Ryusei replied calmly that his name was Ryusei.
The man's aura flared with excitement, and his voice came quick, "Is your mother's name Miyako? And your father's name was Takeshi?"
Ryusei gave a slow, almost awkward nod.
The man's expression softened, though his chakra still burned sharply,
"Then I'm your mother's elder brother, Kazuo Senju. Tell me, is she doing well?"
His tone carried a thread of expectation, as if clinging to some fragile hope.
Ryusei went silent for a few moments.
Even with the layers of distance in his transmigrated soul, he could feel fragments of the original Ryusei pushing up sorrow.
At last, he let out a quiet sigh.
"She passed away six years ago, around two years after my father. Stress, grief… it broke her down. I was only six then, just about to enter the Academy."
Kazuo froze. His aura changed like a switch being thrown, swelling with raw killing intent that stabbed into the air around them.
Ryusei thought bitterly, 'Great. I always wanted to trigger a family reunion that ends with a murder charge.'
Kazuo's jaw tightened, voice dropping to a growl.
"During the start of the last war, when the Hokage's faction butchered the revivalist leadership, I lost all contact with your parents."
"Your father, my brother-in-law, was one of the first to be targeted. I feared the worst. But your mother… I didn't think she'd follow so soon."
His chakra flared a deeper shade, and his eyes hardened.
"Was there anything suspicious about her death? How much do you really know about your father and your background?"
Seeing him boiling over, Ryusei let out another sigh. He hadn't expected to suddenly pick up an 'uncle' today, but here they were.
"I already know everything. My father left me his notes. I read them before my mother passed. As for her, I don't think there was direct foul play. She was paranoid, heartbroken, and sick. I watched her gradually fade for two years until the end. So no, not like what they did to my father. Directly, they weren't responsible. Indirectly?"
Ryusei gave a thin smile.
"Obvious enough where the blame lies."
The reason they didn't target Ryusei's mother directly was obvious. Unlike his father, who had served as one of the revivalist faction's leaders during the war, she never held such a role.
She was instead one of the best medical ninja in the village, high up in Konoha's hospital administration, and always stationed in the village itself.
That made her difficult to deploy and even harder to move against without raising suspicion.
After his father's death, she had been devastated. She loved him deeply, perhaps drawn in by the same looks and reckless charisma that Ryusei himself inherited.
From then on she became depressed, detached, and no longer in contact with other revivalists. In that state, she posed no threat, so they left her alone until she eventually passed away on her own.
Both of Ryusei's parents had been young, early twenties when they had him, and only in their mid-twenties when they died.
That also explained why, after Ryusei's grandfather Masamune passed away of old age a few years before the Second Shinobi War, it wasn't his father who immediately succeeded him.
He had been far too young, not yet in a position to take leadership. It was only later, after several other elders were assassinated, that his father stepped in unofficially to guide what remained of the revivalist movement.
Kazuo's aura shuddered, like a man trying to cage a storm inside his chest.
"Anyway, uncle," Ryusei spoke up, already calling him that without hesitation, "I know from my father's notes that you went to serve among the Twelve Guardian Ninja under the Daimyo nearly thirty years ago. How come you're here now? What happened in the meantime?"
He remembered clearly what the notes had said: his uncle, along with five other young talents from the revivalist faction, had been sent outside Konoha to guard the Daimyo.
The plan back then was simple: get closer to the Daimyo to build influence for a clan revival, or at the very least, leave a safety net outside the village if things collapsed internally.
They weren't ordinary shinobi trained through the Academy, but private members of the Senju's own internal guard in training.
Because of that, Tobirama couldn't restrict their movements the way he could with regular village forces, who needed permits to leave to this day.
By Ryusei's reckoning, his uncle should now be in his early forties, same as the others.
Still by the tail end of prime age for shinobi, though Kazuo had always been considered the most gifted among them, nearly matching Ryusei's father.
Had his parents survived, they too would only be in their mid-thirties now.
Instead, his father had been assassinated eight years ago at the start of the Second War, one of ROOT's top priority targets.
His mother followed two years later, broken by grief and paranoia. Ryusei was only four when he lost his father, six when he lost his mother.
Looking back on it now, it was almost laughable. The revivalist faction had thought they were playing the long game, setting pieces in and out of the village.
None of them ever imagined Konoha's leadership would decide to wipe the board completely and succeed with such seamless cruelty.
When Ryusei first came across mentions of those six in his father's notes, he hadn't paid them much attention.
Nearly thirty years had passed since they'd been sent out, and back then, they were just young men.
By now, they had lived through the entire brutal purge of the revivalist faction, watching from afar as it was wiped out.
In Ryusei's mind, it was only natural to assume they'd long since abandoned the dream of a Senju revival, just like everyone else.
But, even if some faint ember of loyalty remained, there was no realistic way for him to reach them anytime soon.
He didn't even know if they still served under the Daimyo or if they had scattered elsewhere.
With so much uncertainty, planning to seek them out had never been at the top of his list of ideas.
The thought of suddenly reuniting with this strange uncle, of all people, had simply never crossed his mind.
However, his uncle was no ordinary shinobi either; now a seasoned fighter from what was likely the third-strongest Senju lineage, Ryuse's mother was also a part of, before the disbandment, ranking just behind Ryusei's father's bloodline.
Kazuo's mood, at this time, could easily be imagined. He hadn't seen his sister in nearly thirty years, ever since they were separated while she was still just a young girl. To hear now that she had died in such a state cut deep.
She had been his only sibling, and he remembered how she always treated him with respect as her elder brother.
After leaving his birthplace behind and never returning, she had been one of the few ties he still held to that past. And now, even that was gone.
Kazuo, meanwhile, quickly steadied himself after hearing that Ryusei already knew the truth.
If the boy understood how his parents had died, then there was no way he could ever bow to Konoha.
And if he was smart enough to survive this long, he also had to know that Konoha would never simply let him go.
That meant, whether he admitted it or not, he was already on their side.
So, he exhaled slowly, his tone softening as he began to explain.
"Back when Tobirama dissolved the clan… nearly thirty years ago now, shortly before the first shinobi world war… your grandfather eventually gathered other similarly minded elders from the clan and formed the so-called 'revivalist faction'. One of their strategies was to tie the Senju name to the Daimyō himself. They chose six of our brightest youths from elite bloodlines related to these elders, myself included, to serve as his personal guardians. The idea was simple. If revival inside Konoha failed, then at least the Senju name would live on outside, preserved through influence at the palace."
Ryusei tilted his head. "Six of you, for thirty years? That must've been dull."
Kazuo snorted. "Dull doesn't even cover it. We were half of the Twelve Guardian Ninja at the time, a little faction of our own. But the truth became clear quickly. The Daimyō was happy enough to gain six loyal shinobi for free, but expecting him to go to war with the Hokage for our sake? Pipe dream. The two restrain each other, always have, always will. He had no reason to risk anything for us. To him, supporting Senju interests meant nothing. But offending the Hokage by protecting us? That was a real cost. So he smiled, kept us as his watchdogs, and that was the end of it."
His voice hardened, the memory weighing heavy. "And while we guarded him like glorified furniture, our kinsmen were being slaughtered. Assassinations, disappearances, mysterious accidents during the Second War… until the faction was gone. Erased."
Ryusei's expression didn't change, but he spoke quietly. "So you all gave up on the dream."
"On Konoha, yes. On the Daimyō, certainly. But not on ourselves." Kazuo's lips twisted into something between a grin and a sneer.
"Decades of service, living like dogs while we should have been kings… eventually, we began planning. We had connections, knowledge of palace movements. We learned of certain shipments, gold being moved discreetly to the Daimyo estates. Why not take that gold for ourselves when we get a chance?"
"Then, after accumulating enough of it, finding a smaller noble inside some local territory, far from the Daimyō's eye, is much easier to control than Fire's central throne. Control the gold, control the land, and with enough time… the Senju could revive in secret. On our terms. With wives, children, and a new base to grow from. And when the moment came, revenge against both Konoha and the palace."
Ryusei raised a brow. "Sounds more like a coup than a revival."
Kazuo chuckled bitterly. "Call it what you like. After thirty years, we felt entitled to it."
He leaned in slightly. "But escaping the Daimyō's leash wasn't so simple. We were his personal bodyguards. Always watched. Always summoned. Only rarely would we be sent away on a confidential errand. When that happened, the others had to remain behind. That was the window. I, being the strongest, volunteered when such a task finally came up, alongside two others. On paper, I was to handle the Daimyō's private business. In truth, it was my chance to move. To strike one of those gold convoys. To set the plan in motion."
His eyes darkened. "And that was when fate played its trick. The gold I went for… was the one your team had been assigned to guard."