Under my 'orders', Mei, Ao, and Mangetsu were following me to my courtyard a day after Mei proclaimed herself to be the next Mizukage despite not yet being appointed by the daimyo. The man could always try and appoint someone else if he didn't mind having some of the most unhinged ninja among the five major villages after him. So it was unlikely that someone else would succeed in taking the position from Mei. It was the only reason I hadn't killed him despite my initial plans for doing just that after coming back from the Land of Fire. There was no need to wait for Mei's confirmation needlessly just because I couldn't wait to kill the man for a few weeks.
"You better have a good reason for this," Mangetsu sullenly stated when nobody else spoke up. Yesterday made it more apparent than ever before that I was very likely the most powerful ninja in the village by far. Especially to Mangetsu, who keenly watched me half-heartedly ambush Yagura and his ANBU and still overwhelm them.
Yet, nobody answered the swordsman.
I merely did some intricate hand seals to open the seals on my hidden courtyard, enjoying the silence.
"What is this, Yoshihiro?" Mei asked as she stopped Ao and Mangetsu from stepping forward with a discrete signal that I pretended I didn't see.
"My gift to you for you becoming Mizukage. Regardless of how deserving or undeserving you are of it," I said with a disinterested expression. Turning back to go to my own quarters, I added, "Remember your promise for those sealing scrolls. I'll know if you keep something hidden from me. And tell Pakura and Kaede to come find me. You'll find them inside."
It was clear that despite my strength and the fact that I was her fiancée, I was not in Mei's inner circle. Mangetsu had merely joined the fight against Yagura at the eleventh hour and managed to join it somehow. Well, it was either that or contest with me and usurp Mei's claim. Or defect like the rest of the seven swordsmen who weren't Ringo or dead.
Well, they were in for a rude awakening.
The Red Demon, butcher of countless clans, and most callous executioner of the Fourth Mizukage… had actually saved over two hundred kids and teenagers from all those clans he was ordered to wipe out.
They would not know how to deal with me.
"You're giving away all those children to the new Mizukage, your fiancée?" Pakura asked as she entered the bedroom where Rin was usually stowed away, and I waited. It had been quite some time before she found me. These women must have had quite a bit to talk about.
"They are children, not rice dumplings. And they were never mine to give away even if they were. I merely did my part in making sure that the puppet kage didn't wipe out Kiri. I did more than anyone else. I even got you to teach them to be proper ninjas, proper humans, did I not?"
Pakura looked at me with narrowed eyes.
"You have an opinion to share," I pointed out sarcastically without looking at her. "By all means."
When she said nothing, I spoke for her, "You are a ninja. I am a ninja. Their parents were, to an overwhelming degree, ninja. And yet you loathe the fact that I put them on a path to become ninja. Instead of being a hypocrite, I never once hid my intentions from them or you. I fed them. I had them taught. I shared all the secret techniques and jutsu I gathered over the years for free. I gave them medicine that nobody else has access to to help them be stronger than they ever should become even in the most nurturing ninja village. I paid for it all and asked for nothing in return. Or did you want me to make them Suna shinobi for when you get your revenge and become Kazekage?"
She dared to scoff, so I took her face in my hand to look at her in a movement so fast that even someone like her who was firmly at kage-level didn't quite catch me moving from my position.
My anger was bubbling up again as I finally looked her in the eyes.
"Their loyalty to me is well earned. I did not brainwash them to lay down their life for me, their glorious leader, unless you or my mother did that without my permission. I gave them their life so that they may live for the village. Show me a single kage among the five great villages other than Hashirama who would have done the same in my position."
She still didn't say anything, and so I merely stared at her pretty face for a while.
"Just tell me if you are tired of living. If you forgot your desire for revenge, then by all means. I have no need for you, and I certainly don't relish being thought of as a monster by the likes of you."
She dared to rouse her chakra in front of me, but how could I ever allow someone to use fire chakra near me? Even if it was the scorch kekkei genkai chakra with wind chakra mixed in. In no time, Pakura paled as she once more realised the insurmountable gap between us. With horror in her eyes, she tried to find the words but remained silent for a moment as she watched fire rise from her own hands and stomach only to obey my command.
"What have you done?"
Sneering, I quipped, "Nobody on this planet is qualified to use fire near me. Have you not learned your lesson when you tried to force me to give you more of my pills?"
My wind affinity was too bad for me to form my own scorch release so far - I was getting close, though - but with a hand on her stomach where her chakra pathways concentrated, I drew out her chakra tinged in her own bloodline ability.
"Aarrgh," she gasped in pain as I increased the amount - extracting chakra forcefully was never pleasant.
I ignored it all and allowed the scorch chakra to feed off of my own fire nature transformed chakra and had the scorch flame blasting above my palm after moving it away from her stomach.
Giving it a short, bored look before looking back into Pakura's panicked eyes, I drawled, "This is the only thing you have that I do not. And yet, I could just make you a vegetable by disabling your spine and literally farm this scorch release from your chakra pathways until my own chakra decides to like this taste of chakra and form it on its own."
Her eyes never left the scorch flames that she had no control over.
I continued, "Just imagine. With all my pills and your training in recent years, I bet you surpassed your earlier limits despite the grievous wounds you sustained before I rescued you. Your chakra control is probably on a level bordering that of Elder Chiyo or her grandson Sasori from your Sunagakure right now. Right?"
Pakura heavily gulped her saliva.
"And yet. After surpassing the one-tails in chakra volume and the best puppeteers of Suna in chakra control… you can do nothing but stare at your chakra being toyed with by my own. Just how much higher is my fire chakra affinity compared to yours? And how much more chakra do I wield than you, you must wonder?"
The scorch flame snuffed out instantly and was replaced by my own kekkei genkais, or, some of them.
A spinning chakra ball with lava release, another with boil release, yet another with my yang-fire 'phoenix' release and a fourth with just ridiculously concentrated fire chakra formed behind me. Slowly, ever so slowly, those chakra balls turned into shuriken, then into little animals like fish and birds as they began to wander around the room.
The air hadn't heated up even a little bit despite that.
Theatrically waving my hand in the air suddenly extinguished all fires in the room as if they were never there in the first place.
"My level is so far above your own, I don't even think we're the same species anymore. In all the villages, there's exactly one person I'm a little bit scared of. It's why I would never allow him time to set up his technique. The rest of you are… mere humans," I said with a deep-seated sneer as I vented some of the feelings I repressed for several years now.
I knew I didn't want to be kage. I didn't want to unify the world or join Akatsuki to free Kaguya. I didn't want to deal with the Otsutsuki either - hence me trying to strengthen Naruto.
But that didn't mean I could endure these 'simple kage-level' ninjas looking down on me.
Might Guy was the only one I'd endure belittling me from among the five shinobi villages once I managed to form the kekkei tota fire + water + yang release plasma flame.
Not that I wanted to find out, but I doubted even old Onoki, the third Tsuchikage with his dust release could harm me. And Minato, whose speed could have overwhelmed me, was now dead, too.
I attained a level of chakra control that allowed me to drown the surroundings in my chakra to ignite it. Not many people could hope to come close to me - especially now that my Uzumaki blood was 'purified' and I attained the mind's eye and got even closer to a pure Utsutsuki - maybe even something different but at the same level as that alien race.
Releasing Pakura, I walked out into the courtyard to see a pale Kaede look at me with horrified eyes. It seemed she heard my little speech and didn't entirely like what she heard.
"You have nothing to fear. Nothing I told you previously was a lie. You are an Uzumaki. You and your daughter are safe with me here," I spoke in a tired voice.
"You misunderstand, Yoshihiro-sama," Kaede quickly denied as she steeled herself. "I didn't mean to overhear your conversation… I meant to thank you once more."
I looked at her with a small smile before I waved it away.
"No need. I already told you what I expect from you for rescuing the two of you. I did not lure you here to suddenly ask for more," I pointed out when I read her intentions. She was here to offer herself to me to make sure her daughter would want for nothing and that the two wouldn't be separated.
Softly grasping her chin after she shyly looked down with an embarrassed expression, I looked into her eyes and said, "If we ever do share a bed, it will be because you want to. Not because you feel you need to."
With that, I walked to my own personal hot spring powered by seals and my personal lava release.
"Lord Yoshihiro," a brunette kunoichi solemnly greeted me as I opened my haori to get ready for a long soak.
"Ruka," I said without stopping my movements.
The young woman blushed but remained standing close to the entrance of the spring. Not many were even allowed back here. The medical ninja in front of me, who was taught by a distant aunt of mine of the Terumi clan, was one of them.
"You and your master have another case where your medical ninjutsu has hit a limit?" I asked with an exasperated sigh.
"Lord Yoshihiro… you were there when Lord Fourth was dealt with… you must know how many ninja were grievously injured," Ruka pointed out with a complicated look in her eyes.
"I know that I am the reason that less than half of the village died trying to end my fellow jinchūriki," I countered with narrowed eyes. "Hence, I do not know how I am responsible for those few weaklings who still managed to get hurt after I sealed the three-tails for as long as I did."
"You are not, Lord Yoshihiro," Ruka bitterly conceded. As a kind-hearted medi-nin, it probably hurt her soul to say something like that. I had no idea how she survived the graduation ceremony with such a mindset.
"Then why are you here?" I asked while dressed in nothing but a towel held at my hip as I walked past her to get into the water.
"Lord Yoshihiro... you once saved me from certain death with one of your pills. I saw you do it to countless fellow Kiri-nin over the years," the kunoichi managed to say with gritted teeth.
"Oh? I remember saving you... but you paid attention to my actions after?"
Ruka had been a recent graduate during the Third War, a year or two younger than me and definitely no prodigy that graduated early. As a mere genin, the bloody mist put her at the front lines immediately so that the more powerful ninja could use the cannon fodder as a distraction. I had saved her in passing so that I could get another three Uchiha corpses to feed my tree in the plant dimension.
It didn't surprise me that I left a deep impression on her. I did wonder though why this was the first time she revealed this particular secret of hers.
"Yes, Lord Yoshihiro," Ruka breathed out with only a smidgen of reluctance as she dropped her own kimono to reveal she did not wear anything beneath it.
She came prepared.
"Allow me to help you wash, Lord Yoshihiro," the medi-nin whispered as she stepped behind me after picking up one of the wooden buckets.
I didn't answer and merely sat down on one of the rocks lining the heated waters with my feet already resting in the soothingly hot pool of water.
Wordlessly, the brunette gathered some water with a bucket and allowed it to run over my body.
Gently using a towel and the bucket to wash me as I said nothing, the kunoichi eventually spoke up, "Lord Yoshihiro. Your scar… it's gone?"
"My scar?" I asked without opening my eyes.
"A few years ago, an Uchiha managed to plunge a short-sword through your side. Shisui of the Body Flicker. It was the day your aunt decided to pick me as an assistant and allowed me to study medical ninjutsu under her."
My left hand moved to my right side at the lowest two ribs.
I had miscalculated that day. I thought myself invincible already as long as I saw no Uchiha with a Mangekyō and no kage or one of the Sannin after White Fang's death. Shisui had just started making a name for himself and caught me off-guard with his genjutsu-assisted sword-assassination style that combined the regular clone technique, his sharingan-empowered genjutsu and the body flicker jutsu.
The bastard actually managed to almost gut me that day, and only Saiken's tailed-beast cloak allowed me to slap him away and immediately retreat once I vented my fury. I was almost certain I had allowed Shisui to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan that day, but he still didn't dare fight me and fled while I raged and unleashed a bijūdama on the Konoha forces.
Together with Saiken's chakra, my pills, and the few medi-nin loyal to the Terumi clan who had accompanied me to the battle-front against Konoha that year, the cut was healed in less than a week... but I still used to have a scar.
"Constantly getting fed rokubi's healing chakra and testing out new pills got rid of the scars," I answered as I lowered myself in the water.
Ruka sat down next to me, her shyness slowly losing out to her determination as she grabbed my hand and pressed it onto her firm ass.
"Can you help me get rid of this scar?" She all but whispered with a fierce blush.
My fingers slowly glided over the skin of her full behind under the waters, and I felt a line of scar tissue going over it.
"Someone dared to stab a kunai in your rear?" I asked with some mirth in my voice.
"A training accident. My little sister was a helpless cause in shuriken-jutsu," Ruka answered, and I noticed she lost the small smile she allowed herself to show.
Ah, probably someone who didn't manage to survive the bloody mist era and ended up not being good enough to graduate.
Which meant she was very likely dead.
What a weird tactic to get me to do anything - like getting rid of the scar or helping those other ninja would not happen if the kunoichi sent to seduce me brought down the mood by mentioning dead siblings.
"Remind me to give you a pill to help rejuvenate your skin later," I instructed in a low voice and allowed my hand to rest on her ass. Her lithe form started shifting more and more to fall closer to me.
"… Lord Yoshihiro," Ruka suddenly breathed into my ear as one of her hands suddenly found its way onto my slowly hardening dick.
My hand started roaming around her plump ass a little in response since she was clearly inviting me to do so.
Like that, she leisurely played around with my dick for a while as I played around with her ass until she suddenly flung one leg over my lap and sat down on it.
"Lord Yoshihiro," she once more whispered. "Please consider helping out the injured ninja of the village. That's all I ask."
With that earnest plea, the kunoichi guided my erect dick below the waters into her tight sheath and hugged my head into her modest chest.
As if on instinct, I opened my mouth to lick around her nipple and elicited a continued, throaty moan from Ruka.
In slow, deliberate circles, the kunoichi swayed her hips from side to side, back and forth, while enjoying the hot waters and my ministrations.
Finally relaxing as was befitting my strength and station in this life, I allowed the Kiri ninja on top of me to vent all her urges on my dick while soaking in the hotspring.
The following days would be hectic for Kiri. And I was determined to not care one bit about it.