At the end of the day, very few people in this world had no desire to move forward.
The more capable someone was, the more they craved progress. Whether they'd turned to darkness or fallen from grace, they still wanted to keep pushing ahead on their own terms, at their own pace.
And for human beings, the word "progress" was straightforward enough. Climbing in status, accumulating glory, acquiring wealth, growing stronger—all of these qualified. Which was precisely why Akatsuki could never have refused Hinata's proposal.
After all, for an organization that aspired to conquer the entire world, the lure of these things was almost impossible to resist. No matter how confident Pain was that capturing the Tailed Beasts would yield weapons powerful enough to force the other great nations into submission.
Honestly? Compared to an actual factory that could generate real revenue and real growth, the whole "capture Tailed Beasts, build a nuke, threaten everyone into compliance" strategy sounded a little... fantastical.
In the original story, without a hyper-efficient moneymaking partner like Hinata, that plan had been fine. Everyone was sitting around with nothing better to do anyway. As missing-nin, taking on the challenge of hunting Tailed Beasts while gradually working toward the endgame was reasonable enough. Pain was the boss, and when you didn't have any particular ambitions of your own, following someone stronger than you was never a bad call.
But now, with Hinata—someone who could casually turn worthless clay figurines into tens of millions in revenue—Akatsuki had glimpsed a different path. One that was far more practical, far more grounded.
They weren't about to abandon the original Tailed Beast plan. But the timing wasn't right to execute it yet. Intelligence on the various Jinchūriki was still incomplete, funding and influence hadn't reached the target threshold, so...
Why not develop the economy first? After all, even if you were planning to rule the world, building yourself a prosperous and powerful base of operations didn't exactly conflict with that goal, did it?
If this were any other organization, perhaps it would be different. But the ones facing this choice were Akatsuki.
A super-organization of missing-nin whose individual and collective combat power rivaled that of a major hidden village.
Just as Hinata had said, Akatsuki had more than enough capability to covertly destroy those electronics factories that no nation particularly cared about protecting. Then, following Hinata's timing, they'd launch a monopolistic electronics retail operation. It was an unavoidable chain of cause and effect.
Only when you had the muscle to silence every other manufacturer could you safely pluck the final fruit.
The single variable in all of this—the one factor outside Akatsuki's control—was how well Fox Tales would actually perform.
And since the production crew operated inside Konoha, even Akatsuki couldn't influence its development. In other words, the organization was betting this entire venture on the Fox Tales franchise.
While that instinctively made Pain uneasy, every endeavor carried risk. As someone who was both powerful and confident, Pain had the courage and resolve to shoulder it.
Even though Akatsuki's true leader behind the scenes was Obito—operating under the alias Tobi—he couldn't find any flaw in Hinata's plan either. And from his perspective, Akatsuki was nothing more than a tool he'd assembled specifically to advance the Eye of the Moon plan. The stronger the organization became, the more it served his purposes. He was happy to see the proposal go through. And most importantly, Hinata's personal combat ability was so negligible by Akatsuki's standards that Tobi hadn't even bothered investigating her real identity.
So the outcome was predictable. Pain agreed to the proposal and accepted the pitch. The factory would be built inside Amegakure. Equipment procurement and personnel recruitment were trivial matters. Simultaneously, they'd begin covertly sabotaging the more prominent electronics factories scattered across the great nations.
"Huh? No lightbulbs in stock?"
Sakura peered at the electronics shop owner from behind a shopping basket, her pink brows knitted in confusion. "How does something like that go out of stock?"
"Because the Yamada Electric Factory—the closest one to us—caught fire two days ago. Something about aging wiring, they said. It's going to be a while before they can get production back up."
The shopkeeper shrugged helplessly. Running a small business was hard enough without your supplier's factory burning down.
"Oh... Sorry to bother you, then..."
Sakura headed back to the Uchiha Compound with a belly full of questions. She'd long since grown accustomed to every corner of the place, though it was clear that this past week had brought plenty of changes.
"Ino, I got the groceries! How about pork rice bowls for lunch today~"
She walked into the kitchen with practiced ease, and her call brought Ino strolling over from the courtyard. The blonde nodded approvingly. "Mm, sounds good. We can't live on ramen forever~ Honestly, it's all Naruto's fault. I swear my hair's starting to look like noodles. Choji~! Come chop firewood~!"
The chubby boy rolled off the rooftop at the summons, lumbering toward the woodpile behind the kitchen with a cheerful "Coming~!" He'd clearly gotten used to this routine.
Living away from home was a bit early for kids their age, but the Hinata Group wasn't some ordinary after-school club. None of the families saw any reason to question the arrangement. It was no big deal.
"Hmm. So this is all you managed to find?"
Sitting in the main hall, Hinata stared at the television set before her with visible displeasure. Never mind the clunky, boxy housing—the fourteen-inch screen she could grudgingly forgive. But even the channel buttons were old-fashioned rotary dials bolted to the bottom of the chassis. The only saving grace was that the label did say "color TV." Otherwise she might have put her fist through it.
Beside it sat a video camera. Exactly the kind Hinata had expected—a hulking contraption with a tripod on the bottom and two reel-to-reel tape spools perched on top, the sort of thing you'd see in a Republic-era period drama. By Hinata's standards, this was practically a museum piece.
"Yeah~ and even getting these took my old man pulling strings. Seriously, you can be way too picky sometimes."
Shikamaru's dark circles had gained another layer. Hinata had dumped the entire crew-expansion operation on him in one go. Shino and the others were helping, sure, but even so, Shikamaru felt like life itself had lost all meaning.
The only reason things had gone smoothly at all was the Third Hokage's covert support, combined with Asuma's considerable influence as the Third's son, which had greased the wheels for this latest round of investment and logistics. This time, the investor pool was significantly larger. Basically every shinobi with any spare cash had tossed some in on a let's-see-what-happens basis, buying share certificates proportional to their contributions. After all, if ordinary shinobi weren't allowed to run businesses, you could hardly stop them from investing and playing the market.
In a world where economic development lagged this far behind, the fact that Shikamaru had independently devised something resembling a stock-market system using nothing but his own brain struck Hinata as proof that this kid was born specifically to handle her intellectual heavy lifting. Raw IQ alone couldn't explain it. It was as if the world's will itself had blessed him with extra brainpower.
"Heh heh heh~ The one thing I'll never complain about is that brain of yours. So quit whining and get the camera set up. We graduate tomorrow, and today we need to get the first episode of Fox Tales filmed and recorded onto tape."
She gave Shikamaru an appreciative clap on the shoulder—one that nearly sent the pineapple-headed boy face-first into the floor. He managed a listless nod. "Fine, fine... Maybe things'll ease up once we're actual shinobi."
"Ugh... Why do I still have to dress like this the day before graduation..."
Naruto, decked out in his Fox Immortal costume, drooped his head in defeat. Beside him, Sasuke—dressed as the Cowherd—snapped irritably: "Stop complaining, dead-last. Hurry up and finish so I can go train."
"Yeah yeah! Sasuke, you nagging statue!"
Naruto and Sasuke's routine low-level bickering barely turned any heads anymore. Shino, sunglasses firmly in place, was out in the courtyard carefully directing a team of electricians as they ran new wiring into the Uchiha Compound. The old circuits had only serviced the lights; with all the new equipment moving in, additional lines were a necessity.
And out in the back yard, the newest recruit—Kiba—was gloomily practicing his Transformation Technique. As the member with the least acting experience, he needed to get his private rehearsals in. At the very least, he had to get comfortable with the transformations required for filming.
"Tomorrow is graduation day for this class. It's finally here."
Sitting on a bench at a restaurant, Kakashi allowed himself a rare moment of sentimentality. This incoming class of graduates was something else—aside from the ordinary students, all nine of the standouts seemed to belong to a certain organization.
"Hah? Kakashi, that almost sounds like you're nervous? Have you been slacking off too much?"
A bowl-cut gleaming like a polished watermelon, teeth so white they could star in a toothpaste commercial, and a green jumpsuit with a matching flak jacket. There was no question—this was Kakashi's self-proclaimed eternal rival, and Konoha's walking standards-lowerer in the looks department: Might Guy, the so-called Rare Beast of Konoha.
"I can understand how Kakashi feels. This class really is full of remarkable students. If you end up with any of them, teaching won't be easy."
Kurenai sat beside Asuma, taking a refined sip from her sake cup and nodding. "The more talented the student, the harder the teacher's job sometimes."
"Bah~! Our job as teachers is simply to pass on the Will of Fire. No need to overthink it—just do our best!"
Asuma raised his own cup with an easy grin, brimming with self-assurance.
"So all we have to do—is look forward to it!"