Pre-Chapter A/N:First of all, Happy Holidays to all who celebrate. First post of 2026, innit? Let's smash those goals! If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio
"So what can they do?" I asked.
"A demonstration, perhaps, Hokage-sama," he said.
"Disappear," Shiba barked, turning his attention to the crowd of children. At his word, I felt all their chakra signatures just vanish from my senses. Interesting. Very interesting. I wasn't a natural sensor by any means, but any shinobi above a certain level gained the ability to sense chakra in close proximity thanks to constant exposure and more than a little paranoia.
I activated my byakugan with a squint. Interesting. Each of them had gathered their chakra into their cores, suppressing it with an exertion of will. A feat that I was sure was only possible because of how little they had and how underdeveloped their chakra systems were. It was not a feat that a fully trained shinobi would be able to replicate.
"Interesting. So what else can they do?" I asked, leaning forward and staring at them.
"Infiltration techniques including disguise and the transformation jutsu if necessary, skills with voice replication and throwing," Shiba said before gesturing for one of them to step forward.
"Copy the Hokage," Shiba commanded.
I watched as a copy of myself appeared with none of the customary explosion of chakra smoke that marked an execution of the transformation jutsu. Efficient as well.
"So what can they do?" The copy of me said in a perfect replication of my voice. It was like I was staring straight at a shadow clone.
"Well done," I said, directing the words to the boy as he transformed back.
"Thank you, Hokage-sama. This one lives to serve," he said. Shiba dismissed him.
"And they are all equally capable?" I asked, more than a little skeptical.
"Some are more skilled than others. Only the most well trained and skilled will be sent to the major villages. The rest will either be inserted into civilian lives in civilian cities, the land of Samurai, or lower stress roles within villages," he said.
"And the failsafes?" I asked, not saying more in case he had not informed them of the seals I had directed to be placed on them.
"The seals were all placed successfully. They are aware of how to trigger the seals by themselves, as well as the fact that the seals will trigger themselves automatically if they harbour even the thought of betrayal," he said. I nodded. Good, I guess. I had gone a bit farther than Danzo had in his own seals. While they were also cursed seals just like what he had used, this was much different. It was not enough to just stop them from talking when they wanted to. There was a seal that would disintegrate their bodies completely if activated by them, or if the cursed seal sensed their intentions to betray. There were warning measures before full disintegration, but they could be bypassed if a drastic enough overt act of betrayal was taken.
"Brilliant. So can I have an exhibition of the other group?" I asked. Shiba nodded, and with a nod, he dismissed all those in the hall.
"Yes, Hokage-sama," he said, and then began leading me deeper into the complex.
"How did you even dig all this so quickly? If you had made use of the building corps, I would have known for sure," I asked a question I already knew the answer to.
"We have a variant of kikaichu that grows in size when exposed to chakra, in a process similar to the Akimichi and their expansion jutsu. It is traditionally short lived, but selective breeding has allowed us to create a subspecies that can last for as long as two hours between birth and death. Using their expanded forms to their full capacity, we are able to direct them to dig massive underground structures, a fact that I am certain Uraume-san would have mentioned, Hokage-sama," he said.
"Uraume? Does she know about it from your time as teammates or something?" I asked, feigning ignorance. He turned his head to my direction and I met his goggle-clad eyes.
"Something like that, Hokage-sama," he said, choosing not to confront me on the surveillance his clan was being placed under. Good. It showed that he understood the way of things, at least. It would have been better to surveil them with them being none the wiser to our monitoring, but that was a feat that would have been impossible to achieve. The Aburame were some of the best sensors Konoha had access to, only behind the Hyuga clan when it came to sheer utility. Add that to the fact that they were some of the most perceptive people out there, then there was no point in even trying to hide it.
Instead, we made it apparent—or at least as apparent as we could without drawing attention to the other clans. The Aburame were receiving a privilege with the authority I gave them over Root, a black ops unit within the regular black ops, and in exchange, they would have to accept the burden of my prying eyes at all times.
We walked into a smaller dojo where there were a dozen children arranged in a circle with two of them in the middle. Both of them had brown hair and black eyes. All of them did. Not a single one would have drawn notice for their physical features in a crowded street.
"Begin now," Shiba ordered as we walked in and the Aburame who waited in the middle of the mat with the two children nodded and they erupted into motion. They were quick for their ages. One led with a punch. The other allowed it to pass to the side as he dodged, countering with a high kick his opponent blocked with his other hand. They stepped backwards before shooting at each other again even faster. This time, the one who had countered the first time struck first. He lashed out with a straight kick for his opponent's head. Said opponent stepped backwards.
He returned his second foot to the ground, and attempted another kick immediately. His opponent ducked underneath it before lashing out with a punch once the kick landed. He blocked with his forearm and then tried to stomp on his opponent's foot.
Said opponent backpedaled, avoiding the stomp and then lashed out with a straight kick. He hadn't stopped moving, though, and the kick hit nothing but air as he swept his opponent's other foot out from under him and then jumped onto him, keeping him down.
"How long have they been training in taijutsu?" I asked.
"Six months," he said.
"Well done. And have the substances from Kagame been working as expected?"
"Growth is difficult to measure in such a small period. We continue to see improvements but we are yet to be able to tell how much is due to training and aging as opposed to the cocktail of drugs," he said.
"Fair enough. I'm sure Toshiro will have a scientific answer for us when he is finished with the present academy class. But do keep all of them on the drugs just in case," I said. Yes, I was making my young shinobi dope. Why the hell not? We saw the kind of growth Sasuke had in canon. He went from about chunin level to just waiting on the edge of S-rank in a matter of years. Sure, we know he had a shit ton of talent, but we do know Orochimaru had been giving him drugs to make him grow faster. Something like that existing in canon was a sign that we could get similar effects if we invested the resources into it.
The Nara clan had the best records when it came to pharmaceuticals in all of Konoha—maybe even the world. And the Akimichi had their food pills that could achieve ground breaking results. Why no one before me had bothered to get the best and brightest from those two clans in the same room with the explicit goal of making supplements to improve shinobi growth was a question I would probably never get a full answer to.
"And this is the most advanced class?" I asked.
"You only approved the combat section of Root eight months ago, Hokage-sama. Without your approval, I did not pursue any combat training," he said. I nodded.
"Good. Proceed with them. When the present infiltration class graduates, increase your combat class cap to two hundred," I said. He nodded. This was a significant amount of trust I was placing in him now. The Anbu had about three hundred members so this would mean Uraume would have only 33% more shinobi under her command than he did. And his shinobi were going to have much less oversight. As I turned to leave the Root complex, it struck me that if there ever would be a mistake I made in my administration with the potential to come back and bite me later on, then this would be it. But the benefits were too much for me to overlook.
I focused on my tag placed in the middle of the commercial district before teleporting to the back alley I was heading for. I didn't want to just pop in on Shika unannounced. It was somewhat rude to just show up next to people when you wanted to talk to them, that was it. It definitely had nothing to do with what I had teleported in on Uraume doing. Bad Shori. No thinking about that.
Shika, as head of intelligence and counterintelligence had seen her role evolve a lot. For one, part of it just had to be parsing all the information that was coming in. We had the general Konoha spy network which she directly controlled, and then there was Anbu and their own intelligence gathering efforts. Inoken had his own thing going with T&I, but that was mostly breaking captives that Anbu managed to extract from other villages. Add Root to that once the spy network there got up and running then she was going to become a very busy woman in the next few months. And now here I was with something to add to her plate. Well, this was going to be a role she shared, but she was going to have to take point.
The building we had intelligence working out of was nondescript. It was another triplex in a village that was quickly beginning to fill up with them. Thanks to putting even more earth release focused shinobi on building duty, we had so many projects being completed that I was sure we would have enough supply to deal with the next few decades worth of population growth, even as building rates inevitably slowed down once I pulled back the extra funds that were going towards paying shinobi to do the building.
I knocked at the door at the end of the hallway on the ground floor. Most would have expected the head to occupy the top floor, but Shika would never willingly climb any stairs she didn't have to.
"Hey Cuz," I said cheerily, waving as I walked in. There was a stack of papers on her table easily thrice as tall as the one I had on mine. I hid my smile with expert ease, even though the way her eyes narrowed in my direction told me I wasn't quite as subtle as I hoped I was.
"What do you want now?" she groaned.
"Now, is that any way to greet your favourite cousin and Kage?" I asked her.
"My favourite cousin is Shikaku. You know why? Because he does nothing but nap all day. He's good company to be around. You, on the other hand, only ever show up when there's more work to be done," she groused. I lifted my hands in surrender.
"Of course, of course. But what if I told you I didn't come here with any more work for you to do?" I asked.
"Really?" She raised an eyebrow filled with doubt.
"Naaaa. I do need your help with something, but this is more based on your duty as Clan Head of the Nara Clan than anything else."
"Why do I get the feeling that I am not going to like this one bit?"
"Remember when I said we'd need a police force eventually?"
"And when we told you that the village had too many fires to put out to worry about that," she completed. I shrugged.
"Yeah, the time has come for us to at least get things started. Of all the clans in Konoha, the clans most well suited for disabling violent persons non-lethally are yours, the Hyuga, and the Aburame. I'm sure you would agree with me that giving more power to the Aburame in addition to Root would be less than wise."
"So you want me and Uraume to head this police of yours?" she asked.
"No. You're too important doing what you do already, and Uraume is doing a great job with Anbu. I want you to sell the idea to your respective clans. Get those not in active duty but with shinobi training to sign up. Tell them the pay will be generous or whatever else you need to tell them, but I'll need one hundred of yours and the same of Uraume's," I said.
"Why not meet Uraume with this first? Why come to me?"
"I need a Nara to head it. Both you and Uraume are my cousins yes, but my relationship with the Hyuga is under way more scrutiny. You've heard the whispers around Uraume's rule in Anbu. It's much better to avoid the appearance of impropriety even if it's not like anyone could do anything if I was choosing to be improper," I said with a shrug.
"And you yourself want to send a message to the elders of the Hyuga clan," she added.
"Well, if you knew then why the question?" I admitted her guess with a shrug.
"Are they still on that?"
"No one has spoken to me since the idiot that suggested I didn't want to marry Uraume because she was 'crippled' got out of the hospital. But I can see them plotting in their council room. They'll try again. And that's because they're way too comfortable," I said with a sigh.
"So you remind them that the other clans are still a threat to their dominance. And I'm sure you've considered the possibility that this leads to them pushing for a marriage even harder?" I nodded. I had other irons in the fire in that regard.
"And you know that giving this appointment to the Uchiha would worry them way more than giving it to us?" she said.
"Don't underestimate your clan. I have two Nara on my small council. No other clan can say the same. Besides, the Uchiha aren't an option," I said, suppressing a shudder. Kurama was sealed within me so logically there would never be an Uchiha massacre, but lord only knows what Madara could be cooking.
"Because you will be marrying Uzume and you don't want to be seen to be favoring them overmuch?" she asked. I resisted the urge to scoff.
"You and Uraume gossip way too much," I said instead.
"I would need to be blind, deaf, and stupid to need Uraume to tell me it was coming. It's practically been inevitable from the day you told her to fuck off at the academy all those years ago," she said.
"In defence of you," I added.
"I didn't ask for it. I was more than willing to stand up and change seats. You just wanted a fight and so did she. Peas in a pod, the both of you are."
"There's a saying in the Land of Iron that opposites attract. And I did defend you from her... Maybe you're the one I want to marry and all this is simply me favoring my future wife's clan," I teased, watching the way her face paled before she realised the jest in my words and then she was scoffing.
"First of all, please never make that joke again. I quite like having my head attached to my shoulders, and from what I've seen in the mission logs, I doubt you'd be able to make it in time to stop her from divorcing that particular connection. Besides, you're not quite my type," she said. I was the one scoffing now.
"I'm everyone's type."
"Sure you are. And if that will be all?" she asked, clearly intending to send me out of the room already.
"Not even going to want to hang to a bit… we haven't seen each other in forever."
"Keep it that way for a bit more then. I have work to do, and sadly for the two of us, and maybe for the village, if I don't do my job we could have half the village on fire again," she said.
"That will never happen again," I said, my words more an oath than anything else.
"And that is what my work is committed to ensuring. Now out with you." Her tone brooked no disagreement so I lifted my hands and flashed to my next destination.
—
"What's up favorite Cousins," I said as I appeared right in the middle of the Research and Development work shop.
"Someone tell Reiji that Cousin Shori is back," I heard a voice call out above the cacophony that came from having multiple Uzumaki in the same place.
"No one's going to stop and greet me properly?" I asked, and then half the room exploded. Rather, three of the tables that littered the work shop experienced rapid uncontrolled disassembly.
"Anyone hurt?" I called out while most of the room went back to their work once they were sure the explosion was contained. Cousin Hakko had been the one working all three tables and he seemed to have been able to use his chains to form a barrier beforehand.
"What the fuck did I tell you? Huh Hakko you fucking idiot!" Oh there was Cousin Reiji.
A/N: And we look around Konoha a bit to get a sense of where things stand post-timeskip before we move on with this arc. Expect things to accelerate into next chapter (no time-skips), just more action and less exposition in the present. 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.