"It is indeed the Mangekyo. As for its specific abilities, I didn't pry. After all, such things are the absolute secret of every shinobi. Danzo, I have already resolved to establish the Council of Elders.
The Uchiha and Hyuga will each be granted a permanent seat, and as for the remaining positions, I intend for over half to be occupied by civilian ninjas."
"What!? You actually intend to hand real political authority to the Uchiha?" Shimura Danzo imdiately voiced his fierce opposition. "Hiruzen, you are openly flouting the explicit edicts left behind by our teacher!"
"Our teacher's edicts were ant to guide us in ensuring the Hidden Leaf grows stronger and more stable. Rest assured, I possess a definitive strategic blueprint regarding how to handle the Uchiha.
When all is said and done, they remain an inseparable part of this village... and Uchiha Fugaku's Mangekyo must be managed with absolute care."
"I believe Fugaku will perform adequately as Clan Head. As long as we systematically concede an appropriate asure of authority, he will willingly assist us in diating and neutralizing the friction between the village leadership and the Uchiha clan."
"This is absolute madness! You are doing nothing more than nurturing a tiger that will eventually devour you." Seeing that his argunts were failing to pierce Hiruzen's resolve, Danzo could only leave behind a parting threat: "Hiruzen, you will live to regret this!"
With that, he whipped around and departed.
For the first ti, Sarutobi Hiruzen didn't offer a single word of counter-argunt after Danzo's outburst, simply maintaining a heavy silence as he watched his old friend leave.
As for transferring political authority to the Uchiha, it wasn't as though he actively desired to violate his teacher's foundational principles; there were tis when, for the ultimate stability of the village, he was simply forced to adapt his thods.
While the Uchiha had indeed lost a notable number of shinobi during this recent campaign, the absolute, systemic damage inflicted upon the broader Hidden Leaf military infrastructure was vastly more severe.
Furthermore, with the return of two standard Three-Tomoe users alongside a newly manifested Mangekyo wielder, the Uchiha clan had beco unified to an unprecedented degree.
Their internal security operations had grown exceptionally strict, and the collective aura they projected within the village was sharper and more dominant than ever before.
To describe their current political trajectory as a blazing sun at its absolute zenith wouldn't be an exaggeration in the slightest. At a ti when Konoha could least afford internal upheaval, Hiruzen had no choice but to surrender a fraction of their core interests and political leverage.
This wasn't a pathetic attempt to buy peace, nor was it a helpless, cowardly compromise. It was simply... he wanted to trial a different approach.
Perhaps a calculated policy of conciliation would gently guide the Uchiha back into the warm embrace of the village's core structure.
"Alas... regardless of how the landscape shifts, whether it be the Uchiha or the Hyuga, neither of your lineages will ever be permitted to assu the mantle of Hokage."
Hiruzen stood up, his gaze fixing upon the stone faces carved into the Hokage Rock. This wasn't rely the lingering will of his teacher; it was the collective, unspoken resolution shared by the vast majority of the Hidden Leaf's shinobi structure.
The unique ocular power of the Uchiha was a force that germinated within absolute resentnt and found its ultimate birth through profound tragedy.
Their exceptional strength was forged strictly within the crucibles of hatred and psychological scars. How could individuals shaped by such core trauma ever be trusted to carry the absolute light of the village forward?
Shifting his focus back to the imdiate present, Hiruzen suddenly recalled a pressing tactical detail.
He bit the tip of his finger, drawing blood as his hands blurred into a sequence of signs. Following a sharp pop, a dense cloud of white smoke erupted over the floor, and Enma materialized by his side.
"Hiruzen, why have you summoned so abruptly? Is there a battle requiring my assistance?"
"No, there is no combat today. I simply require your specialized insight on a specific matter." Hiruzen pulled over a nearby chair, gesturing for the King of Monkeys to sit, before continuing plainly: "Has the Enma clan ever encountered or heard records of a lineage calling themselves the Dragonfly clan?"
"The Dragonfly clan?" Enma scratched his head in deep thought, eventually shaking his head firmly. "Never heard of them. Probably, they are rely a minor, unrecorded summoning lineage tucked away in so obscure corner of the world."
"That shouldn't be the case. Based on the verified intelligence I just received, their combat capabilities are formidable. They even explicitly refer to their ancestral domain as the Dragonfly Sacred Land."
Hiruzen handed the newly compiled post-war report over to Enma. As his eyes skimd the stark data recorded on the parchnt, the Monkey King's baseline certainty wavered significantly.
Scratching his head once more, he muttered, "Perhaps there truly is a hidden Dragonfly lineage that has kept itself completely isolated from the affairs of the shinobi world, but as for them being an actual Sacred Land... I find that highly improbable."
"No matter, I simply wanted to verify if you possessed any imdiate context."
"It's fine. I will review our clan's ancestral archives once I return and consult with the older generations of our lineage."
With a final nod, Enma dissolved into a plu of white smoke and vanished. In absolute reality, the various summoning clans scattered across the world were vastly older than the concept of shinobi civilization itself.
While Enma held an exceptionally high status within his own lineage, his scope of historical knowledge had its structural limits. It remained entirely possible that a reclusive clan, hidden away from the world for centuries, had suddenly chosen this mont to re-erge.
But regardless of their historical origins, this Dragonfly clan had definitively stamped themselves as an enemy—one whose hostility allowed for zero future compromise or reconciliation.
After all, the Enma clan and the Sarutobi clan had been bound together for generations, their fates so tightly intertwined that they had long since beco entirely inseparable.
anwhile, on the other side of the village, Uchiha Fugaku crossed the threshold into the core Uchiha residential compound.
Weaving a silent hand sign, he deactivated the sensory jutsu he had kept active around his body, allowing his tightly wound nerves to gradually unwind.
He was going to extre lengths to ensure no one realized his eyesight had already deteriorated into a blurred, hazy ss—particularly when operating in front of outsiders.
If the surrounding factions discovered that his current aura of supre dominance was rely a desperate bluff, the hard-won political concessions he had just wrung out for his clan would instantly evaporate into thin air.
Suddenly, as he rounded a familiar stone corner, a soft figure bumped directly into his midsection—or more accurately, a small, stubborn head collided right against his abdon.
Fugaku lowered his head to look. Standing right in front of him was a young girl who appeared to be roughly ten or eleven years old.
"Ouch..." The girl stepped back a pace, covering her forehead with a small hand.
Fugaku focused his strained vision on her, eventually identifying her identity primarily through the cadence of her voice. This was the daughter of one of the clan's core conservative elders, nad Uchiha Mikoto.
In the past, they had possessed virtually zero personal interaction; their age gap was simply too wide, spanning roughly seven or eight years, placing them in completely different generations.
Facing a child of his own clan, his deep voice softened considerably, and the rigid tension on his face relaxed. "Is that you, Mikoto? My apologies for bumping into you; I was deep in thought regarding a few clan matters."
Mikoto hastily shook her head, her voice small: "No, it was my fault... I wasn't looking where I was going..."
She raised her head, her gaze locking onto his sharp, handso features as her heart began to hamr like a drum against her ribs. In truth, she was lying through her teeth; this entire encounter had been a calculated choice to wait for him at this precise corner.
With Fugaku's sudden awakening of the Mangekyo, his ascension from the position of Young Master to the absolute Clan Head was a foregone conclusion. And her grandfather had explicitly instructed her very recently that she was destined to beco the wife of the future Clan Head.
Therefore, the young man standing before her was her future husband. This accidental collision was a script she had ticulously coordinated, driven entirely by a youthful curiosity to see exactly what kind of man her future partner truly was.
Evidently, her internal evaluation left her profoundly satisfied.
As for him bumping into her, she didn't view it as an actual accident at all. Instead, she assud he had done it entirely on purpose—that he had easily seen through her clumsy little stakeout from the start and had intentionally walked into her to playfully tease her.
As that specific realization blood in her mind, a bright crimson blush rapidly crept up her cheeks. A sudden wave of intense embarrassnt washed over her; she felt as though her private, girlish sches had been stripped entirely bare before him.
Right at that mont, a young, red-haired girl materialized a short distance down the path, waving her hands and shouting across the yard: "How much longer are you going to make wait over there? Hurry up and get over here!"
"Brother Fugaku... I have an errand to run with my friend, so I must take my leave now." Dropping her head, she quickly spun around and sprinted away in a flurry of motion.
She remained completely oblivious to the alternative, stark reality of the situation—the simple fact that Fugaku's vision was bordering on functional blindness, and he literally hadn't seen her standing there at all.
Fugaku watched the small, retreating figure vanish around the bend, his features returning to their standard, unreadable expression. In truth, he hadn't seen through any intricate sches or romantic intentions.
To him, she was a child of barely eleven years old, nothing more than a young, innocent girl of the lineage. He was entirely incapable of viewing his arranged fiancée through any sort of romantic lens at this stage of her life.
Fugaku gently raised his hand, his fingertips tracing the contours of his eyelids. As he blinked, the temporary chakra concealnt he had maintained over his dojutsu dissolved entirely.
The brilliant, piercing clarity that usually defined his gaze faded away, replaced by an uninspired, hollow dullness that lacked any vibrant color.
"It appears I will need to focus strictly on guiding the clan through the next few years before I can even begin to afford the luxury of considering personal matters. I can only wonder if these eyes of mine will still retain enough light to watch you walk down the aisle when the ti cos..."
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