Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
"I would never dream of assassinating my Kage," I said.
"Then you are either lying or a fool. I like you, Shorirama Senju. I liked your Granduncle even more. So I will assume you are no fool and are just merely lying. Do you know anything about how I became the Daimyo?" He asked. Was that a serious question?
"Your father had been sick, and then died in his sleep on the eve of your sixteenth birthday, so you had the shortest regency in history and then ascended to the throne a mere three days later," I said. Everyone knew the story, but to my surprise, the Daimyo burst into laughter. Not the polite titter that you would have expected of a Daimyo, but full, hearty laughter.
"People actually believe that?" he asked me. I nodded, hesitantly, beginning to see that I was the butt of some sort of joke.
"I guess your Granduncle was on to something when he said that a lie repeated oft enough is indistinguishable from the truth."
"So that story was not true then?" I asked.
"No. I contacted your Granduncle with a mission when I just turned fourteen. It was early in your village's founding. Your Grandfather had just passed and my own father was much keen on your Granduncle. You see, he liked your Grandfather a fair deal. Hashirama knew how to present him with all the right gifts. This manor was one such gift. The ceremonial blade on my mantle is another, forged in the heat of Madara Uchiha's legendary Fire Release. He knew how to play, but your Granduncle lacked that charisma, that charm, and my Father did not much see the use in having a shinobi village. You see, having you all united caused mission prices to rise. Where before he could play clan against clan to get the best deal, he had now lost that opportunity and was beginning to want to see things returned to their status quo. So I looked at things and knew that he was a dead man walking. Your Granduncle assented to my plan with no objections. He saw to his poisoning, keeping him strong enough that he could still rule in his own name and would need no regent, but too weak and feeble to get any bold ideas. When it was near enough my majority, I smothered him to death with his pillow with my own two hands," he said, meeting my eyes.
"So tell me now why you did not kill Sarutobi Hiruzen? I assume you are here to secure my support for your bid as Kage. I do not back losers, and if your reason is not satisfactory, then I will take it as an indication that you lack the will to do what is necessary, and this can never be a winner." He said, and I could tell he meant every word that left his lips. This man had killed his own father, I thought. If anyone would judge me for my thoughts then it wouldn't be here. None of his guards or samurai had even flinched as he boasted patricide.
"He was too well guarded. While I could have attempted a subtle means—ordered away the ANBU on a mission or just crafted a seal to do the job subtly enough. All it would take is a simple modification to the Healing Sleep Seal to turn it to an eternal rest. I considered both of those options, but the truth is that the optics would have been bad. My cousin is the best healer in the world, and Hiruzen Sarutobi is her sensei. If there was any foul play, she would have seen it, and I would have been the natural first suspect. Having her move against me while the village is at war on all fronts would have been disastrous, and killing her to divert suspicion would have been wasteful," I began, not adding that I would never have killed Tsunade. Something told me that trivial things like familial bonds would do little to convince this man of anything.
"Killing Sarutobi Hiruzen would have just as surely killed the Village itself, and that was not a price I was willing to pay. So I bided my time and waited. I ruled well, and now he has woken a shell of his former self so I can move and do this the right way," I said. His eyes turned from left to right, assessing.
"I see, then. While far from ideal, I find your explanation satisfactory. So you will begin the first steps of the process, I take it?" he asked.
I nodded. The next steps were another wall I would have to scale.
"Good. When you have the required votes from the Clan Council, I will assent to it and remove Hiruzen as Hokage. Godspeed, Hokage-dono," he said, dismissing me.
"Thank you, Daimyo-dono," I said, and I bowed. Not out of subservience but gratefulness.
"So I assume you have something for me?" I asked her as I stood at the gate, awaiting their return. She turned and gestured to some of the jonin. I actually chuckled when I saw what Uzume had prepared. Should I have expected anything else? Kitsuchi was bound to wooden poles, tied and double-tied with chains on his hands, his legs, his neck even. I looked at him, and he met my gaze, eyes bloodshot. I could recognize that particular look.
"You know I gave you that poison to make fighting the S-ranks easier," I turned to Uraume who stood next to our Uchiha classmate, seeming to be having as much fun as I was.
"Uzume handled all of them before I could do anything and Toshiro landed the final blow on this one before I could dose him as well. Uzume had the idea, and since I remembered you said you wanted a victory parade at the end of all this then I thought, why not?" she said with a smile.
"Alright then. I guess this makes things somewhat easier," I said, feeling the earth beneath my feet and forcing it to my will. Mud wrapped around the platform, forming a a second floor and creating some extra binding around Kitsuchi's arms. I jumped up to the second level and unsealed the body I'd shown both Hiruzen and the Daimyo, using my mud to force the body upright.
"Okay, we're good for the parade," I said with a smile.
Four hours. That was how much time we spent being cheered by the citizens and other shinobi. After the festivities—the parade had turned into a party after the victory procession—and right now most of the jonin and chunin were down there having a ball, we'd smoothly sealed Kitsuchi's tomato-covered form and handed it over to Torture and Interrogation. I could trust the Yamanaka to get me every sliver of information from him that existed. Everything from precious Iwa training secrets and techniques, to knowledge of the administrative backbone of the village, to even knowledge that would make it easier to model what they would do next and help me decide if there was a need to go nuclear.
If I went nuclear though, none of the other villages would see that as a good sign and they'd probably fight all the harder to prevent that happening to them.
"So what now?" Uzume asked. Uraume had taken the seat in front of my desk while Uzume lounged near the window. I took a deep breath before I turned to my drawer and one of the things I'd picked up during the parade—dozens of merchants had taken the chance to come hawk their goods. The cigarette took a spot between my index and middle fingers and just as I moved to light it with the tip of my other finger, the silly thing was cut in half. Both women were glaring at me.
"That's a stupid and dangerous habit," Uzume said.
"Surely you did not plan on blowing that smoke in my face?" Uraume made her thoughts known at the same time.
I lifted both my hands in the universal symbol of surrender. Dealing with one of them was trouble enough. With both of them? When they were both pissed off? I'd rather fight Hanzo again. Speaking of Hanzo, that was another thing I had on my mind. The Land of Rain. The Land of Rain would birth most of the Akatsuki's leadership—Nagato, Konan, Yahiko. If Hanzo could be trusted, then maybe I would have been fine trusting him not to fuck things up, but from all accounts, he was little better than a warlord that actually did nothing for the betterment of the populace.
"You just want to fight Hanzo again," Kurama grunted, and even if I wanted to disagree, I couldn't. He was right. I wanted that smoke. I wanted the fuck out of that smoke.
"Okay, you've got me," I replied.
"Just don't get beaten black and blue again. Can't have my jinchuriki running from a fight all the time."
"You said it was a retreat—"
"Earth to Shori," Uraume said, snapping me out of the building argument with Kurama. I smiled at both women who looked like they were beginning to get upset.
"Sorry, sorry. I got carried away there. What were we talking about again?" I asked.
"We brought back the bodies you wanted. It was a pain pretending to destroy them, along with the others, and hiding what exactly we were doing. I can't even guarantee that Shiba didn't figure out something was up," Uzume said. I nodded. That was fine. Better than fine, actually.
"May I have them?"
Uraume moved to hand the scrolls over, but Uzume placed a hand on my cousin's shoulder.
"Nuh-uh. You'll tell us what you want them for. If you had asked us to bring them back alive, then we would have understood that you wanted to use them for some sort of sick breeding program, but what use are they to you dead as they are?" she asked, practically daring me to meet her eyes.
"I want to see if I can find the genes and cells that mark the various kekkei genkai. That's why I had you get such a wide range—both kekkei genkai and non-kekkei genkai users mean I should have an easier time identifying specific genetic material and seeing if I can transplant it to volunteers from the genin program," I said, fully aware of just how closely I was stepping to the kind of twisted bullshit Orochimaru had done. But the issue was that he had proven that it could work. And if it could work, then that meant there was potential there. I could just imagine it. An Uchiha with Explosion Release, or a Hyuga with Lava Release—vice versa worked as well. An Aburame with Explosion Release able to make each one of his insects tiny little suicide bombs that could latch on to a limb and blow it to smithereens. The potential was limitless.
"That's impossible!" Uzume bluntly disputed.
"I concur. If it were possible to transmit genes like that after a subject's death, then the Hyuga clan would be aware and would guard against it beyond just sealing the eyes away. Besides, if we had this kind of thing, we would already have stolen kekkei genkai from the other villages before now," Uraume added her voice to the discourse.
"I just have a good feeling that I'll manage it," I said, and stretched my hand for the scrolls. Uraume gave Uzume a look and when the Uchiha did not object, my cousin handed the scrolls over.
"Thank you," I said, even as my eyes remained focused on that hand of hers—the missing one. With Iwa defeated, I could focus my attention on projects I hadn't gotten much of a chance to work on. One of them would be designing a suitable prosthetic for her. Something perfect. Something fitting, and I could already feel ideas coming together.
Where are the Hashirama Cells? I asked myself as I studied another of my Granduncle's journals from beginning to end. He had never kept a diary like Hashirama did. At least, never a diary in the traditional sense. He had comprehensive notes on every jutsu he worked on—whether learned or created. And yes, the Edo Tensei was one of them, but the thought of messing around with the dead like that made my back crawl. Maybe it was my Uzumaki upbringing, but messing with the dead was one of the few things that I genuinely couldn't bring myself to do. Not even with my enemies.
Besides, the version of the Edo Tensei that had been so scary was the perfect Edo Tensei that had what was at least a decade of work from Orochimaru, and then Kabuto taking over after him. While I had my issues with both men, none of those issues related to their intelligence or capabilities. Both of them had been geniuses without compare.
But back to the issue at hand. The notes cut off around my Grandfather's death and did not continue for another two years afterwards. He'd actually only done the bulk of his work on the Edo Tensei after Hashirama's death, so something told me the jutsu had been at least partially motivated by a desire to bring him back—he never said so, of course. But he wouldn't have.
I'd asked Mito already, and she said he was buried and left it at that. I could not probe without seeming like a creep, and something told me that she wouldn't know either way. I was actually tempted to believe he was truly buried and that was it, but Danzo would give Orochimaru access to basically unlimited stores of my Grandfather's cells in canon. So where were they?
Nowhere immediately obvious, and my choices were beginning to be limited. If I couldn't find the cells and harness their power, then my options for Uraume's prosthetic would have to involve mechanically designing one like a puppet's arm. I still had the remains of the puppet I'd stolen from that Suna Jonin to learn how they worked in concept, and crafting one couldn't be that hard. I had the resources to hire all the best builders in the village. The only issue with that was that it would not be as useful for the Gentle Fist—it was more likely to be useless than not, to be completely honest. Maybe I could come up with an alternative, but anything less than Hashirama Cells would be a poor substitute.
So I did the drastic thing. I had a reputation for acting first and thinking later, but I had thought this particular action through multiple times. If I couldn't find where his cells had been harvested, then maybe they hadn't been harvested yet. Sure, with how long he'd been dead for, there would only be a skeleton at the very most, but it was something I had to try. That was why I had a clone at home creating an alibi and making dinner with both Mito and Kushina. That was also why I was doing this in the dead of the night, dressed in the most nondescript clothes I had. Black and black and covered with the Camouflage Jutsu. I'd even gone to the trouble of marking the area with seals to prevent the Byakugan from penetrating the walls.
And so I entered Konoha's cemetery. It said something that basically every other clan made use of their clan's burial grounds while the Senju did not. It wasn't accidental—like a lot of things, it was designed to show that we were all in. So I ventured to the end of it where there was a massive edifice. Tobirama's was next to his, equally as grand, and if everything went well, then I would get the one next to his. I planted my hand on the ground in front of the marble structure. If I did this right, there would be no disturbance. No one would even know that I was here. I turned the ground to mud, and did the same across a straight line to the coffin.
Creating the mud was not enough. Next, I bent it to my will, using the mud to move the coffin while being careful to keep the rest of the surrounding earth undisturbed. Ideally, this would happen with no one ever being able to tell that anything had happened in the first place. And it worked. The coffin moved slowly but surely until it floated right above ground, ferried by dozens of tiny little mud hands. I looked at it with a breath held in my chest, and a feeling of awe suffusing my very being.
It was a simple coffin. It was made of wood—at least it was clear to see that it had originally comprised just a purely wooden structure. Now, there were leaves, vines, all sorts of greenery around it. My Grandfather's chakra, even after his death, it still gave life to so much. It was beautiful. But sadly, I was going to have to mess with it a small bit. With a flick of my kunai, I cut straight through the vines and other plants that covered the coffin's opening so I could swing it open.
With how little time I had for all this in general, I probably spent way too much of it just taking in the moment before I moved to open it. It was that ever-present ticking clock that someone would decide to come see a family member so late at night or a Hyuga member of the temporary policing unit would come investigate why their view of the Cemetery was blocked off that forced me into motion in the end. I moved, and instead of using my mud or wind release, I pried it open with my bare hands before swinging it flat open.
The inside of the coffin was many things—it was white and it was cushioned, and it was filled with flowers that still hadn't died. But there was one thing it wasn't—Hashirama's final resting place. His body wasn't here.
A/N: Smoking, gene experimentation, artificial limb creation, and now grave robbing. He's really trying his best to win Konoha's annual creep of the year award, isn't he? Also, what people never appreciate enough isn just how much of a genius Orochimaru was. The things he did…no one thought it was possible to transfer kekkei genkai like that. If he had been in any village other than Konoha, he would have been giving funds and resources to continue his research along with a slap on the wrist. Maybe that'd have gotten pissed off at him for using their own citizens for experiments but that wouldn't have stopped them from using the shit out of what his research was producing. Next five up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.