In the blink of an eye, three months had passed. Today was Dave's birthday—he was turning six.
Inside the Senju compound...
"Wow!! Uncle Madara! Is this gift really that valuable?" Senju Dave looked at the Uchiha war fan in his hand and asked Madara, his eyes shining.
This wasn't an imitation—it was the genuine article, one Madara had always owned.
"Kid, use it well. Consider this the Uchiha clan's dowry for that little girl Tsukimi."
Madara had faced plenty of resistance from the clan when he decided to give Dave the Uchiha war fan. After all, it was a symbol of the Uchiha clan with centuries of history. Madara had teamed up with the second elder to convince the other elders.
Nonsense—only Madara could use this thing in the clan anyway. After the village was founded, Madara had no need for it. He might as well give it to his future son-in-law.
"Ah!!! Clan leader... what... what dowry..." The little girl Uchiha Tsukimi blushed furiously in embarrassment.
"Hmph, Dave—this is the Sword of the Flying Thunder God. This was the weapon your father used to kill enemies back then." Tobirama felt uneasy seeing how his son looked at Madara. He pulled the Sword of the Flying Thunder God from his robes and handed it to his son.
"What a sword! Lord Tobirama's Sword of the Flying Thunder God!!" Danzo exclaimed, his eyes sparkling with stars.
Hiruzen nodded vigorously beside him. Even when Uchiha Madara had given Dave the war fan earlier, the two hadn't reacted at all.
As he spoke, Tobirama raised an eyebrow at Madara. Madara's brother Izuna had died by this sword. And Tobirama had deliberately emphasized the word "kill."
The atmosphere in the room instantly grew tense, and Madara's eyes flared with the scarlet Sharingan.
The most painful moment of his life had been watching his brother die right in front of him.
This event was branded into Madara's mind like a scar.
And today, Tobirama—the killer—had ripped that scar open.
Hashirama sighed inwardly. Izuna's death had been a sore spot for Madara all these years. Normally, even Hashirama wouldn't dare mention it in front of him.
The three kids—Danzo, Tsukimi, and Hiruzen—swallowed nervously... Something felt off... Why had the room suddenly turned so cold...
"Hey, Uncle Madara—I told you I had a surprise for you. Here—this is my gift to you." Just as the tension reached its peak, Dave pulled a colorful lump of metal from his pocket and handed it to Madara.
"What is this, kid?" Madara glanced at Tobirama, then deactivated his Sharingan, took the metal lump from Dave, and asked.
Especially when Madara saw the design on the back, his heart skipped a beat—because the pattern matched exactly: a fan in the left hand, a scythe in the right, disheveled hair, and Susanoo at the feet. It looked incredibly imposing.
"Uncle Madara, this is called a phone. Flip open this cover..." Dave then explained the flip phone to Madara in detail.
"You mean I can contact you anytime, anywhere within Konoha—without using chakra, just with this device?" Madara looked at Dave skeptically and asked.
"Yeah, Uncle Madara—dial the number 666." Dave nodded, then guided Madara through the operation.
Soon, the flip phone in Dave's hand rang. It was a simple ringtone, without much melody—just some static-like noise.
"Uncle Madara, can you hear me?" Dave answered, held the phone to his ear, and said.
"...This..." Madara was stunned for a moment, then Dave hung up.
"Heh, what do you think, Uncle Madara? If you need me in the future, you can call me anytime, anywhere! Of course, if you're out of credit, you'll have to top it up," Dave said with a grin.
"Dave, don't you have one for me?" Hashirama looked at Dave resentfully and asked.
He even had one for his lifelong rival Madara. As Dave's uncle, how could he not have one?
"Hehe, everyone gets one.
Don't worry—you all do, but they're just not as fancy as Uncle Madara's."
Dave pulled a bunch of flip phones from his pocket and handed them out to everyone.
Even Danzo and Hiruzen got one, which touched them deeply.
Dave was a good comrade and a good friend.
Tsukimi, his little fiancée, got one too.
The design on the back of her phone was a pink bunny, which Tsukimi adored.
But none were as elaborate as the one in Madara's hands. The others were plain, in shades of brown, black, red, and so on.
Dave gave everyone a phone card, and following his instructions, they inserted it into the slot in the battery compartment on the back of their flip phones.
"Now, from here on out, within Konoha, everyone can call each other using these phones," Dave said with a smile.
"Is this what you've been working on for the past few months?"
Tobirama looked at Dave puzzled and asked.
Over the past few months, Dave had always come home late after school.
Of course, Tobirama had sent a shadow clone to follow him, but when he saw Dave was with a civilian young man, he hadn't said anything.
As long as it wasn't with someone from that evil Uchiha clan!
"Yeah! In a couple of days, I'll start selling these in Konoha Village. The price is one thousand ryō. The phone card is fifty ryō. You just pay twenty ryō a month for two hundred minutes of calls." Dave said with a smile.
Tobirama and Hashirama nodded at the same time.
Dave, this kid, was contributing to Konoha.
Such a revolutionary device could let people communicate across the hundreds of miles of Konoha Village without chakra.
And Tobirama, being someone who did experiments regularly, knew the materials in the metal lumps weren't simple—many metals weren't cheap.
The production cost of one phone couldn't be less than a thousand ryō, but Dave had set the price at a thousand ryō—a price even ordinary people could afford. After that, they'd only need to pay twenty ryō a month for calls.
Madara didn't think about that. So, the hundreds of thousands of ryō he'd given Dave every month had been for this—and he'd gotten such a special one. Madara was at a loss for words.
Dave thought he was practically printing money.
Sure, that lump of metal in his hand used some precious metals, but it depended on the proportions! For example, a piece of metal specially used for conducting electricity with strong signal reception.
A palm-sized piece cost thirty thousand ryō, but with just that one piece, he could make five hundred flip phones by himself.