NRaO Chapter 28 (Patreon)

“He crippled one of our main branch members and is taking one of our pairs of eyes from our clan!” One of the elders loudly yelled at Hiruzen as I thought of a comeback. “You’re elder clearly tripped and fell directly on his spine. Those eyes you care so much about are attached to a person who hates your clan. They should be given the choice of leaving.”

He looked angry before he smirked. “As a large clan, we’re given certain permissions. You unfortunately aren’t part of any clan-.” I cut him off. “You’re wrong there chief. Didn’t you hear? I took in ten orphans as my adopted children earlier. You’re speaking to Orochimaru Ryuchi, the snake sage of the village.” I puffed on a long pipe. I was only smoking to annoy the Hyuga representative.

His plans were thwarted and the frown on his face let me know I had won. He stood to leave, possibly saying something like “This isn’t the last you’ve heard of this.” before running away with his tail between his legs I stopped him. “As you know clanless are only allowed to adopt two children per adult in their family. Small clans can adopt as many children as they want. I have already petitioned for the adoption of the one hundred and seven Hyuga orphans left from the war.”

The frown turned into full-blown rage as I held back my laughter. “You cannot do that! Don’t you know we must seal any Hyuga eyes who leave the clan!” I only scoffed at him. “That’s a Hyuga rule, not a village rule. You’re more than welcome to try if you can get to the children before I alter the caged bird seal- oh wait. They’re being escorted out of your clan by my clone as we speak.”

His head turned almost red in anger as he stuttered. “T-t-the rules c-clearly!” I cut him off. “What rules!? Those are YOUR clan rules, not the villages! I don't give a fuck about YOUR rules! If you want to fight over this see how fast your side branch flips on you when I tell them I can remove their seals.” I stood up as I yelled at him but sat back down after the outburst. If they made the wrong decision here we could have a civil war inside the village. I try to give him an olive branch.

“This should be eye-opening to the leaders of your clan. What I did was strictly inside the rules of the village. There are no rules stating that a side branch Hyuga can’t get their seals removed. I see you getting mad that there are Hyuga rules that tell them they can’t but I don’t give a shit. If you want to pursue this inside the law then we can. If you want to attack me outside the law of the village I’ll retaliate in kind. Take this loss, learn from it, be better, and fuck off back to the actual leaders. Let's just hope they make the right decision.”

Hiruzen looked at me with judgment in his eyes and it made me want to defend myself. “They’re slavers. How can you trust someone behind you if they’re being forced to be there? I’m stopping a problem before it becomes an actual problem for the village… The village is still too young to survive a civil war if one were to happen… If worse comes to worst I’ll take full responsibility for what happens.”

When I said, take full responsibility, I meant I would flee from the village with my family if they had someone who I couldn’t beat in a fight. The Hyuga were losers though, getting by on numbers and slightly special eyes made them seem like weak frauds to anyone actually strong. It wasn’t Hyuga fighting the Ryuchi. It was Hyuga fighting Orochi. And Orochi was going to make sure it was Hyuga fighting Hyuga if the worst were to happen.

I sighed as I still actually had to do the paperwork for the orphans I just adopted. As I sat in silence filling in the forms I mentioned. “Oh, who reduced the funding for the orphanages?” Hiruzen looked at me confused. “There shouldn’t have been any reductions.” Thank god they didn’t go through the legal means to steal the money. Well, 'reallocate' but we all know what that means. “Whoever is supposed to handle the funding is massively underpaying the orphanages. The children are practically starving.”

He puffed at his long wood pipe before responding. “Ahh, I see. I’ll have to look into that after things settle down here.” It needed to be done. I was doing what I thought would make the village stronger. Having enslaved members was doomed to failure. If anyone attuned themselves to the chakra signature they could kill every side branch family member at once. Hiruzen gave me one more piece of information before I left. "You know you only have a few days before the clans try to have your clan status revoked from your workaround."

The Hyuga situation was going to boil over far before then. If they foolishly attacked me I could openly retaliate and that was the fastest solution… I had a gut feeling that the leaders were cowards though. If I was attacked, it would be by side branch members. They’d want me to kill them so they could use it as justification for having me kicked out of the village. Little did they know they’d be dead far before that occurred.

I looked directly at the Hyuga they made follow me as I left the building and evilly chuckled at him. What a terrible mistake it was to make it a side branch. I called out to him. “Do you want me to remove your caged bird seal?” He sat in silence for a few moments before responding. “I… Can’t. They have my family.” Hmm, of course, they would do that. How unfortunate.

“What happens if you lose track of me?” The man was quiet again before speaking. “They… They hurt them.” I got the picture now. “Understandable. Are they being held in the main branch or a building in the side branch?” He didn’t answer again. Waiting to perfectly think out his response. “I can’t answer that.” I cut him off. “I can outrun you. Tell me or I’ll just run away faster than you can follow.”

“...Branch. They’re being held in the leader's house. He's main branch, sent to watch over us.” Alright then. That actually works out perfectly for me then. “How many main branch members are there in the side branch at any particular time? Do you all get tested regularly?”

“...Ten watching us. Making sure we don’t rebel but that’s all it takes. A single arm movement is enough to disable all the side branch Hyuga around them. They do checks every few years.” I stare at him dumbfounded. All they have is ten watching over them. The side branch is the bulk fighting force of the Hyuga. Totaling about a thousand shinobi, they make up about eight percent of the entire shinobi forces in Konoha. 

If I were a guessing man… Maybe a hundred main branch family members. Twelve leaders, their families and maybe ten founding families of the Hyuga. So less than a hundred most likely. They’re less than ten percent of the Hyuga forces. Take out the children, the ones who can’t fight, and the ones who disagree with how the Hyuga are run… Why am I even fucking around here? Just freeing the side branch will have them crash down like a rising tide and destroy the main branch in the same day.

(Where I got my estimates. Very few actual numbers are stated but taking conservative lowball numbers for everything Konoha has about 80k people<extreme lowball>. 15k ninja after 3 shinobi wars, reducing their numbers<probably more than 15k before second war>. The Hyuga base takes up about 1/16th of the entire Konoha map. 80k divided by 16 is 5k. To be safe I put that number at half. The number of ninjas is 15k divided by 16 putting it at about 1k. Once again, these are lowball numbers where almost 20% of people in the village are ninjas. If I were to guess the actual number is closer to 10-20k Hyuga with 2.5-5k ninja but the math doesn’t math in Naruto. That would make the main branch <We’re shown like 12 members in all of Naruto> have like 30 shinobi capable of fighting. Probably less.)