"Sister! You're back!" Fugaku blurted out, his voice a decibel too loud for the calm interior as soon as he saw Azula.
A complex series of micro-expressions flickered across his face—genuine relief, a surge of familial affection, and then, as if on cue, the internal Uchiha alarm for "Dignity Breach Detected!"
His body twitched forward an inch, a half-aborted gesture toward a hug, before he locked his arms stiffly at his sides, settling for a nod. The Uchiha Tsundere Protocol was in full, glorious effect.
Azula, leaning against the doorframe with the effortless cool of a cat that had not only caught the canary but also taught it to sing her praises, let out a low, melodious chuckle.
"The mission took a few… unexpected detours. Let's just say the timeline stretched a bit. But," she added, a wicked gleam in her eyes, "it was worth it. Probably the most exciting mission I've ever had."
She wasn't lying. After all, what could possibly be more exciting than a casual afternoon exchanging pleasantries—and earth-shattering jutsu—with the four most powerful Kage in the world, and then sauntering home without a single hair out of place?
The clinking of glasses from the kitchen doorway paused. Asami, bearing a tray of what was undoubtedly freshly squeezed juice (the Uchiha were dramatic, not uncivilized), had frozen mid-step.
Her eyes met those of Tajima, who had been relaxing.
Azula calling a mission "fun" was one thing. Azula, whose standard for "enjoyable" was a perfectly executed, clinically efficient A-rank assassination of a noble, calling something "the most exciting"? That was the narrative equivalent of a seismic event.
Of course, they wanted to hear the rest. And anyway, Tajima was formally the head of the Uchiha, and clan doctrine was clear: all missions were to be reported to the leader.
On a brighter, more practical note, even if the Hokage had strictly forbidden the sharing of certain details, well… unless the secret was on the level of "I am secretly the Ten-Tails' babysitter" or required the self-flagellating "Will of Fire" of a Shisui or Itachi, the clan leadership would definitely be hearing about it.
Clan loyalty, as the Uchiha saw it, was a thicker, sharper blade than village red tape.
Asami smoothly resumed her journey to the low table, setting down the tray with a quiet clatter. Fugaku, forgetting his earlier embarrassment, practically levitated to a cushion, his eyes wide.
Tajima, with the deliberate slowness of a man preparing for a storm, gestured for Azula to sit. "A story of such… excitement," he rumbled, "requires proper hydration."
Asami poured the juice. After all, what kind of legendary tale could be told without a beverage in hand? (Even if it was just juice. This was a family meeting, not a tavern brawl.)
Azula accepted a glass, took a slow, deliberate sip, and then let a smirk bloom on her face—a smirk that promised chaos and delivered.
"It was nothing special, really," she began, her tone as casual as if she were describing a trip to the market. "I just exchanged a few friendly rounds with the Raikage. You know how he is, all lightning and bluster. I helped him see the scenery from a new perspective—specifically, the perspective of someone who has just been launched through a small forest."
"Then, the Tsuchikage and the Kazekage decided they wanted a turn. The Kazekage was particularly… receptive. Took my punch with his body. He's probably still picking sand out of his internal organs as we speak."
Now, Tajima had, over the years, built up a formidable immunity to Azula's particular brand of outrageousness.
He was a man who had heard her theorize, with a straight face, that the world was a spinning ball, that they were all living on a giant dirt-and-water marble, and that there were people in the sky whose sole ambition was to suck one celestial ball after another. He hadn't even blinked.
But this—who starts a conversation like that?! He had just sat down!
If it were anyone else, the table would already be a collection of splinters and his Sharingan would be spinning in fury.
But this was his daughter. And he knew, with the cold, hard certainty of a seasoned shinobi, that she would never bother to lie about something so audacious.
Lying was for people who needed to embellish their accomplishments. Azula's accomplishments tended to embellish themselves.
He processed the information. His heart did a single, powerful thump against his ribs, like a war drum signaling the start of a battle. A surge of adrenaline, hot and fierce, rushed through his veins. There was only one logical conclusion his Uchiha mind could leap to.
"Have you," he asked, his voice dropping to a hushed, intense whisper, "awakened those eyes?"
The truth was, no one in the Uchiha clan truly knew Azula's upper limits. They knew the public record: jōnin at eleven—a prodigy.
He, as her father, knew a few of the terrifying pieces: she'd mastered Tobirama's Flying Raijin, absorbed the Uzumaki's sealing arts from Mito-sama, and had even crafted her own Lightning and Fire Release Chakra Modes.
But their spars had always been… normal. Controlled. He had pegged her at an elite jōnin level (hehe). A formidable one, but still within a comprehensible framework.
To do what she described? To dance with three Kage and send one of them flying? His only reasoning was the power of the Mangekyō Sharingan.
As an owner of those crimson eyes, he knew their world-bending potential. If not for the cruel price of encroaching blindness, he might have dared to grasp the Hokage's hat himself long ago.
And since Azula's talent had blazed forth, the clan's single, burning hope was for her to awaken those eyes. They knew the secret—the forbidden path to not only halt the blindness but to transcend it, to reach the mythic level of Madara himself—a level no one in the current, diminished ninja world could even comprehend.
And it only required a sacrifice from one who shared a close bloodline.
Unfortunately for his soaring expectations, Azula gave a slight, almost apologetic shake of her head. "Not yet, unfortunately. But…"
She didn't finish with words. Instead, she let her chakra flare. Her eyes shifted, the onyx irises bleeding into crimson, and three tomoe spun lazily within each—a perfect, deadly pinwheel.
At the start of her great battle, her eyes had been a two-tomoe Sharingan.
But when Tsunade's forbidden jutsu had run its course, leaving the Slug woman exhausted and broken on the ground, a cold fury had settled in Azula's heart.
It was her own lack of power that had let it come to that. If she were at Madara's level, facing three Kage would be a warm-up; she could take on all five without breaking a sweat.
That intense, simmering emotion—that craving for absolute power—had been the final catalyst. The evolution was subtle—a slight sharpening of her senses, a new depth to the flow of Yin chakra—but undeniable.
This didn't surprise her. Awakening the Sharingan and pushing it to the Mangekyō were the true hurdles. The little steps in between? For a talent like hers, a bit of sufficient stimulation was all it took for her eyes to level up as naturally as breathing.
Tajima's proud, sharp-toothed smile returned, wider than before. She hadn't gotten the Mangekyō, but the Three Tomoe was the antechamber to the throne room. She was knocking on the door.
"Okay. Very good," he said, his voice thick with pride. "It seems it is time for the next generation to take the helm of the Uchiha. Come, tell me the entire story of this mission."
Azula mirrored his smile—a confident, razor-sharp expression. She offered no hypocritical excuses, no false modesty about not being ready or worthy. She had been ready for years.
She knew that being the Uchiha heir and being the Uchiha leader were two completely different realities—one of permission and the other of power. And with the coming storm she foresaw—the Uzumaki crisis she fully intended to steer to her own advantage—she needed that power now. ... ... ... Three days. For seventy-two whole hours, the most explosively awesome piece of gossip to ever grace the ninja world had been doing the rounds in Konoha's upper echelons.
The tale of Sakumo, Tsunade, and the pyromaniac prodigy Azula not only facing down the Four Kage and their entourage of elite jōnin but also living to tell the tale—and personally autographing two of the Kage with what were likely very pointy, very painful souvenirs—was the kind of story that wrote itself.
In the high-level meeting halls and clandestine ANBU bars, it was the only thing anyone could talk about.
It was the ninja equivalent of a blockbuster movie, complete with thrilling action, daring escapes, and a sassy firebender who probably scoffed at the very concept of "overkill."
Yet, down in the village proper, among the civilians and lower-ranked shinobi? Crickets.
The air was filled with the usual chatter about the price of dango, whose kid accidentally set the laundry on fire with a poorly executed Bunshin no Jutsu, and the profound mystery of why the Third Hokage's hat seemed to get floppier with each passing year.
The reason for this informational blackout wasn't some complex, multi-layered S-rank secret. No, it was something far more predictable: good old-fashioned, top-shelf political buffoonery.
A small but stubborn faction within the leadership, who had apparently been mainlining skepticism for breakfast, was fighting a desperate rearguard action against the truth. Their logic, if one could call it that, was a masterpiece of self-sabotage.
Publicizing this legendary feat would be the greatest morale booster since someone invented instant ramen! It would make Konoha the talk of the Elemental Nations—a village so formidable that three of its fighters could give four Kage a collective black eye.
Ah, but there was a catch. One of those three was an Uchiha. And not just any Uchiha, but an Uchiha who had been branded as "evil" and had too many achievements in her name.
Allowing her to be hailed as a hero was, in the minds of these esteemed elders, like handing a lit match to a fireworks factory and hoping for a gentle light show.
Never mind that the Uchiha hadn't yet "proven their trustworthiness"—a conveniently moving goalpost that seemed to be mounted on a runaway cart.
The "greater good," they pontificated, demanded that this glorious, reputation-enhancing victory be swept under the nearest and plushest rug.
Watching this farce unfold from the shadows was Mito Uzumaki. She, who had seen generations of Hokage come and go, who had helped place Hiruzen Sarutobi and his cronies on their gilded thrones, felt a disappointment so profound it was almost a physical ache.
She knew the future—a grim tapestry of their blunders and miscalculations—but she'd conscientiously filed that away under "Things Not Yet Done." She was trying to be fair, to not judge a man for crimes he hadn't committed.
But this? This wasn't a future mistake; this was a present-tense, Grade-A, premium idiocy unfolding in real time. She pinched the bridge of her nose, imagining the scene in any other village.
A team pulls off a stunt like that? They'd be carried through the streets on a litter made of gold and gratitude. Parades would be organized, statues commissioned, their faces plastered on every "Be All You Can Be" recruitment poster from here to the Land of Wind.
The morale of their village would skyrocket, while the enemy villages would be plunged into despair, their soldiers whispering, "Our Kage teamed up with three others and still got outmaneuvered by a trio of Konoha's finest? Maybe we should just invest in farming."
And yet, in Konoha, the leadership was engaged in the magical, mystical operation of "Hiding the Glorious Merit." It was like trying to conceal a sunrise with a teacup. A weary sigh escaped her lips.
"It seems," she murmured to the empty room, "that I was indeed hoping for too much from Hiruzen."
Still, a stubborn, optimistic part of her—the part that remembered a bright young student of Tobirama—wanted to give him one last chance. She didn't want a civil war.
So, she devised a test—a final exam for Hiruzen Sarutobi and the current leader of the Uzumaki, proctored by fate itself. And conveniently, the subject matter involved her own clan, the Uzumaki.
Her plan was simple. She would anonymously leak the real reason the Four Kage had convened: their little summit to plan the total annihilation of the Uzumaki clan and light the fuse on the Second Great Ninja War.
No more excuses. Azula had said that in the future, Hiruzen's defense was a pathetic, "I didn't know enough, and it all happened too fast!"
Well, here was the information—gift-wrapped and delivered by a mysterious benefactor. Now, there were no shadows to hide in.
Mito would sit back and observe. Would he step up? Or would he shirk his responsibilities, citing "political delicacy" or some other flimsy excuse? Would he be a man worthy of the Hokage title?
If he chose the latter—if he failed this simplest of tests in basic decency and alliance—then the gloves were coming off.
She wouldn't wait for the war to end. She would personally unite the Senju and the Uchiha, and together they would hoist one Azula of the Uchiha—age and wartime chaos be damned—onto the Hokage's throne.
It was time for Konoha to get a leader who understood that sometimes, the greatest weapon wasn't a jutsu, but the truth, delivered with a flashy, and preferably fiery, smile.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)