Pre-Chapter A/N: So here we are back on our regular upload schedule. Sunday and Tuesday/Wednesday. I've put systems in place to ensure we don't fall behind again so yay. I look forward to stress-testing them as the madnesses of life stack up (We're over two weeks in now and life is really hitting. We're still on schedule though, so things look good!). To celebrate the scale of our achievement, we've got a cheeky little discount for the whole month (code: MAY01) on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga). Next five chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXX - SHORIRAMA SENJU
I sat on the chair, relaxing against the cold metal even as I rocked it backwards. The man across from me-- boy more than man, to be honest-- looked to be stewing with barely concealed rage.
"I told you to stop coming," he snarled at me when he eventually tired of the silent treatment just like he always did.
"That wasn't the question I asked," I pointed out with a chuckle. He looked to the side, not meeting my gaze. When I first started coming, he had stared into my eyes for minutes at a time, challenging me to some imagined competition. Of course, I could use chakra and he could not. I could go on for hours if I needed to. His stubbornness only ever took him to ten minutes. Now, he had resolved against meeting my eyes as some sort of alternative to that.
"In case you forgot, the question I asked was how are you," I added when he remained silent.
"Get these seals off me and I'll tell you how I am." I chuckled at his challenging tone.
"Really? That didn't go well for you the last eight times," I pointed out what had happened every single time I had removed his bindings. He was fairly strong, but compared to me, he was nothing. He barely even gave me a good stretch.
"Of course it didn't. Jinchuriki," he spat the word at me like it was a curse. I chuckled again. He was nothing if not consistent.
"Using the nine tails to beat you would just be overkill, don't you think? I could beat you with half my chakra bound, my hands tied behind my back, my legs tied together and my eyes under a blindfold," I said. And that wasn't just an oddly specific boast. We'd tried it once, and he had still lost. He'd given a better showing but it still hadn't mattered. I didn't need to move to use my mud release and when faced with a tsunami of mud, he could do little but hunker down and hope he survived it.
"Just leave already. I told you I want nothing to do with you or your clan," he said.
"Family doesn't choose family, sorry to say. Between you and me, there's a few cousins I'd get rid of if given the chance. Sadly, I can't. And neither can you. You're an Uzumaki and as your Clan Head, I am responsible for whatever actions you take and also for whatever happens as a result of those actions," I said.
"You aren't my family. Kaito was family and you killed him for no reason," he said. I had no reason to correct him on the assumption so I simply chose not to-- it wasn't like knowing his friend still lived would do much for anybody.
"Killing my friend doesn't count?" I asked sarcastically.
"I already told you, we didn't kill anyone," he said.
"You're a good liar. I'd almost believe you if I didn't know better."
"Believe whatever the fuck you want," he snarled back. Also, predictable. This song had been played many times before and he still danced to all the same beats.
"Whoa, whoa. Language. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" I asked with a smirk splitting my face in two.
"What?" he asked, clearly unfamiliar with the phrase. How sad.
"Nevermind. Going to tell me how you are now?" I asked. He said nothing, keeping his eyes pinned on the wall in the distance.
"You know I won't leave without an answer. The longer you do this for, the more time we spend together," I said lightly, pushing the chair further back so now it rested on only its back two legs and my feet dangled in the air. A subtle application of chakra kept me from falling over from the lack of control.
"Fine," he muttered, voice barely audible.
"Excuse you?" I asked.
"I said I'm fine," he said, voice still low but more intelligible this time around.
"Good. Any complaints about your accommodation?" I asked.
"Let me out," he said stubbornly.
"If only I could. I really would love to, but you'd do something stupid like try to leave this village or maybe even attack one of my people," I said.
"If you do the former, bringing you back would be a hassle and if you do the latter, I'd have to kill you. Wouldn't that be such a waste?" I asked with a sigh.
"New Stone is dead. I saw what you did when you were done with us. You destroyed it. There's no information I could ever offer you that would be useful to you. You already won. When will it be enough?" he asked.
"It will be enough when my people no longer fear any sort of attack. It will be enough when the entire shinobi world is Konoha. When my flag flies over every village from Kumo to Suna," I said, taking some delight in the alarm that appeared on his face. It did always feel good when people realised the scope of my ambition. Ruling a single village was well understood here. Most children went to the academy aiming to become their village's Kage (or equivalent). Few ever considered World Domination. Even fewer thought it was possible. But when I saw a map of the elemental nations, I saw Konoha's flag over them all.
"You are mad," he said with a barked laugh. It was near hysterical like he could not quite believe what he was hearing.
"Do you know the difference between genius and madness?" I asked with a laugh of my own.
"I assume you think this ambition of yours falls in the former and not the latter and the answer to that question is supposed to convince me of that?" he asked with a shrug, eyes narrowing at me. I guess it was a bit too much to expect him to just play ball without a fight considering the context.
"Success," I said after letting the silence his words had landed in stretch for a minute or two.
"Pardon?"
"That's the difference between genius and madness. If I fail, the world will know me as Icarus who flew too close to the sun. If I succeed, generations after me will wonder what I saw, what I knew that the rest of the world did not. What made me confident enough to act even though I knew the world would view it as madness," I said.
"When you fail, you mean. Destroying a village is not the same as conquering it. I was a shinobi of the New Stone for only a few years and even in that short time, I learned that shinobi do not much like enemy control," he said.
"When I succeed. I have plans, of course. Plans I would eagerly share with a cousin of mine but you have renounced the name so I don't have anything for you," I said. He just scoffed.
"Like I'd ever even want to know. I wouldn't be able to stop myself from laughing to death if you told me what bit of stupidity convinced you that you could do something as insane as rule the world," he said. I sighed. In my seal, I pulled the lever open just a tiny bit.
A small amount of Kurama's chakra flowed into my body and I just allowed it to hang in the air. The man across from me stilled like I had placed a blade at his neck.
"Careful now. I don't take well to insults, Cousin," I said, gazing straight into his eyes.
He remained silent, stilled by the fear of what could become of him if I willed it. It almost made me chuckle. This same man had dared me to kill him not even a few days ago. Now, I threatened to do so, and he was paralysed with fear. Everyone thought they knew death, that they did not fear it, until it came for them. And when it did, it was usually too late for them to realise their mistake. Usually. I locked Kurama's chakra back up within me, ending the threat in the air and watched as he visibly relaxed. He breathed a sigh of relief, the rest of his breaths coming out in brief, sharp bursts. He had been holding his breath.
"Now, we can talk to each other in a more civilised fashion," I said with a smile that he did not return. That was not a big surprise and not a massive loss either.
"I have some questions for you this time, and if you can answer them for me then I think we can consider this day a success. I'll have books sent to your quarters. Perhaps a television. Can't be all that stimulating just sitting there doing nothing but think," I said. Still no response from him even if I could see the way his gaze sharpened at the offer of entertainment. He was too much of an open book to qualify as a shinobi truly trained by one of the Great Five.
"How did you end up in New Stone?" I asked.
"You destroyed Iwa. The refugees needed somewhere to go, didn't we?"
"And how did you end up a refugee of Iwa?" I asked, not all that bothered by the sarcasm.
"I said you destroyed it. Have you forgotten already?" He could not quite hide the satisfaction that bled into his voice. He was surely underestimating my patience. It wasn't like I had anything better to do after all.
"Yes, yes. And how did you find yourself in Iwa before I destroyed it?" I asked.
"You know how," he said.
"I have suspicions, but nothing concrete."
"Kumo captured me during the attack on Uzushio. Me and the rest of my class. Took us all and killed our teacher in cold blood. They took us down to their village and while some of us were expected to stay to breed their own version of the Uzumaki clan for them, some of us were only to be useful as shinobi. Eventually, they entered into an alliance with Iwa to destroy this village. I was traded as part of that alliance," he said, being light on the details. I did not press on most of it as they were things I had already been able to ascertain.
"Only you?" I asked.
"No. Not only me. One other. Kin," he said.
"And what happened to her?"
"None of your business," he snarled, his unaffected demeanour melting away as I pressed on something he actually cared about.
"I know what happened to her, of course. But I want you to say it," I said.
"Make me," he replied sullenly. I remained silent. I just sat there, staring at him. He did not meet my gaze, looking at the wall in the distance. He was still looking at the wall when he spoke.
"It was our first training session. They had been teaching us in classrooms before then, but this was the first time they let us around actual weapons. Nothing too dangerous. A blunted set of kunai and shuriken. But they underestimated just how good she was with chakra manipulation. They underestimated just how good she was with everything. The second she had the weapon in hand, she drove it straight into her neck. She was dead before they could even pick her up. The red pooled beneath her head. They made me watch as the rest of her blood flowed out. Iwa did not have any medics capable of helping so there was nothing they could do either way. They decided to use it as a lesson for me. They said she took the coward's way out. That she could not accept her new reality. They were wrong. She was the brave one. She was brave enough to die instead of live on her knees," he said, voice distant as he recalled the events.
"And you were content to stay alive," I said the obvious.
"I considered it, even decided to go the way she did a few times, but I never could. Was never brave enough. I don't regret not following her on that day anymore though. She had to do what she did and I do not blame her for it, but whatever loyalty she felt she owed Uzushio was entirely imagined. Uzushio did not protect us. It allowed us to be taken while it saved those that mattered to it. Loyalty is a two-way street. We owed nothing to a village that had showed none of it to us," he said, turning to me now with a fire in his eyes.
"I see. You think Uzushio abandoned you," I said.
"I don't just think so. That is what happened. How else could you describe it?" he questioned.
"I would describe it by calling it a bad situation with no good choices. Uzushio did not have the means to defend the whole island. Not when they'd been caught with their pants down like they had. They had to prioritise--"
"So we weren't a priority to them, were we?" he asked, near snarling with rage. That was good. Anger meant he cared. The fact that he cared meant he could be brought back to the Clan with time.
"No. Shinobi were sent for you. The position of the orphanage meant there was little they could do to get you out in time with how rapidly the attack had begun. If Uzushio had a shinobi like me that was worth an army on their own, then things might have been different. If they had seen the attack coming, then perhaps things would have been different. But neither of those were the case. They were outmatched, outnumbered, and caught by surprise on top of it. Is it a surprise that they made mistakes? And if you think the Clan does not regret what happened to you and your friends then you are dead wrong," I said, stretching out a hand and unsealing a stack of papers on the table.
"What is that?" he asked, but he was already looking through them.
"Requests. The Clan sends one every week. They are begging the village to do something about those who remain in captivity even now. Those in your situation," I said.
"And you do nothing? Are you not the Hokage?"
"But I am not a god. You should know that Kumo's Uzumaki breeding program never got off the ground. All those they took were returned before peace was agreed between them and Konoha. Iwa had you and now here you are. Kiri is the only village that still has our people, and they were also the village least affected by the war. We cannot afford to take them on yet. But one day we will. The Uzumaki clan will be free once more. I will see to it. And until I do so, the Clan remembers and mourns," I said.
He remained silent. He just kept his gaze fixed on the papers, rifling through them. He was looking for some sort of lie, I could tell. Something that would confirm to him that the things he had thought were true. That he had been abandoned and the clan did not care. But that was not the case. No one loved their own with the intensity of Uzumaki. It was one of our greatest strengths.
"But that is enough of that. I understand how you got to Iwa now. How you even got to the New Stone. But how exactly did you find yourself becoming the self-acclaimed best friend to the man who would become one of New Stone's so-called Five Shadows?" I asked.
"You think I'll give you any information you can use against us?" He snarled the words. Rage was an old friend for him. It was all he was used to having and when he got the chance he embraced it wholeheartedly. It would have been sad if it wasn't so amusing. He was like a child with their favourite blanket.
"You know Taeru is dead. We are Konoha. We have the Yamanaka clan. The seal you placed behind his ear was interesting to work through, but when it comes to fūinjutsu you and I are on different levels. The difference is almost as stark as the difference between us in combat," I said. He did not take the bait, maintaining his silence on the matter.
"If you could break my seals you would already have those Yamanaka poking through my brain right now," he said.
"No. I could have them poke through your brain anytime I want. I just don't need to. We captured Taeru. We captured three of the other shadows. Every scrap of information the New Stone had is now being catalogued and recorded by my people. The New Stone exists no more. Its people exist no more. Those we did not kill, we imprisoned. And I'll just tell you this for free. We killed everyone who posed a threat. Perhaps there is a chance that some of the younger ones can be brought into the fold. Perhaps they could work for the good of Konoha. But I need to be convinced of that possibility," I stared at him as I spoke, making sure the message was received.
"So you want me to bow to you to save the children?" he asked.
"No. I want you to bow to me as your Kage and Clan Head because your family misses you and would want nothing more than to have you back," I said.
"They aren't my family. You killed my family," he said.
"Is that so? I don't remember any of those I killed in Iwa having that colour of hair," I said, rising from the chair. That was enough for today. He would come. Just not today.
A/N: We go back to Konoha for a bit of time to see how things proceed with best boy. Next five chapters up on patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early. Discount available with the code MAY01– have fun.