swept her gaze across the group, confirming that the ones who had stayed were the best among them. Fewer people, considerably better quality.
Exactly the people who needed the most thorough treatment.
Since they had chosen to hang back and let everyone else go in first, splitting the force up to be dealt with in pieces, Jun saw no reason to suggest otherwise. She offered them a small smile and asked one more question.
"You have that much confidence in Takumi Village?"
"You're from outside the country, so you may not know," the guard captain said, his tone carrying a trace of genuine respect. "Takumi Village is small, but the history runs deep. The legendary tools they hold are something else entirely."
He gave particular weight to those two words: legendary tools. He was not performing admiration. He actually felt it.
Someone behind him added, "And beyond the tools, the elders in that village are long-experienced jonin. With them in the fight, one assassin should be no serious..."
The words were still in the air when the screaming began.
High, desperate, overlapping voices from ahead.
"No, please..."
"Help me..."
"I don't want to die..."
The sounds had a quality that did not allow for comfortable interpretation. Each one cut off sharply, the way voices cut off when something final happened to the person making them.
The guard captain's expression changed. He stopped worrying about appearances and drew his blade.
Whatever he had planned, he could not afford to let the forward group be wiped out before they revealed anything. Too many losses on this mission and explaining it to his employer would be its own kind of problem.
The others were running the same calculation. They moved.
Jun's side was empty now.
She smiled slightly and followed at a comfortable pace, in no particular hurry.
The ones who ran fastest were the ones who died first. That was simply how it worked. She would walk over, observe the results, and take care of anyone who slipped through.
The Iron Sand Drizzle was not without effect. It was a real attack. But against ordinary ninja it was most useful, and the three Takumi Village elders each had their own methods, avoiding the needle barrage without much difficulty.
That had not been the point of the technique.
Each needle had driven into the ground at speed, pocking the earth below the crowd's feet with a dense pattern of small impacts. And in the ground, beneath anyone's line of sight, those needles had dissolved back into iron sand particles, spreading quietly in every direction, connecting, weaving into each other, forming a wide invisible net beneath the entire field.
When the noble guards came charging in from outside, shouting and sure of themselves, and took their positions in the middle of the open area, Yasushi let a cold smile settle on his face and activated the follow-up.
"Magnet Style: Iron Sand World Method!"
The iron sand beneath the ground bloomed upward all at once, branches erupting through the earth from below, crossing and intertwining as they rose, filling the space among the crowd with a forest of black iron.
The guards who had come in expecting to earn merit had not even made sense of the situation yet.
"What is this?"
"My leg..."
The charging formation that had entered with so much force became something else in seconds. One person went down, then another, then everyone at once. The screams and cries for help layered over each other and then gradually went quiet as the iron branches spread, absorbed each impact, grew further.
Black iron sand branches drove in from every direction, piercing through one body after another, threading them together and suspending them from the iron trees like terrible, dark-red fruit. The field settled into silence. Every person in it hung with their head down, legs swinging in the dead air. The branches were soaked to the color of rust.
"Where did these people come from?"
The three Takumi Village elders had not even identified who this second group was before they watched every last one of them die.
"Looking at the clothing, they appear to be noble guard forces from the capital. Based on the schedule, today was the day they were supposed to arrive and handle the bandit situation."
All three looked at each other. Nobody's expression was good.
They had received notification in advance from the daimyo. They had been planning to go meet this column themselves today. Then Yasushi arrived, and his timing was so perfectly chosen that they had been thrown immediately into fighting him, with no chance to send word to the incoming column or delay its arrival.
Now the column was gone. Every member of it. And explaining that to the daimyo afterward was going to be a problem without any clean solution.
The three of them stood there and said nothing for a moment.
"Iron sand is hard, but it's not indestructible. How did all of them go down so completely?"
"How could they be that careless?"
They muttered at low volume, not entirely sure whether they were criticizing the dead or themselves.
"They had no time to prepare. The Iron Sand World Method activated the moment they were in position."
"The enemy didn't give them any chance to adjust."
"But the Iron Sand World Method is one of Sand Village's secret techniques. How is an Uchiha using it?"
"Didn't we hear that the Third Kazekage was killed by an Uchiha not long ago? This wouldn't be the same person?"
At that suggestion, all three felt a cold drop in their chests simultaneously, something close to fear moving through their expressions.
The same thought arrived in all of them at the same moment.
Should this battle continue?
Was it even winnable?
Maybe... surrender?
The three exchanged quick flickering looks, running the calculation as quietly as possible.
Before they could reach a conclusion, movement flashed at the street side. The guard captain came around the corner with the rest of his people, and stopped when he saw the bodies hanging on the iron trees. His eyes went red. The resemblance to the Sharingan was briefly, unpleasantly close.
"Damn you!"
"I'll kill you!"
He roared it and charged forward with the specific recklessness of someone who had stopped thinking clearly. His remaining ninja came in behind him, spreading out and throwing jutsu forward to cover his approach.
"Earth Style: Quicksand Trap!"
"Earth Style: Earth Binding Coffin!"
The ground beneath Yasushi softened instantly, and both Yasushi and the Susanoo's skeletal frame began to sink. At the same moment, mud ropes came in from every angle, wrapping around the skeleton and hardening quickly, trying to fix it in place.
The guard captain reached close range, eyes going cold. He drew a deep breath and formed his seals.
"Lava Style: Magma Fire!"
A large mass of molten rock came out of his mouth at force, carrying its own momentum and an enormous amount of heat. It hit the Susanoo's ribcage and immediately began to seep inward, producing a sustained hissing sound against the energy structure. In moments the bone surface had turned red, the edges softening and beginning to deform.
Yasushi broke into a grin.
"A kekkei genkai user. Rare."
"The nobles actually have some capable people working for them."
He said it cheerfully, let his gaze find Jun arriving at the back of the group, confirmed that everyone was now present and accounted for, and stopped holding anything in reserve.
The Mangekyo pattern rotated once, barely. The heat damage on the Susanoo vanished, the softened material returning to its full hardness. And then the half-body skeletal frame that had already stood more than ten meters tall simply kept growing, legs extending downward and touching the ground, energy muscle layering over the bones, full armor materializing over that.
In front of everyone watching, the large skeleton had become an armored giant.
The earth techniques that had buried the skeleton halfway up did not reach the new form's knees. The armored giant took one unhurried step and walked out of the quicksand, the hardened mud ropes crumbling off it as it moved.
Nobody said anything.
Yasushi reached down without particular urgency and picked up the Lava Style user, who had apparently forgotten his next attack entirely.
No pressure was needed. The man's body immediately produced a series of deep structural sounds, bones under stress, organs compressing. He could not actually register any of it. The only sensation available to him was fear, filling him so completely there was nothing else.
The man who had been a kekkei genkai user and someone's guard captain broke immediately, crying and wailing with open desperation.
"Don't kill me!"
"I'm the Finance Minister's head of guard. I can pay a ransom. I'll pay you whatever you want, just don't kill me..."
His voice had gone high and uncontrolled, all the dignity and authority stripped out of it, nothing left but pleading and the sound of someone in the grip of absolute terror. Loyalty, pride, every professional commitment he had carried into this fight: all of it gone, gone so completely it was as if it had never been there.
All he wanted now was to survive. All he wanted was to get out of this thing's hand and keep breathing.
"Ransom." Yasushi curled his lip. "You can't even identify the right argument when you're begging for your life. No wonder you die here."
His finger moved slightly. The enormous hand closed.
The guard captain started to scream and then went silent in the same moment.
Blood and fragments of the man ran down through the gaps between the energy fingers and dripped to the ground, pooling into a small dark red paste.
"Run!"
Seeing their captain reduced to that, the remaining ninja finally responded. One voice called it out and every other person turned and ran at the same moment.
It was already too late.
Yasushi laughed out loud.
"Now it's my turn."
"Wail!"
"Scream!"
"Then die."
From behind the Susanoo, a hundred or so Adamantine Chains shot outward in every direction, turning into golden light that spread across the entire field, covering everything under a shifting lattice.
Using a blade was too slow and people could dodge. The Adamantine Chains were simply more efficient.
Against those crisscrossing golden lines, nothing defended effectively. Weapons that tried to block them broke. Jutsu that tried to block them shattered. Running bought a person a short and specific amount of additional time, and nothing more.
One of the quicker-thinking guards spotted Jun standing at the field's edge in her Tengu mask and sprinted toward her, screaming.
"Tengu-sama! Help us!"
Jun looked at him. She smiled slightly. Then she raised one leg and kicked him back the way he came.
He flew back only a few meters before the chains caught up, one of them entering through his back and exiting through his chest in a single smooth motion.
He died without understanding what he had done to earn that particular response from Tengu-sama.
The screaming rose and fell in rapid waves and then stopped entirely.
In a few breaths, the guards who had run were either debris on the ground or remains suspended from the chains.
The three Takumi Village elders had pulled the surviving village ninja into a corner and held position there. The legendary tools were providing just enough coverage to keep them alive.
Not because the tools were strong enough to have stopped Yasushi. He had simply chosen not to break them, and the elders had survived as a result of that choice.
But the battle was over, and the outcome for everyone still breathing in that corner was already decided.
The three elders were decisive people. They could read a situation. When Yasushi's attention turned toward them again, they dropped to their knees without hesitation.
"Please, great one, spare us!"
"Takumi Village will offer up the legendary tools. We ask only for your mercy!"
Chapter 475: Resolved to Devote His Life to the Happiness and Peace of the Shinobi World
Yasushi and Jun left Takumi Village with all four legendary tools and started back toward the capital.
The elders had read the situation quickly enough and surrendered before he needed to push further. He saw no reason to keep adding to the body count. From now on, those people were technically subjects under his daimyo authority. He was short on useful personnel. Better to keep them around.
He had no intention of bringing them into the Swap operation, though. They had spent their entire careers as the daimyo's loyal servants. Rebellion was not something they would adapt to. That kind of work, the kind that turned the whole structure upside down, could only be trusted to people who had already decided to burn every bridge behind them.
Back at the capital, the news arrived not long after their return: the noble guard column had been completely wiped out.
All of the new nobles put on performances that would have been competitive at any award ceremony. They raged and argued in the capital with convincing fury, filling the halls with recriminations, and eventually dispersed back to their respective territories without resolution.
After that, it was simple. All they had to do was wait for people to keep dying on the noble families' end.
Yasushi was not idle in the meantime. He composed an official document and had it sent to Konoha Village, in which he sharply criticized the village for its failure to discipline its rogue ninja, stated that the resulting damages to his country had been severe, and demanded compensation.
His presence at Takumi Village was not something that could be kept quiet. Word would reach Konoha one way or another. He preferred to get ahead of it, lodge the complaint first, and hold the moral position before anyone came looking for him.
He assumed the letter would be ignored.
Two weeks later, Konoha sent someone.
"Your Excellency. A Konoha messenger requests an audience."
"Who is it?"
"Jiraiya-sama."
"Jiraiya?" Yasushi sat with that for a moment. "Why would he come here?"
Jun, standing quietly behind him, supplied the answer at low volume.
"If they want to capture us, ordinary ninja wouldn't have much of a chance. Among anyone Konoha could actually send, only one of the Three Sannin would have a realistic shot at completing that task."
"Right. That tracks."
He thought it over, then made his decision.
"But since he's here, we might as well meet him. Let's see what Konoha's actual position is on the two of us."
He murmured brief instructions to Jun, then waved toward the door.
"Show him in."
A short time later, Jiraiya entered the hall with a boy at his side. Yasushi looked them both over from his seat at the head of the room, his gaze settling a moment longer on the boy. He assumed this was a new student Jiraiya had picked up somewhere.
Before Jiraiya could speak, the boy threw himself forward onto the floor and launched into a tearful account.
"Your Excellency! I have finally found you!"
"Please, you have to help me!"
"Hold on. Who are you?" Yasushi held up a hand and looked at Jiraiya instead.
Jiraiya explained quickly. "On the road here, I came across this boy being chased. I intervened and brought him along. He said he needed to reach the capital and speak with the daimyo directly, so I let him accompany me."
"I see." Yasushi understood immediately. Someone on the operation had not cleaned up completely, and this was the result walking through his front door.
He asked, and the boy confirmed it through his tears.
"My father is the Left Councillor Sanba Yuwa. My name is Sanba Taro. A few days ago, after my father returned from the capital, he became a completely different person. His temper turned violent. He started hitting and screaming at everyone around him for no reason."
"We assumed it was grief over the heavy losses to the guard force. But then we found out..."
Yasushi nodded along with a suitably grave expression, looking for all appearances like someone paying close attention. His mind had been somewhere else for quite a while.
When the boy finished, Yasushi summoned his most authoritative daimyo manner and spoke with composed reassurance.
"There is no need to worry. I will personally dispatch my ANBU to your father's estate to investigate the situation thoroughly."
"However. I have a Konoha emissary to receive at present, and cannot attend to your matter immediately."
"Go with my attendants, rest, and be ready to guide us there afterward."
The boy bowed his thanks repeatedly and was led out by the household staff.
Yasushi finally turned his attention to Jiraiya, adopting the appropriate air of a man whose patience was being tested.
"Konoha sent only one person to bring in Uchiha Yasushi?"
Jiraiya was not always as composed as he was capable of being, but in professional settings he managed well enough. He opened with a proper apology.
"We deeply regret the disruption our village's rogue ninja has caused to your country. I have come today to..."
Yasushi did not let him finish. He raised a hand.
"Just an apology? What about compensation?"
"We sustained significant losses. Are you telling me a single apology is supposed to settle that?"
"Uh." Jiraiya stopped. He had dealt with plenty of foreign dignitaries over his career. The ones who spoke to Konoha messengers the way this daimyo was speaking right now were the ones who could back it up: the leaders of the other four great nations. Small, underpowered countries like this one did not do this. They expressed their complaints carefully, in language that was always careful not to bite, always softer than it appeared.
This daimyo did not do any of that.
Maybe the losses had been severe enough to break something in the man's judgment. Maybe he simply had nothing left to lose.
Whatever the reason, Jiraiya was also a reasonable person, and he knew his village was in the wrong here. He set the strangeness aside.
"What kind of compensation does Your Excellency have in mind?"
"Hmph."
Yasushi appeared to think this over seriously, then began.
"I imagine Konoha can't actually produce real payment for what we lost. So let's approach it differently. Our Takumi Village's shinobi strength is simply inadequate. Have Konoha help us strengthen it."
"I'm sorry?" Jiraiya didn't follow. "What does helping you strengthen it look like?"
"I've heard Konoha possesses a Scroll of Seals. Make a copy and give it to us."
"I'm deeply sorry. That is not something we can do." Jiraiya's expression closed down immediately, the refusal final.
Yasushi continued as if the expression had not registered.
"In that case, leave us the training method for Sage Art."
"Absolutely not. That is Myoboku Mountain's most closely guarded knowledge. I cannot share it with anyone without the Toad Sage's authorization."
Jiraiya folded his arms, his eyes sharpening. He had clearly identified what was happening here. This daimyo was trying to extract something.
Seeing Jiraiya's posture, Yasushi's expression shifted toward open dissatisfaction. He shifted his considerable weight in the wide chair and turned to address Jun in a voice that was clearly not as private as he was pretending.
"This won't work, that won't work. He clearly has no genuine intention to compensate us."
"I told you. Konoha people are all the same. They take and take and never give anything back. Did you actually believe they would make us whole?"
Every word arrived perfectly in Jiraiya's ears.
His face went dark.
The ANBU operative standing behind the daimyo added to the situation without mercy.
"Your Excellency, please don't say that. We're a small country. We need to be careful about what we say."
"What if you offend Konoha and they decide to deal with us? What then?"
"All right, all right, I won't say it." Yasushi waved an impatient hand and looked back at Jiraiya. "Just give us the Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu. That should be enough."
"That is enough!" Even Jiraiya, who was patient by nature, had limits. He pulled himself up to his full presence. "Your Excellency. A rogue ninja is someone who has betrayed their village. Whatever they do after that has nothing to do with the village itself."
"We will track down and return these individuals. But we will not accept unreasonable demands for compensation."
"Track them down." Yasushi's tone went cold and mocking. "And how do you plan to do that? I've been hearing rumors lately. This Uchiha Yasushi, isn't he the one who's supposed to unify the entire shinobi world someday? Establish something called the Uchiha Divine Nation?"
"A person with that kind of future can't possibly act alone. Maybe Konoha ends up being one of his key supporters when the time comes. Are you really prepared to go after him?"
He tilted his head with an expression of theatrical concern.
"You won't end up finding him and then going down on your knees begging him to come home as the Fourth Hokage?"
Sand Village had done Yasushi the service of spreading that particular piece of intelligence. It had reached River Country like everywhere else.
Most people were treating it as something uncertain, something to weigh carefully. Yasushi believed every word.
He knew from White Zetsu that a Dragon Vein time-traveler existed. If the traveler was real, the traveler's intelligence was real. He, Uchiha Yasushi, was a transmigrator from another world entirely, carrying complete foreknowledge of the shinobi world's major turning points, vast amounts of information that nobody else possessed, and on top of that he was seven years old with an awakened Mangekyo Sharingan and the status of a Perfect Jinchuriki, among other things.
Why exactly could he not unify the shinobi world?
He had not held that ambition before learning this. But now that he had, the resolution formed immediately and completely: he would dedicate his life to the happiness and peace of the shinobi world's people, and serve as its divine king.
It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.
Jiraiya's expression had gone unpleasant, but his rebuttal came out steady.
"Those are rumors. Sand Village's fabrications, designed to create suspicion between nations."
"Time-traveling ninja. Do those actually exist?"
"And if Sand Village genuinely had intelligence sources that advanced, how did they end up in the condition they're in right now? With their own Kage dead?"
The obvious answer, which Yasushi was privately enjoying, was that the information Akakaze managed to pass along was fragmentary. But he kept that thought entirely to himself and produced an expression of grudging concession.
"Fine. You're the great nation. Whatever you say."
He shifted forward slightly.
"What I want to know right now is simple. Has Konoha made a definitive decision to eliminate this rogue Uchiha? Yes or no."
Jiraiya paused briefly. He recalled the specific instructions Hiruzen had given him before he departed, and weighed whether explaining them to a foreign daimyo served any purpose. He concluded it did not.
He nodded.
"Yes. Konoha does not forgive its rogue ninja. We will eliminate them."
The statement was clear and without qualification.
Behind Yasushi, the light in Jun's eyes went out quietly. Whatever small remaining thread of thought about returning to Konoha she had been carrying was cut at that moment, and she let it go.
"Good. That puts my mind at ease."
Yasushi slapped his knee and stood, signaling the end of the meeting.
Jiraiya spoke before he could take a step.
"Your Excellency. My visit today had a second purpose, beyond investigating the rogue ninja's whereabouts. I would also like to exchange intelligence."
"Has your country encountered a ninja who is entirely white, or entirely black, in appearance?"
Yasushi stopped walking. He turned back.
Jiraiya is looking for Black and White Zetsu.
Because of Nagato?
Yasushi's expression shifted toward something hesitant. Jiraiya caught the change immediately and pressed forward.
"Your Excellency. These two individuals are a genuine threat. They operate in secrecy, with unclear and likely malicious intent. They represent a serious danger to the shinobi world."
"If your country has any information about their location, sharing it would earn Konoha's genuine gratitude."
Yasushi considered this.
Giving Jiraiya that information would not be without benefit. When he first defected from Konoha, the original plan had been to go directly to Madara and disconnect the life-support apparatus keeping him alive. Without that, the old man's body would fail. Without Madara as an executor, Black Zetsu's plans lost their primary mechanism, and the shinobi world would become ninety percent more manageable at a stroke.
He had abandoned that sequence because of Jun's situation, choosing to establish a base in River Country first.
But sending Jiraiya to handle it accomplished the same result without requiring him to move.
He sat back down. His expression opened into something pleasant.
"My country did indeed come across certain information, through circumstances I won't go into, that points to the location of the pair you're calling Black and White Zetsu."
"Black and White Zetsu." Jiraiya straightened. The names alone were more than he had arrived with. He pressed on immediately. "Your Excellency, where exactly is this base located?"
Yasushi eyed him sideways and let a drawling tone enter his voice.
"Konoha's profound gratitude. Jiraiya-sama, one of the Three Sannin, standing in front of me delivering empty phrases and not willing to produce a single thing of substance. Always hoping to use nice words to get intelligence that was bought with other people's lives..."
Jiraiya endured this with visible difficulty. He was regretting the firmness of his earlier refusals.
"Whatever Your Excellency wants," he said, keeping his voice even, "name it. Anything within my ability to trade, I will not refuse."
"Then I want the Scroll of Seals."
"...That one genuinely cannot be done."
"Then I want Sage Art."
This time Jiraiya did not refuse outright. He thought it over, then made a counter-offer.
"Training in Sage Art requires direct instruction from the Toad Sage of Myoboku Mountain. It also requires medicines that are exclusive to the mountain. Even if I gave your ninja the method in writing, they would not be able to learn it."
"What if I gave you the Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu instead, in exchange for your intelligence?"
"Done."
Yasushi had never expected to walk away with the Scroll of Seals. That demand had always been a ceiling to argue from. His actual target from the beginning was the Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu.
He was now a Perfect Jinchuriki with effectively no chakra ceiling. The shadow clone human-wave approach that had defined Naruto's most effective combat style was now fully available to him. And unlike Naruto, who had generally used clones for either mass rushes or straightforward multiplication of effort, Yasushi had considerably more ideas about what could be done with them.
Jiraiya's counter-offer landed exactly where he wanted. He agreed without delay.
Brush and ink were prepared immediately. Jiraiya wrote the technique out in full. Simultaneously, Yasushi fabricated an intelligence document, placing Madara's base at the mountain burial ground where he knew the Demonic Statue's cave was located.
He did not know the exact coordinates. He had a general sense of the region. He drew a circle on the map in roughly the right area and presented it as the base's position.
If Jiraiya pushed for more detail, the story was simple: the ninja sent in to get precise coordinates had all died before they could report back. No precision was available.
That framing would, if anything, make the intelligence seem more credible rather than less.
Jiraiya believed it. He studied the map with focused attention, then departed quickly, the matter of capturing Uchiha Yasushi having effectively left his priority list.
Compared to a rogue ninja whose status was genuinely uncertain and politically complicated, his student Nagato was the more important question.
Both Jiraiya and Hiruzen had reached the same conclusion on that point independently.