A few minutes later, "Shinnō" woke up again—naturally, as an Edo Tensei.
"…What is this…?"
He checked his own condition and felt a bit lost about having come back to life yet again.
Right then, Uchiha Yorin's voice came from beside him:
"So from now on, you're one of my subordinates. But you're gonna need a new name. How about 'Dumbass'?"
Shinnō: "?"
What kind of nonsense is that?
Instinctively he tried to object—then realized he couldn't move. Worse, somewhere deep inside, there was this faint impulse to accept the new name.
Uchiha Yorin: "On second thought, forget it. From today on, you're the Sky Ninja Leader. Work hard for me now—put your back into world peace."
The Sky Ninja Leader still wanted to resist on reflex, but in the end he was completely powerless. He could only stare at Uchiha Yorin like he was looking at a monster and demand:
"What did you do to me?!"
"Aren't you the one who loves stealing Konoha's forbidden techniques?" Yorin said lazily. "And now that I've used one of Konoha's forbidden techniques, how come you don't recognize it?"
"…"
Guess that's what you'd expect from the Sky Ninja Leader. With that little hint, he immediately thought of the answer—and his whole face went bad.
"Edo Tensei?!" he shouted, outraged. "You actually used Edo Tensei on me?!"
The moment Yorin said it, Shinnō felt like the blood in his whole body went cold.
On second thought, he was already dead, so his blood had been cold for a while anyway.
"So my life's basically over," he thought. Then paused and realized his life already had ended; this was just overtime.
Being Edo Tensei'd for some reason… awakened a talent for stand-up comedy in him.
Well, rakugo, technically.
That made Uchiha Yorin pretty happy. He felt like reviving the Sky Ninja Leader alone was worth the price.
Even if the guy's not an elite researcher, he's at least top-tier comic relief. Whenever they're bored, they can throw him on stage to do a routine and cheer everyone up.
Of course, the most important thing was still Sky Ninja's research results.
Under the personal guidance of the Sky Ninja Leader, Konoha's forces quickly located all of Sky Ninja's hidden assets, technologies, and equipment.
During that process, the Sky Ninja Leader ground his teeth in utter resentment. If he could, he would've gladly murdered Uchiha Yorin on the spot.
But his hatred meant nothing.
Once Yorin had scooped up every last scrap of tech and gear, the Sky Ninja Leader just showed a look of "nothing left to live for," his whole aura going gray.
"So," Orochimaru asked, having rushed over when he heard, "can a Sky Ninja Leader in this emotional state actually do research?"
"You're the Edo Tensei expert. Why are you asking me?" Yorin shot back.
Orochimaru quietly thought that, sure, he was the expert—but lately Yorin had been using Edo Tensei more often than he had. Between the two of them, who really counted as the specialist here?
Not that he said it out loud.
Compared to snarking at Yorin, he cared more about the two medical secret techniques Yorin had just acquired:
Body Activation and Body Regeneration.
Those two high-level medical arts could super-boost the body's performance, which meant that all kinds of further modifications and fusions would have much higher success rates.
"With this, we can finally make serious progress on that 'perfect fusion body' we've been aiming for," Orochimaru said, eyes gleaming.
As they talked about mixing Uchiha and Senju genes, mass-producing pseudo–Six Paths-level monsters, and so on, the Sky Ninja Leader listened from the side and nearly had a stroke. It gave him that "standing at the foot of a mountain" kind of feeling.
They were both technical people, even if one was biotech and the other was mechanics. He could still hear the shape of what they were really saying.
If before, him getting beaten by Yorin's raw power had left him a little unconvinced, this time—watching Yorin display a scientific and technical depth that completely surpassed his own—the Sky Ninja Leader had to admit he'd been crushed across the board.
Uchiha Yorin really was a more exceptional existence.
His strength, his mind, his ambition, even his age—all of it completely overwhelmed Shinnō, grinding him down to nothing.
At last, he went quiet.
His hatred and anger didn't disappear. If he ever got the chance, he'd absolutely stab Yorin in the back.
But until then, he would obediently work for him and stop acting up.
…
"Looks like that's about it," Yorin said.
Akatsuki's cleanup unit arrived at the Sky Ninja base to sweep and catalog everything, packing up all valuable materials and equipment before shipping them back to Akatsuki's secret bases.
At this point, Akatsuki had four of those.
The old Rain Country HQ was now the training camp—a junior division. All prospective members would be sent there for intensive training and leveling up, and only then could they become full combat operatives.
Among those trainees, anyone who showed exceptional brains, strong learning ability and logic, or unusual talent for math would be transferred to one of two special branches for higher study.
The Uzushio branch—at New Whirlpools Village—was built around schools, especially the cadre academy where Akatsuki members would learn how to function as ground-level civil servants.
The Snow Country branch was the technical and engineering academy, where rookies would study to become software system engineers or mechanical equipment engineers.
After graduating, the management-track people would be sent to Snow Country for internships, while the engineers were distributed through various Uchiha factories to gain hands-on experience.
As for those who weren't suited for engineering or management—the ones whose technical skills and brains just weren't enough—they'd go to the Water Country branch.
That was Akatsuki's biggest operations base.
From there, they'd move under the Akatsuki banner all around the world, "righteously" raiding corrupt merchants and landlords, building their reputation while also laying the groundwork for the eventual takeover.
Anyone who distinguished themselves in the field could be recommended to the cadre school or tech school for advanced training.
Likewise, engineers who did well on the technical front would be rotated through the cadre academy for management training.
And those who started in administration would be reassigned periodically to frontline technical roles for hands-on experience.
That was the full system Uchiha Yorin had designed—not just for Akatsuki, but for the future ninja empire.
It was a pipeline meant to produce a constant stream of cadres and specialists.
Of course, it had its downside.
Money.
It cost money. It burned resources. And not just a little.
If that money went into the military, Konoha could raise two more 10,000-man corps.
If it went into industry, they could build dozens of new major factories.
Instead, he was dumping it into education, which in the short term produced seemingly nothing.
It was a long game—a deep investment.
But Uchiha Yorin still chose to go all in, and to keep going no matter what.
Ten years, thirty years, even a hundred. Education isn't about the immediate payoff—you do it for the long future.
…
So the Sky Ninja Leader got dropped into the 007 grinder.
If there was one thing he could be happy about in all of this, it was finally seeing the Zero-Tails restoration tech he'd always dreamed of.
But that brief excitement quickly turned to deeper despair.
Because this time, the restored Zero-Tails didn't belong to him—it belonged to his greatest enemy, Uchiha Yorin.
Not only had he died and been crushed; all hope was gone—and now he had to work for his own nemesis, watching the achievements he'd longed for blossom in someone else's hands.
That was the ultimate humiliation.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
On one side, Fūka Arashi, and on the other, Hidan—no, in this story, Fūka and Hidan's equivalents like Hanzo's imitators and other old villains—laughed their heads off when they saw the Sky Ninja Leader.
They'd all gone through the same ordeal. But instead of feeling any sympathy, they just reveled in his suffering.
Because they were bastards. Villains. Faced with someone as miserable as themselves, they didn't feel compassion—they felt incredible schadenfreude.
…
"…"
Seeing how these "senior" Edo Tensei looked and behaved, the Sky Ninja Leader said nothing. He just quietly took his assigned seat at the workbench and started researching Zero-Tails reconstruction and aerial fortress design.
He buried himself in work, cursing everything under his breath.
Cursing Yorin. Cursing his colleagues. Cursing the entire ninja world.
But that didn't matter.
Not everyone was an Uchiha. No matter how intense his emotions, he wasn't going to awaken a Mangekyō Sharingan.
The world was destined to flourish under his curses. Humanity was destined to march forward under his curses.
Maybe ten years, maybe a hundred, maybe a thousand years from now—when he looks out over a world that has changed beyond recognition, a beautiful era just like Yorin imagined, maybe then the Sky Ninja Leader will finally let go of his hatred and soften.
And if he doesn't, that's fine too.
Because one way or another, he's never getting out of Uchiha Yorin's hand.
~~~
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