My eyes burned red as I walked through the dark corridors of one of Root's bases. Without paying attention, I stepped over a body of some local operative lying on the floor to move a little further, to the door I needed, and opened it.
Before me lay a sparsely furnished room with a desk, and slumped in the chair behind it, a barely living body. Barely able to lift his chest, Shimura Danzo, one of the former advisors to the Hokage, could only wheeze, covered in blood. The red stain on the left side of his face testified to a now-absent eye, while the missing left arm said... that there was no arm.
With a satisfied grunt, I walked up to the desk and dipped my fingers into the liquid in the vial sitting on it. All to pull out and hold up before my face an eye with a black pattern resembling a shuriken against a crimson background.
Uchiha Shisui's Mangekyō. The sight of it scraped something raw inside me. Short memories, but sometimes very sharp ones, and memorable because of that.
A profoundly dangerous dōjutsu. I'd seen it with my own eyes: its internal flows of energy, what they carried within them. Kotoamatsukami, that was the name of the technique bound into this eye. It allowed effortless intrusion into the mind of anyone nearby; you didn't even need to open your eyes. Full manipulation: false memories planted seamlessly, leaving the target utterly convinced they were acting of their own free will. The most refined genjutsu I had ever witnessed. Its victim might never even realize they'd been manipulated.
Shisui had been remarkably lucky that whatever came together in his particular "vat" turned out this harmonious. But it would definitely be interesting to study his Mangekyō more deeply. Because...
A smile spread across my face.
I think I can create something even greater on its basis.
But for now... this was more than enough.
My eyes flared crimson, and the chakra flowing through my hands coaxed the same response from Shisui's eye.
In that same instant, part of my consciousness slipped easily into Danzo's mind and began reshaping it. Reforging it in a matter of seconds, replacing his attitudes and entire worldview with what I needed. And what I needed was obedience.
A minute's work, and it was done. The same man sat before me, yet in several fundamental ways, an entirely different one. Naturally, in Danzo's own hands, the Mangekyō had never unlocked even a third of its true power; our chakra reserves weren't remotely comparable. But even so, these capabilities were frightening.
Which was precisely why, before coming here to everything ready-made in my own form, I'd neutralized Shimura using clones.
I can't say they did it all heroically or dramatically. More like dirty and dishonorable. But that's life. I had no intention of risking my existence by giving someone a chance to brainwash me.
So, covering every angle I could think of, I'd recently settled near this Root base and started sending clones in one by one via my spatial jutsu. Each Shadow Clone was tethered to me by the thinnest possible thread, just enough to keep it from dispersing, and too flimsy for anything serious to travel back through it.
It was all over very quickly. One clone would have been enough. After that first clone ripped out Danzo's eye and arm, fast and before the old man even knew what was happening, it reported to the other arriving clones that it had still managed to resist the Mangekyō. Briefly, yes, and it was just the ordinary command "die," which Danzo managed to issue while still conscious. But as a precaution, after delivering its report, the first clone severed its connection and dispersed. The next batch of clones did the same, working as a small group on the Mangekyō and the arm, which turned out to have a dozen Sharingans hidden under seals and bandages. They made sure none of the eyes held some program, say, to cast Izanagi upon my arrival, or anything else. Danzo had used his Kotoamatsukami charge, of course. But all of it still needed checking! Twice! So the next group of clones repeated the fate of the previous one, thoroughly double-checking everything, then dispersing. And only the third group of clones, having checked everything one more time, gave me, the original, the all-clear that I could go in.
That was how I ended up in front of this desk.
Done with the eye, I set it back into its vial and sealed it into my spatial storage seal. The carefully arranged arm with the Sharingans followed the same fate.
Then I stepped around the desk and got to work healing Danzo.
This man was mine now. And even though his past was pretty questionable, clearly tinged with grime and two-facedness, he could still be useful.
I mean, I'd seen that it was his operatives who attacked my girls. Beyond that, based on what I knew about him, I knew he'd wanted the Hokage's seat and had definitely been working with Orochimaru just very recently. Moreover, I knew he'd once used Root, back when the organization was considerably larger, to suppress Konoha's opposition in other countries and from within. And he was involved in other misdeeds too. But he definitely possessed many skills; at minimum, leading an organization like that was worth something. Shimura himself was one of the strongest shinobi of the Leaf. And most importantly, he almost certainly still had a pile of contacts in other countries, compromising material stored only in his head, various subtleties, and, probably, operatives he hadn't thrown at the invasion during the Chūnin Exams.
Even shit can be used if you approach it with brains and forethought. As fertilizer, for example. With Danzo, it was roughly the same.
Once he was healed, Shimura and I had a conversation about what was what. What resources he had left, which operatives were still alive; I flipped through their dossiers. In the end, we decided the old bastard was better off lying low.
Hiruzen could trace him through this attack, and it was better for Danzo not to make a move right now, to preserve what he had left. After that, I planned to use him in his specialty, just under my command.
Whatever opinion I had of myself, it wasn't in my power to take on every task with my own hands. And even where I partially could, it would be way too draining. Given that Danzo had enormous experience, and his operatives were far from genin, they'd be able to carry out some tasks even better than me. And such tasks would definitely come up in my subjugation of this world.
Having thus wrapped up for now with the remains of Root, the absolute last remnants you could say, since very few shinobi remained in the organization, I headed up to the streets of the Leaf. After dealing with the former political and military mastodon, I had a slightly less important matter to attend to.
Walking slowly, I tried to enjoy the nature in the form of frequently encountered trees and the ordinary hum of busy locals.
But it wasn't working like it used to.
Catching glances here and there that were now full of awe, especially from the young shinobi running past, I felt uncomfortable. Though not everyone reacted the same way. When I crossed paths with a Hyūga elder, an old-looking man, he straight-up started getting nervous at the sight of me and ducked into the nearest alley right in front of me.
"What's his deal? I don't even know the guy," I thought.
So, having failed to enjoy my surroundings after about ten minutes, I walked into the Yamanaka shop.
"Hey again, Ino," I said to the empty room, after which the girl in question emerged from the storage room door.
"Oh..." she faltered. Her expression was a whole whirlpool of something like reverence, admiration, and a touch of wariness.
"You can talk to me like before. I'm not the ruler of the world yet, and I don't need to make people sing my praises to strengthen my power," I remarked with a smirk, having good empathy, meaning I was reading her feelings well. To which Ino... lifted her chin with a hmph.
"I wasn't going to," she folded her arms. But under my amused look, she soon let them drop to her sides.
"That confidence of yours ran out fast. But whatever. There should've been an order this morning."
"Yes, Sora-san arrived before the invasion..." She turned and went into the storage room.
This was, in fact, that important second matter. Shamelessly leveraging my connections since the opportunity presented itself, I'd nagged Sora, who also happened to be leading a certain Konoha delegation to the Water Country revolutionaries, to buy seeds for a specific variety of flower while he was there.
Hinata had a hobby: real flowers, and she'd started growing them in the courtyard of the mansion after moving in. At some point I'd noticed the girl kept gazing at one particular variety, but it only grew in the Land of Water, and it was rare.
And since such an opportunity came up, I figured, why not give the girl a little present, and started nagging people. Not for free, of course.
"Here," Ino handed me a small pouch, after which I signed the delivery note. "By the way, Hokage-sama has been organizing cleanup teams around the village outskirts. Are you done yet?"
"Hm? No, haven't heard about that."
"Well, the bodies of the giant snakes. Rumors are already going around that some kind of... pink flash destroyed them. But nearly ten hectares of forest are now covered in their remains." As she said this, Ino shuddered at the end.
"Sounds like Sakura overdid it a little," I noted with a laugh.
"That was her?! I suspected, but I couldn't believe it..."
"Yep. Proud of her." A satisfied grin spread across my face.
"Mm... Naruto," after a brief pause, Ino began conspiratorially, like an eightieth-level gossip. "Could you tell me how she got so much stronger? If it's not a secret, of course!"
"Healthy eating and sleep. No bad habits, like alcohol or smoking. Discipline. Well, and of course..."
In response to my silence, the young Yamanaka leaned forward to make absolutely sure she heard every word.
"It's a secret! No, what were you hoping for? Ha-ha-ha!" I cracked up when she pulled back, disappointed.
In general, the changes to the girls' bodies by me weren't some huge secret. Ino had known for a while, since back when Sakura had just gone through the change, that my actions were involved, and all that. But she always wanted the details, and possibly something more... But I shot her down.
"You're insufferable," she drawled in disappointment, giving me an accurate characterization.
"Nah. Hiruzen over there has been putting up with me for years," I noted with a smile again, after which, waving my hand, I said goodbye and left the shop.
Charged with positivity, I headed to the next destination. The pouch went into my spatial seal, and after taking a few steps down the street, I disappeared in a teleport.
A moment, and I'm in a familiar prison: the same one where Zabuza and Haku had been held. Previously held... But that was already the revolution's business. Right now, as I'd sensed, Orochimaru with my seal had been moved here.
Nodding to the guards as I appeared before them, thus informing them of my presence, I headed to the right cell. And stepping inside, I spotted the body I was looking for on the bed.
Because of my seal, Orochimaru couldn't move, which was why he'd recently been carried to the interrogation department. There, I'd bet about ninety percent, they'd tried to get into his head and read his various memories. But since this was Orochimaru, he clearly had mental defenses against those Yamanaka techniques. So they'd probably examined his defenses and started working on a way to bypass them back at their place, while the currently unneeded body was brought here.
"How's the criminal life?" I asked with a smirk, taking a chair from the cell and casually sitting on it beside the bed.
At my will, the seal loosened, allowing Orochimaru to move weakly. Soon he sat up.
"You..." he practically hissed.
"Yeah, me," I nodded at him seriously, to which the snake's eyelid twitched.
And so our dialogue fell silent for a few seconds. After breathing loudly in my direction, Orochimaru began to calm down. Though the hatred in his gaze was only blooming and flourishing.
"What I came here for," I began. "Besides having a laugh at you, I need to damage your chakra pathway system. Keeping an active Cursed Seal running obviously isn't stressful, but one serious mistake and it falls off. Well, you know that yourself."
A force of will, and Orochimaru, who'd been about to move, froze when I scooted my chair closer.
"Of course, I could've thought up some fancy Cursed Seal for you. Not like the one I slapped on you on the fly. But why bother when there are more reliable methods?"
Extending two fingers on each hand, I lit them with blue flames of chakra.
"Here, here," I began poking at Orochimaru's tenketsu, causing him to grimace and strain from the pain. This time I didn't engage the restraining seal, so he could move his face and speak. "And this spot won't hurt either..."
My flames were burning holes in his chakra channels, much larger ones than what the Hyūga make. Besides that, I was twisting them in a specific way and cauterizing them, so these injuries wouldn't heal on their own. Though I could heal them.
"Hah... Your power... What price did you pay to get it?"
I heard from Orochimaru as I finished. But without letting me answer, he continued:
"What is it like for you, living in a village that's afraid of you?"
To his questions, I raised an eyebrow and gave a mocking snort.
"Don't even try. Your words won't sow doubt in me."
I stood up from the chair and placed it against the wall by the bed. There was no longer a seal on Orochimaru, but there wasn't much point in one either. Right now he was barely different from an ordinary person, and escaping from here was a near-impossible task for him.
"But since you endured that, fine, I'll tell you," I turned to him in the doorway. "With my own hands, I tortured hundreds of people to death. They are all dead."
Orochimaru's eyes gleamed with... mockery and... offense?
"They weren't residents of Konoha, or even the Land of Fire," I clarified for him, to which he snorted, clearly remembering his own past. "And that, I'd say, is far less than you've killed. Moreover, it's far less than what some ruler of a minor country destroys in a war. I think I have something to be proud of. Having spent so little, I achieved so much. As for the fear... believe me, I know how to goof around well enough in my close circle so they don't fear me. That's enough for me."
Under Orochimaru's angry gaze, I left the cell and closed it.
"Have fun in your little shell, snakeling," I called cheerfully, waving my hand as I walked away.
After that, I could finally rest. And not just me.
Hinata and Sakura must have done a lot of great work today. So why not eat something delicious to celebrate?
At that same time, on one of Konoha's walls.
The "world's biggest pervert" was simply overflowing with emotions. If he'd been angry when they teleported him right to the shinobi trying to invade the Leaf, now, a couple hours later, that feeling had grown into a fury that shook his entire body.
"This old, vile, dishonest... old-fart sensei sent me to command a squad of shinobi to restore Konoha's wall and clean up the surrounding area," Jiraiya fumed to himself.
His skirt swayed as he paced angrily along the massive wall.
Yes, the toad Gamabunta he'd summoned had a somewhat unfortunate landing... But to the deepest misfortune of the wearer of the white outfit, the old man still dumped all the blame on him: "You destroyed it, you deal with it."
And that wasn't all. The Hokage also said that since Jiraiya was already leading the construction squad, why not oversee this entire "cleanup" too.
"And it's all the fault of that crawling reject..."
One of the Sannin stopped and turned his gaze to the forest, soaked in blood and broken open by the innards of the massive snake. His nose wrinkled.
"Orochimaru... bastard. Just dare to come out, or, Kami forbid, escape from prison. For pulling this crap, you won't get off with an easy death..."
A rustling sounded from below, and the white-haired man looked down to see an ANBU who'd arrived.
"The eleventh group of guest work... I mean, laborers from the Sand has arrived, Jiraiya-dono!"
The Konoha shinobi, seeing the absolute mess around their village and figuring how bad the snake carcass would stink if not removed immediately, had been about to organize nearly half the village to clean it all up. But one bright mind quickly thought of putting the invaders to work instead.
"You're the ones who made this mess. So clean it up!" had been Hiruzen's words, and he couldn't care less that technically this snake had been summoned by Sound shinobi.
So in the end, from Konoha only genin worked under the walls. While everyone from chūnin rank and above just strolled around casually, pointing out spots the Sand shinobi had missed. And of course, making sure nobody escaped.
Jiraiya was made head of the concentration camp.
"Good," said "the Mountain." But hearing a snicker from his subordinate, he squinted. "Something funny, soldier?"
The two of them were on the wall, and being perpendicular to the ground didn't bother them. Except in this weather, the wind kept lifting a certain white skirt, making the look of this brute-ballerina even more comical, constantly showing off his already barely concealed, tight-fitting crotch.
Tracking the gaze through the mask's eye holes, and then realizing that nearly a dozen shinobi below were also looking up at him with similar expressions, Jiraiya yanked the sticking-out skirt over his crotch. A vein bulged on his forehead.
"Bastards!!! Get to work now! If we're not done by tomorrow morning, I'll rip all your heads off!"
The ANBU beside him was blown away as if by the wind, and the shinobi below started working twice as hard.
Huffing angrily, the "Sage" on the wall breathed deeply, trying to calm down. His mind was filled with negative thoughts about how in a single moment his plans had simply fallen apart like a house of cards. He'd just wanted to peep at bathing women... What did he do to deserve all this?!
After a minute, when a measure of calm finally did come, Jiraiya continued surveying like a hawk the territory entrusted to him. Today these shinobi had a lot of work ahead. But tomorrow... he'd finally be able to continue where he left off. Right after the hot springs opened in the morning.
No outfit that blows your cover can stop a true master!
Uzumaki Naruto's POV
Yesterday, having treated the girls and stuffed ourselves silly, today I was asked to drop by the Hokage for one matter. And I dragged myself over, greeted the old man, and soon someone else joined us.
"Come in!"
Right after the old man's not-very-loud call, the door opened, and through it appeared a sleepy-looking, ordinary-looking Nara. A man of about twenty-eight years, seven months, and thirteen days old, ahem. With a slight melancholy on his somewhat elongated face, in the standard Konoha ninja outfit. Though his expression seemed put-on to me.
"Good morning, Hokage-sama." His head dipped in a bow, which made the hair tied in a ponytail at the back look like a pineapple top. Just like Shikamaru's, yeah. Except two long strands hung forward.
"Come in, Sora."
The shinobi walked to the desk and seemingly only noticed me about a meter away.
"Thanks, got it," I thanked him, getting a lazy nod in return.
As a side note, though he'd arrived yesterday, apparently the Hokage only had time now.
"Report," Hiruzen gave the word.
"The negotiations concluded successfully, results exceeded expectations. It's all in writing," the shinobi took a small scroll from his vest pocket and placed it on the desk. Of course, this wasn't the report itself. Just a mini fūinjutsu scroll where a decently sized stack of papers was, I assumed, sealed. Which was confirmed when Sarutobi unsealed it. And immediately forming several hand seals, via the Shadow Clone technique, the stack became two.
The visiting shinobi was slightly surprised when the Hokage slid the duplicate stack in my direction. I dove in with an interested expression. This was the report on the negotiations with the Kiri revolutionaries, whom my humble self might be visiting soon.
"Shikaku's been a bad influence on you," the old man remarked with displeasure, mentioning the Nara clan head, before getting to reading the first page.
"Please don't speak ill of my senpai. He's a good person, even if a bit of a drinker."
"That's not what I mean," Hiruzen held up a page demonstratively. "One glance was enough for me to tell: this isn't your handwriting. You dumped the work on your subordinates again?"
The moderately cunning Nara dropped the sleepy act, putting on an awkwardly guilty expression.
"I... I'm sorry, Hokage-sama," he lowered his head.
"A personal report is called personal precisely because it must be written in your own hand. So the details from each delegation member can be cross-referenced. Sora-kun, should I send you back to the Academy? You clearly don't understand the basics," the Hokage stated with displeasure.
Meanwhile, while the old man was dressing down the Nara, flipping through several pages a second, a single glance was enough for me to read everything. My eyes actually managed this a bit faster than my sphere-vision. So it was no surprise that everything was read through before long.
As for the report itself: it was dense with details. Now Konoha had formed an alliance with the revolutionaries, which upon completion of the revolution could develop into a full-fledged one, like between Villages. Zabuza and Haku had been transferred to the revolutionaries and joined their ranks. I also noticed one funny coincidence in the reports: information about a certain Mittei, a shinobi I'd once read about in other briefs. But most importantly, my mission with Jiraiya was confirmed, and a date had already been agreed upon.
When Hiruzen finished dressing down the inattentive tokubetsu-jōnin and quickly read through the report, we discussed the details, and once Sora left, we moved on to the next topic.
I offered the old man the body modification procedure that the girls and I had gone through. But... Arguing that he'd already had a very full, long life, he launched into a mini-lecture about what he regretted. It covered some political moves, Danzo and his Root, Orochimaru, and how he still couldn't decide what to do with him. That, back there on the roof, it had seemed simpler: they needed to finish him. But now that things had cooled down, the old man's resolve had cooled too. At the end, he said he didn't want to put off the reunion with his wife Biwako, and turned down my offer.
To that, I just nodded sadly. Unfortunately for my mentality, in this world people treat death with a bit more respect and positivity overall. And I wasn't going to force the man.
So, wishing Hiruzen a peaceful day, I was about to leave the office but stopped because of an ANBU who burst in.
"Hokage-sama! Urgent report: two shinobi in black cloaks with red clouds have infiltrated Konoha! Believed to be members of the Akatsuki organization! Among them are Uchiha Itachi and the former Mist swordsman, Hoshigaki Kisame! They are currently being held off by Hatake Kakashi and Might Guy!"
"Spoke it into existence, damn it..." I sighed, after which the orange markings appeared on my face.
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