Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
"Call up the reserves. Reduce the age of Graduation for the Academy from twelve to eight. Every child above the age of eight within the academy shall be effective immediately be made a genin and drafted into the Konoha military. They are to assemble within this very building by 0600 hours tomorrow, so I may address them. Every able-bodied jounin is to be returned to the village. Halt all missions— even the sensitive ones Hiruzen had approved beforehand. Cancel all contracts. We will eat the costs, but better we have a village that is a little poorer than one that is destroyed. Remind the clans of their promise to submit lists of all personnel not officially included in the Konoha military but who are capable of combat and their most recent internal combat assessments— focus on then Uchiha, Hyuga, and Aburame. Have the anbu monitor the process to make sure we get some honesty out of them. Now, clear the rest of my schedule for today. I'll be at the Uzumaki Clan Compound" I'll be going to see my Grandmother because this was way more stressful than I had imagined, were the words I thought but did not say.
The meeting that had essentially made me the interim Hokage had taken place only yesterday and since then, my life had been a flurry of activity. I did not have to move into the Hokage mansion— one didn't exist yet, so I got to live at home, but that was my only anchor in the storm I'd been tossed into. Danzo had written everything he had ever done in code. A code that no one but the paranoid bastard seemed able to understand, so getting a good picture of the village's situation had taken longer than expected. It had taken most of the today, and even then, it was difficult to tell what exactly I was yet to become aware of. I'd figured out finances— that had been hell, and where most of our shinobi were— the sad part was that the answer to that question was 'in the ground'.
I titled my head at my new Secretary as she silently scrawled all my orders down. She was a recommendation from Uraume, a Hyuga branch family member that she swore by and who I was mostly certain would be Tallinn my cousin every single thing I got up to. But that was better than the alternative— having Danzo's spy at the centre of my operation. That was why I had sacked her predecessor in minutes after taking the job. Uraume's cousin was the lesser of all evils. At least with her, I could know what her connections and biases were. With a classless shinobi, it could literally be anything. With any of the other clans, it was worse because none of them were as close to me as the Hyuga as a whole were. I just had to hope that they would remain committed to propping up my reign for the long run.
"Do you understand?" I asked when she had finished taking down all my orders in her notes.
"Yes sir,"
"Then I'll be off" I said, using the flying raijin to appear back home.
"Grandmother" I called out to the massive place, not in the mood for going room to room to check and wary of simply teleporting to her location with the mark I had on her. Neither of us wanted what happened last time to happen again.
"Drawing room, Shori" I heard her voice call out and nodded before teleporting to her side.
"Grandmother—" I began to speak before the older woman shushed me with what looked to me to be a fond smile.
"Before that, there's someone here who has something to say to you" She said, and I whirled around to see Tsunade sitting before the drawing room desk.
"Tsunade?" I asked. She looked at me before looking away. Like the words were struggling to leave her lips. Then she abruptly pushed off from the chair, sending it flying backwards and into the wall. I internally winced. Living with two Uzumaki women meant there was always something in need of being repaired, but I had been able to avoid having to replace any of the chairs so far.
My thoughts left that as she did what no one could have anticipated. Tsunade dropped to her knees, squatting into a full bow with her face mere centimeters away from the ground.
"Thank you, Cousin. Thank you for saving our lives and for holding off Hanzo long enough to allow us to escape" She said, voice breaking as she said the S-rank's name. I could tell that this Hanzo had a different effect than the one from canon. It was obvious in how he had nearly killed off all three rather than christening them with their legendary title.
"There's nothing to thank me about, Cousin. I simply did as a cousin ought" I said, trying to navigate an awkward situation. And then she moved unexpectedly again. From being bowed to the floor, she pushed against the ground to capture me in a hug that wrapped around my whole body.
"Thank you. I thought I was going to die there. I thought we were going to die there. I owe you, Shori." She said, and it might have taken me a second, and lots of enthusiastic encouragement from Grandma behind Tsunade's back, but I did wrap my arms around her to enclose her in a hug as well, while trying not to think about the way her mammary glands squished themselves against my chest. Gods, those things felt like pillows.
No, bad Shori. That's your cousin, I warned myself off to prevent undesirable bodily reactions before she leaned away, and I tapped her shoulder in some camaraderie.
"You're welcome, Tsunade. What are cousins for?" I asked, and she smiled back. This time it was a watery thing.
"Danzo-san says you want to send Nawaki to the front lines" She said next, looking at me. What kind of ambush was this? Thankful one minute, and accusing the other? And Danzo? That little piece of shit. He probably had some convoluted plan related to having the Senju upset at me and making me lose the support of most of the other clans through that.
"No. The front lines are a meat grinder. One would wonder where Danzo would get an idea like that one. I did graduate all genin over the age of eight, but not to use them in the war, but to instead have them take up administrative functions within the village, so their elders can be sent off to the front line. Everything from cryptanalysis to torture and interrogation is going to receive a massive influx of genin to free up the chunin ordinarily taking up these roles.
"Not like those chunin are much better than genin in the first place" She scoffed. I shrugged.
"They're old enough to face the consequences of somehow thinking that they could survive in this world without physical might. Or village might suffer from the losses in the future, but we need the bodies on the lines now if we want to have any chance of surviving this war. I might be strong, but not strong enough to face down three armies when they make it to our gates." I said.
She nodded, accepting the reasoning but not being pleased about it.
"What about Hiruzen?" I asked. I tried to put as much concern in my voice as possible. It was not difficult to fake. My concern was not for his well-being, but for the fact that he might wake up too soon. Say what you would about my cousin, but she was one hell of a medic.
"He's stable. No danger of crossing the line now. All we just have to do is bring him back to consciousness in one piece" She said.
"And how long would that take?"
"It depends on him, to be honest. Could be anything from a month to never" She said. If it were anyone else, I would have asked her to delay his return as much as possible, but this woman would try to turn me to paste if I even suggested it. So instead, I closed my hands around hers and wished her the best.
—
"I do not much appreciate being ambushed" I said, turning to Grandmother as Tsunade left.
"I think you might be letting your new position get to your head, Hokage-sama" She said the title mockingly. "I am not beholden to what you appreciate, young man"
"As you insist on making known, Grandmother. Now I need your help." I said, walking back towards her and finding my lips quirking upwards to match hers of their own accord.
"What idea has wormed its way into your fooled that you can't figure out on your own?" She asked.
"Who said I had an idea?"
"That smirk on your face. Now talk before I lose my patience and get to whacking" She picked up her cane, showing that she had every intention of backing through threat up with violence.
"Remember when we needed to rescue Tsunade and needed to get her precise coordinates to send a hiraishin marker to her location?" I asked.
"It wasn't even a week ago. What do you take me for?"
"Obviously, a rhetorical question, but I'll continue and ignore your attempt to derail the conversation"
"You're just begging for a spanking at this point"
"I was thinking that it would be useful for our intelligence and troop movements if we could have seals scattered across the Land of Fire aimed at scanning all chakra signatures within a fixed range and acting as hiraishin markers so I can move to any part of the country as needed" I said.
"Doesn't sound all that hard. You could probably design it yourself. Nothing more than a classic chakra identification matrix. You helped me with one before your tenth birthday, I remember."
"Well, I'm Hokage now and have less spare time than ever. Besides, I'm nearly certain that you have some ideas for how to improve what I told you about already" I smirked, and she nodded.
"Fine. I'll help you out. And you're right, I have a few ideas".
"Who's going to mass produce these seals and place them around the Land of Fire?" She asked, and I just pointedly looked around the house.
"No."
"The other clans are beginning to grumble. The Uzumaki haven't overtly contributed anything to the war effort as far as they are concerned, and they think it's unfair" I said.
"We've lost more than any of them have. Our village. Our family. We were the war's first casualties, Shorirama" She pressed.
"I agree. That is why I'll be giving the clan a job with very little chance of seeing combat. I'll name this as the internal intelligence and reconnaissance division and make it the duty of the Uzumaki clan to oversee in much the same way the Uchiha Clan oversees the Police Force" I said.
"No combat. You promise me?" She asked.
"I promise" Being Hokage seemed to involve a lot more talking than doing.
"Okay then, I have an idea" She said, taking out a scroll from somewhere within her kimono— I'd learned not to bother asking.
"We want something that can read chakra signatures at a distance and transmit that information back here, yes?" She asked.
"Yes"
"Good. We need three seals chained together, I think. If we have a seal dedicated to sensing chakra and place that all about the country, then those should work. We'll then attach them to seals that aggregate and collate all those readings— essentially creating a map of the land of Fire. I imagine something like a rod that interfaces two ways both with the smaller reading seals and then back here with the seal that displays the information for us" She said.
"And which one would have my hiraishin markers?"
"Obviously, the rods. There would be fewer of those, so less chance of you getting things wrong and jumping to the wrong one. Also less chance of one getting discovered" I nodded.
"Okay, so that could work. Then maybe some obfuscation seals for the rods themselves to make them harder to find" I suggested.
"No, no, no. It would clash conceptually. The obfuscation seals work on the concept of not being found, you can't pair that with chakra sensing seals that work with the concept of finding other things. You can't blow hot and cold at the same time, Shori".
"I was thinking of the rods not having any identification matrixes at all. Give that fully over to the discreet seals and have it just function as aggregator and waypoint."
"Hmmm" She considered, holding her brush against her lips while she thought my suggestion through.
"I've got it, now get out. The Hyuga clan head came by to tell me to make sure you're on time for your date".
"Date? We're meeting for tea, Grandma".
"A boring date, but still a date"
"She's my cousin" I pressed.
"So? My parents were closer than cousins. You're an Uzumaki, and half Hyuga, moreover. The family tree is basically a straight line." You know what? I really really don't want to know. So I took the out with that and turned around to make my way out.
Uraume had sent the invitation for tea to my office, and then to my home, and now gotten Grandmother involved. Well, if she wanted to make sure I didn't miss it, then she had succeeded. I returned to my room, switched out my jonin fatigues for a simple black kimono with red embroidery. I did not have the anbu guards that a Hokage would have enjoyed because technically speaking, I was not the Hokage. The council had taken over administration of the village and entrusted that power to me as head of the council to act in their stead. That meant wearing a kimono with no armour or protection and then taking a scenic walk about the village was as much a message as it was a choice.
I was telling the villagers that the village was safe, and that was something that needed to be said. No one was blind to the losses Konoha had suffered. We had either withdrawn or been beaten off all fronts of the war and were essentially allowing the other villages run roughshod over the neighboring villages to us. They were probably securing lines of attack, baggage trains, resource provisions and the likes before advancing on Konoha proper. It meant that I had time to plan, but unfortunately the villagers had time to panic. And there was panic to go around.
I walked into the Hyuga clan compound and the guards barely even gave me a second look. Uraume's orders? I wondered. An attempt to make it seem like I was family here, and to remind me where my loyalty ought to lie?
—
"Well, this feels like an ambush" I said as I walked into a room that did not have one occupant like I expected. Instead, it had eight. Every surviving member of my graduating class sat around the table, clearly waiting for me to arrive.
"Just a meeting Shori" Uzume said, appearing at my side and leading me over to my seat.
"Look at me thinking this was a date or something" I said to Uraume, and the second I did so, I felt Uzume's grip on my arm tighten to unbearable levels. Was she that against incest? Pretty sure the only ones who had the Uchiha beat at that sort of thing were the Hyuga clan.
"We're cousins" Uraume replied with a deadpan even as her eyes flickered to Uzume for a second.
"Fine, fine. So what is this ambush supposed to accomplish?" I asked as I took the seat Uzume had led me to at the head of the table a second after she took hers at my right-hand side. I was not going to interrogate it for now, but something about that arrangement just felt right to me. Like I could feel it right in my soul.
"We just want to talk, Shori. You're our leader now, and we want to know what you have planned" Toshiro was the one who spoke next, and as I turned to him, I realised just how little I'd seen him since Kusa. How little I'd seen any of them who weren't named Uzume to be fair.
"Alright then. If anyone deserves honesty, it's you guys. I mean you guys were the ones who got me the position in the first place" I said with a nod towards the clan heirs and heads around me. I hadn't really anticipated it, but somehow Uzume had managed to get them onside between when I told her about my plan and when we had the meeting. It was just the kind of thing that Izuku would have done. Fuck.
"Shoot" I said, referring to the questions they were undoubtedly holding in reserves.
"What are you going to do about Frost and Kusa?" Of course that was the first question. It was a valid one, even as the person asking it was a surprise. Inoken had a wry smirk on his face as he watched me closely, waiting for an answer.
"The Sandaime's plan to let Iwa gorge themselves on Kusa and his defeat against the Raikage at Frost are both non-ideal. The truth is that the only thing open to us now is retreating past the border, slashing and burning the countryside to deny them resources and then picking the armies off one at a time" I said, even as I knew that would get me more questions. Inoken had asked his question with no competition. The next question had Toshiro, Shikahime, and Kizuru all speaking over each other.
And while their questions piled upon each other, I felt a plan begin to come together in my head. There was something I could do to even the odds in this war.
A/N: And so we get a chapter where some things happen and others are decided. A lot of things Shori does as Hokage will make sense to him, but might not end up yielding the best results. Maybe he learns that the Naruto world works the way it does for a reason. Or maybe he won't. Next three up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.