"Tobirama, deep down, you should actually be pretty happy, right? No matter what, I count as your successor. And I've done a pretty damn good job sitting in the Hokage's seat."
"I led the Leaf into peace talks with the Cloud, defeated the Stone and the Mist, and made over a hundred billion ryo."
"I've done such a great job, so give me a smile already. Success and fame aren't the point. The point is making yourself happy..."
Seeing that Tobirama looked a little depressed, Haru began listing off his glorious achievements, trying to cheer him up a little.
"Hmph, stop flattering yourself. The successor I chose was Hiruzen. You, you evil little Uchiha brat, are a usurper!"
The moment Tobirama heard Haru's words, he instinctively snapped back.
The Leaf was a military regime. Haru taking the position by force was a classic case of a subordinate seizing power from above, the kind of thing that violated every taboo.
"But Hiruzen definitely wouldn't have done as good a job as I have!"
Haru cut him off with a confident smile. He knew far too clearly what the future would look like after Hiruzen became Hokage.
If Hiruzen had taken the seat, then with that brain of his, he probably would've just kept patching one hole by tearing open another, relying on the daimyo's dead funding to slowly nurse the Leaf back to health bit by bit. Then the moment it recovered a little, another ninja war would start, and after that he'd go back to slowly recovering again. Repeat that cycle for decades.
"Hmph. And how would you know?"
Tobirama still wanted to keep being stubborn, but Haru waved a hand and changed the subject. There was no point arguing about this. Tobirama looked at him through colored glasses, and Haru couldn't exactly show him a recording of the Leaf's future.
"How's the research on those appliances I gave you? Those things can make serious money."
Haru finally got to the real point. He had absolute confidence in Tobirama's research ability. Enough time had passed that there should've been at least some progress.
The Naruto era was only about thirty years away now. Refrigerators and televisions hadn't been fully popularized yet, but they had already appeared.
Technological development in the ninja world couldn't be judged using the standards of his past life. In fact, some precise instruments could basically be handcrafted by these ninja.
"I've already completely understood the structure and principles behind the air conditioner. As for its internal..."
"But the television and radio you gave me are more troublesome. Signal transmission, converting sound and images into signals..."
The moment Haru asked about his professional field, Tobirama immediately started launching into an explanation.
Haru listened with a blank look for a while, then cut off Tobirama's endless lecture.
He just wanted the result. He had no interest in hearing the whole process.
"The air conditioner can be manufactured. But the television and radio still need more experimentation."
Haru nodded after hearing that. This pace was already astonishingly fast. Tobirama had actually reached the point where he could manufacture air conditioners.
But manufacturing alone wasn't enough.
What Haru wanted was mass production, then selling them across the entire ninja world.
Air conditioners were guaranteed to sell well. Summer in the ninja world was brutally hot. At its hottest, the Land of Fire could go above forty degrees Celsius. Those nobles tried every possible way to cool themselves down. Even stuffing rooms full of giant basins of ice didn't really solve the problem.
As for someone at the daimyo's level, they would directly hire Ice Release ninja.
Naturally, the cost wasn't cheap. It was cross-border ninja employment, after all. Just getting them there cost several hundred thousand ryo, and after that they had to be paid by the day.
Maintaining a comfortable indoor temperature twenty-four hours a day was not easy.
"Manufacturing and production aren't the problem. The real trouble is popularization. The energy source for air conditioners is electricity. Chakra could work too..."
Tobirama rambled on for quite a while, but Haru got the point.
Ordinary civilians didn't have much chakra to use. If he wanted to push electrical appliances, then electricity itself had to be widely available first. But the world was still basically in the stage of burning firewood. Jumping two stages straight into the electrical age was genuinely difficult.
Even in the Leaf, which was already at the cutting edge of technology, electricity still hadn't been fully popularized. Electric lights existed only in the homes of the major ninja clans. Ordinary villagers still used candles at night.
There were obstacles everywhere.
Still, technical problems were not something Haru needed to think about.
He could dump them all on Tobirama.
"Tobirama, your workload just got heavier again. Generators, power lines, light bulbs..."
Like he was reciting a menu, Haru casually assigned Tobirama a whole new list of tasks.
Tobirama felt his head start to throb. In the future, he'd have to research Hashirama cells while also handling all this other work. How could one person possibly keep up?
"Are you treating me like a beast of burden? I'm only one person. I don't even have an assistant."
Tobirama strongly protested this kind of black-hearted exploitation.
The protest, of course, was invalid.
After thinking for a moment, Haru came up with a perfect solution.
Multi Shadow Clone Technique.
That technique mainly had two drawbacks.
First, if you didn't have enough chakra, then the clones would be too weak to be useful in combat.
Second, even if you had enough chakra, making too many clones could be fatal when they returned to the original body. The accumulated fatigue might kill the caster on the spot.
But Tobirama didn't really need to worry about those problems.
As long as he had enough chakra, then in theory he could create an unlimited number of clones. Sure, if they were used in battle, they'd probably vanish into smoke the moment they got hit.
But this wasn't for combat.
This was for research.
And he also didn't need to worry about dying from the exhaustion of the clones returning, because Tobirama was already dead.
This made Multi Shadow Clone the perfect technique for squeezing every last drop of labor out of Tobirama.
In an instant, one thread became many threads. That unbeatable brain of his could become dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of Tobiramas, all working nonstop for him twenty-four hours a day.
Wouldn't the research speed shoot straight through the roof?
Haru explained his idea to Tobirama, leaving him speechless.
It really did make perfect damn sense.
But that hadn't been the original purpose behind inventing Reanimation.
No, wait.
This was even worse than treating him like an animal.
At least an animal still got time to eat, sleep, and rest every day.
Haru wanted him to work twenty-four hours a day and even said that only living people needed sleep, while for the dead, long rest was just a waste of time.
The moment something you loved turned into year-round labor with no time off, the entire feeling changed.
Beast.
Pure beast.
As expected of an inherently evil Uchiha.
"Tobirama, you're the Second Hokage. Before death, you devoted everything you had to the Leaf. Even your funeral made money for the village, and now after death, your soul still continues adding bricks and mortar for its future."
"..."
"I call that a great sacrifice."
Haru kept talking, piling one grand title after another onto Tobirama's head. The solemn expression on his face clashed absurdly with the nonsense coming out of his mouth, making Tobirama want to punch him.
How had someone this devoid of morality and shame ended up being an Uchiha?
What kind of darkness had Haru gone through to turn into something like this?
"Tobirama-sama, don't you want the Leaf to become great again?"
That single line directly put Tobirama in check.
For the sake of the Leaf, suffering a bit and working a bit harder was still worth it. Reanimation probably didn't suffer from mental exhaustion anyway.
Probably.
Tobirama wasn't entirely sure.
Back when he created Reanimation, he had definitely never considered using it in this direction. If a soul became too mentally exhausted, would it just scatter and disappear?
"There's no problem with agreeing to that request. The problem is my current state. I simply can't use the Multi Shadow Clone Technique. The sacrifice you used for this Reanimation body is far too poor."
Tobirama raised a practical issue. He had no problem being Haru's labor slave, but first Haru had to at least give him a body that could serve as a proper labor slave. In his current condition, he could barely use an ordinary Clone Technique.
If he had a stronger Reanimation body, one capable of using Multi Shadow Clone, then he would also be able to use other techniques to some extent, such as one of his proudest creations, the Flying Thunder God Technique.
And if that became possible, then maybe he might have a chance to escape.
Tobirama, of course, had his own little calculations.
He still held onto the idea of overthrowing Haru, but his thinking had shifted somewhat.
Haru was no longer someone he absolutely had to kill.
Now he was someone who might be worth winning over.
Tobirama's opinion of him had changed. Haru's plans for the Leaf aligned with Tobirama's tastes far more than he had expected, and some of Haru's ideas were so clever that even Tobirama had to click his tongue in admiration.
And Haru's ambition was even greater than that of his old ancestor, Madara.
Madara's vision had stretched only as far as the ninja world.
Haru, on the other hand, had directly aimed his sword at the daimyo and wanted to overturn the entire thousand-year system of the ninja world.
But Haru was far more reliable than Madara.
Madara only knew how to bulldoze forward with brute force.
Well... admittedly, that wasn't completely invalid.
But no matter how you looked at it, Madara had still failed.
Haru had his own theories and plans of action. If he kept carrying them out step by step, there really was a chance he might succeed.
Tobirama also wanted to see what a future without daimyo and with highly developed productivity would actually look like.
Surely it couldn't still be a world torn apart by endless war, right?
The long-term goals of Haru and Tobirama were actually the same.
But the differences in the middle were enormous.
Tobirama believed that he himself was far more suitable to be the one carrying them out.
In the end, Haru was still an Uchiha who had awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan. Just because his way of thinking looked normal now didn't mean it would stay normal forever.
For the Leaf, that meant Haru would always remain an unstable factor.
And in the entire ninja world, there was only one person who could suppress Haru if he ever started going too far.
That person was Tobirama himself.
Defeat Haru. Reclaim the Hokage seat.
That was now Tobirama's goal.
Did the Leaf have any rule saying a dead person couldn't keep being Hokage?
Why couldn't Tobirama return from the dead?
Besides, he was now trapped in this pitch-black underground laboratory, working around the clock for Haru without rest, and in the future all the glory would belong entirely to Haru alone.
That point alone was something Tobirama absolutely couldn't accept.
Becoming some nameless root beneath a giant tree was not what he wanted.
In Tobirama's imagination, he would become Hokage again. With his research ability combined with Haru's strange but brilliant ideas, he could make Haru his assistant, while also keeping him under control at all times to stop him from going off the rails.
Together, they could make the Leaf bigger and stronger.
This was basically a god-tier situation.
Everyone would have a bright future.
"I see."
"That's no problem. I can help you switch to a stronger body."
While Tobirama was still lost in those grand thoughts, Haru had already agreed to his request, since this was a perfectly reasonable demand.
The current Haru was no longer afraid of Tobirama trying anything strange.
He was no longer the reckless new ruler who had climbed into the Hokage seat by relying only on force.
Tobirama had already been dead for months.
The situation in the Leaf had completely changed.
The Hyuga Clan, the Ino-Shika-Cho clans, the Inuzuka Clan... whether they were famous great clans or small families no one noticed, Haru had already united all of them around himself.
To the small clans, Haru had given large sums of money.
To the great clans, he had not only given large sums of money, but had also granted authority that Tobirama had never given them before.
Even if Tobirama weren't dead but fully resurrected, Haru still wouldn't fear him.
Following Haru meant money and power.
What would they gain by switching back to Tobirama's side?
A pile of debts left behind by a ninja war?
Sorry, Second Hokage.
The Third Hokage is simply offering too much.
Seeing Haru agree so easily, Tobirama was ecstatic inside, but his face did not change in the slightest. He simply kept discussing the Leaf's future development with Haru.
"If I remember correctly, the Leaf has a generator. I led its construction myself back then. But if you want to spread electricity across the entire Leaf, then the output of that small generator is nowhere near enough."
"Not only does it need improvements, but several more need to be built. They also need to be modified into large-scale power plants."
"And what energy source are you planning to use for the generators? I have two options. One is chakra. The other is coal. In the past, the Leaf's demand wasn't large, so chakra was enough. But if electricity is going to be used on a large scale, then the little chakra the village's ninja can provide won't be enough..."
Haru frowned.
Supplying electricity to the entire Leaf would mean burning a huge amount of coal every month. You never truly understood the price of firewood and rice until you were the one paying for it. The Leaf might be rich now, but whenever there was a way to save money, Haru would still look for it.
"Tobirama, how long do you think one complete drain of a tailed beast's chakra could supply the Leaf with electricity?"
Haru thought of the Nine-Tails and felt that the village should make proper use of its resources.
A giant tailed beast was sitting there at home, sleeping in Mito's stomach all day. That was just too wasteful.
The Nine-Tails was enormous, with chakra so vast it could be described as an ocean. After being drained, it would gradually recover on its own anyway.
A top-tier rechargeable battery pack like that should absolutely be put to use.
Most importantly, it cost nothing.
The Nine-Tails was the Leaf's property.
It could be used for free.
To put it bluntly, from the day Mito became the Nine-Tails' jinchuriki, the degree to which she functioned as a weapon within the Leaf had already become greater than the degree to which she was simply a human being.
She was also part of the Leaf's assets.
It was just that her identity was too special, so no one dared say it out loud.
As Hokage, Haru could exploit Mito's labor for free.
"You really are insane."
"But with chakra on the Nine-Tails' level, and with the Leaf's current scale, one full charge should last at least half a year."
"..."
Tobirama suddenly had the urge to pry open Haru's skull and see what it was made of.
How had he never thought of something so genius himself?
"Then that settles the Leaf's electricity problem!"
"Tobirama, you need to speed this up and get it all done. Things like light bulbs are an especially high priority. You can start with those!"
"I want electric lights across every street in the entire Leaf!"
Haru instantly became excited.
Electric lights were incredibly significant to human civilization.
Once night fell, the entire Leaf turned pitch-black, just like some tiny backwater town.
The moment it got dark, there would be no one left on the streets.
But the Leaf's future was supposed to be the center of the ninja world, its most prosperous place.
How could it remain like that?
"Uh... why are you in such a hurry about electric lights?"
Tobirama looked curious. Given the way Haru's mind worked, he was certain Haru's answer would not be what he expected.
Hearing the question, Haru's expression turned serious.
"The popularization of electric lights will have an epoch-making impact on the Leaf. In the future, whether they're ninja or ordinary villagers, they won't just be able to work during the day. At night, too, we'll be able to exploit... no, release their labor value and have them continue adding bricks and mortar for the Leaf."
After hearing that answer, Tobirama suddenly had the urge to hang Haru from a streetlamp.
(End of Chapter)
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